[SPIKE ARRESTOR]

In India, R&D in most Automotive companies (the home grown ones) is Replicate and Duplicate, there is very little of R&D which happens there. Not sure of IT companies though.The small institute where I attend a course in Vehicle Acoustics has more sophisticated and expensive equipments than the acoustics department of the company I used to work for.

The learning methodology here is completely different to what we have back in India. The interaction with industry helps, for e.g. few weeks back, I was working on CO2, PM and NOx optimization for a V12 development engine. Before that, I had not even seen a V12 engine in flesh. That is studying Automotive Engineering in Germany for you.

Spike

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by amitk26

... being seeded by any Indian institute.

Which "institutes" did you have this expectation of?

2 years back, I had visited one of the premier Engg. colleges in Bangalore (in connection with setting up a possible collaboration with a Japanese research institute), and met the HOD Telecommunications & HOD Electronics. The expressions were very illuminating:
* "We are paid xx.xxL per annum, what motivation would you expect from us to produce something practical?" (xx.xxxL was much less than what a person with 8-10y experience gets on and average in the software industry, and this was the HOD talking!)
* "I have been to Japan to attend a conference. Very nice place. All other speakers there talked about practical implementation of different protocols. I showed them the theoretical fine points of <some topic>, including the equation derivation"
* "In all the academic and administrative work we have to do, there is no time left for practical thinking. I also need time to teach my own children for 10th and 12th, no"

It was *extremely* embarrassing for me (may the earth part ...), and the Japanese team didn't know what hit them. They had come with fond hopes, and I sincerely hoped that they didn't understand the HODs' English. We diplomatically avoided talking about it after that.

[amitk26]

Originally Posted by DerAlte

Which "institutes" did you have this expectation of?

.

My expectation is only of seeding an open source project related to the subjects they are teaching and claiming to do research on.

If some institute claims they offer post graduate degree in perticular discipline related to computing and also if there are Phd students as well is it an unfair expectation that work done as part of thesis is available in open source ? Unless it is sponsored research thus bound by NDA there is no reason for research done with public money to remain closed.

I would expect IITs , IISc or whatever is considered Tier 1 here to fullfill this.

Example: Few years back there was lot of news on development of parallel processing in India but I did not see any of these "institutes" of national importance as defined by parliament of India starting any project on tools/compilers for distributed parallel processing.

[ampere]

Originally Posted by amitk26

If some institute claims they offer post graduate degree in perticular discipline related to computing and also if there are Phd students as well is it an unfair expectation that work done as part of thesis is available in open source ? Unless it is sponsored research thus bound by NDA there is no reason for research done with public money to remain closed.

I would expect IITs , IISc or whatever is considered Tier 1 here to fullfill this.

Now there is this new Mantra of patenting. So no one talks of any thing !
Of course they can patent and develop a prototype. But under the garb of patenting nothing comes out.

Also a working prototype is a much more involved effort which many dont want to get into. All they want is publication and the story ends there.

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by DerAlte

I think you are describing a miniscule part of the industry. Without naming names, and these are big names in the both Product and Application sectors, most companies don't use this sequence; or, it just happens in the prototype part where very few, if at all, India based centers are involved. .

. Majority of product companies, anywhere in the world do miniscule "Actual Research and Development".
Even cutting edge semiconductor companies only do incremental development in their next generation chipsets.
R&D budget is around 20% of the Revenue of most companies.
Out of this 1%-5% is involved in "Research projects".

Rest is all reuse. You cannot crank out chip after chip every 6 months if you do things from scratch. So its just things like moving to a smaller library, or using a faster DMA, or plugging in some additional peripheral etc.,

Even in very cutting edge products like GPUs, once the first of the series comes out, the subsequent enhanced versions are micro-variants.

So whether its India, or abroad, most of the work is reuse, re-assemble etc., Only a small fraction of the engineering force (Called Architects) actually writes stuff from scratch.

As far as India is concerned, depending upon caliber of available workforce, projects are undertaken. Established product centers, with experienced engineers are doing lots of real development work. However, the percentage of people capable of, and being involved is slowly declining. As Samurai said, the gold rush candidates are now entrenched in middle order and upper middle order, and most of these joined the field because there was promise of a foreign stint and high pay.

As a result, we are geared towards a booming service sector, where technical skill level is not really required.

For example, an engineer friend of mine, who did Electronics and communication engineering did a job where he had to reset a particular appliance, if things went bad. A fifth standard student could have done that. After that he did MBA and became a consultant, where he does something which I have been unable to understand. The guy draws very well(or used to draw very well), but with his good academic scores, if he had chosen the arts, his family would have skinned him alive.

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by amitk26

... is it an unfair expectation that work done as part of thesis is available in open source ? ...

No, of course not. The expectation is absolutely valid. But ... their life doesn't have ANY relationship with the expectations of the rest of the world - they live in & for their own microcosm. Including the delusions they create for themselves that they are working on something extremely important, and of extreme self-worth.

This I am sure you would have realized as soon as you joined your first job (I am assuming you were educated in India).

Originally Posted by amitk26

... I would expect IITs , IISc or whatever is considered Tier 1 here to fullfill this. ... "institutes" of national importance as defined by parliament of India ...

(I regret the limit is 2). You have a great sense of humorous sarcasm.

[w 12]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Me: This is your final year project, and you didn't know this?
She: ....

<little later>


Me: What is Fourier Transforms used for?
She: Hmm, don't know.
Me: You are an electronics & communication engineering graduate. But you don't know what Fourier Transforms is used for?
She: Hmm.
Me: Think

May be I am going against the tide bit I find this line of questioning pretty silly.

What is the point in ridiculing the candidates implied lack of knowledge, once they accept they do not know the answers ?

This is a very common mistake made by most of the interviewers, who mistake interview as a chance to showcase their supposed higher intelligence, in front of an audience.

Once the candidate says she does not know the answer, there is no point in humiliating them further by such statements. A good interviewer will just conclude the meeting cordially & reject them instead of saying things like "you dont know this "or "you didnt know that " inspite of scoring well in maths or studying electronics. etc.

p.s. the famous century question itself does not have definite answers.There are multiple views on that as well.

[ampere]

Originally Posted by w 12

This is a very common mistake made by most of the interviewers, who mistake interview as a chance to showcase their supposed higher intelligence, in front of an audience.

Agreed that when one interviews, he needs to start with what a candidate knows and see if one can make the candidate think and build over what he knows. Many a times interviewers do that mistake of asking the candidate what they know and not try to find what the candidate knows or can think about.

But then its also implied that candidate is aware of basics. Its like a candidate has passed 12th std physics and says, I dont know Newton's Laws of Motion or simple harmonic motion. Fourier and Laplace Tranforms form the core of electrical engineering concepts for signal processing and circuits. An electrical/electronics engineering candidate simply cannot say he does not know these concepts.

[DerAlte]

Originally Posted by w 12

... What is the point in ridiculing the candidates implied lack of knowledge, once they accept they do not know the answers ? ...

Sure, and most likely you would have lost a possibly great candidate because you didn't pull them into a conversation, trying to be politically correct.

What is missing in the expression is the facial expression of the interviewer and interviewee. It would be very short sighted to call this 'ridiculing', especially under circumstances that the candidates create terror in their own minds before they sit down for the interview. Sometimes mildly asking 'hey, you don't know that?' or 'how can you forget that?' brings them out of their shell and makes them think.

What we look for is HOW they think, not whether their answers are correct or incorrect. They can always find the answer to any question - on the 'net. What matters is can they be self-driven and self-reliant in searching for answers. If they can't think, their searches will be perfunctory and they will never find answers to practical problems on their own. That is a big drain on an organizations's resources, as others have to pitch in. 2 persons salary going to doing 1 person's work is never a good deal.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by w 12

May be I am going against the tide bit I find this line of questioning pretty silly.

If you actually have some experience in hiring fresh candidates, you won't find it silly. It is actually heartbreaking and sad to me that I have to ask such basic questions to engineering graduates. I was asked 10 times more difficult questions in my days as interviewee.

Originally Posted by w 12

What is the point in ridiculing the candidates implied lack of knowledge, once they accept they do not know the answers ?

If you don't know something complex, that is one thing. If an E&C FCD graduate doesn't know the application of Fourier transform or doesn't know whether she used a diode or transistor in her project, it is downright deplorable. I rarely point out mistakes to candidates, but when these FCDs don't know the ABCD of their 4 year course, I just cracked and it came out. Will you please forgive me?

Originally Posted by w 12

This is a very common mistake made by most of the interviewers, who mistake interview as a chance to showcase their supposed higher intelligence, in front of an audience.

And this is a very common mistake made by readers who read this thread by chance. What is the need for me to showoff to people less than half my age? People who know me in person can vouch that I am a very confident guy even offline. I don't need to inflate my ego by harassing fresh graduates.

So give it a break, will you? Anyway, I have answered this accusation before: http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifti...ml#post2814486

If you are lazy to read through that, I'll mention in short. I only ask questions from what they claim to know on their resume. I never ask them to solve silly puzzles or to move Mt.fuji. I only want to know whether they are capable of learning by observation. When a 22 year old person with 18-19 years of schooling doesn't pickup the meaning of the word century in that entire period, one can safely conclude that he/she is not capable of learning. Same again for E&C graduate not knowing the purpose of FT, or not knowing diode vs transistor. These are the basic knowledge, if they didn't pickup this, they are not observant enough to be engineers.

Originally Posted by w 12

Once the candidate says she does not know the answer, there is no point in humiliating them further by such statements. A good interviewer will just conclude the meeting cordially & reject them instead of saying things like "you dont know this "or "you didnt know that " inspite of scoring well in maths or studying electronics. etc.

As I said before, this was a very rare case. I had these back-to-back interviews with 4 candidates with very impressive resumes. When I realised this is the cream of the VTU output, I got totally frustrated and had to tell them they didn't know the most basic facts of their field of choice.

However, by the time I came to CS FCDs, I had regained my composure. When they said they need Visual Studio and MS-SQL on every user PC, I smiled and moved on.

Originally Posted by w 12

p.s. the famous century question itself does not have definite answers.There are multiple views on that as well.

Yes, you may hire people who have different interpretation of century. I simply can't.

[alpha1]

Originally Posted by Samurai

So give it a break, will you? Anyway, I have answered this accusation before: http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifti...ml#post2814486

If you are lazy to read through that, I'll mention in short. I only ask questions from what they claim to know on their resume. I never ask them to solve silly puzzles or to move Mt.fuji. I only want to know whether they are capable of learning by observation. When a 22 year old person with 18-19 years of schooling doesn't pickup the meaning of the word century in that entire period, one can safely conclude that he/she is not capable of learning. Same again for E&C graduate not knowing the purpose of FT, or not knowing diode vs transistor. These are the basic knowledge, if they didn't pickup this, they are not observant enough to be engineers.

Looks like we (this thread) haven't moved much from that period of time?
;-)

Same is the story about education and employability.

I am happy to announce that I still stick to the views I posted at that time, and with each passing day, I can only conclude that I was right (which is a very sad reality about our Indian education system and job market/work).

[Samurai]

I completed the hiring very much in June, so this thread is once again silent. But I found something more to share.

Few BE (comp.sci/info.sci) FCD students who just completed 4th semester, are doing internship in my office. Not out of curiosity, god forbid, it is an academic requirement. So I took couple classes for them, before they can go about setting up the open source software and validate what they learned. Doesn't involve any programming. They just have to install couple open source software, configure and test the setup over the network.

I told them I can't give access to my corporate network, they would have to put their laptops together and create their own network. In the stunned silence that followed, I realised they didn't know how put a bunch of laptops into a network, even a wifi one. Is this not covered in the first couple years of comp.sci BE?

Later I was talking to a trainee who joined the company last year. He is from E&C and is a pretty sharp guy. We were discussing about the candidate who mistook the photo transistor for photo diode for lack of the third leg. Suddenly something he said didn't make sense. I probed deeper and found that he believed photo transistor actually generated electricity, as in a solar generator. Then I explained that light is merely a signal, that controls the amount of much amplified current that flows between emitter and collector. The amplified current comes from a proper power source and not generated by the light falling on the transistor. He was a bit red-faced at the end as he realised the truth.

[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Few BE (comp.sci/info.sci) FCD students who just completed 4th semester, are doing internship in my office. Not out of curiosity, god forbid, it is an academic requirement. So I took couple classes for them, before they can go about setting up the open source software and validate what they learned. Doesn't involve any programming. They just have to install couple open source software, configure and test the setup over the network.

I told them I can't give access to my corporate network, they would have to put their laptops together and create their own network. In the stunned silence that followed, I realised they didn't know how put a bunch of laptops into a network, even a wifi one. Is this not covered in the first couple years of comp.sci BE?

Are they VTU students? Networking is then taught only from 6th semester and later . The first year is anyway the common set of subjects which all branches go through, so they are into their actual CS courses only now. The third and fourth semester concentrate on basics of programming - Data structures, algorithms, graph theory, etc. Networking, DB, web programming, etc come in from 3rd year onwards. Practicals of networking was actually prescribed in the 7th semester for my batch ('08 passout).

I don't think we can expect all 2nd year students to know something like this, even if people are expected to try it on their own accord. Not every student might be interested in networking, not all may be able to afford a computer, and even if they could they may not have had access to multiple computers (at the same location) to try rigging them up together.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

I don't think we can expect 2nd year students for knowing something like this, even if people are expected to try it on their own accord. Not every student may be able to afford a computer, and even if they could they may not have had access to multiple computers (at the same location) to try rigging them up together.

All of them have laptops and have broadband connections at home. One of them has linux on her laptop. So I thought they would know that much. Anyway, I told them how setup a network.

[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by Samurai

All of them have laptops and have broadband connections at home. One of them has linux on her laptop. So I thought they would know that much. Anyway, I told them how setup a network.

I think they should bring some basic networking courses into the earlier semesters' syllabi. The way it is structured right now is a bit weird - there was a subject called Data communications in 5th sem, then computer networks in 6th sem and practicals for that in 7th sem! None of that (including lab course) taught setting up of networks. Most of the lab experiments also were dealing with packet analysis using some network simulator, no actual hardware connections. So what you actually require (basic network setup) is not taught in the vtu syllabus at all for computer science engineering. Beat that!

We learnt how to rig the computers together into a LAN on our own, but for a different reason - we wanted to play Counter strike multiplayer in the lab .