|
Search Forums |
Advanced Search |
Go to Page... |
Search this Thread | 188,237 views |
19th August 2013, 15:20 | #571 | |||
Senior - BHPian Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 8,069
Thanked: 2,919 Times
| re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
As Samurai succinctly mentioned, "The current professors with M.tech and Ph.D have no clue about industry". | |||
() Thanks |
|
19th August 2013, 15:28 | #572 |
BHPian Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 314
Thanked: 97 Times
| re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates
I dont agree with the first statement. People do get into teaching because they have a genuine passion for it and can pursue their lines of interest (this is a smaller percentage I agree). It is not necessary for every one to pursue graduation to work in the industry. Quite a large amount of innovation in IT has come about from colleges and not industry especially on the OS and DB fronts. I have spent about a decade in the industry and find that by and large the Indian IT industry dumbs out most people as time goes by. Most of the work is plain ridiculous and does not need technical graduates. There are a few genuine places where work is generally really good (again a small percentage). |
() Thanks |
19th August 2013, 15:44 | #573 |
BANNED Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Gurugram
Posts: 7,969
Thanked: 4,788 Times
| re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates @zoombiee; and @DerAlte; As a lifelong academic let me add. Till about two decades ago people did opt for teaching but today the rewards ratio is too poor to think about it. |
() Thanks |
19th August 2013, 15:57 | #574 | ||
Senior - BHPian Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 8,069
Thanked: 2,919 Times
| re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates Quote:
There definitely exists a small set of people who after having worked 15-20 years in the industry have now become teachers. Do interact with them to know the current state they are in. The ones who predate them in the institutions keep them locked up in lectures and don't allow them any leeway or progress - for fear of getting superseded by superior knowledge. Quote:
Even in the worst of the industry environments, there is enough scope to innovate and invent, *provided* one is involved intimately enough to recognize it. Most people spend their time only peripherally involved, and also waiting for others to tell them what to to. I have also spent 25 of those 35 interacting with academicians, from Level 1 institutions to Level n, on various occasions. I have seen enough to be disillusioned. Your idealism is refreshing. PS: Dr. Gupta, you are old school! Last edited by DerAlte : 19th August 2013 at 16:00. | ||
() Thanks |
19th August 2013, 16:13 | #575 | |
BHPian Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 314
Thanked: 97 Times
| re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates Quote:
All my questions are in relation to the field in which I work on (comp sci). I can also confidently tell you that I have more working technical knowledge than my engineering director who has about 20 years of industry experience. Q1 -> When one is in the industrry (in INDIA), one really does not have the liberty of choosing what you work on. There is a exception to this, but in most service companies you just cannot. You have to work on what is available Q2 -> 7 times out of 10 dirty and quick approaches are taken. Pain-staking perfectionist solutions are neither appreciated nor encouraged in general. Everything comes down to dollar savings Q3 -> Most projects use off the shelf products. Very less room for innovation and usage of skill. For ex - Most ORM specialists have little or no knowledge of underlying database knowledge. A college pass out will know more than these industry veterans All in all - there are incompetent people in the industry and in colleges. The percentages usually would be the same. The same incompetent person in college will remain incompetent even after 10 years in the industry. Passion/Pride/Hunger/Responsibility are not taught in colleges. They are taught much earlier and such people should not even get into colleges. | |
() Thanks |
19th August 2013, 16:57 | #576 | |||||
Senior - BHPian Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 8,069
Thanked: 2,919 Times
| re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
"Dollar savings" is an emotional expression; the universal truth is investor's interest / returns. Can / should / must you deny them that? Quote:
Innovation cannot be necessarily found by going back to first principles and "assumed personal skill" (which is another way of saying "it gives me kicks to do it"). And yet, despite all these 'perceived' constraints, creative people find sufficient avenues to satisfy their desire to 'innovate'. Everyone benefits, and no one says "No, don't do it". Just needs the right objectives, no? The sordid state is not due to "incompetent people" (yes I agree; they are present everywhere in the same %age). It is a set of people choosing an easier way of life, a life devoid of any sense of excellence. Corrupted principles, not lack of innate abilities. Extreme self-serving subservience. Absolute reliance on the paradigm "No pain, a little gain, I can lead a hassle free life. Who wants headaches.". | |||||
() Thanks |
19th August 2013, 17:42 | #577 | |||||
BHPian Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 314
Thanked: 97 Times
| re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
I think we are on the same page. What I wanted to say that industry does not mould people or make them more professional than they are when they come out of college. A person who is aggressive and wants to learn will do so both at a crappy college and a crappy company. A person who is not so aggressive and likes inertia will do so both at the best college as well as in the best company. There will always be a small set of people who defy all odds. They do not represent the general truth. There are a few honest politicians, yet the generally held thought is that politicians are corrupt. Last edited by zoombiee : 19th August 2013 at 17:51. | |||||
() Thanks |
20th August 2013, 01:27 | #578 | ||||
Team-BHP Support | re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates Quote:
I gave a speech couple years back at an engg college function, where I was the chief guest. Following is an excerpt from that speech. Quote:
So... when I encountered my first software services project at HP in 1995, I already had 5 years of product development background. This project had nearly 150 people including 120 C++ programmers across 10 teams. The development work itself was very boring and repetitive. The design was done by Andersen consulting, and we had no access to it. We were supposed to read pseudo code and write C++ code. I didn't want to do it. So, I looked towards creating new work. I was a tools guy by then. My mantra was "If you need to repeat, automate it". There was already a CASE tool that created some of the code. So I wrote another tool to generate source code from a definition (meta data) file. I brought it to a level where 80% of the source code could be generated and only 20% need to be hand coded. Whenever bugs were found, I fixed the tool instead of source code. Showed it to the boss (team leader), after she was suitably impressed, I asked whether the whole team of 10 can use it. She right away saw the benefit and green signaled it. Now my personal project attained semi-official status within the team. I could work on it openly. Since the whole team needed access, I had to add many new features. Since everybody in the team needed access to each other's code, I had to maintain a common definition file which can be edited by all without overwriting each other's changes. So I kept the definition file in my HP-UX workstation, and turned my standalone tool into a socket based client-server application. The client tool would talk to my server app and retrieve the definition file. Until the user returns the file, nobody else can take out the file for editing. But disaster struck on the second day when a user returned a blank file and wiped out the combined definition file. Now I realised the importance of a version control system, and added that feature using the RCS utility (Revision Control System of Unix) on the backend. Now locking and version control was managed by RCS, allowing people to access older definitions if required. Now I hit the next problem. When I was alone, it was easy to ensure I was using the latest version. Everytime I fix a bug, how do I ensure others use the latest client instead of the outdated one? I didn’t want to move code generation to the server side since it would steal my CPU power. Also, I had no superuser power to maintain it in a central place. FTP was the only way to share files. So, I wrote a socket based version control service. Every time the client tool would run, it would check with my server whether an update exists. That way I could send a warning to download the latest or even stop the execution if the update was critical. Now I had complete control over the client tool no matter where it ran. It also had counters to keep track of number of times the tools were invoked. The productivity of my team members suddenly went up, and two other teams in the same floor noticed it, and soon adopted the tool. There were 7 more teams (nearly 100 people) in Madras, headed by much senior team leaders. They didn’t show any interest in our un-official tool and continued to do it the hard way. Meanwhile, the entire project had hit a snag. After 4 months of coding, we still couldn’t compile. Our source code had dependency on a template library, which was specifically designed for this project. That template library didn’t compile on HP-C++ compiler because of some compiler bug. Until HP C++ compiler team fixed the bug, we had no way to compile any code. One fine day I started looking at the template library and discovered a shocking fact. That code didn’t require template feature at all. It was not generic code. The entire 150 people team were held hostage to a feature that was not needed in the first place. All because of a stupid designer who didn’t know how to use templates. But who is going to listen to a 5 year experienced programmer, when the library was designed by the venerable Andersen Consulting? When I explained the problem to the 3 team leaders in Bangalore, they couldn’t understand it. They were technical, but they had never done template programming, so they couldn’t get it. Therefore, there was no question of escalating it to the higher ups. Then I made an offer they couldn't refuse. I said I can modify the code generation tool to generate non-template classes to replace the template class library. That means we can start compiling. That was too irresistible, and I got the go ahead. In couple of days I modified the tool to generate non-template classes to take the place of template classes. Then we had all the Bangalore programmers re-generate the source code, and now we could start compiling. It was a bloody coup! Madras team continued to ignore us, while being very skeptical about our compilation status. That was mainly because they were in-charge of coding the template library, and didn’t want to accept any suggestion from us. In the next couple month, we compiled the code, unit tested the code, fixed all the bugs. Meanwhile, the top boss (my manager’s manager’s manager) who was located in Bangalore was confused. She knew the Bangalore team was compiling using some non-template version, while Madras team was waiting for the compiler bug fix. While she suggested the Madras team to follow our lead, inter-branch rivalry was enough to resist the recommendation. Then there was a funny situation. Those days HP C++ compiler used to get patches very frequently. One day the non-template class code generated by my tool ran afoul of the C++ compiler. It compiled before update, but failed after that. It took me more than a week to find the issue and put a workaround. But the secrecy around the un-official tool caused a funny situation. When nobody could compile in Bangalore for a week, the top boss was all up in arms. It was another matter that Madras team hadn’t compiled even once. So she called all the key people in Bangalore to discuss the matter. Since I was 2nd in command of my team, I too was invited. She: This is a serious problem, why is this happening? <couple team leaders gave a brief summary and turned it over to me for details> Me: It is because of blah, blah, blah... She: How can we fix it? Me: It will take time, we are looking into it... She: Why don’t we consult somebody about this? Me: Who? She: Madras team. Me: They don’t use this tool. She: Why not bring in Mr.X from Madras team? Me: How can he help? <I am being very evasive because she doesn’t know the author of the tool> She: Isn’t he in-charge of the template library? Me: Yes She: So call him. Me: But this is non-template version <I just don’t want to admit I am the author, especially since the tool isn’t working> She: How different is it? Me: Very different. <All the other seniors were studying the walls, ceiling and table surface with great interest> She: What if it is different, didn’t he develop the non-template version too? Me: No She: Bloody hell, who then developed the non-template version of the library? Me: <sigh> I developed it... so I have to fix it. She: <speechless> The meeting ended with that. It was probably the only time she was so speechless and ended the meeting that way. After that she must have dug deep to find out all about it. However, I didn’t get into any trouble. She knew about the productivity that was achieved due to the tool, but didn’t know it was developed right under her nose. A month later, the compiler team fixed the problem with the templates. After that the template team took some more time to compile and test their code before releasing it. Finally Madras team could compile, after 6-7 months of coding. They actually had hopes of beating us using the template version. They knew Bangalore teams had compiled and tested using non-template version. But what about migration to template version? Many jokes were made about us having to redo everything all over again. But they just didn’t know the power of our tools. The day before the template library was released, I reverted my code generation to the earlier version. The one that generated template version of the source code. By morning every team member in Bangalore had the latest tool and re-generated the header files. Since the changes were only needed to header files, the hand written source files were left untouched. By 11AM, everybody had recompiled and fired the unit tests. By noon, we were done. Madras team was still looking at their makefiles. After this second coup, many Madras teams showed interest in my tools and started using it. I had few other tools, but I don’t remember the details. By the time the project ended after 16 months, my various tools were invoked nearly 200,000 times, as reported by my version control tool. In this project, most of my coding was related to my unofficial tools. I set the requirements, did the design, and developed using the language and tools of my choice. I spent another two years in HP, and I continued the same habit. When I was put in-charge of a testing team, I created a development project within the team to create a distributed testing tool using C++ and CORBA. So I got to do C++ programming even while running a testing team. By then all the managers had stopped questioning me on such matters. Can this be replicated? Yes. Last year, one of my best programmers quit the company. He is one of the few who understands Boost C++ library and could use it well, apart from Java and Python. And after 4 years of working with me, he had become a very good generalist. But his new employer uses only C. Asking a Boost C++ programmer to use C is akin to chinese torture. When he met me couple months later and cried about it, I revealed my old bag of tricks. So he started looking around and found a failed testing tool project within the group, that was badly needed done. He offered to do it using C++ and they accepted it. Thus he went ahead and did that very complex project using C++. So everybody was very happy and impressed. Next he demanded to use C++ in his main project, and they approved it. Now they hold him in very high esteem, all because he decided to change his situation. Moral of the Story: You can get your way, provided you can demonstrate irresistible value proposition. Quote:
Quote:
Last edited by Samurai : 16th July 2020 at 18:11. Reason: typo | ||||
(9) Thanks |
The following 9 BHPians Thank Samurai for this useful post: | blackstallion76, evil_grin, gauravanekar, InControl, Lij, rajvardhanraje, skarface, SPIKE ARRESTOR, sujithsidhardha |
20th August 2013, 10:36 | #579 |
BHPian Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 314
Thanked: 97 Times
| re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates @ Samurai - I agree with you on this. I agree that if one wants to do something, he/she can do it by being creative. However, this is a minority population. Most people in the industry are not like you or your programmer. The industry in general views all of us with the same experience with the same eye (excluding certain startups). So in general what I want to say is that people who are incompetent in their college mostly remain incompetent in the industry. The ratio of competent:incompetent remains the same. I will again iterate, that finding work in the industry that one really likes to do is extremely hard to come by and also requires an element of luck. Some of the questions that I have been asked when interviewed in the industry have been plain ridiculous. |
() Thanks |
20th August 2013, 11:35 | #580 | |||
Team-BHP Support | re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Start looking to add value, you may get lucky. | |||
() Thanks |
20th August 2013, 12:10 | #581 | |
Senior - BHPian Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 8,069
Thanked: 2,919 Times
| re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates Quote:
Some brains work differently - they are bored very soon with canned information and and prejudiced answers. They are thoroughly dissatisfied with the lack of challenge (learning by rote and regurgitation is not challenging for them). They are hardly incompetent. Most of them really excel in the real world as they get a wide variety of challenges which gives them ample scope to apply their intellect / power of analysis. The reverse happens more than the above case. Students who learn by rote reach their limit of competence by the time they get a job. | |
() Thanks |
|
20th August 2013, 12:15 | #582 |
Senior - BHPian Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Bengaluru
Posts: 4,375
Thanked: 2,256 Times
| re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates Man, the replies to this post keeps running... How about employability of economists, businessmen, doctors and any other field. Isn't it prevalent in every filed in India? |
() Thanks |
20th August 2013, 12:17 | #583 | |
BHPian Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 314
Thanked: 97 Times
| re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates Quote:
| |
() Thanks |
20th August 2013, 12:47 | #584 | ||
Senior - BHPian Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 8,069
Thanked: 2,919 Times
| re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates Quote:
* You earlier said "people who are incompetent in their college mostly remain incompetent in the industry". How did you define 'competence' then? * Solving problems 'logically' is out of scope / 'out of syllabus' in colleges in India, right? Or did you mean that competent people solve problems logically, even if they arrive at the wrong answer / solution? Quote:
BTW, employability is not an issue with neither 'Businessmen' nor 'Doctors' - and only Govt. needs Economists. Fresh-out-of-college Doctors somehow manage not to shorten the life of their patients when treating them. Comparatively, fresh-out-of-college technical graduates would either - freeze to inaction (simile: the patient would die from doctor's inaction), - demand that they be trained (simile: "Please teach me how to treat a patient") or - manage to destroy whatever they were told to create (simile: the patient dies from their action)! Last edited by DerAlte : 20th August 2013 at 12:58. | ||
() Thanks |
20th August 2013, 12:59 | #585 | |
BHPian Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 314
Thanked: 97 Times
| re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates Quote:
1 -> People are inherently incompetent. Their problem solving ability is not good 2 -> People institutionalize incompetence over a period of time. Its either in their nature or due to external constraints. Reasons for this are complacency, lure of low hanging fruits, sheer laziness, inertia .... Most of such people will continue to remain incompetent for the rest of their lives. Solving problems is not out of scope. Its a part of the curriculum, but there isnt much weightage given to it in the grand scheme of things (grades). You can choose to ignore it or take it on. You may sometimes arrive at wrong answers or solutions by using some basic logic, if the understanding of the core subject is less. Understanding the subject should eradicate that problem. If there is inherent lack of problem solving skills, nothing can be done. Not sure where the contradiction lies. I think its more of a misunderstanding. I think we could continue endlessly over this. Lets agree to disagree (not sure if there is a genuine disagreement as we seem to have a misunderstanding). | |
() Thanks |