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Old 20th August 2013, 13:11   #586
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

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Originally Posted by zoombiee View Post
... (not sure if there is a genuine disagreement as we seem to have a misunderstanding) ...
No, I had not misunderstood - you skirted the issue. It's OK, let it be! But you seem to use a remarkably broad brush.
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Old 20th August 2013, 17:00   #587
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

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Originally Posted by sgiitk View Post
@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.
Dear Sir,

The education scenario have changed drastically except for IITs in regard to faculty reward system.

Being educated in a non IITian engineering institutes, I can vouch the professorship is the most lucrative job option in the non IIT institutes (Yes! even more than the govt babus sitting in ministries).

I myself have heard faculties talking among themselves about how they distribute entire syllabus in form of assignments to the batch and the better presentations/assignments of the students make up to their teaching slides and notes data-bank of lecturers.

Seldom do they teach and more seldomly do they take practicals (which as per the latest trend is endowed to the M.Tech/Ph.D students).

So, the ratio of the return in form of handsome salary when compared to efforts put in is best you can find anywhere. Plus the job security and perks attached is beyond mention.

That very well explains the current dwindling education scenario of (non-IIT) education institutes which are major contributors to the technical education (except for say 10% contribution by all IITs combined).

The sad part is that when the senior academicians from IITs/CSIR etc visits these institutes for inspection (UGC, NAAC, AICTE), they pass them with flying colors instead of raising objections on the lack (or rather absence of) laboratories, equipment and basic amenities. Hope you can shed some light on these inspections part as being a well established Professor, you must have done many such inspections yourself.

Regards
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Old 20th August 2013, 18:02   #588
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

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Originally Posted by srishiva View Post
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?
Completely agree, I think tech graduates are being singled out when they have to deal with the same education system as everybody else.

However, it is a good start to a discussion.
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Old 20th August 2013, 18:44   #589
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

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Originally Posted by srishiva View Post
How about employability of economists, businessmen, doctors and any other field. Isn't it prevalent in every filed in India?
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Originally Posted by vivekiny2k View Post
Completely agree, I think tech graduates are being singled out when they have to deal with the same education system as everybody else.
Yes, you are welcome to open new threads for those topics if you feel you have enough content to contribute. This is a 4 year old thread that has been having regular contributions. The thread is about employability of tech graduates and so that is what we are discussing.
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Old 21st August 2013, 08:56   #590
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

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Originally Posted by Grr7 View Post
The sad part is that when the senior academicians from IITs/CSIR etc visits these institutes for inspection (UGC, NAAC, AICTE), they pass them with flying colors instead of raising objections on the lack (or rather absence of) laboratories, equipment and basic amenities. Hope you can shed some light on these inspections part as being a well established Professor, you must have done many such inspections yourself.
Less said trhe better. There is an unofficial 'rewards' system! Also, in one case one of colleagues was tough, and was sagely informed that the next lot of inspectors will clear it!

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Originally Posted by srishiva View Post
How about employability of economists, businessmen, doctors and any other field. Isn't it prevalent in every field in India?
Doctors I can say, my father and grandfathers were doctors, as are my so and daughter-in-law. An MBBS gets you nowhere. I was once in Manipal when the PG counselling was on, an some batch-mates of my son were there (third attempt). I asked them what is their choice only to get a straight answer, uncle at this point anything will do. Also, employment opportunities with a plain MBBS are very limited. Even practice in a small town/ hamlet is tough, competition from the local PMPs and RMPs.
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Old 21st August 2013, 09:48   #591
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

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Originally Posted by sgiitk View Post
Also, employment opportunities with a plain MBBS are very limited. Even practice in a small town/ hamlet is tough, competition from the local PMPs and RMPs.
Yes these days life is tough even after PG one needs to slog out as resident doctor for few years in some reputed hospital where they exploit and treat the residents like dirt. If someone really wants to shine without much struggle then DM or MCH is the only way out.

My sister and BIL are surgeons who run their own hospital and they tell that they need to keep the quacks ( PMP and RMPs) in good humour, These RMPs mostly practice in villages and tehsils and their only job is to direct patients to proper doctor in nearby city and smaller towns with medical colleges.
In doctor's lingo they are called Cut-practitioners .

Also there is a hearsay that few lawyers hang outside the private hospitals and keep hustling patients in case they want to file a case against doctor.

One negative news in local newspaer or word of mouth by cut-practitioner is enough to destroy the reputation for life.

So life is tough after almost 8-10 years of study in medical field.
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Old 21st August 2013, 10:13   #592
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

Therefore, we can conclude that a similar thread on doctors won't fly. Also add the factor that it is part of the doctor's professional courtesy not to put down other doctors, except in privacy. Thankfully, we don't have that in IT.
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Old 21st August 2013, 10:23   #593
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

My perspective is a little different - this is very specific to the profession I have spent most of my career in which was in coding and that too only in product companies. I feel industry experience, internship etc is far down the line in what I expect from a fresher - there are far more basic things missing which need to be fulfilled before I look for practical/industry knowledge or whatever.

When I am interviewing/looking for a programmer who has less than 5 years experience, all I am looking for is that he be able to code - nothing less, nothing more. I don't care what language he can code in, I don't care what OS he is been working on, I don't care whether he knows anything else. I usually start with asking him to write an implementation of strcpy or strcat on the white board in any language of his choice. If he does that quick enough, next a strstr on the white board. Then give him a known sorting problem or a search problem - i.e. say mergesort on the white board. It's not these exact questions but somewhere along these lines. Then finally some problem solving ability - i.e. some problem where he has to design an algorithm for solving a problem - he need not write code for this - just explaining a solution is enough. I am hiring a guy who is going to be coding all the time - so basically he has to write tons of code on the white board in the interview.

Who cares about tools and stuff? How much time would it take a reasonably competent person to learn to use a crappy version control system like CVS or some build system? All this can be learnt on the job.

If it's someone with more than 5 years, then good familiarity with the Gang of Four Patterns is a must.

I spent some amount of time with what was supposed to be one of the better private engineering colleges in Bombay University. I also spent a little time with one person who interacts a lot with DTE Maharashtra and AICTE. This is what I discovered. During the years when I did my graduation (I am not a comp science/electronics/electrical engineer), the govt colleges ruled the roost - they had a major say in syllabus setting, exam setting, setting the tone of the correction and marking. Now the private colleges are large in number and they have a heavy influence in everything. The private colleges are in to make money - if lot of people fail, then it hurts them badly. So everything is designed to make sure that the no of people who don't pass out isn't high. First Year Engineering is common to all branches. It had 2 subjects - C & C++ in Semester 1 & DSA in Java in Semester 2. Apparently these 2 papers resulted in huge amount of failures. So what was the solution? Change the paper format so that you can pass without writing a single program - exam papers have enough theory questions in programming so that someone can pass without writing a single program and someone who cannot code a fizzbuzz(http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/200...s-program.html) can score high marks. Even the programming questions are repeated from a set of 20 programming questions. So over the semester, the professor teaches some 20 standard programs - these programs are repeated in the assignment, they are asked in the mid term tests - almost everyone knows these programs by heart even if they can't program at all. And 3 or 4 off these 20 programs are asked in the university exams also.

Even after all this, the fail rate of Bombay university in these 2 papers was much more than other subjects. So the next solution. Remove these 2 subjects from first year engineering. Now there is no programming subject in the first semester - and there is subject dealing with some amount C in semester 2. C++ and Java been eliminated. I am perfectly OK with this - i.e. doing one programming subject in the first year is enough & C is perfectly fine - no need to get into C++ and Java. Even python is good enough instead of C. However, I am pretty sure the papers are structured such that you can pass and score high without knowing how to program at all. Another thing is that for all subjects (all years), one of 2 things happen - either a paper is easy or by some chance the paper is a little tough, then all examiners are told to make the correction easy.

In my opinion, since engineering subjects are common for 1st year, colleges should admit students into just engineering in the beginning and after the first year based on how much marks they obtained in the respective subjects, they should be allowed to choose their branch. Another thing is that for programming subjects, there should be zero theory questions or short notes. As a matter of fact, I think there should be no short notes in any subject - 'short notes', I think are the bane of engineering.

So to reiterate, I want colleges to make sure students write 1000s of programs. I don't care about tools, I don't care practical experience or internship. I just want guys who can write basic code.

Last edited by carboy : 21st August 2013 at 10:42.
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Old 21st August 2013, 11:08   #594
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

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Originally Posted by amitk26 View Post
Also there is a hearsay that few lawyers hang outside the private hospitals and keep hustling patients in case they want to file a case against doctor.
Very true in countries (like the US) which allow legal practice on commission (often 90% or so). Remember the droves of lawyers who came into India post Bhopal.
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Old 21st August 2013, 11:32   #595
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

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Originally Posted by carboy View Post
- exam papers have enough theory questions in programming so that someone can pass without writing a single program and someone who cannot code a fizzbuzz(http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/200...s-program.html) can score high marks. .
I decided to try this . I am not a programmer per se, but know some perl. I am sure this is probably not the fastest implementation, but in 2 minutes this is what I could whip up
Quote:
#!/usr/bin/perl
#
use strict;
use warnings;

my $i;
my $flagfizz;
my $flagbuzz;
for ($i=1;$i<=100;$i++) {
$flagfizz = 0;
$flagbuzz = 0;
if (int($i/3) eq $i/3) {
$flagfizz = 1;
}
if (int($i/5) eq $i/5) {
$flagbuzz = 1;
}

if (($flagfizz eq 1)&($flagbuzz eq 1)) {
print "FizzBuzz\n";
} elsif ($flagfizz eq 1) {
print "Fizz\n";
} elsif ($flagbuzz eq 1) {
print "Buzz\n";
} else {
print "$i\n";
}
}
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Old 21st August 2013, 15:08   #596
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

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I decided to try this . I am not a programmer per se, but know some perl. I am sure this is probably not the fastest implementation, but in 2 minutes this is what I could whip up
Well, you would pass my telephonic interview with ease & I would actually be looking forward to interview you in person. You would not believe the amount of people who have supposedly programmed professionally for a year or two would take more than 5-10 minutes to actually figure this out and some who would not be able to. I had a hit rate of roughly hiring 1 person out of 50-60 resumes when I was working for product companies which were famous and which pay well. The eliminations happened progressively by resume screening, then by telephonic interviews and then by in person interviews.


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Originally Posted by amitk26 View Post
Now pray tell me, how many Indian customers barring a few banks and stock exchanges have demanded a new product ?
Which company/customer demanded Visicalc? Which customer demanded the AppleWriter? Who demanded a search engine? Who demanded Harvard Graphics? Who demanded web based email? Who demanded an RDBMS? Who demanded one time passwords? Product companies develop products before customers knew they needed them.

Spreadsheets, WordProcessors, AntiVirus, Firewalls, RDBMS, Compilers, RAD tools, Authentication systems, Security Systems - these all and thousand others are all products. You are probably talking about a different kind of product, but Indian companies (outside of banks and stock exchanges) use tons and tons of products each and every day and pay a lot for them. And all of these are developed by companies which started outside India. I have worked in India and abroad for a total of 3 big product companies. Each of these companies do big business in India and each of these companies were started in the US. My current employer is not big but is a product company and we sell to both banks and regular Indian companies - we are in a competitive market. My company is foreign and we compete with mostly other foreign companies in the Indian market.

India doesn't do products - and not because there is no need.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sgiitk View Post
Very true in countries (like the US) which allow legal practice on commission (often 90% or so). Remember the droves of lawyers who came into India post Bhopal.
90% is probably a very rare case. Typically contingency lawyers work on 30-50%.

Last edited by carboy : 21st August 2013 at 15:12.
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Old 21st August 2013, 15:46   #597
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

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Originally Posted by tsk1979 View Post
I decided to try this . I am not a programmer per se, but know some perl. I am sure this is probably not the fastest implementation, but in 2 minutes this is what I could whip up
Since you tried, I'll have to put a C++ version.

int main(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
for(long long i = 1; i <= 100; i++)
{
std::cout << (i%15 ? (i%5 ? (i%3 ? std::to_string(i) : "Fizz") : "Buzz") : "FizzBuzz") << std::endl;
}
return 0;
}

Last edited by Samurai : 21st August 2013 at 15:50. Reason: using 0X feature
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Old 21st August 2013, 15:50   #598
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

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Originally Posted by carboy View Post
My perspective is a little different - this is very specific to the profession I have spent most of my career in which was in coding and that too only in product companies. I just want guys who can write basic code.
Well this may be true if the code you are writing does not require any domain knowledge.
For example if you have a task like developing a solution for image de-blurring or identifying objects in a video it requires that developer understands transforms . Teaching C coding to someone who has clear understanding of signal processing / image processing is easier then teaching concepts to someone who has good coding skills. Same goes for other domains like OFMD-MIMO or any other technology development where understaing of domain is required.

In this case in my observation electronics and telecommunication graduates and those who have worked on DSP have edge over computer science graduates. Because CS people never pay much attention to the higher engineering mathematics though it is part of the course.

I may be biased but this is based on limited sample size I have.


Quote:
Originally Posted by carboy View Post
Which company/customer demanded Visicalc? Which customer demanded the AppleWriter? Who demanded a search engine? Who demanded Harvard Graphics? Who demanded web based email? Who demanded an RDBMS? Who demanded one time passwords? Product companies develop products before customers knew they needed them. .
You are quoting examples from a consumer products but even there a certain market pull was there . There was a community of PC users in west who carried their toy PCs to workplace and demanded / tried business solutions on them instead of working on company provided mainframe console.

Once the product is created in some other part of the world it makes no economic sense to reinvent the wheel in India few years later , So we do see lots of product and custom development for west and western products.

Same thing is being repeated today in case of Mobiles / Tablets consumers brought them to workplace and created a pull for BYOD devices.

Incidentally these days I am working on enabling BYOD as you can guess demand is from western market.

Had Indian consumers or government have created these demands products would have been developed here first.
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Old 21st August 2013, 15:52   #599
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Originally Posted by Samurai View Post
Since you tried, I'll have to put a C++ version.

int main(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
for(long long i = 1; i <= 100; i++)
{
std::cout << (i%15 ? (i%5 ? (i%3 ? std::to_string(i) : "Fizz") : "Buzz") : "FizzBuzz") << std::endl;
}
return 0;
}
Ha Ha my solution was same using ternary operator but in pure C .
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Old 21st August 2013, 16:06   #600
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re: IT Industry and Employability of Technical Graduates

I guess this is the most natural way of solving it.
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