The 5-year limit to being a coder in India?
swaroopch.com
swaroopch.com
My gut feeling (inferring from conversations) is that the vast majority of companies do not perform work of sufficient complexity to require more than three years of technical learning. The only way employees there can then add value to the organization is by becoming a manager.
Usually these are only a small percentage of the total... and to have something to actually "manage" the manager/employee ratio must remain somewhat constant (or that "add value" become meaningless).
It appears that they've been able to sustain it for the past 20 years or so. I agree it's not sustainable indefinitely.
Needless to say, the guy was not offered a job.
I'm lost at this point in the article. Why wasn't he offered the job, and what is a crore dowry?
Presumably because he now seemed to be interested in the company only for its US connection, and might leave once he had his passport stamp.
> what is a crore* dowry?*
A lot of money: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore
1. If you have a B.E. degree, you get a INR 2000000 dowry alongwith a 800cc Maruti Suzuki automobile.
2. If you have a MBA degree, you get a INR 3500000 dowry, alongwith a Maruti Suzuki Esteem, or a Tata Indica.
3. If you have a M.D degree, you get a INR 5000000 dowry, alongwith a Maruti Suzuki Esteem / Tata Indica, and a furnished apartment.
4. If you have completed IAS school, you get a INR 7500000 dowry, alongwith a luxury car, and a rowhouse/bungalow.
Apparently, the way the parents reason when it comes to sending their kid to college is: if sending him to college costs me such and such, what will the returns on such an investment be?
I never realized that my in-laws were so cheap. :-)
Now, I hear you ask : "Why do they need to pay?. can't she marry someone else?". It's difficult to explain. But I will try.
Love-Marriage (Name for the "not arraged by families" marriage) is still a No-No in india. Which means your parents finds a girl/guy for you. Also,you are supposed to find a bride/bride groom from the same relegion-caste you are from.
So, if everyone expects dowry in your relegion/caste,you end up with no other option but to pay the money to get your girl married.
Now the amount of Dowry varies according to the bride grooms family status & of course the qualification and job of the bride groom. If the bride groom has moved outside india, specially to US or UK, the dowry paied increases considerably, as it's considered a socially prestegious thing and he is considered a winner in Life.
Hence the Guy in question asking to be sent to US. And "Crore" is a word used to denote 10 million Indian Rupees.
Corrected that for you.
And this doesn't exist in the US (and everywhere else)?
the expansion of ABCD is "American Born Confused Desi" Where Desi == "Indian" :-)
FOB = "Fresh Off [the] Boat"
The tiering system goes something like this: Software Engineer -> Lead -> Architect
Without advancing through the ranks, it is well nigh impossible to get reasonable increases in pay; so people (even those who may wish to write more code) strive to climb up the ladder.
Not saying it makes perfect sense to everyone, but there is some logic to making sure people climb up the ladder quickly (if they are capable) in large corporations.
Almost all major software companies (Microsoft, Google, Oracle, VMware, ..) have big development centers in India where many people have been spending there careers coding. The problem lies with people who get into outsourcing companies thinking what they are doing is "software development", while most of it is really manual testing or basic support work.
Way to sensationalize a blog post!
They still don't make money on par with their peers who went into management. ( The OP made this point). Neither do they have as much social prestige in Indian society. (another point made by the OP). I personally know people in both Yahoo and Google India (emphasized - Google Mountain View is a very different place) who moved to management from coding to make more money/get more prestige.
Another thing about these "big development centres" is that by and large crappy work is done here, relative to the work done at HQ in California. There are some exceptions, but largely this is true. Google India (with minor exceptions) does very non-core work for e.g. I know people who moved back to Mountain View after trying Bangalore for a while because serious development work couldn't be done out of Bangalore - many reasons, one of which was excessive interference by non technical managers, which again supports the OP's points)
Yahoo India is mostly Ops and maintenance, but then Yahoo is going down the tubes anyway with the best engineers leaving worldwide.
I don't know anything about what VMWare does in India but I would be very surprised if cutting edge work were done in India. I would suspect maintenance, testing etc or at best some non strategic work. That said I should ping some folks in VMWare to find out. (Is Ganesh Ram still with VMWare? he was one of the very early pre IPO hires and my junior in college).
So yes you have a point (Product Dev companies >> Outsourced Enterprise companies), but that doesn't really contradict the OP.
I think the reason for a rigid career path is simply that economical safety is generally encouraged over risk taking.
Possibly because people value having a stable family over becoming successful by other means (not saying you can't have both)
Yes. Usually by people who have no direct experience of India. But then many people in India with no direct experience of America believe it is an immoral nihilistic society of "uncultured" pleasure seeking barbarians (rich too ;-)) .
You're saying its not? Well, the barbarian part is hyperbole but the rest rings true.
>You're saying its not?"
yes I am. Or more precisely the point was that America is no more an immoral nihilistic society than India is.
To clarify even more, I am saying that the Indian assumption of "moral superiority" to America (something you'll hear if you hang around Non Resident Indian circles) is total rubbish.
Most Indians in America clump defensively with "their own kind" and know next to nothing of American history or culture and have few real friends (not acquaintances) among Americans. I have lived in the USA and it is a great place. These days I live in India and (surprise, surprise) it is a great place too.
America and India are very different from each other - what would you expect? India and America are almost exactly half the world apart- but there is really no "moral" superiority for one over the other. People are the same everywhere. There are just as many (by ratio) cultured people and uncouth ones, good people and bad people, bright people and fools in India as in America.
People who say and believe such things are (imo) close minded idiots reacting stupidly to culture shock.
Rubbish. There is no "change of tone". In my first comment I said that some people in India believe that America is a nihilistic nation and Indians are somehow more "moral". In my second comment, in response to your statement saying that you think such a judgment about Americans is correct (says a lot about you doesn't it? Why do you continue to live and work among these uncultured nihilists then vs going back to your more civilized homeland?), I said that people who believe such crap are fools and hypocrites. No "tone difference" there. And there were no absolute statements made in the first place to "tone down".
Your english skills may be less than good, but not non-existent.
1. Every American divorces at least once. An average American marries about 3 to 5 times. I have no idea where this comes from.
2. Americans disown their kids at 16. I've pointed out that American teenagers often work part-time, and that this is a good thing. I'm usually just shouted down.
3. Americans don't entertain guests because food is too expensive. Nobody spends the night at anybody else's place.
4. Americans are materialistic and value money over family bonds.
5. American girls always dress in skimpy outfits. American guys sleep with every girl they can.
6. It's always party time in America.
Honestly, I don't know where this comes from :(
Frankly all your misconceptions ring so true. Just fire up HBO, Star World or any other western channel here in India and you will see all these misconceptions come alive. How else are Indians supposed to make opinions? :)
Everyone knows their own country isn't like the way it's portrayed by the media. But, at the same time, everyone knows that all other countries are like the way they're portrayed in the media. It's a wonder our brains don't leak out.
True to some extent, but most Indians remain conservative, cities or villages.
Ask your friend to peek out and look at the city dwellers, there's no set age for one to get married though parents are heavily involved in the process, there's social pressure and most people get married in their 20's.
Ofcourse these are the norms, within the handful of people I know the exception rate would be 20-30% which is high enough not to take all the social structure/expectation stuff too seriously
This is due to a herd mentality and blinkered vision. Not the caste system.
harami saale