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Comment by nishnik | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate this for the article points out an alarming issue. But there has been slight mis-representation. It slightly portrays that Indian engineering education landscape starts and ends in IITs only. No, there are the NITs, BITSes, IIITs, IISc and others which have equal facilities as IITs and are even doing better than some IITs.

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>>It slightly portrays that Indian engineering education landscape starts and ends in IITs only.

Well, the problem is people treat degrees from these institutions as lifelong aristocratic privilege. Once you start going in that direction, its now in your interest to keep the myths alive about your alma mater.

How else are you going to earn higher than everybody else? You have to convince the society nobody can ever be good as you, by very social design, and you have to keep things that way.

I agree. Many Indian jobs advertisement specially mention student from IIT only. there is job site that targets only IITians.

So the pedigree obviously is valuable.

Can you point to any job description that says so? I have never seen any job description that mentions only IIT students can apply for the job. I have seen some mediocre companies mentioning open to only IITs, NITs, and IIITs though.

Almost all jobs of good software engineering companies these days have a top college degree as a requirement in their job ads. If you have been in the job market you would know the fact that it's the degree that matters most. Companies prefer to even give an interview only if you have a degree from top-tier college. Whether we like it or not it's the fact that here we need a degree from top college to get good opportunities and job.

I have no idea what top-tier company are you talking about. Google, for example, doesn't care about from which college you graduated and hire through APAC test. If you are good enough to be in the top n percentile you would be called for an interview in Google. Take a look at https://www.hackerrank.com/jobs/search. No companies give a shit about which college you are from as long as you pass the coding test.

https://www.hackerrank.com/jobs/search?location=bangalore_ar... - there is not even single job in bangalore area listed there. First of all, if you don't have a degree from good college it's very difficult to even get an initial round interview. My point is you won't even get an interview call unless you are from top college. It's the ground reality. I am speaking from experience of seeing many with tier 1 degree getting interviews while people from bad colleges having hard time even getting an interview despite having better github and projects to showcase. In reality getting a tier 1 college degree matters most than anything else no matter how much you argue. It has got to do with the quality of engineering education in low tier colleges and so being from a low tier college is a label of being incompetent. Tier 1 college graduates on the other hand get better opportunities, have more alumni connections working in top companies, are already certified to be smart and hence get opportunities.

and I don't want to pick ads but since you are not speaking the truth about the ground reality I would like you to check: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/613566647/. It clearly mentions "B Tech in Computer Science or equivalent from a reputed college" as the qualification required. I don't understand why it's so difficult to open eyes and see the reality, a good college degree has a lot of value in India.

And the constant taunting they get when they are not able to get 'expected' package . 'Oh you are from IIT why working in this startup at such low package. My friend from XYZ college is working for much better company/salary than you.'

Interests, skills, background, ambitions and the human behind the degree all goes to hell.

The constant comparison to others really hurts. One is never happy, always looking at the next move to bring happiness which never happens.

"Interests, skills, background, ambitions and the human behind the degree all goes to hell." This. Can't agree more.

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