Comment by throwawayengda | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawayengda | Hacker News Reader

> 3,500 engineering schools across the country, and about 90% of graduates do not have the programming skills to work in software engineering, according to one study.

The "study" is by 'Aspiring Minds' - an Indian company that sells buggy web-based pre-interview filtering tests as a service. It is in Aspiring Minds interest to portray Indian graduates as incompetent to make Indian employers buy their pre-interview filtering services.

Aspiring Minds tested engineering students from all fields (including chemical, mechanical and civil) to make up the misleading '90% of Indian graduates are stupid' headlines. It worked. The headlines went viral and people still quote their misleading study. The coding part of the test was to submit compile-able Java code through an HTML input without any syntax highlighting or formatting. Needless to say most chemical and civil engineering graduates will not be able to do that.

I was a CS student at an Indian engineering college. I was forced to take an Aspiring Minds test. The test was buggy and had no feedback. I probably failed. But today I'm a full-stack developer in Denmark. Most of my graduating class have good jobs and almost half of us work overseas.

Ha I was given one of those when I graduated and interviewed for some random firm (in US), I don't know if it's Aspiring Minds but it was clearly from India. They really go to an extreme length to monitor the tested and I felt very uncomfortable during the whole thing.

The camera's on, Document.hasFocus() is obviously also on, I use multiple screen and you can't move your mouse out of that screen. The test questions are repetitive recital garbage that ask you to recite java syntax and concepts. All in all I would judge it as a complete failure in selecting for technical talent.

All you need to prepare for this is to recite some book about locks or thread and names. And have the coding ability to write hello world level programs in Java without a linter or autocomplete, god forbid you forgot how to use Scanner interface.

I might sound salty, but I didn't need that job and I'm in a much better position today. My opinion is that those filtering tests are loads of crap.

> But today I'm a full-stack developer in Denmark.

Would you mind sharing more details about this? Were your recruited or did you seek out overseas employment?

I'm Indian but in the US since a young age; I'll be finishing my CS education next year and would like to leave this country.

Europe is pretty welcoming. There is a huge shortage of software engineers (of acceptable quality) here.

Well it is also true that wage are lower than in the US. So if you are young without many families bonds makes a lot of sense to seek employment oversea.

If Europe started to pay better money, then there would not be such lack of engineers.

Gonna defend Europe a bit more here, I'd wager there are soft benefits which aren't as easily appreciated as cash. On Europe you make less, but you also get out of the meat grinder much earlier. If you are a median person (which most likely, we all are), then your expected value will be about the same, at most a bit lower cash wise than in the US. But even that is debatable, in most of (western) Europe we don't treat active shooters as a matter of normal life, the cities are made for humans not cars and employee rights are a thing. And looking at the worst case, Europe wins: a medical emergency will not bankrupt you, if you call the cops they won't shoot you etc. And on a political level, having more than 2 parties and a wider overton window is quote nice.

If you think of yourself as a human and social being, not a shark or worker bee, I think Europe isn't too bad. But I recognize that dollar amounts and funding for new ventures is still in the US, or China nowadays. And all the stuff I cited are things at odds with the pure capitalist system some people seem to want to live in, and so might not actually be desirable for all

I expected this kind of lazy analysis to appear on Reddit but not on Hacker News.

> If you are a median person (which most likely, we all are), then your expected value will be about the same, at most a bit lower cash wise than in the US.

In my experience wage offers were significantly lower in Europe when I was potentially looking about a year ago. levels.fyi seems to be pretty in line with my pay experience in the US and that’s not anywhere close to the pay I was offered or researched in the EU.

> Europe we don't treat active shooters as a matter of normal life

People in the US certainly do not treat active shooters as a matter of normal life. Have you ever considered that it makes the new explicitly because it’s a rare thing that people do not expect?

> the cities are made for humans not cars and employee rights are a thing.

I think you would find that most technology companies are in cities with walkability/public transit in the US. I think you would also find that software engineers are not treated poorly as well.

> And looking at the worst case, Europe wins: a medical emergency will not bankrupt you

Medical insurance at tech companies I’ve worked for in the US are very good. For example, I pay $20/mo and the theoretical maximum I would pay for insurance in any given year is $3000.

> if you call the cops they won't shoot you

Again, I think you’re treating news as proof that this is a common occurrence. It gets reported explicitly because it is not

————

I’m not saying the US is perfect because it certainly isn’t. No place is perfect. But, I think that you would find that the US is a very nice place to live for the upper half of the middle class and above and software engineering would definitely put you in that category in the US.

Wow, just wow! Unfortunately I did expect your response from the HN crowd. You and I have very different ways of looking at the world.

The entitlement and privilege among software engineers in the US to have crazy high salaries and "perks" such as health insurance is exactly the reason why I will never move there. I think your last statement sums up the situation very well, but it baffles me how any decent human being would consider that to be a positive.

You may think I am crazy, but did you know that insanely high salaries of a select few is one of the reasons that directly or indirectly leads to income and wealth inequalities in the world, one of the biggest problems of our generation? While you may have excellent health care for $20/month, what about the barista at your local coffee shop? What about your disabled neighbor who got laid off for no fault of hers? How can you live with yourself while they die of cancer as they cannot afford to go to the hospital? And don't get me started on education. How that is viewed as a commodity rather than a basic human right astounds me.

I am very happy with my $60k/year job. I have more than sufficient for myself, and a decent amount to spare. I have excellent healthcare for free and independent of my job situation, and so do all my neighbors. I live in a city with no homeless, and no one desperately poor. I do engaging work for 7 hrs a day and religiously shut my computer at 4 pm, and pursue my many passions afterwards. I have 6 weeks a year of paid vacations, and travel to a handful of countries every year. I paid $50/semester to get educated at a top university, and so will my children. And I received a stipend to cover part of my living expenses. I love the fact that I do not have to worry about getting shot (as rare as that might be). I love living in a country with highly educated people all around with most having the skills of critical thinking. I love living in one of the most gender equal countries of the world (I am male). No offense to anyone, but I wouldn't trade this for a $250k/year job in the U.S. (as levels.fyi seems to suggest for my case).

You can earn 250k and donate 190k if you want. 190k per year will go very far. If you don't to whom to give I can send you names of specific people who are struggling at the moment.

I just find that Americans have little understanding on how things run in Europe. But same goes the other way around.

If you want to earn a lot - you go contracting in Europe. I used to save about half of my income when contracting 6 years ago in London. My rate was 470 GBP for 220 days out of the year. My expenses were taxes and 700GBP in rent. I saved 60k after tax... and I used to fly business class to Thailand, NYC and Mexico.

My income is technically higher, but expenses are through the roof. You sneeze here and it's $20 gone.

> did you know that insanely high salaries of a select few is one of the reasons that directly or indirectly leads to income and wealth inequalities in the world, one of the biggest problems of our generation?

Yes, but it's not the engineers and other well-paid workers that are the problem. They are still workers - they get paid for wealth produced. It's the insanely high incomes - which are mostly not salaries, BTW, but capital gains - of the top management and owners where all the money (that would otherwise have stayed in the pockets of those who actually earned it) goes.

Europe patches it up by taxing the entire top half of the scale more, and redistributing it to the bottom half - but it's still a hack, and it still has substantial wealth inequality as a result.

And I could also expect the response to his response by you, probably none other than my own countrymen. (Origin from Scandinavia I assume?)

I moved out from Scandinavia to another country in Asia, with way more safety, better health care, way more educated population, and the added perk that I were offered 2x Salary before tax. Oh and the health care is actually there, not "free" so that people can claim moral high ground while in reality delivering mothers have no hospital to go to and non fatal young ill people are actively shunned away from health care, but it is there and it works for cheap.

You can make any moral or living standard superiority claim if you just cherry pick the stats (as the healthcare example above). As someone that have relatives in US, have lived (study/work) in both Europe and Asia, The North/West Europeans blatant naivety and sense of superiority towards US is shockingly embarrassing to say the least. (and your naivety is offensive, not only toward the US citizen you are trying to smear, but also toward your countrymen that have to live with the facade of perfection)

Edit: typo

I find your rebuttal short sighted and frankly immature, no offense.

> In my experience wage offers were significantly lower in Europe when I was potentially looking about a year ago.

They are. But the median wages are good enough to raise a family and have a happy and peaceful life. Not everyone works for the top-tier companies.

If someone's goal is to optimize the amount of money they make and save, then for Tech US beats everywhere. That's not everyone's goal.

> People in the US certainly do not treat active shooters as a matter of normal life.

Agreed, but the frequency of being shot is higher in the US than in other developed countries. That does not mean the probability of a person getting shot in the US is very high, but certainly higher than other developed countries.

> I think you would find that most technology companies are in cities with walkability/public transit in the US.

This is certainly not true. There are some companies, in some cities with high walkability, but that's not true for most companies. Also in such cities, the cost of a home or rent is expensive for a family and so most people have to live miles away.

> Medical insurance at tech companies I’ve worked for in the US are very good. For example, I pay $20/mo and the theoretical maximum I would pay for insurance in any given year is $3000.

What happens if you lose your job? What about for people who don't work at the best companies (majority of the people).

> if you call the cops they won't shoot you >> Again, I think you’re treating news as proof that this is a common occurrence

I agree with this though.

tl;dr: For people who don't prioritize $$$ and want to raise a family without a lot of PITA, Europe is great!

If you completely ignore the cost of living - yes, San Francisco offers way more.

Practically - the compensation offered is on par with your expenses, between US and Europe. Some places in Europe are better than others, but same goes for US.

Booking.com in Amsterdam offered me as much as I get in NYC right now.

Don't forget in Europe you have between 25 - 30 holidays guaranteed, better health care - people live longer here, much much cheaper education (I had it for free.), better public transportation... And it's also closer to Asia.

Also there's definitely less extremes around. Less of the bad stuff. Less violence, less criminality, less guns, less social disparity, less racism etc. On the whole I think life is better over here.

> less racism

I think this one is much more contentious than the others. The racism certainly takes more latent forms, so it's perhaps less extreme in that sense, but "less racism" to me implies lower in rate of incidence which I'm not sure is true. It probably is true in at least a few European countries compared to the US.

There is definitely a glass ceiling for immigrants/expats in many companies in Europe.

The wages are indeed much lower than in US, atleast for me. However, I work in a company with a proper labour Union (IG Metal). I have 36 hours working time, any overtime will be paid 30% more than normal. I have extremely good health insurance. My kids get free education all the way to university ( and are part of my insurance until 24). The retirement is linked to the government, not the company. 30 days of compulsory holidays. Sick leaves are not counted.

With all this calculated, the salary sort of equalizes itself.

While the salaries are indeed lower, you should take into account that in the US people almost always report their salary before tax, whereas in Europe salaries are almost always reported after taxes.

An engineer earning 100K in Europe will be listed as earning 60~65K, whereas in the US that engineer would be listed as earning 100K, despite earning the exact same wage.

Not necessarily.

Cost of living is also considerably lower than US. Your employment guarantees are also considerably higher. Let's also not forget that graduates from European schools don't come out with 100k of student debt.

Then... If you really want to make a lot of money, there are options to do so in Europe as well. Though US should just open the floodgates for CS talent and force the rest of the world to catch up.

More precisely: a shortage of software engineers willing to work for low wages. Its far more interesting to move into management roles overhere. Tons of devs leave for the US if they wanna stay in software. Germany and the UK have most chance of solid pay. It is a public secret that Indians are recruited simply because they are not as insistent on making 60k+.

"It is in Aspiring Minds interest to portray Indian graduates as incompetent to make Indian employers buy their pre-interview filtering services."

They really don't need to do anything. Indian graduates, in my experience, have done everything to screw up quality standings of Indian IT education.

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