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Comment by movingahead | Hacker News Reader

The one thing that the article overlooks is that engineering is still the safest way to get a healthy living standard in India. The salary paid by IT firms is exponentially higher than what middle class India has ever seen. Our culture taboos failure. People are worried about a child doing badly in 1st standard. This aversion to failure mixed with the IT boom has led to such a large number of engineers in India.

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Thanks for your comments. I'm with you on that - and that's what I meant when I wrote:

"Becoming an engineer in India virtually guarantees financial security for life, and this blinds parents into forcing their children to choose engineering."

But if this is the case, then shouldn't your article be about 'how money is creating a lot of engineers in India' rather than saying that India has an engineering culture?

I see it in a similar vein to how there are so many finance people in the US - that's where the money is - quick riches compared to other jobs you could get. And if the money/financial security disappeared, so would all the interest in working in that field - ie the culture would evaporate.

It's different to say the US innovation culture which is an attitude and culture that has developed over decades due to many drivers, but money hasn't been the only or even major driving force behind it and in many ways is impervious to fluctuations in 'market demand'.

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