A Million Engineers in India Are Struggling to Find a Job

Two things:

1. This is incredibly anecdotal, but the half a dozen people I know who have come from Indian educational backgrounds (specifically IT programs) did not have much to show with their diplomas. These are all incredibly bright people who seemed to start out levels behind their otherwise peers, and often rely (as we all do) on online material to make up for gaping flaws in their knowledge. From the source article:

Hiring is slowing down because recruiters are changing their strategy. "An engineering degree is a poor proxy for your education and employment skills," says Manish Sabharwal, chairman of TeamLease, a temp staffing firm.

"The world of work is evolving... employers increasingly don't care what you know, they focus on what you can do with that knowledge." While dozens of new institutes have been established in the past six or eight years, he claims that over a third of them are empty and perhaps they are "worth more dead (for the real estate they sit on) than alive."

This suggests to me that many Indian STEM degrees are not an adequate proxy for value (just the same as many American STEM degrees.)

2. I wish decentralized certification systems became a bigger thing. Personally, I would love to be able to take a definitive test on whether or not I knew Python well enough to spend forty hours a week working in Python. Make it open notes and timed, like the real world is. I know this used to be a big thing in the 90's, but that was before my time -- why did this go out of style? Did the rapid advancement and evolution of the industry prove the system prohibitively time/effort-consuming?

Finding a job is hard, but hustling and networking is relatively easy. Once people figure this out, then the real global competition will begin. However, I suppose not everyone has the personality to deal with people well.

The problem with a lot of job seekers (which I think is worse with Asians) is they are too focused on the abstractions of that process.

The process in the U.S. starts with the K-12 system and learning habits from the previous generation. It then goes into college, resumes, cover letters, interviews and then the benefits of the comfort of a steady job and benefits. Add to that the perception of success which includes things like the American Dream, house, car, family as well as that steady job.

What people really need to do is focus on the human elements behind these abstractions. A system which isn't running well is a tough nut to crack, but people are easy.

Forget the abstractions. Do things which can land you the job without even dealing with resumes, cover letters and even college. The college diploma may help get you past certain gatekeepers, but a relative few will land you a job all on its own.

Learn the art of hustling. Open up dialogue with real people. Build things which attract notice. Work with others even if you aren't getting paid for it (open source, help people fix problems.) Reach out through LinkedIn, Twitter and other social networking sites. Find a good niche and then find the center of conversation for that niche. Establish yourself as an authority. The list goes on.

The abstractions have been around for a short time relative to how long we have been bartering goods and services. What I love about a developing nation such as the Philippines is that the downtown of a decent sized city is full of people hustling for their daily bread. This makes me feel isolated and out of touch when I'm working from home with only a computer, but I try as much as possible to participate in the virtual hustle and bustle of the niche communities I'm involved in.

Often I don't have a job, rather I have a gig that might be a few hours to a few months. At any given time I usually have multiple gigs going. This is my personal start-up. It may feel uncomfortable to others, but it's much more secure dealing directly with people than it is dealing with abstractions. At least I can get a yes or no answer from a human, I have no idea (and no control) when I submit myself to an abstraction.

20 years back, there were only few (say, 10~20) educational institutions (IITs & Government colleges) around India that offered engineering degrees. So, getting into them were really hard and only few of the bright students could make it into these engineering colleges. And these institutions produced real engineers, who are all now in higher levels at several tech/Govt companies.

Now, there are at least 500 'Engineering' colleges in my state itself (Tamilnadu). Most of them were started by politicians just to make money. Providing quality education is not their objective, but to lure the not-so-bright students join Engineering after taking a huge money from him/her (they call it as 'Donation', but it is mandatory).

So, when these students complete Engineering degree from these so called 'engineering' colleges, they are getting a degree just for the namesake. They are not accumulating the knowledge like an IIT student. Obviously, they struggle to find a good job without proper knowledge.

It is very sad that everything (education, health, even basic necessities like water) has become a business in India. Money-making is the people's only motive and they forget ethics. :(

This quora answer seems particularly relevant here: http://qr.ae/pxLHv.

tl;dr: The vast majority of "engineering" graduates in India are not worth the paper their degree is printed on.

I have just appeared in third year finals in an engineering college, which happens to be in India. So, I know pretty much about the way things work in `Engineering institutes' in India. The thing is that, in about last 5 years, number of Institutes have grown so fast that one wouldn't even imagine. The year I took admission in my College(2010), there were about only two colleges in the district I live, where, now, there're 6 colleges now! Most of the politicians have realized that `there is so much money' in Engineering institutes! The don't give a shit about Education quality. Having really bad score in Entrance exam after 12th grade, I had no option but to take admission in one of such a college. So, what these `leaders' do, is hire freshers as professors (those who're unable to land a job as a programmer). They lack in knowledge/skills. Next reason is that, most (almost 99%) of the students who are pursuing degree have their only motive is to - secure their future by having a good job. They don't LEARN. They `remember' things to get a good score. That's their sole purpose. Because, they think having good score will give them a good job. People can't LEARN things by just reading several books, they have to USE things that they've read. Just to make sure if they are able to use what they've just read (or learned). Currently there're about 80 students in my class. We had to develop a dynamic website as a mini project in the last semester. Your people would not believe it, but 99% of the people had it downloaded from Internet (or taken from some former student). Worst thing is, they were only static pages. And even worse is, faculties didn't say a thing while demonstrating those projects!!! I assumed the only reason that could happen is the faculties themselves are utterly lacking in knowledge! In second year, I wrote a simple packet sniffer and port scanner in C (again, as a mini-project), the `external' professor didn't even see the code, he waster almost half an hour asking me things about Packer Sniffer (He had no idea about what that is!) The only reason I can think if this unemployment is the quality of Engineers..

As a current undergrad from India who chose to seek an education abroad, I probably have a unique perspective on this.

1) Yes, most Indians who graduate from their colleges often are lacking quite horrifically in their knowledge as compared to a similar non-Indian counterpart, primarily because the culture within the educational system is largely based around acquiring short term knowledge and then never looking back.

While in the Canadian system, I found it quite pleasant that everything is gradually built from what you learn in your first year, the Indian system is modularized and disparate, with large parts of what they learn forgotten in their earlier undergraduate years.

2) There is a vast variation between the quality of universities in India, however even the IITs are definitely not the same thing anymore. My father who went to IIT gave me the impression that it was definitely a centre for higher learning, where the students actually seriously thought critically about what they were studying, whereas now (through the descriptions of most of my friends and colleagues), they have been reduced to places where one no longer has such a luxury, as their marks matter more than the actual knowledge they accumulate; this wouldn't be much of a problem if the courses actually aligned with real world problems, however the courses deal are largely tangential to real hard work that one might see in academia or industry.

3) In contrast to this, American (Or Canadian) universities offer a much more comprehensive education, and while definitely relying more on the initiative of the particular student, they generally encourage independent critical thinking, and don't place much emphasis on a number received from a three hour exam. This I think is the crucial difference between graduates of these universities and graduates from Indian universities, those who actually go on to do something important would have had a much harder time in an Indian university than a non-Indian one.

I should also probably state for completeness that I am not pursuing and Engineering degree, and I am a physics major, however I don't believe that makes much of what I have said irrelevant.

Perhaps some Indians who have been through some of these institutions would be able comment on this... my impression as an outsider from a few months in India (including Bangalore, Chennai, etc.) was that its education systems, particularly at the lower echelons of non-university courses, still heavily target rote learning. I saw many advertisements for courses teaching specific software; little evidence of broader education. Similarly, the HR market seemed to have a certain post-colonial obsession shared with bureaucrats everywhere - re: checking boxes and processing people as products ("you need <x> to be considered for <y>") rather than engaging candidates more openly on the basis of real merits. This two-pronged attack on the individual is what awaits the Indian graduate as welcome to a life of nine-to-five, but is to some extent common to the impression I have felt in other parts of the developing world. Perhaps my own experiences have been luckier, but where an interview has been gained in Australia, the UK or US I have always felt that employers were more interested in demonstrated personal capacity than a candidate's nominal value in terms of third party paper accrual. On the plus side, those scoring jobs in this sector in India do seem to be afforded relative respect and income versus much of the population, so it's not all bad.

While this article particularly pertains to India, I think it can be seen in a more broader sense. If you go into a degree program because of social pressure or you think it is a path to a decent job, yet you have no real interest or passion for what you are doing, you are likely to fail.

Even decent CS/CE programs here in the states have paths through them that allow you to graduate, but at the end of the day, if you are going through the motions, what do you learn?

Good engineers (and engineering students) use provided opportunities to learn and if they are hamstrung by their environment will seeks out additional learning opportunities.

Anyone who goes through the motions, has little excitement or interest, and lacks intellectual curiosity is probably someone you don't want to hire.

You won't believe how bad the ground situation until you see yourself happening. I have been in Noida since one month and some really awful things I saw.

1) Low Scale IT companies are exploiting such graduates by paying them awfully bad salaries to their employees especially Fresh graduates. In fact people are not expecting salaries above 10-15K INR / month. To translate into better perspective, this salary is marginally more than what a Pani-Puri stall may earn.

2) Some people are being made to work for very long shifts (almost ~10hrs) and also have the obligation to fulfill the any shift, may be night, evening or noon.

3) Some crooked IT companies and code academies are offering training in ABC and promising jobs after that period but once they get their sum, they train them with cheap IT engineers and simply deny any obligation to get them placed.

4) Joblessness frustrates people and grads start thinking of migrating to any other city like Bangalore but the situation hardly changes. In fact, Bangalore had become a low IQ hub from what I hear.

Certainly, the problem is with parents who got him enrolled into random college into CS/IT branches because they looked promising that time, and with grads who don't realize that some jobs are not for everyone and refuse to widen their perspective.

I wouldn't go and make blanket statement as saying 'Indian degrees are useless'. But in most cases, its not just Indian colleges and universities. A course only prepares you for an exam or at most clearing a interview.

No body teaches you to build things. This is something you need to learn. And you need to learn it by actually building things. It can't be learned by attending lectures, doing assignments, small time projects, passing exams or clearing interviews. You actually need to go out, talk to people find the problems they face and provide a solution to it. It needs to have definite end goal, a tough timeline. And then when you go out and spend 17 hrs/day going round in circles or failures-success, triumph, enthusiasm, joy, sadness, arguments, debates, consensus. That is when you learn to build things.

When you learn to build things you realize, books, degrees, colleges don't matter. In fact there is an opinion that most people college was useless, they could have rather been spending all those years building something.

As an Indian, I started my official career working at a call center. Before that I have done a lot of small time jobs. Its a journey. In India you need to first work hard to create a opportunity then you need work hard on the opportunity. At every stage, and even money was never enough. I am not close to earning big money- But I've gone from attending reporting office at 1 AM in the morning to staying up till 1 AM solving problems with software.

If you are not finding a job, get into what ever you can. Then start up on the side. Learn to code, to build. Then make incremental progress towards that grand goal.

A small percentage of Indians fall into the higher income group while the majority continue to languish in poverty without even the hope of a squared meal the next day. One of most easiest way to jump from a disadvantaged background to the higher income group is an engineering degree in India. Parents want their kids to become engineers, doctors and chartered accountants not because they think their kids love these professions but rather because it gives them a ticket of sorts to ensure a safe financial future. The parents aren't completely wrong as they themselves have spent an entire generation struggling through the ranks to raise their children. They dream of a better future for their kids than the ones they had. Once this realization set in, mass engineering enrollments took place. To supplement these mass enrollments, engineering universities were spawned which produced engineers like a factory. Alas the break even point has come - the market can only support so much engineering graduates. The over reliance of the market on service based jobs coupled with the thought process which links an engineering degree to a better quality life has led to the current state. Yes, things are changing - I know of two best companies in the world who have set up their research labs in India in the last 12 months but the change is too slow for the supply. Something will give in, one point or the other.

I am wondering if it is down for other 'outsourcing countries' as well. Like Ukraine, Russia, Romania etc. I was working as an outsourcing consultant from 1996 until a few years ago and when advising or staffing companies, one thing remained constant during that time; Indian made software/code quality was always below (similar priced) east (and since the crisis also south) EU coders.

Yes, I do understand there are exceptions, but in general, if I put a random coder from India (living and staying 'forever' in India; people who moved to the west score much better) with 5 years experience and a degree against, say, a random Portugese coder with the same experience and a degree AND the same price per hour, the PT person invariably wins on quality. Quality being, in this case because i'm a coder, readability of code, use of tools, use of good style, amount of code smells, etc.

So I would think the education system is not working well; my favorite pet peeve is that bachelors/masters (in CS) from India, when interviewed, generally have no idea what recursion is or how/why to use it. Which often amounts to the most 'interesting' and unreadable code fragments you have ever seen.

In their attempt to find jobs, many jobless engineers are further exploited by another industry - training institutes that promise placements and jobs. These institutes offer courses on Java/.NET, SAP, Cognos, Oracle etc. They charge a ton, their trainers are no good and the students gain nothing from these. More recently, private engineering colleges are asking their students to base their final year projects on IEEE research papers. And there is now a large number of training institutes that offer readymade "IEEE Projects" to students for a cost.

I happen to know many such engineers who are lacking skills or grades or both. Some of these people happen to be distant relatives or family acquaintances. The problem isn't just with the engineering colleges. Many such graduates lack understanding of basic sciences to have studied engineering in the first place (due to many factors including their own limitations, bad primary/secondary education etc). Few who manage to learn enough to be "employable" are stuck because there are no campus placements in their college. It is incredibly hard to find a job if there are no campus placements. Companies don't have the resources to go to every such college when most of the graduates passing out are not employable.

I have been on the board of studies of two engineering colleges as an industry representative for past few years. There is a meeting every year to revise the course content but nothing useful comes out of it. In such meetings, I have strongly advocated that we introduce more hands on assignments/mini projects, ensure assignments/projects are not copied, lab exams are not based on a fixed set of publicly questions (students already know these questions). In one such meeting, suggestion was shot down with the excuse that if a mini-project is introduced, another set of institutes will come up to help students work around the system. Sure, preventing this would mean that the staff get their act right!

I'm sorry if this sounds selfish or xenophobic but this is in all honestly such a relief. I graduated college in 2008 and I remember being incredibly scared all the programming jobs were going to be outsourced to India. I remember blowing an interview trying to get the employer to prove to me he wouldn't outsource my job then took the first stable job I could find (even though I was never really happy there) for fear of not being able to find another one. Now that we've made it through the financial disaster and computer science jobs in this country is at an all time high I feel a giant weight lifted off of my shoulders.

I am a typical Indian engineer who has just recently graduated ( This Year) and I am pissed off at the article.

1. The original Economic Times article points that a large number of engineers are struggling to get placed but fails to give any satisfying evidence. 2. The article also only takes in account the candidates that got placed through college placement, it entirely disregards the engineers who may have gotten job through other means or those who may have started a business of their own. 3. Compare the hiring data that is shown for two universities - For IIT it is fairly consistent, For Amity, as the article mentions the placements are currently underway in the institute so it is not final data. 4. It says that India's IT industry will be hiring fewer people this year however it doesn't take into account other Indian industries which saw a boom in hiring this year - such as the Indian auto industry. In fact the article is mainly or as I suspect solely based on the IT industry data.

To conclude I think the Economic Times article only convinces me of one thing - rate of increase in engineers in India is proportional to it's population growth rate which I should think is the natural course of things.

Working with many Indian 'engineers', i can say we'd be better off if there were fewer of them. Their typical approach to software development is proverbial. I know there are good ones, but they mostly run their own outsourcing shops, or are already in the U.S.

Maybe education is to blame in part, but mostly it's because of poverty. In a first world country, one can pursue a lot of occupations ending up with nearly same living standard - so the choice depends on one's attitude. If a guy is a U.S. programmer you can be sure he does it because he likes hacking, there is little reason to go there otherwise, a lot of occupations get the same living, or better. In India there is little one can do except getting a non-commoditized job for an export-oriented business, which mostly means engineering. So crowds of people are struggling to get these diplomas simply out of greed, with no passion for what they are supposed to do. I don't think this can be fixed until India pulls itself out of poverty to give people more career choice.

How to qualify as one of the million "engineers"? By having a diploma? Or by being a person who's engineering stuff?

I think if you are really "engineering stuff" in ICT on a daily basis that soon enough you can attract some employers attention. Only passing the tests for a school and having "core Java" next to "MS Word/Excel" on your resume does not land you a job. Is that a bad thing?

Final note: I found that in India many families (often fathers) choose the study direction for their children; this also grows engineers-on-paper that do not really love engineering so much. Companies I know avoid hiring these.

Just my .2 :)

"Some end up in the US on work visas because the US citizens purportedly do not have the right skills. In reality, there are plenty of skills here, but foreign workers will work for a lot less. Since companies can hire a programmer from India or Russia for 1/3 the cost of a US worker, that's what happens."

This is what tech companies need to iron out before the American public is going to go along with increasing H1B Visas

A qualification/certification does not imply a good/useful/in-demand engineer. What if the issue is with the education system?

I don't think this is a reflection of the economy. It's a reflection of:

1. the educational system

2. the menial tasks outsourced to India

3. the poor development practices of Indian companies

All of them lead to low-quality programmers. This is a problem worldwide as well. I've been hiring as many people as I possibly can for the last 6 months (worldwide, between $15 and $60/hr). I've hired about 5 people.

This is the problem with selling education primarily as a means to gain monetary wealth. You'll get lots of people who just want that piece of paper at the end -- and this effect will be increased in countries where monetary wealth is relatively uncommon.

And yet when I look for a qualified developer, I need to sift through 50 resumes to land one eligible candidate! Such is the quality right now - and few engineers have aptitude and expertise for job market.

> Since companies can hire a programmer from India or Russia for 1/3 the cost of a US worker, that's what happens.

This is illegal, so no, it's not what happens.

My views on Indian sector maybe a little outdated and mostly Bangalore centric, but here they are:

a. The IT and Outsourcing boom happened in the 2000s and the Indian IT sector started outpacing all other industries and non-IT companies began to suffer. For example, during the 80s and 90s, there was demand for electrical and electronic engineers in state owned corps like BEL and there were other players such as Onida, Dyanora and Kirloskar. Then globalization happened - suddenly in came Infosys and Wipro with unheard of pay scales and they started sucking in the talent. Foreign players came into the electronic appliances space and non-IT companies began to lose talent heavily. They never were in a position to compete with Samsung etc., and got completely wiped out. As a result, in the 2000s, most engineers irrespective of their specialization (Computer Science, Electrical, Civil) would go towards an IT space looking for a job.

b. Indian IT is mostly service based. As a result, they are looking to maximize value at all times. They don't care if you can't think on your own or need supervision. As such, the idea is that if you are good enough to graduate with an engineering degree, you are good enough to succeed in an Indian IT job. There are no true technical interviews, there are no true behavioral interviews. They are looking for molds. The same guys go on to become supervisors and they in turn look for similar traits when they recruit.

c. I seem to be the only one always complaining about this but Indians in general are not risk taking. They seem more content working for a Wipro or an Infosys than taking the plunge to start their own companies. The problems here are multi-prong. Parents are more focused on ensuring their kids success relative to others. The whole thing is based on a giant mediocrity scale. As long as I earn more than my friends or their friends daughters and sons, parents are happy. Inheritance, wealth, prestige are far more important and play a huge role in related incidents such as marriage, political influences, etc., Part time jobs will get you treated like you are below the poverty line. As a result, failure is not an option. Start-up mentality is non-existent in most engineering colleges. In fact the whole setup is against startups. Opportunities are extremely hard to create. The political hoops, the societal hoops turn most people off. No start-up companies in turn leads to lesser product based companies and more IT service based. And as globalization progresses further, the cost differentials and the drops in quality cause a progressive decrease in number of jobs outsourced etc., So, of course the job market is going to suffer.

d. The last part is around the Indian Education system. I came from a pretty good Univ and again, the whole thing was set on mediocrity. Labs were strictly controlled. You couldn't use equipment when lab supervisors were not around and they were in general never around unless they had a class going on. Most programming courses I took hardly had any practical implications. I thought I was terrible at programming only to later realize that it was taught to me in a ridiculously stupid way by professors whose only knowledge of programming came from Indian authored text books which in turn acted as guidebooks for technical interviews to Indian IT Service Companies. So, it was a giant vicious cycle. My final coding test was to swap a set of numbers using pointers and I could never understand the practical implications of any of it. My Professors used employment statistics for comparisons with other educational institutions and between students and constantly emphasized how hard work would get you through an Infosys. At the same time education hardly costs anything compared to what is spent in the US. The Govt authorization of educational institutions is a giant political scam in itself and requirements are fairly minimal. So institutions are mostly ill equipped and are focused on quantity than quality. You will never know your relative worth in an Indian educational system because there is already a pre-existing mediocrity scale for that.

Indian education system is designed to create employees, not employers.

Just let them struggle.

Author takes into example two extreme institutes: IIT Bombay and Amity. They are the extremes in quality. The former is from the upper part of the extreme.

What you need to open an engineering college in India?

-Money and land. It's al right if you do not have adequate amount of land but you have money. [A]

How do you get the license?

-You have to pay for it. Fees and then the mandatory bribe.[B]

Are all the engineering colleges(you can read tech schools) are like these?

-Government - no, almost none. Almost all are good. They are usually free of [A] and [B] mentioned above and quality of education and students(at the time of entry) is exponentially better than most of private ones.

Private - 90% or more among these colleges can be simply labelled as garbage even though they have all the shiny pretty campuses which actually few have.

How do you admit students?

-If you are one of the TOP ones - {IITs - call them Ivy tier-1}, {NITs, IIITs - call them Ivy tier 1.5 - 2}, {some better private and Govt. colleges, maybe 10-15 in entire India - they range from Ivy tier 1.5 to 3} - then you admit students based on entrance exams and/or marks obtained in 10+2 exam(both are considered now).

If you are are among the rest then it's donation based. Donation is a form of bribe/development fee or whatever you call it. You pay a hefty fee either directly to the institute or through agents/crooks/thugs blah-blah and join that institute to get a B Tech/BE[1] degree at the end of 4 years. A degree is almost 100% guaranteed at the end of the year even though you can't figure out what the fuck is O(n)[2] and I mean just the definition without even understanding it.

Do they get jobs?

-Yes. Many(most of them) do. If not via campus selection then trying from the outside. Some get in 2-3-4 years. A friend of mine got a job 2 months back. 3 years after leaving the college. In the mean time he had collected 4-5 fake experiences and show a particular experience papers for that kind of jobs. There are companies offering this service they even pass background checks. Hiring is taken care by services companies. Forget Google, Amazon, MS, Fb, Start-ups blah-blah. It's Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Patni, CSC, Cognizant, Accenture. They hire in thousands. There are jokes in colleges like this year Infy is coming with a bus or train.

Their interview process is great. You are asked questions like "Do you have a girl friend?", "Which city you would prefer to join in?", "and why?", "Who is your favourite sportsman?" -> answer is a cricketer almost always, "Favourite sports" -> it's Cricket and then maybe he will talk about it. Questions like this. No, you are not interviewed for your coding skills. It's just a luck or random game. Some get in some don't. Don't ask why. Earlier I used to get angry why they don't check coding skills but then I realized they don't need that.

So, students don't learn or enhance their skills because it's not needed.

What is AICTE then? Don't they check it?

-Well, other than the officialese[3] it's a shop where you can buy anything if you can pay the right price. It personifies Indian bureaucratic corruption, babudom and how almost every system in India is rotten at the core/root and people are watering the tip or at least pretending to do so.

[1] Bachelor of Technology/Engineering and it really doesn't matter whether it's an E or a T.

[2] I am a CS guy so I skipped Mechanical, EE, Chemical (&c) equivalents.

[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_India_Council_for_Technical... - offical website is down most of the time.

    tl;dr: Education in Indian engineering colleges is a farce that is why students don't get jobs when their skills are tested and they can't create jobs either. Skills again.