School education is something that lays the foundation. Platform for ones reasoning, ones intellectual, communicative skills and more. One get to learn various subjects like Maths, Geometry, Atomic Physics, History, Civics & Geography. So its horizontal knowledge. Up to until 10grade one would be reading all irrespective of their choice. Now this is the foundation, I got less complaints here though that some syllabus are not competent with other I guess still they do a good if we get good teachers.
Next one got to choose a specialization in the Bachelors degree. Now whats makes people to make this choice here? They go consult friends and scholars to make this decision. Some parents are smart enough to identify the best of their children and help them realize their dream. (this is happening with the next generation of parents) Here one got to choose various stream of specialization like Electrical and Electronics engineering, Computer Science, Chemistry, Aeronautical and many more...
Now what happens! After this you are supposed excel in the stream that you choose. What happens in instead, every graduate has an vacant seat in a software firm to write code. Yes healthy in one way and sick in many ways. Whats healthy, we made global players to shift their focus to India by producing so many software engineers in numbers. When compared to US or UK it was a really big astonishing number for them. So this shifted their focus here. Also the economy was low which made any tom, dick and harry to invest in Indian market for cheap labor. Sick part is, "whats the conversation ratio of the students perusing their own area of specialization". It could be true that one or two in a batch of non-computer science students have extraordinary skills to switch their branch to computer science. But not 60% of the total strength landing up on a software job. We increase in quantity and decrease in quality which is a very bad sign. I call them "Cyber Cooli".
To me a community of good software engineers is directly proportional to the number of commits they have made to OSS. You can judge it for yourself of where India stands.
What brings these "Cyber Cooli's"? First thing that drives an normal Indian is the money that you get in these jobs. Say a Chemistry graduate who wants to do his MPhil and start as a lecturer in college. How much would he earn on a basic scale, it should be around 6k-9k per month. When compared without any prior computing skills today's software industry is in a way ready to pay you around 12k-15k per month with an additional skill. Tell me what would you prefer now? The second set are those bright chaps from non-computer science background and take up a software job. They sailed all the hardship in school and college for this computer science job. No! They got their own plans. Some software firms put in freshers out of college into this bonding where they cannot get out of the company until X months. That's a good time for them to earn some money, write minimal code and aside prepare for their higher studies (MS or MBA). Once their things are done, chuck the company and go in search of their dream. Crap, whats about the employer who has made so much intangible investment on one? I don have to answer it.
Cyber Cooli's risk is the current recession. If not coding whats next? One needs to really thing of it now.
Is the education system to be blamed or the individual to be? It should be a collective responsibility of all. All cannot be Hendry William gates. So let your child pursue his dream, tell him that its not less when compared to any. Let the educational system be non-partial enough to make all courses as important as the other. Let there be so many different jobs that flourish with in the country. Let there be no Cyber Cooli...
Disclaimer: When it says this post is written by kvijesh, Its me and only my opinion. Not in a way directly or indireclty refering to my Employeer.
Update: I know this post is badly written, I myself hated to read it again.
12 comments:
Cyber coolie is a mild term. One of my fav. bloggers uses the term: "Corporate whore". You get money and get yourself f**ed for 8 hours a day.
Did you get the word from "Neeya Naana" ?
Can you url /me that blogger?
Yes sankar got term from "Neeya Naana".
@Sankar:
I am sorry to tell you my opinion and I am sorry if it is a bit harsh. I am quite pissed off by the comments about software engineers. "Corporate Whore" and things like that. Everywhere, it is not only software industry, if you work you will get money (dont point me to some government employees who get money without being... you know..., I am talking about people who deserve their money). Do those people mean that working is equal to being fucked? If so, it is their fault. If they run a businees, then they pay salary to those who work under them. Working and getting money is not like prostitution. Seriously there are so many sick guys out there... bull shit...
@Vijesh:
I am extremely sorry to make your blog nasty with my nasty comments. You mentioned like, when you leave the company it is like cheating the employer? Come on Vijesh, grow up. I was not offended because I had recently shifted to a new company. It is not always employees leave a company only for money or other opportunities. Even if they do, it is not an injustice. People leave for other reasons and when they leave, they consider money also. Services companies earn hell a lot of a money from their clients and pay the employees very less. They get in dollars and pay in 1\10 or smaller in rupees. Sometimes employers cheat, sometimes team mates cheat, sometimes manager cheats and people leave for those reasons also. The duty of the employee is to keep the company productive and the duty of the employer (or managers) is to keep every employee happy and satisfied. The thought of leaving the company should not come to an employee. If that comes, there he\she has all the rights to leave the company. Let me stop here. Sorry for my blabbering.
@amudhan
Don be Sorry and thanks for writing. :)
Well, my view was *only* on those whom the employer trains and the employee do not do justice for his training. Yes for the company its not a loss in terms of money, since one or two people is negligible for him. When people leave for other reasons its valid from the employee's point of view.
@amudhan I strongly feel that all (okay more than 95%) of the software engineers are overpaid, for the kind of (mostly support maintenance ) job they do.
And more than often, they complain about their job without doing anything. I have no difference of opinions. I just pointed to a different word usage that impressed me. And the person who used that term is not a software engineer either, iiuc ;-) So, as shown in "Katradhu Tamizh" , the person will feel tempted to compare and argue.
And, as for your other comment, changing job _is_ cheating the employer, unless you are changing location (moving to parents town etc.)
You want your employer to share the profit that he earns with you ? No way! If the company moves to loss, will you be ready to give money out of your pocket and nullify the losses ?
It is business and it is not fair to expect the company to give more than what has been decided by the company.
As long as there are job openings, happiness can be a factor for changing jobs. But I hope this situation changes and everyone lives in a fear of losing their job (yeah I am cynical). So people will do their work correctly.
Overall, don't read into my comment too much, I felt like blabbering ;-)
@Sankar:
It is really a cliched topic to discuss too much. For any given matter, there will at least be two different views.
Coming to the overpaid cliched topic, the service companies don't give the extra money out of their pocket. They show the head count and get a big money and they give the employees a very small bit of it. Even if the dollar value is reducing one or two rupees, some service companies think about firing the employees (of course those who are in bench or not performing well). But the same bench people helped earn the company some fortune. The employers don't love the employee and the employees don't love the employer. They are even. It is business.
Coming to the quitting_job_is_cheating, I don't know whether I have to laugh at you or shout at you. You work for your company for a month and the company gets some money from your work and you get salary for your work. It is even. It is not like employees are to be loyal dogs to the employers. It has to come intrinsically. The love of the job and work is more important. The love of the employers have to come naturally, not because of they are paying. Of course, if the employer pays anyone who is not at all working, they have to be loyal and stay in that company for ever. It makes me to think that you have not seen sadist team leads, indifferent managers, etc. Or at least you don't have any friends who had gone through it. Just because you got a cosy environment, don't think that all environment are ideal. People leave the companies for various reasons. Even if they do leave for money, they have all the rights to do it. If they think they deserve more and there are employers out their who is ready to pay bigger, what is the factor which should stop from leaving? At least in my experience, I left 2 copanies not for money. The thought of leaving company did not raise because of money factor. I left for other reasons. At least all my friends left the companies for various other reasons. Not only for money. So, please don't judge people comparing to your environment.
I am sorry if I sounded offended or offensive. After all, we are bloggers and we are sportive enough to digest other's views.
Never fall in love with the employer, fall in love with the work :)
@Karthik
Well said. But are we really doing it? Or Can we really do it? :)
@amudhan: You are spot on that we will never be able to convince each other fully. I had some moronic, sadistic, dumb-ass superiors in my professional life as well. But the love for my company was able to overcome the hatred for them. And yes, may be I cannot expect the same for everyone, where work of indviduals is not as isolated as mine is.
To a certain extent I agree here with Amudhan.
I do not agree that software engineers are over paid. The whole point that they can be kicked out anytime makes their job highly unstable and hence, the trick is to may hay when sun shines.
Also, Indian economy and the society is such that young students have no other go but to fall for the luring software industry. May be another 30-40 years later, when the society becomes more matured, students will have the courage and motivation to follow their dreams.
My final comment for this post:)
@Sankar:
As I had previously told, for any given matter, there would be at least 2 different opinions and views and the two parties can argue for hours to years without being able to convince the other party.
I want to thank Vijesh for giving me a platform to know about a guy who had survived a sadist lead. May be you are a less sensitive than me :) When me and my friends got offer through campus, I told them, *we have to stay in our company for at least 5 years to show that we are grateful as this is the company which opens the SW gate for us*. But I failed.
Happy to see a guy who is living as an example, Sankar. I now got curious to know which is the lucky company you work for :)
@amudhan I work for Novell . My work provides a lot of independance and hence bad seniors didn't affect me much. Not sure if I can say hte same for everyone in my company ;-)
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