Some weeks ago, Deloitte came recruiting to Indore. They were offering a modest paycheck, and I suspect many of the PROTON students flubbed the aptitude test and interviews so as not to be offered a job that they'd have to take as per the student body's own placement rules.
Today, it is clear to the same students that industry has tightened its collective belt. If a company is recruiting, it is going to try to pay as less as it can. It is a buyer's market. Those students must be regretting their actions.
This topic brought the proverb to mind, "Do not look a gift horse in the mouth".
Instantly, I thought of a saying that argues for quite the opposite approach. "Beware of strangers bearing gifts".
Most times I think of a proverb, I am reminded of another that seems to advocate the exact opposite.
"Well begun is half done". But "it is not over until the fat lady sings".
"Curiosity killed the cat". However, "nothing ventured, nothing gained".
I found a few lists of such pairs of proverbs on the Internet.
I guess life is all about balance.
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The best educational institution in India is...
... industry!
Yes, the best educational institution in India is not an educational institution at all. It is industry.
Indian industry takes hundreds of thousands of graduates with a low-quality education, trains them, and makes them fit to do work that competes with the output of companies around the world.
Our industry is approaching world class, whereas the bulk of our education system is far below global standards.
World class Indian software companies like TCS, Wipro and Infosys hire tens of thousands of engineers every year. There can be only so many IITians among them - and the typical quality is rather poor. As a web article puts it,"Nine half-literates are produced by our colleges, by Nasscom’s numbers, for every graduate of passable quality."
At Nagarro, we need high quality engineers because our projects are technically challenging. We find we need to scan 1000 resumes for every three hires!
Nagarro's final hires are typically very good (since we need to hire only a hundred or so each year), so I really have a lot of respect for the larger software companies who have to hire many more, far less capable candidates, and train them, teach them to code, teach them a work ethic, teach them to think, teach them to write, teach them to talk, and teach them to run projects.
The finished engineers command hourly rates of at least Rs. 1000 per hour! Talk of value addition!
The IT outsourcing and BPO revolution set off by these companies has given India a chance to modernize. It has helped build the country.
But it is highly ironical that even as the private sector is training tens or hundreds of thousands of people and making them fit for world class work, vested interests are trying their best to limit the participation of the private sector in formal education!
It is time for would-be students to stand up and ask for the right to a good education - even if it is to be provided by Reliance or Tata or Wipro in a "for-profit" mode.
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Yes, the best educational institution in India is not an educational institution at all. It is industry.
Indian industry takes hundreds of thousands of graduates with a low-quality education, trains them, and makes them fit to do work that competes with the output of companies around the world.
Our industry is approaching world class, whereas the bulk of our education system is far below global standards.
World class Indian software companies like TCS, Wipro and Infosys hire tens of thousands of engineers every year. There can be only so many IITians among them - and the typical quality is rather poor. As a web article puts it,"Nine half-literates are produced by our colleges, by Nasscom’s numbers, for every graduate of passable quality."
At Nagarro, we need high quality engineers because our projects are technically challenging. We find we need to scan 1000 resumes for every three hires!
Nagarro's final hires are typically very good (since we need to hire only a hundred or so each year), so I really have a lot of respect for the larger software companies who have to hire many more, far less capable candidates, and train them, teach them to code, teach them a work ethic, teach them to think, teach them to write, teach them to talk, and teach them to run projects.
The finished engineers command hourly rates of at least Rs. 1000 per hour! Talk of value addition!
The IT outsourcing and BPO revolution set off by these companies has given India a chance to modernize. It has helped build the country.
But it is highly ironical that even as the private sector is training tens or hundreds of thousands of people and making them fit for world class work, vested interests are trying their best to limit the participation of the private sector in formal education!
It is time for would-be students to stand up and ask for the right to a good education - even if it is to be provided by Reliance or Tata or Wipro in a "for-profit" mode.
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Sunday, November 22, 2009
A quiet revolution
A quiet revolution is underway in India. It may possibly have more significance than the IT-BPO revolution, and almost as much significance as the Green Revolution or the liberalization of the early 90s.
We could call this the Governance Revolution (taking a cue from Thomas Friedman who coins various terms and tries to popularize them - the latest being ET for Energy Technology).
All across the board, well entrenched methods and structures are being overturned. For example:
The full impact of these changes has not yet been felt, but I am very hopeful. Even more than the changes themselves, the courage to change is most remarkable. Legislation otherwise tends to be a one-way process: it has a tendency to simply create more and more complicated and senseless structures. So this is new and very welcome!
One gets the feeling that the central government is being run by professionals, not ideologues or crooks or ultra-nationalists or caste-warriors. Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, Sam Pitroda, Nandan Nilekani - these are people that we can identify with. These are not the typical politicians we had gotten used to. This too is new and very welcome!
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We could call this the Governance Revolution (taking a cue from Thomas Friedman who coins various terms and tries to popularize them - the latest being ET for Energy Technology).
All across the board, well entrenched methods and structures are being overturned. For example:
- The Right To Information (RTI) Act has made big inroads into the opacity of the government.
- A brand new income tax code is being circulated (click here for the draft). This is a bold move aimed at simplification of the entire income tax regime.
- There is a towards a generic Goods and Services Tax (GST) to replace a maze of taxes such as octroi, stamp duty, entry tax, central sales tax, state sales tax etc. If this succeeds, the long lines of trucks at state borders will become a thing of the past.
- There have been highly significant amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), somehow missed by most of the mainstream press (see here). The need for these is apparent from a report of the National Police Commission that 60% of the arrests are unnecessary and unjustified. Also given the big delays in India's judicial systems, many people languish in jails for no fault of their own, awaiting trials that can take decades.
- The school education system is being re-thought, and hopefully higher education will also get a re-think.
- The Unique ID project, handed to ex-Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani, is a big step in the right direction. Under Nandan, it is sure to be professionally executed.
The full impact of these changes has not yet been felt, but I am very hopeful. Even more than the changes themselves, the courage to change is most remarkable. Legislation otherwise tends to be a one-way process: it has a tendency to simply create more and more complicated and senseless structures. So this is new and very welcome!
One gets the feeling that the central government is being run by professionals, not ideologues or crooks or ultra-nationalists or caste-warriors. Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, Sam Pitroda, Nandan Nilekani - these are people that we can identify with. These are not the typical politicians we had gotten used to. This too is new and very welcome!
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