95% engineers in India unfit for software development jobs, claims report

PTI ^ | 4/20/17

[markomalley]

Talent shortage is acute in the IT and data science ecosystem in India with a survey claiming that 95% of engineers in the country are not fit to take up software development jobs.

According to a study by employability assessment company Aspiring Minds, only 4.77% candidates can write the correct logic for a programme -- a minimum requirement for any programming job.

Over 36,000 engineering students form IT related branches of over 500 colleges took Automata -- a Machine Learning based assessment of software development skills - and over 2/3 could not even write code that compiles.

The study further noted that while more than 60% candidates cannot even write code that compiles, only 1.4% can write functionally correct and efficient code.

"Lack of programming skills is adversely impacting the IT and data science ecosystem in India. The world is moving towards introducing programming to three-year-old! India needs to catch up," Aspiring Minds CTO and co-founder Varun Aggarwal said.

[Red Badger]

Over the past 25-30 years I have built up quite a library of ‘old code’ that I use, re-use, re-cycle and “re-invent”, as necessary.

I have some programs that have code in them that was written in my 30’s and I’m now 62...................

[rbg81]

I am not at all surprised at this. While there are some very smart students from India, there are also a lot of very bad ones. Especially when it comes to programming. They also cheat. On the flip side, their English is good and they are very polite and deferential—at least to your face.

[Pollster1]

There’s inefficient, and then there’s bloat. I’ve used some powerful statistical software that does just about everything you can imagine. It also, like Microsoft Word, does ten thousand things I have no interest in doing. Sometimes I just want software that does little things quickly and well.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Yesterday I did not even know what a software engineer was, and now I are one!

[TexasGator]

“Most of my code is copy/paste these days. But I have been here 20 years. I recycle a lot of code. “

I am not referring to one’s copying and pasting of their own code ...

[vortec94]

True. My experience at Verizon IT in training H!B’s both domestic and non-H1B’s in India supports this. Thinking creatively is not in their skill set thus solving problems is impossible. Tell them exactly what you want and they’ll get through it. If they hit a problem? All stop.

Verizon shipped over 3,000 jobs to India from 2000 to 2008 when I left.

[butlerweave]

but they’re Expert Cybercriminals with their Microsoft virus Phone Scam

[moovova]

I’ve spoken to most of them via phone after dialing 1-800-DellFix.

[COBOL2Java]

I was on a PeopleSoft project many moons ago where we had a Russian developer. He was a very good PeopleCode programmer but knew no SQL. He wound up writing all of his queries in PeopleCode instead of letting the Oracle database do the heavy lifting. His stuff was slow, slow. slow...

[depressed in 06]

But, they are so cheap.

[jr3000]

15 years ago I suddenly got two Indian guys to supervise and train. Two months later they replaced me.

[central_va]

Nobody can write code that complies the first time. It is an iterative process. I know 5 different languages and if you wanted me to compile a program that prints “Hello World” the first time it would probably not compile. I would make some stupid syntax error. But the second time it would run just fine. This is a stupid test.

[bigbob]

My experience wasn’t this severe but on the same lines - I’d say half were incompetent and zero were high-talent (those were ones who had left). The biggest problem was they were “book smart” but had absolutely no practical knowledge or common sense, as we define it. And they preferred to argue academic points and recite what they’d been told at IIT than listen and try to understand what they were missing. I quickly gave up hopes of integrating them into the team and just let them run til they inevitably failed, it was cheaper and far less frustrating.

But hey, they all had masters or PhDs and were much cheaper than US engineers,right?

[Common Sense 101]

After working in the IT industry for the past 25 years, that number is low...

[null and void]

Eh? Why do the Silicon Valley companies import so many of them? To depress the wages of American coders, silly!

[Celerity]

This isn’t just an India thing. I know many, many developers who “oversell themselves”.

I’ve hired and fired more than I really should have. Including one from that same pool of “Americans at Disney”

[jpsb]

Then again, my US born colleagues are about 70% unfit. 20% of us do about of the actual work. 80% do the other half.

Bump!

[AppyPappy]

That’s why God made Google. All my VBScript programs were purloined.

We don’t have manuals anymore. Google is quick. One of the big problems with coding is that we don’t have Systems Analysts anymore. We have to know the data, the business models and the languages.

[COBOL2Java]

I hear you. I was a statistical programmer way, way back when I was a COBOL programmer working on an IBM mainframe - you know, back when we drove our cars with our feet. :-)

I worked with actuarial analysts and learned to write tight little routines that digested seven quarters worth of data and output reports that they used to project future rates. Cool stuff. These programs input over 100 reels of tape.

In the JCL, you learned how to properly code CHECKPOINT RESTART, boy! As well as the COND parameter (if it’s TRUE, you’re THROUGH).

[Pollster1]

“Hello World!”

Somehow, that’s familiar.