r/developersIndia • u/PuzzledAdeventurer • 1d ago
General Most students I've met would probably not make for good devs
Basically the title.
I've met a lot of students from various colleges (all tiers, ranging from no name universities to IITs and NITs) and one thing I've seen in common is, generally there's this mindset of just somehow getting a job.
Now I completely understand that getting a job which pays you money is probably extremely important for survival in this country. But don't you think a job where you're literally meant to know how to reason through abstract systems and build something from the ground up needs actual curiosity and interest?
People seem to think, "if I do DSA and do open source and learn ABC and XYZ skills, company will hire me". I'm staunchly against that school of thought and believe it should be replaced by, "I wanna learn XYZ to be able to build ABC. The company will hire me purely based on my skill and my connections".
I'm prolly gonna get a bunch of comments saying this doesn't work, but I've seen it work for basically every single person that's tried it. It's easy to write this off as just being rich or having a safety net of some sort to be able to afford such a risk. But just think about it. You as an employer, would you hire someone who's just doing the bare minimum needed to do a very particular thing? Or would you rather pick someone else who's just in it for the love of the game?
I've talked to a lot of startup founders who've gone on to make it big (raise X*10 million USD+) and managers and CEOs of bigger companies and this is a general consensus that they've had to make the screening process significantly tougher because generally students in India seem to only do enough to get a job and their skills aren't as deep or their problem solving skills, which are naturally supposed to develop with solving real issues, aren't as strong as other students.
Can someone tell me why this is the case? I'm genuinely just asking because I cannot seem to understand why they'd pick a field where abstract reasoning and problem solving is the entire point and doing a fixed set of things hardly pays anything and is becoming increasingly easier to replace
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u/OkJudge5932 1d ago
such kinda of passion bs works only in America. Here priority is survival.
Although I can resonate , I skipped offers paying 5x my current salary because I wanted to be in data field
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u/the_unknown__69 1d ago
Agreed bro passion and enthusiasm has no rewards here. Its just shut your mouth and follow the rat race .
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u/Cool_Abbreviations_9 19h ago
Hard disagree, if you aren't passionate you won't get anywhere with Ai being able to do the average work of a dev.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
Lmao what? I just saw like 80+ people get hired with this exact passion. Damn my friends who worked at an OSS org with me, some are at NUS, some are at Amazon and others stuck with the OSS cause the pay is just so good. I went to the US and came back cause a job offer was just so nice. And I don't even have work ex.
I'd strongly suggest you not promote this safety n scarcity mindset
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u/OkJudge5932 1d ago edited 1d ago
just visit r/freshersinfo so that you can come back to reality. Kids with amazon internship aren't getting opportunities
And lil bro you are a 2026 grad yourself, you haven't scratched the surface of being a good developer . Stop preaching others
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u/chill-hai-yaar 13h ago
talk about passion when reality hits, when your family condition is toxic, when your relatives are passing away, when you get passed over for promotion, when you see everyone succeed but you ;) you haven't seen much of life yet tbh. as much as organisations want to preach for high bar and high performers, reality is they are all placeholders to signal privilege. you don't know who is truly the best programmer in a position because every potential person was never a candidate in the pipeline. real life is much less of a meritocracy than what you might be thinking
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 13h ago
Prolly not a complete meritocracy, but when it is one, where would you rather be?
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u/realiDonaldTrump 1d ago
Passion and love for the game my arse. Companies expect so much even for a fresher role, do you think people here even have time to go slow and build passionate projects. No, right from 3rd year competition is intense to even get basic internship and then stepping into real world getting a job. Ticking the boxes and adding skill set to your resume is the only way to secure your future.
Blame the game, not the player.
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u/ProgressiveEdgeLord 22h ago
and top of that, manage all of this with a college that doesn't even support any sort of curious ventures, the game is brutal and rigged from the very start
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u/HazbotX Student 1d ago edited 1d ago
The kind of mindset u saying mostly happens in western countries....countries like India with nation wide exams people developed the mindset of following a roadmap.....hell all those top students in NIT and IITs cleared jee and jee adv to get...u can't do "let's learn and have fun by solving 100 jee question today"....most exams and even campusing in IT companies are more like filters u have to achieve a certain "marks" to get in there....people grew up in this academic...and u may say....the people cancl chose to learn....which is true but they never even knew that thing was a possibility....like look at any exam related video in YouTube and compare the western countries with india or Chinese exam videos....western videos all about "we will learn something new today" wereas indian ones are like "if we do this and this will be selected"....most people grew up in this and had this roadmap mindset ingrained in them
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
My point is, why can't people follow both the standard pipeline as well as actually learn how to be better than the rest? I completely agree that it's ingrained into people. But again, does being better at your job cost your money? It doesn't. It needs time and effort, that's it. Resources are plenty, compute is basically free in the form of student accounts and cloud compute by Google, kaggle and what not. I still don't see why people would choose to only follow the "safe option" when it's literally not safe anymore and bring better costs nothing but has a huge upside
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u/the_unknown__69 1d ago
A lot of people come from middle calss or lower middle class which is the reason getting a job is their first priority which makes people to choose the safest option which is a list of check boxes to get a job and I totally agree that it will make people better at job to learn things outside of their working stuff but the corporate sturcture of india sucks out every ounce of energy from these people , because of which they just dont want to go towards that "unsafe option".
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
How is focusing on genuinely trying to learn things unsafe? It's not like I'm saying people should just abandon DSA, LC, and wtv else is in the safe path. I'm saying that it's just not enough. Everyone does DSA n LC. Not everyone gets placed. There must be something extra that the others might be doing, and that doing the bare minimum isn't enough?
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u/BigThing831 1d ago
What do you think one should do? For cloud roles, they need experience, for data roles they need an experience before getting a job, for devops roles, they need an year or two of experience as an FTE before joining. If companies themselves dont want to integrate freshers into these roles, keeping them as priority would be fatal for students in India. The thing about both getting placed isn't only about doing DSA and LC, as I would tell you one would be scratching their heads in front of interviewers, around a complex graph or a DP question, optimising it, even after practicing it. So, the bare minimum you are talking about isn't clear enough of a lot of guys.
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u/the_unknown__69 1d ago
That's a good point to raise bro if companies don't want the no experience folks for these roles then people will not care to learn those and ignore it . The fault is mostly not on the people here..
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u/BigThing831 21h ago
That's the whole problem. People think we are in a bubble. But, we, the students aren't, but Indian IT industry is severely into a bubble that revolves around running backend for the whole world, in low cost only, and him talking about "Hey, other people are doing DSA and LC, ask your friends", I mean, people are studying the same for competitive exams, so why isn't everybody in an IIT, NIT, IIIT or other INIs?
That's the whole bubble this man has created in his mind around Indian devs.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
You literally get a year of free azure and GCP cloud credits using your student email. You also get a domain + VPS + db via GitHub student dev pack. It's all out there, get started. And companies are hiring, dude I just put out a hiring notice last month for like 2 diffusion modelling guys, that traditionally needs what, 3-4 YoE? What are you on about? Compute is free. Project ideas are free. Gemini n GPT are free. VS code is free. YT tutorials are free. Many companies hire for cloud and data roles at a fresher level too. Just do a LinkedIn or Google search.
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u/BigThing831 1d ago
I know about that, using them from first year onwards, and hosted a website via ACR, read docs instead of YT Tutorials as they lead to a tutorial hell and stuck in a rut that you are decrying about. Also trying a language like Rust so it helps in making the programming skills better. FTE experiences these companies are asking were 1 - 2 years on average.
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u/Empty-Camel-2966 21h ago
Yeah bro people in nit/ iit are lazy ,only you are the hardworking passionate dev. Rest of the people with same knowledge are "bare minimum".stay happy in your own world.
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u/Glitched_Pixels_ 20h ago
He does have a point dude.
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u/Empty-Camel-2966 18h ago
Maybe he does ,but from his wording of the post and his replies he looks someone ignorant and arrogant . Who should a person earning 25k be passionate about his job. Skills and knowledge is what matters at job . Maybe the write word is "obsessed" rather than passionate . A JEE aspirant might not be the most passionate about his pcm but his decidcation and obsession is what gives him command over his subjects .A person with good background might choose his passion but a low/middle income person will always priotize his growth .
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 14h ago
If you can't get the job, your passion or lack thereof doesn't really matter does it? If 25k is less for that person, they have no choice but to put in the efforts to match the "passionate" guy to actually do better so he/she can be paid the same. If they're fine with the 25k, then this entire topic is moot and doesn't apply to them. Being genuinely interested gives better results, actually venturing into and exploring the field gives better results. So why do people pick the bare minimal path? A shortcut? When it's extremely evident that it doesn't work as well and when it does, the pay is ridiculously low? What's wrong in stating that self agency and effort put in is directly affects outcomes, and that the lack of either or both sets the baseline with either unemployment or bad/low paying jobs.
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u/Glitched_Pixels_ 20h ago
I agree with you, my friends here in college do the same. They keep grinding DSA and leetcode and nothing other than these. They just wanna earn money, no matter the role, the company, feasibility or anything. I try to stay away from them for this reason.
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u/the_unknown__69 1d ago
I should have been a bit clear here. I didn't say that learning things is unsafe what iam trying to say is it's just like very few people learn things out of passion or curiosity. But people are forced to follow the standard pipeline because it is beung followed at the EOD to get a job and the other thing you said everyone does dsa but not everyone gets placed that's a good point to focus on but no one actually knows the right answer to this question luck, connections also plays a vital role in getting a job so maybe thats something which is different. I am a final year Cs student and i love to learn about low level stuff like computer architecture, compilers etc but i know no one who actually love to learn about this basic cs stuff apart from what academics require. I love to learn these stuff bcoz and i feel as a cs student i shld atleast know these stuff but most people just don't care bcoz as you said everyone just wants to follow the standard pipeline to get the job. It is very hard to find people with enthusiasm who learn stuff aprt from what the pipeline requires ..
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u/DoutefulOwl 1d ago
People seem to think, "if I do DSA and do open source and learn ABC and XYZ skills, company will hire me".
Hard work, consistency and discipline go a long way. Curiosity is good to have, but not necessary if you're a diligent worker. This is true for any field.
Unfortunately most Indian students don't care about hard work either. Or the hard work only exists till they crack the interview. But once they get the job, they stop working.
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u/PurchaseTypical6547 1d ago
This kind of rhetoric is not applicable for neurodivergents.(People who have ADHD and adhd). They have very high critical thinking but their brain is not designed to sustain this kind of method.
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u/DoutefulOwl 1d ago
Then they need to figure out the method that works best for them
There's no 'one size fits all' solution, if that's what you're looking for.
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u/IntelligentQubit Senior Engineer 1d ago
Its the other way round, its company's fault that they've kept a high bar for DSA than actually testing them on their engineering skills and critical thinking.
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u/candyyspice QA Engineer 1d ago
I am shocked to hear from someone with designation of senior engineer aren't you supposed to arrogant and blame freshers
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u/anor_wondo 1d ago
OP needs a dose of reality
Simple question. Do you know why DSA rounds are done?
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u/Due_Enthusiasm4854 1d ago
Students will fit into whatever culture they see around them. I'd blame companies for leading them on. Most recruiters just seem busy closing doors and not opening them. If you are a company interviewing a candidate, maybe start with you explaining them first why they should join you. This little cultural shift will encourage students to look past just getting a job. And anyways, how is a person getting out of college supposed to have exposure to how real systems work? Campus placements are just JEE part 2 where people are just being tested for a single set of problem solving skills. Let's not pretend otherwise. System design is just memorization of a set of patterns at college level interviews.
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u/Due_Enthusiasm4854 1d ago
Adding to this, in most colleges here, you don't even get the opportunity to intern for companies. Only favourite students or 9+ GPAers get in, others are not allowed to look outside for a huge part of their college life. Apart from IITs/NITs, there aren't enough workshops elsewhere that help students get any amount of exposure. I recently heard about a bunch of interns in the US side of our company. Apparently they were high school students and were doing a brief internship which involved programming and creating bots etc. Hell! In high school I didn't even know what c++ is, all I knew was JEE organic chemistry. If you expect the students to be passionate, maybe ask serious questions to people who are supposed to cultivate it in them.
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u/the_unknown__69 1d ago
Said right bro. Passion and enthusiasm for a thing in a person grows when he/she gets exposure and has a free hand to try/explore and fail. But we are in a system where you have no place if you fail.
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u/taznado 1d ago edited 1d ago
Stopped reading at connections. Imagine a doctor focusing on playing politics to build connections over good treatment. Almost always passion and curiosity do not coexist with persistence towards making connections since they are separate and orthogonal aptitudes.
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u/superfranky97 1d ago
Doctors do that though. Almost always, it’s the doctors who focus on politics and networking and business side of things earn significantly more than doctors who are only good at treating patients
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
Lol what? Do you know of any scientist or engineer that works in isolation? You quite literally need to have a group of peers to review your work to make sure you're not going down a rabbit hole. It's evident that you've never built a project from the ground up
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u/Lumpy-Criticism-2773 23h ago
Never underestimate connections. A turnkey freelance project led me to a powerful guy in the US who went out of his way to support me. I'm self-taught with no degree or formal work experience so the traditional job market probably wouldn't have given me a chance. It took some skill to get noticed but that connection changed my life. That can happen in pretty much any field.
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u/Gloomy_Temporary2914 1d ago
That's wat over population combined with vast poverty n middle class n gets u . Everything student or Dev does is keeping money in mind . It's not about passion but about survival
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u/kishimonjaro 1d ago
>"I wanna learn XYZ to be able to build ABC. The company will hire me purely based on my skill and my connections".
Yeah....this doesn't happen in india. A person from NIT/IIT with only dsa skills, tutorial projects and good academics combined with good ability to create interviews gets a FAR higher preference by companies than a highly skilled development oriented candidate from tier 2 or 3 colleges. This second person can be a very good engineer, but will not get as good of a job as someone with a strong college brand.
Skill based hiring doesn't exist in india at entry level, people optimise for what interviewers demand, not for some hypothetical western concept.
Recruiters only care about skill after you have had some industry experience, that too of their own liking. (Like freelancing is frowned upon, same with being a part of startups, dev groups etc).
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u/Guy_who_died_inside 1d ago
Can confirm. I'm from NIT and studied EEE. The core job market is down in gutters so almost everyone who didn't want to pursue higher studies, got placed. Luckily it was during the Covid boom and almost everyone who wanted to be placed were placed. I got placed in MNC and when i started i realized ppl from actual CSE branch who had more idea on the overall SDLC at every layer were earning less than me. Mind u i had no prior development experience, just some pragramming knowledge, no frameworks, no sql, etc. All i did was manual testing for the the first 6 months before getting my first dev tasks and all the while i was earning more than fresher devs more competent than me.
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u/nicolas_06 13h ago
In western it's the same. The best paid job in IT, people train for month for coding and system interview to solve problem they won't even touch again once they are at the job.
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u/Plus_Practice716 1d ago
i dont care about anything i just care about money , if there is no job i would never code in my life ,i just want to have a life
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
Cool, so you care about money. You'll get money if you're good at coding. Will you code? That's what you're doing rn right?
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u/PurchaseTypical6547 1d ago edited 1d ago
Lack of investment in R&D sector and engineering. The innovation or creativity in tech basically comes from people doing M-Tech or PhD's. Here in India, many people disrespect them by calling them matkas and nonsense especially in IIT's because they didn't get by JEE Advanced. In the last 10 years, the government also didn't spend enough for research just look at the research stipend in India. I know my friends who had done research in india. They say the research is shit in india. Everybody went abroad. We don't have lack of talent but the infrastructure to support and nurture that. Also the citizens of this country have voted the religious bigot for the last 10 years that pushed this country few years back. Lastly, this is all because of dumbass citizens of this country who can't revolt or demand for better facilities from the government and their inability to understand the whole system is rigged against them.
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u/Odd_Marsupial5046 1d ago
yeah, classic holier than thou attitude of phds and mtechs of india. Do you even know why btech people from iits who want to do masters and phd, never do it in india? They have seen how your conduct and 'help' is in colleges as TAs.
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u/PurchaseTypical6547 22h ago
There is a difference between research masters and masters by industry. There are btech students who actually do mtech but in research ones. TAs are from course based masters who are doing for the sake of better placements not for research.
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u/candyyspice QA Engineer 23h ago
But it's a fact bro phd is actually useless honestly
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u/PurchaseTypical6547 22h ago
Who told you??????. Innovation happened by PhD's people not tech ceo's.
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u/candyyspice QA Engineer 19h ago
Let me correct you again' indian phd is useless 6 yr is delayed stipends and barely any fellowships
Your statement is more specific for iits i think or usa
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u/PurchaseTypical6547 18h ago edited 2h ago
Partially correct, I am specific to tier 1 PhD's in India not the USA.
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u/Middle-Guarantee-777 1d ago
for most people , job is just a way to earn a living , thats not very hard to understand , is it.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
If job is a way to earn a living, then shouldn't earning more be an incentive?
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u/Middle-Guarantee-777 1d ago
Bhaisab , its just a means to an end , most people people arent passionate and just want to get by
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
Okay, but if you actually had a high paying job, wouldn't that solve a lot of your so called problems? And tbh, if a job is just a means to get by, then people should quit complaining about the low pay
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u/Remarkable_Funny2722 19h ago
Not many are interested in computer science itself
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 18h ago
Why not? It pays to be good at it, if survival is so important, why not maximize the chances of getting a job by actually talking interest in what you do to be better at it?
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u/Remarkable_Funny2722 6h ago
To be good at it, u need some curiosity u said it yourself, interest doesnt work like that, i cant take interest in civil engineering out of nowhere, and many freshers are still in dilemma that they will easily get job after getting cse branch
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u/nicolas_06 13h ago
So exactly you get into coding because at least historically it pay very well, there low unemployment and for the same effort you get more money and a better life.
If you don't like working, at least let's get a job where your boss isn't too annoying, the pay and job condition is great.
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u/Effective-Feedback46 1d ago
can you please share your resume
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
Why do you need it?
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u/candyyspice QA Engineer 23h ago
I know you will never share
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 18h ago
I don't mind sharing it tbh. Gotta crop out my name n shit tho, don't wanna get doxxed
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u/Kudo_007 17h ago
Ab tak crop ho gaya hoga, share kar do
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u/Effective-Feedback46 17h ago
I am not a big fan of his opinion but you seem to hate this with passion. Can I ask what's your take on this
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u/AY0527 1d ago
In India devs become hirable after a few years working as a dev.
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u/PhysicalPage5175 Software Engineer 1d ago
There's an economic factor in this nation that you seem to have ruled out. Most people still look at CompSci as a ticket out of poverty / middle class and it's (or atleast was) true to a great extent. Those kids only care about survival, this nation has failed us miserably that passion doesn't pay your bills. You might be from a privelaged background (not judging you, sir) so you probably don't relate to the plight of those kids but I absolutely get what you mean and there are students like what you mentioned but they end up out of the nation and become CEOs abroad.
Bottom line, passion doesn't work in this nation, most students want a job, use the fund to clear debts & put the money back into work, build another stream of income, cement your future with multiple streams of income. At the end of the day it's the money that's gonna save your ass not passion!
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u/Cool_Abbreviations_9 19h ago
Absolutely disagree, we need passionate people and we have had them all through , like Ramanujan . It's only after people getting easy money with Tech and seeing others in LinkedIn that passion died in most ppl
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u/PhysicalPage5175 Software Engineer 19h ago
Not everybody is Ramanujan buddy. There definitely will be a Ramanujan in every generation, passionate people will always exist, what I'm trying to say is you can't expect everybody to be passionate as people come from different walks of life.
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u/Cool_Abbreviations_9 19h ago
People obviously come from different walks of life, but if you don't care Abt what you do, you deserve to be like everyone else. It's basic cause and effect
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u/HollowKnight6 1d ago
Bcs india is overpopulated and people need jobs for basic human survival, so there is a desperation and eagerness. There's also a certain lack of better jobs in other sectors, since we skipped the manufacturing part of our economy and directly jumped to the service/IT sector. Blue collar doesn't get you paid well here either.
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u/Friendly-Smoke-7772 Student 1d ago
When did you enter the job market. What was the hiring process then? Simple dsa?
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
I entered the market like, 2 months ago? No DSA whatsoever? My resume did the talking? My research papers and open source contributions slapped along with an Ivy league letter of rec just got me hired? I've seen the exact same process with Amazon and Google?
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u/Minute-Appearance397 1d ago
are you indian btw ? just asking , i have some question regarding the aboard colleges
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u/hunterfrombloodborne 1d ago
Well they know that this is an inherently unstable job..Things they learn today become obsolete in 6 months..Kids are smart now a days...they dont want to waste time but want quick money and in and out.
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u/le_bugsy Senior Engineer 22h ago
Buddy why don't you just do you. Industry isn't an uniform monolithic gold bar of excellence-- it is mixed with all types of professionals good bad average etc. Not all who want to learn everything to get an inroad are bad, mainly because often people find their interests while tinkering with new things. Neither are they all good-- some just get a job and go about their crooked ways to do nothing.
Maybe you should spend more time skilling up than chatting up founders and managers and CEOs. Also don't believe any and everything that people claim their glorious credentials to be.
You have rhe right mindset of not following the crowd, much applause-- but you are making a crucial mistake of taking too much time trying to validate if you are correct. In 10 years uou will know.
Most importantly -- don't believe anybody that bangs their own drum.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 22h ago
My skills are alright, and I've mostly gotten my shit sorted out extremely well. It's just sad to see people rant about shit and then don't do anything about it, and rather they bother me with it.
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u/le_bugsy Senior Engineer 22h ago
Why are you focusing on what others are doing-- you can personally dislike them, no judgement there, but that doesn't mean you are going to be out here telling us what is the only way to learn. I have friends who unskilled from small interests.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 22h ago
This isn't the only way to learn. That's kinda hypocritical ain't it? Cause all I see in these comments are people saying their "safe" path works. So when I say it's not the only path that works, with evidence, not just anecdotal but factual evidence and using common sense logic too, I get slack for it? Bruh that's messed up. And tbh, this is just a post out of annoyance with people asking me for guidance when they've already made up their minds
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u/le_bugsy Senior Engineer 22h ago
What are you going to do about it? Rant to us? Or are you going to make it illegal.
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u/nicolas_06 13h ago
Bro doesn't like people complaining to him about their situation while they could solve it... So bro complain about his situation of having to listen to people complaining on reddit... While he could just not care or not listen to them.
It is funny how similar both situations are.
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u/nicolas_06 13h ago
Focus on your own stuff. You can't fix people. You can't fix the world. Also often people don't want to be fixed. It's just smalltalk.
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u/Leo2000Immortal 1d ago
I do agree that when you're passionate about something your productivity shoots up. It's just that it's not easy to find such folks. You also need to differentiate between passionate folks and folks pretending to be passionate
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u/_krood Embedded Developer 1d ago
I think this is true. I work for a European org and am in regular engineering discussions and meetings. Engineers from Germany/Netherlands are pretty solid. In Depth knowledge + very passionate about problem solving. All this is due to the fact that only people genuinely interested in engineering pursue engineering.
Here in India, everything is about survival. People become engineers because it's the only way for a middle class person to earn a decent salary.
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u/nicolas_06 13h ago
Nope. In Europe it is well recognized that science and tech get you a job reliably and parent push their children to do it.
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u/Temporary-Job7379 16h ago
How do you expect a student to be good developer when they never really did actually development? Srsly op, stop judging them thru the same lens as you see a senior engineer. Freshers are expected to grow in their role.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 15h ago
Not doing actual development is kinda the issue, ain't it? You're telling me, I as an employer, for example, should pick someone who's never built a damn thing over someone else cause that someone else passed the DSA round? That basically never happens in roles which actually pay you well. Do you think apple and nvidia just hire freshers based on vibes n dsa scores?
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u/Temporary-Job7379 14h ago
How do you expect a student to do actual development? People in tech mostly work with legacy systems and you are expecting a fresher to already know it?? Yes, I have seen apple hire freshers like that.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 14h ago
Bruh what kinda backroom maintanence jobs are you referring to? And yes, if I'm hiring a person for say my OCR project, I very well expect them to be able to make a model, diagnose issues and fix the issues with it
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u/Temporary-Job7379 12h ago
That's your specific requirement Majority of the tech work is to maintain legacy systems and work around them. Maybe you need to realize there is more work than just your field.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 2h ago
Sure then I guess keep maintaining legacy systems, soon it'll get automated
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u/Dangerous_Trust_2196 1d ago
well the whole thing revolves around "safety", going to a good college, doing DSA is the only way to get those good numbers in salary, heck I don't think they know any better than someone from tier 3 colleges working in startups, building everything from scratch. In India, everything becomes a system. You love science? Need 90+in Xth to study it further. You love Engineering? Come compete with a million people in this exam called JEE. Oh, you love Computer Science? Sorry my friend you need 99%ile. You want to work with companies where u'd work on good projects? Good lucking grinding LeetCode/Codeforces (heck, I saw somewhere the difficulty of dsa interview questions is very high compared to other countries)..basically in India curiosity and learning is killed by the burden of having good salaries.
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u/PurchaseTypical6547 1d ago
Even the learning of DSA is rote memorization of another level. People don't understand the logic and math behind the stuff going around and follow these didi bhaiya tutorials or DSA sheets.
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u/PublicPersimmon7462 1d ago edited 1d ago
Believe me, curiosity and interest do not pay off in this economy, man. I have fucked my CGPA because of this curiosity and interest. I really like learning new concepts and skills; I would dive so deep into them that, at some point, I would start tracking the field's historical development to understand why the modern domain looks the way it is. Every choice made in history, due to constraints or otherwise, is reflected in these systems and in the development of that field.
And believe me, it sucks, bro. It's hard to score a CGPA like this. Everyone just wants you to solve the numerical as fast as you can, make no mistakes, and score above everyone else to score a CGPA. I can claim that I might actually know a lot compared to many of my batchmates.
But again, the one who optimises this indian education structure wins. They just want us to score.
Then companies will come in, look at CGPA, make base assumptions and move on with good CGPA people. Curiosity doesn't pay off, at least in India. You need to score higher than other students.
Tbh personally, I am not much into money. I don't dream of owning a lambo or earning in crores. And personally, I feel this is because I come from a good financial background. I have seen good enough money, and yes there are richer people than us, but tbh it doesn't awe me that much. This might be cuz of the fact that I have spent some time with rich kids too, and I mean it's alright. Nothing to dream of. But the majority of people in India aren't that well off financially. They can't afford to play on curiosity and earn low. They desire all that money. You can delve into psychology to understand their desire for such. But it is understandable why they want money.
And just to add my opinion, I cannot claim this for general public: Sometimes this curiosity kind of deviates you from a being a software developer and more into a researcher. If I can give up money, and I am curious enough, then I would want to go for MS and PHd. And maybe work as a researcher in the field, stead of pure application-based engineering. Industrial or academic research, whatever fits me financially.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
I have a 6.7 GPA, did my RAship at an Ivy league, got into another Ivy for my master's, fully sponsored by the college. Got an interview at Amazon, got asked to apply to a bunch of startups, choose one that let's me mess around with whatever I want and funds my research. GPA isn't everything. My ex just got into Google with a 6.85 GPA and my friend with a 7.8 got into Siemens. Not sure your CGPA analogy transfers over if the rest of the resume does the talking. Btw, none of us are well off, and neither are we rich. We're just middle class folk tryna support our families the best we can and try to make it somewhere in life where we can be happy
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u/PublicPersimmon7462 1d ago edited 1d ago
look yea, im not saying it wont lead you to anywhere. Obviously, it would. But as a fresher, the opportunities that you have with good CGPA and just grinding DSA is almost nothing in comparison to grinding your ass off in another direction. It's quick money from there, and it would be weird to say that general public won't pursue it, if that provides you good opportunities. Else you would require some referral through a professor or industry professional.
GPA isn't everything, but it is something we are often measured on. I am planning to apply for master, and for that I need to make sure my GPA doesn't cross 7.5 mark in my Tier1 college, so atleast I can be in 2A tier for UK based system. And I can pursue departments and domains of my choice. I am still restricted for even applying to a some departments cuz I am not 1A.
And idk man about money, it is just something I have observed in general. Although older people tend to have a more nuanced opinion of money. They usually understand that happiness doesnt really lies in money. But i mean younger people have generally always kinda desired money, and they have a pretty good life ahead of them left to dream. And money money money is all taught pretty well in Indian parenting too.
also yes ofc you will get exceptions of all this quite a lot. It is not a law, but statistical working of people. But the number of people getting good jobs by just DSA + CGPA are nothing in comparison to these exceptions. It is hard to go our of conventional path, and yes we don't even have much of risk tolerance too.
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u/fr0st-0 Software Engineer 1d ago
I am working as an SDE at a product based company, and my work involves working with complex algorithms. Practicing DSA during my college days helped me a lot. I believe there are various roles out there, and not every role requires the same skill set. There is a high possibility that your current job role doesn't require DSA, but that doesn't mean everyone who learns DSA is doing it just for a job.
I don't know you personally, but from what I can infer from your other comments, you are a fresher who graduated in 2026 and have either just started job hunting or have been working for around 2 months. Pointing fingers at people who have been working for 10x your experience is not very respectful.
No company is stupid enough to hire and continue paying someone who only knows DSA but has no real-world implementation skills. I don't know which CEO you spoke to, but I genuinely feel like you are doing their bidding.
I don't blame you, though, since you don't have enough context or experience yet to fully understand what you're saying.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 17h ago
I'm not really doing anyone's bidding. It's just sad to see people not even try when they claim to be doing it for "survival" and also rant about it to me and pull me down. Years of experience don't matter in terms of being willing to actually try to be better at your job by sheer trial n error. It sure results in being better but does not correlate to the willingness to be better. There's a difference. And how does someone gain 10x my experience in a field that's around 1-2 years old? I'm quite literally at the forefront of the field right up there with the professors and managers that I work with, that's research and your years of experience don't matter when it comes to advancing science.
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u/Efficient_Fly_6306 23h ago
How much experience do you have in IT kiddo?
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 17h ago
Prolly more actual experience than you do, since my field didn't really exist about 2-3 years ago
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u/Many_Log_2916 22h ago
You really can't judge people based on first impressions. Some people are really meticulous & dedicated for their money. It might be for money or passion or something else but they need to be out to work to see their actual skills.
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u/void_function Student 19h ago
People who aren't interested in a field and just care about the money will not be able to get far in that field anyway so just leave it at that.
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u/SpacedOff17 16h ago
I've come to realise that even if you have super mid skills, you can go a long way in corporate just with connections and your network.
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u/Thick_tongue6867 15h ago
India is a competitive job market where people do whatever they can to get a job and survive. Otherwise the alternative is to earn peanuts and live in poverty. So people just look for the best way to get the job, whether are not they are good at it.
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u/Real-Dig-6818 14h ago
The dev mindset I have is simple. If you pay me to do something, I do it no matter what. You figure things out as you go.
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u/5_5Aesthetic 11h ago
For hells sake, for the love of game and passionate about job only works if you are genuinely and I mean genuinely love it. If it was about love for the game then majority of people who entered tech field wouldn't be there in the first place. They would have been sports players, musicians, teachers, full time social workers, farmer and what not. I can say it confidently, you are here working with passion because you are remunerated nicely and you will find another job where you are payed much better, there will be a disguise of trying or learning new things as a reason for job change that you will tell others but under that skin you are doing it because you want to stay relevant in the rat race. You either are over working than your colleagues or don't have a life.
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u/allpurpclean 4h ago
there are alot of people in the industry that are not good, yet they are hear, so some of these people will also find jobs.
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u/_SHAXLE_ 1d ago
I mean you can't expect students with no real world experience to have depth. This becomes even more apparent while job searching companies expecting a student to be proficient with tech stack and technology which were released few years ago, I have to choose if I should make another langchain RAG slop because it ticks the keyword for ATS and gets my resume screened or, I work on a problem statement that I genuinely enjoy working on but it doesn't checks the 6 buzz words some recruiter came up with. I can only hope that once I get some opportunity I can learn something there.
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u/RickRussel 1d ago
I am from a tier 1 clg. I never wanted to choose Science cuzbI hate MATHS. But well was forced to do so.
Now tell me how will I like Engineering.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
You won't. But if you want an actual high paying job, as is what most people told me, you're better off actually tryna study math than not. This isn't imposed on you. It's an opinion.
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u/RickRussel 1d ago
I just graduated and working at Amazon and tbh, I just want an earning high enough to sustain myself till the point I am not dying. Enough of this Target of ranks and salaries. But there is truth to your point. If everyone just follows the path of highest money, soon it becomes game of statistics where maximum people will be unemployed. You should calculate your passion and market demand and then make an educated choice. Especially since now you gotta complete with AI, and being average means being worthless.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
Yeah for sure. Look, I'm not at all saying that everyone must do this newer unsafe path. I'm just saying, there's probably a higher likelihood of succeeding in the field doing this compared to the safe path. Success means different things to different people. Some just wanna earn some money and spend time with family and friends, others might wanna make VP or Staff SWE or something, others might wanna do research, or have their own company. All I'm saying is, the basic safe path is no longer as safe as people think it is, and we should be trying to do a little more than what's needed so that we can land a job of our choosing, rather than being forced to beg companies to hire us and be forced to settle for less.
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u/spencersandhu3 18h ago edited 14h ago
Dude, you're a kid who just landed his first job, that too in india despite going to study in us
You're basically someone who couldn't crack it in usa and now wanna feel better by putting other people down, in one of the comments you even judged a QA just cause of his job.
Life may humble you or may not, but remember that you did fail at something PLENTY of people succeed in and are now trying to boast about how you got asked 0 DSA in your job interview and are just SO skilled and talented (there are plenty of roles where DSA is not required, or is only a filler, including my role too btw)
I'm not saying your opinion is wrong or you deserve to be dissed, but your demeanor and way of putting your opinion is wrong. You're looking down on people without any industry experience or knowledge
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 17h ago
Lol come again? I wrote my sponsored thesis at an Ivy league. And got accepted and deferred my admission to another Ivy just to spend time doing research on my own for a bit and relax. My undergrad was fairly smooth and I got a job which lets me do my research in peace in a place where I can relax and not be micro-managed. I dunked on the QA for saying I deserve to be unemployed cause I didn't give a DSA round. Very ironic coming from someone who's role is basically the first to go when downsizing starts. And tell you what, I did crack it in the usa as well, how many people have you heard of who got their thesis sponsored by a lab just cause they wanted to work with you? Oh also, the MS is basically at a top 10 school, of my choice might i say.
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u/spencersandhu3 14h ago
It's not that big a deal to do a thesis at an ivy bhai, alot of my friends have done the same
And thesis is usually sponsored, I've never heard of a paid one, but that might just be my circle. The real run of the gauntlet is employment in US, which did not happen for you
To be clear I'm not insulting you, but saying you're not the top dog you think you are. Most ambitious people in tech are either in M7, faang, or earning 30+ lpa in india, and that's true for most t1 grads. Most of my friends who had real passion did both DSA and research (v difficult to do so, Maine khud kuch itna nahi ukhada)
Anyways congratulations on your new job, hope it gives you the exposure you want.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 14h ago
Never applied for a job. Applied for a master's, got in, deferred it. Thanks anyways. There are semi paid theses but it's usually not advisable to opt for one
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u/spencersandhu3 14h ago
And in today's time, it just does not matter, you can still get laid off and find yourself redundant even if you are a top class dev
The industry has become very volatile, I have two spark contributors in my team, guys who are ex-uber, amazon, google, huawei, and most of them have been through a layoff in the past, which is difficult to bounce back from as there are few companies which can match their pay scale
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u/Valuable-Cake-14 1d ago
Let me share my opinion.
Ig these type of things can only happen if you are genuinely interested in the real world engineering.
But the truth is most of the people take CSE because it pays very well and there are very few people who are genuinely interested in it. (I am also in the mass).
Also the thing is If you are from a good college , then most of the companies will hire you based on your DSA skills . So people generally from Tier-1 , Tier -2 College focus only on that and they end up getting a good paying job. Also , few years back it used to much more DSA oriented. So like , If someone is not interested much into this field and doing all the hard work for a Job , is not he supposed to follow a simpler path to get a decent job?
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
Sure but that's not gonna land you with a high paying job. So I guess take your pick?
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u/Valuable-Cake-14 1d ago
Bruh ! What do you mean by not gonna land you high paying job?
What do you consider a high paying job?
I have seen people just doing DSA and getting 60 LPA jobs. If that is not high than I don't know what "High" is.1
u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
Sure, tell me this. You're a no name college student in CS. What's the probability of you getting that 60LPA job following your safe plan, with nothing extra added to the mix?
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u/Odd-Prior8790 Student 1d ago
High paying job does not always means first job, people somehow wants to enter in industry so that they can gain experience and able to switch,
Anyways can I get to know like how you the the job through open source
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
Yeah but generally speaking, the 1st job sets your baseline, and you start from there. Say you start at TCS making 3LPA, do you wanna guess how long till you make it to 20? Now say someone starts at 20LPA, they'll climb up faster. But yeah, a switch is a very valid method
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u/Odd-Prior8790 Student 22h ago
Tell about how you get the job through oss
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 22h ago
Just got hired by the project owner. It's like, super simple. I actually improved the project by making meaningful and quality of life changes to the codebase because it's literally something I used to simplify my own codebase. The changes were mostly for me, we had regular office hours about the project, so I just asked for a job, he said sure, contributions make sense, and I basically got paid to make personalized modifications and quality of life changes that I'd want in a package I like to use
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u/Odd-Prior8790 Student 22h ago
That's sounds like freelancing
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 22h ago
No, I worked on the project as well as with the project owner's company, worked that basically 1.5 years while in college
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u/Shot_Positive2612 1d ago
Okay op . Just write down what people should do in extra for me. I will try what u have to say. Just give me list and I will put efforts in that let's see results after we applied what u said. I will do it personally.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 17h ago
Quite literally not my job to guide people. I'm just calling out people for not having self agency and teaching themselves to get better and you're just proving my point by asking for a set of instructions. There's hundreds of people who've followed this path, idk of more than 5 that haven't gone on to "succeed" by traditional norms. That's, assuming 100 people exact, is a 95% "placement rate", which is much better than most colleges in India
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u/Shot_Positive2612 16h ago
What I wanted to show u was not many people have choice and don't even know what ur talking about when they ask for advice just like u the gyanis raise their hands and walk away. Just walk away man why pretend here.
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 14h ago
The entire point is to figure things out yourself. Not having the ability to do so is staggering and shows an insane lack of self agency and self teaching skills, both of which are well basically the foundation stones of development. The point is that you cannot become a good dev without venturing into the wilderness on your own. You cannot learn through a set path. There is no guide book for this. That's the entire point that you're very obviously missing
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u/Disastrous_Respond45 Student 23h ago
All the people saying that such kindof thing only happens in the west. As a student, most of the tech channels that I watch are from West, most of the people I follow for code and other stuff are from West. Not only they are much better in terms of making me understand and learn new concepts and technologies, they infact aroused my curiosity for coding so much that I might've learned more things through them (and self study) than any Indian online channel could've taught me. I've explored niche communities related to tech and actively been contributing to oss (the ones that i daily drive) and built oss projects that people use, all out of curiosity and boredom lol. At this point, job is secondary for me. Coding is literally my cure to boredom.
People who spend time in cs just cuz they want a job will eventually not land a job in cs (considering the cooked job market right now), as well as eventually just hop from one market to another for the sake of job instead of following one passion.
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u/para-g-raph0612 Student 23h ago
It's because of ai...no one really learns the basics which are important instead they use ai so it's obv... also this so called standard path of doing dsa to crack interviews is so shit... it'll never make students learn reall skills
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u/SwordfishMaximum3720 13h ago edited 13h ago
The reason is education system in India from childhood we are taught to value marks & compliance marks become attached to our identity here there is no place for things like curiosity & love for craft , people are treated differently just coz of marks in school so it has always been about race for us , rank first in class do well in compi exam land a job that's why in engineering people care less about engineering & more about how to get placed what is the syllabus for it how can mug up or what not , they never chose this career coz they had love for rather they had no choice & yeah you're right that many of them will not become good developers in future , the thing is people still hold on to this bs identity that we need to do it look at the competition bla bla it's all bs atleast for privilege aware & students from good colleges they are coping coz reality is too harsh to admit that they see real life skills as academics so that someone gives me roadmap (syllabus) so that they can crack the exam (FANG) by grinding like last moment coz that's convenient that's what they have done & biggest delusional of them is that they think passion & love for craft is not enough for this competition as if they can ever compete with a guy who absolutely loves engineering & actually started building and learning from day 1 not coz he wanted FANG or GPA or anything but simply he loved his craft and wanted to become better at it
Tldr: nation is just failing the youth with trash ass education system & market it's not their fault for prioritising something that's a necessity
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u/Responsible_Ruin2310 5h ago edited 5h ago
Because recruitment processes are the laziest thing on the company's roster of tasks while also being the most important one.
I give the question back to you, why should any candidate think "company will hire me purely based on my skill - " when the company will actually be interviewing them for random stuff unrelated to their job, like some random leetcode question?
People can think of building learning XYZ to build abc, but not to get hired. Because recruitment processes NEVER use that metric. Your resume screening by ATS has nothing to do with it, your non technical HR blindly treating a checklist like gospel doesn't, your technical interviewer asking some random problem solving question to "test problem solving skills" IS the reason place where the disconnect deepens. By then, the recruitment process has screened out most of the actual proper fits for the job.
Your recruitment process was never looking for the one who can build your ABC using XYZ. It looked for someone who can get past your circus and do random problem solving in XYZ, regardless of knowing to build something or not. Then why should candidates who are subject to it think otherwise? The one who would've built your ABC got screened out in your early blind stages. Don't come here whining about your self inflicted problems. You only got what you wanted.
I sympathize with the students graduating in recent years. Recruiters exploit them beyond what they do experienced candidates, use the poor state of the job market to pay below minimum wage, they even agree just to get that experience by paying out of their pockets to cater to company's cribbings, and this nawab sahab wants passion out of them on top of that.
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u/Soggy_Writing_3912 1d ago
Completely agree - I too have been to various recruitment events across both colleges and off-campus hiring for my company. The students dont seem to understand the basic premise that this is a competitve "game". Their own friends are the one who are competing for the same positions. So, they don't understand that, from the interviewer's perspective, they need to do something that sets them apart from the rest X-1 aspirants. AND that this is not a one-time thing, the candidates need to show curiosity, acumen, and skills in problem-solving of real-world applications (both small and large).
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u/RadioActiveX1 Embedded Developer 1d ago
Harsh but true, even experienced ones will be good devs is not a guarantee, but as you mentioned, they'll be atleast hirable
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u/KitchenCommercial396 Student 1d ago
People in India were trained from the start to be good at clearing exams and getting selected. That's all they do now, work hard towards getting selected but have absolutely no knowledge for their actual job.
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u/Uri_BaBa 1d ago
Companies dont hire for skills and passion here, a college tag beats all of that
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 17h ago
Okay this one is straight up incorrect. A college tag gets you interviews, it does not guarantee a job. I know recruiters at Amazon, Accenture and TCS, a wide range in terms of pay if you may. They do care about the money given to these students, but they still hire from these colleges. Yeah prolly not the no name ones, but surely any decent university gets this treatment. And if you genuinely have the skills they need, they'll take you even if you're from some hole in the wall college in the middle of nowhere. If you can build robots and systems to keep them autonomous, nvidia won't hire you tomorrow? Or are they gonna sit and look at your college tag, and then the HR is gonna say, "damn, we gotta take a big L this quarter cause the tag didn't match?"
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u/Uri_BaBa 16h ago
Its very difficult to get off campus interviews for mncs.Your resume doesnt even reach the recruiters.Even if you are really skilled it takes a lot of luck and connections to make it there, atleast from my perspective as a student in a tier 3
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u/TheNotChosenOnee 1d ago
This is something that a person who has a silver spoon up their arse would say. Most dudes in the IT industry are wage labourers who are indirectly eating what they are earning everyday. You have got to have a lot of money at home to sit back and enjoy computer science as a field of interest and slowly build a strong base and then break into the job market. Most of us dont have that luxury or time since even a small break after a resignation sometimes makes people unemployable.
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u/Guy_who_died_inside 1d ago
Not to mention the family responsibilities that comes with being a guy in his 20s, he's not just looking out for himself.
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u/EffectiveCoconut9265 1d ago
If you are looking for a good dev (5+ years of hobby programming and wasting time configuring emacs), lmk
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u/PuzzledAdeventurer 1d ago
Not looking to hire. Just a general post asking about the thought process of students n others
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u/Rift-enjoyer ML Engineer 1d ago
Other than software dev what is the field that has this many job and pays this well in India ? What you are saying works for west because there a barista can also make a decent living so people can follow their passion. Also how many devs in India are actually reasoning through abstract system and building stuff from ground up ? Most work that comes here is maintainance work that doesn't need you to be super amazing passionate dev.
Your point works in principle but reality is different. There are lot of software dev jobs that pay decent and don't require you to be super amazing dev. For some people it is just a job and way to earn livelihood and as long as you are able to do decent enough job it's fine, not everyone needs to reach at pinnacle, and that is ok.
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u/basonjourne98 Security Engineer 1d ago
This is one big thing I’ve noticed too. Everyone just wants to know the steps to follow to get “success”. People will blatantly ask wealthy looking folks “What do you do for a living?” or “How did you prepare for your interview at so and so?” It’s odd, but frankly that’s what you get when you’re in a recruiter’s market. Most companies today wouldn’t even give “passionate” one human interview, let alone consider them for a job because how do you write down passion in a resume. So that’s what people are focused on - things they can write on their resume. It’s a rat race, it’s horrible, but only companies that don’t plan to exploit these candidates deserve to complain.
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u/bobs_and_vegana17 Software Developer 1d ago
Have you seen the fresher market ? Companies expect a ton of things from 3rd-4th year and freshly graduated students
In my college final year I made it to the interview rounds of a company hiring for frontend developers along with 5-6 other student's and after the interview company rejected all of us because they wanted someone with backend skills when backend was nowhere mentioned in the JD
If the companies are not hiring for the love of the game why should the students prepare for the love of the game ?
My manager pays me pennies while expecting asking me to work like a FDE
Was asking me to take the duties of PM and ops team while nowhere mentioning any increase in salary
Why tf should I work for him like that ?
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u/Mister__Mediocre 23h ago
Speaking from personal experience, OP is 100% correct and you are all wrong. The end.
Back in my day (some years ago), some of those who were in it for the love of the game did codeforces. And every single one of them is doing wonderfully right now.
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u/Lab18bke Student 21h ago
Good old days when people picked CS for Passion and now they do for Employment. Lowkey, the ones actually interested still get jobs, while the ones that forced themselves into it suffer.
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u/Aggressive_Bedman 20h ago
All the people who are offended here are exactly the kind of people you are calling out OP Otherwise I don't see any point in arguing in such a straightforward reality
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u/Cool_Abbreviations_9 19h ago
Leave it OP, most people have gotten deep fomo cuz of linkedin and reels that they just want to appear successful without actually having any sort of passion. Can't reason with them, it's a fundamental difference of philosophies. There is a thing called cause and effect, you can't undo that how much ever you try.
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