The 5-year limit to being a coder in India?

http://www.swaroopch.com/blog/5-year-limit-to-being-a-coder-in-india/

by bootload • 16 years ago

39 47 16 years ago

swaroopch.com

spudlyo• 16 years ago

"If I have a USA stamp in my passport, I will get one crore dowry.”

Needless to say, the guy was not offered a job.

I'm lost at this point in the article. Why wasn't he offered the job, and what is a crore dowry?

k3dz• 16 years ago

A crore is 10 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore)

sethg• 16 years ago

...and according to coinmill.com, 1 crore Indian rupees is roughly US$220K, or €175K, or £150K.

I never realized that my in-laws were so cheap. :-)

blahedo• 16 years ago

> Why wasn't he offered the job

Presumably because he now seemed to be interested in the company only for its US connection, and might leave once he had his passport stamp.

> what is a crore* dowry?*

A lot of money: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore

ahk6• 16 years ago

Expecting a dowry is indicative of an atavistic belief system. Doesn't usually go well with an ability to work or perform in a modern environment.

sree_nair2• 16 years ago

Dowry is a deeply rooted cultural custom in some regions India where the Bride's father/family has to pay a heavy sum of money to the bridegroom or family in order for the marriage to take place.

Now, I hear you ask : "Why do they need to pay?. can't she marry someone else?". It's difficult to explain. But I will try.

Love-Marriage (Name for the "not arraged by families" marriage) is still a No-No in india. Which means your parents finds a girl/guy for you. Also,you are supposed to find a bride/bride groom from the same relegion-caste you are from.

So, if everyone expects dowry in your relegion/caste,you end up with no other option but to pay the money to get your girl married.

Now the amount of Dowry varies according to the bride grooms family status & of course the qualification and job of the bride groom. If the bride groom has moved outside india, specially to US or UK, the dowry paied increases considerably, as it's considered a socially prestegious thing and he is considered a winner in Life.

Hence the Guy in question asking to be sent to US. And "Crore" is a word used to denote 10 million Indian Rupees.

kksm198201172• 16 years ago

Love-Marriage (Name for the "not arraged by families" marriage) is still a No-No in some parts of india.

Corrected that for you.

kksm198201172• 16 years ago

I recall one fellow from Gujarat I met at engineering college who was in it because the degree would earn him a better dowry. He explained it thus:

1. If you have a B.E. degree, you get a INR 2000000 dowry alongwith a 800cc Maruti Suzuki automobile.

2. If you have a MBA degree, you get a INR 3500000 dowry, alongwith a Maruti Suzuki Esteem, or a Tata Indica.

3. If you have a M.D degree, you get a INR 5000000 dowry, alongwith a Maruti Suzuki Esteem / Tata Indica, and a furnished apartment.

4. If you have completed IAS school, you get a INR 7500000 dowry, alongwith a luxury car, and a rowhouse/bungalow.

Apparently, the way the parents reason when it comes to sending their kid to college is: if sending him to college costs me such and such, what will the returns on such an investment be?

narrator• 16 years ago

I worked with an Indian guy for a few years. He said that in India it is extremely unusual for a person to not follow an extremely rigid career track. It's the legacy of the cast system pigeonholing people into various professions. In the caste system, your identity very narrowly dictates your job. In the west, job and identity are far more distinct.

statictype• 16 years ago

It's interesting how almost every aspect of life in India is eventually spun and attributed to the caste system - kind of like Godwin's law.

I think the reason for a rigid career path is simply that economical safety is generally encouraged over risk taking.

Possibly because people value having a stable family over becoming successful by other means (not saying you can't have both)

plinkplonk5• 16 years ago

"It's interesting how almost every aspect of life in India is eventually spun and attributed to the caste system - kind of like Godwin's law."

Yes. Usually by people who have no direct experience of India. But then many people in India with no direct experience of America believe it is an immoral nihilistic society of "uncultured" pleasure seeking barbarians (rich too ;-)) .

prototype56• 16 years ago

This has nothing to do with caste system. India doesn't have the social safety net like the west, so people tend to be more conservative, for example if you get injured at work , you are screwed for rest of your life , no disability benefits like in the west . Believe it or not I went half my life without knowing what my caste is, no one cares about caste at least in the cities .

talonx• 16 years ago

>> No one cares about caste at least in the cities

True to some extent, but most Indians remain conservative, cities or villages.

sree_nair2• 16 years ago

>> "no one cares about caste at least in the cities" I find this to be reasonably close, till it comes to marriage. Very few families wholeheartedly agree for an Inter caste marriage.

GBond• 16 years ago

What always fascinates me is that this rigid track extends beyond careers and to the family life. According to my Indian colleagues, the social structure sets expectation on the type of wife, age you are married, age you start having kids.

awa3• 16 years ago

I don't have a better response than saying BullSH!T.

Ask your friend to peek out and look at the city dwellers, there's no set age for one to get married though parents are heavily involved in the process, there's social pressure and most people get married in their 20's.

Ofcourse these are the norms, within the handful of people I know the exception rate would be 20-30% which is high enough not to take all the social structure/expectation stuff too seriously

shriphani• 16 years ago

I would say this is true to a large extent. Our family knew an Indian who wanted to marry his Japanese girlfriend. The parents behaved like the biggest <censored> on the planet, even harassing the couple and taking the guy around to meet other women (who they thought were more appropriate for their son). Needless to say, that family went through quite a rough patch. But this is true of Indian parents. On one hand you have the new, more educated variety of parents who allow the kid to charter his/her own life. Then you have the weirdos who are completely out of touch with the world and feel that they know everything (no literally, from deciding their kids' majors in college to deciding where the kid should build his/her home). Right now there are more weirdos in India than the sane ones.

train_robber• 16 years ago

I really don't think caste plays that much of a role (in day to day Indian corporate life) as it is made out to be. Past 5 years working in this industry, I have never been asked about my caste or been discriminated against because of it. It seems the non-Indian is more obsessed with caste than Indians, nowadays.

ahk6• 16 years ago

> extremely unusual for a person to not follow an extremely rigid career track

This is due to a herd mentality and blinkered vision. Not the caste system.

drac• 16 years ago

At least one of the problems, IME, is that salary ranges are rigidly determined by the employee tier.

The tiering system goes something like this: Software Engineer -> Lead -> Architect

Without advancing through the ranks, it is well nigh impossible to get reasonable increases in pay; so people (even those who may wish to write more code) strive to climb up the ladder.

Not saying it makes perfect sense to everyone, but there is some logic to making sure people climb up the ladder quickly (if they are capable) in large corporations.

michaelfairley2• 16 years ago

"...there is societal pressure for more money, higher status, fancier cars and bigger houses."

And this doesn't exist in the US (and everywhere else)?

jey3• 16 years ago

As an "ABCD", i.e. American-born child of Indian immigrants, I can assure you that the pressure is distinctly different. Middle class Indians have a pretty rigid set of expectations for their kids, and there's hardly any room for individual expression. Everyone is expected to go for the prestigious-but-safe occupations of doctor, lawyer, or engineer (in that order). Meanwhile in American society we tolerate, and even encourage, experimentation and "following one's dream". Yes, everyone's still generally expected to get married, have kids, buy a house, etc... but there's usually no threat of being disowned for choosing to become an artist, or even teacher.

michaelfairley2• 16 years ago

I feel like there's a lot more talk of "following one's dream" than there is actually approval of people who do so, outside of normal tolerances. Many of my friends at university were forced into engineering/pre-med by their parents. Also. outside of the Bay Area, telling people you want to do a startup gets responses of extreme confusion and discouragement.

plinkplonk5• 16 years ago

"As an "ABCD", i.e. American-born child of Indian immigrants, "

the expansion of ABCD is "American Born Confused Desi" Where Desi == "Indian" :-)

psranga2• 16 years ago

There are companies in India where people are coders longer than five years (I was at one).

My gut feeling (inferring from conversations) is that the vast majority of companies do not perform work of sufficient complexity to require more than three years of technical learning. The only way employees there can then add value to the organization is by becoming a manager.

drtse4• 16 years ago

Just one question, is this "after 5 year i should be a manager" sustainable? How many managerial positions are available?

Usually these are only a small percentage of the total... and to have something to actually "manage" the manager/employee ratio must remain somewhat constant (or that "add value" become meaningless).

psranga2• 16 years ago

Software services companies in India grow very fast since many are they're tapping into the offshore outsourcing (or offshoring) trends.

It appears that they've been able to sustain it for the past 20 years or so. I agree it's not sustainable indefinitely.

awa3• 16 years ago

Let me start off with saying nobody gets a "crore" in dowry using a US Visa stamp, Almost all software engineers can get a stamp if they want them.

Almost all major software companies (Microsoft, Google, Oracle, VMware, ..) have big development centers in India where many people have been spending there careers coding. The problem lies with people who get into outsourcing companies thinking what they are doing is "software development", while most of it is really manual testing or basic support work.

Way to sensationalize a blog post!

plinkplonk5• 16 years ago

"Almost all major software companies (Microsoft, Google, Oracle, VMware, ..) have big development centers in India where many people have been spending there careers coding"

They still don't make money on par with their peers who went into management. ( The OP made this point). Neither do they have as much social prestige in Indian society. (another point made by the OP). I personally know people in both Yahoo and Google India (emphasized - Google Mountain View is a very different place) who moved to management from coding to make more money/get more prestige.

Another thing about these "big development centres" is that by and large crappy work is done here, relative to the work done at HQ in California. There are some exceptions, but largely this is true. Google India (with minor exceptions) does very non-core work for e.g. I know people who moved back to Mountain View after trying Bangalore for a while because serious development work couldn't be done out of Bangalore - many reasons, one of which was excessive interference by non technical managers, which again supports the OP's points)

Yahoo India is mostly Ops and maintenance, but then Yahoo is going down the tubes anyway with the best engineers leaving worldwide.

I don't know anything about what VMWare does in India but I would be very surprised if cutting edge work were done in India. I would suspect maintenance, testing etc or at best some non strategic work. That said I should ping some folks in VMWare to find out. (Is Ganesh Ram still with VMWare? he was one of the very early pre IPO hires and my junior in college).

So yes you have a point (Product Dev companies >> Outsourced Enterprise companies), but that doesn't really contradict the OP.

lonewolfaka9• 16 years ago

lets put an limit on companies that they cant work more than 5 year :D

harami saale

dododo• 16 years ago

why would you want to be a programmer for more than 5 years if managers view the position with such disdain?

The 5-year limit to being a coder in India?

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