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The Road most travelled

Being a software engineer in India is like being on a Dominoes menu card. Indian IT industry is a baking oven where fresh crust (boys) and cheese (girls) are fermented into a classy double cheese crunch pizza (computer experts).

Now there are a lot of varieties in Dominoes.

Chicken barbeque spiked with onions (Tech Support)
Seventh heaven pizza (System Analyst)
Chef’s Chicken choice (Q A Analyst)
Mexican Green Wave (Network Operation Controller)and many more. 

With the advancements in the technology, newer types are under discovery. The chefs (CEOs) of various restaurants (organisations) ferment their yield (employees) in cooking ranges (ac cubicles). The more time invested in fermenting, more is the increase in the number of pizzas (more the experience, more is the rate of billing of that employee). And if the pizza gets lucky, it gets a chance to showcase itself onsite to foreign Market. (Spicy masala crunch in U.S)

Being a pizza, you get a lot of attention in the social community, merely due to the price (salary) and the taste it offers (cool tech stuff you show off). 

But in reality what is the plight of software engineers in India? Are they actually skilled? 

Take for example any metro city-Bangalore would be the best example. If you throw a stone in Bangalore, chances are that 99 times out of 100 it will hit a software engineer. These so called software engineers would have actually specialized in any other branch of engineering apart from computer science or IT. But since Anu Aunty’s obedient son decided to go ahead with the safe TCS-INFOSYS-WIPRO placement, the rest of the lot decided to follow suit.

The problem arises when a supposedly highly qualified resume gets hired based on the performance criteria of a college and can’t cope.

And the day comes when our Indian programmers are finally sent to fulfill the great Indian dream. Many a time they are considered to be very low quality employees. This usually happens when unscrupulous Indian outsourcing companies send over empty heads with made-up resumes as "5-years of Oracle expertise" when it is clear that the person never touched Oracle after doing the 3-month Oracle course. 

In India, practical knowledge isn’t given priority. Students learn things by rote and practically they know nothing. People with 6 years of experience wouldn’t know how to write a Fibonacci series program.

Software engineers usually don’t keep themselves updated. If you ask a developer what are the books they have read, chances are that the answer would be none.
And finally another one of the software engineers dream is to become a manager at the drop of a het. Once he becomes a team leader, the next aim is to become a manager by hook or crook. So without having any knowledge of programming our Indian software engineer fulfills his dream.

Who would want to go through the gruesome task of reading, learning and experimenting when shortcuts are available? In India software engineers just seem to happen by chance and not by choice.

Isn’t it high time that the software engineers of such a skilled nation adopt a methodology that includes more reading, writing and listening?

Two roads travelled in the woods, I took the one most travelled by and finally, that made no difference. Robert Frost would think otherwise.

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