Degrees for All!

The Roots of Education are bitter but the fruit is sweet! (~Anon)

Good Day! Todays blog is about the sorry state of the Professional Education System in India. Specifically, Engineering Colleges and I am sure there are parallels in other streams as well. I believe this is the Nadir and that only better times can lie ahead!

National Waste

The Indian Education system was originally designed to develop great Engineers in ALL fields (Civil, Chemical, Electronics&Telecom, Mechanical, Computer Engineering etc) in order to supply the demands of an emerging Indian Industry. To date degrees are awarded in all these widely dispersed engineering disciplines so that companies in these disciplines can flourish and create value and great products/services for end customers .

However in came the Software Industry. The demand (bubble) for Computer Engineers (Programmers) was so great that people from other unrelated disciplines who had the aptitude were also absorbed by this rapidly growing industry. The salaries were typically a multiple of 3 or 4 over other industries. These salaries were high partly because this software was being developed for foreign clients who could pay in US Dollars. Indian Money was on tap! The curse of Easy Money successfully murdered a generation of Great Engineers in various disciplines as they queued up to join these offshore sweat shops. (Read Indian IT industry) Not only did they say bye bye to their original field of deep study, but also a vast majority decided that a Bachelors was "good enough" and that the "money was good" so why study further? Another half generation has followed with the "Me too Phenomenon". Observing the success of their predecessors, they "Followed in their footsteps"

However change was in the air! A nasty recession was a wake up call for many of us. Large and Dramatic change makes you take a step back and think and I think this is beginning to happen (at last!).

Collage of Colleges

The bubble also created an artificial demand for engineers( or someone with a chit of paper that says "Degree") The Govt was adamant about reservation and social justice(Quota). In came Private Engineering Colleges increasing the number of seats in general. You might think this is a good thing. But alas, many of these colleges could not keep up the standards of education for long. Also, since there was a great demand in the Software industry anyways the attitude of the students now became "Give me the degree, I already have a job waiting for me!". Please note that many of these Engg Colleges are wholly owned Subsidiaries of Indian Politicians. Setting up colleges was easy as a song, build buildings with large rooms, install fans and tubelights, have ill equipped labs, appoint Staff (often poached from Govt Colleges on promise of greater salary) Apply to the AICTE for accredition (and other paperwork) which moved swiftly since the college was often a wholly owned subsidiary of the Politician.

The Problem

Now we are faced with

• Lower demand for Low quality engineers from the West
• Lower salaries as there is excess supply of these "Engineers"
• Lack of Trust in the quality of the Indian Education System's Degree amongst Western Customers

The Solution

How do we solve this complex problem? My favourite method is Hacking the system. Boycott several of these colleges that give out useless pieces of paper at the end of 4 years. Go back to the Guru-Shishya Parampara. Exploit Coursera, MIT open Courseware, Youtube etc.and actually LEARN something in 4-6 years!

For the industry the solution is simple, Hire people who can do the work, not people with useless Degrees. Also, if you must insist on formal education, please hire Masters or PhD degree holders since

Now BE=the new BCom!

Thats all for now folks! Happy Thinking!

Regards
~Milind Thombre

Death

Yesterday a friend and batchmate +Sunil Ivan Gomes had a massive heart and died. I am deeply shocked that a guy around 39-40 should suffer this untimely a death! Sunil RIP. Today's blog is dedicated to you

Innovation

A lot of people in the software industry who are doing the same thing for years together talk about innovation. "In-novate" is derived from "Novel" which means new. This requires original thought, not copying and repetition. To build skills requires a discipline and rigour, but once you have built the skills, if you keep on doing the same thing with those skills, that is NOT innovation. That is Specialization and "specialization is for insects"

So what exactly is innovation when it comes to the software industry? Let me give you an example from my life.

Years ago i ventured out trying to build India's first Analytics product (Nash Data Miner). We failed but the experience enriched me in many ways. This was not innovation as we were following in the giant footsteps of +SAS, however, I came in touch with several people who wanted to do new things and were all fired up! Needless to say several of them were Fresh graduates and yet un-destroyed by the Indian IT industry's un-innovative regimen! Though the idea was not new to the world, it was new to India and certainly new to me. However, I toyed with several innovations when it came to solving my practical problems. This was the first time i was dealing with 16 odd software engineers at once, all writing code at varying speeds and with varying quality.

I decided to use the Co-operative model for software development! this was an innovation (new to world) I was inspired by Mr. Kurien the milk man of India. he set up +Amul Milk which was based on the co-operative model, and i decided to use something similar for software!

Which meant :

1. Developers would not need to be physically present at one place most of the time
2. They would be evaluated by their work alone. (and paid in proportion)
3. They would bring in their code which would get evaluated by automated tools (similar to Amuls milk quality and quantity evaluation tools)
4. The modular code would then be built with the rest of the engine
5. There would be metrics for code quality as well as quantity (LOC)
6. There would be deductions for bugs, mistakes and such.

This was and still is a fine example of innovation according to me.

Why do most people lack it? And why innovators are often rebels.

People lack innovative thinking because they are programmed by society. They are "beaten into shape" till the programming becomes hard-wired. Wake up, Go to work, lunch, tea, work and so on. Only a die hard rebel is truly able to question this programming, challenge it and rise above and destroy anyone who tries to program him/her. This requires supreme belief in ones own abilities and the ability to swim against the flow. As I like to say "if you go with the flow, you end up down the drain"

How do you spot an innovator in robot-town-hell ?

• Someone who is building new skills all the time (so if you get a guy with the headline "16 years of Java experience" he's not it)
• Someone with a die-hard attitude ( this is required to fight the programming) (team players can leave the room now)
• Someone who has ideas and is willing to work hard to make them happen. (bye bye work life balancers)
• Someone who does not care to be judged by society, leave alone companies and managers.
• Thinker as well as Doer.

That's all for now folks!

Regards

+Milind Thombre

(comments welcome)