WobblyBurrito
WobblyBurrito

Indian SDEs will do all DSA and System Design chatter but cannot create any real value

Indian SDEs on LinkedIn & Twitter are some of the worst engineers you will ever find across the real world. Their typical value lies around:

  • Cracking a FAANG/MAANG or Product company.
  • Make an announcement on LinkedIn & Twitter and accumulating followers.
  • Starting YouTube channel, Topmate links, affiliate marketing channels, and more.
  • Rant DSA, System Design, Interview resources all day long.
  • Post daily of their office, their colleagues, candid shots, and barely getting any work done.

While this is expected out of early career professionals, it pains to see senior SDEs doing the same shit over and over again. Things don't end here — Everyone talks about creating a revolution. And the revolution is teaching DSA.

If you are an experienced SDE and still ranting DSA, it just means that you have barely learnt anything that is of worth any value. You are atmost a "Ticket Engineer". You get assigned a Jira ticket, you bust your ass solving it, and that's it. That's your entire value.

Its high time that these "Bhaiya", "Didis", "Bhabhis" stop ranting DSA and System Design over and over, and build something of real value. You would barely see any credible open-source projects coming out of India (but hey, we have some many contributors!), barely any Indie dev project, or anything that captures the attention of the world.

Literally every popular SDE you might follow or see over your social media is the same. Their entire community game is a farce and designed to capture gullible college students and shill thousands of rupees out of them. You might be featured on Times Square ($40 ka showoff), but no one would remember you for anything that you built.

<Rant Over. Peace>
19mo ago
Talking product sense with Ridhi
9 min AI interview5 questions
Round 1 by Grapevine
JazzyBurrito
JazzyBurrito

A big reason for that is non-Indian SDEs choose computer science because they are passionate about it. A great deal of Indians choose it because it pays. The whole DSA interview process has become just like another Joint Entrance Exam. Optimizing for solving as many coding questions as humanely possible.

WobblyBurrito
WobblyBurrito

Put in simpler words! Thanks :)

SillyPretzel
SillyPretzel

False

FluffyNugget
FluffyNugget
Plivo19mo

Bhabis? Lmao. Good rant 👍🏻

GroovyBoba
GroovyBoba

This what happens when you use the same twitter account for work and nsfw stuff

BouncyPenguin
BouncyPenguin

We do have some good open source projects from India https://github.com/jeswinsimon/awesome-made-by-indians

WobblyBurrito
WobblyBurrito

PyTorch was led by an Indian Engineering Lead in Meta. Didn't come out of India.

I have huge respect for creators of Hoppscotch and Hasura. I did not categorically deny that open-source projects come out India. They do come, but just not in the quantity where we can have a significant dent.

PeppyRaccoon
PeppyRaccoon
Vercel19mo

This is the trend I have noticed recently -

  1. Create a dummy repo for hacktoberfest
  2. Call it collection of projects - other people upload their entire project to each folder
  3. Upload your LC solutions to the repo
  4. Add || Open Source Contributor || to linkedin title & resume

Although, there are many well known projects created & maintained by Indians but they are anonymous

GroovyJellybean
GroovyJellybean

Also check the contributions of these so called college devrels/engineers. Saying they are maintainers when just change HTMl pages(contributions are abt fixing/improving things) One more hack students have found is begging Linux Foundation for scholarships to attend confs in Europe/Americas. This will more hurt reputations of brown engineers.

WobblyBurrito
WobblyBurrito

I have worked with Devtool companies, and let me put this honestly. Most DevRels in the west would absolutely crush Indian SDEs in tech game. One DevRel I worked with had 12 years of professional experience, and this dude can build, deploy, talk, and present an entire end-to-end product out of his own effort (currently he has a Indie dev project he built as a demo which has some 8K GitHub stars). How many Indian DevRels can do it? Most Indian DevRels at best can scam their own companies by bringing students which might uptick their numbers but won't reflect on the actual revenue game.

PeppyTaco
PeppyTaco

Okay I got a different opinion. What's wrong in being so? Their life, their choice. Innovation is not born out of compelling someone to do it. The person doing should feel the compelling urge from within. In a nation whose avg income is around 2LPA and a SWE starts at 4+ LPA , it has been a GREAT socio economic leveller. A tool for social mobility. And these people (not all) spend like crazy too. So what is the problem? What have they already not done for the nation?

I understand that u r ranting abt mediocrity. I m just mediocrity is not bad. What they want to do, let them do. Each one to their own. As long as they don't cause harm to others, they are good.

WobblyBurrito
WobblyBurrito

I did not intend to make this post from a patriotic point of view. I am not making any violent call to actions, or asking people to cancel them. I am just calling a spade, a spade. Most Indian SDEs are mediocre, for the very same reason you state — They are tuned to improve their lives and social standing. But the same folks have inculcated a toxic environment through social media brainwashing, that it would make an entire generation of software developers less than capable to do anything. Again, it was just my POV and we can agree to disagree.

CosmicKoala
CosmicKoala

may be the real problem then is not them but what interview process of these FAANGs have set, it needs a v2, and the talks might change

SnoozyBagel
SnoozyBagel

Market correction on salaries required in Software atleast by 30%

WobblyBurrito
WobblyBurrito

Software companies should stop making their businesses a "sabko rozgar yojna". Talk with colleges, inculcate skills that they require, make them grind, hire the best, and build the best out of them. Mediocre folks will mug up 100 Leetcode problems, and then go about giving gyaan to the rest.

WigglyRaccoon
WigglyRaccoon
Google19mo

Hmm that’s true but real fact is we just broke a kind of record by offering a Staff Engg around 2.6Cr. This bracket will keep on increasing.

SquishyPanda
SquishyPanda
Juspay19mo

Naa bro you're also just coping by saying open source karlo. Let the people do wtv they wanna do wtv makes them happy. You are just getting angry that no one is looking up to you.

WobblyBurrito
WobblyBurrito

If I needed to make people looking up to me, I won't be here. It was just a mild rant and you should not take it seriously ;-)

SwirlyUnicorn
SwirlyUnicorn

From someone who's likely at the point of this spear: I agree with your observation, there's 100s of faang guys whose only contribution to the world is DSA preparation and almost all of them, from individuals to marketers looking to sell their DSA courses, lack any genuine passion to even teach. Like pick any striver's explaination and the guy is simply telling you how to mug up a type of problem, or arnav from scaler who's promoting how good their scaler is and preaching software to people whilst all he does is use social media all day. The Blind lead the Blind indeed.

Some people like Abdul Bari are good teachers, but even they just mug it up and teach you how to do so.

And the people who are amazing at CP, like Priyansh Agarwal, just succumb to creating DSA platforms that also score money out of people.

The simple reason all of em do so is because there's only 2 ways these guys see how to make money, by either climbing on top of others by selling them hope or by leaving the mud altogether.
And they are able to sell hope because the rest of us who are able, can see better, but the guy who has only ever seen poverty in his life and has absolutely 0 connections to good resources or people, will only ever see hope in buying the dream.

My point is, software engineers are rare in India. Most of us are simply optimising for the paycheck, and it just so happens that the effort to pay and assurances ratio is leaning towards software engineering right now. So both the guys selling these courses and buying these courses are simply, not engineers at all. Any innovation you expect of them, is misplaced.

WobblyPancake
WobblyPancake
Meta19mo

The problem is YOU spend alot of time on Twitter and less on GitHub. Lots of indian folks doing cool open source contributions, follow the right people.

WobblyBurrito
WobblyBurrito

It was cool for you to judge me ;-)

I have more GitHub followers than my Twitter followers and I am one of the folks with the highest following on GitHub from India and creator of one of the most popular open-source Python project in India as well

WobblyPancake
WobblyPancake
Meta19mo

Good for you.

It was cool of you to generalise all "indian" sdes based on some you saw on internet. Whats next, female are bad drivers?

BubblyMuffin
BubblyMuffin
Amazon19mo

Bro woke up and decided to speak facts. Everything on point. Screw these bhaiyya didis, poora scene pollute kr rakha hai.

MagicalBiscuit
MagicalBiscuit
Student19mo

While I respect them for cracking FAANG/MAANG, the major issue is not recognising the 2021-22 hiring market that led them to such opportunities, and assuming (rather deceiving) that hiring levels are the same. They are not by a margin.

Sab apni roti sek rahe hain

PerkyBoba
PerkyBoba
Cred19mo

Bhai mujhe baar baar mini heart-attack aajata hai tumhara username dekh kr. You'll convince me that I'm Aamir from Gajini one day. 😂

MagicalBiscuit
MagicalBiscuit
Student19mo

🤣🤣🤣 sorry Bhai

Discover more
Curated from across
Misc
Misc19mo
by SleepyRaccoonSoftware Engineer

Tech rant

I am a fresher 2023 graduate and have been doing this (applying for jobs) for almost a year, everyone said you have to do internships as it is necessary so did 2 internships one for a year and another for 6 months but apparently no one c...

Top comments
user

Bangalore tech scene is weird man. I feel even the auto driver knows how to code and the third wave barista is defini...

user

there's more like plenty more like I can write a book but I reached the word limit here

user

Completely understandable rant - but there is light at the end of the tunnel You dont need to give two fucks about ...

Memes
Memes11mo
by SnoozyHamsterSystem Administrator

The Indian FAANG roadmap !

Get into FAANG Open a YT channel and talk how you got in Make you feel worthless and you don’t know anything at all. Quit FAANG Sell Courses ( Discount in the name of charity ) Beg to buy the 999/- ultimate course Die

Software Engineers
by WigglyPenguinSenior Software Engineer

Most of the content taught by tech youtubers is simply wrong/incomplete

"a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" or "neem hakeem khatra jaan"

I realised this recently when I went through my old bookmarked videos and realised I learnt it wrong.

Now i know better from my experience, but it's quite shoc...

Top comment
user

Most of the content taught by ~~t̶e̶c̶h̶~~ youtubers is simply wrong/incomplete