Tier 1 IIT NIT Tag privilege

A friend of me, did his btech from one of the top and oldest iit, in core branch, average with tech skillset and profile. Howver, despite he not looking for a job right now, is still getting approached by recruiters. Whereas, my other friend, with great skillset and profile, is hardly getting noticed. The same is applicable to salary as well. Iitian gets more pay for same role and yoe. So yeah, college tag matters

As someone from a tier-3 college, is it possible for me to bag a good job and slowly climb the ladder and make 30L, 40L like some of you do? Is this IIT branding so needed even today to get a job at top companies? I have huge regrets for fucking up JEE mains now.

please share anecdotes

I have worked in startups for 6 years now(Product Manager role); and recently applied for 1-year MBA programs in UK. Got in Queen’s University, University of Liverpool, Birmingham and a few others. I resigned a few months ago because company was putting people on PIP instead of layoff and severance payments. I am not working at the moment. Eventually I did not go for MBA - thought it’s foolish to spend 30lakhs for a Masters Stamp on my portfolio. People generally to for MBA to move into another domain; and mostly product. I am thinking of a few conventional businesses now or a job overseas. I do not have a Tier 1/2 college degree. What would you have done?

My current salary is 42LPA. I am from IIT, have 7 years of experience and work in product. Honestly, my value in the market is higher than what I’m being paid but I am very demotivated to optimise for that. When I do see less deserving people minting more money, I feel that I am doing injustice to myself and playing the wrong hand. More and more though, the thought of earning more money chokes me a bit. I have dreams of building something of my own - that gives me control to build something my way and freedom to live my life as per my terms. But the mindset of “zyada paisa pareshaani hai” doesn’t leave me. My family also is not dependent on me and whatever is needed from my side, I actively contribute to. I also lack any motivation to focus on my investments and see my money grow. I just have money sitting around in my bank account purely for nothing I also look at my lifestyle choices from time to time and go into existential debate of why we need the things that we do. This has come to a point where I really do not understand my relationship with money and why we earn and spend it. For me at this point, it’s just a show for the world. There’s very little that you need, and really no limit to what you want to show. And I just don’t see a point in it anymore.

TLDR; Had a data science intern join our team. His resume was really impressive, good academic record, had a couple of research internship (NUS, IIT), 4 papers in journals etc. His interview was just okay, but we probably got biased by his resume which looked stellar. This guy didn’t know very basic python programming. We gave him basic task of converting a image dataset from one format to another(very first step of developing ML model). Took a week, constantly badgered all the team members, would just randomly copy code from ChatGPT, and if it won’t work, would ask us to solve it for him. Didn’t figure it out in a week, and at the end of week, we arranged a meeting with him about the update of work. Turns out, he didn’t even understand the task clearly. But we didn’t mind him, as it was his first week and we cut him some slack. The next week, I understood that he struggled in programming so gave him very basic task. He just had to figure out a command line program. Took two days, gave the result without any documentation, and the very next day he asked whether he would get the credit of his work and that it would account for his decision to full time conversion. Then he started taking a leave, EVERY WEEK. We used to have scrum call at 10AM, this guy wakes up at 10:30AM, and tells that he slept late and would come to office by 11AM( we had work from office policy), and he would come around 11:30AM. Would slack at work the entire day, give him some basic task, would keep asking silly doubts, copy paste code from ChatGPT and ask us to solve the bugs. Come to office without taking bath, no professionalism at all. One day I scolded him a lot, to come at time, learn some professionalism( if he doesn’t have good skills, atleast a humble attitude and professionalism should be there), but dude had no effect, comes at 12PM the very next day, missing the scrum call again. Was scolded many times, but didn’t have effect on him. 50k/per month stipend, completely wasted.

Came across a scenario multiple times while searching for senior engineer jobs. I felt that in majority of the cases if the interviewer was from IIT, no matter how much experienced they are they always have a particular style of putting you down during coding or system design type of interviews where they have high acceptance to bookish answer rather than having an open mind to other solutions which can be discussed in details and probably has a far more chances of evaluating a candidate on core thinking and logical skills rather. What do you think? Have you also faced similar scenario?

I am probably earning 2x of what an average T-1 MBA grad makes in India. I'm just not happy in my role and this SDE grind caught me lackin'. Can you help me determine whether it is still a good bet to get an MBA? Because these normie MBA folks are literally the dumbest people I have seen and I think I can do a better job than them.