Ask HN: India tech industry, discrimination to ones without tier1 college degree

[puthan]

Why the Indian tech industry is so ignoring and stereotyped towards people without a degree from tier1 college? It has become impossible these days to even get a SE or developer role interview if you don't have a tier 1 college degree in India. More and more job postings these days specifically mention tier1 college degree as a requirement. Its seems no matter what the degree matters the most because there are many instances I personally know of people with tier 1 degrees getting an interview than another guy even of the other guy has way better open source contribution and projects. Why is such high level of discrimination prevalent in Indian tech industry?

[robinphilip1989]

It is generally impossible to interview each an every candidate for a position. Recruiters will try and narrows the field by using easy filters. Numerical and categorical filters are easy to implement (especially if this is an automated process). For e.g. CGPA, Academic Pedigree... are easy to check for.

Recruiters are typically not techies and cannot evaluate open source contributions / other projects. As harsh as this sounds, there is an over supply of engineers in India with a marked difference in quality of teaching in tier 1 as compared to tier 2. Companies expect this difference to be reflected in candidates. Of course there are expcetion to the above, but, most companies will not pay to spend to much time giving a fair evaluation to every candidate on an individual basis.

Legally speaking they can do this on candidate attributes except race, gender, ethnicity (anything where right to equality will apply). Right to equality does not apply on academic backgrounds, i.e, people do not have a right to be treated equally in the labor market regardless of educational background. As far as I know there is no precedence going against this.

[puthan]

The hard truth. It seems like nothing other than the college you went to matters in this industry. Atleast everyone should know about this situation so that people with passion and skill opting for engg from low tier college because they couldn't get into top ones won't waste their life

[statictype]

This is not really limited to India - having a Stanford degree opens up a lot of doors in Silicon Valley.

The unfortunate truth is that people don't really know how to properly hire and identify talent, so we end up using signaling like education. Having a tier-1 degree doesn't always mean you're good - but statistically its a reasonable indicator. That doesn't mean its the only indicator but its one that is 'easy'.

I studied at IIT - a lot of my peers were brilliant but couldn't code their way out of a paper bag. Many have gone on to success, but not a lot in the tech industry on the technical side so I can see both sides of it.

For the record - we are actively hiring (details in profile) and we hardly look at your degree qualifications. Your Github profile is more interesting - and your in-person and phone interviews and work samples are generally much more informative than anything on paper.

[puthan]

You are right its the most practical way. But companies these days are acting like it's the only indicator

[bendermon]

Consider it a blessing. Apart from the few success stories, most tier1 college graduates take the safe route of unsatisfying mass recruitment, do an MBA and end up in less technical jobs.

Unlike in the past since the advent of the internet, resources available to a random student is almost as good as that available to someone from a tier1 college.

There are plenty of small companies/startups where one could have a much better long term career. Outside the glamours jobs, plenty of niche area like manufacturing/defence/... software has much more real world impact and long term value than social media/marketing/finance.

ISRO's wonderful engineering team is built almost entirely of graduates from tier3 colleges.

[puthan]

Hope you won't take it wrong sense but don't think not getting opportunity and being stereotyped because not part of cream layer is that much of a blessing :) By the way the all the requirement of tier1 degree were found in startup job ads not just in big tech company jobs. Regarding the resource availability you are right but the problem is not about becoming skilled instead no one is ready to accept your skills if you don't have a tier1 college degree