[deltasquare4]

I faced the same issue a couple of years back. As I did my engineering from a not-so-reputed university, it was hard for me to even get a "monkey-coder job". I eventually joined Infosys, learnt some good stuff and now I'm an independent developer working on an idea of my own.

Two good things came out of my working at a big company were money and a better understanding of what I wanted to do. Also, the thing about service companies offering only boring coding jobs is not entirely true. Most of the work they do is boring, yes. But, they also work on some cool stuff. You might also get an opportunity to work on huge applications which can be a great experience.

Personally, I would be reluctant to spend more money on formal education in India. The top-tier universities are good, but the rest of them are not even close. As you are interested in hardware/networking design/maintenance, you should probably look for a job at indian managed hosting providers like netmagic.