[MikeTheGreat]

I'm almost afraid to ask this, so please assume good intent and bear with me - I promise this is a genuine question :)

Different cultures definitely consider different things to be acceptable / polite / etc in the same situation (e.g., do you take your shoes off when entering another person's house?). I've heard that there's groups of Indians (possibly the descendants of certain castes?) that place a high value on entrepreneurship and that "go get'em" attitude you often see in motivated sales / business people.

I wonder if that's a factor the behavior you observed - if there's a cultural pressure to assertively put themselves out there and actively look for jobs in these ways.

So with that said - I'm interested in other people's takes and happy to accept constructive criticism :)

[random_visitor]

> if there's a cultural pressure to assertively put themselves out there and actively look for jobs in these ways.

I am a student so my world-view is highly myopic. That said, in my personal experience, there is a pressure among engineers to stand out, else they won't get a good job. Also there's a rat race mentality inculcated by our parents to excel and always one-up others, rather than to co-operate and collaborate. It was okay when we were school-students and had to contest for entrance into a renowned college. But, the "I was the topper in high school, I gotta excel in adult life, be it through hook or by crook" mentality still runs in college and (hearing from seniors and relatives) in jobs. People are eager to do the 4 hour course on Tensorflow and mention "Tensorflow expert" in their resume to get an edge, people will and do write "Hacktoberfest 2018 and 2019" in their resume, a guy who can fire up an EC2 instance will call himself "moderately proficient in AWS". I'm not joking about these, job-hunting season is starting and I've seen resume of other students mention all this. People see videos of conferences where engineers wear swag t-shirts, and associate swag with good developers, that was further intensified by this guy's video and people wanted this swag for all these reasons.

I guess I've gone slightly OT here, so I'll summarise: Herd mentality due to poor guidance, peer pressure among engineers and the societal pressure to stand out (for securing jobs) is a big culprit here

[bonestamp2]

> I'm not joking about these, job-hunting season is starting and I've seen resume of other students mention all this.

Be very careful with this. At a company I used to work for, the hiring managers started to have a negative view of Indians as they became known for their inflated resumes.

[mcv]

A year ago I was required to hire two developers from TCS. One pattern I noticed is that a lot of developers from TCS, when they don't know the answer to a question, just answer a different question. Another Indian that I did hire, explained that this is a product from Indian culture where not knowing something is seen as a weakness, so people don't want to admit they don't know something, and hide it by answering something else and hoping for the best. I really strongly prefer developers who know and are honest about their limitations. Nobody knows everything, so it's fine if you say you don't know. That makes it a learning opportunity. That opportunity gets closed off when you pretend to know something you don't.

This makes it really hard to hire people from TCS. I did eventually find two good ones, fortunately.

[ficklepickle]

...two good people, fortunately. FTFY.

[mythrwy]

your tshirt is in the mail

[vijayr02]

For more background on this, if you have the time, watch this movie:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Idiots

[searchableguy]

Nope. As the parent comment said, there is lack of guidance and mentorship. Many people are unaware of the spam they are creating and genuinely believe what they are doing is acceptable.

Culturally, India is not really homogenous so I can't say anything for the 1.34 billion people but at least in the region I live in, cheating is normalized since first grade. Be it contests, exams or any other status games. Shortcuts are encouraged. There is little incentive for anyone to play fair. Schools want to look good on paper and competitive so they help students cheat, pay for false advertisements and enrollment. Parents do the same and well, kids will learn it if you incentivise that.

For the job seeking, it's pretty much desperation and high unemployment rate.

[geraltofrivia]

Certainly there are cultures where this holds to some extent. However, the spammy PR, the low-effort oncoming nature that is being discussed is not associated with folks from this culture, as much as it is by some commonly prevalent sentiment in CS colleges, which generally move you to be proactive, get your name known, have a colorful (green) github commit frequency chart (?), and other faux markers of excellence which (are believed to ) increase the chance of getting hired for good positions.

[unishark]

> Different cultures definitely consider different things to be acceptable / polite / etc in the same situation (e.g., do you take your shoes off when entering another person's house?). I've heard that there's groups of Indians (possibly the descendants of certain castes?) that place a high value on entrepreneurship and that "go get'em" attitude you often see in motivated sales / business people.

I have been told something to this effect. That some families, for example, are "business oriented" and raise their children to view everything as negotiable and for the taking. While other families may be focused on engineering or something else. It fits with strong parental involvement there, and the expectation that the children must support the prior generation. Easiest to push children in a direction you know. Basically multi-generational career goals.