[evincarofautumn]

> Indians just can’t deal with the fact that someone without pedigree can get somewhere in life.

I am not Indian, nor have I spent time in India, so I hope I am right in thinking that this speaks to present growing pains in Indian tech culture. I say growing pains because I think, and hope, that this valuation of pedigree over merit is coming to an end, as it is already at an end in parts of the U.S.

There are, if I may say so, a lot of bad Indian programmers. They’re bad not because they’re Indian, of course, but because they don’t really want to be programmers. It’s a career option. Engineering and business are things you study in school because they’re where money and prestige are. But studying in school and learning are entirely different things.

> The only way your son is ever going to succeed being an entrepreneur is by getting himself an MBA.

I want to believe that this, though it be the present, is not the future of Indian tech entrepreneurship.

[auctiontheory]

There are, if I may say so, a lot of bad Indian programmers. They’re bad not because they’re Indian, of course, but because they don’t really want to be programmers.

I observed long ago that (in my Silicon Valley experience) white American programmers were always good programmers, because white Americans only become programmers if they really want to be programmers. The same cannot always be said of other nationalities and ethnic groups.

At least, that's been true until now. The glamorization of programming and the advent of 10-week programming cram courses may change things.

[eksith]

You're likely going to get some knee-jerk flak from people who misunderstand what you're trying to say, but from experience (I'm ethnic Sinhalese), I can say that this can be attributed to what exactly constitutes "programming" in those cultures (this transcends race and nationality BTW).

If by "programming", you mean putting together a website and the like, then yes, there is a huge swath of people who are semi-qualified to do anything else, but get drafted to do more anyway. If by "programming", you mean problem solving and innovation where writing code is actually one of the last things to be done, then most people will consider that to be a smaller subset.

[anupshinde]

Wow... thats so true!