Y-A-P-P-A

"One day a doctor, an engineer and an architect went to a zoo. When they were passing by a monkey - they couldn't resist testing themselves against each other.

The doctor said "Let's have a test. Whoever makes this monkey laugh, has the best job".


The doctor tried to make the monkey laugh by telling jokes. The monkey stayed still. The architect tried to make funny gestures but the monkey stayed put...
Now, comes the engineer, he whispered something into the monkey's ear, and it burst out laughing at him.
The other two were astonished.


So the architect said "OK, let's take another test. Let's make this monkey cry!!"


The doctor narrated sad stories, the architect made sad gestures,and they failed again...
Then, the engineer whispered something into the monkey's ear and lo! It started crying, patting the engineer's shoulder!
The other two just could not believe their eyes!


So the doctor said "OK, you've won twice. If you can win just this one, we will bow to you. Let's make this monkey run".


And he barked at the monkey and ordered him to run. Of course, it did not move.
The architect pushed and prodded the monkey- still no go.
So... here comes the engineer, again, and whispers into the monkey's ear.
The monkey just takes off!
It runs and runs as fast as it can, as if it was scared to death!


The other two surrendered. Said: "OK, we give up. You're the best among us. But please,please tell us your secret," they begged him.
"Well", said the Engineer,"
The first time I made it laugh, I said I am a Software Engineer
The next time, I told the monkey how much I get paid
And then I said that I was here for recruitment!!!"

So I decided to start this post with a (modified) joke which I read somewhere, the problem is the joke threatens to be longer than how much I write and I don't want that to happen, So get ready to read a long long post. The story is fictional but if you think of it, it isn't too far from reality. I heard that a Mumbai BPO was making spot offers to people who were walking in a mall. The fictional story may turn true sooner than you think.

Oh and by the way Y. A. P. P. A stands for Yet-Another-Placement-Process-Article.

First things first, why did I write another article on placement? Some of my friends pointed out that there were a few points missing from the previous article, that is I had forgotten to mock a few things. For example interviewers, job profiles! And I thought I wasn't quite done with mocking Dr. Bozo and MT. So I decided to think like a second-rate Bollywood director and write a sequel to my previous post  (To be fair it would be a better comparison to a director's cut edition of a movie, few of the things were left out since the previous article had gotten too long). If you aren't familiar with my first post do read it, the link is mentioned in the next line, it is kind of a prerequisite to some of the references in this post.

The Absurdity of Placement

The Talented Dr. Bozo

Or "The Arrogant Defective Disillusioned Lazy Naive Obnoxious Pathetic Thick-Skinned Worthless Dr. Bozo"(For those of you who think I am being caustic, it is a reference to the movie "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and its full title) has become more famous than I expected so I decided to dedicate a paragraph to him.

Creative Visualization of Dr. Bozo. Credit to "the scientist" 

The Star Wars fans probably recognize the image of Jabba the Hutt, but it works for Dr. Bozo as well, especially the neck and the facial expression. When we call Dr. Bozo 'Sir' we don't actually call it out of respect, in fact it is a an abbreviation for his character description it stands for Semi-Literate Ignorant Rude. There was a recent event which happened in Dr. Bozo's life which is presented in an over dramatized way below.

Dr. Bozo was in a fix, not only had the good and decent companies stopped coming but the desperate ones were laughing at his inability to provide a decent crowd for the written test. He thought long and hard, "What excuse should I come up with?" was his thought to be precise. But he came up with no good answer. He thought fervently for months then he thought "Oh!...", a smile lit up his face, "I should have done what I always did! Blame someone else". So the next day he makes an announcement, "None of you are writing companies now since you think it is beneath your level. I am going to "teach you a lesson". I won't call any good companies also. All of you suffer. Muahahahahahahaha!!".
 
MT
A few suggestions to MT to improve upon their "evaluation" system.

Make the system transparent: MT has a strict code of confidentiality as its first rule. Of course breaking it means that its patented system of evaluation will no longer remain a secret, but they are blissfully unaware of the fact that all lottery companies worldwide use the same system.

Hire bimbos: An "attractive" scheme, it ensures that they maintain the same level of IQ among its staff and lets face its the only way that at least some part of the college population will look forward to their visits.

Hire Dr. Bozo and troupe: This will achieve the impossible! Everyone always thought MT couldn't sink any lower but hire Dr. Bozo's troupe and you will see how low they can sink. This won't exactly improve their standards but it will certainly exorcise Dr. Bozo's placement department.

The Interviewer's Mind ( A not-so-Beautiful Mind)


You know I have always wondered what goes on in an interviewer's mind through the course of the interview and I came up with a few fascinating ideas.

When making er, questionable choices..


NOTE: The use of the word 'guy' doesn't mean I am a male chauvinist, I thought it would be pretty stupid to write guy/girl everywhere.


"Hey I was a moron just like this moron when I was his age, I am going to hire him."


"Oh! This guy is a moron! He is perfect for the job."


"I have had enough, I am hiring the next guy who walks in."


"Eeny Meeny Miny Mo.."


"Inky Pinky Ponky...." (This line is as redundant as the interviewer's line of questioning)

"Hmm I don't know about this guy's knowledge, but he is sooooo cuteeeee" (The vain lady interviewer, similar line exists for the vain lady's male counterpart)

While rejecting a potent candidate,

"This guy actually knows something, my job will be in jeopardy if you are my competition, my deepest sympathies to you.."


"Er.. I am not able to follow this guy, I am gonna pick someone my own speed."


"I am going to give myself an ego booster, I am going to prove that I am better than the next guy who I am going to interview and totally screw him over in the process."


"I am bored. I am going to reject the next guy who walks in and mock him before I do."


"Hmm this guy is a little too confident for his own good.. I am going to assist him in dialing it down a bit."


Of course all these opinions are totally made up, as they say you can never read another person's mind (Thank God! Some of us might have died of depression otherwise). But interviewers of certain companies will definitely have this on their mind
"50 more to go.. 50 more to go.. 49 more to go......" 


Job Profile-d


So there are all these different job profiles offered by the companies, you must have obviously heard all about the roles and responsibilities of the various profiles. But what are the companies not telling us?

Analyst/Architect/Developer: Undoubtedly the most coveted profiles in the field. You'd probably think your life is settled once you land a job with this profile, but within a few years you'll realize you only have a job, no life.

Test Engineer: Ever heard of the term "test dummy", well with this job you'll be the dummy who'll be running the tests. I am sure it'll be very fulfilling.

QA Engineer: (For those unaware Quality Assurance Engineer) You'll be given two seals, one says "ACCEPTED" and the other "REJECTED", and you need to give your stamp of approval once the dummy sends the code to you. So in other words you are the dummy's dummy.

Support Engineer: The first thought which came to my mind when I heard the term support engineer was "glorified receptionist". But then when I thought more about it I realized its not glorified at all. Remember school where the peons, the maids were all termed as "support" staff.

Associate Software Engineer: Four years of engineering and later you are not even an engineer, everyone knows associate is just a fancy term for assistant. You are officially at the lowest possible position. Your pay scale is on par with the support staff.

System Engineer: This is a popular profile in one of the mass recruiters, there it means that you are an engineer without a "system" (And by system I mean PC). The name of the profile makes the least sense amongst all profile, what are your responsibilities? An engineer in charge of a/the system? Sounds preposterous.


Some (sensible) Concluding Remarks


I am hoping I completed mocking every aspect of the recruitment process. All kidding aside, engineering (in India at least) is by far the best way to lead a reasonably comfortable life. All the IT sector companies have done a decent job in improving the pay scale when you compared it to what existed before. Some companies absorb students of all companies and provide training to them so that they are ready to enter the IT world (Why they would want to enter it is a baffling question indeed! They'd do better if they stayed put in the field which they studied.)

So in my opinion if you are an engineer, you probably won't have the most satisfying job, but you are better off than most other professions.

And if you are an aspiring engineer with some misguided ideals about engineering, please speak to someone experienced and decide on what you want to do. My personal advice would be "Run Forrest! Run". And by that I mean do something more meaningful than following the herd. If you have another area of interest you'd do well to pursue studies in that area, don't give in to parental and peer pressure.

Now a few remarks about the post. The aim behind writing the article was for completeness of my previous article (and not cheap publicity). I wouldn't be writing anything else which is remotely related to placements. I wouldn't want to be categorized as a one-trick pony or a one trick two-part pony.. Oh great now I am feeling like how David Yates ought to feel. Doh!

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Comments are welcome, as long as they don't accuse me of being too sarcastic! That's the definition of my blog. Literally!

The Absurdity of Placement

WARNING: High Content of sarcasm, skepticism, narcissism (I just added that so that it would rhyme) and any other x-sm's you can think of. Read only if you want the illusions about engineering to be shattered. Comments and criticism will be subjected to further comments and criticism. Written by a frustrated computer science student who will insult, well pretty much everybody.   

"If you stand on a road and throw a stone it will either hit a dog or an engineer."

-My college teacher

The quote pretty much sums up the current position and value of a degree which says "Engineer". According to statistics there are 600,000+ engineers who graduate every year in India alone. Based on the number of colleges which can be termed as decent, you can say that about 15% of these graduates are "hire-able". Luckily for the top 15%, there is no dearth of jobs. Thanks to the "mass" recruiters. 

What are "mass" recruiters?

"Trespassers will be recruited"

This is a joke about what the motto of these companies should be rather what the notice on their campus says.

Mass recruiters in simple words are those companies who have more people leaving their company than the number of people joining them in spite of the thousands of employees who are hired each year.

If you prefer a more formal definition these are companies which offer IT services without having any product of their own (or in other words you have to work on code which has been written by someone, debugged by someone after that, modified by someone, debugged again, tested by yet another one, checked if it is up to the mark and then sent to you. It would have been serviced at least a  couple of times before being sent to you, so the job in the purest form is what people in the olden days used to call "The Odd Man Job"). These companies require large number of employees, since there are a lot of international companies who want them to "repair" the programs for them that only means that these companies are scraping the bottom for all "hire-able" engineers (irrespective of what they have studied) into their organization.

According to recent reports, the appetite of the mass recruiters is particularly large this year, with the count exceeding 100,000. That is more or less the whole batch of 2011's employable pass-outs. So yay us!

When you put it into perspective, its not just these companies who have the Indians doing the dirty work. All international companies who outsource to India make us do second string jobs which is very expensive when done on shore. So don't be fooled when a company representative says "We work on cutting edge technology". They probably mean cutting edge a decade ago.

WARNING: If you are a student of Electronics and Communication do not read the next paragraph unless you want to be thoroughly insulted

What the placement process taught me?

 To get placed you need to have little skill, a whole lot of luck and the uncanny ability to lie (convincingly) through your teeth.

Placement is the worst place to be a student of Electronics student, these people get very few jobs which are in their domain, even if they do the pay is not very good. So eventually they write for companies of our domain, where they are not preferred over students of CS or IS (unless they are extraordinary). Sadly they had to work harder since their subjects are harder, they had to do better in their 12th standard, exams and get a better ranking and after all this they have to still learn subjects what we learnt in college AFTER they start working and whatever they learnt in their four years was a complete waste of time. I seriously don't see any reason to take EC, I know even after all this they say I am "passionate" about EC, where does this passion come from? I have never heard the biggest nerd from computer science tell "I am "passionate" about CS".

A moron should not be in charge of inviting companies and looking after the whole process, from personal experience that is always a bit of a snag. I would like to tell the story of one such moron, lets call him "Dr. Bozo" (Unfair characterization I agree, my due apologies to Bozo the clown) is a very engaging (Haha!) character.

Dr. Bozo is the Alan Harper (for those of you who aren't familiar with Two and a Half Men, Google him and read his character profile) of the placement world. Dr. Bozo gets a straight no from the "good" companies. The "decent" ones are hard to come by, in case one of them agree due to some misconception Dr Bozo gets stood up (the most recent being on Feb 25th). And the desperate ones come to him because they have no where else to go,  and these companies boost his ego far more than it should and he thinks he is blessed if everyone gets into the "desperate" ones.

Most companies which visit campuses are too lazy to set their own test paper for the written test and evaluate them, hence they hire people from an agency whose "specialty" is creating and evaluating written tests. I would like to talk about one such agency, I shall refer to them as MT which is a surprisingly apt name for them since, you know all of their employees heads' are "m-t".

So the guys from MT have mastered three sentences in the English language perfectly over the years (Sadly that beats Dr Bozo's knowledge. Ouch!). And they manage their entire job with these sentences. The MT people (Pun intended) have a notorious reputation of not correcting all (sometimes even half) of the papers which are submitted to them. I personally have a theory as to why they do it. 

Amongst the troop of guys who march over to the college every time a company visits the college, there should be a guy in charge, the "manager". It is my belief that the paper "correctors" are given a remuneration based on the no. of papers they correct. So what the manager does is, he counts the no of students in the room, after collecting the papers he manages to give his boys half or less than half of the bundle. Since most of the papers are uncorrected the remaining money goes into his pocket. Ingenious! (and fictitious. Lol!)

Law of Placement

"The happiness quotient achieved after getting placed is directly proportional to the pay and the reputation of the company and inversely proportional to the number of people who are hired by the company" 

Well it is not a law per se, but you could term it as an observation which holds good most of the time. Given that enough time passes and you are frustrated a new corollary can be formed out of this "Once sufficient time has elapsed and you have attended more interviews than you can remember, the priority of profile, company and getting placed itself reduces".

The Aftermath (Highly Pessimistic!) 

So what next after placement? Training for a brief period of time, then you get involved in your work, you lose track of time, you are middle aged, your waist line is as big as your pay packet, your hair line is receding and you probably have a few people who actually like you because of the tremendous stress you have been under. So at the end all you have is a morbidly obese guy with a correspondingly large amount of money with him who's battling Diabetes Type II and Hypertension at once and his best friend is his workstation. If you knew me you'd probably understand my skepticism. Or not..

I mean everyone won't end up that way but I thought writing this would be way more fun than writing a success story, which according to me is a cliche. I am not a believer of the phrase "Happily Ever After". But I guess we will do alright.

We seem to have a bright future ahead! Good luck!

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For the next part of the article please click here