Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Life of a software engineer in India - Part 1

Rahul was studying in an engineering college in Chennai. He was in the final year now and seriously preparing for the final semester exams. Rahul's ambition was to become a Scientist (in the field of Chemistry or Electronics), when he was doing his higher secondary, he was told by his parents that he has to do engineering and not to take B.Sc (Chem). As in those days , a middle class father thought that only a B.E. course would bring job to his son and all the other courses will not aid his son's future.

After he finished his higher secondary, he has to write entrance to get into engineering. So he wrote some dozens of engineering entrance exams and finally gets into a good engineering college.Almost 4 years have passed and after September,2001, there was a revival in software industry and companies started to recruit people from engineering colleges. Everyone were excited about that because they will be getting lucrative offers from these software companies.

At that point of time, getting into a software company is the ultimate aim for all engineers, that was supposed to be highest point in one's career a engineer can reach.Before the first day of campus recruitment, a confused Rahul sitting in his house (in a rather confused state) pondering about his future. He forgot his childhood ambition of becoming a scientist and serve the nation and thinking about his future in software industries. Finaly he decided that software industry is the way to his future and he gets mentally prepared for the campus recruitment. He also learns from his friends about the positives of working in a software company and the huge salary they pay you and about the on site opportunities they get when they get into the companies.

The D-Day arrives and he writes the entrance test and at the end of the day he finds out that he didnt get selected, but he was assured that more companies are going to come for campus recruitment. He was confident of getting into one of them. As months rolled, he couldnt get through any of the companies and his future starts to look bleak.