Chapter 431 Engineer
In the early 1990s, India's tech boom seemed a distant prospect.
But in just a few years, the computer craze swept across most of India.
By this time, dozens of private institutions had emerged in Mumbai, offering computer courses specifically for those who had not been able to get into engineering colleges.
This industry is highly competitive, and your training fees cannot be too high because most young people don't have much spare money.
Akash has been back in China for two years. He initially worked as an outsourced contractor in an IT company.
However, after only half a year, he resigned and left because his current job was just helping his former self.
At that time, he was still in Silicon Valley, leading an entire team responsible for website development, and all the trivial matters were thrown to outsourced personnel on the other side of the ocean.
Now you are asking him to lower his status and pick up the job that he used to look down upon, which is very torturous.
The reason why he persisted for more than half a year was entirely for the sake of his family.
Akash's two sons could not adapt to life in Mumbai and were always sick, as was his wife.
The apartment they rented cost 20,000 rupees a month, equivalent to more than 400 US dollars.
The expenses are very high. If I don’t go to work, I might not be able to stay in Mumbai.
Unfortunately, he has already quit his job in Silicon Valley and cannot go back in the short term.
Thanks to Mr. Sur's charity work, the medical expenses of Akash's two sons were greatly reduced, which really gave them a sigh of relief.
As his life became more stable, the adventurous Akash decisively quit his outsourcing job and started his own training institution.
The friend who persuaded him to return was right when he said, "India will eventually become part of the computer wave. There's no way to escape it."
Since the computer industry has great potential, he might as well start the "shovel selling" business.
Under pressure from deposits, Akash had no choice but to locate the institution outside Mumbai.
Many similar computer schools are located in residential areas, and the houses inside are of a nondescript nature.
This isn't one of those colleges and universities that line Park Avenue, with its flashing neon lights, soft carpets, and pretty waitresses.
But this does not stop young people from attending computer classes, squeezing into buses and trains for long hours, making their worn clothes wrinkled, and walking through the city streets making the heels of their slippers unevenly worn.
They would feel out of place if they were to appear at a higher institution in this attire. Most of them live in the shabby houses that are common in the suburbs of Mumbai.
Others lived in the slums, just across the noisy road, and they obviously had to struggle to scrape together enough money to pay the tuition, even though Akash charged such a low fee.
However, they received enough education to no longer have to work as maids or bus conductors.
Although in a few years, they may very likely end up in that situation again.
But as they wander around clutching their notebooks and photocopied computer manuals, they are still dreamers of working in an office and the middle-class living standards that come with it.
There were more young people coming for training than expected, so Akash had to hire other teachers.
Some teachers are not that reliable, even though they stand one or two steps higher than the students in the classroom.
These teachers have paid a lot of money for their qualifications from prestigious computer schools, and now they are eager to earn that money.
Unfortunately, there are not many specialized jobs available for people who can operate computers, so many computer science graduates naturally think of making money by imparting knowledge to others.
This usually takes a long time and the salary is not very high.
The combination of impoverished students and unreliable teachers meant that even as Akash's career flourished, few graduates from his school found jobs.
Of course, his technical level is beyond doubt, but how many students can he teach by himself?
After some investigation, Akash suddenly realized that the main reason why students could not perform well in the interview was that they could not speak English, not that their computer skills were not good enough.
This problem is like students not learning how to zip up their pants after peeing.
Needless to say, Akash was a man of action. He immediately hired an English teacher with a salary of 2,000 rupees.
As a result, the other party ran away after working for a short time and made a lot of suggestions.
For example, a good half-day part-time job gradually evolved into sitting and waiting for him from 8 am to 8 pm, or occasionally writing advertising copy for the company.
In addition, he had to endure the strange rules of the company. The most objectionable one was that Akash had to have lunch with female teachers in the employee office, while male employees had to wander the streets like disbanded soldiers.
Very Indian, even if he is a sea turtle, the first thing he considers is the relationship between men and women.
The hired teacher has already started teaching. He has a round head and usually smiles, but once he enters the classroom, he puts on a serious face.
He wrote on the blackboard: 8 bits (bit) = 1b (byte), 1024b = 1kb;
The students wrote down the formula carefully, but when he drew a calculator on the blackboard, many people immediately started to make a fuss.
They suggested that the teacher go and look at a real computer, perhaps that way the drawing would be more realistic.
What? It’s definitely a TV, and he even wrote the “Sol” logo on it.
The students suspected that the teacher had never touched a computer and that all the computer knowledge was memorized from books.
"If you don't study hard, what will happen if you press the wrong key?" the teacher asked, avoiding the main point.
Such answers will greatly reduce students' curiosity about computers and their interest in attending classes will also gradually disappear.
Akash, watching from the window, couldn't help but sigh. Mumbai was still far behind Silicon Valley. Most people in Mumbai had never even seen a computer, and the same was true for the teachers.
Fortunately, the age of engineers was approaching, and the West was increasingly panicked by the emergence of the Y2K bug, which people believed would cause a huge disaster when the millennium arrived.
This panic provides job opportunities for people with computer skills.
Starting from the past two years, the United States has issued tens of thousands of H1B visas to Indian engineers.
At U.S. offices in India, people often work late into the night to align with U.S. working hours.
There is still more than half a year left until the millennium and the new century, and the tension seems to be becoming more and more urgent.
Regardless of whether the Y2K bug caused any harm, it is a fact that it brought a wave of "Internet companies" to the world.
This trend still requires computer technicians, and his students will more or less enjoy some benefits.
At this time, people have ushered in the "Bangaloreization" of back-end office work. In other words, the United States outsources tasks to India.
With any luck, these students will transform themselves into Indian engineers recognized worldwide.
It's a freelance profession, one that's ubiquitous in back-end offices in India and brick-and-mortar stores in the West.
Despite occasional unrest in the West over resentment of jobs being outsourced, Indian engineers are still seen as a quintessential minority.
They were relegated to suburban Jewish enclaves like Edison, New Jersey, and were largely invisible in most aspects of social life.
White people rarely bother them because they are non-threatening and relatively efficient at work.
Akash thought about his time in the United States. Before entering Silicon Valley, he had an experience of "hard work".
When he first started learning programming, he went to Rockford, Illinois.
There are seven other Indians living within a kilometer of where he lives, and they all work at Coleman Company.
Rockford is the third largest city in Illinois, located in the central United States. Industrial machinery factories and furniture factories have brought prosperity to Rockford.
However, like other industrial manufacturing centers, many factories here have closed down one after another, and production activities have gradually shifted to Asia because of its relatively low labor costs.
When Akash arrived in Rockford, the city had entered a period of depression.
Akash didn't know that Rockford was in a recession, and although it felt "out of place," "cold," and "small," it was the perfect place for him.
Most importantly, here he learned how to negotiate in the United States and understood that the United States is a "low-context culture country."
This is the exact opposite of India, where people interact with each other in many different ways.
But in the United States, the basis of people's interaction is common interests.
Americans always have a reason to get together, such as work, and when people interact, they care about why they are together, that's all.
When Akash was in the United States, he hired a maid to clean his room, and he found that the maids here were very different from those in India.
An Indian maid would look forward to her employer sitting down and chatting with her, but if she did that in the United States, the maid might ignore her.
This made Akash uncomfortable, and he ended up putting on headphones and listening to his Walkman whenever she came into the house to clean.
Fortunately, he persisted and achieved success in his studies, and then successfully went to Silicon Valley.
I just don’t know when the “Internet company wave” will appear in India.
Whether it is training or outsourcing, it is difficult to have that kind of entrepreneurial passion.
Akash walked into his office in boredom. None of the work was interesting.
The street outside the window is still noisy and bustling with people. This area is full of computer training institutions, attracting many young people.
"Everyone is taking computer classes nowadays," Sanjeev complained as he walked through the dirty alleys.
"Mumbai's slums are filled with young people who want to learn computer programming. For these talented children from poor backgrounds, computers are a medium for the new generation of Mumbai to change their destiny, just as boxing or basketball are for black teenagers in Harlem."
Karuna pushed aside the "Guangming Computer Course" sign and walked under the eaves with his head down.
He and Sanjeev are both executives at Sun Media, responsible for the television station business.
As a result, I suddenly received instructions from my boss these two days to find a programming expert who truly understands technology.
They heard that there was a sea turtle who had returned from Silicon Valley, so they went to visit him in person.
When Akash came out of the office after learning the news, Karuna and the others only said one sentence.
"Are you going to teach in this hellhole for the rest of your life, or are you going to join us and change India?"
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com