I am a master in India

Chapter 431 Engineer

In the early 90s, India's era of technological prosperity seemed far off.

But in just a few short 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 failed to gain admission to engineering universities.

This industry is highly competitive, and you can't charge too much for training because most young people don't have much spare money.

Akash has been back in his home country for two years. He initially worked as an outsourcing contractor for an IT company.

However, he resigned after only half a year. Because the job he was doing now was essentially working as an assistant to his former self.

At that time, he was still in Silicon Valley, leading an entire team responsible for website development. He usually delegated the trivial and trivial tasks to outsourcers on the other side of the ocean.

Now you're making him lower himself and take on a job he used to look down on, which is very torturous.

He persisted for more than half a year entirely for the sake of his family.

Akash's two sons are not adapting to life in Mumbai and are constantly ill, as is his wife.

They rented an apartment for 20,000 rupees a month, which is equivalent to more than 400 US dollars.

The expenses are very high; if I don't go to work, I might not even be able to stay in Mumbai.

Unfortunately, he had already quit his job in Silicon Valley, and he couldn't go back anytime soon.

Thanks to Mr. Sur's philanthropic work, Akash's two sons' medical expenses were significantly reduced, giving them a real breather.

With his life becoming more stable, Akash, who has a strong adventurous spirit, decisively quit his outsourcing job and started his own training institution.

The friend who persuaded him to return was right: "India will inevitably be part of the computer revolution sooner or later; there's no escaping it."

Since the computer industry had great potential, he decided to start by selling shovels.

Faced with pressure to secure deposits, Akash had no choice but to locate its offices on the outskirts of Mumbai.

Many similar computer schools are located in residential areas, and the buildings inside are a hodgepodge of styles.

This place is unlike those universities that stand on Park Avenue, where you can see flashing neon lights, soft carpets, and pretty waitresses.

However, this does not stop young people from attending computer classes. Long hours on crowded buses and trains make their worn-out clothes wrinkled, and the heels of their slippers worn unevenly from navigating the city streets.

Appearing at a higher education institution dressed like this would make them feel very uncomfortable. Most of them live in dilapidated houses, the kind that are common in the suburbs of Mumbai.

Others, living in the slums, simply cross the noisy road. Clearly, they have to struggle to scrape together their tuition fees, even though Akash charges such low rates.

However, they received enough education that they no longer had to work as maids or bus ticket sellers.

Although they may very well end up in that situation again a few years later.

But as they wander around with their notes and photocopied computer manuals, they remain dreamers who aspire to work in an office and enjoy the middle-class lifestyle that comes with it.

There were more young people attending the training than expected, so Akash had to hire other teachers.

Some teachers are not so reliable, even though they stand one or two steps higher than the students in the classroom.

These teachers spent a lot of money obtaining their certifications from prestigious computer science schools, and now they're eager to make that money back.

Unfortunately, there aren't many dedicated job openings for people who know how to operate computers, so many computer science graduates naturally think of making money by teaching others.

This usually takes a long time and the salary isn't very high.

The combination of impoverished students and unreliable teachers meant that even as Akash's career flourished, few of his graduates could find employment.

His own technical skills are undoubtedly excellent, but how many students can he teach by himself?

After some investigation, Akash suddenly realized that the main reason students couldn't perform well in interviews was their inability to speak English, not their lack of computer skills.

This problem is like students not learning how to zip up their pants after urinating.

Needless to say, Akash was a man of action; he immediately hired an English teacher for a salary of two thousand rupees.

As a result, the other party left after a short time, and also raised a lot of complaints.

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, they had to endure the company's strange rules, the most objection being that Akash had to have lunch with female teachers in the staff office, while male employees had to wander the streets like disbanded soldiers.

Very Indian, even if he's a returnee, his first thought is still about relationships between men and women.

The hired teacher has already started teaching. He has a round head and is usually all smiles. However, once he enters the classroom, he puts on a serious face.

He wrote on the blackboard: 8 bits = 1 byte, 1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte;

The students wrote down the formula diligently, but when he drew a computer on the blackboard, many of them immediately started to jeer.

They suggested that the teacher go and see a real computer, perhaps that would make the drawing more realistic.

What? That's a television set, he even put the "Sul" logo on it.

The students suspected that the teacher had never even touched a computer and that all his computer knowledge came from rote memorization of books. "What if you press the wrong key if you don't study carefully?" the teacher countered, avoiding the real issue.

Such an answer drastically reduced students' curiosity about computers, and their interest in listening to lectures gradually diminished as well.

Akash, looking out the window, couldn't help but sigh. Mumbai still lags far behind Silicon Valley; most people there have never even seen a computer, including the teachers.

Fortunately, the era of engineers is coming soon. The West is increasingly panicked about the Y2K bug, and people believe that it will cause a huge disaster when the new millennium arrives.

This panic created job opportunities for people with computer skills.

Starting two years ago, the United States issued tens of thousands of H1B visas to Indian engineers.

At the U.S. office in India, people often work late into the night to align with working hours in the U.S.

With just over six months until the new millennium and the new century, the tension seems to be growing ever more urgent.

Regardless of whether the Y2K bug actually caused any harm, it is a fact that it brought about a wave of "internet companies" to the world.

This trend still requires computer technicians, and his students will more or less enjoy some of the benefits.

At this point, people had already begun the "Bangaloreization" of back-end office work, in other words, the United States outsourced the task to India.

If they're lucky, these students will transform into globally recognized Indian engineers.

This is a form of freelancing, a profession that can be found everywhere, whether in back-office offices in India or in brick-and-mortar stores in the West.

In the West, despite discontent with outsourcing their work and occasional unrest, Indian engineers are still considered a typical minority.

They were relegated to suburban Jewish territories, such as Edison, New Jersey, and were rarely seen in most aspects of social life.

White people rarely cause them trouble because the latter pose no threat and are relatively efficient at work.

Akash then thought back to his time in the United States, where he had a period of "hard work" before entering Silicon Valley.

When he first started learning programming, he went to Rockford, Illinois.

Seven other Indians also lived in the same neighborhood as him; they all worked for Coleman's company.

Rockford, the third-largest city in Illinois, is 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 eventually closed down. Production gradually shifted to Asia because of the relatively cheaper labor force there.

When Akash arrived in Rockford, the city was already in a period of decline.

Akash was unaware that Rockford's economy was in recession. Although the place felt "disorienting," "chilly," and "small," it was the perfect place for him.

Most importantly, he learned how to negotiate in the United States and also learned that the United States is a "low-context culture".

This is the exact opposite of India, where there are many ways for people to interact.

However, in the United States, people interact based on shared interests.

Americans always have a reason for getting together, such as work. People are concerned with why they are together in their interactions, that's all.

When Akash was in the United States, he hired a maid to clean his room and found that the maids there were very different from those in India.

Indian maids would really appreciate their employers sitting down and having a chat with them, but if you did that in the US, the maid might not even acknowledge you.

This made Akash very uncomfortable, and eventually, whenever she came into the house to clean, he would put on his headphones and listen to his Walkman.

Fortunately, he persevered and succeeded in his studies, and then went to Silicon Valley smoothly.

I just don't know when India will see a "wave of internet companies".

Whether it's training or outsourcing, it's hard to have that entrepreneurial passion.

Akash walked listlessly into his office; none of the work felt right.

The street outside the window was still noisy and bustling with people. This area was full of computer training institutions, attracting many young people.

“These days, even cats and dogs are offering computer classes,” Sangiev complained as he walked through the dirty, messy alleyways.

“There are plenty of young people in Mumbai’s slums who want to learn computer programming. For these poor but gifted children, computers are like boxing or basketball for black teenagers in Harlem. Computers are a medium for Mumbai’s new generation to change their destiny.”

Karuna brushed aside the "Bright Computer Courses" sign hanging above her head and walked under the eaves.

He and Sanjiv are both senior executives at SunMedia, responsible for the television business.

As a result, I suddenly received instructions from my boss in the last two days to find a programming expert who truly understands technology.

They heard that there was a returnee from Silicon Valley here, so they went to visit him in person.

When Akash came out of the office after hearing the news, Karuna and the others only said one sentence.

"Are you planning to teach in this godforsaken place for the rest of your life, or come with us to change India?"

(End of this chapter)