When it comes to tech, India is certainly seen as a country that has a skilled workforce and plenty of opportunities. But while choosing where to work, many Indian engineers still try to move abroad. There are multiple reasons and one of them, according to a former Microsoft and Qualcomm employee, is the chance to work on more complex technical problems. A Reddit post discussing this very issue is now going viral, where a user claiming to have worked both in India and abroad argues that most Indian tech teams rarely get the opportunity to work on “deep tech” problems.
The software engineer, who claimed to have worked at major technology companies including Microsoft and Qualcomm, with around 6 years of experience, argues that in India, software engineers do not get to work around Deep Tech, fundamental scientific or engineering breakthroughs. In a long post shared on the DevelopersIndia subreddit, the engineer claims that in India the focus of many companies is largely on product integration, feature development and maintaining existing systems rather than building core technologies.
“After working in India for several years, I’ve noticed that most engineering teams here — even in FAANG — rarely work on deep tech problems,” the user wrote, adding that while there are exceptions, they are relatively rare.
The techie maintains that a large portion of engineering work handled by teams in India focuses on tasks such as product integration, feature development, maintaining large codebases, and adapting systems originally designed elsewhere.
In the post, the engineers also criticised the hiring culture in the Indian tech industry, particularly the heavy focus on algorithm-based interview preparation, often referred to as the “LeetCode grind”. According to the user, many candidates spend years practising coding puzzles for interviews, even though their day-to-day work may not require that level of theoretical computer science depth.
“With the AI wave, I think this difference will become even more obvious. The world will need engineers who deeply understand systems, algorithms, hardware, distributed computing, and architecture — not just people who can solve coding puzzles quickly,” the user further wrote on Reddit.
The post is now going viral on the platform with some developers agreeing with Redditor’s observation.
“Sure we do a lot of end-to-end product development but most of that is a wrapper over an existing feature or exposing existing data to customers in a way they can use,” one user replied.
Another commenter wrote, “OP, it’s very true. I worked in FAANG India and can 100% say it’s true. Management here is more about cost reduction than progressing technology. They don’t want to invest in such things. They have labelled India as a dumping ground for reducing costs.”
However, not all developers in comments agree, particularly when it comes to the Deep Tech part. Many commented arguing that Indian engineering teams were also increasingly working on complex and critical systems.
“I have been working in FAANG and similar companies in India for the last five years, and I strongly disagree based on my personal experience and that of my friends in similar roles,” one Reddit user wrote. Another added, “Hard disagree. I work at a leading distributed database company and while the US team does a lot more, the team in India has significant ownership and contributions.”
