r/IndiaCareers

Hi everyone,

I’m currently 22 and come from a Tier 3 city. I am pursuing CA and have failed six times in Inter. I just gave my September '26 CA Inter attempt, and I have hopes that this time I’ll be able to clear it.

Right now, I work in my dad’s office (he’s also a CA). I do have some knowledge about filing audit reports, but not in-depth knowledge, and I am also trying to learn more about GSTR filings and TDS returns.

I’m slightly lost right now because I don’t know what to do. I do want to do something in finance, although my goal is to move out of India. I know that this seems pretty unrealistic looking at my current background and capabilities, but right now I do have time to upgrade myself and my skills. I don’t want to keep this regret in life that I didn’t try it at all, because many things have already happened about which I still feel that I should have done that earlier.

So I’m here just looking for advice on what I should do, what skills I should master, and what changes I should bring about in myself. Would love to hear your thoughts.

*used chatgpt for better framing*

I want to work under a professor at IIT Madras who is working on something related to Entrepreneurship during my 3rd year. Favorably 12month one.
But i want to build a positive impression during early stages so that i can have a better chance of getting an LOR in some cases. Here's my CV attached below. Help me in improvements.
Im thinking not making my CV more than 1 page. Thanks in advanced

PS The hidden parts are not useful as of now, and i dont want to make it public for now.

Im posting this one behalf of my dad

So he has done his engineering (mechanical) from one of the most prestigious universities in my country and has worked in a mining company for the past 21 to 24 years. Now he is in danger of loosing his job. He is almost 58 years old but is still very active. He has done a lot of other supporting courses as well. Is it possible for him to get another job if he gets fired by this week ?

I'm sorry that I can't reveal his company or exact courses cause they are unique to his company ( to my knowledge) but what I can tell is he is somewhere in the top management and has previously held the title of 'Asia-Pacific manager'.

In the event he gets fired what other options do i have?

​

I'm(34F) an Indian project manager working with teams in India and Europe. Over the last few years, I've seen European companies move more and more engineering work to India through GCCs/GSCs. The reason is obvious ofc the cost. A team in India can be significantly cheaper than a similar team in Europe.

On paper, it's a huge win for India. More jobs, more investment, bigger teams.

But after working closely with both sides i could see soo much difference in the quality of engineering.

For example, in one project, I had a developer with around 12 years of experience who couldn't explain why a particular service was designed the way it was. When I asked whether he'd considered a different approach, his answer was basically "This is how we've always done it."

Another time we had a production issue caused by a fairly obvious database bottleneck. The team had been working on the system for years, but nobody had really looked at the underlying query performance. We ended up bringing in someone from another team who identified the problem in a couple of hours.These aren't isolated incidents in my experience.

I've also seen developers with 10–15 years of experience who haven't really learned anything outside the technologies used in their current project. They're good at completing their assigned tickets, but if you ask them about newer architecture patterns, cloud services, AI tools or even why they're making a particular technical decision, there's often very little depth.

I have a fresher who has one year experience now and he joined as an intern in our team. He basically does the same amount of work if not more than people with 15 yoe in the team. Sometimes even faster and smarter using AI. So what even is the point of all that experience you boast about when you can solve an out of the box problem.

And I don't think it's entirely their fault.

A lot of us didn't enter IT because we genuinely loved engineering. We entered because it was a stable, well paying career. There's nothing wrong with that. But if your only motivation is salary, it's very easy to stop learning once you're comfortable.

AI has made this even more obvious.

I've literally seen developers take an AI generated solution, make a couple of minor changes, and put it up for review without fully understanding it. When someone asks why the code works that way, the answer is sometimes "AI suggested this approach."

That's scary.

AI should make a good engineer faster. It shouldn't replace the engineer's brain.The fun part of engineering debugging something difficult, understanding how a system actually works, challenging an approach, finding a better solution seems to be disappearing.

I've seen people spend 10–15 years in the same company working on roughly the same stack. They're comfortable, their salary is decent, and everything is fine until suddenly the project is moved or the company restructures.

Then they start interviewing and realise the market has moved on.Their CV says "15 years of experience" .But the market is asking, What can you actually do today?"

This is also where I think some of the GCC growth could backfire.

If companies move work to India purely because engineers are cheaper, but don't build strong engineering cultures, we risk becoming a low cost implementation centre instead of becoming a serious engineering hub.

I genuinely want the GCC boom to succeed. I'm Indian, I work here, and I want to see Indian engineers doing high value engineering rather than just taking tickets from Europe.

But writing code is becoming cheaper. Good engineering isn't.

Curious to hear from people working in Indian IT especially those with 10–15 years of experience.

Are you seeing the same thing in your teams? Or am I completely off here?

I (25F) am a recent Geology post-grad from a tier-3 central university. I didn’t get the chance to do an internship during those two years (embarrassing, I know), and my CV has no industry exposure.

Right now, I’m really confused about which direction to take:

1. Should I prepare for GATE / PSU exams?

2. Go the general government exams route? (Though I’m terrified that I’m getting too old for multi-year prep cycles.)

3. Or try breaking into the corporate/private sector? The issue is, I have basically no idea how off-campus hiring works for geology grads or what roles exist.

Any advice or a harsh reality check would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

25M, currently working at an investment bank for 4 LPA — seriously considering quitting without another offer. Am I making a stupid decision?

I’m 25M and currently working at an investment bank in India, earning around 4 LPA.

For some context, I’m a B.Com + MBA graduate. I didn’t get placed through my MBA college, so after graduating I started looking for jobs off-campus. I have skills and internship experience in Business Analytics, and that was the career path I originally wanted to pursue.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t land a Business Analyst role after my MBA.

My unemployment gap was getting longer, and I started getting scared that the gap itself would make me unemployed. So eventually, I accepted a relatively low-paying, non-tech/operations-type role at an investment bank just to get back into the workforce.

Now comes the confusing part.

I’ve been in this job for only 8 months, but I’ve performed extremely well. I’ve become one of the stronger performers on the team, and because of that, more and more work keeps getting assigned to me.

At this point, I feel like I’m being rewarded with more work rather than better opportunities.

Some of my seniors are actually getting questioned by management when they don’t complete tasks at the same speed or volume as I do. Obviously, I don't want anyone to get in trouble because of me, but it has also made me realize that I’m getting very good at something that I don't actually want to build my career around.

For the last 4 months, I’ve started seriously hating this job.

After I log off, I constantly think about resigning. I keep having this thought:

«“If I continue doing this for another year or two, am I going to become stuck in this career?”»

The biggest issue isn't even the salary alone.

It’s that I feel there is very little learning, limited career growth, and almost no connection between what I’m doing now and where I actually want my career to go.

I originally wanted to move toward Business Analytics / analytical finance roles, but now I’m accumulating experience in something completely different.

So here’s where I’m stuck.

I’m seriously considering resigning without having another offer and spending the next few months aggressively preparing/upskilling and applying for the roles I actually want.

Financially, I’m in a position where I can survive without a salary for quite some time. Even if I don't find another job for 6 months, I can manage my expenses without being financially dependent on this job.

But I also know the job market isn't exactly amazing right now.

So I'm torn between:

Option 1: Stay for another 6–12 months, keep earning, and search for a job while employed.

Option 2: Resign now, take the financial hit, and dedicate myself completely to switching into the career path I actually want.

My fear with Option 1 is that I'll become increasingly specialized in work I don't want to do.

My fear with Option 2 is that I'll create another employment gap and potentially make my job search even harder.

What would you do if you were in my position?

Would you quit without a backup given that I can financially survive for 6–12 months, or is resigning without an offer in the current Indian job market a bad idea?

Would especially appreciate perspectives from people who have made a similar career switch after an MBA.

Hey everyone, I’m currently caught in a massive spiral of overthinking and depression, and I need a reality check from people working in the Indian IT industry.

The Comparison: A close school friend of mine just graduated from DJ Sanghvi College of Engineering (DJSCE), Mumbai (2026 Batch, CSE). Through her college's on-campus placements, she landed a role at UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) with a 18 LPA package right out of the gate at 22 years old. Meanwhile, my situation couldn't be more different. My qualifications: B.Tech in Mech Engg from a literal tier-3 govt college. I messed up my entrance exams years ago, ended up in the wrong branch, had zero campus placement support, and I’ve been unemployed for 4 months now. To stop the gap year from getting worse, I just started to learn Software Testing/QA (Manual + basic Automation) from scratch just to get a foot in the door. I’m trying to upskill, but I feel so small and humiliated looking at the gap between us. I have a few blunt questions about how the industry actually works:

1. Where do these high-earning banking freshers eventually move? What does the actual salary growth look like for someone starting at 18 LPA versus someone who starts at a basic 3 LPA testing job? Will she almost always earn significantly more than me throughout our 20s, or do these brackets normalize later on?
2. Does the nature of the work create trouble for job switches later? If a global bank pays an 18 LPA premium on-campus, but the freshers are ultimately working on internal enterprise support, testing, or maintaining legacy software systems, do they face the "golden handcuffs" problem? Is it hard for them to switch to core product tech companies later if external interviewers expect insane architecture skills for that salary bracket?
3. Are they more or less prone to layoffs? In a volatile tech market, are high-earning freshers in captive banks safer or more vulnerable to corporate restructuring than entry-level employees at regular service/mid-sized firms?
4. How do I even compete from my position? If I am learning the foundational concepts of software lifecycles and testing workflows off-campus, how can I ever bridge this gap in the next 5 years without a CS degree or an on-campus launchpad? I know Mumbai is incredibly expensive to live in and a huge chunk of that 18 LPA goes into taxes, rent, and high living costs, but mentally, an 18 LPA starting package feels unimaginable to me right now. Any brutal honesty, career trajectories, or advice on how to mentally navigate this would be highly appreciated.