Are SLIIT students not hired for IT jobs ? Are they getting paid less ? There was a big debate about this a while back , And if your a software engineer who has time to browse around the blog sphere you should be aware of this. And when it was dragged up again in the Sri Lankan Programmers yahoo group I thought I should write a post about it giving my opinion.
First thing you have to realize is that SLIIT is a university dedicated to IT and more than 1000 students graduate from SLIIT every year. You cant expect all of them to be top notch programmers. And lets not forget the fact that the students who are going to normal government universities got there because they work hard and have some talent in them. So you'd except them to perform better than the ones who didn't get there. Its just like Royal College producing the best results in A/L etc , well they should produce them since they take the best of the lot after O/L. So its foolish to say that the standards maintained at SLIIT are low by looking at only few students. If the standards are low SLIIT students wouldn't be able to achieve things like Gold and Silver Awards at NBQSA , Gold at APICTA and Gold in Techno 2007. So I think its about time the critics of the SLIIT degree understand the above facts before criticizing.
And a final word about the salary levels given in the forum, The guy who posted cited his sources and they included friends at IFS as well. I work at IFS and I can assure you that no one works there for a salary around 15-20 k as mentioned in the post. He has mentioned many other places and I have to admit I don't know friends in all of them, But the SLIIT guys that I know who works in Virtusa and MIT also get more than 20k as mentioned in the post. So about the salary levels what I can say is that the guy who posted didn't do his research properly.
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I have to admit a fair reflection of the true state of SLIIT , As you said few bad students can give a bad image , but having a few good students does’nt make the whole lot great either.
unfortunately SLIIT has become more like a glorified tuition class rather than an IT university, this is a issue that seriously should be addressed by the administration.
i own a small IT company and employ several IT professionals but only employ 5 programmers and all the other being researchers and technical writers all related to IT of course and from my experience of hiring IT professionals SLIIT does not fair well when compared to other private and even government IT institutes and unis, in fact most of our best employees are from University of Colombo and Moratuwa and the other notables are from APIIT, so SLIIT should really improve there standards and make sure they prove the students more hands on practical knowledge.
well I have a few questions here for fkdplsl , why are you not revealing your company , are you ashamed of it ? with only 5 programmers you are hardly in a position to pass judgment. And being a small company you might not have the budget to hire the best students of SLIIT , instead you probably have hired someone who’s willing to work for a low salary and now whinning about it.
Hmmm… Degree is just a paper that makes people recognize you. Talent is the only thing which makes you a MAN.
fkdplsl is just a bone less chicken. Just leave this & do your hackings guyz.
i have no intention of providing my company details and it is not cuss i am in anyway ashamed of the company but i simply refuse to get into public debate with my company details attached to it.
first of all u r very naive to think that IT is only programming and 5 programmers are more than enough for a medium sized company, this is because we do not attest to the normal SL ideology of hiring 25 ppl to do the work of 5, ppl here work hard and get paid for it
since u mentioned low salaries fyi our starting salary in 300USD for the 6 month probation period and after that its 500USD and increases 5 to 10% based on the permanence, so it is far better that most other IT companies
your other point also was quite funny as i have personally interviewed 10 sliit grads, and all 10 of them said they are willing to work for 200USD a month, but they werent good enough and apart from one all the others scored less than 60 in your English aptitude test and a further 2 addimited to us that they copied a project
i have no intention of providing my company details and it is not cuss i am in anyway ashamed of the company but i simply refuse to get into public debate with my company details attached to it.
first of all u r very naive to think that IT is only programming and 5 programmers are more than enough for a medium sized company, this is because we do not attest to the normal SL ideology of hiring 25 ppl to do the work of 5, ppl here work hard and get paid for it
since u mentioned low salaries fyi our starting salary in 300USD for the 6 month probation period and after that its 500USD and increases 5 to 10% based on the permanence, so it is far better that most other IT companies
your other point also was quite funny as i have personally interviewed 10 sliit grads, and all 10 of them said they are willing to work for 200USD a month, but they werent good enough and apart from one all the others scored less than 60 in your English aptitude test and a further 2 admitted to us that they copied a project when my colleague asked several questions regarding the implementation of the said project
i really dont want to get into a whole thing with u so please take this only as constructive criticism based on my personal experience of sliit grads
first of all fk , your constructive criticism idea stinks , you have concluded that SLIIT is glorified tuition class rather than an IT university by interviewing 10 SLIIT grads , which is less than 0.1% of students that graduate from SLIIT. Starting salary of 300USD is about the average salary paid by most IT companies , so yours is no better. Since your not giving details about your company we have no way of verifying that as well. ( how convenient
) , As the author mentioned in the article about 1000 graduate from SLIIT every year and not all of them are very competent. And since the 10 that came your way agreed to work for 200USD they cant be the most competent of the lot. And the very fact that the not competent people came your way speaks a great deal about your company.
Assuming Sakutha, and Chanux are SLIIT students, those two people explain the problem I keep on having with SLITT guys and why I will never hire any SLIIT student. Awful Attitude.
The term “Glorified” fkdpsl used is beautiful. I have interviewed so many SLIIT students, and I have worked with number of them over the years. Unfortunately even my youngest brother chooses SLIIT, and he is still studding there.
Programming is the best work in the world. And not everyone can be a programmer. Technical knowledge alone won’t create a good programmer. A programmer needs the burning desire to create new things, and make their creation better than everything else, and enjoy every bit of that process alone the way and find pride in the final creation. Money follows afterword. SLIIT guys indeed have the technical knowledge. But unfortunately that is all they have. So they do not suit for small development teams where developers have to take responsibility and plans out solutions on the fly. But with their attitude, and with their skills, and with their “glorified” point of view, they fit very well in to large organization, where the developer is nothing more than programming chicken in a programming cubicle.
Can SLIIT student become a good programmer? I think Yes. But have I seen any? No.
I don’t say student of Colombo University is any better. But they are far easy to turn in to “good programmers” since they are more ground to earth and they know they are not “top of the world”. But they do have deferent sort of work ethic problems, out of the topic here.
Since I have wasted so many time with SLIIT guys, this as far as I’m willing to spend talking about them right now.
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I’ll take it as you have never worked in a large organization
this web site did some thing strange with the quote in my previous post so here is the quote that I am referring to
“they fit very well in to large organization, where the developer is nothing more than programming chicken in a programming cubicle”
well sam at least you agree on that SLIIT students are technically competent.As for the attitude thing don’t you think its something personnel and it has nothing to do with the institute. Well at least thats how I see it.
Rakhitha,
I always try my very best to avoid publishing my personal details on the web. So I will not answer your question. Anyway how large you want it to be? 10 people? 80 people? or 600 people? I can talk about all that.
Sakuntha,
I have been in IT for all my adult life. If you are a SLITT student, learn every single advice you get, rather than bounce them back like a tennis ball. That can actually helps you. That is my advice.
No. Attitude very much depends on the environment. Setting up good attitude in students is very much a part of the institute’s job.
Exactly! Your Attitude Depend on your environment. And your statement about those who prefer to work in large organizations sounds exactly like how those western developers talk about Asian developers. Only thing it shows is that you don’t know jack about the challenges that people face in a large organization and you have some personal problem against those who prefer to work in large organizations instead of small companies. Take a look at your own attitude before you teach us about attitude.
If you want to see how ground to earth some of the people produced by government universities why don’t you google for BIT@MRT and you will find Chanux’s blog and read the replies there.
I was a SLIIT student now a SLIIT graduate working for a large organization. I have been programming since I am 11 years old and I consider my self as better developer than most people in my age because of my experience and accomplishments. And I prefer working for large organizations various reasons. I am not going to list those reasons here because that will make this post tool long. And I know plenty of brilliant people (not only developers) who prefer to work in large organizations because of the same reasons.
If you work in or run a small organization why don’t you do this simple experiment? When you interview a guy next time ask them which company they preferred to work for first. And check if that is a large company or a small company. And you can ask why they prefer that. You will get the picture.
If you call us “programming chicken in a programming cubicle” that only show how sad your attitude is. And you better not put any information that might expose your identity, because if I were you I don’t want to be known for making such a statement in public.
In my previous post there was small error.
Tee keywords for Chanux blog post was not BIT@MRT
its BIT@UOM
and here is the link
http://chanux.wordpress.com/2006/10/15/bit-uom/
Dear all,
I went through all the comments above.
What I got from there is, sam still havn’t seen the real SLIIT people. Caz, when SLIIT students complete there degree, all the largest IT companies are wating for them and take all the bright students for their companies.
Most important difference between the SLIIT students and the other students (From gov. uni or other institutes) is, SLIIT students have all the required knowledge about the SW development A to Z. They are bright not only for the programming but also for all the related activities to the SW development. They can easily involove in any of the phase in the SW development without having any problem.
Sam
Sometimes your argivement may be correct for the students who you met. But I think you have never met a student who has got through SLIIT well. In any institute there are students who follow the course only to have the degree, not to get the right and complete knowledge. But there are students who have completed the degree well. Try to find such one student and assign that student what ever work and see who is best? Then you ll understand how SLIIT ppl are working?
I doubt that companies like sams will ever find such students from SLIIT.
Based on what I have seen unlike students of other universities most of the top SLIIT students (I am not talking about the GPA here) start working once they are in 2nd or 3rd year of their studies. They will normally demand lower salaries. Because if you demand a similar salary to what a graduate would demand when you are still a student you normally don’t get the job. Most 2nd & 3rd year students will demand between (15k to 20k). But normally their salary demands after graduation will be 2 to 3 times higher than what a normal graduate will demand.
So if you need to hire top SLIIT people you have to hire them while they are students. And if you consider their low salary demands as a lack of skill then you don’t get them ether.
Also those students are not studying IT because that open the door to big money. They do it because they like software development and enjoy doing it. As a result they will be involve in various from of studies, technical communities and their own private projects. They will always look for companies that give them enough freedom for that. That make those companies that overwork small number of developers non attractive for them.
Dear All;
i ve gone through all the posts…..and I m just asking the the people those who don’t want to recruit SLIIT grads just to find about what I m writing below…
Who is the chief Analyst Programmer of SAP implementation in CBSL.
Who are the “QA Leads” of CSE, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, USA (AMEx, ICAP) stock Exchanges?
Senior Business Analyst CSE ?
How many (SLIIT) tech-leads are there in Virtusa..?
How many (SLIIT) Software Engineers / QA Leads there in Dialog Telecom?
How many (SLIIT) QA-leads are there in Virtusa..?
The team behind the Development / Deployment of MGTs (One of the leading Fabric Manufacturer who provide materials for 90% of the sri lankan garments) ERP?
The team who interconnect 240 Hayleys Consumer showrooms island wide and deploy the sales management system… (US$1.2M project) The entire team consists of SLIIT grads)
The team behind the Development of the World’s No1 Activated Carbon /Charcoal Manufacturer’s ERP. (US$4-8 M Project)(90% from of the team is from SLIIT and lead by a SLIIT grad.)
Who is heading the Corporate IT of LOLC?
Who heads the E business solutions unit of Sri Lanka’s Largest business conglomerate?
How many SLIIT software engineers are there in the British Telecom UK?
How many SLIIT software engineers are there in the Motorrolla AUS?
How many SLIIT students have formed their own companies and doing well ?
We have a well qualified grad from SLIIT who is the manager of one of the Leading banks in SL as well
Well I m asking all the sliit allergic people to find more facts about SLIIT grads before u acts..!!!…
I m from the 1st Batch of SLIIT and for last 5 Years we know where we stands in the Industry, the perceptions are changing a lot.. thanks to the buddies who are doing really well …
Soo guys don’t worry about those comments..i ve done many presentations for Undergrads from Mora, Colombo and Kelaniya and many undergrads have done projects under me fro Mora, Col,. so I know exactly where we stands…. It’s true that there are issues ..but not as many as they were thinking… For last 5 years.. SLIIT grads have spread across the country in all the IT companies… depts…etc..so don’t worry about those small scale organizations… and their comments…and experiences…BTW you cannot expect a fresh grad to be very thorough with the whole SDLC and in practical scenarios in large scale projects it’s very difficult to stick to the original plan…and follow exactly the same as we learnt in theory…if some one has wasted his / her time with the developers… then I must say it’s his or her inability to manage the HR.. in IT projects.. During my undergrad period we work for free sometimes, mainly to gain exposure..and in IIT even I know they work for very low salaries during their placement year.. since the number of heads at SLIIT is way too high it’s unlikely to get a placement year for all the students.. but still student should be more vigilant about what they do and should managed to gain the max during their learning period..so I m not seeing any problem with asking for low salaries during the early stages… but I think SLIIT career guidance unit is a dead unit, if they have done a proper job this kind of communication threads won’t be here in the http://WWW. But it doesn’t mean that all these comments made by SLIIT allergic people are correct.
Totally agree with eBiz, our batch mates are doing a gr8 job in all the places…and there are prominent characters as eBiz mentioned…so u dont have to worry about what others says..make sure you have the self confidence in what ever thing u do, u will succeed…BSc is just a basis no one can challenge the untrained brains..cos some do well some do bad.. and know one knows what will happen when it start functioning in an innovative manner…..no one can stop…it…biologically it has proved that the reaction of brain may differ from person to person and it may vary on time to time…
Anyway if u look at the Mora..Col..grads..the lecturers have very little to do because they just have to train the top brains..which is very easy but in SLIIT the knowledge range of the students are vary so things like this could happen…..that doesnt mean that all the students from SLIIT are bad but there can be few dark patches…which could ruin the brand image…anyway I also think that the Career Guidance Unit must do a proper job than this….
Programming Chicken in a Programming Cubicle ?
— Well… thats incorrect..if that is the case non of the sliit student become tech leads ..or design architects..or Business Analysts… anyway there has to be programming chickens as well…so sliit’s duty is to full fill the market requirements… so i think they ve done an excellent job to fill up the job market…
why was SLIIT setup in the first place?why did gov spend money?(and you pay course fees) its to create IT professionals. not to waste your time arguing about whether SLIIT is better than others. where are your professional ethics? I do admit SLIIT students will have a problem working in smaller organisations.but all of you will have jobs if you work hard, since most ppl upto now have. today SW is a US $200 mln industry and around 25% population are IT literate. SLIIT,like it or not played an important role in taking IT to the masses since before ICTA it was involed in policy making and education in IT
Oops I came back to see a long long conversation here. SLIIT has produced morons. Yes… because it is on earth and earth has lot of morons.
SIIT has produced lot of great ppl too. Simply because there are great ppl on earth.
If anyone have problems with SLIIT start calling it SLUT & sleep well ever after :P.
Came back to an old post indeed , all comments are welcome though
who ever try to compair salaries are very unplasent. remember salaries depend on the persons skill level and experience. that show how un educated person he is. wounder whether this guy working any where???? and im not tell any thing to his institiution. coz problem with the guy not institution……..
SLIIT 4 ever……
im jzt trying to follow a degree in sliit in the nxt semister,and i have gone through all of these above commitments and gain a complete picture about sillt and its students.so this is a grate place to argue about my degree and its value through the community.so thank you so much nishadha.Finally Jobs does not come to your doorstep,you have to compete with others using your knowledge and try to find your way throught IT section.IF THERS A WILL,THERE A WAY.thankyou
@Chama,
glad to help you out , this is a relatively old post and SLIIT has gone from strength to strength after that , they have won many awards in last year and this year for the second time running they won the gold medal at NBQSA , a job might come to your doorstep but its your skills that will let you keep it. Best of luck with your degree.
This is a joke….please don’t joke around “SLIIT allergic guys”, I am telling these thing because I have been working for 3 years in a IT field as SSE once we worked with SO CALLED COLOMBO UNI…MORATUWA UNI and I don’t see any different with SLIIT guy’s work for the same project…..some SLIIT guys perform better that Mora and Colombo guys only different between SLIIT and Moratuw or Colombo guys is SLIT guys willing to learn things and putting them in practice so hard while others I haven’t seen that much commitment I think most of the Colombo, Mora people think that they are the best and they can understand every thing…IN FACT I must say it’s a wrong attitude that they have some one should correct them.
@sachin,
, this old post still gets traffic and comments. I think SLIIT students have proven themselves now and I think they are starting to win the industry recognition. And as mentioned a lot in this post its not the institute , but the student that matters 
It sure helps when you rank well in Google
hey guys,
i have gone thru all ya comments. hmmm finaly i have decided to add some few words behalf of current sliit students.
As you know mora and cmb must have best sprit cuz they are well refined among all the AL population. But the things is most of them have a big E-GO :)). THey think they are the man. damnnnn….
It isn’t caused to any of further growth in industry. But they can survive themself for the sake of the name of University and the experience.
Nuttin inside just a scareCrows…………..(Ewwwwwwwwwww)
Sliit students consist with different types of peepz. some are geeks some are rasti guys and some are just wankstas.
so you(for the SLIIT alergic guys) just take a subset of them and criticize, make impressions.. and spread it. This is so awfull to see.
I have been doing this for almost 4 years( 4th year - 2009) . I have seen the potential of sliit guys and the drawbacks. As far as i know, they might look bit strange than typical local uni geeks or potatoe boys. But the creativity, motivation and the loyalti are far better than them.
I think (fkdpls) was trying to get employees for a cheap price. But fortunaitly
he ended up that attempt with some low-level craps.
So dont think SLIIT has cheap guys.
Better to respect them and be respected…….
HELLL YEEEHHHH S>L>I>I>T
i’m going to do an IT Degree in this year (2009) as my results are out and i’ve got CCS (maths Stream) and I have three choices
*SLIIT
*APIIT
*IIT
Which one has best BSc Computing (Software Engineering) Degree?
Please help me; :)))
That would be really kind of you guys all.
HAIL!! \m/
@Mafiaso,
I went to SLIIT and I can highly recommend it , but I’m sure APIIT and IIT have good programs too , deciding the best program is hard and opinions vary but in the end it comes down to you and your skills
Thank you very much Nishadha,
Your Blog is really helpful; and the commenst too! and;
I’ve Created Some Shaders For maya Using MEL and Python; and i’m a power user of MAX too. but Cant find a multimedia Software developing dgree in SL :((( But heard that APIIT have it. and is there any modules in SLIIT i can choose such??
dear all ,
In accoding to my exprience most of the companies in Sl could’nt have a good method to recruit best persons for best/proper plase they always try to limit the wokers to cooding for a long time but best students no so much happy about it & most of the situations they left to another country that’s why the indrustry say “Sliit Student are not working ” But if you observe about sliit graduate they are execellent workers in some difficult section like Oracle ,Networking & Testing
dear Mafioso,
definetly U can select Sliit
Hi,
I studied SLIIT. Nowadays SLIIT think only money. Because when i apply they require A/L 3 passes in new Syllabus and 4 passes in old Syllabus. But nowadays they call if any student got A/L 1pass they can apply. Nowadays some of the students did not get the good job. Reason they all are going special class for SLIIT subject. They have not practical knowledge and they don’t know which jobs they want to select for apply. Some time they apply all jobs. If any small job they got they immediately sign the contract and all. After that how they can go a good job.
“One advice for all students before you applying the job you must be go through the programming, database and software engineering books. Then easy to face your interviews”
With the current economic crisis here and abroad losing jobs is frequent .Heard there are some layoff of employees in IFS and virtusa . .pretty gloomy until financial situation turns out be normal
@nascar2000,
.
There are some layoffs at other branches at IFS but at the moment IFS is recruiting in Sri Lankan branches. They recently started another branch at Kandy. I guess Sri Lankans don’t have to worry just yet
well I have a few questions here for fkdplsl , why are you not revealing your company , are you ashamed of it ? with only 5 programmers you are hardly in a position to pass judgment. And being a small company you might not have the budget to hire the best students of SLIIT , instead you probably have hired someone who's willing to work for a low salary and now whinning about it.
Basically you don't need AL results to apply but to my understanding you have to complete AL qualification within first two years. Or you cant register for third year.
Also a one big mistake many students make is they assume SLIIT to spoon feed all the knowledge. Well that's how they do at schools but not at degree level. It is your responsibility to decide on what job you need to do and acquire the technical knowledge needed. Degree is all about understanding theory and your ability to apply them creatively. Also if you do all the assignments given and do an honest job in your academic projects (you have three projects in 4 years) technical knowledge will never be a problem.
Studying at SLIIT gives you a unique advantage. You can switch to week end course and then do a job in week days. Its not that deficult to find a job once you complete second year provided that you have done your part to gather technical knoledge.
One of the biggest mistakes that students do is to settle for the first job you get. Dont ever do that. When you apply for a job and and go to interviews. First find as much information as possible about the company, job and their culture and any other information you need to know in order to make a good decision. If you cant find something ask that in the interviews. Good employers will give to time to make a decision after the interviews. You don't have to sign right away make use of that time to make a good decision. Specially when you apply for multiple jobs you need to manage the interviews properly so you don't loose opportunities. Managing job hunting is very important or you will be stuck in a job you don't like while your friends are doing your dream job.
Dear Friend,
Best IT people are generated from local universities.These are the spirit of the country. SLIIT is place where the remainder go. Probably students with 3 S' passes.Thats why you get a lesser salary.
Roshan
I personally know of many SLIIT students that get a bigger salary than local universities. Universities can only guide you and its up to you to improve upon the knowledge given. Its about what you do not about what university you learned from