Skip to content
article

monthly rant: the WITCH model is why indian engineering has a bad name

downvote me idc

Ankit Khurana@faang_or_bust

August 23, 2026 · 1 min read

#2 in Desi Devs

ok here it goes. once a month i say this and once a month the bench army comes for me.

the big service cos hire freshers in bulk at 3.5 lpa, park them on bench for months, then bill them to a client as "consultant" at a dollar rate. the fresher learns nothing. the client gets a ticket closer. the company keeps the margin. this is not engineering. this is staffing with extra steps.

and then the same people come to product interviews with 6 yoe and cant explain how a hashmap works inside. i have interviewed them. i literally asked "what happens when two keys land in the same bucket" and got "sir we use the framework".

  • no code review culture
  • no ownership, everything is a "ticket"
  • "resource" is an actual word they use for humans
  • appraisal based on certifications, not on what u shipped

if ur in one, unpopular advice: leave in 2 years max. grind dsa, build one real thing, switch. every year u stay there ur market value goes down, not up.

someone has to say it. basic stuff btw

#career#jobs#salary#rant

Written by

Ankit Khurana

SDE @ product co, Bengaluru. If your company bills by the hour, you are not an engineer, you are a resource. Fight me.

View profile

Get the best of #desi_devs weekly

One email each Monday with the most useful posts. No spam; unsubscribe in one click.

Comments

16

Sign in to join the conversation.

Sign in to comment
Omkar Joshi@omkar_java#8 in Desi Devs
Ankit, I read this same rant every month so let me reply properly this time. 8 years in a 'WITCH' company. Last year I led an Oracle to Postgres migration for a European bank, 14 TB, cutover in one weekend, zero data loss. Your product company runs on Postgres that someone else tuned. Who is the engineer here?
3 net votes
Ankit Khurana@faang_or_bust#2 in Desi Devs
one project. the other 29,999 are on bench watching udemy
4 net votes
Omkar Joshi@omkar_java#8 in Desi Devs
And how many 'senior' people in your company did 400 leetcode and have never seen production at 3am? Every company has bad engineers bhau. Service companies just have more people, so more of everything, good and bad.
1 net votes
Kunal Bhatia@kunal_dsa#4 in Desi Devs
I was in a service company for 3 years. Bench was real, yes. But I also learned to handle clients, requirements that change daily, and code from 2009 nobody understood. Product companies hired me BECAUSE of that. Your 'sir we use the framework' guy exists in product companies too, I have interviewed him there also.
4 net votes
Ankit Khurana@faang_or_bust#2 in Desi Devs
u left tho. kinda proves my point
-1 net votes
Kunal Bhatia@kunal_dsa#4 in Desi Devs
I left for money. Not because I was a worse engineer there. Don't mix the two.
1 net votes
Priya Rawat@priya_tests5 rep in Desi Devs
ek baat: service company ki QA team ki wajah se bahut saare 'product' clients ka data safe rehta hai. har company mein achhe aur bure log hain. 'resource' word bura hai, haan. log bure nahi hain 🙂
1 net votes
Sayan Mukherjee@bong_bugs#9 in Desi Devs
Ankit dada er monthly rant chole elo, calendar e reminder diye rakhi 😂
1 net votes
Ankit Khurana@faang_or_bust#2 in Desi Devs
at least i have something to rant about. ur whole job is clicking the same button 400 times
-1 net votes
Sneha Kulkarni@laidoff_not_out#5 in Desi Devs
fun fact: i was at a 'product' startup. got laid off by a 9.07 am email. my friends at service companies are still employed. so. job security is also a feature, ankit.
2 net votes
Ankit Khurana@faang_or_bust#2 in Desi Devs
thats fair. sorry about the layoff. hope the search is going ok
2 net votes
Sneha Kulkarni@laidoff_not_out#5 in Desi Devs
...ok who are you and what did you do with ankit
-1 net votes
Dhruv Thakkar@dhruv_ships2 rep in Desi Devs
Bhai bhai, salary is not the only way to make money. My first 10 customers came from people I met on a service company onsite. Network bhi kuch hota hai.
1 net votes
Vivek Chauhan@vivek_backend5 rep in Desi Devs
The bench problem is real and the industry should fix it, but 'WITCH' as an insult for lakhs of people is lazy, Ankit. Half the payment rails I work with talk to bank systems built and run by those same companies. They work. Every day.
-2 net votes
Rohit Verma@rohit_codes#1 in Desi Devs
Ankit bhai, theek hai, mahine ka rant ho gaya. kal main iska proper jawab likhta hoon, alag post mein, aaram se. aaj ke liye bas 🙏
3 net votes
Ankit Khurana@faang_or_bust#2 in Desi Devs
waiting. bring data not emotions
0 net votes