A Reddit post from an Indian professional working in data analytics in Australia has gone viral for issuing a blunt reality check to Indian students planning to pursue degrees in IT or data science Down Under. Shared on the subreddit r/Indians_StudyAbroad, the post warns against blindly investing in expensive courses without understanding the shrinking job market and the ground realities of Australia’s tech industry.
“I see way too many Indian students posting on Reddit regarding coming to Australia for IT or data science degrees. I want to give you a reality check before you spend money,” the anonymous user wrote, sparking heated discussions among aspirants and alumni alike.
The post lays out a sobering picture, “Tech jobs are being offshored to India anyway… Why would they hire you here when they can get someone local back home for a third of the price? Tech budgets are being used in offshore countries like India and the Philippines,” the user noted, adding, “I have a client that is aggressively hiring in the Philippines at the moment.”
The author argued that Australia’s tech industry is relatively small, especially when compared to hubs like the US or UK, and most companies prefer permanent residents or citizens. “They’re not going to invest in someone with a temporary graduate visa that expires in two years,” the post cautioned.
The post also challenges the academic value of data science degrees themselves, “Data Science degree is pretty much useless… I do data analytics at work, and I never studied it at uni. I learnt Alteryx, Power BI, Python, Power Query, and web app building from YouTube and from work projects.”
They argue that real skills come not from degrees but from practical exposure and the ability to solve business problems. “The real skill isn’t in data science or analytics, it’s in knowing what questions to ask (and this depends on how well you understand the problem set of the client), and this is something you acquire from experience and not from a classroom.”
The writer added that their own data science course in Sydney offered little value: “It was so useless, and it was basic SQL that we were using.”
There was also a blunt take on job-readiness in the age of AI, “If you don’t use AI in your work then we’re not going to hire you because you will be seen as backward.”
With hundreds graduating from data science and IT programs across major Australian universities each year, the competition is fierce, and the post ends by inviting other professionals in the country to agree or disagree with the assessment.