A new report states that only 36 percent of Indian software engineers can write working, compilable code based on a test used to automatically grade programming skills.

The report was published by Aspiring Minds, an Indian skills assessment company, which based their report on a sample of 36,800 people from more than 500 colleges across India. The company used an automated tool called Automata to perform the study. Automata is a 60-minute test that is taken in a compiler integrated environment that rates candidates on a number of levels including programming ability, programming practices, run-time complexity, and test case coverage. Candidates in the test were made up of 61.1 percent male candidates and 38.9 percent female candidates, coming from cities such as Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, and Hyderabad.

Automata utilizes advanced artificial intelligence technology to automatically analyze and grade a candidates coding abilities. The study states, “We find that out of the two problems given per candidate, only 14 percent of engineers were able to write compilable codes for both and only 22 percent were able to write compilable code for exactly one problem.” The test also found that of all the subjects tested, only 14.67 percent would be employable by a modern IT firm. When testing for candidates that could write fully functional code using the best practices and methods, only 2.21 percent passed the test.

“Functionally correct code is the basic requisite of a good programmer. However, to enhance the quality of the code, a few more important indicators have emerged — efficiency, time complexity and space complexity,” the study said, “Nothing is more time-consuming than dealing with badly written code which leads to enormous bugs and exceptions. The analysis unveils that only 2.21 percent of engineers possess the skillset to write logically correct code with best efficiency and least time-space complexity.”

The full report from Aspiring Minds can be found here.