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Ask HN: How is software development different in China and India?

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Re: Ask HN: How is software development different in China and India?

#131

Post by neeleshs »

kkarakk wrote: post #87
neeleshs wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But did the world really move from Java to Node/Python?

2 years ago i'd say no but increasingly every new concept/tech stack i encounter has npm embedded in it to access a js library. same with python being used for automation/low level scripting. unless you set out with the mindset of NO NODE/NO PYTHON, it tends to worm it's way into the project coz someone on the team thought it was convenient

Npm is prevalent in client side for sure, many non trivial ui apps use react/redux or similar and use npm for package mgmt. On the server side, it's a different story. Java still is the go-to language in a lot of organizations. Python for automation, machine learning, and provisioning, yes, I agree. These areas were never Java to begin with.

This may change,though, what with Oracle's license changes.

Re: Ask HN: How is software development different in China and India?

#132

Post by contingencies »

maxxxxx wrote: post #66
abhinai wrote: post #32

I'll summarize my experiences. (1) (Too far removed) Engineers in India / China mostly work on projects meant for Western markets. They do not always understand the problems that the project is trying to solve. They rarely get to see it work in the wild. They can't feel proud of creating something they will never see in action. If the project is a huge success, the engineers who created it will almost never be reward…

"Most software engineers work for outsourcing companies. " Is this still true? I have heard that years ago it was prestigious to work for the likes of Infosys but now the best engineers work for Indian startups and the outsourcing companies only get average ones or worse. This seems in line with the people my company gets from outsourcing companies. They all seem pretty clueless but the direct hires are quite good.

Is this still true?

Definitely not (maybe never) in China.

Re: Ask HN: How is software development different in China and India?

#133

Post by contingencies »

China: Many embedded programmers. Lots of Windows platform derived language choices. Code is typically discussed and documented in Chinese, but very often with English variable names. There are many companies so there must be agile shops, though I've never seen one. Access to computing and the internet is cheap and ubiquitous, the economy is good, many people learn for fun or interest. Salaries are high.

India: Hundreds of colleges offering basic professional computing education under the promise of acquiring a job. These are inevitably in outsourcing sweatshops or "MNCs" (read: insourcing sweatshops). Access to computing and the internet is very much class-based. The economy is essentially stagnant due to corruption, basic infrastructure such as electricity often fails, and only wealthier classes can afford to spend the time and money learning computing for interest's sake. Salaries are low.

Re: Ask HN: How is software development different in China and India?

#134

Post by contingencies »

ayasenico wrote: post #31
40acres wrote: post #6

I'm really interested in hearing more about this, especially when it comes to software development in cities like Beijing and Shenzen. The stories make it seem like China's developer culture is really harsh, almost absurd in the intensity level and hours worked. Another question is regarding the economic position of developers, here in the US it seems like a path way to a solid upper middle class existence, is it the…

We have a term “996”, which means working from 9am to 9pm per day, 6 days per week. It’s common in many tech companies.

I think it's largely marketing bullshit used by VCs, specifically GGV.

Re: Ask HN: How is software development different in China and India?

#135

Post by turingbook »

tluyben2 wrote: post #116
turingbook wrote: post #113

Native Chinese guy here. Software Development in China is more like the United States, not India. China now has several very big software development product or platform companies like Huawei(more than 80k engineers), Alibaba and Tencent(20k to 30k engineers), even the newer companies like Meituan-Dianping (market valued 30B dollars) with nearly 10k engineers. These teams are learning closely what the counterparts in…

Where is that? I work with (a bunch of) companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen and the things that I find most interesting if I had to name differences are that my colleagues almost exclusively use waterfall as a process (they need complete specs) and they count more on books and specs than internet to find answers to programming issues. They can be stuck on issues I can answer with Google (which finds SO usually) in sec…

What kind of Software Development shops did you worked? There are several tiers of companies. Developers in outsourcing shops are bad at lots of things everywhere.

Re: Ask HN: How is software development different in China and India?

#136

Post by sbmthakur »

random314 wrote: post #130
sbmthakur wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a Placement Coordinator at my college, a representative from TCS told me that a good thing about non-CS candidates is that you don't have to make them "unlearn" things.

That reflects badly on TCS, not on Computer science or it's students.

I concur. That's the reason I avoided TCS for placements.

Re: Ask HN: How is software development different in China and India?

#138

Post by eric24234 »

abhinai wrote: post #32

I'll summarize my experiences. (1) (Too far removed) Engineers in India / China mostly work on projects meant for Western markets. They do not always understand the problems that the project is trying to solve. They rarely get to see it work in the wild. They can't feel proud of creating something they will never see in action. If the project is a huge success, the engineers who created it will almost never be reward…

You did not say it explicitly but your comment hints that indian devs are below mediocre. I will share my perspective as a native guy. My experience is 15 years in dev(mostly c++) experience worked in 6 different companies and have taken up contract gigs in erlang and android(writing ejabberd extensions). Infosys, wipro, tcs and other service based companies have really below mediocre dev's. But other than that the enterprise org's such as emc square, oracle, hp etc have dev's from mediocre to good. The Big Four company dev's (especially amazon) are definitely above mediocre. One observation is while working at enterprise org's i have never seen any 10x people(like the admiration type) on the US or European companies. Only read peoples blog posts. So it seems the 10x people only exist at Big Four or they move there quickly before.

Re: Ask HN: How is software development different in China and India?

#139

Post by woolvalley »

NullPrefix wrote: post #39
woolvalley wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happens even when they are part of an internal company office and not a contract shop.

Are they paid better than burger flippers in California? Absolute numbers, not relative. Discount team doesn't really need to care about your problems.

They were paid better than the typical tech company in beijing, so definitely not a discount team.

It was a combination of a culture that valued quantity over quality & long hours, management and time zones. When some staff moved over to the US office they got better. Mostly because they realized that the work style in the USA is much nicer as an employee than the one in China.

I had a much better experience later with contractor eastern european teams, who came from the start caring about quality. I didn't have to fight a cultural mismatch. I know other people have had issues with EE teams, but nothing is perfect.

I was a jr engineer back then, so I didn't have much power to change it. I eventually left for other reasons.

Re: Ask HN: How is software development different in China and India?

#140

Post by john53563443 »

eric24234 wrote: post #138
abhinai wrote: post #32

I'll summarize my experiences. (1) (Too far removed) Engineers in India / China mostly work on projects meant for Western markets. They do not always understand the problems that the project is trying to solve. They rarely get to see it work in the wild. They can't feel proud of creating something they will never see in action. If the project is a huge success, the engineers who created it will almost never be reward…

You did not say it explicitly but your comment hints that indian devs are below mediocre. I will share my perspective as a native guy. My experience is 15 years in dev(mostly c++) experience worked in 6 different companies and have taken up contract gigs in erlang and android(writing ejabberd extensions). Infosys, wipro, tcs and other service based companies have really below mediocre dev's. But other than that the e…

True in my experience. US and Europe programmers from enterprise organisations complaning about quality of Indian programmers is not justified.
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