The good developers move here.
Out of curiosity, to which parochial center of the Universe are you referring to by "here"?
Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?
31–40 of 54 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?
#32Working in IT I often work with people who remote from India. Its all the same. You have those who are gifted and have a passion for what they do, and those who don't. I think the most important thing to consider here is communication. Often it can be difficult to speak with foreigners in common terms.
I think one difference that I've seen is that the US has a very different attitude toward computer programming. In the US it's more glamorous? That's not the right word, but it seems like when I talk to a number of foreign developers who emigrated to the US, it's more about being a good job than it is about being a genius hacker, rich by 25, or being a technical tour de force. I see a lot more women overseas who beco…
I am an Indian developer and I feel that you're onto something there. This needs more discussion.
For eg: An executive an HCL , a leading Indian outsourcing firm called American developers "unemployable" :
>> He says students from countries like India, China, and Brazil are more willing to put the effort into "boring" details of tech process and methodology, such as ITIL, Six Sigma, etc.
http://www.dailytech.com/CEO+of+Microsofts+Indian+Partner+Co...
So basically , American devs want challenging work and technical growth , while Indian devs are happy to even have a job.
Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Often what they leave behind is nearly unmanageable code that cost's 2x as much to maintain and support.
Then you need to review the code once in a while and also put some code quality related clauses in the contract. If you do that you'll find that outsourcing to India is actually not such a bad idea and guess what , we're cheap :D.
Contracted code quality becomes a standard to be gamed. They'll have plenty of comments, but how many add useful information? It may pass a lint, but the architecture will look horrible. The database may be normalized, but the people and accounts will both own money, but there will be no way to link people straight to accounts.
Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?
#34The good developers move here.
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Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?
#35One factor that increases the difficulty of working with Indian teams is that there is little time overlap between India and the US working day.
Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?
#36It depends if we are talking local or outsourced. From a coworker, he says what you save in money up front you will lose in time trying to communicate what you want with them, getting the result, smacking yourself in the head while finding it makes zero logical sense, having to send it back, get the results, find more problems, etc, all with massive delays due to time zones. His company laid off a lot of good staff a…
This was my exact same experience where I used to work, where large parts of the company's code base maintenance was moved to India. It decayed really quickly.
The culture we were met with was tragic to say the least. The only thing that mattered to the Indian managers were error reports and statistics, to the point where I was confronted for reporting an error without consulting with them directly first, so they could spoof the numbers...
And some of the developers I had to interface with literally needed to be told, character by character, what to do to fix even the most basic stuff.
And yes, on the other hand, we had Indian colleagues integrated locally which were some of the best people around.
Outsourcing is hard. You will likely not get any top talent unless you really know how to work the market, and then it will likely not be particularly cheap.
Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?
#37By whom? Most Western engineers I have worked with don't think much of their Indian counterparts. While no single assessment will ever properly fit everyone in such a large group of people, the quip goes "the Chinese will do exactly what you tell them to do, but nothing else; the Indians will do exactly nothing you tell them to do but a whole lot besides." This seems about right to me, so I don't think anyone is bein…
very well said.
Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?
#38In the US most of those who graduate with a CS degree did so because they are interested in CS. In India you have a lot of students who are taking CS because they are expected to not because of a passion for it. Combine that with lack of accountability at some schools you get a lot of half prepared graduates.
So there are good and great programmers but you also have a lot of mediocre ones. The other problem is a lot of what is taught at these schools is dated.
Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?
#39I've worked with Indians in a number of counterparty firms. The key isn't whether they're Indian, the key is how they are organised. The Indians who worked in a western firm in permanent roles were pretty much the same as everyone else at those firms. The guys who were working outsourcing roles were problematic.
Sometimes it's just plainly obvious a guy has been hired because he's cheap. And since it's a money-saving exercise, the employer will also skimp on such things as documentation, communication, availability, etc. This only makes the guy's life harder, and makes him look worse than he really is.
Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Often what they leave behind is nearly unmanageable code that cost's 2x as much to maintain and support.
Then you need to review the code once in a while and also put some code quality related clauses in the contract. If you do that you'll find that outsourcing to India is actually not such a bad idea and guess what , we're cheap :D.
Have you yet figured out a metric that encapsulates code quality? Any metric you name, I can find a way to game it.
The only way I can see is to thinly slice the system enough and to require business peer review and daily demos on all slices to correct bad systems earlier. This also means you need a top engineer devoted to babysitting on behalf of the organization, and a good enough engineer to handle the code reviews can probably do the job better than a team of remote mediocre engineers.