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Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?

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Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?

#41

Post by jaddison »

theshadowmonkey wrote: post #28

Ok, here's the thing. Indian developers are not overrated. The developers that you are trying to hire might be overrated. Very good developers in India mostly work for big product companies or startups. Most good developers do not freelance. And coming to technology consulting companies like TCS, Infosys etc.., hire a lot of new college grads at cheap salaries who have no clue about the work and make them slog. So, i…

This is the honest truth.

I've dealt with outsourcing to India before and share many of the same headaches mentioned in these comments.

I know it's a generalization, but I believe it's fairer to generalize about Indian outsourcing businesses than about Indian individuals: these businesses are doing their best to maximize profits, like any business does. They hire very low, mark up quite a bit and (in my experience) misrepresent their talent pool.

Conversely, I've worked with a number of brilliant Indians at a large corp here in North America.

The good individuals leave after a couple of years or less. The turnover is really high. They leave for the same reasons anyone would: better opportunities, mentorship, culture, money, etc.

In reality, it's a smoke and mirrors game where the outsourcers mostly win. Indian individuals get a bad rap.

Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?

#42

Post by Joeri »

I've worked with developers in 4 countries so far, including India, and I've learned two things. (1) you have good developers everywhere, the challenge is finding and hiring them, and (2) there are only two efficient org structures for developing a codebase, everyone in the same location (optimizing for face to face) or everyone remote (optimizing for online communication). Most shops end up setting up a remote unit outsourcing a particular set of tasks (e.g. maintenance, or a particular module), and that's a recipe for disaster because you end up with an extremely inefficient communication structure (blend of face to face and online, no one actually knows what's going on, yet everyone spends the whole day communicating).

The thing I've noticed about hiring in India is that due to the economic circumstances a lot more people go into software development who have no business being there. You can find good developers, but you have to weed out many more bad candidates to get to them.

Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?

#43

Post by justaman »

throwaway43 wrote: post #32
fullwedgewhale wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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+…

There is definitely something to this. From my experience(American), nobody writes their specs.

Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?

#44

Post by bediger4000 »

twunde wrote: post #35

One factor that increases the difficulty of working with Indian teams is that there is little time overlap between India and the US working day.

This is far more important than upper management believes. It's almost impossible to overlap workdays in an effective way with people 11.5 hours off of your clock. Night shifts don't work for various reasons, either in the USA or India, so every communication is via email, and can take a day or two longer just due to no schedule overlap.

Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?

#45

Post by aaronchall »

jaddison wrote: post #41
theshadowmonkey wrote: post #28

Ok, here's the thing. Indian developers are not overrated. The developers that you are trying to hire might be overrated. Very good developers in India mostly work for big product companies or startups. Most good developers do not freelance. And coming to technology consulting companies like TCS, Infosys etc.., hire a lot of new college grads at cheap salaries who have no clue about the work and make them slog. So, i…

This is the honest truth. I've dealt with outsourcing to India before and share many of the same headaches mentioned in these comments. I know it's a generalization, but I believe it's fairer to generalize about Indian outsourcing businesses than about Indian individuals: these businesses are doing their best to maximize profits, like any business does. They hire very low, mark up quite a bit and (in my experience) m…

Offshoring is no panacea, it's become a fairly efficient market, and whatever free lunch was there is no longer. Companies that were trying to outsource to save on wages or capitalize on increased productivity are not getting those results: "We find no significant change in average wages or in total factor productivity measures for offshoring firms." (http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/ifdp/2014/files/if...)

It's increasingly obvious there are no gains from offshoring unless you have other more compelling reasons (e.g. 24 hour/global support, shortage of local talent pool, global availability, etc...)

Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?

#46

Post by jaddison »

aaronchall wrote: post #45
jaddison wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the honest truth. I've dealt with outsourcing to India before and share many of the same headaches mentioned in these comments. I know it's a generalization, but I believe it's fairer to generalize about Indian outsourcing businesses than about Indian individuals: these businesses are doing their best to maximize profits, like any business does. They hire very low, mark up quite a bit and (in my experience) m…

Offshoring is no panacea, it's become a fairly efficient market, and whatever free lunch was there is no longer. Companies that were trying to outsource to save on wages or capitalize on increased productivity are not getting those results: "We find no significant change in average wages or in total factor productivity measures for offshoring firms." ( http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/ifdp/2014/files/if... )…

I completely agree.

Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?

#47

Post by reboog711 »

bruceb wrote: post #38

In 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…

Do you have a source for that claim?

I know a few US based developers who I feel went into computer science because they saw dollar signs.

Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?

#49

Post by throwaway43 »

jaddison wrote: post #41
theshadowmonkey wrote: post #28

Ok, here's the thing. Indian developers are not overrated. The developers that you are trying to hire might be overrated. Very good developers in India mostly work for big product companies or startups. Most good developers do not freelance. And coming to technology consulting companies like TCS, Infosys etc.., hire a lot of new college grads at cheap salaries who have no clue about the work and make them slog. So, i…

This is the honest truth. I've dealt with outsourcing to India before and share many of the same headaches mentioned in these comments. I know it's a generalization, but I believe it's fairer to generalize about Indian outsourcing businesses than about Indian individuals: these businesses are doing their best to maximize profits, like any business does. They hire very low, mark up quite a bit and (in my experience) m…

Yes , it's the bean counting IT firms that have to share a large portion of the blame.

Anyone who is good and asks for a higher salary is quietly moved out.

In an IT services company it's all about the billing rate. A manager can always be billed at a higher rate than a lowly developer. So say you've been a developer for five years. Now the company can no longer "afford" to bill you as a developer.

So they'll force you into management so that they can bill you as a manager. I've seen brilliant developers , who're still interested in writing code , but now all they do is fill excel sheets and status reports. And you'll be forced to manage multiple projects so that they can make even more money off of you.

Otherwise you'll forever be stuck at a lower pay grade as a "mere" developer.

IT services companies have a super low cost business model and they aren't interested in moving to the premium end of the market.

The attrition in this sector is enormous. Just look into the figures for Infosys , TCS etc. It's reached upto 30% ! If 30 % leave in a year , it doesn't take long for all your experienced people to move out.

But they've perfected this continuous conveyor of clueless graduates being cycled into the software meat grinder. They don't even hire CS grads. They'll hire almost anyone put them through their cookie cutter "training" and now you're ready to work on projects for the Fortune 500.

Then there is the pervasive cheating and deception. Resumes are faked , they hire clueless developers straight out of college and make them work night and day to deliver their first project all the while assuring the client that they've put their best devs , with 3+ years of experience on the project.

You're endlessly in maintenance projects which means you don't have much of a chance to learn and grow.

So a lot of the "bad Indian coder" meme is due to the way that low cost IT services firms are structured and the people they hire.

So very few people who take pride in coding can survive for very long in such an environment. If they're really good , they've already jumped ship to some top 10 product firm or startup.

So you're very unlikely to find any good coders there , and the ones left will be doing management.

Re: Ask HN: Are developers in India highly over-rated?

#50

Post by JohnnyDouglas »

Dunno.

But there are a ton of unscrupulous individuals that represent inadequate developers (maybe in general, maybe only for a specific project) and flat out lie about their skill sets and experience. People thinking of outsourcing in this manner should interview those doing the work, and follow up later to make sure those are the actual people doing the work a few weeks down the road.

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