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IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

nytimes.com

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Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#101

Post by amrrs »

samstave wrote: post #64
github-cat wrote: post #53

This is not good for IBM indeed. As lots of people know that IBM gets 21 consecutive revenue decline and it's forced to cut down cost. But cutting down cost doesn't mean you should shift your development work to under qualified developers or programmers. This will further affect IBM's software quality and hurt its revenue. Why not putting the money hiring less but good developers. If you are a developer, you would fi…

I am just curious.. I havent purchased a single IBM roduct for maybe more than a decade (professionally and personally) -- the last major professional purchase was an AS/400 upgrade... 1998? I have never bought an IBM-->lenovo laptop, although I have been provisioned some in various jobs... What other main product(s) does IBM have that I would want? they have great eng resources, scientists, etc... but I just dont se…

IBM SPSS is a product maybe not sure for you but IBM pushes a lot among Data Analytics Practitioners. They had their legacy in Market research companies. But democratisation of R and Python ate up a lot of market share from Sas and SPSS. Nevertheless still a lot of companies who used SPSS are still using it. It's an irony that IBM failed to capitalise the hype of Data science.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#102

Post by gaius »

skynetv2 wrote: post #68
github-cat wrote: post #53

This is not good for IBM indeed. As lots of people know that IBM gets 21 consecutive revenue decline and it's forced to cut down cost. But cutting down cost doesn't mean you should shift your development work to under qualified developers or programmers. This will further affect IBM's software quality and hurt its revenue. Why not putting the money hiring less but good developers. If you are a developer, you would fi…

> shift your development work to under qualified developers or programmers. How do you justify this blanket statement?

How do you justify this blanket statement?

Because talented engineers don't want to work on the typical things that get outsourced, such as maintenance of legacy applications, helpdesks, implementation of dull ERP projects and so on. Therefore on average the quality of programmer at an outsourcing company is lower than at a real product company, and this would be the same at any outsourcing company in any country. It just so happens that some locations are cheap enough to make hiring large numbers of low quality engineers seem more attractive than fewer, high quality engineers payed sufficient salaries to attract them.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#103

Post by arca_vorago »

samstave wrote: post #64
github-cat wrote: post #53

This is not good for IBM indeed. As lots of people know that IBM gets 21 consecutive revenue decline and it's forced to cut down cost. But cutting down cost doesn't mean you should shift your development work to under qualified developers or programmers. This will further affect IBM's software quality and hurt its revenue. Why not putting the money hiring less but good developers. If you are a developer, you would fi…

I am just curious.. I havent purchased a single IBM roduct for maybe more than a decade (professionally and personally) -- the last major professional purchase was an AS/400 upgrade... 1998? I have never bought an IBM-->lenovo laptop, although I have been provisioned some in various jobs... What other main product(s) does IBM have that I would want? they have great eng resources, scientists, etc... but I just dont se…

I have seen them pushing their vendor lock-in oriented BlueMix PAAS offering. More for dev than prod.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#104

Post by gaius »

tspike wrote: post #51
atarian wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code and Indian accents. The idea of Indians actually working innovative jobs seemed laughable to many Americans. As someone who grew up in America during that time, this is the exact opposite that I was told by the media and teachers. We were taught that Indians were just as effective (if not more) than people working in the US and that we…

This mirrors my experience. When I enrolled in a CS masters in 2006, I was repeatedly questioned why I would enter the field when all those jobs would be going to India.

Around that time I was one of 6000 or so laid off and the work sent offshore, at a financial services company. Anyone who'd lived and worked in that period will have seen their or their friends or colleague's jobs at risk for the same.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#105

Post by gaius »

IntelMiner wrote: post #82
timthelion wrote: post #5

I think that this is a good example of how racism, conscious and unconscious is making us worse at predicting the future. Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code and Indian accents. The idea of Indians actually working innovative jobs seemed laughable to many Americans. But there wasn't actually strong evidence that Indians were less good at doing cutting edge research. This…

>Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code and Indian accents It's hard to not fall into this trap in certain fields of IT. To the point it's almost not regarded as racist Though as a Systems Admin, outsourcing is considered more of a joke than anything. The lowest bidding contractor wins, and the people they hire are absolutely abysmal. If contracting companies did the same th…

Right - the factor is not anyone's race, it's the concept of outsourcing itself.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#107

Post by snambi »

davesque wrote: post #55
pavanred wrote: post #42

Everyone seems to be making the assumption that all the work IBM India does is outsourced from US. IBM India is the biggest domestic IT player in India with clients like Airtel, Indian Railways, HDFC etc.; IBM India also services clients from other countries in the world (which wouldn't have happened otherwise because its too expensive in the US). And, IBM India, has a few research labs setup that do independent rese…

The reason people are comparing US and Indian employees is because the doubling of IBM's India workforce since 2007 seems to be, in many ways, a result of labor arbitrage, as the linked article is arguing. You can slice things any way you want, but the fact is that this is a problem for the average American worker. In other words, it's something that readers of the NYT would care about.

Americans are not aware of cost of living in places like Bangalore. The India real estate is expensive for the folks living in Silicon Valley. It is cheaper to buy real estate in USA compared to India.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#108

Post by gaius »

tapatio wrote: post #35
timthelion wrote: post #5

I think that this is a good example of how racism, conscious and unconscious is making us worse at predicting the future. Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code and Indian accents. The idea of Indians actually working innovative jobs seemed laughable to many Americans. But there wasn't actually strong evidence that Indians were less good at doing cutting edge research. This…

IBM is innovative? Lol.

They were once... They invented entire industries single-handed once. Now they are just trading on their old reputation, which they haven't deserved for over a decade now.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#109

Post by seanmcdirmid »

snambi wrote: post #107
davesque wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people are comparing US and Indian employees is because the doubling of IBM's India workforce since 2007 seems to be, in many ways, a result of labor arbitrage, as the linked article is arguing. You can slice things any way you want, but the fact is that this is a problem for the average American worker. In other words, it's something that readers of the NYT would care about.

Americans are not aware of cost of living in places like Bangalore. The India real estate is expensive for the folks living in Silicon Valley. It is cheaper to buy real estate in USA compared to India.

The same is true in china, but that has more to do with real estate bubbles than fundamentals. Rents are still very cheap. Is the same true in Indian cities?

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#110

Post by seanmcdirmid »

github-cat wrote: post #53

This is not good for IBM indeed. As lots of people know that IBM gets 21 consecutive revenue decline and it's forced to cut down cost. But cutting down cost doesn't mean you should shift your development work to under qualified developers or programmers. This will further affect IBM's software quality and hurt its revenue. Why not putting the money hiring less but good developers. If you are a developer, you would fi…

IBM has been arguably lost in the woods since the mid 90s, it got worse when they took over a consulting company who then convinced them to optimize for short term profits. Then it just gets worse from there.
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