Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 259 posts

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

#121

Post by pjmlp »

blizkreeg wrote: post #84
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…

You're getting a little defensive here. IBM was one of the crown jewels of American industry. It was an iconic company in its time. The fact that it now employs more people in India than the US is something to ponder. It isn't so much about the merits of outsourcing. Everything can be done cheaper by getting it done in another part of the world. Should it be? Sometimes the answer is yes, at other times, not. Imagine…

They are already being outsourced to cheaper countries.

Check for example CyberCity in Port Louis, Mauritius.

Quite a few Indian helpdesk centers have moved there.

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

#122

Post by majani »

cybernytrix wrote: post #33
gourabmi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a thought about the "huge" salary difference. Are you taking the Purchasing Power Parity(PPP) into account? I know that PPP is too macro for comparing very specific cases but it does steer the discussion in the right direction. Let's say, an engineer's monthly salary is $10,000 in the US and he can afford X level of arbitrary "comforts in life". To be able to afford the same X level of arbitrary "comforts of lif…

When you talk about PPP, keep in mind to factor in housing and other modern lifestyle conveniences. These are very very expensive if you price it as a percentage of your salary. Even in the Bay Area, a Home is still 5-6X annual income of a typical software engineer. In India, it is more like 10-15X.

as a counter to that, in third world countries, rent is often a way better deal all round, so if you're not hung up on home ownership, you can get by pretty well for less.

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

#123

Post by majewsky »

saimiam wrote: post #80
samstave wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am beginning to think that out-sourcing ones-self is a better and better idea...

Meaning?

Moving to a poorer country on reduced pay that still outperforms that of locals in the same job, maybe?

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

#124

Post by github-cat »

snambi wrote: post #114
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…

A lot of assumptions and bias in the comment above. You are implying that more expensive means higher quality. Less expensive means lower quality. Both are not true. The truth is, "opensource software and cloud" disrupted IBM's business model of selling proprietary software that runs on IBM hardware and selling services to maintain these.

Sorry, you misunderstood my point. My implication is that we should spent the money on the right people. For example, if we have budget of $10000, we can spend them hiring one/two good developers instead of hiring 4/5 below average developers.

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

#125

Post by jedberg »

wehadfun wrote: post #89
skynetv2 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I have been a close observer of code coming from India. I think the majority of the problems are because of vague, incomplete, and wrong requirements coming from the company that hired them. One company sent over someone. The guy spent a month talking to management, employees, probably the janitor and figured out what we actually wanted and the resulting code was decent.

Maybe it was just the firm I worked with, but they got the same requirements doc that the software was eventually written against using an American outsource firm.

The Indian firm wanted requirements so detailed that I had to tell them where to put the for loops and while loops. It was faster to just write the code myself than explain such easy details.

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

#126

Post by 794CD01 »

flarg wrote: post #72
pavanky wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code and Indian accents. If you thin this is 10 years ago, you should watch some threads here and on /r/programming about people on H1b visas.

I've actually worked with and managed international teams for a number of major consultancy companies and outside of silicon valley I don't see much difference in skillsets and proficiency between the US, Europe and India.

Right, which is why the people who assume there is one are racists.

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

#127

Post by majewsky »

snambi wrote: post #116
gaius wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Okay... what do talented programmers like to work on?

If the front-page is any indication, the latest JS framework.

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

#128

Post by yeukhon »

For those working at IBM, how do you feel about your job in general? I have a couple friends working for IBM now or before, from what I gathered, unless you work in the research division or in the smart city project, the rest felt unimportant. These negative sentiments perhaps just edge cases...

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

#129

Post by github-cat »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #112
wehadfun wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been a close observer of code coming from India. I think the majority of the problems are because of vague, incomplete, and wrong requirements coming from the company that hired them. One company sent over someone. The guy spent a month talking to management, employees, probably the janitor and figured out what we actually wanted and the resulting code was decent.

That is the problem with outsourcing in general: much of the work a development team do is figure out what the problem really is and how to solve it. The actual coding part is easy in comparison. But the business people didn't really see this, and....well...the results were predictable.

Exactly..

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

#130

Post by RoadieRoller »

NKosmatos wrote: post #13

I guess the I in IBM, now stands for Indian. [It's a joke, don't take this seriously :-)]

Innovative Bangaloreans and Madrasis (Madras is the old name of Chennai and Madrasis refers to people who live there). IBM has huge presence (8-10 Offices) in Chennai.
Post reply on HN