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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

#151

Post by chroem- »

majewsky wrote: post #136
southphillyman wrote: post #21

It's a multinational corporation, I don't see a problem with it on a surface level since they have no real obligation to maintain some arbitrary percentage of American workers. The current climate of companies needing to continually push down cost to compete is the new normal and there will be various ramifications as further globalization opens up more cost saving opportunities. Maybe it will hit a turning point whe…

> The current climate of companies needing to continually push down cost to compete is the new normal In which reality is that a "new normal"? Companies have always been about profit maximization. The only thing that's changed is that we let them get away with more than we used to.

>In which reality is that a "new normal"?

This one. It used to be that you would boost profits by innnovating and launching a new product line, not liquidating business segments. Instead of focusing on growth, corporate America is now preoccupied with trying to squeeze water from a stone. IBM has sold off countless viable profit centers in the interest of "streamlining" to the point at which there isn't much left of the company's former product line.

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

#152

Post by t1o5 »

e59d134d wrote: post #120
flarg wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you. This always bothered me as someone with Indian background. It seems like some programmer make assumptions about my code and I have to do a lot more to gain acceptance in some companies/teams. But on other hand, I have a theory. Indian firms write a lot more code. Their code quality distribution probably is same as any other group but since there is more code, a large percentage of overall bad code comes fr…

I will chip in for what I feel about the supposedly bad code quality problem. Most of the US firms which outsources to India is looking for work to be done in an unreasonable amount of time. To make my point clear, if a story takes 8 points, it should be done in India for 3 points and at 1/4 the cost & hence. Both firms (outsourcer & outsourcee) are to be blamed for this (to look good on their Q4 reports). Not the programmer.

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

#153

Post by likelynew »

screye wrote: post #132
jgalt212 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its hard to live there with the salaries they are are getting hmm, sounds just like SF or NYC.

I'd say worse. IBM employees in India get paid around 500,000 rupees in India. A non-cramped 2 bedroom apartment in a decent area in the big cities (Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi ) will set you back 10,000,000 rupees easily. That is 20 times their salary. I'd say that's a higher multiplier per unit salary, than for the US. Also note that living just outside the city (as people in the US do) isn't always an option, unless…

The 500,000 you mentioned doesn't seem correct to me for IBM. It is the lowest in the IT sector targeted to freshers from substandard colleges. In most first and second tier college, the average for IT is 15,00,000 to 25,00,000 at the time of joining.

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

#154

Post by t1o5 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #40
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…

I'll probably get in trouble for this but from my experience even in the US majority-Indian teams prefer hiring Indians.

Has also to do with the H1B employee lock in benefits.

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

#155

Post by wbl »

nikanj wrote: post #143
screye wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say worse. IBM employees in India get paid around 500,000 rupees in India. A non-cramped 2 bedroom apartment in a decent area in the big cities (Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi ) will set you back 10,000,000 rupees easily. That is 20 times their salary. I'd say that's a higher multiplier per unit salary, than for the US. Also note that living just outside the city (as people in the US do) isn't always an option, unless…

The numbers look similar in Vancouver and Toronto. It seems to be an emergent trend in the global housing markets.

Except Tokyo, Vienna, Montreal, Germany. Almost like we could apply their policies in SV.

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

#157

Post by adventured »

794CD01 wrote: post #117
blizkreeg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That was merely an accident of history. The I in IBM doesn't stand for American.

It wasn't merely an accident. The US had a superior context which enabled something like IBM to exist and thrive.

Name another country circa 1911 that could have produced IBM and enabled it to acquire such vast global scale at its peak. There are only a handful of nations that can even be considered as possible.

IBM came out of the US for the exact same reason Fairchild, Intel, Cisco, Silicon Graphics, Motorola, Texas Instruments, HP, Sun, Xerox, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, etc. all did.

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

#158

Post by lotsofpulp »

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…

Assuming the relocation of work is only due to arbitrage in wages and not bypassing environmental or human rights causes, then how is it decided what can be arbitraged, and who gets to decide this?

Are people allowed to go to Walmart and choose to buy something for less money than the mom and pop store? Are traders allowed to take advantage of pricing differentials in different markets? Are employers allowed to relocated outside of San Francisco to find less expensive employees?

You can try to stop the market from reaching equilibrium...but I have a feeling you won't win in the end, at least not without some help from the armed forces.

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

#159

Post by maxxxxx »

iamnewhereqwer wrote: post #52
jrs95 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty much true of any group, it would be absurd to deny it.

I'll probably get in trouble but russians don't like to hire russians.

Discriminating against Russians is OK. No worries :-)

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

#160

Post by jordanb »

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.

If a spec isn't vague, incomplete and wrong then you could just make a compiler that compiled the spec into working code and skip the programmer.

The job of a programmer is to map the vague notion of what the software should do, which is reflected in the spec, into a concrete, internally consistent set of instructions to the computer.

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