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

nytimes.com

161–170 of 259 posts

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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The (unconscious) bias here is via the assumption that one can't hire good developers in India.

[deleted]

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

#162
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Because talented engineers don't want to work on the typical things that get outsourced

another assumption without substantiating evidence.

See the comment from @pavanred for some context.

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

#163
I am an Indian and i will tell you how it is. Most indians in india and the valley where i live and work suck in programming. I can't say how i do because we can never judge ourselves objectively. Indians in India write bad code because they will they are being cheated and being paid less money. The other issue is the education system is to memorize stuff and get a job so they can make money. There is no passion to do great or decent work. The end goal is to keep a job and make money. The same is true for people who work for google or amazon. They memorize the damn interview questions and get the job. Now all this is my experience with majority. So don't ask me for a study. I am sure there are exceptional programmers, founders that are Indian but majority aren't.

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

#164

I am an Indian and i will tell you how it is. Most indians in india and the valley where i live and work suck in programming. I can't say how i do because we can never judge ourselves objectively. Indians in India write bad code because they will they are being cheated and being paid less money. The other issue is the education system is to memorize stuff and get a job so they can make money. There is no passion to d…

Why is IBM outsourcing then? It's not just about money. They can't find an American to do that job. Americans get paid more and can find more interesting work. Plus, Indians are really good at delivering code fast of inferior quality. Americans like most people here delve too deep in stuff and are slow at churning code.

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

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real estate pockets in industrial hubs like Bangalore, Mumbai is expensive. Tier 2 cities are cheaper.

How do sale prices correlate to rents?

Yearly rents are about ~2% of the price of property, In US it is about ~7%. So yes rents are cheaper in India because that's what market can afford.

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

#166
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 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.

Those numbers are far too high - it's extremely rare to find anyone who will pay those wages, even in tier 1 cities for experienced candidates.

By way of comparison, plenty of people in the UK entering their first IT job would make less than the equivalent of 25,00,000!

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real estate pockets in industrial hubs like Bangalore, Mumbai is expensive. Tier 2 cities are cheaper.

How do sale prices correlate to rents?

In Bangalore, sale price/monthly rent ratio in an ok neighborhood would be around 200. In a pretty good neighborhood this go up to to 300-400. Mumbai is more expensive than this. Nobody buys property in India and makes a killing off the rents -- its mainly the price appreciation (inflation is around 6-7%).

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

#168

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.

Do you know that Indian GDP has grown significantly from 2007? Could it be that the market in Asia has grown and hence IBM wants a larger presense in India. And that since the labor is relatively cheaper they can afford more people over there than in USA? Why do you think that by staying in US IBM could have competed with other companies in India fighting for the Indian/Asian market?

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

#169
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meaning?

Collect a U. S. salary while shipping the actual work to a less expensive worker elsewhere. Just like companies do, only on an individual basis. I believe it has actually been done (then the person got caught and fired, IIRC).

It's been done alright!

> "As it turns out, Bob had simply outsourced his own job to a Chinese consulting firm. Bob spent less than one-fifth of his six-figure salary for a Chinese firm to do his job for him."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/16/software-devel...

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

#170
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 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.

The numbers you mentioned are towards top end of industry. Most people I know with 5-10 yrs of experience make less than 10,00,000 in any of the major IT company.
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