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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

#171

Post by hesarenu »

matwood wrote: post #139
lagadu wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP but I can likely offer some insight as someone who has had to deal with teams in India: The biggest problem was the employee turnaround rate. Getting a developer, even an experienced one to become fully productive in your organization if you have several or complex products is a process that can take over a year but the turnaround rate was high enough that there we needed to use a very significant amount o…

I haven't dealt with IBM, but I have been in charge of outsourcing before. Early on we used Indians, but it became expensive so we moved on to the Philippines. Both had the issue you're describing. If you found someone good they would be gone in a few months for more money. I remember arguing with management above me because I wanted to pay a person 40k instead of 35k (I think those were the numbers, it's been awhile…

I think any competent underpaid developer would eventually move on.

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

#172

Post by snambi »

mirrormind wrote: post #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 d…

Majority of programmers are bad. It is nothing to do with race or nationality. People are taking to programming because it pays well and there is demand. Most companies hire a person with good attitude than a great programmer with bad attitude.

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

#173

Post by snambi »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #4
kanwisher wrote: post #2

Honestly I'm surprised this is just now the case. Last time I was in Bengaluru(Bangalore). There were ads on billboards for programming jobs. Everyone walking down the street had backpacks from major tech companies. The sheer number of tech work there has to be massive

I love India but lots of non-tech people have backpacks that say "Apple" with an attempt at an apple logo on it :) i always smile when i see those

It is just marketing...

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

#174

Post by snambi »

majani wrote: post #122
cybernytrix wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OTOH, rented houses are pretty bad, compared to owned houses in India.

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

#175

Post by eurticket »

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 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

That statement is racist

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

#176

Post by snambi »

schnevets wrote: post #32
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…

Let's not forget a Western stereotype from 10 years ago: the deprecated specialist. Since the 80s, IBM has had a lot of bloat from poorly managed technologists who owned "the JDBC-based plugin for integrating AIX-based Lotus Notes servers with a COBOL-based mainframe that is only used by JP Morgan and the state government of Ohio". Despite the risk, it's easier to toss these responsibilities to a junior-level develop…

Most junior developers will not even know that getting into a dead end job such as these are the end of their career. Sad!

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

#177

Post by gozur88 »

taurussai wrote: post #167
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%).

That's the classic real estate bubble.

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

#178

Post by BeetleB »

adventured wrote: post #157
794CD01 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, Texa…

>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.

By that reasoning, IBM is outsourcing from the US for exactly the same reason virtually all the other companies you listed are.

Sure, something about the US helped them to exist and thrive. And something about the US is helping them to outsource.

The argument cuts both ways.

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

#179

Post by southphillyman »

crispyambulance wrote: post #93
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 thing that bothers me is not so much that technical and implementation work goes straight to India and manufacturing goes to China, Mexico, etc. The thing that bothers me is that there's so many goddamn "project management professionals" state-side. It's like now students are coming out of college and going straight into project management doing bullshit work. American industry is in a downward spiral, we're trai…

Ha, I have a MIS BA actually. Most of my former classmates took the PM/BA route post graduation and generally all are successful according to Linkedin including a guy who runs his own investment bank and another pretty high up at Amazon apparently. I think so many people go that route because people who can "speak tech" and "speak business" are incredibly valuable now days. At least that's the reasoning that sold me on it, despite me now being almost completely technical. I have personally seen individuals on the same team with similar skills have careers diverge dramatically because one person could present in front of a room and another couldn't. The PM types are on the front lines and get all the credit because they are "selling" the product or business. I get why it's attractive to some.

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

#180

Post by njharman »

Aren't there more people in India? Why is this suprising / news?

Did you think global companies weren't global?

Did you imagine corporations we're patriotic or loyal in some way?

Do you hope free marketism cares about anything than efficient allocation of resources / maximum profits?

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