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Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#71

Post by avaika »

I'm in the project which is currently being transited to the team in Pune, India. Means I hand over all my stuff to them and quit. They will take care for the project. Thus my view might be a bit biased (I hope it's not).

I'm just back from 3 weeks trip to their office. Here are my impressions:

* just a few of them (new team is about 40 people) are skilled enough to do the project work

* most of them never heard that people can google errors and check for solutions in the internet (I mean really, how can even a junior come with questions like "I've got an error X. please help me, I don't know what to do")

* they do not dig around. they were told to do X, they will do their best to do X. if it turns out that it obviously will break Y (and it can be seen from the beginning, or something similar might happen) they don't care. They have to do X.

* code quality is not high at all. sometimes they try to fit multiple workarounds to fix some consequences instead of digging around and fixing the root cause

* they stick to their hierarchical structure and rules. if manager told to do X, they will not doubt it for a second, even if it's something I would argue about (however I saw some rare exceptions)

* not all speak good English. some need quite a while to find the right word. * if they will not change something in their workflow, I'm pretty sure they will completely screw the project quite soon after we quit.

This is my experience with new team. In the same time I would like to mention, that there are some good engineers over there and I had a good talks with them when I visited there another company for a day there, but not many of them. I can really feel the lack of qualified people.

PS. I enjoyed the trip a lot (even the kitchen sometimes). Most people in India are really kind and helpful. I managed to visit some interesting places and now have some nice pictures :)

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#72

Post by objectivecdev »

GrumpyNl wrote: post #42

Stay away from it, other then tax advantages you should stay away from it. Nothing but horrible experiences.

I agree, but how to improve it? What issues did you face with them? It would be interesting to read your experience.

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#73

Post by saluki »

I've worked on two projects this year originally developed by developers from India.

These projects have been an ongoing effort to upgrade, resolve bugs and add new features.

The 'legacy' code just causes ongoing problems.

The main issue is everything is overly complex. They use 10x the amount of code that is needed for everything.

They also attack problems in really complex ways.

And they like to create really complex functions that are multi-use instead of clean functions that meet a specific purpose. It's not even really code-reuse or modular as they will pass a value to a function and then run it through a myriad of if statements to figure out what model it is and what should be done with it.

They also don't include much if any error checking, checking for objects before using them, etc so if anything unexpected happens a fatal error occurs.

I have contacted the original development shop, and contracted out some revisions to them. They do have one top notch guy, but he hands off work to other developers that aren't as talented, that's were the trouble creeps in.

To change perspective I would focus on writing cleaner code that is more bulletproof.

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#74

Post by sitepodmatt »

mosselman wrote: post #40
laci27 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"they always say yes." OMG this is by FAR the most annoying thing with them. But I think It's a cultural thing.. They say yes, not because they know how to actually do it, but rather that they understood what you said (English is a second language for them so I think they just mean "yes, I understood that part").

As far as I know it has nothing to do with them not understanding the difference between 'yes' and 'I hear you', but rather a cultural avoidance of the word 'no'.

I think that's where the loose neck comes into play, it's another alternative to avoid saying No. You learn fast when teaching in India, you become almost ruthless, once bitten by the loose neck you do everything to avoid it. It's no fun going through basic regex and onwards then after 4hrs morning of the workshop realizing that everyone was lost after 2 minutes, after that you no longer accept non-verbal communication. You still get a lot of bullshit in verbal though, this was ten years ago, but I recently reminded when contracting someone on upwork and getting a 'i can do' to everything when reality they probably just took a khan academy class the day before, and thus totally useless, we still paid him and wished him well and ended contract another lesson learnt.

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#75

Post by batushka »

saluki wrote: post #73

I've worked on two projects this year originally developed by developers from India. These projects have been an ongoing effort to upgrade, resolve bugs and add new features. The 'legacy' code just causes ongoing problems. The main issue is everything is overly complex. They use 10x the amount of code that is needed for everything. They also attack problems in really complex ways. And they like to create really compl…

this coding style is called job security

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#76

Post by jbob2000 »

osrec wrote: post #18

I've used large (Wipro/TCS) and small firms, and poor code quality is common amongst them all. What's more apparent is their lack of ability to innovate or think on their feet. If I give them a "familiar" problem to solve, they're generally okay, but anything that requires them to think outside of the box, they tend to overcomplicate and the result is often terrible. Also, I no longer find them to be cost effective,…

Is there a connection between native speaking language and code quality? Since computer languages are logically constructed, do people who speak more logically constructed languages fare better?

I see a lot of over complication in the code that our Indian developers produce. Lots of copy and pasting code around instead of wrapping in a common function and calling that. They setup weird data structures when simple arrays would suffice. Lots of redundant logic. They don't negate if statements, they use the else block and leave the if blank. It's just weird. It's not even laziness, there's way lazier solutions to the ones they provide. I'm tempted to think that Indian languages beget a certain style of thinking that produces this kind of code.

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#77

Post by GrumpyNl »

objectivecdev wrote: post #72
GrumpyNl wrote: post #42

Stay away from it, other then tax advantages you should stay away from it. Nothing but horrible experiences.

I agree, but how to improve it? What issues did you face with them? It would be interesting to read your experience.

First communication, the mean no but say yes. All meetings has to be done in English, not a big deal but for a dutch company a lot of extra effort is needed. Their lack of skills, they say they are senior, you find out they are on learning level, hidden behind two better programmers. Time difference always bites you in the back. If you just wanna hire 10 or 15, hire 5 good people in your own country. If you need more then a hundred hands and can afford to place some people over there, give it a try.

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#78

Post by laci27 »

ethbro wrote: post #45
dcminter wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me: Can you blah blah blah? Them: Yes Me: Ok, and would you be able to blah blah blah? Them: Yes Me: Great, and do you think that will be ready by blah blah? Them: Yes Me: Fantastic. What approach do you intend to use? Them: Yes Me: mutes phone, curses, unmutes phone, goes back to start I've occasionally worked with some excellent individuals, but the aggregate has been poor. My most recent experience with a team of…

This has come up on HN and other places. If you want to avoid this issue, phrase your questions differently (e.g. as non-binary agree/disagree questions). I'll let one of our Indian colleagues suggest the best alternative here, as I'm sure they know more about the relevant Indian cultural points than I. But even something like "Tell me how you will accomplish X?" or "Do you have any worries about doing Y?" tend to pr…

You are right. I will try this approach next time for a small project, just to see if it results in something more constructive.

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#79

Post by subrat_rout »

OliverJones wrote: post #57

I had a positive experience a few years back with a small agency located in Bhubaneswar in Odisha. Our company started working with them because we needed a mass-production job done quickly: we needed a whole mess of paper health-care forms converted to Acrobat (pdf) forms. We quickly discovered that this particular agency assigned a staff member who worked to really understand the forms and imagine the workflow of t…

Being originally from Odisha I am curious to know the name of the company.

Re: Ask HN: What are your views on India based development agencies?

#80

Post by saran945 »

I am from India, there is no doubt that devs/IT professionals generally are highly talented but

- The whole education system is totally messed up here, Things are changing slowly. the professors/lectures have no idea what is going on from rest of the world. the students are preparing for exams only in the last day. the exams are purely memory based. I did "Rote learning" during my school days.

- The interview process is highly questionable in most IT shops. Even Bill Gates can't get job here. (hint: its memory based interview process, it can be easily cleared by students who are well on it)

- There are lot of politics going on any IT firm (thats the worst thing)

- Most of the CEO do not listen. you have to follow their instructions.

- It was 2002, I applied my first job, friends who referred me for the job told me to change my resume to fit the requirement, instead of including my real skill set.

- It was 2005, my first interview in US, An interviewer who called me "how much US experience you have?" I told her "I do not have any US experience", I got lot of anger, what is going here?, I am doing coding for few years, now it has no value? latter I realized the purpose of the question.

- 90% of the students who are coming to IT industry are from poor/middle class families, they have lot of focus to improving their family, standards of life, unfortunately their skills/focus are not properly unleashed.

- Most IT people in India spending more time on traffic rather than coding.

- the list goes on. I do not see any use of listing/discussing these here.

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