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India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

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Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#241

Post by pckhoi »

jorblumesea wrote: post #179

I truly believe offshore IT work was mostly a scam in the first place. The work they produced was of very low quality, and often was more expensive because you had to go back in and fix everything. The whole game was to overcharge western firms for cheap crap produced by shoddy programmers overseas. The IT outsourcing firms would pocket the difference. Come in and promise the world, overbill and underdeliver. Then th…

This feels like your personal sentiment. You do know that there are good outsourcing firm out there right? I've been working at outsourcing firm for most of my career and I have to disagree. There are a full spectrum of good and bad developers out there even in the outsourcing world, not just bad ones. Do you think outsourcing as a practice can still survive if it doesn't bring value?

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#242

Post by tschwimmer »

qaq wrote: post #107
bhouston wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have a weirdly large supply of very competent developers. I've noticed this as well. Very strange that it is so "poor" but so talented. I guess that probably won't last.

It's very far from "poor" when IT industry is concerned :). While pay rate is obviously lower vs US it's higher or on par with most EU countries. So for say Senior Java Dev (the pay is much more dependent on a stack vs US) making 66K - 72K which would be about half of what same person would be making in US (outside of SV), but tax rate will be around 3% vs 30% and cost of living is a fraction of what it is in US. Whe…

I have a cousin who has a small SaaS business out of Belarus, and he says the top end of what he pays his devs there is $500, which is quite a bit lower than the numbers you're quoting here.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#243

Post by xstartup »

Clubber wrote: post #60
myth_drannon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed a lot of outsourcing work is going to Ukraine and Belarus. India got a head start because of English language but right now many devolopers in Eastern Europe speak fluent English as well.

I've worked with Belarusian developers and they were top notch. Belarus is very close with Russia and is considered the last dictatorship in Europe, so weigh that with a decision. Having said that, the old Soviet / Eastern Bloc countries are very sharp. They were of course on the other side of the Cold War, which is what birthed most of our modern technology.

I've had opposite experience. In my case, they were sharp but they were also toxic to be working in a team. So, we had to move our R&D centre to Poland.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#244

Post by zerr »

strken wrote: post #213
user5994461 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

70k gross is more than what a senior developer would get anywhere in Germany or France. If you really get that much, you've got it better than all western Europe, except London and Zurich.

I had a recruiter after me with a €100k senior role in Berlin, I thought the market rate in Germany was nearing SV levels.

It is actually a €120K position - the only company in Berlin paying that amount, with very alarming reviews on Glassdoor - Thinkcell. So the recruiter was trying to low bail you.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#245

Post by tschwimmer »

kamaal wrote: post #226
sandGorgon wrote: post #154

These are mostly outsourcing companies. India's IT industry is realigning towards domestic markets and #MakeInIndia companies - it is more aspirational to join Paytm, Ola, Zomato in India than to work for a US based outsourcer. It is not even a competition anymore - I'm able to very easily get highly qualified Indians in Silicon Valley to move back and work on something cool in India. This is the reason that nobody i…

>>it is more aspirational to join Paytm, Ola, Zomato in India than to work for a US based outsourcer. Its hilarious you mention this. Those companies are in double digit billion $ debt, with no sight of returning even a single $ in profit back to their investors. Snapdeal recently bombed. Ola and Flipkart are next. >>It is not even a competition anymore Competition between whom. IT services firms haven't posted a los…

Citation on FlipKart and Ola being billions of debt? Not overtly doubting, but curious.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#246

Post by closeparen »

pckhoi wrote: post #241
jorblumesea wrote: post #179

I truly believe offshore IT work was mostly a scam in the first place. The work they produced was of very low quality, and often was more expensive because you had to go back in and fix everything. The whole game was to overcharge western firms for cheap crap produced by shoddy programmers overseas. The IT outsourcing firms would pocket the difference. Come in and promise the world, overbill and underdeliver. Then th…

This feels like your personal sentiment. You do know that there are good outsourcing firm out there right? I've been working at outsourcing firm for most of my career and I have to disagree. There are a full spectrum of good and bad developers out there even in the outsourcing world, not just bad ones. Do you think outsourcing as a practice can still survive if it doesn't bring value?

Yes, absolutely - plenty of decision makers face incentives structures that reward short term cost savings and don’t punish increased long term maintenance costs.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#247

Post by fizwhiz »

kamaal wrote: post #131
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #117

The issue has to do with Institutions & services firms here in India. It is normal to see IT Engineers (coders) define they career as X programmer where it's now time for every programmer to have full-stack skills and treat programming language as a drill-bit in a tool-box. Since the services companies benefited earlier by recruiting a graduate and training them to be X programmer for life, the institutions didn't ha…

Its strange that you take the names of CEOs and proceed to deduce that as a proof of them being good programmers. Most of them go to Ivy league engineering schools, and then Ivy league management schools. And then from there straight jump into management barely spending any time at all in engineering. And the whole reason why they do engineering is largely because they need a bridge course to get into a masters level…

> Only thing IITians are good at is self worship.

It's almost as though you've got an axe to grind with people having any respectable pedigree.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#248

Post by saguro »

pavanred wrote: post #215
code4tee wrote: post #5

There will be many more. The India IT sector’s main play was cheap labor for low value-add IT tasks like basic dev or ops. The play a while back was to move day-to-day ops jobs to this cheap labor. Now the play is to automate this work so the jobs are disappearing. E.g when you move to the cloud with good architecture you don’t need tons of people pushing buttons and tweaking servers all day long. The India firms hav…

Indian IT Outsourcing Industry ⊆ Indian IT Industry India is a huge country with a huge population and a rapidly growing economy and a domestic market. Even if it was true a decade or two ago, should we still keep assuming that anything that affects the Indian IT industry is caused solely by the outsourcing industry. Surely HN can stop having the same conversation every time anything regarding India and IT comes up.…

> Indian IT Outsourcing Industry ⊆ Indian IT Industry

Indian IT outsourcing has been the vast majority of cash flow into the Indian IT sector, that much is undeniable. There is some actually good Indian IT talent out there and it's picking up steam, but that's not where the money is yet.

And to the western/eruropean markets, Indian IT industry == Indian IT outsourcing industry. And the Indian IT outsourcing industry has developed a very strong negative stigma which I expect will completely kill it over the next ~5 years. Does the 'real' Indian IT industry have enough cash and momentum to survive that? Maybe, I'm not sure. One thing is for certain: all the low skilled IT workers which make up 95%+ of the outsourcing industry, they're all going to be permanently out of those jobs and new jobs like that aren't coming.

And from personal experience with those low skilled indian IT workers, I think it would be a miracle if even 1% of them are able to re-skill for the real engineering work that's now in demand. Not only that, but just the fact that you're in India is a strong signal that that you're terrible, even if you're actually not. I've seen Indian IT workers with CVs 3 times the size of mine and glowing recommendations from past employers, and most of them failed fucking fizzbuzz. After you deal with a dozen people like that, you just start to subconsciously dismiss Indian candidates because chances are, they're gonna be another one of those.

tl;dr: In terms of economics, the Indian IT industry is the outsourcing industry, and that cash well is drying up fast. Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka saw the writing on the wall and bailed on a high note.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#249

Post by sontek »

nine_k wrote: post #186
user5994461 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Tech companies are not competing for worldwide talents. The companies you quote have at most 3 offices in Europe: London, Zurich, Dublin. The first thing a recruiter will tell you is to abandon your life and your family.

A reasonable relocation package includes moving the family. I've seen a few firsthand.

What those packages fail to realize is that many of us still value more than just our wife and kids.

Relocating means leaving uncles aunts, cousins, mom, dad, grandma, etc. And any friends you have.

I've had to explain to many recruiters that leaving all my friends and family and my community as a whole is just not an option.

Re: India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year

#250

Post by sandGorgon »

kamaal wrote: post #228
sandGorgon wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not incorrect. YMMV obviously...but I stand by what I say. However you misunderstood the reason - they are not coming because of me . They were coming back anyway because they want to work in India and build something here. That was my point all along - I'm not uniquely positioned. It's happening all over.

>>They were coming back anyway because they want to work in India and build something here. As a former NRI, who stayed in the US. Not one person I know has/or-is moving back because they want to 'build stuff here'. Most of the times its unworkable visa situations, old parents or something on those lines at play.

I suggest you go and check the senior leadership on LinkedIn for the current stream of startups and large companies.

Even more - we have expats actually building successful and highly funded startups in India. Take a look at Zoomcar, Zestmoney and CreditMate. India is extremely startup friendly for foreigners - maybe not as friendly as the US, but definitely more than Europe, China, etc.

We are one of the world's largest consumer internet and smartphone market ... oh and with strong net neutrality guarantees. Everyone wants to tap into that. India is moving very differently now !

In the last week, I have had 2 conversations with CXO level leadership of companies in the Bay Area, who want to move back to India and build startups here. I get to do this a lot because I run one of the earliest YC funded companies in India (when it was "special" for YC to fund an Indian startup). I end up being the sounding board for a lot of CXO level talent moving back to India.

BTW - Indian startups form the second largest pool for YC applications now (after the US). Not sure what the funding stats are.

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