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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

#401
post #281

Why don't NRI's quit their Bay Area job to come and contribute to the motherland?

Probably because India cannot match the salaries and quality of life in US.

I'd argue about quality of life. But definitely absolute income.

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

#402
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because India cannot match the salaries and quality of life in US.

I'd argue about quality of life. But definitely absolute income.

Then you would be arguing with facts.

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

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Understandable" to you, based on where you live and what dialect of English you speak :)

For most folks in the US, understanding a Spanish accent is easier than most Indian accents. This is especially true for lower paid support roles.

Maybe so, and many Americans aren't understandable to me as an Indian. I just wanted to point out that not being understandable is a statement about the person making it as much as it is about the people it's ostensibly about. Indians, in this case,

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

#404
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first thing a recruiter will tell you is to abandon your life and your family. Do you mean that as in "move" or as in "work long hours"? Google has at least offices in Germany, too.

I meant move. Google has offices in almost every countries but they are administrative offices with almost no employees. If you're a tech worker, you can only be in one of the very few tech locations.

They do have tech workers in multiple locations in Germany. At least one of them is almost only tech, but small.

But you are right, that those are not big major tech offices like the three mentioned. So most engineers in Europe would still be working out of London, Zurich or Dublin.

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

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most folks in the US, understanding a Spanish accent is easier than most Indian accents. This is especially true for lower paid support roles.

Maybe so, and many Americans aren't understandable to me as an Indian. I just wanted to point out that not being understandable is a statement about the person making it as much as it is about the people it's ostensibly about. Indians, in this case,

Totally get it.

I grew up in a weird household, with half my family with strong Irish accents and the other with strong NYC accents. When I moved away from New York, almost nobody could understand me at all for a few weeks. A few teachers thought I was a non-native speaker.

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

#406
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why blind CV screening and remote tests in hiring are crucial. We all have these biases and sometimes the candidates that pass those phases are surprising.

Remote tests put off actually good talent, they are insulted by that kind of waste of time. As for biases, bias isn't inherently bad. Bias is critical to how neural networks operate in ML. Removing bias is to intentionally discard valuable observational data and harm your rate of success.

[deleted]

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

#408

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…

There are 3 types of companies here in India. 1. The likes of TCS, Wipro and Infosys. These have a huge workforce and literally hire in wholesale. Even this month, Wipro hired something like 50 students from a nearby college. They don't look for your programming skills or even CS theory knowledge. Nope. They hire based on marks, group discussion, English skills and even looks. Basically, anything that is not related…

Are you in college? You will find that 3 is not all rosy as it seems to you right now, if you are not from a top tier or atleast decent tier college. I was like you back in college when I realized that heading to TCS etc was a dead career path from the start.

The better product startups all look for "IIT/NIT/whatever other brand college" students. Snapdeal, for eg, first switched the application engineer position that I applied for to other secondary positions, and then rejected me when I asked for the original position on this basis. There is no guarantee that you will find good things in other startups. I realize now that these companies have no better way of screening candidates, because the candidate pool quality in India errs on the side of less than decent. Doesn't justify the bait-and-switch but oh well.

If you do end up like I did, make sure that atleast the peer group in your startup is exceptionally talented, and that the startup is good with tech. The pay is shit in these kinds of startups (for eg those running as a small service company, but building their product behind the scenes), but the idea is to become really good at what you do and then jump ship to a good product startup.

Also, if you are still in college, it helps to have GSoC under your belt.

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

#409
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gotten offers for somewhat more for Amsterdam (with booking.com). I didn't take it, because I was getting way more in London at the time.

I looked at Amsterdam as they had/have some nice tax incentives for expats. And as I had the max no of years in the UK state pension I could built up a Dutch pension as well. Holland also has Mortgage interest relief so you could rent your UK property out and buy a property in Holland with some nice tax breaks

I'm in Singapore now. I'm not using any tax breaks---the taxes are generally low without need for exception.

(There are some tax breaks you (or your clients!) can get for investing in IT, though.)

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

#410
post #183

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…

FYI all these new high tech "Made In India" companies are backed by Chinese investors. PayTM and Zomato are largely backed by Alibaba, Ola backed by Tencent,

Financially.

Engineers are still Indians

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