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The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

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Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#101

Post by CapricornNoble »

chrisper wrote: post #74
niklasd wrote: post #50

I studied in India 2012 for a short time. I met incredible smart and hardworking people. However, one thing that I found quite unnerving was that there is a tendency to always anwser yes if asked if one knows how to do something, even if thats not true. Sometimes a plain "I don't know" can be very helpful in achieving a goal. I can't count how many times I asked a rickshaw driver if he knew a certain place and he ans…

I believe it is similar in Vietnamese culture. When we work with them they often say yes only for us to find out later that they had no clue what to do.

I can personally attest to this, having hired a small team of Vietnamese engineers to do some freelance hardware and firmware/OS-level work for me.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#102

Post by chvid »

plinkplonk wrote: post #81
chvid wrote: post #46

In my own observation the use of outsourcing to India (in terms of market share) has been declining for years. Either being replaced by work done here in Copenhagen or in countries nearer by - Poland in particular. As a practioner; I cannot say that I miss working with projects outsourced to India. I really hope that you guys learn a less bureaucratic and hierarical way of working and you as a country become more foc…

"I really hope that you guys learn a less bureaucratic and hierarical way of working" These generalizations make as much sense as me telling a random American HN user "I really hope that you guys stop indulging your blood lust by invading other countries and killing millions of innocents to make profits for your munitions industry and you as a country become less bloodthirsty" Most Americans are not killers, though t…

Yeah.

We should be careful with generalizations; and it is easy to go overboard in a short general sentence (like I did).

However there is such a thing as differences in work culture. And it is very reasonable to talk about differences amongst countries. And on the mentioned scales (bureaucracies and hierarchies) Denmark and India sit on each their extremes.

That India's IT-industry has been driven by external demand is just a fact as far as I know.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#103

Post by tewewrwp »

plinkplonk wrote: post #81
chvid wrote: post #46

In my own observation the use of outsourcing to India (in terms of market share) has been declining for years. Either being replaced by work done here in Copenhagen or in countries nearer by - Poland in particular. As a practioner; I cannot say that I miss working with projects outsourced to India. I really hope that you guys learn a less bureaucratic and hierarical way of working and you as a country become more foc…

"I really hope that you guys learn a less bureaucratic and hierarical way of working" These generalizations make as much sense as me telling a random American HN user "I really hope that you guys stop indulging your blood lust by invading other countries and killing millions of innocents to make profits for your munitions industry and you as a country become less bloodthirsty" Most Americans are not killers, though t…

Anytime someone criticize India, people always come to defend it. As an Indian I disagree with you completely. It gives me anxiety when I think about dealing with employee of another office. I only do that if there is no other option. We should learn to accept criticism when it's valid instead of coming up with excuses. Also your whole comment is whataboutism.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#104

Post by kamaal »

jeswin wrote: post #94
sumanthvepa wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. India is a poor country. Indeed a very poor one. But that does not necessarily constrain the growth of its tech sector. First, tech growth is not primarily about domestic per capita income or demand for software in the country. It is about exporting products while also catering to a rising domestic demand. i.e. use domestic demand to find product market fit and then expand globally. So global demand is more rele…

> Yes. India is a poor country. Indeed a very poor one. But that does not necessarily constrain the growth of its tech sector. That is simply not true. You could grow anywhere, it's different shades of difficulty though. > It is about exporting products while also catering to a rising domestic demand. The revenue from exported domestically made software/tech products, compared to the size of the IT Services industry…

>>The revenue from exported domestically made software/tech products, compared to the size of the IT Services industry is miniscule. Almost nothing.

This is a very interesting point. Only recently I had a discussion about this with a colleague.

The painful fact about big salaries in India is either US pays it or a VC pays it. Or you go the services way where some one does the work over the years and has build a company for you, then they pay you services salary(But that is again from the US.).

So its just US or VCs. If you build a company in India and pay you can't pay much.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#105

Post by pjc50 »

kamaal wrote: post #80
niklasd wrote: post #50

I studied in India 2012 for a short time. I met incredible smart and hardworking people. However, one thing that I found quite unnerving was that there is a tendency to always anwser yes if asked if one knows how to do something, even if thats not true. Sometimes a plain "I don't know" can be very helpful in achieving a goal. I can't count how many times I asked a rickshaw driver if he knew a certain place and he ans…

>>Sometimes a plain "I don't know" can be very helpful in achieving a goal. In a country like India where opportunities are scarce, saying no in many cases can mean permanently losing the opportunity to do something big. Saying 'yes' and failing is a lot more better than saying 'no' and not trying at all. If I'm not wrong this isn't just limited to India. I think it was Richard Branson who said something to the order…

> Saying 'yes' and failing is a lot more better than saying 'no' and not trying at all.

Not for the person whose money you've spent on the failure.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#106

Post by kumarvvr »

mantas wrote: post #87
StudentStuff wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entrepreneurial spirit generally doesn't emerge from standard formal education, but not much is done to suppress it, and there are often extracurriculars to encourage young entrepreneurs. Rote memorization also only gets you so far, often you get tested on how you arrived at an answer, not just on the answer itself. Understanding the process is just as important as knowing it. Perhaps this is a bit like the schooling…

Fun part is, high school is/was the other way. USSR curriculum was full of stuff that 99% of students wouldn't ever use. There was little incentive to use anything in practice. You had to memorise, pass test and then you can forget it. This practice continues to this day in big parts of ex-Soviet sphere. I had plenty of teachers who took pride in saying that "stupid Americans learn this only in university!". Yet Amer…

My teachers and peers and even parents used to say this and I would always be mighty proud of it.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#107

Post by kamaal »

pjc50 wrote: post #105
kamaal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Sometimes a plain "I don't know" can be very helpful in achieving a goal. In a country like India where opportunities are scarce, saying no in many cases can mean permanently losing the opportunity to do something big. Saying 'yes' and failing is a lot more better than saying 'no' and not trying at all. If I'm not wrong this isn't just limited to India. I think it was Richard Branson who said something to the order…

> Saying 'yes' and failing is a lot more better than saying 'no' and not trying at all. Not for the person whose money you've spent on the failure.

Not all failures are in the 'WW2 Normandy' Ballpark.

In fact in almost all cases, letting people fail is how let them learn.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#108

Post by godelmachine »

reacharavindh wrote: post #97
godelmachine wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask which technologies have you worked on?

Not sure why it'd help the discussion :-) Here is my public CV : https://aravindh.net/cv_2018.pdf

Yours is one awesome CV. I was just curious to know.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#109

Post by bocahrokok »

kumarvvr wrote: post #47
sumanthvepa wrote: post #33

While the article doesn't explicitly make the association, I get the impression that a lot of HN readers make the assumption that India's tech sector is synonymous with its IT services industry. Not so. While it is true that IT services is plateauing, that is not so with the tech sector as a whole. E-commerce, cloud-computing, fintech are exploding in India driven by a massive domestic market demand and an ability to…

Tech is doing fine, but India definitely dosen't have the homegrown talent to cater to the new wave of startups. The fault is the Indian education system, which silences creativity, encourages rote learning and focuses too much on numbers on report cards. Its really sad and alarming here. (I am from India). There are whole generations of students, who, from their early schooling, right up to a Bachelor's degree in En…

I believe this is third world countries problem not only India. In indonesia, my homeland, it also become problem, we focus to much on memorization while doesnt really care about problem solving

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#110

Post by peteretep »

kumarvvr wrote: post #47
sumanthvepa wrote: post #33

While the article doesn't explicitly make the association, I get the impression that a lot of HN readers make the assumption that India's tech sector is synonymous with its IT services industry. Not so. While it is true that IT services is plateauing, that is not so with the tech sector as a whole. E-commerce, cloud-computing, fintech are exploding in India driven by a massive domestic market demand and an ability to…

Tech is doing fine, but India definitely dosen't have the homegrown talent to cater to the new wave of startups. The fault is the Indian education system, which silences creativity, encourages rote learning and focuses too much on numbers on report cards. Its really sad and alarming here. (I am from India). There are whole generations of students, who, from their early schooling, right up to a Bachelor's degree in En…

> India definitely dosen't have the homegrown talent to cater to the new wave of startups

That may be true, but I've always just assumed the talent leaves. It's a big-ass place, with smart people, and lots of people in IT -- I've always assumed that anyone I speak to at an outsourced firm is someone who wasn't smart enough to get a tech job abroad.

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