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The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

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Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#131

Post by carlmr »

avip wrote: post #56
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…

This is ABC of travelling in India. Never ask "is this the train to Pune"? Ask where the train is going instead. The answer to Y/N question is always yes in India, and that can mean anything between "I don't speak English" and "NO".

Asking open questions is a very good communication tactic in any country. In "yes" countries like India, Japan, China it's necessary. In other countries you often find out about whether your communication partner actually understood your question.

Don't ask "Did you finish task X". Ask "what did you do on task X?". What you see as finished and what the other person sees as finished might be separate things. Maybe you see 100% unit tested, reviewed and documented as finished, and the other person means feature complete, but untested, undocumented, not reviewed.

Open questions allow you to see what the other person understands. In some cases they might misunderstand your question entirely.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#132

Post by kemiller2002 »

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…

When I first became a manager, I had this really amazing mentor that explained to me a lot of the quirks of multiculturalism. I consider myself at least somewhat versed in other cultures, but I quickly learned there was a lot I didn't know about the mannerisms of people from India, China, Russia, etc.

What I find sad, is that there are a lot of people in positions of power that either have no idea (or don't care) that people from different parts of the world see things and respond differently than you'd expect and then get frustrated when the outcome is different than expected. I'd explain to them that it's a cultural thing, and they need to learn how to approach their questions/explanations differently. Most of the time I get this blank look like, "Why? Can't they just change?" and then go back to trying the same approach and calling their staff down, because they can't seem to understand why they are ineffective.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#133

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

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…

One thing I observed when interviewing candidates for offshore positions was that people wanting more senior technical roles wasn't as strong as here in US.

Granted this is anecdotal from interviewing maybe a couple dozen people out of whatever giant number of IT people in India.

Just wondering if there is a cultural/societal push towards the management/boss level that diminishes value towards senior technical roles?

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#134

Post by _xzxj »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #126
kumarvvr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> A few years back, when complaints were made against rote learning, schools have begun to give 'home projects' to kids, ostensibly to improve their creative skills. However, these projects devolved into internet searches, copy-pasting online articles and pictures and calling it a day. That's not really unique, many American school children do the same for their homework. It's a time-honored tradition (at least since…

Ah even before the internet was widely used you would go to the library and copy stuff out of encyclopedias. It just took longer :)

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#135

Post by carlmr »

mieseratte wrote: post #128
kamaal wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all failures are in the 'WW2 Normandy' Ballpark. In fact in almost all cases, letting people fail is how let them learn.

We're not talking about hiring some interns and giving them room to fail here. If I hire your firm and you tell me you can achieve an objective, then I spend money and come to find out you can't and you knew you couldn't, you've defrauded me. If I ask if you can perform a task and you tell me you know how, then I find out you have no idea, you've lied to me. I'll take a "No, but I can figure it out" any day of the we…

>I'll take a "No, but I can figure it out" any day of the week, but lying is a cardinal sin in any relationship.

...in western business culture.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#136

Post by gowthamgts12 »

kamaal wrote: post #90
chris_wot wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and the problem with this is if you lie and get found out, you'll not get asked again in many Western companies.

Based on how politicians and how many second chances CEOs and other rich people get in the US I think its the same in US too. Its just that if you are working minimum wage, or you are a spoke in the gig economy it's different for you. Based on my experience working in the US, my American friends weren't very different. Its just that when you have sufficient you tend to worry less about over optimizing for the rainy d…

Cannot agree more.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#137

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

_xzxj wrote: post #134
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A few years back, when complaints were made against rote learning, schools have begun to give 'home projects' to kids, ostensibly to improve their creative skills. However, these projects devolved into internet searches, copy-pasting online articles and pictures and calling it a day. That's not really unique, many American school children do the same for their homework. It's a time-honored tradition (at least since…

Ah even before the internet was widely used you would go to the library and copy stuff out of encyclopedias. It just took longer :)

I was relatively young in the long-long-ago when there was no internet. I rephrased things from encyclopedias and biographies because the original wording was long and I was lazy. I'm unsure if that counts the same as copy-pasting because I still had to read and have a basic understand of what I'd read.

It's possible people who were older at the time just straight-up copied the text though. I wouldn't be surprised.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#138

Post by prepend »

mindhash wrote: post #130
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…

If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later! Richard Branson

This is great advice but is contingent on learning how to do it. The rickshaw drivers in OP’s example didn’t complete that part.

I’ll add that this isn’t unique to India and there are lots of bullshitters in the world and in tech. I think the difference I’ve witnessed is that with more Indians than non-Indians I’ve worked with is that the acceptance is not deceptive or manipulative, it’s just neutral. Hard to describe, but I had one programmer who claimed to be great back during the Java days, not sure his cultural background, but he looked like a white guy from somewhere in America. He was lying to get the job and had fabulouser and fabulouser reasons for not being able to do it, until the lie crashed and we fired him.

This is very different from “Can you do tensorflow?” “Yes” ...check in for a week of “Yes” during daily huddles and then at the end nothing and still a “Yes, I can do it” with a perplexity of why I’m confused. Or also common the “I’ll check it in and say it works even though all tests fail and it doesn’t meet spec.”

The former is deception, the latter is sort of a disconnect with reality.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#139

Post by oblio »

StudentStuff wrote: post #61
jeswin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that we manufacture very little, and a disproportionate part of our GDP is services. If you take away services, there's not a lot of money coming into our economy. The size of our economy is tiny in comparison (smaller than UK's) and per-capita income is one of the lowest - there's not a lot of headroom to grow for companies targeting the domestic market. The point I'm making is, until manufacturing an…

Does India actually want to grow manufacturing and industry though? Its notably more environmentally destructive, here in Seattle we're still cleaning up cadmium and other hazardous pollutants in the soil from Boeing's manufacturing partners from decades ago. Overall, considering the amount of remediation we've had to do, there are some industries that cost us more than they ever earned.

Boeing was the backbone of international and local airlines for decades. It seems to have been worth it.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#140

Post by mantas »

paganel wrote: post #99
mantas wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I had plenty of teachers who took pride in saying that "stupid Americans learn this only in university!" Can absolutely confirm this saying for Romania of the late '80s and throughout all of the '90s (so, even after the Wall had fallen).

It's still the same logic even today. Worst thing, updates programmes double down on pushing even more facts. While PISA scores are getting worse and worse. I guess it will take few generations to forget about glorious soviet schooling :(
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