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The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

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Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#161

Post by cafard »

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…

Years ago, a woman, a medic in one of the airborne divisions, told me that people in the military don't want to say that they don't know how to do something. I think this was in reference to two near-debacles, one scuba diving, one rock climbing, in one of which she had been the one that said "Sure, I know how to."

[edit: change "one said" to "one that said"]

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#162

Post by jgh »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #137
_xzxj wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, you always had to rephrase it. Being that the number of possible sources were pretty limited it would be easy for the teacher to catch you plagiarizing heh.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#163

Post by jcadam »

prepend wrote: post #138
mindhash wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 describ…

> ...back during the Java days...

The Java days are in the past for you? Must be nice...

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#164

Post by sevagh »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #133
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?

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

To an extent I felt similar working for average tech shops in Montreal, Canada. I moved to California to live and work in a culture where the IC track is real and highly valued (which is fantastic).

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#165

Post by jerf »

setr wrote: post #88
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.

Well, if what he's saying is true.. then you'd lose the chance by saying no anyways. So getting caught lying is the same result as not lying. It'd only be useful to be honest if you do have a skillset, and the company has a reasonable chance of reaching out to you fot the skillset in the (near?) future

"Well, if what he's saying is true.. then you'd lose the chance by saying no anyways. So getting caught lying is the same result as not lying."

That's only true locally. Globally, you've got a variety of reputations, for yourself, for your firm, and whether or not you like it or consider it fair, for your country. You're burning all of those things. This will eventually catch up to you, your firm, and your country if withdrawals exceed deposits. This is, of course, a global truth, not an India-specific truth.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#166

Post by le-mark »

osrec wrote: post #129

IT miracle? More like IT sham. The quality of engineers in India is sketchy at best in my experience. Lack of understanding and innovation is rife across the board, but they seem to be great at selling their service. This may be because of the "yes" culture other comments have mentioned, but I would guess it's got a lot to do with a massively undercut price. It is, however, a false economy, because you often end up i…

I don't think many who've worked with the major body shops would disagree with this. On the other hand, I've worked for companies that have opened offices offshore, and hired their own full time development staffs. I have seen very talented developers and dedicated teams via this arrangement. I work with one such team now, and I'm deeply impressed by them. They're some of best I've seen.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#167

Post by code4tee »

If you’ve ever been to India you see that clearly the general approach to things is just throw people at the problem. Why have one person inspecting your ticket when you can have four?

The problem with the Indian outsourcers is that they’ve broadly failed to move up the technology value chain. These firms were quite good at the “just throw a bunch of people at it” solutions to brute force get work done but the tech sector has moved on.

Need a company to give you 1000 mechanical turks to perform some tasks you haven’t been able to automate yet? Go to an Indian outsourcing firm. Need some people to design technology to make the mechanical turks no longer required? That talent is generally not found within these Indian firms.

In that sense what McKinsey said in the article is probably true. Advances (largely built elsewhere) will probably make 80% of what these firms do irrelevant in the next few years.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#168

Post by kamaal »

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…

We are not talking about those sort of failures here. But almost everyone who has every written code, has failed or written buggy code at some point in time.

In fact I'm a tad little surprised that I'm having to sell the virtues of incremental failure in a forum that idolizes "Move fast and break things"

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#169

Post by [deleted] »

cpmouter wrote: post #141
kemiller2002 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) tha…

>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 get your point, but the fact that Indians say "yes" to everything (i.e. the fact they lie constantly) is not something that managers should get used to, it's something Indians have to correct.

[deleted]
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