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The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

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Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#211

Post by devdas »

osrec wrote: post #156
sumedh wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The quality of engineers in India is sketchy at best in my experience. That is because you dont pay them well, the good engineers who are being paid well work in MS, Amazon etc in India.

Not sure about that... I worked at an investment bank in London, and had a tech team support our quant desk from India. I signed off on the costs and they were ranging from 10 lakhs to 35 lakhs per person. I think that's comparable, or even better than MS or Amazon for the city they were in (Pune).

The truly good people would expect a significant fraction of the UK salary, not an average Indian IT salary.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#212

Post by Clubber »

koolhead17 wrote: post #150

We have a saying here in India: "You pay peanuts, you hire donkeys". So a lot many comments in the thread is either generalization or a confirmation bias. The India I know and software developers I know of are no less either in dream or dedication from peers in Silicon Valley or any other part of developed world. :)

Yes, this is essentially what I've witnessed. I went to a very exclusive private high school in the US and the students from India there were top notch. Same in college. This was in the 90s. In the 2000s, our 2nd DBA at a very well known company was from India and he was top notch as well.

I think what happened is some not so ethical business people in India decided to make money off the good reputations of the Indians already working for US companies and built their companies off that. Instead of finding good Indian developers, they hired whomever they could find to take the job and presented them as top talent. US MBA's not knowing any better (what's new) couldn't resist the low cost and jumped all over it. Of course not being able or willing to admit a mistake, this ruse went on for two decades.

The aftermath is the good Indian talent now has a tarnished (severely) reputation, and businesses now have no strong internal systems development teams; nor have no idea how to recreate one.

Greedy capitalism is a global phenomenon. The greedy US companies got duped by the greedy Indian companies, and everyone lost. Good US teams lost by getting severely thinned out. Good Indian developers lost their reputation. US businesses lost their ability to develop even basic quality internal software. Indian companies seem to be losing out on the market as well.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#213

Post by matz1 »

code_duck wrote: post #210
imglorp wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cultures, you're smart to get ahead any way you can, and they'd call anyone a fool who followed some set of rules or principles instead of getting ahead. For them, rules are artificial, arbitrary social constructs with zero benefit, while results are concrete. It's hard to argue they're wrong.

A business not wanting to invest time hiring, training and integrating an employee who is likely to leave prematurely is not an abstract principle.

Then the business must be willing to pay generously.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#214

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#215

Post by devdas »

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?

Money and power. Technical tracks don't really have much of a growth path in India, and especially in service firms, where the work itself doesn't really add much to your technical skillsets.

Often the challenging/interesting bits in those scenarios are done by the US/European/Australian office, and only the implementation details are left to the Indian workers. That isn't conducive to being valued as an engineer.

Management tracks also have higher salaries. If you want to continue in engineering and still make good money, you get a H1B or equivalent and move.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#216

Post by matz1 »

mieseratte wrote: post #196
bhouston wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was dealing with a smart IT engineer from India and then I found out that he has sold me code for peanuts he had created for another client (and was already owned exclusively by that client, which was a major venture backed company), and then I caught him selling the code I paid him well to create exclusively to a third client also for peanuts. Basically no regard at all for IP rights and the contracts he signed, j…

At work, we've had issues with Indian candidates informing us during interviews that they've already recently accepted an offer / started a new job, but that they're willing to come work for us instead. Completely oblivious to the fact of how big of an immediate red flag that is.

A candidate who want to get better offer is a red flag ?

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#217

Post by kamaal »

intended wrote: post #155
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No - foreigners (ie non Indians / Chinese etc) are missing this fact : there’s 40 students to 1 teacher in india, or more. The exam and grading workload is unserviceable . This is the crux of it. And it’s the crux of MANY MANY other problems human beings face every day! Recruitment ? How do you prove that this person is actually an expert in his field/as good as he says he is withiut tying up my entire tech team in t…

>>The exam and grading workload is unserviceable.

The standard testing in India, at-least for engineering, medicine, civil services and CA is unforgivingly fierce. Kids sacrifice everything, like everything to qualify for a seat at engineering colleges. Even in so called tier-2/3 colleges seats for Electronics/Electrical/CS go like hot cakes. I remember in my batch all students were the top most Math students in their individual pre-university colleges.

In many ways these exams are a giant filter to select people into STEM careers. The effects last way after. Even the most successful non-STEM desk job guy will tell you the immense difference STEM and non-STEM salaries, overall job perks and career quality in general. And kids watch their uncles and elder cousins in these situations all the time. And are forced to work hard.

Every year these tests get harder, and kids train even more harder.

I have younger cousins in US, and I jokingly tell them they won't last a few months in the fierce competition here in India.

But like everything, continuity is required. Once people arrive at jobs. They sort of lose all the momentum, coast around and eventually to settle to mediocrity. Or worse resort to politics and things like that.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#218

Post by piva00 »

sumedh wrote: post #153
StudentStuff wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that sounds quite sad that they define their self-worth by some piece of paper given to them, and not by what they can accomplish with the skills they have gained. A degree does not make a competent employee from what I've experienced.

> that sounds quite sad that they define their self-worth by some piece of paper given to them That sounds sad to you because you are looking at it from a Western perspective, when you have couple of hundred people interested for a job you can use a certification to filter lot of the candidates.

And like any metric that is easier to "game" you end up in the situation where a bunch of people go for the easy route of taking certifications because they act as a filter and that same filter doesn't work as intended because people are gaming the system.

It's much harder to game a system where evaluation of a candidate's skills is the filter, to game this you become a cheater.

Of course that it's also harder to scale but if India has such a huge problem in filtering candidates there must exist some companies doing good skill-based assessments and that should be the way forward.

Or just keep the status quo of needing to take certifications and competing with unqualified people that have the same papers you have, for me it's a race to the bottom.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#219

Post by mritun »

osrec wrote: post #156
sumedh wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The quality of engineers in India is sketchy at best in my experience. That is because you dont pay them well, the good engineers who are being paid well work in MS, Amazon etc in India.

Not sure about that... I worked at an investment bank in London, and had a tech team support our quant desk from India. I signed off on the costs and they were ranging from 10 lakhs to 35 lakhs per person. I think that's comparable, or even better than MS or Amazon for the city they were in (Pune).

35 lacks you mentioned is a good starting salary for a person at Amazon or MS. 10L is not, even in Pune.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#220

Post by coconut_crab »

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.

It's because asking for clarification is considered bad here, either you are an idiot or you are bothering others. So their best choice is to say 'yes' and try to figure things out later. That's why I always ask my colleagues how would they complete some tasks instead of "Can you do this?".
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