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The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

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Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#221

Post by s_trumpet »

StudentStuff wrote: post #59
throwawayqdhd wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indians are fixated on certifications. My friends still can't believe that I make the kind of money I make without a CS degree (I studied literature). And when I tried to hire someone when I tried building an agency, the only thing candidates kept emphasizing was their degree and certificates, not their skills.

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.

The problem is this: how do you entrust that the right people are getting into any institution (college, jobs, etc). There are two broad approaches: standardized testing vs. application/interviewing. The Western mindset predominantly favours approach #2 in most contexts, with standardized testing being a factor only in college admissions (in my knowledge). Interviews and essays (to continue the college admissions theme) are good ways to get an insight into the mind of the prospective student, but the crux is that they are interpreted subjectively and not objectively. This keeps a window for bias to creep in. Harvard University had instituted standardized entrance exam; they later scrapped it because of those who passed the exam, a large portion were Jews[0]. Standardized testing is an approach to selection that avoids this kind of direct bias, which is why it was selected as a way to ensure that all communities receive the same opportunities to educate their children (not that this worked out in practice).

[0] https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/expose/book/cloak-meritocrac...

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#222

Post by thewhitetulip »

ksec wrote: post #179
code4tee wrote: post #167

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 s…

It seems to me, time and time again, India, ( actually pretty much all the other BRIC ) are trying to copy China without actually understanding how and why China got there in the first place. 10 to 15 years ago one would have thought India to be better in programming, largely due to English for Chinese are not as common. Turns out with a whole Ecosystem, China has been able to adopt and produce some very decent engin…

This doesn't happen because Indian politicians still fight elections based on religion

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#223

Post by eriken »

matz1 wrote: post #216
mieseratte wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

You can always negotiate, but if you accept an offer I expect you to commit.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#224

Post by JoeAltmaier »

s_trumpet wrote: post #221
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.

The problem is this: how do you entrust that the right people are getting into any institution (college, jobs, etc). There are two broad approaches: standardized testing vs. application/interviewing. The Western mindset predominantly favours approach #2 in most contexts, with standardized testing being a factor only in college admissions (in my knowledge). Interviews and essays (to continue the college admissions the…

Essays and interviews are a thing of the past. I believe they are only used when students' applications are near the borderline?

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#225

Post by xienze »

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…

> The quality of engineers in India is sketchy at best in my experience.

The problem, I think, is that management draws conclusions about the quality of Indian engineers based on interactions with the ones working in the US, who by definition are the absolute best of the best. "Sanjay is one of our best engineers", the bean counter says, "and my God, there's _a billion_ of them back in India!"

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#226

Post by sh87 »

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?

Yes totally true. Would be hard to impossible to find a someone with solid 10 years of technical experience who is still in a technical role by choice. You would be expected to ‘lead’ teams instead of craft great products

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#227

Post by carlmr »

v_lisivka wrote: post #160
carlmr wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

... in Christianity.

How so? Southern Europe is very relaxed in this sense culturally, and it's the most religiously Christian part of Europe at the same time. While atheist northern and central Europe (Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Switzerland) place a lot of emphasis on reliability.

Sure you could argue that these nations are culturally Christian, but Christian culture still doesn't imply an emphasis on reliability.

At most I might agree with this being a case of the protestant work ethic, which seems to have a high correlation here (northern and central Europe as well as America is very much protestant, southern Europe is more catholic and orthodox).

However first of all most historians agree it's false, and second you get places like Germany, where the economic powerhouse is the catholic south (Baden-Württemberg has Porsche, Daimler (Mercedes), Audi and Bosch, Bayern (Bavaria) has BMW, the protestant North and East are more poor).

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#228

Post by geodel »

mritun wrote: post #219
osrec wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

35L starting sounds like exaggeration. The most common is <15L for 0-5 year of experience.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#229

Post by mc32 »

imglorp wrote: post #199
mieseratte wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

That depends on expectations, whether in a given industry or culture. In most professional settings showing your hand as essentially a mercenary in terms of allegiance and showing no stickiness, will result in considering an alternative candidate, in the US.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#230

Post by enlightenedfool »

A bunch of crappy generalizations here driven by emotions - "quality of engineers in India is sketchy at best". I can say the same about the American engineers around me right now. There are good and bad engineers everywhere. Same about culture. And companies like Google, Amazon won't hire sketchy people to save money. Think before you talk. The system is driven by basic economics and what's allowed by law. Companies take advantage of that. USA is now turning protective and hire its citizens. Good for them. The world will chug on either way.
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