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The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

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Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#251

Post by osrec »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #249
osrec wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced. I've seen some terrible test cases written by Infosys engineers. Just a complete lack of imagination with respect to the failure modes of a piece of software. Remember that India is not the "only choice"; Eastern Europe is waiting in the wings at a similar price point, better quality, and better timezone overlap.

" Just a complete lack of imagination with respect to the failure modes of a piece of software." you get what you pay for to some extent. E. Europe is considerably more expensive than India.

Not really, when you consider that tasks need to be repeated multiple times in India before they're done to an acceptable standard. A few years ago, things were still cheap enough to accept this problem, but now development costs in India have gone up significantly and makes them non viable in my opinion.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#252

Post by naravara »

osrec wrote: post #247
sonnyblarney wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a scam, you just have to know what you are buying. For internal Enterprise apps, for testing, for some other things - you need just basic developers who can understand problems and solve them. Also - there's a lot of basic IT work and basic dev-ops-ish stuff that can be done. So yes, if you try to build a hot new thing, for your hot new startup using Infosys, you're going to fail. But if you have large compa…

I'm not convinced. I've seen some terrible test cases written by Infosys engineers. Just a complete lack of imagination with respect to the failure modes of a piece of software. Remember that India is not the "only choice"; Eastern Europe is waiting in the wings at a similar price point, better quality, and better timezone overlap.

>Just a complete lack of imagination with respect to the failure modes of a piece of software.

I get this with people Accenture and the like too though. . .

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#253

Post by ethbro »

cpmouter wrote: post #187
ethbro wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying "yes" to everything, as has been explained above, has more to do with different cultural definitions of "yes" than lying. You ask me if it's going to rain, and I say yes, because I know with certainty it will rain tomorrow. Is it fair for you to call me a liar because you carried around an umbrella today?

>different cultural definitions of "yes" https://i.imgur.com/gByDqFX.png There's no 100% accuracy in weather forecasts so a mistake is understandable. Asking you if you finished your task and getting a "yes" when you haven't finished it is outright lying.

You're missing the metaphor by being pedantic.

I'll assume you're American (I am).

You know how in a healthy, well-led team, if your boss suggests a course of action that's wrong at a meeting and asks for feedback, you and I would pipe up and point out the issues with their approach?

In Asian cultures, my understanding is that would never happen. Instead, everyone would agree at the meeting, then feedback would be given privately to the boss if it were a major issue, and decision changed.

Which one's right? Eh, if they both result in an eventual good choice, does it matter?

If you feel strongly about "yes" being a lie, then bully to you and run with that. But that's kind of like boxing a glacier and expecting to win...

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#254

Post by srameshc »

osrec wrote: post #198
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…

I hate to say it (as I am Indian), but it's a cultural thing. Basically, it's all about solving the problem by any means necessary, regardless of cost to the environment, cost to others, future problems etc. This is changing somewhat, but rather slowly.

It certainly depends on who you are dealing with. It definitely isn't a cultural thing. Ethics and ethical people exist everywhere. Had it not been there wouldn't be these many tech companies or businesses in India.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#255

Post by boubiyeah »

jcadam wrote: post #163
prepend wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

This was both funny and sad

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#256

Post by Alterlife »

tome wrote: post #244
commandlinefan wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The quality of engineers in India is sketchy at best In a little over 25 years of experience, I've observed that the most competent developers I've worked with have been Indian. The most incompetent developers I've worked with have also been Indian. That doesn't say anything about Indians as a population, it's just that 90% of my coworkers, for the past two and a half decades, have been Indian.

Were they in India? That's specifically what osrec said. Nothing about Indians.

I am in India, and I can't help but feel insulted by this comment. Is there some kind of magic that makes engineers better when you take them out of India?

There are some great developers here and plenty of crappy ones. And some of the worst developers I've worked with are Americans in America.

----

edit: I'll also add here that a many of the best developers I've worked with are American as well.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#257

Post by devdas »

OliverJones wrote: post #112

In 2004, I heard a sales pitch from a VP of a big outsourcing outfit in Bengaluru (fka Bangalore). In response to a question about turnover and preventing it, he said they were giving raises of about 7% to their developers twice a year. That was crazy. That was Sili-Valley crazy. There are limits to growth. It's too bad they're hitting good people. But the business model of Infosys and other outsource IT services gia…

That was a cost of living adjustment, really.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#258

Post by parylose »

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.

The problem is they have to give three month's notice when quitting a job. When other companies or headhunters learn that you gave notice, they do their best to hire you away from whatever new job you took.

Our HR Department now calls new-hires every couple of days to keep them engaged so they don't take a job elsewhere. It sucks when you hire someone, plan things three months in advance, and.... they don't show up to the job without ever telling you they took a job somewhere else.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#259

Post by samfisher83 »

sumedh wrote: post #144
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. That is because you dont pay them well, the good engineers who are being paid well work in MS, Amazon etc in India.

They just come over here. Why would they work in india when they can make 4-10x here?

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#260

Post by kamaal »

throwaway1414 wrote: post #174
kamaal wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in FANG companies too. In fact most people who left Google I know did it because they were largely in QA and their friends who were so called working in crappy services companies, often from colleges considered bad, did more code work then them. They were largely forced to leave and join start ups because the difference in experience was catching up with them. Fb was purely a 'hire and send' unit in Hyd,…

Looks like the people who left Google you know were not hired into Google proper. What you describe sounds like they were working for a vendor providing QA services to Google. Sure your friends were probably walking into Google office with a Google ID card but being on Google payroll is a completely different thing from being on a vendor payroll. Every company has core teams and non-core teams. Why do you present the…

>>But the work in Amazon is at least two orders of magnitude better than what you get in Infosys.

No. In fact this is precisely the kind of binary classification that forces people to make bad decisions.

Please try to understand that people working Wipro or Infosys or TCS are humans like us, who use the same programming languages and same computers.

This binary classification is why people up becoming SREs at Google, while they could have probably been programmers at Cognizant.

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