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The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

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Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#261

Post by niklasd »

senthil_rajasek wrote: post #235
niklasd wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was just an anecdotic example of a more general habit that also affects office jobs. I heard that directly from people who have an IT team in India, and the answers here at HN also seem to imply that this is a wider shared experience.

Most people including me are not experts in culture. I am not defending bad behavior. I am yet to find one single defining culture in the US and I have lived here 20 yrs. May be the rickshaw driver was being helpful. Hey you seem to not know where you are going... I don't know either so let's figure this out together... There is room for that interpretation too. I have been scammed by hospitals and HVAC guys in the U…

Well, I agree with you about the point that what we perceive as "culture of a country" is often a made up construct which doesn't account for the variety of backgrounds and behavior of the citizens. It really is very hard to definitly say x is part of "the" culture of the country y.

However, what is here being discussed is not a second classing of non-whites by whites. First, how do you know that I or the persons from whom I heard about the problems with their Indian IT teams are white? You just assume that. Second, it seems that there really are issues working with some IT teams in India. Why is it wrong to attribute this to a certain work ethic? Or more prescisely: Why do I second class non-white people when I describe the work ethic I'm experiencing? Man, I lived in Germany, US and India (for a short time at least), and let me tell you, there are different work ethics in these countries. And there have nothing to do with the color of your skin. But true, mostly generalisations are unjust. But people here are describing what they experienced. And it doesn't feel for me like it is linked to skin color.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#263

Post by xienze »

commandlinefan wrote: post #237
xienze wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!"

> by definition are the absolute best of the best. I think that's probably true - the people who can claw their way through the H1B process are probably among the best India has to offer. I don't believe that that's entirely why management loves them, though. The fact that they work 12-15 hours a day, 7 days a week, in crowded, noisy open offices without ever complaining since they're under constant fear of being fir…

Right, but again I think they end up drawing incorrect conclusions about the state of Indian engineers in general based on what they see with their H1-Bs.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#264

Post by Fellshard »

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…

A key insight is less that all Indian devs are bad, and more that they tend to be called in by companies who are incapable of knowing whether they are doing good or bad. So when a competent team comes in and sees an Indian team that has operated incompetently, things get pretty nasty pretty fast.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#265

Post by jmartrican »

I have a theory that a certain percentage of any given population can do good engineering or IT in general. The US and India are pushing up against those limits. This leads to recruiting people without the lust or mental capabilities to do said work. This leads to shoddy output for the customers hiring the tail end of the bunch... a very long tail because the demand is so high.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#266

Post by boubiyeah »

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.

Seems common in Asia. I had the same experience in cambodia.

One example:

- I was very, very sick (Traveler's diarrhea) and we were about to embark for a 5 hours minivan trip with a guy without a driving license.

- 5 minutes before departure, I ask the organizer "do you have a vomit bag?"

- "Yes"

- I wait around a bit, but he carries on with his work and just ignore me

- "Sorry, did you have a bag, any bag? maybe a plastic bag, as I'm sick"

- "Yes"

- Now it's 30s before departure and I get pretty stressed as I have nothing should I need to throw up. So I ask him again, and he actually get pretty mad (with that asian "must not lose face" style though) and ignore me because I insisted and didn't just drop the issue (I didn't know what was going on at the time ...)

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#267

Post by kamaal »

Alterlife wrote: post #256
tome wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>>Is there some kind of magic that makes engineers better when you take them out of India?

Obviously no. But NRIs have an incentive to portray that image. Once you go out of the country, you have to now worry about your own interests. If you keep singing praises about your ex-countrymen they will outsource more work to India, and you the newly minted US passport holder, who has a job in the US will suffer. Or worse you might be on the path to receive a GC and may have to restart the process if you lose your job due to outsourcing.

Please note, everyone protects their own interests.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#268

Post by rcxdude »

billfruit wrote: post #189
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…

But in todays world, is not manufacturing anything an issue? Does UK manufacture even a safety pin, and they seem to be doing ok, by and by, focusing on services, financial businesses, licencing and IP etc..

The UK has a fair amount of high-tech manufacturing (In terms of value, the manufacturing industry in the UK is bigger than it's ever been). Things like MRI machines, jet engines, etc are all manufactured here.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#269

Post by parthdesai »

Alterlife wrote: post #256
tome wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are in India, and you exactly know what OP meant. He meant tons of people working in TCS/Infosys/Wipro where majority of them are bad engineers.

There are a lot of extremely talented devs working in India; at Google, Microsoft and all the start ups in Banglore and Hyderabad, but unfortunately there are more people working in those IT industries and thus skews the perception.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#270

Post by ksk »

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…

Everytime I hear this I fail to see how it makes any sense. Either (1) All the firms hiring them are idiots and are unable to judge competency and continue falling for the "scam" every year, year after year on every project, with every company. (2) Your propositions are incorrect. They do have good engineers and they do end up doing good work.
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