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The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

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Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#271

Post by chappar »

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.

I am not sure how you can generalize. I would not consider it as a red flag unless the candidate in question has history of hopping too quickly. I have direct/indirect experience of being both the sides. I once left a company in couple of months because company's culture was totally different than what I expected. I have also seen a friend of mine getting fired in couple of months after joining a company because company felt he was a misfit

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#272

Post by varjag »

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.

It is common to see Chinese names in some top tier science publications coming from America. At the same time, the bulk of science coming from mainland China is junk. So there well can be some magic at work. That, or selection.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#273

Post by kamaal »

parylose wrote: post #258
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.

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 t…

>>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.

And yet nobody ever agrees to lower the 3 month notice period rule.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#274

Post by varjag »

vkatluri wrote: post #241
eriken wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Just curious, commit for how long? I have been in situations before, where I have accepted an offer, started a job and was informed 3 months later that the company mis-calculated the budgets/revenues and have to let go a bunch of people. Guess who gets let go first? The people who started the latest. Doesn't this go both ways? In this day and age in America, there's no loyalty going in either direction, employer or e…

Not entirely convinced that others' poor ethics are a justification for your own.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#275

Post by kamaal »

devdas wrote: post #211
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).

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

The sad part about India is most people who come from low income households accept any salary. Because a job and the opportunity that comes with it is more important than anything else.

Negotiations are for freshers whose father's have been paying college fees and bills. The remainder can't afford to turn down a job for these reasons.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#276

Post by kamaal »

cafard wrote: post #161
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"]

Id have a pretty bad opinion about a person who would turn down an opportunity, especially those one's that require skills than can be learned easily.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#277

Post by senthil_rajasek »

niklasd wrote: post #261
senthil_rajasek wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fro…

Thank you for agreeing on some parts of my comment.

The parent comment that I reacted to did not sound as sincere as yours. I am not assuming you or the previous commenter as white. It's not about the individual but rather my point is about the larger society, it's cultural institutions that have historically "whitewashed" the whole world. All of our experiences are colored in that sense. This needs to change. In fact, it's vital when worlds are coming together.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#278

Post by Alterlife »

parthdesai wrote: post #269
Alterlife wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hey, I don't agree with that either. In my experience, there is a normal distribution of idiots regardless of the country of origin.

A lot of my colleagues and ex colleagues either work or have worked in Infosys/Wipro/TCS at some point in their careers. And again, they didn't "magically" get worse or better when they left or joined my company (I'm in a product development company).

Wipro, Infy etc aren't able to hold quality senior technical talent because they cannot pay as much. The better senior developers leave to product development firms that pay better and have better quality work and work life balance, leaving behind newly joined junior developers who know less, but will accept what Infy/Wipro pays and work ungodly hours.

I've read that every 5 years the number of active developers doubles. That means that every 5 years 50% of the development workforce has little to no experience. In India, that 50% starter workforce is concentrated, sitting in the big consulting firms, developing their skills and getting better, and when and if they get better, they leave.

The real problem is that if you pay peanuts, you get... people willing to work for peanuts, until they can get a better job.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#279

Post by lainga »

ethbro wrote: post #175
cpmouter wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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?

>has more to do with different cultural definitions of "yes" than lying

Thus the Windows dialogues which let you choose between "Yes" and "Yes" when localised to English-India.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#280

Post by mavelikara »

megaman22 wrote: post #14

I can only hope so, after near on a decade of dealing with TCS, HCL, Cap Gemini, Cognizant, and others. I tend to get drawn in because I'm working for an ISV that makes a product. The Indian third-parties get drawn in because the real customwr has outsourced a function to them. I now have to deal with the incompetent pm on the $outsourced side, instead of the competent, reasonable pm on the real customer. And eight l…

Do you sell to local government or defense contractors? How has your experience been with them?

Also, if your customer is smart and still outsource to incompetent folks, they aren't too smart - are they? Either that or they are too smart to deal with you, and have handed over the relationship with similarly capable folks.

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