The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’? • Hacker News Board

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#321

Post by reacharavindh » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 4:33 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #295

reacharavindh wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hit a vein of deep true thought. I can share my personal experience that can help exemplify your point. Disclaimer: Personal experience. Not saying this is the case foe everyone. My first job was to work for one of the biggest Indian outsourcing companies. Soon after joining, I realized that their business model has nothing to do with real engineering work or genuine solutions to problems. They were essentially l…

>>Saying No is not the engineer's prerogative here. Outsourcing or no outsourcing, if someone walked up to me and said no to doing something in software team setting, I will likely be finding somebody else to do the job. And yes, I will likely never ask that person for doing anything ever again. Its not as simple as you make it to be. In this age and era, quitting is a sure sign of a loser. >>On the other hand, sever…

I'm amazed by the negativity and prejudice in your response.

>> Outsourcing or no outsourcing, if someone walked up to me and said no to doing something in software team setting, I will likely be finding somebody else to do the job. And yes, I will likely never ask that person for doing anything ever again.

Precisely why I said - "Saying No is not the engineer's prerogative here." in the context of a developing world. You just explained my words :-)

>> For saying NO? Doing nothing and saying NO requires 'true passion and creativity', while doing what it takes to achieve the task doesn't?

I said - "Engineers working for product companies where they get paid and recognised for good product instead of outsourcing companies show true passion and creativity." Somehow you connect it to saying NO?

>> These things are called requirements documents, and yes you are supposed to code what the requirements say.

Although I could have explicitly said it was not a requirements doc, I hoped that you'd give me the benefit of doubt that I wouldn't ramble about a basic software engineering artefact. In this case, it was a Word doc with variable names(not variable naming conventions), loop variables, and pretty much the entire code within quotes. That is what I was pissed about. The doc screamed - "I don't want you to think, just be a monkey and do this."

>> Please. Passport tourism among Indians is now well known. Also bad mouthing your former employers and colleagues isn't exactly how you go about justifying other reasons to move out of the country.

So, you call going to another country for studies "Passport tourism"? I sure am very happy that I'm not as close-minded to think like that. I pursued what I wanted to study, and what I wanted to do with my career. For the record, I still proudly hold my Indian passport.

Living outside your home country, and exploring other cultures opens one's mind like no other. Please give it some thought.

>> Bad mouthing former employers...

Seriously? I was contextually explaining my personal case about what I didn't like, to provide an example of things that happen at an outsourcing setup. So, you think one should never speak of what happens at work and be "loyal" to companies? Welcome to the open world of discussions and improving for the better.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#322

Post by PurpleBoxDragon » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

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 would expect most developers to do the same thing if the offer was good enough, but I suspect they would be far less open to mention it. I'm assuming this is just a difference in cultural knowledge of how it looks. They might have been thinking of it as social proof of desirability where as more local developers are aware that culturally you are supposed to pretend to be loyal to the company.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#323

Post by mkovji » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #146

kemiller2002 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first became a manager, I had this really amazing mentor that explained to me a lot of the quirks of multiculturalism. I consider myself at least somewhat versed in other cultures, but I quickly learned there was a lot I didn't know about the mannerisms of people from India, China, Russia, etc. What I find sad, is that there are a lot of people in positions of power that either have no idea (or don't care) tha…

In my travels, I learned very quickly not to let that bother me, or else I would have gone nuts. I mean, the number of times somebody acted like I was an insane person because I started to eat X food with my hands instead of silverware, or silverware instead of hands. ("But in the last country I was in...!") Fact is, you're the one choosing to be aware of and experience different cultures and travel, but they're not…

every foreigner is always a wierdo, thats wat makes this world so much fun and exciting.

foreigner by nation or state or city or apartment or school.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#324

Post by theyinwhy » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 4:36 PM UTC

Imho both US-americans and Indians tend to oversell themselves to a degree of perversion.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#325

Post by throwaway1414 » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 4:36 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #260

throwaway1414 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

You mean if someone decides to work for Amazon instead of Infosys, it is a bad decision? If you really believe that you sound like one of those thousands of employees from the likes of services companies like Cognizant or dated product companies (looking at you Cisco and Oracle) who want to justify it to themselves and others that they are in a place as good as any FANG and there is no good reason to work for FANG. This sounds like crying sour grapes. Sorry to burst your bubble, but things are really really that much better in FANG than the Ciscos and Oracles and Cognizants.

I began my career in the services industry. Later I have worked for two FANGs for two years each. I quit them not because the work was bad. The work was damn good. I quit because I got a better job with a better salary and easier working hours.

And what's with this silly comparison of SREs at Google with programmers of Cognizant? Why compare SREs with programmers? That's comparing apples to oranges!

Compare apples to apples. A programmer at Google or Amazon is going to be doing far more interesting work than a programmer at Cognizant. A programmer at Google or Amazon is going to be far more skilled than a programmer at Cognizant. Likewise for a QA at Google vs. a QA at Cognizant. Likewise for an SRE at Google vs. an SRE at Cognizant.

If someone who wants to be a programmer chooses to be an SRE instead, then the choice of profession, not the choice of the company, is the problem here.

And SREs are not some kind of low class work that you seem to believe in. If you really think a programmer at Cognizant is somehow a better job at SRE at Google, please come out of this service industry mentality where one kind of work has to be better than another. One is not better than another. They are just different. They require different skill sets. A lot of very smart people I know are SREs. They enjoy the thrill of cutting through the complexity of network topology, load balancers, DNS, container orchestration, system performance, hardware and software issues to resolve puzzling issues when services go down.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#326

Post by prajjwal » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

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.

That basically hits the nail on the head, but it's not the full extent of it. We have ["Jugaad" culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad), where we actually take pride in doing things that would be labeled outright fraud in a lot of places.

I also can't see how its changing, I've become rather cynical from having to deal with it constantly. I sure hope you're right, though.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#327

Post by mindentropy » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 4:39 PM UTC

Alterlife wrote: post #278

parthdesai wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>(I'm in a product development company). >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.

Do you think the work in product development companies are any better? They just get paid more. Most of the US captives in India will never send their most important product line to India. It is just maintenance of a product line which will be phased out. Most of the big semiconductor companies, networking companies are like this. Most of these companies hire contractors from the companies that you mentioned. They would have some stupid 8-10 levels of interviews to show that they are doing some serious work. After joining it would be a miracle if you are working on some sensible code base.

In fact I have personally seen that some of the work which these service companies are genuinely good which the product companies will never get. Unfortunately it gets ruined by the horrible developers and management there.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#328

Post by PurpleBoxDragon » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

eriken wrote: post #223

matz1 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Any commitment is only until a better offer comes along. Better is a bit loosely defined as there is a cost of burning the bridge with you by jumping (be that a day after accepting or after 5 years of working there), but at the end of the day there this is a business relationship and the extent of our obligations are only spelled out based on any contract we have signed, and our social obligations only extend to the extent that the cost of violating the social obligation outweighs the benefit. Any employee who doesn't see the other side as doing the same is eventually going to get burned by it.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#329

Post by Alterlife » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

osrec wrote: post #294

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.

Please don't feel insulted. It's merely a general observation relating to culture in certain geographies, not to be applied to you specifically. For example, an Indian in India may not think twice before throwing their food wrapper on the road side, but would probably never do that when on holiday in London (if they did, society or police would reprimand them for it and correct their action). Similarly in tech, certa…

I didn't mean to single you or anyone else out. I've seen this sentiment echoed in multiple online forums and as one of them incompetent developers in India, I feel the need to defend myself.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#330

Post by throwaway1414 » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

pritambaral wrote: post #316

throwaway1414 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most jobs are in those companies in Bangalore are in QA/SRE/SysAdmin area. Came here to record my anecdotal data and say that this comment is blatantly false and very misleading. Let us take FANG one by one. Facebook: There is very little QA in the Hyderabad office of Facebook. Most of the work is in software development area. Amazon: Are you kidding me? Many high profile projects of Amazon such as Amazon Prime and…

> Are you kidding me? Many high profile projects of Amazon such as Amazon Prime and Amazon Pay I'm sorry, but those are not "high-profile projects of Amazon". Some things in the AWS roster are. Prime Video and Prime Music are shoddy technical work. The former refuses to play movies on HD on Linux, and their technical support has no idea why, instead spouting bullshit like "Oh, Adobe Flash does not support Linux". The…

It's amazing to see how some people seem to be sitting on a high horse here and thinking that a HTML5 music player issue is somehow indicative of the work going on behind the scenes.

Granted there are issues in Prime (Which software does not? Either people bitch about a software product or nobody uses it) but the context of the discussion here was comparison between the likes of Amazon and the likes of Cognizant. Tell me which Cognizant or Wipro can execute something like Prime Video in Bangalore and take it to market like Amazon has with even half as much quality?

What is the alternative you are hinting at? That someone should not work for Amazon and work on developing and improving their Prime product just because it has got issues and instead go develop a AJAX-based chat application that does not work on anything other than IE in Cognizant?

Why do you think Amazon pays 4 times the salary Cognizant pays its employees? Because developing something like Amazon Prime at the scale Amazon works at is hard. There are people who enjoy working on such hard problems even if the solution is not perfect.