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The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

story.californiasunday.com

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Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#351

Post by nstart »

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…

>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.

And that right there is the issue. Happens in Sri Lanka as well although to a lesser extent (smaller population). The companies that have been most prolific in outsourcing are the ones who are responsible for the current stereotyping of India's IT industry.

Those same companies are also the ones bidding with lowest costs in order to win more contracts. I submit virtusa as exhibit A where India and Sri Lanka are battling each other for contracts and India generally being able to offer lower rates.

Which then feeds back into how those projects actually get completed, and as per the quote and the article, it involves 18 hour workdays 6-7 days a week with poor compensation against 8 hour work days. And this ends up churning out humans who know their worth and know what jobs they can get now that they've got that first job on the CV, aka the foot through the door.

This then restarts the cycle where companies have to complete projects and keep bidding on new projects to maintain the hired workforce and on and on and lower and lower it goes.

This part of the industry has been a shit show for a while. I will be sad for the people who lose jobs. No one deserves that unless they were knowingly malicious. At the same time, the software industry has to mature, and I don't see how this business models will be sustained with such maturity.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#352

Post by Alterlife »

loco5niner wrote: post #343
Alterlife wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ...and as one of them incompetent developers in India, I feel the need to defend myself. Is there a typo (or 2) in here somewhere?

I substituted 'them' for 'those'. According to the interweb, it's grammatically acceptable in informal English.

Similar to saying "Look at them eyes" or "One of them developers will get to it eventually".

ref: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/them

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#353

Post by beart »

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 didn't realize this behavior was so common but I have noticed it in a few Indian tech people I have worked with state-side. Extremely frustrating when the answer to "Do you understand what you need to do now?" is "yes" then a few hours later you find them standing around looking confused. I had assumed it was a language barrier thing.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#354

Post by dredmorbius »

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.

Brain drain.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#355

Post by option_greek »

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.

I never quite understood this concept of loyalty or commitment to a business entity. You might interview the candidate and take it to the final stage with lot of effort but at the end of the day, the candidate is offered the job by the business entity and not personally by the interviewer. I don't see why the relationship should go beyond the applicable law of the land.

Of course, once the candidate joins the company, regular interpersonal concepts between employees that involve loyalty and commitment can be pursued.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#356

Post by mieseratte »

mkovji wrote: post #299
mieseratte wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not talking about hiring some interns and giving them room to fail here. If I hire your firm and you tell me you can achieve an objective, then I spend money and come to find out you can't and you knew you couldn't, you've defrauded me. If I ask if you can perform a task and you tell me you know how, then I find out you have no idea, you've lied to me. I'll take a "No, but I can figure it out" any day of the we…

Some people assume it is a yes when some one says no, but i can figure it out. Whose to blame here?

> Some people assume it is a yes when some one says no, but i can figure it out. Whose to blame here?

The point is that pretending to know does not open up the conversation of risk and reward, whereas "No, but I can figure it out" can and typically will. If, at that point, the manager drops the ball by not making sure the risk / reward profile is correct then it is no longer on the engineer.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#357

Post by ksk »

osrec wrote: post #312
ksk wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They will generally aim to get contractual sign off from business-focused people that know little about IT. In that case any IT consultancy could fool those people. If a US consulting firm is chosen, how could anyone make the claim that they were chosen on merit? I know quite a few "business-focused" people. It is not so easy to fool them even if IT is not their core competency. Businesses typically will include sev…

Every large organisation I've been in operates in silos, and these firms hide within these silos. Also, these firms have a bad reputation - everyone in banking knows it, yet they are still employed because they're cheap and let you add bodies to the shop floor when funding is squeezed. That makes managers look powerful with big empires, which helps getting promoted. So it's not all about code quality or productivity…

Okay, lets assume that this is happening. I would hope that the person harming their own business by willfully engaging with an incompetent third party is the one at fault here.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#358

Post by reaperducer »

ksk wrote: post #298
osrec wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pick their targets very carefully. They will generally aim to get contractual sign off from business-focused people that know little about IT. They'll promise them the world at a fraction of the cost of competitors, and the business guys will present a healthy set of cost savings to their board. Once the customer is fully locked in, they will fail to deliver on a few of those promises. Then the excuses start. Th…

>They will generally aim to get contractual sign off from business-focused people that know little about IT. In that case any IT consultancy could fool those people. If a US consulting firm is chosen, how could anyone make the claim that they were chosen on merit? I know quite a few "business-focused" people. It is not so easy to fool them even if IT is not their core competency. Businesses typically will include sev…

In that case any IT consultancy could fool those people. If a US consulting firm is chosen, how could anyone make the claim that they were chosen on merit?

If it's a US firm, then there can be financial and legal repercussions. Good luck going after a firm in India.

Re: The end of India’s ‘IT miracle’?

#360

Post by koolhead17 »

Clubber wrote: post #212
koolhead17 wrote: post #150

We have a saying here in India: "You pay peanuts, you hire donkeys". So a lot many comments in the thread is either generalization or a confirmation bias. The India I know and software developers I know of are no less either in dream or dedication from peers in Silicon Valley or any other part of developed world. :)

Yes, this is essentially what I've witnessed. I went to a very exclusive private high school in the US and the students from India there were top notch. Same in college. This was in the 90s. In the 2000s, our 2nd DBA at a very well known company was from India and he was top notch as well. I think what happened is some not so ethical business people in India decided to make money off the good reputations of the India…

Indeed. With a bias and FUD, it is too easy to generalize anything.
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