Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#71

Post by dman » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:00 AM UTC

psychotik wrote: post #9

Based on previous experience working with an outsourcing firm in India, and on what I know/hear from friends back home, here's what I've observed: - Although the raw number of 'programmers' in India is large, the percentage of good programmers is smaller than that in the US (anecdotal, as observed by me over ~10 years). So essentially, you get what you pay for because the good programmers can command (and deserve) sa…

au contraire - the average Indian firm I have had an experience with spends far more time, money and effort training their employees than employers here in the US. I say that as someone who has worked in India for a couple of years and who has been working in the US for about 5 years now. US companies that I have worked with largely expect the employee to pick up tech skills in their own time.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#72

Post by ori_b » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:00 AM UTC

Duff wrote: post #60

compay wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of companies are looking to build simple, mainstream projects. For example "add a shopping cart to my site." Those are easy projects for outsourcing. If the client is looking to do something that has never been done before, then outsourcing may not be the best idea.

I think that's his point. Outsourcing doesn't eliminate your responsibility as a customer to participate in the development process -- it just shifts part of the labor to another entity. Telling an outsourcer "do X for me", where X isn't a well defined thing (ie. run a warehouse, manage windows servers, etc) is going to be a disaster. What does "add a shopping cart of my site" mean? Do you want to figure out sales ta…

Any developer worth their salt would come back with those questions, and work with you to hammer out a spec that they know how to implement.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#73

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:11 AM UTC

muzz wrote: post #65

mksreddy wrote: post #11

Decent Indian Outsourcing Companies charge 50$/hrs. Authors friend was willing to pay 12$/hr and he got what he payed for. Outsourcing or not, if you want cheap, you will get cheap.

The whole point of outsourcing is to get something done at lower cost. If $50/hr isn't significantly lower than what it would cost here (including factoring in the intangible costs such as communication time, etc) then outsourcing would no longer be compelling.

[deleted]

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#74

Post by abalone » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:13 AM UTC

smg wrote: post #52

Look around you and you will find that most American companies hire lots of Indians as programmers. Do you think that the guys who ended up coming to America suddenly transmogrified in to competent programmers during their flight across the ocean? Do you think that those Indian engineers who decided to stay back and work in India are any less competent than the ones who took the flight? Having worked in both India an…

The problem is the outsourcing model, not nationality. You could outsource to a company of great programmers in Romania or France and still have the same problems of being overbilled for hours and lacking clarity of product vision. You could hire those same programmers directly and move them into your office and have a better chance of overcoming those problems. Heck, you face similar problems with law and PR firms in your own city. The problem is in thinking the hourly savings are worth dealing with overbilling and poor vision sync.. The more complex and dynamic the project, the more worth it to go with in house development.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#75

Post by jplarson » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:13 AM UTC

The author here, great conversation, gang.

To be clear, I don't mean to dump on India specifically, but rather offer up a narrative that counters the notion of overseas talent being an insurmountable threat. This missive applies equally well to any offshore outsourcing, but I agree that generality gets lost. andrewfelix's suggested title "Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Bad Programmers" is good but doesn't quite hit it: "Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Outsourced Programmers" perhaps captures my intended message the best.

This is about insights I've gained from "coming late to the party": projects that first went for implementation overseas, and which I subsequently got to clean up or improve upon. Much like many of you are saying, I found it refreshing [within the context of the "threat" of outsourcing] to experience that programming talent is indeed the primary factor in winning development jobs, with solid communication ability (aided by proximity) a close second.

I don't know that everyone has the benefit of that realization born of seeing firsthand how several such projects turn out (I didn't--out of school in '03 a popular narrative was that programming jobs are vanishing and there's nothing you can do about it). Calling out the myth of cheap overseas programming I reckon can be useful to both programmers (encouragement) and decision makers (insightful warning).

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#76

Post by beachgeek » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:15 AM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #53

Here's why you should feel threatened by programmers in India. I recently hired a guy over there to work for our startup. He's smart and he gets things done. He's still a little green, but overall he adds a lot of value to our company. He's just as good as anyone I would have found in the US. And after we exit/die, the company he starts might be competing with yours. India has a billion people, 10's of millions of co…

Except that he won't. There seems to be a strong societal and cultural pressure working against people that want to go into business for themselves.

My Dad thinks I'm a bonehead for spending my time at startups and such even though I've tried explaining how working at a large corporation can suck your soul out. I'm pretty sure its not just my Dad and immediate family.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#77

Post by idoh » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:16 AM UTC

As a product manager for the last 6 years, I've had the opportunity to work for outsourced teams in India, Romania, and Ukraine. I've become really good at managing remote teams, and it can work out really really well. What I write below is based on single data points in each country...

India: I didn't like working with the Indian team. They had the tendency to be overly literal and "by the book" - the book being whatever tech stack they knew. They wouldn't ask questions or push back on things, and the result was crap.

Romanian and Ukrainian teams: did / doing an excellent job. We were able to get them at $40-50 an hour, and they are every bit as good and productive as local teams. I sometimes feel like I like working with outsourced teams better than local teams, because the relationship is straight-up business. I have to make sure that everything I ask for is really strong and really helps the business because I'm very aware of the costs involved.

Having said that, it is important to have a couple things: have someone local who can look over the code and be a man on the inside, to make sure everything a PM can't see is to the standard, having a good project manager of the remote team, and have someone who manages the whole thing who knows how to do it.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#78

Post by trussi » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:20 AM UTC

ccc3 wrote: post #22

If the author were writing in the late 60's he could have titled a similar piece: Why GM will never feel threatened by Toyota

Agreed.

Based on lots of experience dealing with off-shore developers, the problem has always been communication.

Once a company figures out how to properly communicate the right level of detail, outsourcing becomes a significant force.

The opportunity gap of $15/hr versus $50/hr is too great to ignore.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#79

Post by omouse » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:20 AM UTC

I'd feel more threatened by incompetent management and by manegement that sees workers as replaceable things. The bottom of the barrell programmers that are hired could be much better if there were training programs and they wouldn't be undercutting everyone's salary/wages because they'd be more educated and see that workers deserve more payment for their work.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#80

Post by beachgeek » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:20 AM UTC

tsunamifury wrote: post #54

This post is so similar to my current situation I checked the authors connections to see if he was talking me myself and my partner. I am a designer with little code experience who tried to spec and design an app using Indian developers. Needless to say its been a disaster and many months and hours paid later we have a inefficient, poorly coded app which likely needs to be rebuilt with an American team.

You'll still need to figure out how to spec your project.

Otherwise in your next iteration you'll still have an inefficient poorly coded app, only you would have spent 3X times more money getting there.