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

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

#91

Post by ankeshk » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 6:16 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #18

Quote one of my past Indian coworkers: "If you pay peanuts, you hire monkeys.". Which is the chuckle worthy way of saying that eventually the markets are, all else equal, fairly efficient, and that the labor pool available at $4 an hour to bill to you at $12 an hour has systemic, pervasive competence issues which will prevent the successful completion of many projects. Anyhow, beating the usual drum: don't be a cost…

If you want to outsource to India, you need to find a company that hires super stars. Super stars in India demand a salary of Rs50,000 to Rs 100,000 a month. Which is still quite less from international point of view: its about $1000 to $2000 a month. A company hiring them will bill you a minimum of $20-30 per hour. Usually more like $40-45 per hour.

If you go with a company that is billing you less than that from India, you should know that your work will suffer because that company does not hire the best skilled coders.

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

#92

Post by yuvipanda » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 6:21 AM UTC

dman wrote: post #71

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.

It makes no difference. You will need to spend a lot of time, money and effort 'training' your employees when they are at a level where they see a C compiler tell them 'Semicolon missing - Line 19' and have absolutely no clue as to what to do with that. Or they've to call up a friend to figure out the 'difference' between * and & in C.

Source: A lot of my friends go through said 'training'. And I was that 'friend' who was called.

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

#93

Post by gnufied » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 6:26 AM UTC

jmspring wrote: post #61

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…

Population numbers play apart in this question, but any thoughts on the proportion of strong programmers that either come to the states or work for a large company in india versus those hired by the body shops? My suspicion is, if they can, an individual will opt to go where he/she can earn more/get better experience than put up with the tasks typically handed over to the job shops (WiPro, etc)...Furthermore, given t…

I am with you here. You will be hard pressed to find really good programmers in Wipro, Infosys of the world, but there are some small boutique shops who charge significantly more, but are pretty good at what they do.

I myself work from my home in Bangalore, while my company is in UK, and I get paid well. I have had offers from US before, but I am staying - because I am trying to bootstrap a product as well on the sides, which won't be possible/easy when I am in US.

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

#94

Post by combiclickwise » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 6:33 AM UTC

There is some truth to this. A long while back when I was doing projects, I got a project from a US company.

When after a week of understanding the scope, I quoted my price at around $150/hour they were shell shocked. The work was for redesigning systems that simply were not scaling (designed originally by a US company by the way). At the last minute they backtracked and demanded that since I was from India and the cost of living was much lower, I should charge them around the standard $25/hour.

I can never compete in the project game - and I dont want to anymore - because of this attitude by every single US company that I have ever interacted with!

I passed them on eventually to a $20/hour company in Delhi, even while I explained to them that none of the coders there had any experience with designing systems that scale.

There is also a tendency to feature creep the project since it is only $20/hour which amuses me and is a sure fire recipe for failure. When we ask them if they want a project manager or an architect who can work with them on architecture/ feature set selection they refuse because they cost way more than the coders.

I am not saying your experience is not true, I am just saying that given the attitude towards India, it is bound to the experience more often than not.

The non-completion of the project above could have been for many reasons... feature creeping, inability to communicate what the client wants, language differences and yes, downright bad coding. Since you were not able to clinch the project - which I believe is simply bad salesmanship, like in my case earlier - your "I told you so" rant is based on a massive leap of faith that you or any "US based" programmers could have finished the project on time, which I am simply have no reason to buy.

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

#95

Post by gnufied » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 6:39 AM UTC

beachgeek wrote: post #76

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.

Isn't that little anecdotal? Yes agreed there is, social bias against people who want to do start up. But I see many people coming up against that and starting up their own startups. Agreed majority are still sweating in IT services, but we don't expect them to do startups anyways.

In fact, If OP was able to hire a single guy who is good and works remotely, that single guy is 100% startup material (otherwise, he would have been already employed at big IT service company) and very likely to start on his own few years down the line.

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

#96

Post by beachgeek » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 6:47 AM UTC

gnufied wrote: post #95

beachgeek wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't that little anecdotal? Yes agreed there is, social bias against people who want to do start up. But I see many people coming up against that and starting up their own startups. Agreed majority are still sweating in IT services, but we don't expect them to do startups anyways. In fact, If OP was able to hire a single guy who is good and works remotely, that single guy is 100% startup material (otherwise, he woul…

Of course its anecdotal. The original article from jplarson that we are all responding to is also highly anecdotal.

But you have a good point about the OP's hire. I'm also very glad to hear youngsters are starting to do their own thing. :-)

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

#97

Post by TheRealmccoy » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 6:50 AM UTC

Very true.You would be surprised to know that even being an Indian I have so bitterly experieicned this truth that you have described. Now learning to program, so that I odnt get fooled completely next time.

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

#98

Post by travisneotyler » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 7:02 AM UTC

harichinnan wrote: post #59

This is like I paid for an iPad clone made in China and concluding that iPad's made in China are of low quality. You need to be an Apple or Google or Microsoft or you should have enough money to afford Wipro, Infosys or TCS to successfully get work done out of India.

I think you've mistaken the analogy here. China = Wipro/Infosys/TCS. Not Apple/Google/Microsoft = Wipro/Infosys/TCS

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

#99

Post by megablast » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 7:19 AM UTC

ankeshk wrote: post #91

patio11 wrote: post #18

Quote one of my past Indian coworkers: "If you pay peanuts, you hire monkeys.". Which is the chuckle worthy way of saying that eventually the markets are, all else equal, fairly efficient, and that the labor pool available at $4 an hour to bill to you at $12 an hour has systemic, pervasive competence issues which will prevent the successful completion of many projects. Anyhow, beating the usual drum: don't be a cost…

If you want to outsource to India, you need to find a company that hires super stars. Super stars in India demand a salary of Rs50,000 to Rs 100,000 a month. Which is still quite less from international point of view: its about $1000 to $2000 a month. A company hiring them will bill you a minimum of $20-30 per hour. Usually more like $40-45 per hour. If you go with a company that is billing you less than that from In…

But if you know that a company is billing more than that or more, you still can not judge the quality of the work until you start seeing results.

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

#100

Post by wnight » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 7:29 AM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #56

compay wrote: post #15

I'm a partner at a Ruby outsourcing company in Argentina. I sympathize with the author, but I think the conclusion that outsourcing doesn't work is overly broad. The crux of the problem is that working with a remote team is a very different proposition than working with people onsite - a fact that is obvious but that people generally fail to act on. Quite often at my company we're contacted by clients want to hire fo…

"Have a crystal clear idea of what you want built." Rarely have I ever worked for a company that knows this. The last company where I worked would change their mind mid-stream every couple of weeks and it added almost a year of extra time onto the final release date. It's usually not this bad, but if more companies followed this (not even just with outsourcing), there wouldn't be as many failed projects.

This is where you need to take small deliverables from what they say so that they actually get something usable at each step. It's almost impossible to have a consistent and useful goal that's years away. Expecting otherwise will just lead to disappointment.