121–130 of 143 posts
Please change the racist title. Racism towards programmers from India is a problem and you're contributing to it.
I am from India and let me say you don't have to feel threatened by bad programmers in India. The problem with posts like these is they make massive generalizations which are not true. Not every body here is a genius and not everybody here is an idiot. I have worked in extremely challenging projects which were billed for dirt cheap prices. Considering the cost at which finished the projects it was almost like we were…
Even some of the largest consultancys here in the UK will get grads from non tech background, send them on a few Java cources and hire them out at £1000 a day.
With developers, you get what you pay for. Good developers in India cost almost as much as good developers elsewhere, and the small cost saving is eaten up by the losses due to distance and culture.
- Not adequate training of these guys. I tried to convince the powers to send someone local over there for 6+ months to get these guys up to speed and ship shape but the management feeling was a good set of written instruction will do the job. Sorry, it wont for work roles of any complexity.
- Being remote and in different timezones created lags in turning work over that had to be looked at at both ends. Also they didn't all see the bigger picture or side issues which are important to help understand motivations and then create solutions and value ad in many project as they just had the main brief.
- Cultural differences with Indians I found is they don't like to say they don't know how to do something. I think this is a loss of face not to know or perhaps they are just worried about keeping their jobs. So often if you give them a project and they don't know how to do, they will do something else they do know how to do just to show you they were working. I kid you not... it was really frustrating finding out a week later they didn't know how to do a job so decided to make a new database instead because they could do that. It created problems a bunch of times.
Overall in my experience I found outsourcing is good for jobs where you have clear "A,B,C,D" instructions but for jobs that had to go from A - D and they figure out B and C, your better off keeping this locally. But that said I'm not adverse to outsourcing more complex work as these guys are generally smart and highly motivated. I think the problems I had could have been fixed by rotating local people in a reasonable ratio to the Indian group to keep culture aligned and maintain personal contact.
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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 $40-45 per hour. If you go with a company that is billing you less than that from In…
It is less from Western point of view not from international. I'm sure that in Latin America and Eastern Europe prices are quite similar and time zone differences are more acceptable. India lose in this price range because of cultural differences as well. Usually those are small details like matching Christian and/or international holidays (therefore no conflicting days off) but sum of those details are really signif…
But they're having trouble filling positions at their salaries, most decent programmers here earn more than U$ 1.000 (I make U$ 1.500 myself, and want to make at least twice that, so I'm about to start my own company).
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> Have a crystal clear idea of what you want built. > Have frequent and early deliverable dates. Both of these things are extremely difficult (if not impossible) for experienced software consultancies to know up front, let alone the crowd looking to outsource. More importantly both figuring out what to build and knowing when those things are deliverable have, in my experience, required the involvement and input of th…
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.
Bingo. This is why you need in-house dev talent for creating bespoke applications.
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…
OK, the cost of living is cheaper in India than it is in the West. Thats fine. However, if that means that they are charging 25% of the minimum you would expect to pay you have to ask why it is THAT cheap.
Often the difference in cost is a linguistic barrier and copy and paste programming.
I think India can really compete by charging 60-75% of what a project would cost in the West and providing the work to meet those expectations.
If you are going to India for a bargain though you are more than likely going to get burned.
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Spot on. My 10 years’ experience in outsourcing industry is similar[0]. I think of this as another instance of bias against Indian outsourcing. I have seen many instances during my career which seems to indicate that pricing do not correlate with performance. [0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3182996
Your view could also be interpreted as being biased against US based developers (what you refer to as 'Native') and the racism you perceive them to be exhibiting.
Meme against Indian is "Indians are taking our jobs by unfair means like working below sustaintable rates".Meme by Indians is "This guy is here to boss us around and confuse us just because he happens to be on the client's payroll."
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.
The issue is not whether the average Indian programmer is as good as an average American programmer. My guesstimate is that they aren't. The issue is whether out of a billion people, you can find quite a few competitive ones. The answer is that you can.