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50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

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Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#111

Anyone who's read outsourced code can vouch for the similar QC problems. I work with a lot of great Indian software developers; none of them worked IN India itself; they tend to be the ones that are skilled enough to quickly realize they're able to command massively higher wages by leaving India. India, despite it's reputation as a software outsourcing location has never been able to produce exportable quality beside…

> There are no cars or electronics, or chip fabs in this country.

This is only partially true.

India has factories that provide inter-mediate parts required for creating final product. For example, a car needs axles, engine, dashboard plastics, alloy for body, brakes and electronics. You are more likely to find an Indian name in top-10 vendors for above parts sorted by marketshare. With the exception of engine, transmission, they have expanded.

What it does lack is tack of exporting finished products such as iPhone or smartphone or cars or jets. And I think this will be a long process. Someone with deep pockets like Apple is willing to bet and here we are.

Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Forge

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#112

This is like comparing the code written by an experienced 20 year veteran to the code written by a fresh graduate. Give it time, India will catch up. Lot of people in the comments taking a dig at the work ethic of people in India when most of them will cry a river if asked by their employer to RTO 2 days a week.

Seriously, it has become a pattern now in every thread related to India. Really shows how HN techies are clueless about real world trends and live in their small bubbles.

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#113

Anyone who's read outsourced code can vouch for the similar QC problems. I work with a lot of great Indian software developers; none of them worked IN India itself; they tend to be the ones that are skilled enough to quickly realize they're able to command massively higher wages by leaving India. India, despite it's reputation as a software outsourcing location has never been able to produce exportable quality beside…

They've done well in the pharma industry recently, but it's their one major success.

This is ironic considering just this last month there was a controversy over their pharmaceutical standards with multiple children dying from over the counter medicine. They haven’t done well and there’s constant issues with Indian “genetics” not actually delivering the amount of a given medicine claimed. There’s also almost no recourse one can take here.

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#114
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've heard, China also used to be like that, sending out cheap samples that didn't meet the specification, and the manufacturers there would tell you that they'd do it correctly next time, just for the same thing to happen again. But eventually they were able to do a good job. Give it time, Indian manufacturing is simply not as advanced as China's right now but it will be if enough investment is made.

It's not about being advanced. It's about keeping promises & being honest. It might take a whole generation to fix this.

This remark applies to all IT outsourcing companies: more billable hours. Love to see how a Chinese IT outsourcing company fares in contrast with TCS, Wipro, Infosys of the world.

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#115
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst I could say about the India based teams I've worked with is that some were to-the-letter to a fault. Anything not explicitly stated was skipped, where you'd typically expect a dev to fill in the unstated but obvious things that you only discover while working a task. But that was at Amazon. At my current gig, the India based teams are great. Not quite up to the standards of the US teams, but I'm sure they'r…

You're willing to throw amazon under the bus, but what company are you at now?

I work at Mercedes-Benz. I'm not secret about it, I just don't feel as comfortable being noisy about current experiences with their name attached, as I do things from several years ago. I don't know that that's necessarily a logical reason to make a distinction.

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#116
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am an entrepreneur & a small business owner in India. I did a small manufacturing in China & was blown away by their professionalism. The article mentions - `Chinese suppliers had a totally different attitude, aiming to exceed the Cupertino company’s expectations` - this is so true. This varies massively from one CM to the next. If you can get your foot in the door at the higher tier CMs, the professionalism and…

Not my experience. I was working on my clothing startup with initial investment of about ~$30,000 USD. INDIA - Met at least 12-15 manufactures in India (medium to large scale, $1m ARR to $50m ARR). Only a 1-2 of these had any catalogs or samples of different fabric compositions. Most wanted an advance to kick-start the process. Sampling was a total failure with three of these. CHINA - Contacted about 10 manufactures…

Surprising twist at the end there. How did the professionalism and quality in Peru compare to the other places?

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#117

Anyone who's read outsourced code can vouch for the similar QC problems. I work with a lot of great Indian software developers; none of them worked IN India itself; they tend to be the ones that are skilled enough to quickly realize they're able to command massively higher wages by leaving India. India, despite it's reputation as a software outsourcing location has never been able to produce exportable quality beside…

50% rejection rate sounds incredibly high to me. I'm not sure the code shipped by the offshored programmers I've interacted with built 50% of the time. Something like 90% of "software engineers" in the country are considered unfit for software engineering [0] [1] [0] https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/ [1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/jobs/only-6-of-those-pa...

Yeah my experience has been abysmal. Now I have met engineers in the states from India who were some of the most brilliant people I’ve met, but the companies I’ve been at that offshored drove me crazy. Time complexity and DRY were things these individuals had never considered worthy of their time. These weren’t all cheap hires either: some of them were senior engineers making six figures

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#118
post #73

"It’s likely that similar issues will arise with new Apple suppliers in other countries too." Not at all Apple. Move to Vietnam and you can duplicate the success you have in China. Indians are only good at talking a good talk.

> Indians are only good at talking a good talk.

Citation needed.

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#119

Anyone who's read outsourced code can vouch for the similar QC problems. I work with a lot of great Indian software developers; none of them worked IN India itself; they tend to be the ones that are skilled enough to quickly realize they're able to command massively higher wages by leaving India. India, despite it's reputation as a software outsourcing location has never been able to produce exportable quality beside…

I suspect that most people who have interacted with remote teams based in India, have had the same experiences. I'm honestly surprised that Apple didn't choose Vietnam or Indonesia over India.

They are moving some production to Vietnam, starting with some Macbooks:

https://www.investopedia.com/apple-moves-production-vietnam-...

I imagine once Apple is confident they will likely add more products there.

Re: 50% rejection rate for iPhone casings produced in India shows Apple’s challenge

#120
post #107
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about being advanced. It's about keeping promises & being honest. It might take a whole generation to fix this.

Parent commenter is right, China was like that. The difference is in the root cause: attitude. Whole world is full of ridiculously hard working Chinese people rising up from being an immigrants with nothing and running like the half economies of countries after 50 years.

The root cause is more than attitude.
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