>>with no innovation and nothing to offer other than questionable rate savings.
Most of the big IT services firms have very elaborate and very active community of people who innovate all the time. In fact if you are working with any moderately big outsourcing firm, they will likely have training programs for nearly all trending technologies out there. There are local in-company LUG groups, all kinds of technology interests groups, even labs who work on core CS research. You just don't hear about them, because unlike the product folks they don't blog every second minute about how great they are. You will be surprised by the sheer depth and diverse range of areas people are working in these companies.
>>Remember all those schools that promised to turn anyone with or without ...
This has been happening in India from probably 1980's or may be even since the independence. That doesn't change anything. India is a place where people will do anything, and I actually mean anything for opportunities. This might look strange to a lot of people. But there are many of us, for whom merely getting a foot in the door means bailing out of a few generations of misery. There fore people will do anything to first get some education, once done anything for a job. Once in a job anything to get a good life. Its not odd, for people to work crazy hours their all life just to get a decent life for themselves and their kids. People in the west may call lack of sleep as spoiling health or whatever, here its almost a virtue.
>>With about 12 hours difference with Pacific Time there is simply no reasonable time for you to talk to your team in India. When they are finishing their work day you are not even ready to start, and when you are ready to leave office they are not anywhere to be found.
In early part of my career, I've slept in the office dorm for days in stretch only because I had take status calls from UK/US. I know innumerable amount of people who still do. Any company with a reasonable brand, and a good vein of professionalism will do. It all depends on whom you are doing business with.
>>Employees in India are extremely difficult to motivate. You’ll notice that weeks and months go by with very little progress being made. Indian outsourcing employees seem to have a natural talent for working hard while producing little.
If anything this is probably the most wrong statement in the entire blog post. In IT services companies you will run into projects which are basically 'mission impossible'. For almost negligible budgets, you will be pushing 18 hr work days to achieve almost the impossible. Most of the them succeed, a few fail. There are instances where people will be up all the night because some UAT needs to be done, or because a regression testing needs to be finished. Again continue to work the very next day to fix a few bugs and get stuff shipped only to be asked to be available that same night for a status check call, I've seen people do this kind of stuff for months. I've seen people burn out, get kidney stones, develop blood pressure related ailments, lose weight drastically- All kinds of crap because over the past year they just have been working like machines. Amidst all this some projects do fail, but its rarely because people are lazy.