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IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

nytimes.com

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Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#131

Post by github-cat »

jedberg wrote: post #125
wehadfun wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been a close observer of code coming from India. I think the majority of the problems are because of vague, incomplete, and wrong requirements coming from the company that hired them. One company sent over someone. The guy spent a month talking to management, employees, probably the janitor and figured out what we actually wanted and the resulting code was decent.

Maybe it was just the firm I worked with, but they got the same requirements doc that the software was eventually written against using an American outsource firm. The Indian firm wanted requirements so detailed that I had to tell them where to put the for loops and while loops. It was faster to just write the code myself than explain such easy details.

Same experience here

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#132

Post by screye »

jgalt212 wrote: post #90
samfisher83 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the arbitrage is going to start failing. The housing is insanely expensive in India especially relative to the salaries. At some point most of the people who can leave will leave, because its hard to live there with the salaries they are are getting. You can make more in other countries and the housing difference would not even be that much different.

> its hard to live there with the salaries they are are getting hmm, sounds just like SF or NYC.

I'd say worse. IBM employees in India get paid around 500,000 rupees in India. A non-cramped 2 bedroom apartment in a decent area in the big cities (Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi ) will set you back 10,000,000 rupees easily.

That is 20 times their salary. I'd say that's a higher multiplier per unit salary, than for the US. Also note that living just outside the city (as people in the US do) isn't always an option, unless you are up for a 2+2 hour commute daily.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#133

Post by R_haterade »

samstave wrote: post #67
burger_moon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 straight quarters (from Arpil this year) of revenue decline would tell me IBM has problems, though they may have nothing to do with where they source the labor from. http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-revenue-decline-20-straig...

so should one be shorting the stock???

No, the margin interest will eat you alive.

It's a decline, nowhere near a collapse. IBM still has a tremendous amount of good will.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#134

Post by pjmlp »

timthelion wrote: post #5

I think that this is a good example of how racism, conscious and unconscious is making us worse at predicting the future. Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code and Indian accents. The idea of Indians actually working innovative jobs seemed laughable to many Americans. But there wasn't actually strong evidence that Indians were less good at doing cutting edge research. This…

There are quite a few European consultancy companies that are actually owned by Indian multi-nationals.

They don't poach devs, rather acquire a full development unit.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#135

Post by mikestew »

saimiam wrote: post #80
samstave wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am beginning to think that out-sourcing ones-self is a better and better idea...

Meaning?

Collect a U. S. salary while shipping the actual work to a less expensive worker elsewhere. Just like companies do, only on an individual basis. I believe it has actually been done (then the person got caught and fired, IIRC).

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#136

Post by majewsky »

southphillyman wrote: post #21

It's a multinational corporation, I don't see a problem with it on a surface level since they have no real obligation to maintain some arbitrary percentage of American workers. The current climate of companies needing to continually push down cost to compete is the new normal and there will be various ramifications as further globalization opens up more cost saving opportunities. Maybe it will hit a turning point whe…

> The current climate of companies needing to continually push down cost to compete is the new normal

In which reality is that a "new normal"? Companies have always been about profit maximization. The only thing that's changed is that we let them get away with more than we used to.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#137

Post by gourabmi »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #109
snambi wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are not aware of cost of living in places like Bangalore. The India real estate is expensive for the folks living in Silicon Valley. It is cheaper to buy real estate in USA compared to India.

The same is true in china, but that has more to do with real estate bubbles than fundamentals. Rents are still very cheap. Is the same true in Indian cities?

The real estate pockets in industrial hubs like Bangalore, Mumbai is expensive. Tier 2 cities are cheaper.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#138

Post by majewsky »

kitten_mittens_ wrote: post #69
burger_moon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you could also use that money to buy a diesel generator so you don't suffer from the daily power outages and you can buy a great water filtration system so you don't have to worry about ever drinking unclean water either.

Air quality is still a big issue too.

No problem, just walk around in a spacesuit. Technology really solves all problems! /s

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#139

Post by matwood »

lagadu wrote: post #118
skynetv2 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> shift your development work to under qualified developers or programmers. How do you justify this blanket statement?

Not the OP but I can likely offer some insight as someone who has had to deal with teams in India: The biggest problem was the employee turnaround rate. Getting a developer, even an experienced one to become fully productive in your organization if you have several or complex products is a process that can take over a year but the turnaround rate was high enough that there we needed to use a very significant amount o…

I haven't dealt with IBM, but I have been in charge of outsourcing before. Early on we used Indians, but it became expensive so we moved on to the Philippines. Both had the issue you're describing. If you found someone good they would be gone in a few months for more money. I remember arguing with management above me because I wanted to pay a person 40k instead of 35k (I think those were the numbers, it's been awhile) because he was good, and communicated well (another issue). I was overruled and as soon as this person became proficient, and presumably found a better paying job he never showed up again.

Eventually I convinced management that even if we had to pay 2-3x for a competent developer stateside, it was worth the money because of the hidden costs of trying to outsource. The work we were doing required someone to be invested in learning the business and the problems we were trying to solve.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#140

Post by ktta »

github-cat wrote: post #124
snambi wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of assumptions and bias in the comment above. You are implying that more expensive means higher quality. Less expensive means lower quality. Both are not true. The truth is, "opensource software and cloud" disrupted IBM's business model of selling proprietary software that runs on IBM hardware and selling services to maintain these.

Sorry, you misunderstood my point. My implication is that we should spent the money on the right people. For example, if we have budget of $10000, we can spend them hiring one/two good developers instead of hiring 4/5 below average developers.

It is possible one can hire better developers for a lower price in India than they would have to pay in the US.
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