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Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86

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Re: Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86

#131

Post by dotps1 »

justmarc wrote: post #110
dotps1 wrote: post #79

I'm sure he was an amazing capitalist, but my experience with Tata consulting was the worst. I worked for a division of GE during the Immelt years that outsourced large portions of IT to Tata, and was in charge of the transition. It was a masterclass in waste and inefficiency. Definitely one of the larger nails in the coffin of a former Fortune 5 company.

I for one would love to read about these types of stories, I'm sure many on HN too. I started a thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41800114 let's see if people pick up on it.

I'll just share a little more here.

The scale of the outsourcing I am talking about is far greater than whatever you're imagining.

We brought teams of people from India over to the US, housed and fed them, so they could be able to work with their counterparts overseas. On the India side we found their operating infrastructure to be woefully inadequate, so we helped them build entirely new facilities with perimeter fences, proper security, the works.

After all was said and done, the skills of the people we were getting were on par with someone with no programming experience that skimmed a java book in their spare time. The code quality was abysmal at best, and this was in the days before source control was popular.

One of the other huge problems was just the time zone difference. You get into work in the morning to have a meeting with some second-shift team in India, and find out about all of the work that didn't get done because they didn't know what they were doing .. spend the time to correct them, they say they will fix it the next day .. next day comes, same issues, no progress, repeat ad nauseum.

It physically hurt to be a part of all of this.

Re: Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86

#132

Post by berniedurfee »

hyggetrold wrote: post #117
dotps1 wrote: post #79

I'm sure he was an amazing capitalist, but my experience with Tata consulting was the worst. I worked for a division of GE during the Immelt years that outsourced large portions of IT to Tata, and was in charge of the transition. It was a masterclass in waste and inefficiency. Definitely one of the larger nails in the coffin of a former Fortune 5 company.

This is all I ever had heard about Tata consulting as well so I have to say it's been an education seeing how sad everyone is to see Ratan Tata pass away. It does make a kind of sense to me now though - if Ratan Tata's goal was to pull money into India, he was massively successful. How he got there might be a different story. But that's just as true of all previous great capitalists as well.

I think this is a big part of his legacy. I’m sure his contributions to the Indian economy are staggering in total.

That’ll conjure different emotions depending on where you sit in the world.

Re: Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86

#133

Post by Gentil »

pphysch wrote: post #114
ankit219 wrote: post #68

Many Indians (esp entrepreneurs) don't realise it, Ratan Tata's conduct is the default expectation how the successful and hyped people in India are to behave (not taking a moral stand, rather a factual one) in the society. He was known to be humble and kind and never made headlines for the wrong reasons. Many would do extensive PR, while he stayed away from the limelight. It's remarkably difficult in a country where…

What does "default expectation" mean here? Didn't the Ambanis just have the most opulent wedding of the 21st century?

The default expectation here means "doing the right thing while no one is looking". Ambanis is far far away from it.

I am sorry. Ambanis are not everyone's favourite. Definitely not even comparable to the Tatas. I can see why the hustle culture folks and fast money folks like ambanis. But that is not Shri Ratan Tata or Tatas at all.

I will quote Shri Ratan Tata himself: "They are business men(Referring to Ambanis). We are industrialists."

That quote properly differentiates the differences between them IMO. Not just the perception about them. But also how they think.

Re: Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86

#134

Post by profsummergig »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #70
profsummergig wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tata could have been much, much bigger. But to the extent they could get away with it, they refused to pay bribes to politicians and government employees (they couldn't refuse to pay "any and all" bribes, for they would have been shut down completely if they took that posture).

yeah. there is a difference between "Speed money" and actual bribes for officials to look the other way when you are doing clearly not legal stuff.

In India it's not even "speed money" that you used to have to pay (don't know how bad it is these days). It's "being allowed to play" money.

Re: Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86

#135

Post by justmarc »

dotps1 wrote: post #131
justmarc wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one would love to read about these types of stories, I'm sure many on HN too. I started a thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41800114 let's see if people pick up on it.

I'll just share a little more here. The scale of the outsourcing I am talking about is far greater than whatever you're imagining. We brought teams of people from India over to the US, housed and fed them, so they could be able to work with their counterparts overseas. On the India side we found their operating infrastructure to be woefully inadequate, so we helped them build entirely new facilities with perimeter fe…

Thank you. That's a good one!

Re: Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86

#136

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

profsummergig wrote: post #134
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah. there is a difference between "Speed money" and actual bribes for officials to look the other way when you are doing clearly not legal stuff.

In India it's not even "speed money" that you used to have to pay (don't know how bad it is these days). It's "being allowed to play" money.

well yeah. if you put it that way, i can talk about indirect taxes and corruption is from even smallest of government employees all the way to the top.

we call it "service charges".

the officer has discretion to impose taxes, interest or penalty and on payment of service charges, discretion to look away, not mention the issue for later on.

in case the issue arises, or goes to litigation, service money ensures the officer will say yes its good to any reply you give.

Re: Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86

#137

Post by ankit219 »

pphysch wrote: post #114
ankit219 wrote: post #68

Many Indians (esp entrepreneurs) don't realise it, Ratan Tata's conduct is the default expectation how the successful and hyped people in India are to behave (not taking a moral stand, rather a factual one) in the society. He was known to be humble and kind and never made headlines for the wrong reasons. Many would do extensive PR, while he stayed away from the limelight. It's remarkably difficult in a country where…

What does "default expectation" mean here? Didn't the Ambanis just have the most opulent wedding of the 21st century?

In Indian society terms, I meant there is a behavior a society will approve of and expect from successful people. If they do not follow this norm (so to speak), they will be criticized for whatever they are doing.

Ambani's wedding was a huge talking point in India, and most people did not like the display of spending power. It's not legally wrong obviously, but it's not an accepted social behavior. We expect the uber successful people to do the right thing by other people all the time, work towards uplifting the society, and be cognizant of other peoples' lives and challenges, not show off when you know other people are suffering, and be empathetic. A tall order, but this is pretty much how Ratan Tata would be described. He is not alone, there is Choksi family (Asian Paints) who are also similarly humble and upstanding, and quite a few others who built business from British times to the socialist times and then the liberal era.

Re: Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86

#138

Post by Gentil »

4ggr0 wrote: post #84

RIP, as one says. That being said, it always irks me when people worship "philantropic" billionaires. I'm sure he's done good things. But there are no ethical billionaires in capitalism. TATA is a giant corp with a lot of influence, I can't believe that they're a 'honest company which doesn't bribe, pays their taxes and are otherwise clean'. Would probably be the first case of an ethical corporation/billionaire :) Ce…

> That being said, it always irks me when people worship "philantropic" billionaires.

I hate that people are using philanthropic to describe Tatas. The western description about it is some random guy who made a lot of money and then later in life decides to do some charity BS for good PR.

66% of everything of revenues from Tata Group of companies goes to Tata Sons - which is a charity trust. Not to the boardroom. This is not some random billionaire paid some money for PR.

This is also why you are wrong. He was never a billionaire because the majority of the money didn't come to him. But to the different charities which opens high class cancer treatment hospitals and other charitable endeavours.

You should read up more about Tata. How they operate. Then you will understand Tata - the brand and the Tatas the people behind it.

Re: Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86

#139

Post by mcint »

hackernewds wrote: post #20
mcint wrote: post #13

Arguably black-bar material. Outside view, it seems like he served a tenure atop a group comparable to Disney, in breadth, scale, and market share across many industries in India, as a magnate. Notably, in the period of massive telecom rollout in India. Largest wholly owned and most advanced subsea fibre network, carrying around 30% of the world’s internet routes - Brave.com's Llama, sourced from Tata sites Note "30%…

I'm finding it really tough to understand your comment across the flipflopping of formats. Here’s a clearer and more concise version of your text: Comment from mcint on HN: From an external perspective, he can be viewed as a magnate who led a group comparable to Disney in terms of breadth, scale, and market share across multiple industries in India. His leadership was particularly notable during the massive telecom r…

Sorry about that. It's not autogenerated beyond the quoted claim, and articles quoted at full sentence length. It was a brief exploration of making the case, intermixed with reflections relating the claims to my more direct experience, e.g. of routing table sizes when running BGP yourself.

Re: Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86

#140

Post by kylehotchkiss »

aitchnyu wrote: post #18
wanderingmind wrote: post #6

People will talk about his different contribution to economy and philanthropy. However, my favorite is the story where he instructed his hotel employees to treat stray dogs well if they enter the premises. For a man of his wealth and power, to care about a stray dog truly speaks to his humble nature. RIP Sir, you were a crown jewel of the post independence India. https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/ratan-ta…

On one hand, stray dogs are a joy for many Indians. For many months the highlight of the day was going to a cafe at 10 pm in middle of work and throwing bones to the assembled dogs. On the other hand, they enter homes and kill babies, attack children and adults and carry rabies epidemics. Right thing to do is to prevent more strays from happening.

> they enter homes and kill babies, attack children and adults and carry rabies epidemics

Are you talking about monkeys or dogs? I guess if you were talking about monkeys you forgot about how they raid the fridge and pretend to do laundry sometimes.

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