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Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

economist.com

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Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#151

Post by TheOperator »

ethbro wrote: post #59
GordonS wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that is not how software is done. I want outcomes not masses. I need creativity to work on tools expressed through software not cheaper developers. Fully agree, but the people making the decisions at large corps are not developers, and are just as focused on costs as the Indian outsourcing firms pushing low cost devs. And in turn, those people are pushed by the board to make cost reductions, and board members u…

Non technical folks under-appreciate the cost and frequency of long-term technical debt. It's easy to save money on developers, yet very quickly produce a net-negative result for the company. Sadly, few companies have guardrails to prevent these sort of shortsighted choices. E.g. requiring parallel approval of projects by IT architects (whose existence admittedly carries its own hazard).

I've heard non-technical folks with their heads in the clouds expecting to run millions of dollars in transactions through an IT system, but cringed at my suggestion that they're likely to dump more than a couple hundred grand one-time into the scheme. Yet the same person doesn't blink at paying significantly more than that yearly maintaining existing low-tech systems, and has already spent millions on ERP projects.

I think a lot of this effect is caused by wishful thinking from people embarking on business plans which they would realise are non-viable if they did the accounting properly. People are buying a fantasy instead of an IT system.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#152

Post by Dansvidania »

marktangotango wrote: post #143
ethbro wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non technical folks under-appreciate the cost and frequency of long-term technical debt. It's easy to save money on developers, yet very quickly produce a net-negative result for the company. Sadly, few companies have guardrails to prevent these sort of shortsighted choices. E.g. requiring parallel approval of projects by IT architects (whose existence admittedly carries its own hazard).

> Non technical folks under-appreciate the cost and frequency of long-term technical debt. Undoubtedly this is true, but there's an implication here in this context that somehow on shore, or more well paid developers don't create such technical debt, when in fact they do. It amazes me that I see team after team of competent well intentioned developers create one ball of mud after another. It's striking really.

I think software development misses a "doctrine". It is very hard to develop robust maintainable software while trying to chase the latest fad (edit: under constant pressure to deliver new functionality).

I have known this as a junior, never really getting to know a technology before hopping to the next one, and I am still having to deal with this now that I have a bit more experience, trying to convince my colleagues not to be so quick to dismiss the modern for the newer.

Sometimes I feel like I do not know what we are doing although being one of the senior members of the team. Stuff quickly snowballs into mud... It's like there is not enough effort or time to deliver functionality while also staving off entropy

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#153

Post by jackcosgrove »

ethbro wrote: post #59
GordonS wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that is not how software is done. I want outcomes not masses. I need creativity to work on tools expressed through software not cheaper developers. Fully agree, but the people making the decisions at large corps are not developers, and are just as focused on costs as the Indian outsourcing firms pushing low cost devs. And in turn, those people are pushed by the board to make cost reductions, and board members u…

Non technical folks under-appreciate the cost and frequency of long-term technical debt. It's easy to save money on developers, yet very quickly produce a net-negative result for the company. Sadly, few companies have guardrails to prevent these sort of shortsighted choices. E.g. requiring parallel approval of projects by IT architects (whose existence admittedly carries its own hazard).

It's not just that non-technical people under-appreciate technical debt.

If you put in the time and pay the money to build an awesome system that is stable and usable for decades, there's only a small chance you'll be rewarded. First because no one notices when software is working. Second because you will probably have moved on to a different role at a different company after your wisdom is confirmed ten years later.

Saving money now is what gets attention.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#154

Post by bluGill »

as1mov wrote: post #47
lgleason wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to this. I've worked with people from Tech Mahindra. Some observations. 1. Very green staff that have little to no coding skills/ability. 2. Communication barriers, even when the people are local. 3. Jobs that any other organization would do with one person being split into 3 different roles with a net result of costing more than hiring the more expensive onshore devs. 4. Because of #3 software takes longer to…

> 1. Very green staff that have little to no coding skills/ability. This is mostly due to high attrition rates, these companies hire students fresh out of universities who have little to no experience. So most projects are in a state of constant flux where people who have worked on the code left after an year or two, only to be replaced by someone who knows very little about the codebase. The attrition is due to the…

I've been to It oriented cites in India. Normal people sleep on the sidewalk because they have nothing else (we don't share a language, so it is hard to be sure, but this isn't like homeless in the US where sleeping on a sidewalk implies a drug or mental problem, these seem like my neighbors here who have a typical family). You would fit right in on low pay if you wanted that life.

Now I'll grant most people want a better life and I'm not sure the low end supports much better, but in context it isn't uncommon.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#155

Post by bluGill »

jrumbut wrote: post #8
mjohn wrote: post #5

I recently joined a company where my main task is to modernise a business critical application built and supported by Wipro over ten years ago. Everything is still on .Net 3.0 (first released in 2007), and despite hundreds of pages of documentation the developers seem to have little understanding of what the application actually does for the business. The impression I have is that their business model is geared towar…

The truest saying in software is that the highest value output of a project is an engineering team that understands your business. Past a certain point of size/complexity you can't buy one of those for any price, you have to make it. Outsourcing turns an investment opportunity into an expense.

Where to outsource is the right question. I could write a word processor, but my company just buys me Microsoft office. My company could buy the software I wrote from an outsourcer, but we consider it a competitive advantage to do it in house.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#156

Post by TheOperator »

afrojack123 wrote: post #67

Indian IT consultancies have been struggling against technological obsolescence for 30 years. And they will continue to struggle for many more. This is an idiotic hit piece hit written by a journalist who needs to meet his quota. This journalist has never worked for one of these consultancies, a tech company, or been in C-suite of any org. I have worked in these "consultancies" so here is my take. There is a wide ran…

People within IT have a bias towards overestimating the importance of it. For a LOT of companies mediocre IT services and products are literally good enough. Hell for some companies crappy minimally viable software is practically a feature if it's used to manage cancellations and warranty support and such.

Tech debt is bad and all but so is real debt and paying a lot of money upfront won't mean no tech debt.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#157

Post by escanda »

GordonS wrote: post #51
lgleason wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to this. I've worked with people from Tech Mahindra. Some observations. 1. Very green staff that have little to no coding skills/ability. 2. Communication barriers, even when the people are local. 3. Jobs that any other organization would do with one person being split into 3 different roles with a net result of costing more than hiring the more expensive onshore devs. 4. Because of #3 software takes longer to…

> Jobs that any other organization would do with one person being split into 3 different roles with a net result of costing more than hiring the more expensive onshore devs When I first started working with an offshore team of Capgemini devs back around 2007, this really struck me too. It was bizarre - you had "devs" who literally knew nothing beyond their very limited task space. Literally.nothing. You'd have 3 peop…

I worked as well in Capgemini although in a nearshore team. The project was a customer portal to manage some of their contracted services.

We were about 60 people comprised of several teams doing nothing but attending to some specification documents who most of use would infer on the go. Beside the whole architecture was a mix of Java beans based on a XML schema and some transformations on them using Spring. Something which would be easily done using XSLT or XQuery in a fraction of the cost. Also we had some middleware interfacing a Tibco bus which was utter bullshit because they were unable to use JavaEE in a proper manner.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#158

Post by [deleted] »

TheOperator wrote: post #156
afrojack123 wrote: post #67

Indian IT consultancies have been struggling against technological obsolescence for 30 years. And they will continue to struggle for many more. This is an idiotic hit piece hit written by a journalist who needs to meet his quota. This journalist has never worked for one of these consultancies, a tech company, or been in C-suite of any org. I have worked in these "consultancies" so here is my take. There is a wide ran…

People within IT have a bias towards overestimating the importance of it. For a LOT of companies mediocre IT services and products are literally good enough. Hell for some companies crappy minimally viable software is practically a feature if it's used to manage cancellations and warranty support and such. Tech debt is bad and all but so is real debt and paying a lot of money upfront won't mean no tech debt.

[deleted]

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#159

Post by stephenhuey »

gourabmi wrote: post #127
BossingAround wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm... 20$ an hour, meaning 3200$ a month, would be quite a nice salary in a lot of Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, ...). You get people with BAs or MAs in comp science who have been developers for 2-5 years. While I'm sure some will say that 3.2k is ridiculous in country X, I personally met people in all of the above countries working for less while being more experienced.

I guess that is the reason why there is interest in outsourcing to Eastern Europe. Case in point being EPAM Systems. Indian IT consultancies might have huge operations but they are not the only show in town.

Yes, and we collaborated with a few dozen EPAM developers on some projects at my last full-time corporate job, and all of the ones I worked with (both the in-person EPAM teammates and the remote ones) were very sharp people who definitely enjoy technological endeavors. As development firms such as EPAM gain traction, I expect some of the massive Indian firms will lose ground.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#160

Post by noir_lord »

dejv wrote: post #117
BossingAround wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm... 20$ an hour, meaning 3200$ a month, would be quite a nice salary in a lot of Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, ...). You get people with BAs or MAs in comp science who have been developers for 2-5 years. While I'm sure some will say that 3.2k is ridiculous in country X, I personally met people in all of the above countries working for less while being more experienced.

20 USD/hour is not what developer earns, but what you pay for developer time. Overhead (buildings, managers, computers, toilet paper), sales commissions, taxes, and off time and eats big big part of that money.

The rule of thumb used to be, total costs = what you pay them * 1.5 to cover that stuff.

So 3200 becomes $4800 (or just under $57k a year) - that's still a good deal given what you'd get.

I've worked with eastern and central European developers and some of them are phenomenal (the skill breakdown is about equivalent to UK devs as a pool maybe tending towards them been slightly better but there will be some element of selection bias in that, language barrier is the biggest hurdle, many of them speak/write good English - my partner is Hungarian and her written English is at least as good as mine) but when the tiniest miss-understanding on requirements is costly during development and potentially devastating in production that really starts to matter.

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