Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–259 of 259 posts

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

#251

Post by timthelion »

pm90 wrote: post #209
jordanb wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah 2002-2005 or so the conventional wisdom is that there wouldn't be software written in America anymore -- that companies were going to beat a path to Asia just like they'd done in textiles and furniture. Economists explained that software is a highly "tradeable good" and Asia -- especially India -- was filled with millions of highly educated cheap programmers. Given that the number of people employed in software…

> I would say that software development has been good to me so far as a career, but I still think I would hesitate to encourage a young person in America to pursue it. This is absolutely terrible advice. Please do not ruin some young American's life with this advice. Technology seems to be one are where the demand seems to always outstrip supply, and a person trained in Computer Science would be capable of learning n…

I think that software is a unique industry in that it is a "self growing" industry. Unlike other industries, in which the more workers there are, the lower the pay, I think with software developers the opposite is true. I believe that the more software developers there are, the more things will be automated, and therefore the demand for software will grow with the supply.

Furthermore, since it the complexity of software grows exponentially rather than linearly, I believe that as the number of software developers grows linearly, the demand will grow exponentially ;).

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

#252

Post by abiox »

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…

> Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code

did they? either way, i think you're equivocating. it's not a "racial" or "ethnic" connotated "indian code" that some people sometimes discuss. it's more in the domain of economics, geopolitics and "IT body shops". everyone has seen brilliant indians accomplishing great things.

> The idea of Indians actually working innovative jobs seemed laughable to many Americans.

this seems like a strawman. ten years ago, people thought IT in america would cease to exist in any meaningful capacity because of outsourcing.

> This racism is again mirrored in the huge salary difference. Are those Indian workers really worth so much less?

this doesn't make much sense to me, so some clarification would help. you cannot directly compare an absolute number in two economies. you can't even meaningfully do it between (say) san fransciso and knoxville.

> One thing is certain to me, that low salary is hurting IBM. By not paying a competitive salary, those IBM offices in India are lacking the deep experience of western programmers.

again, you cannot pay a salary that is absurdly huge and completely incongruent with the local economy - be it within india, the us or any other place. at least, not on a large scale. if you payed a wage translated directly from san francisco to india, your purchasing power would be massively inflated over the vast majority of people with "normal" salaries.

it also means that the burdens and inefficiencies of international work would not be offset, and so IBM and others probably wouldn't even be there in the first place.

> In the pictures, everyone there is Indian, and that hurts the company as a whole. Diversity is more than just not being all white. Diversity means not being exclusive to any background and ethnicity.

it's india. talking about "diversity" and "white" as you are doing is just... well, it seems rather ignorant, parochial and prescriptive.

> Edit: I have yet to hear of anyone (European or American) from the sectors I work in, being poached to work in India.

unless you're planning on staying permanently, it's not an economically advantageous thing to do. not necessarily because of the salary relative to local norms, but rather when you return to a the US or Europe or wherever, your savings accrued will be less than if you had stayed.

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

#253

Post by abiox »

timthelion wrote: post #12
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…

As an example of this racism, I'd use this comment from the article: "It often takes 2 and sometimes 3 Indian employees to perform the role of the North America diluting the savings." https://nyti.ms/2yxCQGX

what are you referring to by "racism"?

whatever it is, perhaps it would be useful to ask yourself if there are other interpretations, as well as why you came to the conclusion you did.

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

#254

Post by lovich »

pm90 wrote: post #250
lovich wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco seems to be the only place where that holds true, and I say that not having tried to get a job there. The average length of time for engineers I know of trying to get a new job is 3-4 months. Any one of us could easily be a shit engineer but its in the 10s of people now. While that's better than a lot of industries now, that doesn't mean that demand outstripped supply. Its just at an ok point. If demand…

Giving raises to existing employees is not related to demand and supply at all, but to other institutional reasons. Managers have more freedom to give offer higher salaries to attract good talent, than they have to offer super high raises, which can also cause discord among teams unless you offer raises to everyone, which may be more money than the manager can afford. Of course it depends on the market, but I disagre…

Those other factors due exist for preventing raises to other employees. The claim, however, was that demand was _far_ exceeding supply. When that happens with any good people start hoarding the resource and going out of their way to maintain their existing supply. If there was truly that great a difference between the demand for software devs and the supply of them, we'd see companies doing their best to keep their employees, at least on average. Instead we're in a situation. Where companies are engaging in some sort of brinkmanship with their employees to see if they'll accept the lack of compensation increase, and they dont appear to care if they are loosing employees due to it.

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

#255

Post by snambi »

mirrormind wrote: post #195
snambi wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Majority of programmers are bad. It is nothing to do with race or nationality. People are taking to programming because it pays well and there is demand. Most companies hire a person with good attitude than a great programmer with bad attitude.

"People are taking to programming because it pays well and there is demand." This statement is wrong. Not everyone takes to programming only for that sole reason. In america people tend to follow their passion first.

Passion doesn't guarantee quality. I have seen "passionate" engineers, failing to understand the problem. "Passionate" engineers tend to find a problem for the solution they have at hand. It is very hard to work with such people.

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

#257

Post by snambi »

pm90 wrote: post #194
gozur88 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the classic real estate bubble.

In countries of > 1 billion people who are racing towards development, the real estate bubble just goes on and on. Even in smaller cities, real estate is seen as a very profitable investment as even more people make the rural to urban transition, jacking up demand to stratospheric levels.

Population of Bay area is about ~7 million. Not even 100 million. The real estate bubble is going on for 50+ years here. So, it is nothing to do with population. Today what we call as growth is just a bubble.

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

#258

Post by snambi »

kd0amg wrote: post #196
snambi wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most junior developers will not even know that getting into a dead end job such as these are the end of their career. Sad!

On the other hand, they've probably had a lot more early exposure to the idea that one is better off changing jobs every few years. After having three jobs in ten years instead of one, they're much less likely to be stuck with a non-transferable skillset.

So, you are saying that maintaining, some shit code written in the 70s and maintained by 10s of enterprise programmers, will result in better experience?

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

#259

Post by tapatio »

gaius wrote: post #108
tapatio wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM is innovative? Lol.

They were once... They invented entire industries single-handed once. Now they are just trading on their old reputation, which they haven't deserved for over a decade now.

Agreed.
Post reply on HN