Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#81

Post by idoh » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:21 AM UTC

jplarson wrote: post #75

The author here, great conversation, gang. To be clear, I don't mean to dump on India specifically, but rather offer up a narrative that counters the notion of overseas talent being an insurmountable threat. This missive applies equally well to any offshore outsourcing, but I agree that generality gets lost. andrewfelix's suggested title "Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Bad Programmers" is good but doesn't quite…

Re: coming late to the party, have you considered that maybe you are suffering from some kind of reverse-surviver bias? In other words, that you only get brought on to failed outsource projects. If the outsource project works well then you don't see it.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#82

Post by cschneid » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:24 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #37

bguthrie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct. Good programmers in India, like good programmers everywhere, cost more than bad programmers. If you would like to hire a decent shop, there are boutiques and larger firms available, but they will charge $40-50/hour, not $15. The problem isn't in the outsourcing, it's treating development like a $15/hour commodity. We all know that it doesn't work that way. The author described paying an hourly rate f…

But there are plenty of good programmers in the US that will work for $50 an hour, which ends up being about $100,000 a year. And if you can have your users, analysts, and programmers in the same building for what it costs to outsource, why outsource?

Estimate that ~half to ~one third of your time is actual billable time. The rest is finding clients / business junk / expenses. So $50/hr is unsustainably low as a freelancer in the USA.

As a salaried position, it's plenty of course...

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#83

Post by jplarson » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:25 AM UTC

ccc3 wrote: post #22

If the author were writing in the late 60's he could have titled a similar piece: Why GM will never feel threatened by Toyota

That's a very insightful perspective, but I'm campaigning in the opposite direction. What I think you're implying is that GM was complacent, didn't feel threatened, scoffed at the notion, and thus has been over taken.

My thought is that to a large part we've ALREADY been sold on the idea that we can't compete, so we shouldn't even try--that outsourcing is here to stay, and programmers in other countries will have no trouble out competing us. I'm proposing that we don't believe the hype, that we can compete effectively.

It's a rallying cry against complacency.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#84

Post by T-hawk » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:28 AM UTC

idoh wrote: post #77

As a product manager for the last 6 years, I've had the opportunity to work for outsourced teams in India, Romania, and Ukraine. I've become really good at managing remote teams, and it can work out really really well. What I write below is based on single data points in each country... India: I didn't like working with the Indian team. They had the tendency to be overly literal and "by the book" - the book being wha…

> the Indian team. They had the tendency to be overly literal and "by the book"

My anecdote: We had a spec for a financial business application. Two of the database fields were last-changed-username and last-changed-timestamp. The document mistakenly had them populated backwards, specifying that the current user's name should be populated into last-changed-timestamp and vice versa. You can guess what happened when the Indian outsourcee coded it.

"I ran this and got a type conversion error. Did you even test it?"

"Yes, I got the same error and that is what should have happened based on the spec."

"How did you test the rest of it, then?"

"I was unable to proceed because of that error."

(I'm not generalizing from this one programmer to all Indians. I'm sure programmers that dumb exist everywhere.)

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#85

Post by eshvk » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:29 AM UTC

beachgeek wrote: post #70

[deleted] wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I think his point was that Chinese startups have the advantage of serving a large internal market of Mandarin speakers, while Indian startups need to compete in the English speaking world. On that note I have a question for smg. I have not been able to figure out why there are so few Indian tech startups serving the Indian market. I can only think of naukri and makemytrip. Do you know why? I read somewhere that there…

There are probably a couple of reasons:

1. The total number of startups is going to be lesser due to redtape although I believe that is becoming less of an issue as time goes on.

2. It is probably perceived to be more lucrative to target the American market. I would think that a larger proportion of the ~ 120M internet users in India would be similar (young urban professional) and therefore easier to release products compared to the general public (cultural variations and interests make it harder to disrupt outside the cities).

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#86

Post by smg » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:32 AM UTC

beachgeek wrote: post #70

[deleted] wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I think his point was that Chinese startups have the advantage of serving a large internal market of Mandarin speakers, while Indian startups need to compete in the English speaking world. On that note I have a question for smg. I have not been able to figure out why there are so few Indian tech startups serving the Indian market. I can only think of naukri and makemytrip. Do you know why? I read somewhere that there…

A few years ago there were a large number of Indian startup trying to become the youtube or facebook of India. Because almost all the internet users in India are also English savy, they found that the youtube of India is youtube unlike say youku in China. Doing a consumer web startup in India is very difficult as you end up competing with far more mature SV startups who have almost limitless resources. Companies with a uniquely local twist like Flipkart or Burrp have had more success.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#87

Post by jplarson » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:33 AM UTC

idoh wrote: post #81

jplarson wrote: post #75

The author here, great conversation, gang. To be clear, I don't mean to dump on India specifically, but rather offer up a narrative that counters the notion of overseas talent being an insurmountable threat. This missive applies equally well to any offshore outsourcing, but I agree that generality gets lost. andrewfelix's suggested title "Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Bad Programmers" is good but doesn't quite…

Re: coming late to the party, have you considered that maybe you are suffering from some kind of reverse-surviver bias? In other words, that you only get brought on to failed outsource projects. If the outsource project works well then you don't see it.

Totally fair point--the fellow I recently talked to is completely an instance of that bias.

For sure, there's nothing statistically significant about my few experiences: I have only observations of some of the shortcomings that are quite real.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#88

Post by lambda » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:50 AM UTC

smg wrote: post #86

beachgeek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his point was that Chinese startups have the advantage of serving a large internal market of Mandarin speakers, while Indian startups need to compete in the English speaking world. On that note I have a question for smg. I have not been able to figure out why there are so few Indian tech startups serving the Indian market. I can only think of naukri and makemytrip. Do you know why? I read somewhere that there…

A few years ago there were a large number of Indian startup trying to become the youtube or facebook of India. Because almost all the internet users in India are also English savy, they found that the youtube of India is youtube unlike say youku in China. Doing a consumer web startup in India is very difficult as you end up competing with far more mature SV startups who have almost limitless resources. Companies with…

Also, the great firewall of China, and their Internet Content Provider license (which can only be obtained by Chinese companies) make it nearly impossible for foreign companies to compete in the Chinese market. Even foreign sites which aren't blocked in China are frequently a lot flakier due to the firewall, and they can't put servers inside the firewall without an ICP license. The usual way around this is to partner with a Chinese company, but frequently the Chinese company will wind up cloning your service and becoming a competitor.

The Chinese market is stacked against foreign competition; I don't think that the Indian market is likewise restricted.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#89

Post by beachgeek » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:58 AM UTC

eshvk wrote: post #85

beachgeek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his point was that Chinese startups have the advantage of serving a large internal market of Mandarin speakers, while Indian startups need to compete in the English speaking world. On that note I have a question for smg. I have not been able to figure out why there are so few Indian tech startups serving the Indian market. I can only think of naukri and makemytrip. Do you know why? I read somewhere that there…

There are probably a couple of reasons: 1. The total number of startups is going to be lesser due to redtape although I believe that is becoming less of an issue as time goes on. 2. It is probably perceived to be more lucrative to target the American market. I would think that a larger proportion of the ~ 120M internet users in India would be similar (young urban professional) and therefore easier to release products…

OK. If you look at the growth amongst Internet users in India between, say 2009 and estimates for 2011, it resembles the growth amongst Internet users in US in the late 90s. US had 120M Internet users around the time of the Web 1.0 boom.

Mobile usage is even higher as you know so it seems like mobile app startups could do really well. If the growth is happening in small towns/rural areas even better, no SV company is going to want to spend time in Gummmidipoondi to understand their target customer. I don't know if cultural variation is really an issue: look at iPad for instance, even a non-English speaker has a finger with which they can tap on the screen.

I've heard horror stories about red-tape, corrupt officials and so on from friends. But every time I've dealt with GOI officials they've been extremely helpful. Maybe I just got lucky.

Re: Why I Will Never Feel Threatened by Programmers in India

#90

Post by Unosolo » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 6:15 AM UTC

Talking from personal experience of having managed off-shore projects from an on-shore base the most significant challenges are:

- misaligned interests

- availability of information

- control

- security and compliance

- communication

As far as "does it EVER work" concerned: it does. It doesn't work well though. Most people can run, doesn't mean that most people can run as fast as Usain Bolt.

My whole opinion at: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/46934/12348