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

Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 285 posts

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#91

Post by iamcurious »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #70
kumarski wrote: post #43

I have a team of 14 engineers in Pakistan. It wasn't always easy to do this and now I always feel at odds with hiring where everyone else is hiring or paying a premium for a western passport developer when I know I can get killer talent elsewhere. I feel the talent we have now has the ability to crush, kill, and destroy the talent in Silicon Valley "engineers" at a fraction of the price in terms of output to input ra…

> The developers who complain about Indian and Pakistani developers are usually: Unfortunately, the list that follows describes the managers of literally every US-based company. If this is the requirement for successful offshore consultancy, then engineers here can rest assured their jobs will never actually be at stake. When you can successfully hire a remote worker without needing 1) to speak their language, 2) und…

>When you can successfully hire a remote worker without needing 1) to speak their language, 2) understand their culture, customs, holidays, and 3) worry about time zone differences, then engineers here should start worrying about offshoring.

You have just described most offshoring to latin america.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#93

Post by woah »

kumarski wrote: post #43

I have a team of 14 engineers in Pakistan. It wasn't always easy to do this and now I always feel at odds with hiring where everyone else is hiring or paying a premium for a western passport developer when I know I can get killer talent elsewhere. I feel the talent we have now has the ability to crush, kill, and destroy the talent in Silicon Valley "engineers" at a fraction of the price in terms of output to input ra…

Your comment sounds very hyperbolic in the description of your team's skills, and yet you still focus mostly on how cheap your developers are, and the importance of your expert management. I don't think that I'd be able to write good code if my primary attribute was cheapness, regardless of whether or not it was good money for my location. I would be trying to do my time as a developer and work my way out of the disposable zone and into "management" as soon as possible.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#94

Post by krapht »

klodolph wrote: post #92
random314 wrote: post #89

Thanks. Grammar check - its note "codes"; it is "code".

Wrong—“codes” is correct in the Indian dialect of English. This is akin to arguing over whether “color” or “colour” is the correct spelling.

It's also, for some reason, what people say in scientific computing.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#95

Post by TriNetra »

_the_inflator wrote: post #45
oneplane wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've talked with a lot of different Indian and similar 'offshore' engineers, developers and managers and most of them ended up in the place they did due to choices between being a farmer or being an IT person, being in a poor province vs. being in a less-poor province, and being able to support your parents. Almost none of them had an upbringing, background or base passion for technology or IT in general. While you c…

"I've talked with a lot of different Indian and similar 'offshore' engineers, developers and managers and most of them ended up in the place they did due to choices between being a farmer or being an IT person, being in a poor province vs. being in a less-poor province, and being able to support your parents. Almost none of them had an upbringing, background, or base passion for technology or IT in general." This sad…

if one is looking for $10-20 hourly developer, certainly the result will likely be what you've experienced.

Big IT Indian firms usually will choose one or two highly talented developers for a project team and others just hop around them. Usually these projects aren't also very engineering-intensive and becomes boring once the base framework is created for creative folks. Good devs don't stay longer in a company at least during initial years simply they're in good demand and gets double the package with every jump. Eventually they'll make it to Indian subsidiaries of US companies like Microsoft/Google or, they'll start their own expert consultancy/product companies.

For the record I've worked out of India exclusively and have charged up to about $100 hourly rate from my US clients. I've gone through above process - my last job being at Microsoft India (2011-2016)

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#96

Post by rams »

lgleason wrote: post #16
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…

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…

wrt Tech Mahindra a very senior engineer who used to work there told me that there have been so many layoffs there that, in some projects the Team Leads report straight to the VP. Newbies receive little to no training or guidance.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#97

Post by theflyinghorse »

kumarski wrote: post #43

I have a team of 14 engineers in Pakistan. It wasn't always easy to do this and now I always feel at odds with hiring where everyone else is hiring or paying a premium for a western passport developer when I know I can get killer talent elsewhere. I feel the talent we have now has the ability to crush, kill, and destroy the talent in Silicon Valley "engineers" at a fraction of the price in terms of output to input ra…

Forgive my skepticism

> I feel the talent we have now has the ability to crush, kill, and destroy the talent in Silicon Valley "engineers" at a fraction of the price in terms of output to input ratio. We've done work on crazy levels of core infrastructure and are scaling.

SV is a hotbed for a ton of international talent, not just American. Indeed, SV pays the most out of anywhere on the planet and therefore has an incredibly strong pull for the best and brightest from across the world. I sincerely doubt that one country's local talent is strong than a clustered talent center like SV.

Is Pakistani talent flying under the radar? Are we simply not aware of the amazing research and development being made in Pakistan vs US or China?

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#98

Post by senkora »

klodolph wrote: post #92
random314 wrote: post #89

Thanks. Grammar check - its note "codes"; it is "code".

Wrong—“codes” is correct in the Indian dialect of English. This is akin to arguing over whether “color” or “colour” is the correct spelling.

Is it like fish and fishes?

fish = plural for many of a single kind of fish

fishes = plural for multiple kinds of fish

So by analogy:

code = any amount of code from a single project

codes = plural for code from multiple projects

I'm American and this is how I use code/codes, so I'm curious whether you make the same distinction, or if you always use codes.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#100

Post by BossingAround »

klodolph wrote: post #92
random314 wrote: post #89

Thanks. Grammar check - its note "codes"; it is "code".

Wrong—“codes” is correct in the Indian dialect of English. This is akin to arguing over whether “color” or “colour” is the correct spelling.

While what I'll say will surely be controversial and will lead to many down votes, Indian dialect of English is not considered a "standard." As a result, the correctness of something in Indian dialect does not mean it is "proper English" or "correct English".

If you go to non-English speaking Europe, most textbooks come from the British Council, and teach British English.

If you go to China and a lot of Asian countries, a lot of their textbooks come from the USA, and will teach American English.

You might find some Aussie textbooks in Japan or China... You will not find a country that speaks Indian English outside of India.

So, "color" or "colour" are both correct because they are correct in one of the "standards" of English. "Codes" then is not correct because it is incorrect in what's considered the "standards" of English.

For the record, I personally am from neither US, UK, or any other English-speaking country. I also think correcting people's English on HNews is silly.

Just my 2c.

Post reply on HN