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The Indian IT situation has reached somewhat of a breaking point, hence the current situation unfolding. The real low level stuff is now being increasingly aut

The Indian IT situation has reached somewhat of a breaking point, hence the current situation unfolding. The real low level stuff is now being increasingly automated thus eliminating the need for cheap labor to do such tasks. At the same time the Indian firms never quite managed to broadly move up the value chain into more innovative and cutting edge areas, which is still very much the realm of local offices of their western customers. As a result there's an increasing oversupply of cheap but not all that good IT labor now flooding the market. Fair or not there's also an increasingly negitive stigma in the west over Indian IT shops. Between growing domestic protectionism and the stereotypical "Indian help desk experience" that became the poster child for bad management decisions, I'm seeing a lot of firms bring even some of the lower level work back onshore--abeit to lower cost regions in their country (think Nebraska call centers now).

ChrisBland 9y ago
I'm seeing a move to eastern Europe from India for support level work. The time zone and language barriers are much easier there than India as well as the cost structures are inline generally.
- mdekkers 9y ago
  Also culture. Seriously don't underestimate culture. In Eastern Europe/Russia "no" means "no" (and is often followed with "why are you asking me to dumb things" or "are you stupid?". In India, they have 200 different ways of saying "yes", with only a few of them actually meaning something along the lines of getting the things you need done actually done. This isn't a slight, it is simply culture. There are many cultures where saying "no" is rude or offensive. Unfortunately, this is very difficult to translate remotely, and requires a long time of cultural assimilation. I manage a lot of "offshore" staff, and have done for about 10 years now. I'll have the Eastern Europeans/Russians any time, also because frequently the outright or muttered "are you stupid?" is followed by a "here is how you should do this", which many times turns out to be a good way doing what I want done. My team can call me stupid as much as they like, if it results in a better product/service.
exelius 9y ago
I have observed a different phenomenon: in the last 10 years, "startup culture" has swept over India. There is very little innovative or cutting edge being done in the US either outside of the universities (where many of the researchers are Indian) and a few big companies (Google, Facebook, et al -- who all have large engineering offices in India as well). Honestly, I find it easier to hire for skills like AWS, node.js, Kubernetes, React, Scala and TensorFlow in India than it is in the US. You're right about call center work, but that's a different skill set entirely. The biggest problem with the offshore model for development is that it requires a certain level of scale to be profitable. Large projects go great, as do small one-offs at established, large clients; but dealing with small customers/projects creates enough overhead to wipe out be benefits of offshore labor (or at least makes them less of an advantage). You have to have fat margins on your projects to cover the training costs for your people -- if you don't give them training, they won't have time to learn anything new (and the time off of projects costs you far more than any training course would).
- hpcjoe 9y ago
  Hmmm ... at $dayjob-1, I watched one of the major Indian IT houses take over a large US companies infrastructure in the interests of cost savings. Driven in large part by your standard gaggle of very expensive (and often clueless) big name consulting firms. The net result is that this former customer took a system that worked well, and replaced it with a system that doesn't. Add in frequent outages, "core team" changes on the IT side, and on the customer side (they fired all their internal developers and most of their support) ... ... This would make for a compelling "do not try this at home, kids" type case study. Somewhere in there, the expensive consultants made some other egregiously bad statements to the customer, resulting in a disastrous policy with regard to their core analytics. I give them another 2 years before they reverse course and fire the IT firm and the consultants. From my personal experience, the money you "save" is rarely worth the headaches associated with this. Call it a Pyrrhic victory. It looks like you are saving money. You really aren't. This said, and going back to the OPs point, this change was inevitable. Automation is going to wipe out low level jobs in this space, and the most at risk are those whom have not adapted. The Indian IT firms have not adapted.
- 9y ago

ChrisBland 9y ago

I'm seeing a move to eastern Europe from India for support level work. The time zone and language barriers are much easier there than India as well as the cost structures are inline generally.

mdekkers 9y ago
Also culture. Seriously don't underestimate culture. In Eastern Europe/Russia "no" means "no" (and is often followed with "why are you asking me to dumb things" or "are you stupid?". In India, they have 200 different ways of saying "yes", with only a few of them actually meaning something along the lines of getting the things you need done actually done. This isn't a slight, it is simply culture. There are many cultures where saying "no" is rude or offensive. Unfortunately, this is very difficult to translate remotely, and requires a long time of cultural assimilation. I manage a lot of "offshore" staff, and have done for about 10 years now. I'll have the Eastern Europeans/Russians any time, also because frequently the outright or muttered "are you stupid?" is followed by a "here is how you should do this", which many times turns out to be a good way doing what I want done. My team can call me stupid as much as they like, if it results in a better product/service.

exelius 9y ago

I have observed a different phenomenon: in the last 10 years, "startup culture" has swept over India. There is very little innovative or cutting edge being done in the US either outside of the universities (where many of the researchers are Indian) and a few big companies (Google, Facebook, et al -- who all have large engineering offices in India as well). Honestly, I find it easier to hire for skills like AWS, node.js, Kubernetes, React, Scala and TensorFlow in India than it is in the US. You're right about call center work, but that's a different skill set entirely. The biggest problem with the offshore model for development is that it requires a certain level of scale to be profitable. Large projects go great, as do small one-offs at established, large clients; but dealing with small customers/projects creates enough overhead to wipe out be benefits of offshore labor (or at least makes them less of an advantage). You have to have fat margins on your projects to cover the training costs for your people -- if you don't give them training, they won't have time to learn anything new (and the time off of projects costs you far more than any training course would).

hpcjoe 9y ago
Hmmm ... at $dayjob-1, I watched one of the major Indian IT houses take over a large US companies infrastructure in the interests of cost savings. Driven in large part by your standard gaggle of very expensive (and often clueless) big name consulting firms. The net result is that this former customer took a system that worked well, and replaced it with a system that doesn't. Add in frequent outages, "core team" changes on the IT side, and on the customer side (they fired all their internal developers and most of their support) ... ... This would make for a compelling "do not try this at home, kids" type case study. Somewhere in there, the expensive consultants made some other egregiously bad statements to the customer, resulting in a disastrous policy with regard to their core analytics. I give them another 2 years before they reverse course and fire the IT firm and the consultants. From my personal experience, the money you "save" is rarely worth the headaches associated with this. Call it a Pyrrhic victory. It looks like you are saving money. You really aren't. This said, and going back to the OPs point, this change was inevitable. Automation is going to wipe out low level jobs in this space, and the most at risk are those whom have not adapted. The Indian IT firms have not adapted.
9y ago