9 ms·
> Indian IT Outsourcing Industry ⊆ Indian IT Industry Indian IT outsourcing has been the vast majority of cash flow into the Indian IT sector, that much is und
by saguro 9y ago
> Indian IT Outsourcing Industry ⊆ Indian IT Industry
Indian IT outsourcing has been the vast majority of cash flow into the Indian IT sector, that much is undeniable. There is some actually good Indian IT talent out there and it's picking up steam, but that's not where the money is yet.
And to the western/eruropean markets, Indian IT industry == Indian IT outsourcing industry. And the Indian IT outsourcing industry has developed a very strong negative stigma which I expect will completely kill it over the next ~5 years. Does the 'real' Indian IT industry have enough cash and momentum to survive that? Maybe, I'm not sure. One thing is for certain: all the low skilled IT workers which make up 95%+ of the outsourcing industry, they're all going to be permanently out of those jobs and new jobs like that aren't coming.
And from personal experience with those low skilled indian IT workers, I think it would be a miracle if even 1% of them are able to re-skill for the real engineering work that's now in demand. Not only that, but just the fact that you're in India is a strong signal that that you're terrible, even if you're actually not. I've seen Indian IT workers with CVs 3 times the size of mine and glowing recommendations from past employers, and most of them failed fucking fizzbuzz. After you deal with a dozen people like that, you just start to subconsciously dismiss Indian candidates because chances are, they're gonna be another one of those.
tl;dr: In terms of economics, the Indian IT industry is the outsourcing industry, and that cash well is drying up fast. Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka saw the writing on the wall and bailed on a high note.
- danpalmer 9y agoThis is why blind CV screening and remote tests in hiring are crucial. We all have these biases and sometimes the candidates that pass those phases are surprising.
- saguro 9y agoRemote tests put off actually good talent, they are insulted by that kind of waste of time. As for biases, bias isn't inherently bad. Bias is critical to how neural networks operate in ML. Removing bias is to intentionally discard valuable observational data and harm your rate of success.
- sideshowb 9y agobadly implemented remote tests. Ftfy
- saguro 9y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/4k994j/if_carpenters_were_hired_like_programmers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/4k994j/if_... This is how good talent views any kind of tests. I can't blame them. There is no other professional industry in the world, where candidates with 6+ years of professional success are asked to sit a god damned test every time they apply for a job. Insulting doesn't even begin to describe the problem with this concept. Don't get me wrong, I understand where the need for testing came from, but that doesn't change the fact that actually good candidates are put off by it and tend to dismiss employers who do it.
- sideshowb 9y agoFunny yes, but that's not even parodying a test, it's a checklist of buzz words. Which is below even what I'd call a badly implemented test. Good tests are not tests of any specific knowledge. They test reasoning and communication skills in a programming context.
- glogla 9y ago> There is no other professional industry in the world, where candidates with 6+ years of professional success are asked to sit a god damned test every time they apply for a job. But is it because it is hard to fake knowledge in other industries or is it because it is easy to find out programmer is faking? If there's so many programmers who can't do fizbuz, are there as many managers, doctors, lawyers, etc who can't do basic stuff despite perfect CV?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- saguro 9y ago> there's so many programmers who can't do fizbuz, are there as many managers, doctors, lawyers, etc who can't do basic stuff despite perfect CV? Yeah, there are. Plenty of garbage doctors and lawyers out there who are allowed to continue practicing. Here's why testing for developers exists: 1: They are incredibly important to business revenue. In a modern business, if a manager underperforms, nothing much happens. If your development team underperforms, you lose millions. So you try to get the best development team you can. 2: There's no meaningful standardized testing. A Lawyer passes the bar exam, a doctor has to pass board certification, while any idiot from backwater India can call themselves a software engineer. But its important to note that neither the bar exam nor board certification tell you anything about how good that person is in their field, they just say they meet the bare minimum requirements. In the case of IT, the bare minimum requirements happen to be much lower than what most employers hope to attract, so they resort to doing testing themselves. It's not a terrible approach, but it does discourage top talent from applying. 3: Skill disparity. There aren't many '10x' lawyers or doctors or managers out there, but there are plenty of such developers. This is partially related to my 2nd point but mostly just a consequence of software engineering being a creative task rather than a learned flowchart like law and medicine. As an employer, you want to come up with some signal to find the high performers.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]