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If anything, Indian engineers are street smart, and pick up new tech and tools very quickly. Of course, everybody can, I mean to say that there is a cultural at
by reacharavindh 8y ago
If anything, Indian engineers are street smart, and pick up new tech and tools very quickly. Of course, everybody can, I mean to say that there is a cultural attitude to quick adaptation to changing conditions.
Source: myself, Indian CS engineer, now living in Europe.
Sure, the simple laborious IT tasks are going away with automation for good. But the labor force will pick the next best thing. As long as labor is cheaper than the west, Indian outsourcing companies will only thrive. In 10 years, the dynamics will slowly evolve such that outsourcing will slow down, and more original startups will rise up.
UPDATE: I over generalized my comment for my own good. I meant to say, many engineers that I know are .....
- ramblerman 8y ago> Indian engineers are street smart If we are going to generalize, I would have to say the exact opposite. In my experience they are definitely smart and capable, but usually extremely naive and somewhat sheltered by western standards.
- reacharavindh 8y agoYeah. My generalization is of no use in a discussion. I only meant to say a lot of them(that I know) are. I can't vouch for billions of us :-) Could you elaborate "sheltered by western standards"?
- ramblerman 8y agoI can also only speak for the friends I know :) But I mean overly protected to a late age, and very strongly influenced by their parents. The flip side is that on average my Indian friends are also the politest people that I know, which makes me realize it's really a lost quality.
- stillwatersr 8y agoI've found quite the opposite to be the truth. On average, my Indian friends are the most arrogant, rude people I know.
- jdietrich 8y agoThere's a bit of a culture clash. Hindi has no direct equivalent of the English word "please" and the closest equivalent of "thank you" has very different connotations that can be perceived as rude. Politeness in the Hindi language is subtle and complex. The verb forms used to express intimacy and formality in Hindi don't translate into English, so Indian speakers often seem a bit blunt and direct to native speakers. To grossly generalise, Indians tend to be less private and more personally inquisitive than Americans, which can sometimes seem intrusive or overly familiar. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/thank-you-culture-india-america/395069/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/th...
- pjmlp 8y agoThe culture of always say yes, and never contradict what the western project manager says, regardless how ridiculous it might be? Until it explodes and escalates all the way to the top.
- jacobush 8y agoI feel like a horrible person for this - but in an outsourcing scenario: listening a LOT to direction and not explore solutions very much themselves. This is probably amplified by their management giving them hell if they spend too much on exploring instead of ticking off the boxes that they can bill for. I.e. not only "you get what you pay for" in the sense that cheap labour might not be the most skilled labour, but in the deeper sense in that if the outsourcing scenario is such that the western company orders a bunch of stuff from a checklist done, well, that's what's going to get done. This is the same problem a large organization has locally too, but it gets amplified when you try to outsource things and increase turn-around time.
- reacharavindh 8y agoYou hit a vein of deep true thought. I can share my personal experience that can help exemplify your point. Disclaimer: Personal experience. Not saying this is the case foe everyone. My first job was to work for one of the biggest Indian outsourcing companies. Soon after joining, I realized that their business model has nothing to do with real engineering work or genuine solutions to problems. They were essentially looking for people to tick the boxes, sit around and do stuff that could easily be automated, or maintain software that should have been rewritten decades ago. Their goal is to bill the western clients and prolong the maintenance work as much as they could. Now, there is no need for creative thought or engineering prowess here. It is not surprising that someone doing this task is not passionate or creative. This is what translates to "Listen to western managers, and do just what they ask for, and the infamous never say NO". Saying No is not the engineer's prerogative here. On the other hand, several Engineers from the same country who work for product companies with the right incentives(you get paid and recognised for a good product) show the true passion and creativity. I have friends who work for both categories of companies and I can clearly see this distinction. Personal experience - I worked for Bank of America - Merill Lynch development center in India, maintaining a COBOL application. I once received an email from a senior team member(from Florida) to just translate his logic from the attached Word document to COBOL and not to do anything more. You get what you pay for. I quit that job a week after, and flew to the states to do my graduate studies soon after. TLDR; Dont expect passion from cheap outsourced labor. Many people do those jobs because they do not have access to a better alternative. Sorry for the rant. I know some friends of mine in the industry shared my experience. It does not mean everyone does/feels the same way. I apologize if I unintentionally belittled anyone's serious effort.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dasil003 8y agoI think both can simultaneously be true in a typical outsourcing scenario. The incentive for an outsourcing agency is billable hours and not rocking the boat. Couple that with the different management cultures in the US and India, and it makes perfect sense that the American company would see the quiet and overly optimistic compliant attitude as not being street smart, while the Indian company sees that they are keeping the gravy train rolling and making bank off fat and somewhat stupid American companies.
- techsin101 8y agoWhat are the naive about
- jcbrand 8y ago> pick up new tech and tools very quickly And then they go on StackOverflow and Github issue trackers, begging anyone and everyone to help them and appearing completely out of their depth.
- reacharavindh 8y agoTo be fair, silly questions are fair game from everybody on SO and GH. There are just so many of us Indians, which makes us more visible. I browse SO just for curiosity, I have seen plenty of silly questions with all sorts of usernames.
- collyw 8y agoOk generalization again, but I see a lot more Indian names asking questions rather than answering them.
- icebraining 8y agoI'd bet every country has more people asking questions than answering them.
- superflyguy 8y agoYes but the ratio is different. Americans produce most of the most popular services even if most Americans consume rather than create them.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- collyw 8y agoStack overflow generally has more than one answer per question, so probably not. People more likely up vote an existing question.
- oblio 8y ago
- Dawny33 8y ago</ blatant generalization >
- godelmachine 8y agoMay I ask which technologies have you worked on?
- reacharavindh 8y agoNot sure why it'd help the discussion :-) Here is my public CV : https://aravindh.net/cv_2018.pdf https://aravindh.net/cv_2018.pdf
- godelmachine 8y agoYours is one awesome CV. I was just curious to know.
- reacharavindh 8y agoThanks!
- ShinTakuya 8y agoI don't think it has anything to do with Indian and rather everything to do with the nature of the outsourcing business model. Outsourced engineers (from India and from several other countries I've encountered) in my experience tend to have low standards of code and terrible engineering practices. I'd outsource for repetitive tasks but never for anything I expect to be rock solid and future proof or handling sensitive data.