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I wrote that blog post immediately after the conversation referred to in the first paragraph. I was very pissed off by my friend's assumption that coding was s
by plinkplonk 16y ago
I wrote that blog post immediately after the conversation referred to in the first paragraph. I was very pissed off by my friend's assumption that coding was some kind of menial task (he used to be a dev some time ago) and I did very little editing (and it shows, for which, apologies. I sometimes use writing as catharsis and don't bother with polishing when I've blown off steam).
These days I would just shrug and move on, but I remember I was very irritated with someone assuming that everyone wants to be a manager and that the failure to "move on from coding" was some kind of failure.
PostScript: the person I had the conversation with("Vivek" in the post) is "Director of Innovation" at an "Offshore Development Centre" here in Bangalore these days and he is leading a "strategic initiative" to "increase corporate innovation" (In private conversation he freely admits that he is just "pushing paper and attending meetings" and that his employer is hopelessly non-innovative and bureaucratic) while I am still coding in Haskell/C all day, working mostly from home, learning new things and working with smart people.
What is worse (from his pov) I still make more money than him which drives him a bit crazy but he consoles himself with "you are a unique kind of crazy guy". We have our differences of opinion but we are still friends (I think ;-) )
- ad93611 16y agoThank you for writing the blog post though. Yes, your irritation did come out, but it is useful to have articles like this to help change the perception in India. The value that is generated by different roles in software is generally measured by the amount of money that the market sets for it. In India, in general the market value of a developer is still lot lesser than the market value of a "manager", mostly due to the low value work done in India by the outsourcing companies. I am sure there are exceptions, but that is the general trend. Your assertion that you make more money than the "manager" indicates that you are an exception. I wouldn't fault the manager for a making an assumption based on the general trend though.
- plinkplonk 16y ago"to help change the perception in India" I don't think the perception of India as a land of (by and large) cheap semi competent (at best) devs with broken English will go away as long as outsourcing is a reality (and its champions, like Infosys, TCS, Cognizant etc are the folks with the most PR). But that is all right really, at least as far as I am concerned. All the really sharp devs I know here in Bangalore have plenty of interesting and satisfying work to choose from and could move to the USA (or wherever) whenever they want. They just choose not to, which is a hard concept for people who'd kill to get on the H1B/Green Card/USA citizenship treadmill to wrap their heads around. It is only the folks with somewhat "generic" skillsets that the bodyshoppers want, and with no unique knowledge or skill, who are really "stuck" in the outsourcing jobs and (in some cases) desperate to move on to some unarticulated "better job". And in most such cases the "better job" is management. Why waste time hacking on some nightmare enterprise legacy codebase no one in the West wants to work on anymore when you can politick and attend meetings and send meaningless emails for thrice the money? If I were working in some soulless "offshore development centre" I'd be a manager too. It is the lesser evil. Even outside the bodyshopping fraternity there are a lot of people here who talk a lot about the latest kool aid fads - agile, lean startups, functional programming,what have you, but very few people who can actually get stuff done or code up something interesting or value providing. The folks who can are swimming in opportunity. As Alex Feinberg (strlen here on HN) commented here the other day "Specialized knowledge is how you make your way out of the enterprise/web ghetto and onto much more fascinating problems". The "enterprise/web ghetto" is where all the outsourcing critters swim and there are plenty of warm bodies competing for those jobs. No Indian dev with any kind of specialized knowledge lacks for opportunity. My personal belief is that if you have access to the internet and can afford a cheap laptop to install Linux on, your only limits on achievement (in software) are those you impose on yourself. And many Indian devs do impose many social limitations on themselves ("I want a 'good' arranged marriage" heh heh) which are fulfilled in dead end jobs and not in the riskier but more interesting opportunities. There is nothing really stopping a guy in India from building good software. Sure you have to work harder/smarter if you are not in Silicon Valley/don't have an American passport/whatever but so what? The world was never "fair" in an absolute sense. (I hope that wasn't too harsh but imho many Indian devs whine too much about lack of opportunity and don't code/learn enough).