7 ms·
This is one of the reasons I hypothesise that you don’t get to hire good programmers in India. It’s not that there is a lack of talent. I’ve seen many enormousl
by sumanthvepa 7y ago
This is one of the reasons I hypothesise that you don’t get to hire good programmers in India. It’s not that there is a lack of talent. I’ve seen many enormously talented developers. However, the very best won’t work for Indian salary levels, since they know they can command better salaries abroad or become entrepreneurs. As a consequence there is an adverse selection effect in play in India. The very best won’t offer their services and the quality of the talent pool declines over time in a viscous cycle, as companies lower salaries even further to compensate for a poorer talent pool. Obviously this is not the only dynamic at play in the enormously complex Indian IT labor market, but it is a factor that I think that might be worth pondering.
- iamsb 7y agoVery true. Also, it is almost impossible to find senior engineer opportunities if you have lot of experience. Most companies I spoke to consider it almost a failure that with 15+ years of experience, I am not looking for upper management roles.
- vishnugupta 7y agoI can second this. A friend of mine went through a real ordeal to change jobs as a senior IC.
- viig99 7y agoIndian's don't value any skill besides the skill to bullshit you way through
- iamsb 7y agoThis is a really silly comment.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- WalterBright 7y agoHere I am, still writing code every day after 45 years. One day, I'll figure out how to do it right, and so get promoted to incompetence.
- vishnugupta 7y agoQuite right. As a hiring manager I've experienced this first hand. You either have to settle for unprofessional engineers or those who accept the offer stick around, at best, for one year. I've seen engineers changing jobs within 2 weeks. It's become really hard to hire good engineers in India at Indian salaries. It's actually good thing in the longer run if the overall salary levels rise. On the other hand the talent drain out of India continues to be quite high.
- goatinaboat 7y agoIt’s not that there is a lack of talent. I’ve seen many enormously talented developers. However, the very best won’t work for Indian salary levels No, there is something more complicated going on. India has a space programme and nuclear weapons. They have the talented engineers to make that happen. I guarantee those engineers are not all “we are facing an issue” and “please do the needful” like everyone who has dealt with Indian IT has heard when they lack the basic competence to do the job. So where is the disconnect?
- blocked_again 7y agoWell you get all kind of software Engineers in India. Software engineers that make less than 8kUSD per year to software engineers that make more than 70k an year. You get what you paid for. And most of the times foreign companies pay lower than what a McDonald's employee make an hour in USA and expect back services of a software engineer that gets paid 100K+ USD in USA.
- H8crilA 7y agoWorking on a space programme and nuclear weapons is a "perk" on its own that can lower the salary. Maybe not for you, but for a lot of people. It's like when people write entire programming languages for free. The job is so enjoyable that it lowers the salary to zero.
- WalterBright 7y ago> It's like when people write entire programming languages for free. The job is so enjoyable that it lowers the salary to zero. Dang, I thing you nailed it! (I'd work on rocket engines for free, too!)
- ndidi 7y agoitt: Indian says Indians are actually not incompetent. Other Indians agree.
- H8crilA 7y agoIt baffles me that someone could possibly think that in a country of over a billion people you can't find superstars. You'll find plenty, there will be a ~million one-in-a-thousand geniuses. Heck, if you take an average million people city and the smartest person in the entire city - India will have a ~thousand people that are smarter than that person, for any definition of smart.
- 91pavan 7y agoIn every thread: people finding reasons to simply bash Indians and looking down on them. Just because of your interactions with few Indians and had a bad experience from those working in mega service companies like Infosys, Wipro doesn't mean everyone's a worthless engineer
- nothrabannosir 7y agoDon’t forget one of the most talented mathematicians ever was Indian: Ramanujan. Of course , he was flown to London... as is precisely the actual topic “itt”.
- ndidi 7y agoI have the theory that the IQ of Indians follows an inverted bell curve distribution.
- blocked_again 7y agoWait what? If you are a senior software engineer at a good company in Banglore you can easily make 40k - 60k USD an year. After taxes and expenses it becames equalent or better than salaries in most places except for San Francisco(USA), London and Singapore. USA is super hard for an Indian software engineer to immigrate. London is doable but for most of them it's not worth all the travel and staying away from family. People immigrate only if they makes way too much salary abroad compared to India which is hardly the case. Nobody is going to immigrate if they will save a few hundred dollars more a month. So good software engineers mostly immigrate for reasons other than salary (Like living in Europe etc). Edit: Looks like even London don't offer good enough salary for a good software engineer when compared to cost of living.
- unicornfinder 7y agoIndeed. Hell, I've known people from India to move back there in recent years because conditions have improved and whilst the salaries are lower the standard of living they can afford you can end up being a lot better.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoThe pollution in the big tech-centric cities though is still absolutely horrible, and this has to be a big factor for anyone with kids.
- Scoundreller 7y agoI wonder how many returnees were only able to improve their salaries by that foreign experience (warranted or not).
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoLondon is fairly notorious for low SE salaries outside of high end consulting, I’m not sure why it would be listed with those other two cities. The biggest problem with India is that talent migration doesn’t really work the other way (same with China), so you have to build companies solely with local talent. That works for lower end software services, but for higher end R&D generally requires some amount of draw from a world-wide labor pool.
- ozim 7y agoYou are assuming that everyone hires only the best or need only best programmers. Starting with "good" and then in the middle you go with "best". Stop rolling this lie about "only the best", there is a place for less skilled people. There is also no measure of "the best developers". Because of this lie, hiring in IT is broken, because people who belive that and are recruiting, shit on people who want to find a job.
- antisthenes 7y agoYou've just described brain-drain in its most common form. It's not a new phenomenon. It's at least as old as modern forms of transportation and probably way older than that. A vicious self-reinforcing cycle that drains underdeveloped countries of the best and brightest - the very people most suited to lead and improve the countries they leave. The US has also been historically the biggest benefactor.