6 ms·

It boils down to the Business Model. Having worked extensively with the major Indian vendors, with people from India in different settings, onsite and offshore

It boils down to the Business Model. Having worked extensively with the major Indian vendors, with people from India in different settings, onsite and offshore, I observed that they simply focus on labor costs in Europe and elsewhere. Salespeople tried to sell us dozens of teams with “cheap” developers of every skillset we wanted. But that is not how software is done. I want outcomes not masses. I need creativity to work on tools expressed through software not cheaper developers. I felt sorry for my Indian dev friends that the true value of these folks was left off the board. Salespeople always tried to solve a problem with another “cheap team”. Enter SaaS...

oneplane 6y ago
I've talked with a lot of different Indian and similar 'offshore' engineers, developers and managers and most of them ended up in the place they did due to choices between being a farmer or being an IT person, being in a poor province vs. being in a less-poor province, and being able to support your parents. Almost none of them had an upbringing, background or base passion for technology or IT in general. While you can in theory do your IT things with no passion at all, and kill all creativity and still be productive, it often ends up being just 'mass' like you describe, a transformed version of the classical western 'consultants' that usually end up being companies that focus on sales and billable hours and never really deliver what the people needed (referring to earlier HN posts about accenture and deloitte). I get that at some point all companies converge on the same generic point of being in the business of making money at all costs, and making it 'measurable' via sales, hours and contracts. It doesn't matter if it's software, financial, legal etc. At least not to them at that point. The bigger problem with this is that the IT systems are not as well defined or a closed system as the other examples might be. A ledger would be simple to verify in comparison: you apply a fixed set of rules to a fixed period of data and it must result in something within a known range. With software you can do a little bit of determining that the 'borders' of your 'box' of functionality would be, but to do an exhaustive verification is so far from profitable that it's only done in a few highly regulated systems like flight controllers. So now we have a system where a lot of money and power vectors are involved that would (somewhat) work for legal and finance and the likes (i.e. the classical big ones that existed long before software did) and a constant attempt to apply it to IT and hide everything they don't like about getting the wrong results. It still eats resources like the other kinds of work, but doesn't produce the results you would expect for the resources that went in to it. Software doesn't operate in a vacuum, disconnecting users, buyers, sellers, or stakeholders in general is bad for everyone and because of endless change and interaction the whole model of 'buying a product' hasn't been realistic since 2000, and with connected OT (think SCADA and the likes) it won't even apply to embedded systems anymore.
- _the_inflator 6y ago
  "I've talked with a lot of different Indian and similar 'offshore' engineers, developers and managers and most of them ended up in the place they did due to choices between being a farmer or being an IT person, being in a poor province vs. being in a less-poor province, and being able to support your parents. Almost none of them had an upbringing, background, or base passion for technology or IT in general." This sadly happened to me many times. Since the quality of many Indian teams was extremely abysmal, I found out that many so-called developers had no IT background at all, as you wrote. They went through a 2 to 4 weeks HTML/CSS/JS Bootcamp, and, very important allegedly in India, received a certificate, that qualified them as “Middle Web Developers”.
  - gourabmi 6y ago
    You get what you pay for. That holds true everywhere.
    - BossingAround 6y ago
      Umm... 20$ an hour, meaning 3200$ a month, would be quite a nice salary in a lot of Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, ...). You get people with BAs or MAs in comp science who have been developers for 2-5 years. While I'm sure some will say that 3.2k is ridiculous in country X, I personally met people in all of the above countries working for less while being more experienced.
      - gourabmi 6y ago
        I guess that is the reason why there is interest in outsourcing to Eastern Europe. Case in point being EPAM Systems. Indian IT consultancies might have huge operations but they are not the only show in town.
        stephenhuey 6y ago
        Yes, and we collaborated with a few dozen EPAM developers on some projects at my last full-time corporate job, and all of the ones I worked with (both the in-person EPAM teammates and the remote ones) were very sharp people who definitely enjoy technological endeavors. As development firms such as EPAM gain traction, I expect some of the massive Indian firms will lose ground.
GordonS 6y ago
> But that is not how software is done. I want outcomes not masses. I need creativity to work on tools expressed through software not cheaper developers. Fully agree, but the people making the decisions at large corps are not developers, and are just as focused on costs as the Indian outsourcing firms pushing low cost devs. And in turn, those people are pushed by the board to make cost reductions, and board members understand this even less. As a developer and architect, I've had this discussion many times over my years working in the enterprise space, and it always ended with me throwing my hands up and giving up.
- ethbro 6y ago
  Non technical folks under-appreciate the cost and frequency of long-term technical debt. It's easy to save money on developers, yet very quickly produce a net-negative result for the company. Sadly, few companies have guardrails to prevent these sort of shortsighted choices. E.g. requiring parallel approval of projects by IT architects (whose existence admittedly carries its own hazard).
  - marktangotango 6y ago
    > Non technical folks under-appreciate the cost and frequency of long-term technical debt. Undoubtedly this is true, but there's an implication here in this context that somehow on shore, or more well paid developers don't create such technical debt, when in fact they do. It amazes me that I see team after team of competent well intentioned developers create one ball of mud after another. It's striking really.
    - RealityVoid 6y ago
      > It amazes me that I see team after team of competent well intentioned developers create one ball of mud after another. It's striking really. It is! But I don't understand... how? How does that happen? You should put good people together and get something good. But it is not always so. Very puzzling to me.
      - 6y ago
yalogin 6y ago
I don't think that is how these companies see themselves. For them they are just a source of cheap labor and the only reason a company would engage with them is for their low cost. They think that the engineers and the talent is easily replaceable and they even think they do adequate work nothing earth shattering. So the company's only aim will be to out maneuver the other IT consulting companies by undercutting on price.
- nickff 6y ago
  You're both describing a 'market for lemons'.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
  - ci5er 6y ago
    Thank you for that article. I like to think that I keep up with what some call "Freakonomics" (not the book, but the concept), and I had never come across that succinct and well developed model. Again - thank you.

oneplane 6y ago

I've talked with a lot of different Indian and similar 'offshore' engineers, developers and managers and most of them ended up in the place they did due to choices between being a farmer or being an IT person, being in a poor province vs. being in a less-poor province, and being able to support your parents. Almost none of them had an upbringing, background or base passion for technology or IT in general. While you can in theory do your IT things with no passion at all, and kill all creativity and still be productive, it often ends up being just 'mass' like you describe, a transformed version of the classical western 'consultants' that usually end up being companies that focus on sales and billable hours and never really deliver what the people needed (referring to earlier HN posts about accenture and deloitte). I get that at some point all companies converge on the same generic point of being in the business of making money at all costs, and making it 'measurable' via sales, hours and contracts. It doesn't matter if it's software, financial, legal etc. At least not to them at that point. The bigger problem with this is that the IT systems are not as well defined or a closed system as the other examples might be. A ledger would be simple to verify in comparison: you apply a fixed set of rules to a fixed period of data and it must result in something within a known range. With software you can do a little bit of determining that the 'borders' of your 'box' of functionality would be, but to do an exhaustive verification is so far from profitable that it's only done in a few highly regulated systems like flight controllers. So now we have a system where a lot of money and power vectors are involved that would (somewhat) work for legal and finance and the likes (i.e. the classical big ones that existed long before software did) and a constant attempt to apply it to IT and hide everything they don't like about getting the wrong results. It still eats resources like the other kinds of work, but doesn't produce the results you would expect for the resources that went in to it. Software doesn't operate in a vacuum, disconnecting users, buyers, sellers, or stakeholders in general is bad for everyone and because of endless change and interaction the whole model of 'buying a product' hasn't been realistic since 2000, and with connected OT (think SCADA and the likes) it won't even apply to embedded systems anymore.

_the_inflator 6y ago
"I've talked with a lot of different Indian and similar 'offshore' engineers, developers and managers and most of them ended up in the place they did due to choices between being a farmer or being an IT person, being in a poor province vs. being in a less-poor province, and being able to support your parents. Almost none of them had an upbringing, background, or base passion for technology or IT in general." This sadly happened to me many times. Since the quality of many Indian teams was extremely abysmal, I found out that many so-called developers had no IT background at all, as you wrote. They went through a 2 to 4 weeks HTML/CSS/JS Bootcamp, and, very important allegedly in India, received a certificate, that qualified them as “Middle Web Developers”.
- gourabmi 6y ago
  You get what you pay for. That holds true everywhere.
  - BossingAround 6y ago
    Umm... 20$ an hour, meaning 3200$ a month, would be quite a nice salary in a lot of Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, ...). You get people with BAs or MAs in comp science who have been developers for 2-5 years. While I'm sure some will say that 3.2k is ridiculous in country X, I personally met people in all of the above countries working for less while being more experienced.
    - gourabmi 6y ago
      I guess that is the reason why there is interest in outsourcing to Eastern Europe. Case in point being EPAM Systems. Indian IT consultancies might have huge operations but they are not the only show in town.
      - stephenhuey 6y ago
        Yes, and we collaborated with a few dozen EPAM developers on some projects at my last full-time corporate job, and all of the ones I worked with (both the in-person EPAM teammates and the remote ones) were very sharp people who definitely enjoy technological endeavors. As development firms such as EPAM gain traction, I expect some of the massive Indian firms will lose ground.

GordonS 6y ago

> But that is not how software is done. I want outcomes not masses. I need creativity to work on tools expressed through software not cheaper developers. Fully agree, but the people making the decisions at large corps are not developers, and are just as focused on costs as the Indian outsourcing firms pushing low cost devs. And in turn, those people are pushed by the board to make cost reductions, and board members understand this even less. As a developer and architect, I've had this discussion many times over my years working in the enterprise space, and it always ended with me throwing my hands up and giving up.

ethbro 6y ago
Non technical folks under-appreciate the cost and frequency of long-term technical debt. It's easy to save money on developers, yet very quickly produce a net-negative result for the company. Sadly, few companies have guardrails to prevent these sort of shortsighted choices. E.g. requiring parallel approval of projects by IT architects (whose existence admittedly carries its own hazard).
- marktangotango 6y ago
  > Non technical folks under-appreciate the cost and frequency of long-term technical debt. Undoubtedly this is true, but there's an implication here in this context that somehow on shore, or more well paid developers don't create such technical debt, when in fact they do. It amazes me that I see team after team of competent well intentioned developers create one ball of mud after another. It's striking really.
  - RealityVoid 6y ago
    > It amazes me that I see team after team of competent well intentioned developers create one ball of mud after another. It's striking really. It is! But I don't understand... how? How does that happen? You should put good people together and get something good. But it is not always so. Very puzzling to me.
    - 6y ago

yalogin 6y ago

I don't think that is how these companies see themselves. For them they are just a source of cheap labor and the only reason a company would engage with them is for their low cost. They think that the engineers and the talent is easily replaceable and they even think they do adequate work nothing earth shattering. So the company's only aim will be to out maneuver the other IT consulting companies by undercutting on price.

nickff 6y ago
You're both describing a 'market for lemons'.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
- ci5er 6y ago
  Thank you for that article. I like to think that I keep up with what some call "Freakonomics" (not the book, but the concept), and I had never come across that succinct and well developed model. Again - thank you.