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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 choi

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.
        gourabmi 6y ago
        Right. I'm counting on that to happen. This should force the hands of the Indian firms to innovate or perish. That should be very interesting to watch.
        shubb 6y ago
        Eastern Europe is in a wierd time where it has the infrastructure, market access, and human resources of a rich country, but much lower cost of living and pay. That isn't sustainable - we will just see things equalise with Germany and then where is the competitive advantage? So cutting costs by pushing technical work to eastern EU isn't sustainable, at least in the 10 year time frame. I am sure EPAM and the tech industry there will adapt to the shift but they will not be as the new Infosys.
jorblumesea 6y ago
> Almost none of them had an upbringing, background or base passion for technology or IT in general. > The bigger problem with this is that the IT systems are not as well defined or a closed system This is the big issue. At the end of the day creating truly good usable software is both an art and a science. Data structures, algos and theory, but also thinking outside the box, asking inquisitive questions, challenging product and design. This doesn't lend itself easily to mass export. Also, culturally, I've found that the West has a different way of thinking about things. In India, questioning your superiors is not something that is done often, but in the West it's common to challenge your boss on ideas.
yourapostasy 6y ago
You used example industries of legal and financial and even in those, passion and innovation are force multipliers. The domain-specific systems in these industries are every bit as ill-defined and open as software, it just looks very, very different. As a layperson to these industries, most people are only exposed to the pedestrian mainstream aspects, kind of like being exposed to only the teenager manning the Geek Squad desk and bringing them a WinPC to defrag to "speed up". Dig not that many layers deep, and you'll expose the ill-defined and open systems in those industries. This is true nearly everywhere in nearly any human endeavor. This is why the Japanese kodawari concept (meticulous care in craftsmanship, design and service) is even feasible across an entire culture for centuries and counting. Once you really start caring about the customer, your entire center of gravity in your relationship with them changes, and you start stepping through the process through their eyes to anticipate their needs and empathize with how they likely feel through the process you set up for them to go through. This is very different from the Western "attention to detail" concept. Personally for me, the Western concept has less of a connotation with focus upon caring and empathizing to "listen for" the details, and more upon a situational awareness to "watch for" the legalistic steps of a spelled-out procedure (perhaps rooted in an Industrial Age paradigm?).
hnick 6y ago
> 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. That's a really good point. We haven't even settled on how to weed out bad programmers through a formal structure yet, and we still sometimes hear about companies setting KPIs based on LoC or bugs fixed. I'm not sure if it's even possible to have an objective framework to evaluate an outsourced system apart from "meets the spec" which is usually not very helpful unless there is in-house expertise spending a mountain of effort building the spec in the first place.
iceman2654 6y ago
As a former Accenture Consultant I do have to point out we rarely used hourly billing. Fixed fees were preferred and I think it actually works better as it forces everyone to keep talking about scope. That being said, the worse part of Accenture was working with the offshore developers. The only way to move a project forward was hand holding these guys. I ended up working around the clock to catch our Hydrabaud team at the beginning of their day and at the end of thier day. Keeping in mind I was suppsedly dealing with the "manager". Was Accenture perfect? No. But based on what I've seen, projects were well run with componetent local staff, good managers and the client side was usually in shambles.

_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.
      - gourabmi 6y ago
        Right. I'm counting on that to happen. This should force the hands of the Indian firms to innovate or perish. That should be very interesting to watch.
        shubb 6y ago
        Eastern Europe is in a wierd time where it has the infrastructure, market access, and human resources of a rich country, but much lower cost of living and pay. That isn't sustainable - we will just see things equalise with Germany and then where is the competitive advantage? So cutting costs by pushing technical work to eastern EU isn't sustainable, at least in the 10 year time frame. I am sure EPAM and the tech industry there will adapt to the shift but they will not be as the new Infosys.

jorblumesea 6y ago

> Almost none of them had an upbringing, background or base passion for technology or IT in general. > The bigger problem with this is that the IT systems are not as well defined or a closed system This is the big issue. At the end of the day creating truly good usable software is both an art and a science. Data structures, algos and theory, but also thinking outside the box, asking inquisitive questions, challenging product and design. This doesn't lend itself easily to mass export. Also, culturally, I've found that the West has a different way of thinking about things. In India, questioning your superiors is not something that is done often, but in the West it's common to challenge your boss on ideas.

yourapostasy 6y ago

You used example industries of legal and financial and even in those, passion and innovation are force multipliers. The domain-specific systems in these industries are every bit as ill-defined and open as software, it just looks very, very different. As a layperson to these industries, most people are only exposed to the pedestrian mainstream aspects, kind of like being exposed to only the teenager manning the Geek Squad desk and bringing them a WinPC to defrag to "speed up". Dig not that many layers deep, and you'll expose the ill-defined and open systems in those industries. This is true nearly everywhere in nearly any human endeavor. This is why the Japanese kodawari concept (meticulous care in craftsmanship, design and service) is even feasible across an entire culture for centuries and counting. Once you really start caring about the customer, your entire center of gravity in your relationship with them changes, and you start stepping through the process through their eyes to anticipate their needs and empathize with how they likely feel through the process you set up for them to go through. This is very different from the Western "attention to detail" concept. Personally for me, the Western concept has less of a connotation with focus upon caring and empathizing to "listen for" the details, and more upon a situational awareness to "watch for" the legalistic steps of a spelled-out procedure (perhaps rooted in an Industrial Age paradigm?).

hnick 6y ago

> 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. That's a really good point. We haven't even settled on how to weed out bad programmers through a formal structure yet, and we still sometimes hear about companies setting KPIs based on LoC or bugs fixed. I'm not sure if it's even possible to have an objective framework to evaluate an outsourced system apart from "meets the spec" which is usually not very helpful unless there is in-house expertise spending a mountain of effort building the spec in the first place.

iceman2654 6y ago

As a former Accenture Consultant I do have to point out we rarely used hourly billing. Fixed fees were preferred and I think it actually works better as it forces everyone to keep talking about scope. That being said, the worse part of Accenture was working with the offshore developers. The only way to move a project forward was hand holding these guys. I ended up working around the clock to catch our Hydrabaud team at the beginning of their day and at the end of thier day. Keeping in mind I was suppsedly dealing with the "manager". Was Accenture perfect? No. But based on what I've seen, projects were well run with componetent local staff, good managers and the client side was usually in shambles.