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Indian IT consultancies have been struggling against technological obsolescence for 30 years. And they will continue to struggle for many more. This is an idiot

Indian IT consultancies have been struggling against technological obsolescence for 30 years. And they will continue to struggle for many more. This is an idiotic hit piece hit written by a journalist who needs to meet his quota. This journalist has never worked for one of these consultancies, a tech company, or been in C-suite of any org. I have worked in these "consultancies" so here is my take. There is a wide range of talent in these consultancies. Some examples are web app developers/software engineers, website people, implementation engineers/enterprise app software, supply chain, cybersecurity, etc. Yes, unfortunately, some of this talent is not familiar with basic software tooling like basic linux commands or git or setting up a path variable. This sounds really bad until you work with a Georgia Tech computer engineering grad and realize he doesn't know this either. Many methods of sales. A sale can be considered a billion dollar deal or having a director hiring a contractor. The billion dollar deal is closer to consulting. The director hiring a contractor is closer to professional services firm. Prior to these consultancies, the orgs would hire their own employees and train them. What changed? Contractors easier to layoff than W-2 employees. Maybe their own employees didn't have the expertise. The truth of the matter is for most organizations, IT is a cost center along with legal and finance. It is not their money maker. They have no interest in innovative IT/software "technology" until their competitor in the same industry as them has it. Price matters. Laying off people easily matter. "Consultancies" exist for that reason. Look past their marketing/branding and their official classification is a professional services firm.

rafiki6 6y ago
> The truth of the matter is for most organizations, IT is a cost center along with legal and finance. It is not their money maker. They have no interest in innovative IT/software "technology" until their competitor in the same industry as them has it. Price matters. Laying off people easily matter. Accurate and poignant. Having lived in the banks for a while, this will always be the case in industries. They don't give a shit if you have a passion or about your career. They want you to be a "xyz developer with 50 years of experience". Sometimes I think we forget how the real world works when we are enamored with the cool things computers can do.
- erikerikson 6y ago
  Isn't this why a variety of industries such as banking are being or will be disrupted? For example in banking, I would love to set up income apportionment (i.e. x% here, y% there, ...) but for some reason I have to split out income deposits every once in a while via manual, external tools. Why is it again that we haven't set up two sided and payee specific authorizations so that we never hand out data that can be used to steal from us and we could be notified if a payee tries to bump the bill? I've suggested these and other things to banks and credit unions for years...
  - PedroBatista 6y ago
    Banks aren't being "disrupted", every new fintech hotness has an old fat bank behind, so either way they win. Like every musical chair game, some poor schmuck will sleep and lose but most of the banks will be just fine.
    - erikerikson 6y ago
      I agree. Banks haven't been disrupted in any serious manner yet. You could go further and note that every angel or VC backed firm has a financier behind it. I wouldn't claim it will be easy but I will suggest there is a large opportunity.
  - rafiki6 6y ago
    Banks have moats. It's really hard to get past these moats. They are so central to the way that the financial system works, that it's really hard to "disrupt" them. Even the tech giants likely wouldn't succeed.
    - erikerikson 6y ago
      Yes, the regulatory overhead is quite high. There are plenty of adjacent firms who could start making moves. Banks are central but the disruptor only needs to provide increasing partial replacement at sufficient profit to continue offering services at sufficient parity.
TheOperator 6y ago
People within IT have a bias towards overestimating the importance of it. For a LOT of companies mediocre IT services and products are literally good enough. Hell for some companies crappy minimally viable software is practically a feature if it's used to manage cancellations and warranty support and such. Tech debt is bad and all but so is real debt and paying a lot of money upfront won't mean no tech debt.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
JAlexoid 6y ago
It's not a hit piece. The whole article lays out the issues with cost focused consultancies. (Please tell me that you're a subscriber and read the entirety of it, rather than the little bit that is available freely.) The issue with lack of tech talent - is that today, more than ever, we realise that tech/engineering talent is what drives the world. You've seen how this pandemic forced conservative companies to turn to online retail, just to survive. There is no going back... You may ask - how does that affect those consultancies? Well... Major service and COTS providers need less and less consultants at implementation phase. Companies that go for SaaS need specialists(tax, compliance, logistics, etc), that Indian engineering grads don't satisfy. In the end the article is about how those companies need to address lower demand for their services.
kaiwenwang 6y ago
Off-topic from the thread, but was the sample size of GT students you've interacted only one, or greater? My intuition on well known public universities has been that they accept all the talented people at the cost of letting some who would struggle with the material while private universities accept only talented people at the cost of missing some people who would thrive.
- afrojack123 6y ago
  Yes, my sample size was 1. Its not a big deal that he didn't know. Not everybody knows everything and with a background like that he can be taught. It requires some hand holding on my end but others have held my hand too so its just part of the job. Its a sad state of affairs for new grads in these consultancies. I have met Math majors from top Canadian universities, physics, and biomedical engineers. They were learning .NET and similar tech that operates at the app layer lol. I think its a waste of brainpower but work is work I guess. They probably couldn't find jobs in their field. Also, this was in the US and a small sample of their US hires. I don't know too much of how it is in India.
  - tdeck 6y ago
    I've had colleagues with surprising blind spots as well, even at Google. Sometimes I've wondered "how was this person hired here and they don't know X" (e.g. how to use the command line, what a CPU architecture is, etc...). But then those people have ramped up and done excellent work.

rafiki6 6y ago

> The truth of the matter is for most organizations, IT is a cost center along with legal and finance. It is not their money maker. They have no interest in innovative IT/software "technology" until their competitor in the same industry as them has it. Price matters. Laying off people easily matter. Accurate and poignant. Having lived in the banks for a while, this will always be the case in industries. They don't give a shit if you have a passion or about your career. They want you to be a "xyz developer with 50 years of experience". Sometimes I think we forget how the real world works when we are enamored with the cool things computers can do.

erikerikson 6y ago
Isn't this why a variety of industries such as banking are being or will be disrupted? For example in banking, I would love to set up income apportionment (i.e. x% here, y% there, ...) but for some reason I have to split out income deposits every once in a while via manual, external tools. Why is it again that we haven't set up two sided and payee specific authorizations so that we never hand out data that can be used to steal from us and we could be notified if a payee tries to bump the bill? I've suggested these and other things to banks and credit unions for years...
- PedroBatista 6y ago
  Banks aren't being "disrupted", every new fintech hotness has an old fat bank behind, so either way they win. Like every musical chair game, some poor schmuck will sleep and lose but most of the banks will be just fine.
  - erikerikson 6y ago
    I agree. Banks haven't been disrupted in any serious manner yet. You could go further and note that every angel or VC backed firm has a financier behind it. I wouldn't claim it will be easy but I will suggest there is a large opportunity.
- rafiki6 6y ago
  Banks have moats. It's really hard to get past these moats. They are so central to the way that the financial system works, that it's really hard to "disrupt" them. Even the tech giants likely wouldn't succeed.
  - erikerikson 6y ago
    Yes, the regulatory overhead is quite high. There are plenty of adjacent firms who could start making moves. Banks are central but the disruptor only needs to provide increasing partial replacement at sufficient profit to continue offering services at sufficient parity.

TheOperator 6y ago

People within IT have a bias towards overestimating the importance of it. For a LOT of companies mediocre IT services and products are literally good enough. Hell for some companies crappy minimally viable software is practically a feature if it's used to manage cancellations and warranty support and such. Tech debt is bad and all but so is real debt and paying a lot of money upfront won't mean no tech debt.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

JAlexoid 6y ago

It's not a hit piece. The whole article lays out the issues with cost focused consultancies. (Please tell me that you're a subscriber and read the entirety of it, rather than the little bit that is available freely.) The issue with lack of tech talent - is that today, more than ever, we realise that tech/engineering talent is what drives the world. You've seen how this pandemic forced conservative companies to turn to online retail, just to survive. There is no going back... You may ask - how does that affect those consultancies? Well... Major service and COTS providers need less and less consultants at implementation phase. Companies that go for SaaS need specialists(tax, compliance, logistics, etc), that Indian engineering grads don't satisfy. In the end the article is about how those companies need to address lower demand for their services.

kaiwenwang 6y ago

Off-topic from the thread, but was the sample size of GT students you've interacted only one, or greater? My intuition on well known public universities has been that they accept all the talented people at the cost of letting some who would struggle with the material while private universities accept only talented people at the cost of missing some people who would thrive.

afrojack123 6y ago
Yes, my sample size was 1. Its not a big deal that he didn't know. Not everybody knows everything and with a background like that he can be taught. It requires some hand holding on my end but others have held my hand too so its just part of the job. Its a sad state of affairs for new grads in these consultancies. I have met Math majors from top Canadian universities, physics, and biomedical engineers. They were learning .NET and similar tech that operates at the app layer lol. I think its a waste of brainpower but work is work I guess. They probably couldn't find jobs in their field. Also, this was in the US and a small sample of their US hires. I don't know too much of how it is in India.
- tdeck 6y ago
  I've had colleagues with surprising blind spots as well, even at Google. Sometimes I've wondered "how was this person hired here and they don't know X" (e.g. how to use the command line, what a CPU architecture is, etc...). But then those people have ramped up and done excellent work.