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A question to those here who have experienced both IT work in both the US and in India: Over the past year, I conducted well over thirty technical phone screen

A question to those here who have experienced both IT work in both the US and in India: Over the past year, I conducted well over thirty technical phone screens in hope of finding a single, somewhat-skilled Java development contractor. The majority of those interviewed were Indian people who were working in the US on H1B visas. Interview results ranged from the mediocre down to the abysmal. The resumes of all these candidates claimed several years of work exclusively in Java, and many also purported to have had lead/architect roles. My screening technique is an insult to a good developer. I ask questions that anyone who has written any decent Java code should be able to answer without pause. For example, I email a small snippet of code containing a try/catch block and ask the candidate to trace through the flow of program execution if the checked exception is thrown. Literally half of candidates think that program execution terminates whenever a catch block is entered and the contents of that block done executing. How could someone have written any quality code and not know this? I'm not asking Java trivia. What's going on here? If I was going to travel half way around the world to work as a Java developer, I'd be sure to read a couple of Java books on the plane. Is there something uniquely American/Western about expecting people to "know their stuff"? I'd attribute my observations to general, world-wide idiocy except that the rate of ineptitude relative to claimed experience was far worse with Indian candidates. Perhaps a Mid-Western, Fortune 1000 company isn't a compelling place to spend six months on a contract? The role was to do back-end engineering work on a pretty large, well-know site -- something I would think would be compelling compared to the average "maintain a crappy legacy banking system" gig. If I claimed to be a Java developer and didn't know much Java, I'd be so embarrassed that I'd study every night to achieve competence. I feel like such an Ugly American asking this question, but I can't discount my observations. What am I missing? Is there some selection bias in my data set that I'm unaware of? I also find a general lack of creativity in these candidates, but I attribute that to the rote nature of Indian education (at least that's what I've read about most schooling in India). Note: I'm not trying to start a "Java sucks" language war here...When looking at a candidate for the long term, I don't care if he/she knows Java at all. However, when you claim to have done Java for five years and don't know basic stuff, I have to question if you know anything at all.

FraaJad 18y ago
Blaming "rote learning" for lack of technical capability of a considerable majority of a "regular" Indian programmer is simplistic. If I may list the issues that are possibly unique to Indian programmer, they are, in no particular order: * Money triumphs everything. Most Indian programmers don't care for the technology as long as money comes a) in ever increasing quantities b) from a reputed, brand-name company c) offers foreign travel, with US being first choice. * Admissions to Engineering courses depends entirely on how "HOT" the market is for that degree. couple of years back it was CS. Now it is Electronics and Communcation Engg (ECE), just because it allows you to compete both for CS jobs and Electronics jobs. * "Work Ethic" - that can be quantified as pride in one's individual contribution, quality of output, constant drive to improve one's skills and knowledge as a distant measure after social status, money for many Indian programmers. * Enjoying Programming for the sake of it is considered trivial pursuit and not "serious". For instance, being a Python/Rails/Lisp/Haskell programmer of some capability is a matter of pride in US etc. Not so in India. If you are not working on "Enterprise" stuff, all you get is a "oh.. ok". Of course generalising the above behaviour to ALL Indian programmers is a disservice and wrong. As a hacker(if I may claim so myself) and a native of Bangalore, I'm proud of many excellent programmers I have met in the last 10 years and I feel that many of us are on par with hackers from elsewhere in the world. To answer your "selection bias" question. There are many reasons why you will not get a qualified hacker to appear on your radar. Getting a US visa is a huge pain in the neck. If you want a H1B you will have go through a lot of circus. Any self respecting hacker would balk at paying upto 60% of their salaries to body shopping firms. H1B applications are flooded on the first day of applications by big name companies and body shoppers. This leaves no space for a hacker (who by nature are content to be hacking on their own) to "hustle" to get into USA. I wouldn't touch a lot of these H1B programmers myself. My own hiring processes back home in India have been similar to yours. I would typically give a programming test and a computer to the interviewees and ask them to solve them for me. A significan percentage of candidates from large, brand name companies would fail. Some of them wouldn't even know how to use command line SQL query tools. So, your sampling population is the one which is contaminated by people who are largely motivated by the desire to work in US and not by technology.
- ajju 18y ago

FraaJad 18y ago

Blaming "rote learning" for lack of technical capability of a considerable majority of a "regular" Indian programmer is simplistic. If I may list the issues that are possibly unique to Indian programmer, they are, in no particular order: * Money triumphs everything. Most Indian programmers don't care for the technology as long as money comes a) in ever increasing quantities b) from a reputed, brand-name company c) offers foreign travel, with US being first choice. * Admissions to Engineering courses depends entirely on how "HOT" the market is for that degree. couple of years back it was CS. Now it is Electronics and Communcation Engg (ECE), just because it allows you to compete both for CS jobs and Electronics jobs. * "Work Ethic" - that can be quantified as pride in one's individual contribution, quality of output, constant drive to improve one's skills and knowledge as a distant measure after social status, money for many Indian programmers. * Enjoying Programming for the sake of it is considered trivial pursuit and not "serious". For instance, being a Python/Rails/Lisp/Haskell programmer of some capability is a matter of pride in US etc. Not so in India. If you are not working on "Enterprise" stuff, all you get is a "oh.. ok". Of course generalising the above behaviour to ALL Indian programmers is a disservice and wrong. As a hacker(if I may claim so myself) and a native of Bangalore, I'm proud of many excellent programmers I have met in the last 10 years and I feel that many of us are on par with hackers from elsewhere in the world. To answer your "selection bias" question. There are many reasons why you will not get a qualified hacker to appear on your radar. Getting a US visa is a huge pain in the neck. If you want a H1B you will have go through a lot of circus. Any self respecting hacker would balk at paying upto 60% of their salaries to body shopping firms. H1B applications are flooded on the first day of applications by big name companies and body shoppers. This leaves no space for a hacker (who by nature are content to be hacking on their own) to "hustle" to get into USA. I wouldn't touch a lot of these H1B programmers myself. My own hiring processes back home in India have been similar to yours. I would typically give a programming test and a computer to the interviewees and ask them to solve them for me. A significan percentage of candidates from large, brand name companies would fail. Some of them wouldn't even know how to use command line SQL query tools. So, your sampling population is the one which is contaminated by people who are largely motivated by the desire to work in US and not by technology.

ajju 18y ago