4 ms·

I'll stick to India. Indians have a better work ethic ("36 hours/week? sacreu blue!"), cost less, and the regulatory environment is vastly better. Someone isn't

I'll stick to India. Indians have a better work ethic ("36 hours/week? sacreu blue!"), cost less, and the regulatory environment is vastly better. Someone isn't working out or demand has gone done? Pay them a month or two of transition, they move on, and everything is finished. No real risk of lawsuits or regulators coming to bother you. (The same is not true in the UK, for example, which I'm told is one of the most relaxed Euro nations. I know someone who managed the RBS shrinkage process, I couldn't deal with that sort of stress.) Additionally, your competition for work is reduced since a lot of Indian shops are simply terrible places to work. If you pay people well and treat your employees well, they will love you forever.

pinaceae 12y ago
that's a joke, right? eastern europe is chock full of awesome talent, talent that can actually get shit done without constant supervision. outside of the most braindead tasks i have not seen anything productive coming out of indian it shops.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  Eastern Europe might be better - I'm mainly familiar with Britain, Spain, France and Italy. Can anyone with firsthand knowledge offer any info? I'm not proposing one emulate the Infosys model, which I think is what you are criticizing. I'm proposing going to India and hiring developers the same way you would if you were in the US. There is no shortage of excellent developers here - I've had great success in hiring myself.
  - pjc50 12y ago
    Estonia is particularly switched-on, and there are small but determined communities in Romania and the Czech republic. Italy is badly underestimated; the big Italian contribution people will know is the Arduino. Long engineering tradition in the north especially around Milan. Spain is something of a disaster area after the property boom, but Barcelona seems to have the trendy/techie atmosphere that people admire. France is probably closest to the stereotype. I knew someone who had to deal with ST Microelectronics (Nice) and they were as bureaucratic and ossified as you'd imagine. Somehow they still manage to ship stuff.
davidw 12y ago
I think you're painting things with an awfully broad brush. What is true for people who have worked for a unionized car factory in France for the past 30 years may not be true for a 25 year old guy who's a Javascript expert in Helsinki or Vienna. I've found the work ethic within the computer industry to be quite good here in Italy. The wages are also low, by rich country standards. I think it'd be a great place to send work if they were able to lower the taxes and bureaucracy some.
pjmlp 12y ago
Sorry, but it is my right not to put my health and family in front of capitalist profits. If work ethic is the right of being exploited, then I need to check my dictionary
pjc50 12y ago
You can make people redundant in Europe, you just need to be genuinely making them redundant; if there's no more work for them to do and you can't afford them and they're selected in a fair process, then yes it's a month or two of transition and move on. This is true almost everywhere outside of the few remaining heavily unionised workplaces, of which the public sector is often one. What you can't easily do is fire people for BS or discriminatory reasons. Oh, and everyone has healthcare so you can't use the threat of taking that away as a stick to corral them with.
thisGuysAccount 12y ago
What makes so many Indian shops terrible places to work?
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Many folks in India are used to working far harder than Westerners. So we call it a sweatshop; they call it a day at the office.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Everybody plays the 'racism' card when talking culture, for some reason. Clearly there is a norm when talking about large populations; behaviors are not the same everywhere in the world. So its appropriate in a discussion to bring that up when talking practices across the globe.
      - thisGuysAccount 12y ago
        It's true. It's been my experience that Indians, the few hundred I've worked with, are willing to put in long hours. Many of which were spent playing ping pong, talking, getting coffees. They also were working, but, the long hours in the office weren't all work. They also held the belief that they were harder workers than non-Indians, and preferred greatly to talk in native languages, likely unintentionally excluding non-Indians. At some level, race is a factor.
        JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        I think more likely, culture. For instance, even across India practices may differ. That would map more closely to culture than race (genetics), right? In fact a child of Argentina raised in that culture could be expected to behave as raised, not according to some genetic plan. Again, its all about culture, not race.

pinaceae 12y ago

that's a joke, right? eastern europe is chock full of awesome talent, talent that can actually get shit done without constant supervision. outside of the most braindead tasks i have not seen anything productive coming out of indian it shops.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
Eastern Europe might be better - I'm mainly familiar with Britain, Spain, France and Italy. Can anyone with firsthand knowledge offer any info? I'm not proposing one emulate the Infosys model, which I think is what you are criticizing. I'm proposing going to India and hiring developers the same way you would if you were in the US. There is no shortage of excellent developers here - I've had great success in hiring myself.
- pjc50 12y ago
  Estonia is particularly switched-on, and there are small but determined communities in Romania and the Czech republic. Italy is badly underestimated; the big Italian contribution people will know is the Arduino. Long engineering tradition in the north especially around Milan. Spain is something of a disaster area after the property boom, but Barcelona seems to have the trendy/techie atmosphere that people admire. France is probably closest to the stereotype. I knew someone who had to deal with ST Microelectronics (Nice) and they were as bureaucratic and ossified as you'd imagine. Somehow they still manage to ship stuff.

davidw 12y ago

I think you're painting things with an awfully broad brush. What is true for people who have worked for a unionized car factory in France for the past 30 years may not be true for a 25 year old guy who's a Javascript expert in Helsinki or Vienna. I've found the work ethic within the computer industry to be quite good here in Italy. The wages are also low, by rich country standards. I think it'd be a great place to send work if they were able to lower the taxes and bureaucracy some.

pjmlp 12y ago

Sorry, but it is my right not to put my health and family in front of capitalist profits. If work ethic is the right of being exploited, then I need to check my dictionary

pjc50 12y ago

You can make people redundant in Europe, you just need to be genuinely making them redundant; if there's no more work for them to do and you can't afford them and they're selected in a fair process, then yes it's a month or two of transition and move on. This is true almost everywhere outside of the few remaining heavily unionised workplaces, of which the public sector is often one. What you can't easily do is fire people for BS or discriminatory reasons. Oh, and everyone has healthcare so you can't use the threat of taking that away as a stick to corral them with.

thisGuysAccount 12y ago

What makes so many Indian shops terrible places to work?

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Many folks in India are used to working far harder than Westerners. So we call it a sweatshop; they call it a day at the office.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Everybody plays the 'racism' card when talking culture, for some reason. Clearly there is a norm when talking about large populations; behaviors are not the same everywhere in the world. So its appropriate in a discussion to bring that up when talking practices across the globe.
    - thisGuysAccount 12y ago
      It's true. It's been my experience that Indians, the few hundred I've worked with, are willing to put in long hours. Many of which were spent playing ping pong, talking, getting coffees. They also were working, but, the long hours in the office weren't all work. They also held the belief that they were harder workers than non-Indians, and preferred greatly to talk in native languages, likely unintentionally excluding non-Indians. At some level, race is a factor.
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        I think more likely, culture. For instance, even across India practices may differ. That would map more closely to culture than race (genetics), right? In fact a child of Argentina raised in that culture could be expected to behave as raised, not according to some genetic plan. Again, its all about culture, not race.