Re: More future history questions - India

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KHR said:

Which just means that India's tech level (and salary level) is moving up
to
better-paying tasks.I have come across a number of pretty competent tech
people from India in recent years.

[Tom] In my field, the most-recent workplace truly is global and my last
project saw further offshoring (to some advantage, to some larger long
term
detriment in my opinion but I blame the buy out by the Israeli company
for
that stupidity).

My experience with the latest bunch of Indian managers, software
developers
and quality assurance personel was this:

- Exceedingly variable quality. Met some very good, sharp lads and
lasses.
Met some less sharp folks or at least less trained but also with a less
expansive thought process.

- They say yes to everything, including things they obviously cannot
deliver on. "Can you magically invent warp drive and have it done
yesterday?" "Yes, yes - no problem." to the point where nobody trusted
any
commitment they made as realistic.
This is largely a problem of their management's desire to please.

- In seeking cost advantage in complex software systems, management here
wanted minimal time spent to achieve metrics. This has nothing to do
with
good software development or testing. It's nice that someone thinks and
Indian QA tester can execute 50 test cases in an afternoon while a
Canadian
one can execute 5. I'm pretty certain the quality of testing is
inversely
proportional to speed.

- They have a cultural bias in favour of the higher ups that means
whoever
has rank at a meeting or on a call does the talking. This means that the
smartest and most informed person in the room may well not be the one
making the decisions or heading the discussion.

- They have a cultural bias, less in tech but still present, for males
to
speak for females. This is also a problem when the smartest and most
informed person present is the female.

I can see they have some very sharp people who will go far, but as a
whole,
they'll need to deal with their cultural male/female behavioural issue
(at
least 2-4 generations away even in the tech sector IMO and it is a
leader
in their society) and with their management culture (this could come
sooner) and with the rank respect to the point of negative outcomes (no
sign of that one getting fixed, even in tech).

I have heard cases of India losing some of the outsourcing dollars to
cheaper places as Indian standards of living rise (to Eastern Europe in
some cases). This is part of the trend that KHR refers to when he talks
about global GDP levelling.

I'm all in favour of the levelling of the GDP playing field, both in
terms
of the human prosperity aspect and the competitiveness aspect. I don't
mind
having a 10% cost advantage over US labour (compensated for by some
taxation issues here) but a 2x, 3x, 5x cost differential with labour
elsewhere is something that short-sighted business thinking (CEOs behave
like democratic leaders with short government terms) won't ignore.

Tom