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Comment by bruceb | Hacker News Reader

Cites recent layoffs but has no real stats on the decline of outsourcing, near shoring, etc. Weak.

Part of the problem with India is lack of standards. There are people who are good at programming in both the US and India and people who are bad at it.

The problem is in the US most of the bad ones don't end up getting a CS degree where in India they do. This means there are a lot of people in India who have a little bit of skill and can get a job but not do it that great. Their US counterpart might have switched to business or something else as they are less expected to get a tech (viewed a good a job) related job by their family. Obviously there are more complexities but bottom line its not just the cost it is the quality of work.

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To add to this; a lot of companies in India just gather as many people as they can with a CS degree in a building (often 1000s) and hire them out in 'teams' to western companies. This is a valid (currently) business plan which makes them a lot of money. It also gives outsourcing a really bad name, but that does not seem to deter companies from hiring these kind of, let's call them what they are, sweatshops. The idea is definitely appealing; you hire educated women and men, usually they are monitored (often by camera's!) to make sure they site and work 8 hours / day, 5-6 days / week and they have the skills you need. Not happy? You get another person right away! You can expand or shrink your team(s) at any time.

That they are treated like robots sitting in long rows of far too little space and that they are not allowed to get up besides for lunch and tea at set times is not interesting to most; that this kind of environment (not even looking at if they are good at their jobs or not; some are, some are not like you say) is destroying any chance of getting quality anyway is lost on most people who hire. This market is growing as it does sound incredibly attractive on paper. The prices are also still a lot (for programmers you pay around 20-40% of what you would pay in the west, it used to be 5-10%) lower than the same role (on paper) in 'the west'.

I hear some companies actually get work done this way and are very happy with it, growing continuously without worrying about who does the tech; they have 100s of companies to pick from and 100-1000s of employees in these companies. How they manage that, I have no clue, but I do hear a lot of my Indian friends who try to make something 'west' quality in India complain about these popping up a lot and a lot young guys dream of making these, in essence no-risk at the moment, 'brain work' farms.

I don't really see the problem here. Indians are willing to work under these conditions, which honestly don't sound worse than the US. It sounds like even though they might shrink/grow teams at will, because the building has many teams, the risk for the individual is low. And you said that companies are happy with the work these teams do. So what is the problem?

Indians are willing to work under these conditions => willing or don't (think they) have much choice? And i'm sure rows of long, room wide desks without any separation between 1m workspaces with touching chairs and cameras pointing at you to keep you in your chair is not normal/allowed in the US? It certainly is not over here. I see quite a lot wrong with it. It keeps the prices low, sure. I didn't say the companies hiring them are happy though; I said they keep hiring them because it seems like a good idea and you have this team doing work, you can show the hours they spent, you can show what they did etc to your boss. It's kind of 'secure' compared to, let's say, Elance, where a really good developer(team) suddenly disappears to turn up a few months later with 'sorry, had some personal/company/financial/cosmic radiation issues' leaving you to explain why you hired this loose cannon.

Quality wise I have not seen anything coming from these shops, however that might be OK for departmental (read CRUD; the type MS Access was made for) LoB applications, mobile apps and internal sites.

Edit: stand corrected, I did say happy.

Yes they do have a choice. Their choices are more limited because they live in a poorer country. On the American companies, didn't you said I hear some companies actually get work done this way and are very happy with it, growing continuously without worrying about who does the tech; Not saying you're 100% wrong on outsource being a safe option for managers, but you really did say that American companies were happy with outsourcing.

If you apply basic microeconomics to this situation, it is actually very simple. The company makes Indian workers better off, American workers worse off, and American companies better off.

I indeed did say happy. Should have the context on my screen when typing replies. You have a point of course; they do have a choice. Sort of. If you are not very talented but you did get a CS degree (which holds for a lot of people), what are you choices really?

Guess the point was that outsourcing is no longer cheap (it is) and I only know about coders as that's what I encounter every day, I'm not thinking call centre employees etc. So it's rather logical why all try to get a CS degree, as the article probably applies well to call centres or manual labor. For CS is see a bright future; I would just like it more if Indian founders would go for nice, high quality startups offering services for 70% of western prices instead of massive factories hiring anything they can get and selling for 30% (and rising).

Yes - this is a common model. But those in the west should also recognize another opportunity: given a couple of months, you can also recruit a great team rather than simply a large one. You just need to do it a little differently than the bodyshops.

There are a lot of good workers stuck in the desk farms described above and they'd love to work for you. The recipe for hiring them:

1. Don't be a dick, your outsourced team here is just as good and deserves the same respect as a US based tech team. 2. Really, see (1). Treat your outsourced team with the same respect you'd give a US based team. Don't be a PHB or a know it all American. 3. Pay above market. Instead of paying $chipotle_wages, pay 2x$chipotle_wages.

I recently helped a startup recruit over here. It was a great team - I'd be very happy to work with such a team in NY or anywhere else. It took about 1 month to recruit them (good luck trying that in the west). Unfortunately they all quit 2 weeks after I stopped being involved - apparently there were failures with steps (1) and (2).

>> I hear some companies actually get work done this way..

This statement and lack of any citations with statistics makes me suspect this as an opinion, not necessarily factual. I am a engineer from Bangalore, India. I worked for a few years with companies that outsource teams to many countries across the world. I lived in Bangalore for over 20 years and I know a lot of people who are in similar line of work. Most software companies provide competitive salaries (according to wages in India based on Indian cost of living, which is lower compared to the US) along with annual leaves, sick/casual leave, maternity leaves, statutory programs like provident fund (retirement benefits in India), gratuity fund etc. Many companies (all companies I have worked with and I know people working in) provide a lot more benefits than the ones I mentioned. I worked with companies that provided facilities like on-campus full time doctors, financial support programs, gyms, swimming pools, libraries, higher education support, employee rewards programs, sports programs, transport facilities etc. I have never heard of CS engineers hired and monitored by cameras to ensure work. I would like some citation on this, and even if it occurred at some place I doubt it's a problem at such a scale that it should be termed that it usually happens.

And, about quality of work, a large portion of the outsourcing projects involve support and maintenance of an existing software/website. Many of such customers do not have software as their primary business e.g. a internal web based software for a huge construction company. Such L2/L3 support work generally tends to be repetitive and does not require highly skilled software programmers. There are lot of companies that work on the same outsourcing model which cost the customers a lot higher and produce high quality work, such companies generally attract the better skilled engineers and customers that require high quality products.

My point, outsourcing software companies in India are definitely not sweatshops. There are sweatshops in parts of India mainly in the textile industry and they most certainly do not hire CS engineers. And, there are good and bad engineers everywhere, it's not determined by where they are from or who employs them.

I didn't say that; I said I see a rise (also in Bangalore) of actual sweatshops (my definition of sweatshops is tainted by the west and especially the EU; I find workplaces where my chair touches my neighbours rather unworkable; I know actual manual labor sweatshops are much much worse than that) with coders; I never said 'Indian outsourcing companies are sweatshops' as I know that's not true at all. I just see a lot of them and it's growing, I believe. And of course it is an opinion; I don't know if anyone does research in this area. I just say what I hear (from friends who own/founded outsourcing companies who live in India, including Bangalore) and see.

I don't think they're literal sweatshops as they usually have air conditioning. :P

Sounds like only so the computers don't break down.

I had visited a small company working on their bus booking application. The owner had a big screen in front of him monitoring his employees. My ex-colleague who is now working in TCS says they use camera as well.

> The problem is in the US most of the bad ones don't end up getting a CS degree where in India they do.

The problem is of course that the world is placing too much emphasis on degrees and this doesn't scale, because education costs are going through the roof and because degrees are so desirable, the system is being gamed. I see this happening in my own country and everywhere really. Lets take the US as an example - how many software developers skipped college? How many founders skipped college? Quite many, compared with the rest of the world.

This is one of those cases in which you're not seeing the forest from the trees. Do you think those indian companies you're talking about aren't aware that they are routinely hiring mediocre people? Of course they do and they like the ability of doing so, because consulting scales only horizontally - the more people you have, the more profit the company makes. And if universities would get tougher, they would just hire people without degrees and still access the same projects they are accessing today.

"The problem is in the US most of the bad ones don't end up getting a CS degree where in India they do."

There are plenty in the US that have a CS degree and aren't good at programming. It isn't a magic ticket to knowledge.

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