Indian engineers good only at theory: Microsoft

Rediff news ^ | 10/5/05 | Sinha and Mishra

[ArcadeQuarters]

Odd that a Chief Technical Officer would say "source codes" instead of the correct phrase "source code." Maybe a typo.

[Johnny Crab]

I'm betting that no matter how fast they make a computer and how much RAM they put in it, Microsoft will write code that will bring it to it's knees.

Intel and AMD giveth, Microsoft taketh away...

Outsourcing:bean counters look great up front but TOTAL costs go up.

[FormerACLUmember]

lol

[dljordan]

"After paying about 10x our original investment for US consultants to fix it, we now have a smooth running, but mediocre product."

But of course the management that made the decision to outsource all got their peformance bonuses right?

[seastay]

These bureaucrats would have got the same from American engineers, that’s what an engineer does; practice scientific theory and with time and patience they realize the theory into practice. But just like some manger bureaucrats; they do not understand or value the theoretical aspects of engineering at all, they just want to know if it works, when it will be done. And if these answers do not meet thier short fuses then they they outsource , Which in this case these managers outsourced till they got to the ends of the earth, India, looking for their answers of quick profits. Yet, they were too dumb to know that American engineers were just as good and real theoretical work that needed to be done, so their stupid schedules and lack of knowledge of technology coupled with unrealistic expectations lead to these stupid conclusions about the state of engineering .

[js1138]

Hey, did you hear the good news? Dell is moving their customer support out of India! Now for the bad news: they're moving it to the Phillipines.

In one episode of Dilbert, Support was outsourced to India, which subcontracted to another country, and so forth, until it came back to the original American company, because they had the lowest wages.

[dljordan]

"IBM has almost as many employees in India as Microsoft does worldwide. Think about that for a second."

Not to mention the thousands they're hiring in Brazil. Oh, they're also moving back to South Africa for some support as well as China. Big Blue just seems to have this love affair with Marxists.

[tfecw]

I hope mine learns this. Everyone actually got an email the other day i found amusing at first then i get angrier the more i think about it.

Some hotshot exec was bitching that too many people were working from home instead of being at the office. At first i waved it off, but when they fire 1000s of people and hire computer scientist over seas and are somehow able to deal with a language barrier and a 12 hour time difference this guy can deal with Average T Employee working 20 miles from the office to beat DC traffic.

[Myrddin]

Beware of the applicant whose resume is loaded with academic credentials and endless certifications, but no practical experience or references. You have an excellent test taker whose ability to apply the skills is not proven.

[SauronOfMordor]

Odd that a Chief Technical Officer would say "source codes" instead of the correct phrase "source code." Maybe a typo.

Or perhaps he's British

[Blood of Tyrants]

You've seen them, haven't you?

[CarrotAndStick]

Interesting ping!

[SwordofTruth]

Followed this year by Steve Ballmer whining he can't find US programmers for 40k / year.

I know of US programmers working for less than that, plus I am working for that salary right now as a programmer. Steve Ballmer is liar.

[impatient]

Computer engineers are more into theory and less in managing businesses, building businesses or writing source codes, the key to software development.

This is actually a general condemnation of software engineering practices disguised as a condemnation of underfunding India's higher education. Microsoft would rather have a marketing department run the product line before letting engineers encumber it with unimportant things such as quality. This quote is just a paraphrase of that mission statement.

Microsoft has a large number of Indian software engineers on its rolls in India as well as abroad.

Well, now we know the M stands for "morale". Next, they'll cancel Vindaloo Fridays.

[grey_whiskers]

Outsourcing:bean counters look great up front but TOTAL costs go up.

The outsourcing improves costs on ONE line item in the short term, but increase, diffuse, and spread the costs (at a higher level) in a dozen different places.

[grey_whiskers]

Some hotshot exec was bitching that too many people were working from home instead of being at the office. At first i waved it off, but when they fire 1000s of people and hire computer scientist over seas and are somehow able to deal with a language barrier and a 12 hour time difference this guy can deal with Average T Employee working 20 miles from the office to beat DC traffic.

One overlooked aspect of offshoring is "blame transferrence".

The current crop of managers are overrepresented by dimwit MBA's who know more about metrics (and politics) than anything else. So Offshoring has two advantages:
a. the manager looks good by cutting costs.
b. if anything goes wrong, the manager has a whole ready-minted set of excuses--"cultural differences", "language barriers", "time differential", "transitional difficulties" etc. to deflect the blame from his own incompetence and dishonesty.

The only answer is going to be to form a start-up full of motivated, disgruntled US 40-60 year old employees who will kick ass into the next solar system.

[tfecw]

"... a. the manager looks good by cutting costs...."

I remember when I first heard about outsourcing, i was interning at GE, I read something about how it's not actually cost effective to do out sourcing. I may get ambitious tomorrow at work and do some research considering I'll put my build request in at 10am est and have to wait 24 hours because we out source the guy who does the builds.

[dirtboy]

I figured out in 2002 that I needed to re-position myself with my business background over my technical background.

You can bang code anywhere.

But business is very culturally-specific. I can no more understand marketing in India than someone from India can understand marketing here.

And that's kept me employed since.

[AndrewC]

Indian engineers good only at theory: Microsoft

Maybe they are in the wrong profession.

[hopespringseternal]

After paying about 10x our original investment for US consultants to fix it, we now have a smooth running, but mediocre product.

It's like an Indian coworker told me: "You can't get good software out of India for the same reason Mexico never wins in the Olympics: Everyone who can run, swim, or jump is already here."

The average amount of seniority among software teams in India is six months. As soon as they get any experience under their belts, they are immigrating under an H1B.

The other side of the coin is that software teams tend to be self-managed, usually because their managers are clueless about software development. When companies switch from native development to offshore development, they face a huge and unanticipated management workload.

I personally witnessed one outsourcing project burn up three project managers in six months. The last only survived because he came on at the end of the project. The first simply walked away, the second managed to get himself transferred.

And at the end of the project we had a product the customer vomited back at us like a bottle of ipecac. It took a local team another six months to get a usable product. Management declared it a resounding success.