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Can China Pull An India?
ricst writes: "The New York Times has a story about how China is trying to leap ahead of India as the world's second-largest producer of software. Apparently the Chinese are trying to learn everything they can from the Indian software developers. It's not clear that if China becomes a strong competitor to India that 'jobs will be lost or simply not created' in the U.S. My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas."
Don't mundane jobs usually lead to more creative ones? Where's the talent pool come from?
I have no problem with China, India, or any other nation for that matter, taking part in the global economy (i.e. I'm not isolationalist), and if they produce great software then that's superb. Having said that I _DO_ have a problem with nations that steal jobs away from other countries without providing them: i.e. If Chinese only buy products from China, and they counterfeit all the software from the US, then I have a massive problem with that. Personally, given the counterfeiting nature of IP in China there is absolutely no way at this juncture that I would trust it as a nation to contract software development out to.
BANGALORE, India, Jan. 4 -- In the battle between India and China over the software business, India holds the edge. But if the recent invasion of Chinese trade and information technology delegations to Bangalore, India's software capital, is any indication, China is hoping to change that.
A few weeks ago, a delegation of officials from the Chinese Ministry of Higher Education was here at Infosys Technologies (news/quote), India's best-known technology company, on something of a reconnaissance mission.
The Chinese, it appeared, could not stop asking questions. How are employees trained in the latest technologies? How do programmers anticipate the needs of the market? How does the company keep its attrition rate under 10 percent? What kind of cuisine at the cafeterias? How many employees use the gym on an average day?
"We are here to learn," said Wang Ya Jie, the deputy director general of the Office of the Academic Degrees Committee, who led the delegation.
The visitor routine at Infosys is well rehearsed, and dozens of foreign business groups come each week. Delegations get a presentation about Infosys or a question session with an executive. To round off, there is a golf buggy tour of the campus that leaves most visitors in awe; Infosys says it has the second-largest technology campus, after Microsoft (news/quote)'s.
Until early last year, Chinese visitors were rare, but in the last month alone, five Chinese delegations have stopped by.
The Chinese groups from universities and software parks are focused on one goal: they would like to supplant India as the world's second-largest producer of software, after the United States.
"The Chinese are very clever, just as the Indians are," said a member of one delegation, Kang Jianchu, an assistant professor at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. "So what else is the difference? We are here to find out."
The Chinese realize that part of India's advantage comes from its schools and universities. So, besides the stop at Infosys, this Chinese group's two-day itinerary was packed with trips to the city's premier technology schools, the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Information Technology.
After all, the Chinese have engineering and technology schools that they consider just as good as, if not better than, those in India. More than 200 universities have computer science departments, according to the four professors in the Chinese delegation, and 33 universities in China now have specialized schools teaching software development.
"The most important difference," said Shen Weiping, vice president of Jiaotong University in Shanghai, "is that professors in India teach computers in English and professors in China teach computers in Chinese."
Until now, English has been taught as a subject in China, but other subjects have not been taught in English, limiting practical use of the classroom learning. English skills are critical for the Chinese if they intend to build the customer relationships needed to increase exports to English-speaking countries.
In the fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2001, India exported software to more than 100 countries, but a significant 60 percent of its software exports went to the United States alone.
China outstrips India in almost every sphere of development except software. It attracts a bigger chunk of foreign investment, and its share of world exports, whether textiles or toys, is far bigger.
In information technology, however, India takes pride in outdoing its rival. In 2000-01, India's software exports totaled $6.2 billion. Nasscom, India's software industry trade body, projects that India will reach $8.5 billion in exports by the end of this year. China's software exports were only $130 million in 1999 and have yet to reach $1 billion.
A sense of urgency came through in the Chinese visit. The visitors repeatedly asked officials of the Indian companies, "What kind of model did India follow to reach this level in information technology?"
Although they say they gain information from the Chinese as well as give it, officials of the Indian companies, understandably, are not entirely open with their answers.
Arjun Belliappa, a government official who facilitates visits by foreign delegations, said, "The Chinese are very eager to know the business model, and Indian companies are expectedly very reserved." For example, this particular delegation, despite several requests, was not permitted to visit Bangalore's other well-known software company, Wipro (news/quote) Technologies.
With the Chinese going about learning in their quiet way, Indian technology companies are already looking over their shoulders. They fear that if the language gap is bridged, the Chinese will begin bidding for the same slice of the pie as the Indian companies, snatching away projects and foreign currency earnings.
The world's two most populous countries, with more than a billion people each, will fight this war with programmers, which they both churn out in the thousands.
Indian labor is cheap, but Chinese labor is cheaper. Programming produced by Chinese costs about 20 percent less than that produced by equally qualified Indians, and some see this as eventually giving China a big advantage. At the same time, companies like Infosys and Wipro are looking for ways to use Chinese talent for their own software development efforts.
Kiran Karnik, president of Nasscom, said China would take several years to catch up with India. "However, we can't afford to be complacent," he said.
China, meanwhile, is being aggressive. One of its largest software companies, Huawei Technologies, has a center in Bangalore that employs 536 people and is Huawei's biggest unit outside China.
At the unit, 180 Chinese work alongside Indian programmers, soaking in the work culture and ethics. "They are learning how Indian programmers work together, how well they coordinate," said Ms. Kang, the assistant professor from Beijing.
Crisscrossing the 50-acre Infosys campus in a golf cart, the delegation was asked how long it would take China to overtake India as software powerhouse. "In the next 5 to 10 years, we hope to do that," Mr. Weiping said with quiet calculation.
Just like Dilberts company had their secret Albonians, our company had Romanians.
Our company did it for two years, and for a good reason we don't do it anymore. Not that there is no good work that comes out of it.. it was just a nightmare to manage. Our software is not one that can just be packaged and shipped, but was an ASP (Java) that requires constant work and modifications for new customers.
I suppose with something like Windows applications it might be easier to outsource, but web based applications it was a managment nightmare and ended up just not working.
I will not go into the differences of culture and work ethic or the irritations due to time zone differences.
I work in an European scientific software company and we get lots of E-mail from India saying that they could train people to do our work and send them to Europe, or where ever you want.
Personally I never reply to these E-mails. I seems to me like a modern form of slavery. What do you guys think? How are these companies managed. Do you think you would appreciate it, being called cheap programming force by your boss?
Or is the situation in India really that bad, and would you be happy to go abroad and have a better live?
Oh yes, routine development such as most of KDE, the invention of the Linux kernel and so on was done outside the US. Just routine stuff, not really creative, right ?
-- Don Inodoro
After looking at the latest three articles I would think I loaded slashdot.org.tw or something instead of just Slashdot.org.. ;)
Is that an implicit assumption that developers in China and India are unable to perform "creative" software development?
Its not quite the same deal as designing your clothes at Nike headquarters and manufacturing them in a Chinese sweatshop. You have to be a good programmer to do "routine" development as well. Indians are no less creative than Americans!
Well, Let's hope that the programmers (or theirbosses) have the foresight to so coding to support their Municipal PC's Red Flag Linux. If they are serious about producing quality software, then maybe we would have a stable, usable, if in Chinese, Office Suite.
I work in an European scientific software company and we get lots of E-mail from India saying that they could train people to do our work and send them to Europe, or where ever you want.
Personally I never reply to these E-mails. I seems to me like a modern form of slavery. What do you guys think? How are these companies managed. Do you think you would appreciate it, being called cheap programming force by your boss?
Or is the situation in India really that bad, and would you be happy to go abroad and have a better live?
[repost sorry, forgot to login]
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas.
Large companies will do this, certainly. But one doesn't have to work for a large company. One
really shouldn't work for a large company, period.
Becomming downright nasty, bloodthirsty entities,
they are.
This may be the year I start my own business.
After watching Enron steal it's employees retirement
money, and other things, I don't think I ever want
to work for someone else again.
There's a lot to be said for self reliance folks. Makes
you strong. Screw the big companies, they don't give
a fuck about you. Don't work for them, do your own thing.
It's like this with most industries, why not software? Levi's designs jeans here and gets poor workers in taiwan to make them in sweatshops. I'm not saying it's right, it's not, but that's the way American companies do business and make a profit.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
While I realize you're a troll, the reality is that the more commercially successful China is, the more reformed its government becomes (which is good for everyone), and hypothetically if China becomes successful enough they will actually provide business to Western countries (though if they want to play the early 80s Japanese game of taking our money but not giving us money, then we'll fuck them into the grave).
Having said that: Before the "Anti-US-ers" yap about how China is going to be the next superpower: China is one of those nations that will reform to a certain point (democracy, etc.), and then as a nation will disintegrate into 15 different nations: No more a Superpower than the tens of other asian countries.
Isn't it the Chinese that don't have any copyright laws? - which is why the don't BUY any software from overseas. In an economy like that, even a SINGLE software export against your ZERO software imports looks impressive.
For my $0.02 I wouldn't even entertain anything from China until they addressed these issues.
I agree with the poster that, for now, creative development jobs are likely to stay state-side (or in the EU: Finland, anyone?). However, I'll throw out this bit of caution: from my own experience at one of the world's largest avionics company, where we routinely out-sourced tedious work to Chinese developers, the major stumbling block at the moment is language. As technology and intercultural exchange advances (say the next generation of developers), a common language will become less and less of a problem as many (if not all) will speak flawless English and be able to understand and convey complex engineering topics. When this day comes, I am afraid that developers in the US will feel the same fear as auto workers, factory assembly line workers and many other 'out-sourced' industry workers have felt in the past.
The developers in India, offering to develop, test, and deploy your software for pennies on the dollar (or Euro) are not dumb, not by any stretch of the imagination. They have excellent resources, many times (books, 'Net connections, hardware) and they almost always have degrees in CS from accredited (and damn good) institutions. I recall a professor I had in my undergraduate schooling (in the US) that went to undergrad school in India, and Georgia Tech for her graduate work. She was one of the most amazingly intelligent professors I have ever run across.
The point? Don't sit on your duff - get out there, get smarter, stay current, try to think of new things, evolve. Good hunting.
At the University where I am attending 90% of the staff in the Computer Science department is from India (says so on their resumes). I guess we're ahead of the game. =]
What?
Taiwan makes their own stuff and sells it to their own. A global economy just cant work
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
the 'brain drain' will cease to be necessary. the internet is allowing IT work to be done around the world, globalization allows corporations to find workers anywhere for any pay.
the US will be reduced to third world status as soon as it is convenient. 1% owns over 95% of the wealth. This is today. Tomorrow it will be worse, and most will simply live on the periphery (today's third world laborers, palistinians in israel, manual laborers in singapore)....
What kind of cuisine at the cafeterias? How many employees use the gym on an average day?
Well, if they want to get a programming edge, all they need to do is have lots of coffee... so why do they need to know how many employees use the gym?
My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas.
I have to laugh on this!!
Come on, creativity has no nation. Countries like India, Germany, China and Brazil have a lot of great programers, who do not only make "routine stuff" but great new things.
Pay attention to the Linux community. The greatest part of it is done overseas.
At work (midsize info. tech company in the transportation industry) we have 1 Chinese woman, compared to 5 Indians (1 woman, 4 men).
Writers imply. Readers infer.
My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas.
I'm not a professional programmer, but I do have programming experience, and this statement got me thinking. In the commercial world what are the oppurtunities for "creative" software development?
The only one that comes to mind is game development, and even for some games the creativity is mostly in the art and story and little in the actual programming. Certainly researchers in AI, natural language, and some other areas are being creative, but most of the unusual things seem to be academic rather than commercial.
It's trivially easy for me to think of a wide array of rote programming projects that could be thrown together with existing techniques, but how often do commerical projects involve inventing new ideas and techniques?
People may wonder how this type of outsourced programming works, and I'll run down a few examples here.
One is the fixed API method. A function or functions are needed that perform X on data Y. This requirement is simply farmed out, and code is produced that does this. This code is then integrated into the larger code by the contracting company. In essence, this is the grunt work of programming, and it's where India started, and where China will likely start too.
Another is code upgrade. Legacy code in one language is handed to a programming team, and the requirement that it be ported to new language X on system Y is given. India does a lot of this now, and their technology parks have a plethora of older hardware to mimic these legacy systems for developers to work with. The advantage here is that Indian's speak english fluently and reading native code with it's comments and documentation presents no problem at all for them. A legacy of British Colonialism that the Indians have turned to their advantage. I don't see the Chinese doing well here very quickly, as periodic reviews will be done in english, and communication could be a total headache.
The third is the requirement style. Software must perform X,Y,Z and run on systems A,B,C. This is becoming more common. In this case, the entire software suite, from the core to the interface is handled by the Indian company. This is where India finds itself today, and it's pretty good at it. I've reviewed some results from projects like these, and the coding style is uniform, properly commented and compact. It's also a unique kind of style, and takes some getting used to, but any given company will produce the same style each time, so it's certainly very acceptable. On average I'd say it's less buggy, BUT!, I only see the end result, it may have been hell just weeks before, and I never saw it. This is somewhere the Chinese could do well, as a final pass to translate comments isn't terribly hard, but
The last style is market need. This is where a perceived need is seen, and software is made to meet this need unsolicited. This I haven't seen very much, but as they become more aware of our market, India will certainly begin to try it's hand at this. China may never bother, as their own market is probably going to be big enough to consume any supply for a long time, and the very different cultures make the risk greater than a lot of companies may want to take.
It's debatable wether China will ever catch India, the difference in style of education and culture may be to great. China may end up with the widget API market, and may end up serving the Indian markets need for this, oddly enough, but wether they can break the language barrier enough to work directly with english commented and documented code is something I can't predict. It's one of thoise moments where paradigm shift actually means something.
The United States are dominating the software market, thats true. But I doubt you can call them the more creative ones.
Its widely accepted that european software companies have the more complicated and more inovative and more difficult to sell applications.
One reason among others is internationalization. A US company usualy can drop that till they have a solid market position. European companies can't.
LINUX e.g. is mainly developed in Europe.
Microsoft Windows mainly in the US.
StarOffice/OpenOffice was developed in Europe.
Microsoft Office in the US.
KDE mainly in Europe.
Y2K services where regulary done in India.
Y2K Reengineering is not easy. A lot of companies tried to provide services and failed. A lot of companies field bancrupcy because they tried to fix their Y2K problems by their own.
Banglore, or Bangalore, has more IT jobs than a typical american city. And in relation to most self thought programmers in the western world most IT workers in India have a solid university education.
Of course its arguable how deep their education is and if it can compete with our western standards.
However I think that the argument is living costs and wages.
As well as their attempt to approach market segments where we have a strong competition in, especialy regarding the price. (Y2K was done in India because they did it for 10 cents a line of code while in the US 70 cents where common. They could do it for 10 cents because the living costs are aby small in relation to the US)
OTOH I doubt China is a competitor for Europe or the US on the gloabl market soon.
As hard as it is for us to tackle their market it is for them to approach our market. The language barrier and the mentality is simply to different.
Look at the silly results of the Microsoft Thesaurus for Word in Germany.
There are so many "new" words which have a wrong meaning. Like "Frauenhaus" which got linked to "Freudenhaus".
The first one is a refugee for women having problems with their friend/husband, the later is a bordell.
Regards, angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I have to wonder exactly how this would influence the open-source community. It seems that most of our current open source software is a conglomeration of several different International efforts. Based on how much Linux has been growing recently, I wonder if we will see more Chinese software contributing to already existing platforms, or if there will be development on completely different platforms that run on the same business model as RedHat. Will we see more Linuxes and BSDs, or will this just result in more outsourcing for highly repetitive tasks in code and proprietary software?
"You think that's air you're breathing now?"
Does anyone know of any commerical sofware from India ?
I have never heard of one.
They may be the largest exporter of programmers --
which I think doesn't give the crown of 'second largest software developer'.
So in the sense of fairness, will we be able to pirate any software we want that comes out of China without fear of punishment?
Like I said in my comment about Microsoft being snubbed by the Chinese government, I think the Chinese have a huge advantage in their largely captive workforce. Whereas Indians constantly emigrate to richer countries (US, Britain, and now Germany), the totalitarian nature of China's policies make it very difficult to leave the country, although many do manage it. India's huge advantage is that about 10% of Indians are native/near-native speakers of English--- not bad for a country with 23 official languages. Unfortunately for China, not only does it have few English speakers, but English (at least spoken English) is especially difficult for Chinese to master.
A problem both countries face is access to computers and the Internet. China and India would produce a lot more software if it were easier for their citizens to gain the programming skills they need to accomplish this goal. If China finally succeeds in absorbing Taiwan, it will have the hardware production it needs to accomplish this. Perhaps this is part of the ``national strategy''.
Most of the software that comes out of Indian (and some eastern european) Sweat Shops is utter crap. They have no concept of QA or even of pride in their work. China seems to have similar problems with QA over there, for hardware. Taiwan used to be bad, but seems to have cleaned up their act (a bit).
Personally, I don't think we should be doing business with PRC at all. The human rights violations are staggering. God damn you Richard Nixon! Also, given that China is an enemy of the US, I don't think it's a good idea for US vital interests to run software made in China.
Not to say there aren't any good programmers in PRC. But if you think Microsoft is a behemoth that makes crappy, undocumented spyware, wait till you see what China, Inc. has in store for you.
- A lot of interaction with the customer
- A good feel for what competitors in that market can offer
- A good feel for the corporate culture & existing systems in the company your selling too
These things are very hard to achieve if the design team is half a world away - the cycle times are just too long and to make a good product/system you need a lot of interaction with your customer.So what's could happen is that a lot of the commodity, stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap software may move elsewhere but custom design remains in the home markets.
Hence this has little to do with creativity of Chinese or India programmers - simply that they are further from the target markets. Once their domestic markets really take off then the US, Japan and Europe will be in for serious competition.
.sig
Alternatively, we can work to balance the economic situation so that dollars don't buy so much more over there than they do over here.
If it's just as cheap (or just as expensive) for a US company to set up a plant overseas as it is to set up a plant locally, then there would be little reason to go overseas. However, US monetary policy has been directly against this situation. The system is controlled so that the US$ is expected to be worth more overseas, and that way the US can more easily exert in foriegn economics. That policy makes sense from the standpoint of the US wanting power, but it's not exactly fair or nice.
Someday I hope to see worldwide economic parity, but somehow I doubt it will happen in my lifetime. In the mean time, much of the rest of the world is already succumbing to the need to learn English just to keep up with the US, while lazy people like me have never taken the time to ever be really good at any other languages.
... or anything else good for that matter. Communism does not support productivity or creativity. So they can try all they want, but only capitalist governments can support and promote innovation.
[FromTheMorning]
I am confused : who's the troll here? Your post is just disguised envy and flame. Be cool man, nobody wants to take America from you.
If I remember correctly your civil war was about states trying to become republics? What are you now, a collection of 51 superpowers?
There's a chance for everyone, and just because they grow it doesn't mean they're a threat to America. It seems everything becomes a military issue when dealt with by americans.
Get real, make peace.
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
And I dont mean that in a rhetorical sense. Very few people realise that while it is a 3rd world country and somewhat socialistic in its inclinations in the past, entrepreneurship is very active in day to day life. Companies like Infosys, Wipro and others were started by enterprising people in a political environment that sustained it.
China definitely has the talent and the schools to grow it. What china lacks is the personal and social freedom in day to day life. China could be a very prosperous nation if it became somewhat democratic.
Slashdot looks deep within my heart and assigns me a number based on the order in which I join
A ecommerce dot.bomb that decided to out source all its work to a company in India got a nice surprise. 2 months of people not showing up for work because of protests and other political issues.
On a side note, 20% of our contract engineers are from India. Not sure why, we have lots of skilled people in our area, and the pay is the same.
-
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. - Rich Cook
In the month of October of last year, I had written to William about this. I had stressed how important it is for us to discuss the situtation in China, and I had tried to reason with him the absurdity and furtility of the current biz techniques that Microsoft has been imposing on most world countries.
... I would never know.. for he would never call....
/.)
William, called me back sometime around November, he sounded very stressed and there was a slight edge to his voice.
"Taco, my friend", he gasped, shocking me by the utter desperation in his voice. "Taco, my love", he lowered his voice gently, but still retaining that sence of stress and urgency.
"You are going to hear a lot about me, my company run by you know who, China, India, and a number of things that would happen in the next few years", he went on.. "Taco, Dear, What I would do in the next few years make never make any sence to you, you may feel betrayed, you may feel I'm working for my own destruction, you may never even believe it, but dearest, please stand by me on this".
"But.... William what are you saying?", I quizzed, worried by the stress in his voice more than anything else.
"Taco, I just want you to take me on faith, In the next few years, I might do things that you would never forgive me for. In the next few years, you might hate me".
"William... I can never hate you", I whispered... gently.
"Taco, My Dearest Superime Taco, your son, CmdrTaco, that boy, he runs slashdot still doesn't he?"
"Yes dear, well, I think he does, or maybe it's Andover or VA or OSDN, I'm not sure what he does, he just likes to play with Anime."
"Nevermind about that, Suprime, I want you to do a favour for me, for the love, that you have had for me since you were 16. My dearest Mr. Taco of Holland, will you help me?"
"Without any conditions, I will help, what do you wish of me William?"
In the land of Washington, on the campus of Redmond, there was a gentle pause. I could feel my love William thinking, his eyes gazing at me, gently remembering the contour of my arse.
"Taco, I want you to make your son post stories about us"
"But, doesn't he do it already? Every since I told him that he was the first of a clone experiment we did in Harvard, and that he might be the heir to your empire, he has been obscessed with you and has been running this silly front of a cursade against you, I think he loves you terribly..."
"I know", he said camly, and I could sense a lot of relif pouring into those two words. He did not sound stressed, and I felt better, my heart slowed down a bit. "I love that boy, does he have any male friends?"
"Well, he's got Hemos, and that fat boy CowBoyNeal... no one like you my love."
"CowboyNeal? Oh, you never liked fat men, Taco."
"Never since I lost my love to one..."
"Let's not talk about that my dearest..."
"I won't"
"Taco, can you get these kids to pull a stunt for me?"
"What kind of stunt, William?"
"I want him to post stories about me and India and China"
"Why?"
"I love Gandi"
"Be serious dear.."
"Well... I've saturated the US market"
"You have what?!"
"I can't sell any more OS, everyone has a computer now, and everyone is thinking of this fin"
"I've heard of that, but what do you want in China or India, dear?"
"Money"
"That's what you always wanted..."
There was a pause.... a gentle pause... "No Taco".
A tear flamed down my cheek gently seeking its way onto my lips. Those lips that had one touched Williams... "You just want money honey?"
"No, I want to enslave them"
"Why ?"
"One OS to rule them"
"Dear what are you talking about?"
"And in the darkness bind them...."
"William.... are you allright..."
There was silence, and in the silence I knew, that our line has been disconnected, the legions of verizon has once again made their precene be felt. But a forboding thought still lingered in my mind, what was this OS and darkness and enslavement that my sweet Bill spoke of
Superime Taco,
Rannamari Idhuru Kilegefaan. (Society for creative 'rolling on
You guys are seriously overthinking this, and you're way too easy on China on this site. When did China stop being the evil, ruthless country that they are? How many tiannamen square massacres and Falun Gong witchhunts (where the chinese government hired people to hack American servers that contained Falun Gong information!do you guys need before you start taking a critical stance against China's government?
The reason that China cares about software development is probably because they're trying to stop getting their web pages hacked by human rights advocates.
They're "going to some other country to learn about programming"? Do you see people from other countries going around the world looking for the "secrets of the programmers"? It's probably just some communist "waste of time" project. And you know what they're probably going to do with it? Program some firewalls and a Falun Gong website exploit or something.
God I'm sick of china. Did you know that they took some Linux distribution code, hacked it up a little bit and called it "Red Flag Linux"? Can you beleive that? That's a spit in the face of everything that Linux represents, being a freedom operating system in all it's possible descriptions. China's probably using it for a Falun Gong firewall or something. Pathetic.
The biggest problem I see with China trying to achieve this is the language barrier.
India has a huge number of english-speaking inhabitants, and universities in India primarily teach in english. This is not the case in China.
A good programmer really needs to understand the problem domain, and it is in english-speaking countries that the most valuable problem-domains will be.
Eastern-european houses are doing fine in Europe because they are all well-used to overcoming language barriers there, but in North America it will be much harder to find bilingual teams.
Of course you don't need a whole team to understand both languages - just your key architects and project managers. There should be some good jobs for bilingual analysts and managers if this does go ahead with any strength.
Very much agreed, on all points. While I do love capitalism as much as the next person, the way it has evolved in the US (politically) is self-defeating and in constant need of 'fixing' to keep the common-folk happy. My personal feeling is that as long as the country is led by people who care more about power than more idealistic things (human rights, our environment, spiritual (not religious) understanding and things like a uniform code of morals and ethics) - we will be forever in this position. As a male that is at least somewhat enlightened to these types of things, I am very interested in seeing what happens to our country (and other countries as well) as more women take on leadership roles. I can't say that women won't succomb as men have, but I am hopeful and interested.
What an awful, unfounded, racist statement. You ought to be ashamed. The US is not the be-all and end-all of software development. Nor is it the center of the universe. I personally use many creative pieces of software that are produced overseas.
In fact, much of the great free software we all use has non-US origins. Sylpheed, KDE, Linux, and large portions of Gnome have started oversees and continue to be large, international efforts with significant non-US contributions. Many well respected and innovative Linux distributions such as SuSE and Mandrake are of non-US origins, and the newcomer ELX, from India, already offers more working code than the vaporous "Lindows." What an ignorant statement.
Thanks, that's indeed insightful.
;o))
Could you or anyone else that has good experience with these type of companies provide some details of those companies (website).
We have never outsourced our coding but we are certainly interested. There is some fear to overcome with management though. We have never had our source go outside the building for example (yep, closed source, for good reasons, believe me) so sending it overseas is not something that they'll do easily. And in our case we probably would have to do that.
It's basically a trust issue, so one of the best ways to start off is with a company that comes highly recommended. (Instead of replying to spam
So anyone: bring em on!
In November of 2000, as a young and brash 24 year old software engineer, I got laid off from the embedded systems startup I was working for. My roommate and I (who was also a comp sci major and laid off on the same day) decided to try independent contracting. We both had been working in the industry for a few years and had picked up some business savvy along the way. So we got outselves a lawyer, incorporated, and all that...
Then the fatefull day that we meet our first potention client. They were a investment group that needed number crunching software there field agents could use on site. I had spent some time at a large national insurance company writing insurance software, so this is right up my alley. So I sit down to talk business and the first thing out of this clients mouth is "why should we go with you, who is charging ten times what it would cost if we went with an Indian firm?" Keep in mind, we were only charging $45 an hour. And for those who don't keep score on software contracting rates, that is as low as it gets. I try to explain the value of being able to work with somebody who you can meet face to face, but they had made up there minds even before I got there.
Over 2001 this was repeated time and again. We were subcontracted some work from a consultant in Florida but were told that there wasn't going to be any follow up work because he normally goes with Russian or Indian programmers that he can pay 5 dollars an hour for!
So what's my point? I shake when I hear that China is trying to follow in Indians footsteps. The American market for small little independant consultants is harsh. And I fear soon will be non-existant. But that's the way the world is moving. Can't fight globalization.
I still believe the entrepunurial American programmer can be successfull as long as they come up with original and inovative services or products. But as far as being a gun for hire... that market might be gone.
Check out my podcast: DreamStation.cc Video Game Show
Software development moving "offshore" to India and now China is repeating a pattern that has occured in several other US industries. One closest to software is microelectronics. In the 1970s into the mid 1980s, major US firms like Intel, Motorola, and National Semiconductor were making lots of memory chips. The Japanese, Taiwanese and eventually South Koreans essentially took that business away by being able to learn the technology and develop less expensive manufacturing processes (in part using lower paid staff). Now Intel, AMD, National Semi, and the rest manufacture only the most complex chips domestically, i.e., CPUs and other specialized designs. Even Japan has ceded some of the memory chip market to the Koreans and Chinese.
If there's a moral here, it's that the highest paying jobs are those that involve the most creativity, intelligence and freedom, and can only exist in a stable political and economic environment. Right now, recent events not withstanding, that's still by and large the US (and some European countries). [Still cosidering outsourcing that software development project to India when they are close to war with Pakistan?] So, if the US (and Europe) is to maintain its current position, we all need to get smart and keep smart and keep pushing for public and privately funded activities that foster and reward creativity and prevent established monopolies (won't mention any names here!) from dominating markets and stiffling innovation.
Now we can have 2 large countries that produce shitty software.... I'm sorry, but my experience has shown me that India as some wonderful source of quality programming at low price is a complete myth (scam)...
Why don't we outsource management too? I mean, who wants a CEO who gets paid 5 M USD a year. Why don't we go with the 15 k USD dude from India? :-)
For your information, not all the software pirates originate from China.
In the Good Ol' U. S. of A., there are lots of software pirates too !
To use your own rationale, then U. S. of A. can't be trusted either, since there _are_ software pirates living in it !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Any other country other than US can be the second third, or whatever biggest producer in the world. Or someday you may see that most of the software is being produced in a country other than US. ( this may seem like the extreme case, but think of hardware, the cheap labor is the key here )
I really admit the way India focuses on software, and i wish my country could "see" the same facts about the trend in the world as India has done.
But have you realized that most of what is being done out of US is just bringing peaces together ? Sure, rest of the world can use OO paradigm, C++, java, and other tools but it's US who produces the goods. how many of you heard of any Indian or non-US work on a new programming language or methodology ?
I believe being the leader means producing the base tecnology, and no other country other than US currently seems to be working hard on new software technology.Trying to produce the tools is the real investment for the future of a country, but i don't see much candidates around.Everybody seems to be busy making money...
I won't try to generalize too much based on four individuals. Based on my limited experience, however, I would never underestimate the skills and talent of developers from Asia. Everyone on my team was at least good; several of them were great. These four were all in the top 25%.
In particular, the man from India was an absolute star. I've never met anyone who turned out such high-quality code, well designed and well structured, in so little time. As a plus, his work ethic was outstanding. He was a manager's dream.
Our woman from China was close behind, a solid #2. We handed her an extremely difficult system; she jumped in and devoured it. Similar work ethic, similar high-quality code, extremely valuable to us.
This is NOT a criticism of our American developers. Three or four of them were stars in their own right. As mentioned before, the entire team was good or better. It just happens that these two individuals were from China and India, and they happened to be the best of the best. When I did annual evaluations, those two always got the highest scores on the team.
Maybe I got the only two stars, but I doubt it. Both of them were already in the area, and the Midwest isn't exactly known for being the center of the software universe. I'll bet there are plenty more where they came from.
In short, those countries do have highly talented people. They can produce extremely skilled developers. We must not assume that they can't handle the "creative" work, or we may be asking "Do you want fries with that?" and wondering whatever happened to those good paychecks.
So your definition of "modern way of slavery" is to get people of India trained to do your work ?
Now, now.... what that makes you, a _former_ slave?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
On the other hand, I can't find "www.slashdot.us" either.
If you think
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Finally! I thought all the creative trolls left /. long ago. All we have is a bunch of loosers posting random links that fill pages now days. This is a cool post. I like it better than S.Taco's older ones.
By implying that ALL CHINESE ARE IMMORAL - with your "Chinese morality" subject heading - may I know where did you obtain your "moral certification", sir?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Racist: The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
Nationalist: Devotion to the interests or culture of one's nation.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I think the current success of Indian programming companies and the future success of Chinese programmers is good for everyone in the long run. Why should Indians and Chinese have to give up their way of life and become virtual indentured servants in the U.S. just to get a programming job?
Right now, the difference in salaries may seem huge, but remember, in the U.S. a lot of a typical programmer's salary is eaten up by exhorbitant rent and mortgage payments. I imagine an Indian programmer lives comfortably, though the dollar amounts are much smaller. Also, I expect the salaries will rise over time as more employers enter the market.
I don't think this is a zero sum game, it's more of a rising tide lifting all boats. More people in the middle class in India and China means more consumers of US and European exports.
I live and work in the UK, and the company I work for contracts all our major development out to a company in India. As a result, we have a continual stream of Indian developers coming over and working with us, sometimes for a few months, sometimes longer. My experience with working with these people is that they are extremely smart. I've seen them implement web applications that go beyond anything I've seen elsewhere.
Perhaps it's a sign of the current climate in the US, but I don't hear people in the UK complaining about jobs being lost to foreign companies. While I may have concerns about the pay and conditions of my Indian colleagues (I would guess that they are payed less that UK-native developers), I certainly don't begrudge them competing and succeeding in the global IT industry.
Outsourcing is real big. On the gig I'm at right now, there are very few U.S. programmers; most of them are from India, Israel and Russia.
This trend is not reversing, it's getting bigger. I do more and more work in these types of gigs; I haven't seen it getting less.
The quality of work from most of the foreign programmers is really crappy. No - that's not a troll; just an observation. Sorry if some take offense, but the amount of utterly rotten and clueless programming that I've seen from these folks just amazes me. If my clients spent a little more for a U.S. programmer of decent quality, they'd end up saving themselves money. I see this over and over again.
Also, the U.S. government is VERY much against U.S. software developers; so much so that it has created an environment which is actually hostile to independent software developers. It is getting harder to maintain one's own business as a contractor - not easier. For example, the I.R.S. actively targets "software consultants" to the point that agencies really dislike working with sole proprietors. Just talk to any medium to large agency, and you'll find that it is a big concern. Some will only take you on as an employee.
I also seem to be running into more businesses that are hesitant about working directly - due to the I.R.S. concerns.
But lets not forget about all the additional legal crap I have to worry about since 9/11, and the resulting legislation. I'm not a terrorist; but now previously innocent things might get me thrown in prison for 25 years!?
I submit that a hostile business environment in the U.S. is not a good one for maintaining a lead in talent on the rest of the world. And I submit that losing such a lead would be detrimental to the U.S.'s strategic interests.
I'm REAL pessimistic for U.S. keeping the lead in the long term. Most of the work WILL go overseas, due to economics and the laws. And it's just a matter of time until all the creative and innovative work goes too.
I'd move offshore in a flash if I didn't have a family. But I will be moving offshore once the kids are grown in a few more years.
Since the U.S. is creating such a hostile environment, I say "screw you" to the whole damn system - I'm outta here as soon as I can go. Less taxes, more freedom, and less worries. No, that's not patriotic. But I'm tried of all this crap, and would be delighted to support a country that actually does have more freedom.
Now could someone kindly explain why anyone would still want to do development in the U.S.? I'm all ears.
If you think you _ARE_ speaking "Flawless" English, please go to Great Britain and ask the Brits there how's your "English".
It's one thing about people speaking English. It's another thing implying others speaking somehow "flawed" English.
The Aussies can say they speak "Flawless English", as well as the Canadians. But to the Brits, the definition of "flawlessness" is very much different from those of the Canadians or the Aussies - as well as the Americans.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
While China may want to get into the software industry they have a major impediment. In India, all of the educated Indians speak fluent english. In China, this is not the case. In my group where I work most of the team is Indian. The only non-Indian people are myself, a Chinese fellow, and my boss (who's Canadian). For the most part there are no problems working with the Indian people (once I got used to their accent). However, the Chinese guy is another story. It is often very painful to try and explain basic concepts to him such that he understands what I am saying. I spent half an hour just getting him to understand that a parameter to my API was limited to 20 bits and to place the upper bits elsewhere. I felt like that father in Monty Python's Holy Grail telling the guards not to let his son leave the room.
He is an extreme example. I have worked with other Chinese software developers who have better English skills, yet the language issue always ends up becomming a problem.
One of the problems is that English is completely different from Chinese with absolutely nothing in common. Europe doesn't suffer this problem since all of the languages have many similarities in sentence structure, pronunciation, spelling, tense, character sets, and so on. Also, in Europe the schools have been teaching English for some time and there is no problem getting fluent English speaking teachers.
I imagine that China has a lot of difficulty getting fluent English teachers over there, especially with all of the opportunities in the Western world without the corruption or restrictions.
I've worked on computers running the German version of Windows NT. By the text I can still figure out what things are and how they relate to the English equivelent. It was not too difficult for me to reconfigure the networking on the boxes, even though I am not a Windows NT andministration expert). Also, if I had any problems, I could ask anyone since all of the Germans spoke fluent English. When I sat in front of a Chinese version once, I was totally lost.
Another major problem is China's lack of respect for IP. India has a fairly good reputation and many large companies have offices over there (i.e. Cisco, Nortel, etc.). China, OTH, has a very bad reputation. You can go anywhere and buy expensive pieces of software for only $1. Or for that matter, you can get a DVD of the latest movie within days after it's released into theaters long before the official releases come out.
Most companies are scared to death of their IP getting out. On this front the Chinese have a well deserved *very* bad reputation.
No company in their right mind would farm anything out to China.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
This was a good summary, but you left out 'keeping an existing app alive'.
We are handing off maintenance of a software product to india at the moment; we have some of their engineers flying out to spend time with us to learn their way round the system, and from a few weeks on they will be dealing with support/maintenance issues with our team only being called in when there is something they dont understand.
For this to succeed we have to have designed maintanable software (design docs, doc comments, doxygen &c), and we and management have to invest time and effort in getting the handoff working.
One nice feature about working with India is that English is pretty much the second language to all the educated folk there (its one of the official government tongues), so language differences are not as hard as they could otherwise be. We all have different accents and other communication difficulties, but written stuff can be easily and consistently understood by both.
A stable usable Office Suite in Chinese? Imagin millions of Linux geeks speaking to each other in Mandarin!
I know Compaq does or did (not sure if they still do this) had a service that you could contract Indian programmers to do specialized applications for your company. The great part about it is that you paid the programming rate for India plus a middleman fee.
This is good for smaller companies that do not have a large budget for programmers. But the projects seem to take longer and there is a lot of red tape that you wind up dealing with.
I really think exporting technical jobs hurts the American economy now and in the future. When we off load work of this sort we are more reliant on the company who wrote the applications because debugging someone else code is not the easiest project. (Especially if it is a large project) Also, the expertise goes to the country that wrote the applications. If we keep standing around while the technical jobs go overseas the US will be left in the dark. Then who know America might be considered a third world country or no longer a super power in 80 years when the 4th wave of technology comes through.
If it isn't broke, tinker with it till it is!
Everyone keeps talking about chineese opportunity and investment, but the simple fact is that India is more accountable to westerm values and ways. They are a lot easier to deal with and make profit with, and alot more english friendly, and alot more politically friendly to the US.
As China grows, it is going to come under incredible political pressure as it's citizens become wealthier and have more expectations for freedom - the government will either become opressive internally or lash out (at Tiwan most likely) to channel this pressure away from the governemnt. In India this pressure will simply be channeled thru the democratic process.
Also, the US is far better off if China and India are struggeling against each other, than with the US.
I'm not entirely sure of what fly flew into your drink, but at no point was any portion of this story or discussion topic related to the differences in English semantics, pronunciations and accents of the various English speaking communities around the world. So, chill out! As an American, if I were to travel to Great Britain, Australia or a variety of other countries whose main language is English, I wouldn't have much of a problem communicating at a high level - this is what I am speaking of when I write of flawless English. Not the nitpick items you are talking of, rather the ability to communicate at a high level (both effectively, efficiently and intellectually). This language barrier is what is keeping the residents of India and China at a disadvantage currently. Lest I get more flames, please don't construe this as meaning that all natives of India and China speak flawed English, I am merely addressing a common problem I see.
Only if they build on top of existing innovation
by using FreeBSD instead of reinventing the wheel
by using Linux. Linux has set back the state
of computing by 10 years. I hope China doesn't
fall into the Linux trap.
DELETING DESKTOP ITEMS: Are you sure you delete!!! Yes or No's?
E-MAIL APP: A male has come. Do you want to read it now?
WEB BROWSER: Site you access is not protected. Do you want to condom?
QUAKE: Team B is 10 fags. You are no fags.
They drone on about the benefits of capitalism/globalism/free-trade, and how restrictions on this free trade is evil and communist, but when it's not working in their favour, they whine and cry like little girls, and want restrictions put in to give them back their advantage. What fucking hypocrites. You've made your bed, now fucking lie in it.
Chinese believe that a fit mind needs a fit body. The Japanese are also famous for starting the workday with group calestenics, which also builds team work. This type of thinking is not alien to the western world. That is why we have athletics in school. In fact the emphisis of the spiritual nature of taking care of the body can be found in Buddist, Daoist, and Christian thought. Managment in the west is so focused on the bottom line, that they sometime miss the details that are needed for building the foundation on wich profitability can rest. The Chinese and Japanese take a more holistic view. If the Chinese want to create a new industry, they are for sure going to build a solid foundation first.
> My guess is that the most creative software
...
> opportunities will remain in the US for some time,
> and the more routine development efforts will
> continue to be transfered overseas
hm, and cleverly used disinformation by the press can be used for bringing down enterprised with key-technology that is not US based. But then again, that's hard to prove once the damage is done...
It's just that some events in the last years made us think a bit more along these lines,
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
Now, I think it's great!
It means that there will atleast be a language differentiality reason for MS Office to fuck up my texts in its dictionary.
Like replacing R with L.
Or Stable with BSOD
Nature seeks equilibrium and so does business. The person who makes $4000/yr in India for doing a $35,000-in-US job yet gets the same globally-distributed and -marketed products pushed in his face as we do but does not have the same living conditions or freedoms is going to start to wonder why there's such an inequality. This is how revolutions begon - EQUALIZING revolutions.
With the value of software dropping what do you expect?
The value of software is dropping sharply because of open source. Even if you develop commercial software you can't charge as much anymore with competition from free software. It's just impossible for software companies to pay out huge salaries in the US anymore.
>>My experience with working with these people is that they are extremely smart. I've seen them implement web applications that go beyond anything I've seen elsewhere. Maybe you are to easily impressed.
My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas."
My guess is not. I give the non-military US software industry another five years before it basically becomes 5/6th in the world.
Interesting software opportunities after that will be almost entirely in the military, who won't outsource to India or China for the obvious reasons.
Even though the US has many of the most advanced weapon systems in the world (with the exception of submarines), the US is declining into recession.
And former world powers who decline into recession tend to become agressive and militant, so the poor people have someone to blame for their poverty other than the capitalists and politicians who have been stealing from them for years. (Yes, you're not poor because we have been paying you $5 an hour for 15 years, it's because of muslims and terrorists who are attacking our way of life.)
If you are a software developer in the US, see what you can do towards getting a security clearance. Because the software development opportunities are going to move into security (three letter agencies) and the military.
If you are not a US citizen, you might want to think about work opportunities at home, to avoid the inevitable 'witch-hunt' that the last ~400 years of American history has shown to be an inevitability.
>>
I am the director, and this is my movie
"when it gets down to it - talking trade balances here- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here - y'know what There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode(software)
high-speed pizza delivery
Because here there's somewhat less chance of the police putting a state-sanctioned bullet in your head and then sending your widow a bill for the slug.
Don't confuse WTO membership with fledgling democracy-in any country.
It's not clear to me that America is better off
by the exporting of work overseas. Sure, the
"global economy" might be better off, but what about
Americans? We are worse off. There is little incentive for Americans to study engineering, when
they only get good salaries for about ten of their
working years before they are replaced by somebody
who is either overseas who is sponsored by their employer to come over for sub-market wages. Perhaps
it's time to put limits on labor importation and tax
trans-national subcontracting payments. Why just tax
hard working Americans? It's time big business paid their fair share instead of not paying taxes but getting plenty of benefits from the system. Bill Gates can afford to train younger Americans, older Americans and minorites and women.
i know there's a difference between producer and exporter, but i wonder how many people know that ireland is the number one exporter of software in the world?
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
> Language Barrier
I think most companies solve this by hiring Indian instead of Chinese workers. Indian have a lot more "English-standard" elementary/secondary/undergraduate/graduate schools. Most colleges in India are English based, a tradition that has been there because of the British.
> It is a backwards, caste-burndened theocratic
kleptocracy with 20% literacy.
Eh? India has a much better educational system than the United States does for the people who use it. AFAIK, India has more than 60% literacy now in the lastest census (2001?). It's something like 80% for males and 40% of females. Of course, in urban areas, it's much higher for females.
> Local warlord goons control everything over there.
Huh? Last time I checked, India was the largest Democracy in the world.
> There are significant roadblocks to commerce there;
Much of India's protectionist attitutes are actually in things like Agriculture, where the majority of the population is. Basically, they want to keep 400 million farmers able to keep themselves alive by selling shit within the country.
As long as the Chineses Communist Party is openly aggressive against Tibet and Taiwan, and the US, putting jobs into China adds to the ability of the communist party there to stay in power. All work in China must be vetted by the CCP and a huge chunk of money must be provided as part of being allowed to do business in China. This money goes mainly to the Red Army which arrests and kills Chinese citizens and Tibetians, and helps arm them against the democratic nation of Taiwan. Boycott China. Do not attend the Olympics, do not buy made in China if you can avoid it and do not export more jobs to China. Thanks a whole damn bunch Bill Clinton and Al (I thought it was Chinese takeout in the bag) Gore.
All this really means is that there is a need to step up software development tools.
It may sound counter intutitive, but technology is not slowing down and in 100 years things are going to be extreamly different than as we know computer technology today.
Better to go with the flow on something like this than to oppose it.
Actually, the sweatshops making Levi's left Taiwan about 10 years ago. This is how it works now:
1. Levi's designs the jeans someplace.
2. Levi's gives manufacturing order to Taiwanese company. (Probably Nien Hsing Textiles)
3. Taiwanese company manufactures the jeans in a sweatshop in Central America (I think it was Guatemala).
BY the way, there has been lots of hand wringing here about the loss of blue-collar jobs over the last ten years. They are currently in the process of outsourcing their tech sector to China (Shanghai and Pearl Delta region mostly). Now engineers are losing their jobs too.
Who says Chinese coders won't be creative?
Why heck, they'd *better* be creative, or they'll end up in the organ donor bank. What's the rule now, import bibles and you're ending up as some party member's kidneys? Have a second child and get carved up to be a donor heart and lung?
Yea, I can see great inspiration coming from this culture.
I have been working in US software industry
since 80s. I collected statistics of at least 12
software companies with size from 10 people to
10000+ people. USA-born programmers usually about
1/3 of engineering team. Also most managers,
sales and marketing are americans. In engineering
american programmers always a minority, at least
in successful companies I observed. In average
1 out 10 programmers is from the former USSR.
Approximately the same I can say about
programmers from Europe (UK, France, Germany,
Scandinavia, Hungary, etc.) about 10% in total.
Even with much more population and immigration from India they are (programmers from India)
represented much less and usually taking less
important positions with less pay. Most
"creative" development done either by americans,
russians (including soviet jews) and europeans.
Chinese developers are much rare and I cannot
recall important piece of code written by
chinese. They usually have good working attitude,
but that's it. It can change overtime, but not
in next year.
Flagrantly ripped from the latest DNRC newsletter:
I got into this issue YEARS ago, and whenever I mentioned it on forums like Slashdot, I was unanimously shouted down...
Now however, it look as if even some of the invincible young dumbasses are catching on to the problem.
The idea is that the USA is a business. And you are not an employee, BUT AN OWNER. YOU OWN, WITH 200+ million other owners, the USA.
The politicians are not your bosses, but YOUR employees.
You feel as if that is NAIVE....that the situation is the opposite.
If so, it can be changed....
MAKE IT SO!
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
An effective way to fight this, and any other form of price pressure on hourly rates, is to deliver fixed deliverables for a fixed price, or other pricing methods that are not based on hours.
(Of course, there are also plenty of perils therein.)
My question is, since the Chinese are so populace, why would they need to tap into the US software development market? Surely they have enough tech. consumers and supply there to create a huge economy in their own country. If that is the case, then what is the need for them to do grunt work for India or the US? (black box stuff, porting, etc...)
:)
On an unrelated note, my pet peeve with many non-native English speakers is that they say "yeah" to anything you say if they don't understand. I'm sure it's not a majority... I think we can all get along.
fortunately, Chinese speaks their own languages, not colonial languages. Life is more than just coding in English, don't you have a life ?
Its an interesting proposition, and I thought I'd chime in with my viewpoint because I think I have a (semi) qualified opinion here.
I work at a university which has a significant number of graduate students who received their undergraduate education from institutions in mainland China. Moreover, we literally receive hundreds of applications from such students every year. I served on the admissions committee for the graduate program last year and had the opportunity to review transcripts and CVs for many of these individuals.
I am of the opinion that what constitutes a CS education in China is radically different from what constitutes a CS education in North America and Europe. I saw several applicants who received degrees in computer science, yet the only courses I could find on their transcripts that were even vaguely related were "Visual Basic Programming I, II and III" and "Microsoft Access".
No theory courses, no programming languages, no algorithms, no data structures, no design, no software engineering. There were, however, mandatory 'Physical Education' and 'Marxist Economic Theory' courses. (I really feel for these students... I'm not sure how thrilled I would've been to have mandatory "gym class" in University!)
Unfortunately this is not a just a few cases; this was the norm (at least for the few hundred applications I've personally seen).
My overall impression then, is that these applicants probably are qualified to hack out VB code. In fact, their education seems to be setting them for trade jobs as coders. Unfortunately, whats lacking is any sort of rigourous training in basic computer *science* and software engineering. In the long run, one of three things can come of this: these individuals will educate themselves and become productive coders; someone else (i.e. their employers) will have to pay to educate them on the missing material; or, sadly, they simply will never be very effective software engineers. Since the people who will choose path #1 are few and far between, I'm not sure India has anything to worry about yet.
I think China needs to take a serious look at how they are educating their 'Computer Scientists' if they are serious about becoming a world software power. Its certainly within their grasp, I'm just not convinced they have the system in place to achieve it yet.
(I must also point out that while the situation described above was very common, it certainly does not reflect *all* the applicants from Chinese universities. There are some institutions in China that give a first-rate CS education and I have had the priviledge of working with some excellent graduate students coming out of those programs. I'm just not yet convinced that this is representative of most cases.)
But the problem is that people outside of America are less lazy and will work for less, since they do not have such big egos. If you put taxes on these companies and limit importation, you'll have a labor shortage and the economy will suffer.
It's better to leave a few Americans unemployed than screw a lot of hard working people in the third world, who need to eat too.
Just the typical selfish attitude that I've seen with Americans. pppffft.
As this is the second or third post I've seen with the ">>" indentation and screwed up line-breaks, might I suggest the use of HTML "i" or blockquote tags? Posts written with ">>" are difficult to read, as the word-wrap tends to occur in unpredictable locations.
The point is not whether the Chinese speak a colonial language, but rather that they do not speak English, the world lingua franca. Even Spanish or French would give them more advantages than being monolingual Chinese, as far as mobility is concerned. Indians, because of their good English, can travel anywhere to work. The ones who work in Germany, for example, don't even have to learn German because the companies they work for have English as their internal language, or at the very least a large number of co-workers who speak English.
Attacking the person does not invalidate the point. English speakers call this an ``ad hominem'' attack (from Latin `at/toward the person'). For instance, if I wanted to counter-attack, I would say that the AC must be an idiot because he can't manage subject-verb agreement. (Chinese has no agreement of any sort.)
As a lot of readers pointed out, one of the main advantages we have here in India is that our entire education is in English.
It may not sound all that great to a non-Indian, but then think of it, we usually know our mothertongue, our national language (Hindi) and based on the state you reside in, the language of that state, besides English (thanks to India being a former British colony).
So in a way, English acts as a binding factor, and in fact, most of us know better English than our own mothertongues. This has given us a small edge over several other Asian countries, where English is not compulsory.
An offshoot of this is the Support Industry from India. Decent technical skills, coupled with good knowledge of English and cheaper manpower, I'm beginning to see a lot of US/European companies outsourcing their support to third party Indian companies.
This works out great for both parties, since the Indian gets paid really well (well atleast relative to Indian standards) and the company need only pay very less. A poster above had said that Indians get paid $5 an hour -- although this seems to be a slight exaggeration, $5 is still fairly high for an Indian, where a fairly good programmer gets about $6000 a year, which is more than enough to lead a luxurious life here!
Another advantage is the cost of hardware & other structural costs. Hardware and other communications equipment here are *very* cheap. For example, you can get about 128 MB RAM for about $10-12. An ethernet card is about $8. So, the setting up of the support organization takes less time, and is cheaper.
Really, it is a win-win situation. And given market inertia, it may not prove to be easy to swerve the customers away that easily.
Precisely. And even the ones who don't have many more possibilities to be exposed to English. See my comment for my take on this. The Chinese should really concentrate on developing their own market because of the linguistic barriers that hold them back. An really, if you had a potential 1.2 billion-customer (UK: hundred million) market, wouldn't you try to exploit it? The Japanese developed their own markets beofre expanding into the world, and China has much more potential to expand if the game is played fairly and the wealthy countries don't divide the world amongst themselves.
I don't think anyone else misinterpreted your original comment. It's pretty clear what you meant. Someone is feeling persecuted (look at his/her other comments in this discussion).
Did you know there are more speakers of English in India than there are in the UK?
Interesting statistics on language on the Internet
India may be the world's second-largest software producer, but where does the hardware (to produce the said software) come from? The chips are Intel/AMD. The systems? Could they be from Dell, Compaq, or HP ?
> If there's a time zone difference, you can turn that to your advantage and literally work around the clock
I am working for a large organization outsourcing most of their software development and providing support to our customers 24/7. We do this by having set up various development and support teams around the globe, eg. in the US, APAC and EMEA theaters.
While the concept is clever, and it somewhat works, in reality there are some trade-offs which make working around the clock impractical:
If you want the job done faster, just add more people working together as a team at the same location. This is equivalent in staffing to adding more people to a remote location supposedly around the clock, but you get the job done faster and without all the overhead mentionned here and in other comments.
--can india and china pull a US.
yes, if they get rid of their "feudal" hangovers.
US immigration law is very complex and difficult to navigate. It is also explicitly written to favor capable people over incapable people. The fact that the four foreigners you know are in the US indicates that they are not a representative sample of the set of all foreigners. Not all foreigners make it into the US; those that do tend to be the best and the brightest.
I happen to agree with your conclusion that foreign workers are highly talented, but your anecdote is a flawed basis for this conclusion.
Did you know there are more speakers of English in India than there are in the UK?
There are more speakers of English in Europe than the UK. For most of them it is a second language.
My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas.
I can't remember that CERN, Nokia, Siemens, Fujitsu and thousands of other companies/universities ever asked US to 'transfer development efforts' to them. You think US is in the center of the Universe, don't you?
Otherwise our standard of living, which is probably the highest in the world, will get lower while the rest of the world's gets higher.
I presume you travel/work experience consists of holidays on some islands, and work in your city, right!? If you think you have the highest standard - you're dreaming. Have a holiday in Singapore or Sweden, for a change...
Sad reality is that many people simply 'ignore' Americans these days, for a very simple reason - they think they know everything about everything, and they think they have right to give 'lesssons' to other people about culture (Britney Spears, yeah), democracy (that's my favourite), communism (although 99% of Americans don't even know/understand concept behind communism), creativity (read European/Asian newspapers, and then judge - don't make judgements purely on reading US newspapers), etc.
Bottom line is - you insult people every day because you don't understand what you're talking about, and yet you think you're "doing them a favour", simply because you read something in the newspaper. Pretty sad...
For an example of what to expect check out www.elance.com. You have alot of indian offshore
software firm bidding on projects, complete
ebay type of site for under 10K, most project
goes for 2-3K.
Now assumed the Chinese get into the game, expect
the prices to drop further. Alot of dot.com could have used these off shore companies to stay alive.
One month salary for a hot shot developer can pay for a whole team of developers
Guess like we Indians are taking over the Guru business again. Only its CS now instead of spirituality :)
I am an Engg student from India and yes, people who are good programmers do earn salaries which though in dollar terms might seem meagre to you, are more than adequate to lead a comfortable life.
In fact in the pre-slump days , some of the office peons in Wipro and Infosys were (Rupee) Millionaires because of their ESOPS.
Imagine that !
My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas.
I doubt the USA will remain a good place to be employed as a software developer. Software development with it's low barriers to entry will eventually move to where software developers are the cheapest, i.e. outside of the United States. China, India, and Russia all have many programmers with salary requirements a fraction of what American programmers demand.
I give an example, company a comes out with a file format, and since this company has a strong position in the market a lot of people use it, therefore company b needs someone to reverse this, lets say encrypeted format. Now call be a cynical old fart but in America wouldnt this just degenerate into a long draw out legal contest, where no one wins, while other countries which simply have no copyright laws to speak of, like china, would finish and distribute their version quicker then you could say CDR.
Im of the opinion that half the trouble with doing any kind of business in America is that you constantly need someone from the legal department looking over your shoulder IMHO.
Also another problem in America is that there is a business culture of "hardball" where the objective isnt too make the best product but to send the other guy broke, or failing that buy them out ala M$.
Pianist : Some jerk whos taught themselves how to type in rhythm
According to this article over at CNN.com, India wants to become the back office of the world.
This is basically IT-enabled services for tele-marketing, helpdesk support, medical transcription, back-office accounting, payroll management, maintaining legal databases, insurance claim and credit card processing, animation, and higher-end engineering design -- all of which can be delivered by phones, computers and the Internet.
India is aiming to become "the world's back-office."
Now this is something the Chinese cannot grab in a hurry at all!
McKinsey estimates the market for this to be half a trillion dollars by 2008. Even if that sounds far-fetched and we discount it by a factor of 10, it would still mean massive amout of money.
Finally India is coming into its own. Just as oil transformed the Persian Gulf, India has found its oil - her people which are her greatest strength.
What is all the fuss? This is just part of the natural progression here in the us.
Agrarian->Industrial->Service->Hype
Welcome to the Hype Economy folks!
Seeing how the english language seems to be open source for the rest of the world. Going on Mr gates philosophy and all the other people who ascribe to the idea that you can own an idea commonly termed intellectual property. Means it is about time the rest of the world started paying dear old blighty some royalties. The English language is the best damn verbal operating system there is, its known chiefly for being fairly crash proof. It is also very good for people who have no arms. Most other verbal operating systems require lots of hand waving gesticulatories.
What makes english especially powerful is it usually takes less words to get the same message across than any other language. It is also a language that is very rich in synonyms enabling the transmission of subtlety with out a lot of hand waving.
To speak good english one needs to be able to operate the lips and tounge with dexterity. The real power of english is, it has relatively few vowel sounds, those sounds are made in the throat. The problem with chinese is it uses many more vowel sounds, in other words their language is not talked, its sang. They are too busy grinning all the time to be able to use their lips properly, the japanese tend to suffer with the same problem.
Because english has relatively few vowel sounds it makes different accents still understandable and lends itself to establishing cultural identity with no problem.
Take a look at company called called Pramati . Theya are the first J2EE 1.3 certified server and a real good application server.
There is a clean division between indian developers :
.com bubble. As for the 1st kind it will hold and continue getting the 90k (usd) starting offers they routienly get which most of them turn down for Research Assitantship at MIT, UC Berk. and other world-leading schools.
1) An indian software engineer - A CS engineer from a good indian engineering college (IIT's among others)or US schools themselves. These are true software developers there basic CS grounding is at par with the near-top schools in the us and elsewhere. (curriculum at IIT Delhi http://www.cse.iitd.ernet.in/Dep/curriculum/ , for those who are not familiar - IIT stands for Indian Institute of Technology and these are among the the best engineering schools in the country). The talent at these places is enormous. Most of these graduates end up with phd's from Princeton, MIT etc without paying the tutions most of the times. Most of these also end up workin in the US but their salaraies are at par with the best US graduates.
2) An Indian Software Engineer-wannabe - This is a large number of indians who figured out that the easiest way to get to the US on an H1 is to do a couple of private cources (VB. Oracle etc) and get a contract with a body shopper. These are generally lousy coders.
IMHO the quality of the code produced in the US is higher (in most cases) than the quality of code produced in Indis. I have seen both since I worked for an indian company for a year (http://www.hcltechnologies.com/) before working for at my current company which is a company co-founded by am indian (Jeet) who went to school here in the US. (http://www.atg.com/en/company/management.jhtml)
The wanna-be culture is now steadily dying down with the burst of the
...and go to law school. It's the only job the corporations can't outsource to some third world country where they can get away with paying less...
It stands to reason that this would be the case (there are more speakers of English in India than there are in the UK) since the population of India is so HUGE (and populous) and the UK is (after all) still only an island. I recall hearing that there are more first generation Irish in the US than there are in Ireland ... not entirely surprising either :).
Btw, thanks for the back up - I appreciate it.
What should US programmers do if they are laid off because of foreign outsourcing?
If they should learn new skills, which new skills? Moving from programmer to software architect? Would that necessarily provide any more security?
Should they move to areas that can't be outsourced, like government and military work, or work that depends on knowledge of US culture, etc?
Or should they just abandon programming altogether for some other field? If so, what field? What other form of work (not management) would provide any better insurance against being outsourced to foreign workers?
In general, how are US workers to compete, since they obviously can't compete on price?
Actually English is more of a de facto standard, like Microsoft Windows. It isn't really all that good for the job, but it gets the job done. English, unlike some other languages, gets harder the closer you come to nativelike proficiency. German is an example of a language that is very hard at first, but gets easier.
But no one needs perfect English to program or to do many jobs (I know this is obvious), but it does limit the efficiency and (upward) mobility of people who work in companies where English is the language used for day-to-day affairs.
India contributes about 47% of the visa holders
and China 9%, accorded to latest figures I've seen.
I should have also mentioned that about 10% of all Indians speak English with nativelike proficiency. That would be over 90 million people. There are probably more English speakers in India than the native population of the US.
English has recently become (in the past year or so) the first language in the world to have more second- and foreign-language speakers than actual natives. This will probably produce a lot of simplifications and foreign influences that may later be adopted by natives.
China is the world's largest source of pirated software, in terms of the percentage of end users using unregistered software. China's laws against enforcing intellectual property are slim to nil. China's culture is isolationist. A signifigant portion of China's population is barely literate. And China's leadership is ultraconservative.
India is the world's largest democracy. While a major portion of their population is illiterate, a large core of educated citizens exists. They've integrated the desirable aspects of western culture into their society, and have been sending large numbers of programmers to the US for education and jobs.
India is in its position because of a unique combination of elements and some excellent diplomacy.
China's culture towards software and intellectual property has to change first. And it probably won't.
For a long time the US has been creating false reports saying there was a huge lack of skilled technical workers.. all the while thousands of skilled local workers went unemployed. They did this so that the guvmint would allow cheap labourers to come in from other cuntries, so that they wouldn't have to pay the high wages demanded by the local boys.. haha.. funny, this strategy is killing them now!
Just dessert!
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
Wow, 10%!?! That's a lot. Though as far as the US is concerned, at what generation does an American qualify as a 'native' English speaker? Might be difficult to quantify that comparison.
I can definitely vouch for the nativelike proficiency of some of India's English speakers. I recently saw a show on 'the next Hollywood' - in India. The creator of this 'Film City' was interviewed and spoke English amazingly well - and he wasn't even of the youngest generation (18-24) - he was probably in his 40s, by my poor guesstimate!
Before I hired Chinese coders I would want to know if they spoke excellent English, had high-bandwidth access to uncensored technical information sources (including mailng lists) in the West.
It would be nice to know if their day job was at the foreign backdoor programming section of the Chicom secret police as well... =;-]
The ChiCom dictatorship has murdered millions of Chinese over the decades and is certainly no friend of the US, yet US companies blithely allow them access to source code remotely and accept their coding. Does anyone check the code to make sure they haven't added a few undocumented 'features' such as keyloggers or backdoors?
"...can you imagine a BEOWULF CLUSTER of these? That'd be some serious power!"
The Chinese government may not wan't too much english fluency. You see, India is a democracy. The government is not hell-bent on political mind-control like it is in China.
The Chinese gov may fear that as their citizens grow more abilities to communicate with westerners, political ideas may also start trading back and forth.
Thus, the Chineses' biggest obsticle may be their own government.
Table-ized A.I.
English, unlike some other languages, gets harder the closer you come to nativelike proficiency.
This is rubbish. We don't think in words. Language is the transmission of thought not its essence. Words are just a hash code to the thoughts. I'd like to see a competition carried out where four groups have to transmit complex ideas to each other using say french, english, spanish and german then see which group completed a range of tasks first.
Hey there,
I'm a Chinese/Computer Science "fresh grad". I'm curious how one can get a job like yours -- any tips? Please email shoney at alum.calberkeley.org
Thanks!
scott/
there is no thing
what else could you want?
First of all, I was referring to the learning process, not the comparative conceptual superiority of one language over another. The point is that for language learners, English is easier to learn at the beginning, but becomes harder. This trend is somewhat contrary to the typical learning pattern of a language like Japanese, which is very hard at the beginning, but gets easier once one learns the system.
Secondly, we do think in words as well as concepts. Cognitive conceptualizations are culturally and linguistically conditioned. A common example used to illustrate this point is the concept of colour. When I refer to something as ``green'', the range of light frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum that this refers to may vary slightly from one individual to another, but the general category remains the same. Translate ``green'' into Japanese, usually ``midori'', and the conceptualization includes frequency ranges that go into what most English speakers would call ``blue''.
These thought patterns suggest the existence of an overall effect on the speakers of a particular language. I, for instance, see that when I write (any of the languages you mentioned), I tend to follow structures that the language facilitates. The German linguist Karl Vossler even suggested that certain grammatical words (partitive forms) in French owe their existence to the bourgeois nature of French society. That takes things a bit to one extreme, but his ideas have merit.
In all US companies for which I've worked (on both the US east coast and west coast), management has considered overseas programmers neither intrinsically better nor worse than American programmers. They were simply considered cheaper in direct costs (salary & benefits) and more expensive in indirect costs (logistics of various sorts).
How the costs totaled up (in both prior estimates and pilot studies) determined which way they would go. In many cases a hybrid solution was chosen: bring some of the overseas programmers to the US and let *them* manage their own remote teams.
I also worked as regular employee of one rather prestigious UK software firm (in the UK) and indirectly with a few continental European and Japanese software firms. Their attitudes were quite different. They bent over backwards to avoid employing any non-citizen, with the partial exceptions that all would consider Americans for specialist work and the UK companies would accept other Commonwealthers (Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, etc.) for grunt work.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Its widely accepted that european software companies have the more complicated and more inovative and more difficult to sell applications
Widely accepted by whom? Wishful thinking and repeated assertions don't add up to wide acceptance -- except arguably among Europeans.
This is just another variant on the endless stream of "American Xs may be more popular, but most people consider European Xs to be better" oxymorons that European self-esteem seems to require in steady doses. Measurable data shows X is greater than Y, but *repeated assertions* demonstrate that the reverse is, in fact, true. Sure.
You claim Linux as an example of European innovation. Do you remember an earlier OS called "Unix", created by AT&T? Which of the two was more innovative, the original or the clone? I guess it depends on whether you're European or not.
You claim StarOffice as another example. Exactly how is an unbelievably poor knockoff of X more innovative than X itself?
Fortunately for you, a lot of us Yanks don't need this kind of nonsense in order to appreciate the talent and accomplishment of our European counterparts. I have enormous respect for European developers, but I get pretty tired of hearing this kind of drivel.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
Isn't it going to be the other way 'round? Americans outsourcing to China? Think about it, teach your kids chinese, hahaha!!
English speaking, hardworking, technically sound and the rand dollar exchange rate makes it cheap at the moment.
I hereby award you a virtual mod point since I don't have any real ones to offer. thanks for the interesting links.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
He found that everyone was working on decrepit mainframes and not suitable for hiring. Has this changed in the last 5 years?
Everything's circling the drainhole. I'm not optimistic about the computer industry in general. I suspect the next economic recovery will not include the computer industry, or the computer industry will play a minor role in it.
I'm trying to find a way out, while I still can. I suggest you do the same.
In any case, you should've saved your money, because of all the risk this industry implies. You lived beneath your means, didn't you? You didn't get married or have kids or get a mortgage? I surprised that people actually think they can raise families while working in the computer industry. Silly people.