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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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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.
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.
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(Very likely a troll but I've seen this opinion legitimately expressed often enough to bite just in case someone's agreeing with it)
Think about this one a little more. Think supply and demand here.
If we end up with the entire US knowledge worker class being made unemployed due to the outsourcing of their work to India / China etc. then, by very definition, two things will happen:
1) US cost of doing such work will drop, due to increased supply against demand. Some workers will therefore leave this industry and move elsewhere.
2) US economic value as a whole goes down. So, along with it, down come land prices (lower demand for a fixed resource) so down come prices (lower rents / mortgages) so down comes the cost of living.
Now, think about the situation with all those outsourced workers in India. You get the exact reverse - people start to train in an industry as they see that jobs are available, which increases the pool of knowledge workers and jobs as a whole which increases the total economic value. So, the total spending power avaiable for fixed resources goes up, at which point the price of those fixed resources follows it. Which sends the cost of living and the cost of doing business up, too.
In other words, it's not the nightmare that you think it is, simply as market forces mean that the more you do this, the less the advantage of doing it is.
The other side, of course, is that the US - or anywhere else in the world for that matter, sitting in the nearly-as-rich UK, most definitely does not have an automatic right to be massively richer than the rest of the world. Why should I have money and opportunities just because I was lucky enough to be born in the UK, when the many thousands born at the same moment in less privelidged (sp?) parts of the world don't? Also, shouldn't I remember that a major source of hatred and violence is poverty and so by enforcing a situation where my country is richer, I'm only making it more likely that the poor people will try and knock my country down?
Be realistic - but also be reasonable. Poverty isn't nice, but if they can use poverty to give them a competitive advantage and haul themselves out then more power to them.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
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.
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.
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.
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Yeah, that statement annoyed me a lot too.
:o)
The poster seems to assume that all India and China has to offer in terms of software development is programming houses that provide services to US companies.
Although it's almost impossible to avoid any racist issues when discussing this matter, I do believe the use of these houses is a Good Thing.
First of all, it provides a way to distribute money from the US to countries that have a lower standard of living. Secondly, it promotes education. The combination of the two has proven to be very succesful in increasing the standard of living in places that need it.
In fact, much of the great free software we all use has non-US origins.
In fact, some of the not so great, not so free software was made in the US.