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The New Face of Global Competition
Valluvan writes "Here is an article in Fast Company on "The New Face of Global Competition". The article is focused on Wipro, a big IT company in India, but applies to many other companies in India that have been highly successful. A long article with some stupid errors like saying developers code with UML, but brings out the business facts well enough."
but it doesn't say to much about us lot as erm.. a species
I'll take the bait posed by your cultural ignorance.
In India, the concept of a nuclear family hsan't taken hold among the masses.
Why ?
1) A billion people in that much land.
2) Taking care of elders is a vital edict of the culture. You don't send them off to "elderly nursing homes."
3) Just because he lives them with them doesn't mean he's financially dependent on them. Likely the other way around.
Having worked on a project in which large portions had been outsourced to Wipro, I can say that saying they can code Java and follow OO methodologies is lot like saying that because I have seen a football thrown, that I can play football.
Another issue many companies haven't yet realized, is that the majority good engineers in India, have left India. Those remaining for the most part are not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
This is very reminiscient of the "Godzilla has arrived" mania that swept the US back in the 1980s. Mayne serious people then believed that Japan was going to buy the US (in cash) and then enslave us all in their Toyota factories. We know now how wrong they were.
India is certainly becoming a force in the global IT industry, but let's not get swept away by Fast Company's muscular prose and usual hyperbole.
Also, I think it's important to remember that real economic growth comes more from innovation than from cheap labor. Companies are willing to pay developers $150K a year if the products they're creating will cover those costs and return a large profit to boot. A lot of the work being offloaded to India (or at least the work that my previous employer shipped there) was maintenanced release testing, legacy OS ports, code cleanup, etc. Nobody was asking them to design the next killer app.
Of course, maybe it's good that these waves of paranoia wash ashore every few years. They prevent us from getting complacent.
The article falls over itself to heap praise on the Indian IT community (I think it ran out of adjectives eventually), but one particular line stood out to me:
They are as good at doing all of that as anyone in the world. Perhaps better. And they are cheaper -- on average about 40% cheaper -- than comparable American companies.
By what metrics are they "As good or better than anyone else in the world"? What ridiculous verbal spewage from someone throwing together a ridiculous little article. The Indian IT industry has gotten attention for one reason and one reason alone: They are very cheap (though the percentage cheaper is steadily declining to the point that it'll be a moot factor), however claiming that they are as good or better than anyone? I'm not being arrogant, but I find that there's a stunning lack of Indian software in the commercial software arena: which would be TRUE proof of homebrew abilities in an arena. Instead the industry is relegated to throwing together post-design highly-redundant type apps for countless life and bank organizations.
I'm not blindly claiming that India isn't a credible force in the software development force, but so are many other countries: This doomsdayish end-of-the-world attitude of this article just strike me as ridiculous.
ergo98
Better they appear in Fast Company than Fucked Company
Trolling is a art,
some stupid errors like saying developers code with UML
These days you can "program" in UML. The actual underlying code is C++ or Java generated by the CASE tool from your UML diagrams, but it's still programming, just at a higher level. For example, instead of programmatically declaring a member variable of a class, you click on the UML class diagram and add a property, instead of typing class Z extends X you drag a line.
You usually have to go to real code to actually implement methods, but using a RAD tool to layout your GUI, a CASE tool to do all the object defintions and database connectivity, only writing code by hand when you have to, is a very productive way to work. Programming Swing or Motif or MFC is very repetitive and can be highly automated, as can writing wrapper code for database tables to present them cleanly to objects.
You'll get a lot of geeks sneering that a text editor is the only way to write code, but that is an obsolete way of working. Computers are built to automate repetitive tasks, and once you've written one form or report by hand to show that you can, doing it again is just a waste of time.
Perhaps you should read the article closely.
[blockquote]Six years ago, Fast Company proled a team at Lockheed-Martin that wrote nearly perfect code ( "They Write the Right Stuff," Dec : Jan 1997 ). The team's claim to fame: It was one of only four outts in the world to achieve Level 5 certication from the Software Engineering Institute. Wipro has Level 5 certication in three different categories. It's eye-glazing stuff, but an amazing achievement.
Such accomplishments conrmed that Wipro's developers weren't just cheap: They were cheap and very, very good. [/quality]
Trust me, these folks are VERY concerned about their careers and their industry. They are also very concerned about quality.
Which is why we should be worried. It's why we should strive to produce better code and strive to do it quicker. It's why we should stop reading Slashdot so much and work more.
Outfits like this are not fly by night charlies that churn out crap, they are some of the best in the world. We (software professionals) will either step up to the plate and hit a home run and prove our worth or we will get run over like textiles and electronic manufacturing.
And by doing so, the "rich world" will eventually give away so much work that they will be poor.
Think about it - if the United States economy continues to send good-paying jobs overseas, what's left for the people in the U.S.? Yes, some "rich" people will get even richer, but a LOT of us will get poorer. Is that what we want?
I'm a developer with over 20 years experience. Cobol, SQL, VB, C, Java, HTML, UML, XML - I can do them all pretty well. My old company fired me after nine years claiming I couldn't do my job. Why? Because they can send my job to India and find someone with 2 years of experience who will work for $6 an hour...
Multiply that by the number of people who earn a living here in the U.S. by writing code, and where does that leave us? Claiming to be a 'Java developer' because we write some code at home, while earning a living working fast-food?
Anyone looking for a skilled developer?
Because we're sitting around discussing this on Slashdot...
Well, yes and no.
The specific sector (in this case IT) that is being squeezed certainly loses some in competition. For the economy as a whole, though, the money freed by getting cheaper IT solutions won't be stuffed into mattresses, but will enable more investment in other sectors (including up and coming areas). The economy as a whole doesn't get poorer; depending on the situation it may get richer at a somewhat slower pace.
Meanwhile, the poor countries get a _lot_ wealthier; each transferred unit of fund is a far larger fraction of total wealth in the poorer country receiving the payment than it is in the richer country paying it. The net result is that the difference in wealth between the countries are asymptotically diminishing - and at the same time, both the wealthier economy and the world economy increases its wealth.
Yes, it sucks to be a 'line programmer' or general consultant in our industry right now. It sucked to be a textile worker in europe or north america for most of the twentieth century, it sucked (and still sucks) to be a high-volume parts supplier to major manufacturing corporations. One day, it will suck to be a human bioengineer or nanotech designer.
However, if you have specialized skills, or work for a niche or speciality company, things are different. Being a cloth designer or speciality weaver does not suck. Being a nimble small-volume and/or speciality parts integrated designer and manufacturer is good eating. And being a highly skilled specialist (VLSI designer, for example) in our industry is still viable and likely to remain so.
Churning out app code or designing yet another business database bridge app is the equivalent to sowing slacks for off-the-rack or molding ten million stereo volume control knobs. They are the equivalent of sowing Nike's. Those jobs will leave - and will leave India as well as even more low-cost countries develop the population skills and infrastructure to take them.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.