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Debugging Indian Computer Programmers
Life as an immigrant programmer is full of culture shocks both minor and major (would you know the first time around how to dress when flying from Bombay to Pittsburgh via Los Angeles, in winter?), and much of the book is devoted to outlining some of the shocks that Indian programmers face, even in immigrant-happy America. Buying a car to rely on for daily transport -- on American highways, no less -- is just one of the things many programmers like Sivakumar have to face shortly after arriving; he explains that one of the reasons certain makes of car (chiefly Japanese) are popular among newly arrived H1-B workers is that their expected resale value is high. When your employment is at the mercy of a short-term visa, and the cooperation of a sponsoring company, similar logic informs all kinds of decisions.
The "Did I steal your job?" in the title is the real question raised by this book: Sivakumar rallies evidence that the answer is a resounding No. Despite the vitriol raised by H1-B visa holders (and the H1-B program itself), he argues that the immigrant workers drawing ire from many Americans (who see the immigrants as encroaching unfairly on "their" jobs) not only contribute real money -- billions of dollars -- to the U.S. economy, but are one of the reasons that the U.S. high-tech industry is as successful as it is and has been.
He asks pointedly "[W]hy do some modern Americans (of course, a small percentage) want only those immigrant programmers and IT workers who came during recent times to go back home, yet tend to forget that their parents or grandparents were immigrants too?"Sivakumar's argument has three pillars. First, that high-tech immigrants (including H1-B holders) are one of the key ingredients in the continuing success of many American companies. These aren't foreign workers who simply happen to land jobs in the U.S.; each H1-B visa holder has at least 16 years (often more) of formal education, and an American company sponsoring his or her application. (That education usually comes "free" to U.S. taxpayers, he notes, not at the expense of public school budgets or student loan subsidies.) Sivakumar contrasts both the generous immigrant policies and world-leading software industry of the U.S. with the policies and software industries of Europe, which tend to be more restrictive and less successful, respectively.
The second part of his argument is that H1-B immigrants, though motivated by a desire to improve their own lives, end up contributing disproportionately to the U.S. economy -- something Americans should be happy about, not resentful. Indian programmers in particular end up spending much of their salary on necessary (and less necessary) material goods both for their personal use and as socially obligated gifts to family members, increasing the retail take of U.S. companies from AT&T to the local car dealer.
More significantly, H1-B workers, as legal immigrants to the U.S., have the dubious privilege of paying the same taxes as other Americans (and more than most), with a far smaller chance of reaping their benefits. Most are single, and send no children to the U.S. schools they help underwrite, and most will never collect on the Social Security system or medical-care systems their payroll taxes help prop up.
Third, Sivakumar points out that Indian immigrants are often among the inventive and entrepreneurial class which provides jobs in the first place, citing -- besides a litany of Indian company founders and inventors -- a Berkeley study showing that in the boom years of the 1990s, "ethnic Chinese and Indian immigrants started nearly 25% of the high-tech start-ups in [Silicon] Valley." That's nearly 3000 companies, employing on the order of 100,000 people. The market capitalization of Indian-founded or -run U.S.-based companies is nearly half a trillion dollars. Job creation is an economic complex that requires funding and expertise, and Indian and other immigrants contribute to -- not subtract from -- the creation of jobs for other Americans.
Sivakumar is polite, almost apologetic at times -- and more optimistic than some of the things he's experienced as a hired-gun programmer might lead you to expect. Though he maintains that the book is not an autobiography, many of the experiences in it are things he himself encountered; some of them are funny, others either frightening or simply sad. In particular, he makes note of one place that programmers and other tech workers are likely to run into "racially abusive" hostility -- namely, Internet message boards. As he puts it,
"You meet these people every day of your life, and they probably would smile at you at your workplace or even would greet you. They show their real face in those discussion forums. These online discussion forums are great tools for those who want to hide themselves from the public but would like to spew their venom."
Given the hostility faced online and (less often) in real life, sometimes Sivakumar's politeness goes what struck me as too far; I was surprised to read his conciliatory advice to Indians treated suspiciously on the basis of their skin color or accent in the panic-prone modern America to "please accept it," rather than to bristle. That might be pragmatic and sensible advice, but America will be a better place when it's unnecessary.
This book makes no pretense of being an authoritative work on cultural differences, but Sivakumar does delve into a few of the gaps between American and Indian aesthetics, habits, and mores. Sexually explicit entertainment is far more accessible in the U.S. than in much of the world, and in India in particular; he labels the usually short-lived exploration by some new immigrants of the seedier side of American entertainment "The X-Rated Movie Syndrome." On a different note, vegetarian food isn't easy to find in company cafeterias, which means for many Indian programmers one of many small barriers to acceptance by their coworkers, because they can't simply order off the menu at a company cafeteria.Even trivial aspects of daily life are sometimes imbued with cultural meaning: after being advised by a friend to "walk smart" (that is, confidently, not quietly or humbly) along company corridors, he writes "It sounded true to me, and I was prepared for my next American adventure. 'Alright, I am going to walk straight and smart as of tomorrow!' I tried recently only to have my colleagues comment that I walk like President Bush."
Despite a casual style and sometimes distracting use of jargon ("Dude" is funnier in the title than when it appears several times in the text), the content of Debugging is serious. Sivakumar and other immigrant programmers are not abstractions or hypotheticals: they're designing processors, programming systems of all scales, and bringing the results of high-end education worldwide to places like Palo Alto, New York and Austin. They're also facing an anti-immigrant backlash that ranges from merely spiteful (the usual) to actually violent (thankfully uncommon). Sivakumar's experience in the U.S. isn't wholly negative -- he's quick to point out otherwise -- but includes cavalier treatment from co-workers and landlords, and even harassment from a flag-waving driver gesturing obscenely (and blocking his car) on the streets of New Jersey. That's the sort of experience most light-skinned, native-born Americans are lucky not to face on a daily basis.
Losing friends and neighbors to the terror attacks of 2001 isn't something that happened only to American citizens, and Sivakumar was touched by both; five residents of his New Jersey apartment complex were killed by those attacks, along with the wife of a friend. In this and other aspects of life in America, he justifiably considers himself a part of the U.S. high-tech economy, not a mere visitor, and uses the second person when talking about the American software industry specifically. If you're an American by birth, realize that Sivakumar is an American by choice (even if he has ties and loyalties to both India and Sri Lanka besides), whatever his visa status says.
This is also a funny book, in parts -- in particular, Sivakumar's experiences ordering lunch in an American company cafeteria made me laugh. (Pronouncing "milk" with an emphasis on the "l" rather than the "i" is a matter of spoken convention, after all, not a rule of nature -- but a short "i" will get you a carton of milk faster in an American company cafeteria). The author's graceful levity is welcome, and it helps to defuse the natural anger I felt at some of the odious treatment he describes.
The writing is understandable throughout, but Sivakumar is clearly a programmer writing, rather than a writer who happens to also be a programmer; much of the text is awkwardly phrased, and dotted with avoidable errors in spelling or diction. (One that stuck out: in more than one place, the name of fellow H1-B immigrant Linus Torvalds is rendered "Linus Travolds.") The chronology of Sivakumar's own story is not always clear, either; he mentions offhandedly at one point early on that "[b]y the way, my wife had come from India and joined me by then"; a clearer timeline would help in unifying the anecdotes which make up much of the book.
Sivakumar is also guilty in places of wielding the same kind of broad brush he sees being used to paint Indian programmers; he provides cultural sketches of several other groups that may be meant merely as casual observations rather than any sort of final word, but end up doing the same disservice as any other stereotype. (Of his first trip through customs, he says "That was the first time I ever talked to an African American. I never understood their accent even in the movies." This kind of glib generalization doesn't advance the cause of the book; often "they" are hard to characterize so blithely, no matter which "they" is at issue.)
However, take these complaints with a grain of salt: it would be easy to concentrate on the less-than-smooth delivery -- it just wouldn't be smart. If you let the presentation distract you too much from the content, you'll miss what the book's about, which is that "there is another side to the H1-B factor." While the book has some distracting flaws, they don't subtract from its logical conclusion: immigrant programmers in the U.S. are simply human beings trying to better themselves in what's supposed to be a free society, and adding immensely to U.S. prosperity -- and they're doing so despite hostility on several fronts. If you want to understand the not-so-simple phenomenon of Indian programmers in America, don't overlook that message.
You can purchase Debugging Indian Computer Programmers: Dude, Did I Steal Your Job? directly from Divine Tree. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
What about the curry?
I'm part Irish, Scottish, Danish, French, and German. My great-grandfather on my mother's side was an illegal immigrant from England. My great-grandmother on my father's side was a full-blooded Cherokee. Which country, exactly am I supposed to say I'm from if not the US?
I was born in the US. I've lived here my whole life. Both of my parents were born in the US and lived here their whole lives. They both served in the US Army. All of my grandparents were born and lived in the US. Both of my grandfathers served in the military, one in WW2 and the other in the Korean War.
As far as I'm concerned, my family and I have earned the right to call ourselves Americans. I may have mixed roots, but what we've done in the last 100 years has earned us a place here. And, there is no other country we can now call home. That is more than I can say about anyone now illegally crossing the border or legally getting off a boat and taking our jobs. They need to spend some time and blood here before getting that priviledge.
As American citizens, we have the right to dictate how and why people may visit our country. This attempt to question our lineages as Americans is merely to conceal this fundamental truth. If we do not want illegal immigrants flooding our country, then as Americans we can choose otherwise. If we do not want cheap, foreign, H1-B labor flooding our country, then we can also choose otherwise.
We should not be made ashamed because our distant ancestors were immigrants. We are not immigrants and we never were. We were born American and we will die American. And thus we have a right to say what will happen in America.
If you're wondering, yes, my mama wore combat boots!
OK.
This one has got me fired up.
I've been coding for 15 years. I work with 4 Indian guys that are HALF my age. They are cocky and don't listen. There code sucks for several reasons which have NOTHING to do with the color of their skin. They have an ATTITUDE of being elite and better. They also NEVER seem to let ANYONE mentor them. I NEVER started my career talking down to someone who has been doing the job for 15 years. So for exmaple...
I tell our build guy...
Hey the Ant script you did. The boxes you put around the text don't line up correctly. I FIXED IT AND E-MAILED you a NEW build.xml file. He doesn't have time for it too busy. He took the time to do pretty printout in nice boxes but the ending line is NOT a line! Why do all that and not do it RIGHT???
Manager buys JBuilder at 5K a seat for the team. NONE of them use it. Want to use Eclipse because it is something they want to LEARN. They have NEVER figured out how to PREVENT the standard todo comments from going into the code. Even worse one of them using some SORRY TEXT EDITOR. I went to get water from the cooler one day. 5 minutes later he is STILL working on CURLY BRACES FOR A IF ELSE STATEMENT!!! I tell him in JBuilder he can just do 'if' and then CTRL J. He tells me it has to do with comfort level. He is more comfortable with a text editor. 5K spent for him to SCREW AROUND WASTING TIME MOVING CURLY BRACES!!!
One of them CONSISTANLY broke the build. When I sent an e-mail out to the team I got a reply from him that he was TOO busy to worry about having to make sure files he checked into the build worked.
This guy ALSO told me when I told him his checked in test case would NOT COMPILE!!! That I didn't correctly have JBuilder set up. Then it was JUnit. Then he blamed it on our CM tool. I finally have giving up on him. He is ARRAGONT and BLAMES EVERYTHING on SOMETHING/SOMEONE else.
Is Gosling from India? How about Strousoup?
Can anyone name me a hall of fame programmer from India?
NOT that there are not a LOT of them out there. I've worked with ONLY ONE guy who was a hard worker and fun to work with. Fun means he could listen as well as teach. If his ENTIRE COUNTRY was like him I would just pack my backs and move to India to be coding there. The problem is I see a bunch of POSERS that BULL SHIT there way all the way up into management. The only thing that gripes my ass more is knowing ONE of these clowns I'm working with is going to bull shit his way right into a management job and he NEVER learned how to LISTEN to ANYONE that might know more.
Instead he has just been a smart ass 20 year old who doesn't even know what assembler is or how a computer REALLY works.
Ohh
Final note.
The guys on my team that came from India. They ALL came here because they HATED the sweat shop software houses back in there home country.
I think there are two problems with this current thread.
1. Indians acting elitist
2. People not seeing that the COMPANIES are selling out the people THEY trained for cheap labor.
Knowing how to type DOES NOT make you a software engineer.
If I hear one more Indian tell me how smart they are I'm going to puke. If your so smart why don't you find a way to keep people in India from DYING of starvation or of taking a crap on the side of MAJOR road like a freaking animal?
EVERY RACE and country has their problems. The primary one ususally being blaming IT on another race. But last time I looked a HUMAN DNA strand didn't give ANY ONE RACE an edge.
For those who belive in only one God it is often stated as: 'God created ALL men EQUAL'.
BTW
I know a BUNCH of American guys that could do 5X's the work of what these clowns that I'm working with can do. But are they getting a chance?
Nope there unemployed telecom engineers with 15 years of C/C++/Assembler experience. But they don't have JSP or J2EE on their resume. They were too busy putting people on the moon or building the phone network so everyone on the planet could talk on a voice line.
What a shame...
I don't mean to be offensive or anything, but its virtually a fact that Indians carry some major B.O, all you Patels out there, can u explain this to me? cuz damn, get some old spice, or perhaps try something called soap.
So what we're really doing it devaluing IT work in the US.
The thing that really devalues IT work in the US is the concept that software should be produced and given away for free...
Amen to that. The majority of H1-B workers aren't immigrants, they're scabs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"