PwC Auditors Arrested In Satyam Fraud Inquiry

theodp writes "Indian police arrested two employees from the affiliate of PricewaterhouseCoopers who audited Satyam Computer Services, the IT outsourcing giant at the center of the nation's largest fraud inquiry. The move comes after Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju said he had fabricated $1 billion of assets and confessed to making up more than 10,000 employees to siphon money from the software company. State Farm Insurance has severed its ties with Satyam, citing uncertainty about the company's future as 'the only factor responsible for the termination of the contract,' which will reportedly affect at least 400 on-site Satyam employees. Other customers, including GE, are standing by Satyam, one of the top recipients of H-1B and L visas (so much for those $500 Fraud Prevention and Detection fees!)."

Comments

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[Anonymous Coward]

eat my asshole curry munchers!

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[gravos]

Pricewaterhouse Coopers is a huge company and actually audits 40 percent of companies in the FTSE 100 Index. They audit everyone from aerospace & defence contractors to general retailers and chemical goods manufacturers. Scary news.

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[shentino]

curry fried anus?

I'll bet there's some odd village out there that considers that a delicacy...

Maybe somewhere in Spain...I think they already fry bull balls after a bullfight.

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[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for eating my asshole!

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[b4upoo]

One problem is that traditional audits really don't work very well as a rule. There are too many ways of beating an audit and the cost of an audit often is greater than the stealing it reveals.
            It is hard to believe that companies that exist to sell auditing service are not well aware of these problems and therefore sort of corrupt in general as they often are not offering a reality based service.

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[Anonymous Coward]

PricewaterhouseCoopers is not actually a company. They are a network of partnerships across the globe that utilize each other to perform global audits. Just because one office is crooked doesn't mean that it is true in another office, as each one is managed by a separate partner who makes their own choices regarding how to run the office (in this case crooked as hell).

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[mabhatter654]

this is the kind of book-fixing Sarbanes-Oxley was designed to fix. You have to have do the audits YOURSELF, and have the executives verify that the numbers are good. Then the "auditors" audit parts of the audit process and verify proper signatures are in order.

Of course this is an INDIAN company... so they don't really have to follow ANY US accounting laws at all because they are not based on US soil!

They took your money big guys... you have no legal recourse under the rules you're used to... how 'bout them apples!

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[PolygamousRanchKid]

Pricewaterhouse Coopers is a huge company and actually audits 40 percent of companies in the FTSE 100 Index.

Yepp, Pricewaterhouse Coopers is one of the Big Four: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Four_auditors., one of the best, without question.

But in these matters, I tend to wonder if the auditors are in cahoots with the company that they are supposed to br auditing.

On another note, an executive once told me: "I can't steal $100 from my company. We have enough controls in place to detect that. Now, $100,000,000, you can do that, and nobody would notice."

At "The Economist" quipped on the Bernard Madoff case, "if you are going to steal, steal big."

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[Anonymous Coward]

If PWC is one of the best I'd hate to see the worst. Our auditors lack basic understanding of IT process and technology let alone security. The stupid and basic things I get asked by our auditors amazes me. I have no doubt that I could perform any action in our IT systems without them having a clue what was going on. I know they aren't an IT security firm, but without the ability to ask the basic questions and delve into any anomalies I wonder how they can correctly perform an audit in an modern company. The scary thing is we are a fairly small shop with a fairly simple setup both financially and from a technology perspective, large multinationals with distributed operations must really boggle them.

/anonymous for obvious reasons.

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[ushering05401]

Our auditors lack basic understanding of IT process and technology let alone security. The stupid and basic things I get asked by our auditors amazes me. I have no doubt that I could perform any action in our IT systems without them having a clue what was going on.

Your auditors may be fools, or they may be finding out who the clever people are.

If they ask about a process and you show them standardized documentation then you pass the test.

If you do anything else you do not pass the test.

If there is no standardized documentation then the company does not pass the test.

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[powerlord]

Alternatively, a lot of auditors that I've met have only a rudimentary understanding of computer systems.

They understand some, but, the same way as most people in computers would have to have GAAP or IFRS explained to them, auditors might need someone to explain Caching, Access controls, etc. to THEM.

Don't equate foolishness with ignorance. The first you might be able to put something over on, the second might know something is being done that shouldn't, even if they are not sure what.

Only one way out of this mess

[Anonymous Coward]

Outsourcing, cheap goods from China, etc, etc...

We need a world-wide currency, world-wide wages, world-wide costs for raw materials, etc.

Until then, it's always going to be fucked-up.

And don't tell me that it doesn't matter if the guy in China only gets paid US$100 per month since his rent is US$50, because the problem here is imports/exports and local wages vs your own country's wages.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[Z34107]

We need a world-wide currency, world-wide wages, world-wide costs for raw materials, etc. Until then, it's always going to be fucked-up.

Wouldn't it be nice if we were all the same, and some world-wide authority to make sure none of us broke that golden rule.

Unless you plan on normalizing climate and remaking Pangaea, things will always have different costs in different countries. Japan will never have herds of free-range cattle; beef will always be more expensive there. Housing will never cost as much in West St. Bumblefuck as it will in Hong Kong. It will never be as expensive to heat your house in Florida as in Canada.

Global inequality and exploitation isn't exactly a good thing, but there has been real progress made over the last 40 years. Your ideas aren't going to help.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[gabrieltss]

How about you take your Fucked up NWO ideas and move to China. Oh wiat you sound like a Bildeburger plant - Now we have outed you!

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[khallow]

We need a world-wide currency, world-wide wages, world-wide costs for raw materials, etc.

We're already better than that. We have several competing world-wide currencies: the US Dollar, the Euro, the Renembli. Slavery is almost universally outlawed so we have everyone getting paid for their work, hence, we have world-wide wages. And of course, extracting raw materials costs something so we get world-wide costs for raw materials.

And don't tell me that it doesn't matter if the guy in China only gets paid US$100 per month since his rent is US$50, because the problem here is imports/exports and local wages vs your own country's wages.

Who in the world would make an argument like that? Besides it's more than import/exports and local wages. Someone in China making $100 per month just isn't doing valuable labor. The reasons are probably that they're far away from trade routes and have little local infrastructure to support themselves. Someone in the US with equivalent education, makes more because they are closer to the customer and have great infrastructure support.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[Dogtanian]

How about you take your Fucked up NWO ideas and move to China. Oh wiat you sound like a Bildeburger plant - Now we have outed you!

Hell, yeah. Those creepy secretive fucks are trying to influence world opinion by posting AC comments on Slashdot!

About the only plausible conspiracy surrounding this comment is that it's a setup to make NWO types look stupid. Or maybe it's a setup by the NWO types to make the anti-NWO types look like the kind of people who'd set up a poor quality fake to knock it down. Or maybe it's.... ah, sod it.

Oh wiat you sound like a Bildeburger plant

Is that a plant that grows Bildeburgers? I want one of those!

<homer>Mmm..... Bilde burger....</homer>

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[sjames]

There are differences in the real costs of some things. The problem is exchange rate differences. That is, work 40 hours in place A and you can live for a week there or then take that cash and live for a month in area B. Do that same 40 hours of work in area B and you can't even live for a day in area A.

The problem comes in because it's much easier to move a job overseas where labor is cheap than it is to move oneself overseas to where jobs exist.

Were the exchange rates equalized out, beef in Japan would still be more expensive due to shipping costs and houses in the middle of nowhere would still be cheaper, but there would be nowhere near the differences we see now between labor and living costs in (for example) New York and Mumbai.

In turn, that would lead to greater efficiencies overall. A pair of shoes takes X hours of human labor no matter where that labor happens. Currently it happens far away from the market they're sold in and then they get shipped halfway around the world. Were things equalized, they would still require X hours of labor but would only be shipped 1000 miles over land (much less resource intensive).

Economy is supposed to serve the people, not the other way around.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[paulgrant]

$100 per month isn't doing valuable labor?
Depends on how many units (and of what) he's assembling eh?
Looking at a wage-rate as a summation of the valuableness of
a worker (or productivity-rate) is a *horrible* assumption,
even here in the USA.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[the_B0fh]

I can't believe someone with a 4 digit number can have such a stupid idea. The reason why there's disparities is because of scarcity of resources. For something like what you're suggesting to work, would mean that everyone has access to the same level of lifestyle. This is so far from true. At one point, one of my professors told me that the US consumes 70% of the world's resources. We definitely use a shitload of energy compared to the rest of the world.

How are you proposing to to raise the level of living in Africa so that they too can participate in this glorious new world of yours? Oh, wait, this new world is only for people whose standard of living approaches that of the western world?

And shipping by boat is far *FAR* cheaper than shipping by land. Please do some research.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[skeeto]

The Ferengi philosphy of the Great Material Continuum,

The Continuum is a river whose current flows from those who want to those who have. According to this concept, there is a finite amount of wealth and goods in the universe, and any goods taken from one part of the "river" must be appropriately replaced or paid for by other methods. Thus, one must be sufficiently knowledgeable of the wants and needs of others to properly conduct business; a Ferengi sufficiently skilled at navigating this continuum will certainly prosper and amass great wealth and power.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[sjames]

Gee, since you called my idea STUPID, you must be a genus! I was Sooooo WRONG I think I'll nip off and kill myself now...

So, sarcasm aside, I fully realize that theres more than waving a magic wand involved, I just didn't have a month to prepare a proper scholarly work on the subject. Instead, I merely pointed at one point of attack for the problem. Unfortunately, that would involve extremely difficult things like putting an and to profiteering dictators constantly tearing societies there apart for their personal gain. A somewhat less charitable option would be a sort of legal impedance matching. That is taxing 3rd world transactions to remove the advantages of exploiting cheap labor (and perhaps spending the tax proceeds on aid packages to develop those 3rd world economies) or simply changing workplace regulations such that the 1st world corporations must make sure that 1st world workplace standards are applied by their offshore partners. Quadrupling the less that $1 per pair labor cost on $150 sneakers is not going to have much effect on the final price but would go a long way towards equalizing the economies. What's Nike going to do about it, refuse to sell in their most profitable market? Close down their non-existent U.S. factories?

As for shipping, you do realize that goods must travel over land anyway once they reach a port in the U,.S. don't you (or have you discovered a harbor in Kansas that can only be accessed by ships from Singapore?). Shipping half way around the world and then 1000 miles over land can NEVER be more efficient than just shipping 1000 miles over land. I apologize for overestimating your ability to see the patently obvious without spelling it out.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[khallow]

I'd have to say you're wrong here. The other replier nailed it. Value is what you can get. If you can get paid $20,000 a month, then that is what you are worth. If you can get paid $100 per month, then you are worth about 1/200 of the other guy.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[the_B0fh]

You do realize why the labor is cheap right? Because they have a lower standard of living, comparably, to western worlds. Which is why you don't outsource your factories to Europe or Japan.

If you start taxing them to make the labor cost equivalent to the western society, you just fucked them over - how the hell are they supposed to improve their standard of living?

And before you give me any grief about well, life sucks for them, remember, the west have been exploiting the rest of the world for cheap resources for 300-400 years, and once all the gold and other resources have helped built the west up, it is of course so easy to tell the rest of the world that well, buck up, you need to build yourself up just like us.

I'm always impressed by people with a magic wand who can wave problems away.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[sjames]

There's more to it than that. Even living at their standard of living here in the U.S. would cost more than it does there.

Also note that I suggested quadrupling their wages (still cheaper than paying for western labor) as a way to speed up the equalization. As an alternative I suggested direct taxation of foreign labor with the proceeds used to develop their economies.

But your right. If we just sit and do nothing it will surely be fixed by deus ex machina. Doing nothing always helps!

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[Jacques Chester]

Having multiple currencies with floating exchange markets has a very, very important advantage: it helps to moderate the impact of inflation in one country on trading partners.

If you choose to have a single currency, you need to set a single supply regime. But what happens if one part of your economy needs cheap and easy money because it's stagnating, while another part needs its money supply tightened to avoid runaway inflation? It can't be done, you're screwed both ways.

Australia had this recently in the gap between New South Wales, the most populated state, which was stagnant, and Western Australia, much more lightly populated but in the midst of a mining boom. Our Reserve Bank chose to fight inflation. Now they're fighting recession. But either way the impact of their policies is uneven within a single currency.

The EU has a similar problem in the Eurozone. What is good for Germany can be bad for Spain, what is good for Greece can be terrible for France. With floating currencies each country can determine its own settings and the market will, more or less, adjust for it.

Of course the total dominance of the US Dollar means that we're all affected by Federal Reserve policy whether we like it or not, but some of the effect is soaked up in exchange rates. Until the crisis hit and everyone fled for US Treasury bonds, the US dollar was falling like a stone because it was too abundantly created by the Fed, which was driving up other currencies. The inflation in prices for US goods was offset by the increase in the price of other currencies.

The above analysis roughly holds in normal conditions. But these aren't normal conditions.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[afidel]

You're assuming the market has perfect information and a perfect ability to assign value to labor, both are VERY far from the truth in the real world. Thanks to all sorts of distortions in the market the fair value of labor is almost never assigned. That doesn't mean capitalism doesn't work, just that it is far from a perfect system. We simply haven't found a better system to replace it or a sufficient way to limit its shortcomings yet.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[Anonymous Coward]

You are aware that the Erris account you friended is one of Twitter's admitted sock puppet accounts.. right?

In fact, 25% of all your friends are admitted Twitter sock puppet accounts ;)

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[sjames]

So then why doesn't each city have it's own currency? Or each industry within the city? Playing with exchange rates is a very blunt instrument to solve a fine grained problem. Often manipulation of exchange rates is done rather than using a more appropriate fine grained approach primarily as a way to deny manipulation of the market.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[khallow]

The market doesn't need perfect information to assign a value (which is inherently perfect since it is what you get paid that determines your value as labor) to labor. Which is good since there is no way to get perfect information.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[paulgrant]

Your right. I should just start robbing people like you.
Then you would be worth nothing and I would be very very rich (and hence
very valuable);

hence no-one would listen to your opinion since you are value-less
and everyone would pay more and more to listen to me hence relieving
me of the need to *physically* rob you -- I can just harness other
peoples greed/stupidity.

point taken?

Incidentally, ^^^ thats the missing step in all of those:
1. blah
2. blah
3. ???
4. profit!

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[paulgrant]

>The market doesn't need perfect information to assign a value

you keep using that word value; I do not think you know what it means....

BTW - your definition of value is the same as "mark-to-market" LOOK that one up ;)

I'm fairly sure Mr. Buffet would disagree with you too :)

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[khallow]

BTW - your definition of value is the same as "mark-to-market" LOOK that one up ;)

Yes. That is my definition of value. And I'm not so sure that Mr. Buffet would disagree with me.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[paulgrant]

Note the title to our thread - only one way out of this mess....
a mess created by mark-to-market valuation.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[khallow]

The original poster was calling for some silly stuff. A "world-wide currency"? As I note, we have a number of world-wide currencies. "World-wide wages"? Huh? I gather he meant some sort of common global minimum wage, which would be complete nonsense since it would mean either meaningless wage floors in the Developed world, or massive unemployment in the rest of the World. If instead the minimum wage in question is tailored to the circumstances of the region, then it's not a global minimum wage. Besides what's the point of labeling it "world-wide" wages? I get paid the same no matter how globally my wages are labeled. 10 world-wide US dollars spend the same as 10 provincial US dollars. Same for world-wide costs. It's a label. Would be stupid to set the price of a resource at a fixed price globally. Hence, there's no point to the label.

The point is that the price of goods, labor, etc are locally determined. Sure it matters what price Chinese labor is. But they aren't a plug in replacement for my rental house's lawn service. Those guys make $100 per month per house where I live. My landlord can't import said Chinese worker for free and have him do the lawn.

Once we accept that what we pay for something is dependent on location and situation, then it's a simple matter to ask how to best implement the transaction. A market does that efficiently and we haven't found a better approach. In addition, what is the value of something, especially a ephemeral product like labor? Ultimately, it is how much we'd have to pay to obtain or replace it.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[paulgrant]

>I gather he meant some sort of common global minimum wage, which would be complete nonsense since it would mean either meaningless wage floors in the Developed world, or massive unemployment in the rest of the World.

meaningless wage floors in the Developed world, or massive unemployment in the rest of the World.

HMMM. have you tried living on 6.25 with a family? even if its a dual-income family?
HMMM. massive unemployment in the rest of the world?

we have both of those already.

>The point is that the price of goods, labor, etc are locally determined. Sure it matters what price Chinese labor is. But they aren't a plug in replacement for my rental house's lawn service. Those guys make $100 per month per house where I live. My landlord can't import said Chinese worker for free and have him do the lawn.

LORD. Yer landlord outsources said importation of Chinese workers for free (re: landscaping companies all use either illegal labor or recently legalized temporary labor)

>Once we accept that what we pay for something is dependent on location and situation, then it's a simple matter to ask how to best implement the transaction. A market does that efficiently and we haven't found a better approach. In addition, what is the value of something, especially a ephemeral product like labor? Ultimately, it is how much we'd have to pay to obtain or replace it.

-- A market does that efficiently - everbody parrots that, nobody actually proves that statement.

> In addition, what is the value of something, especially a ephemeral product like labor? Ultimately, it is how much we'd have to pay to obtain or replace it.

I would posit a single global currency (one world currency) would prevent the gross errors of magnitude in exchange rates. A person cleaning toilets in America gets paid 6.25 USD per hour;
a person cleaning toilets in China gets paid 6.25 USD per month -- how would you justify a 30-fold difference in valuation on the labor for essentially the same task? Its even worse when u
take into account the actual exchange rates for cross-currency transactions (of which we *all* pay the price in the form of duties, financial fees etc). I take the extreme example here, but
realistically this sort of disparate valuation exists throughout. How is your market efficient if 100% of the people who are getting screwed would want a higher hourly wage for *exactly* the
same labor.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[khallow]

we have both of those already.

Except for the massive unemployment and I'm not supporting a "family" on a minimum job.

LORD. Yer landlord outsources said importation of Chinese workers for free (re: landscaping companies all use either illegal labor or recently legalized temporary labor)

But why do that when we can have our own employee for the whole month? Mow lawns, fix up the house, cook food, fetch the mail, wash the cars, etc.

-- A market does that efficiently - everbody parrots that, nobody actually proves that statement.

There's a simpler explanation. You ignore the evidence. Markets are everywhere. You get more than a few people together who have stuff and need other stuff, then markets spontaneous crop up. There's millennia of history here. Markets are a natural, efficient social mechanism for transacting goods and services. And once again, if you have some better idea than the market, please let us know.

I would posit a single global currency (one world currency) would prevent the gross errors of magnitude in exchange rates. A person cleaning toilets in America gets paid 6.25 USD per hour; a person cleaning toilets in China gets paid 6.25 USD per month -- how would you justify a 30-fold difference in valuation on the labor for essentially the same task?

What gross errors? The tasks are not equivalent because they aren't taking place in the same location, aren't serving the same customers, etc. The former janitor is simply 30 times as valuable.

take into account the actual exchange rates for cross-currency transactions (of which we *all* pay the price in the form of duties, financial fees etc). I take the extreme example here, but realistically this sort of disparate valuation exists throughout.

These inefficiencies would still exist in a one currency world. You'd have to eliminate the segregation imposed by having more than one government.

How is your market efficient if 100% of the people who are getting screwed would want a higher hourly wage for *exactly* the same labor.

And now we get to the very core of your ignorance. Almost everyone wants more than they currently have. Why pay $4 per gallon for gas, when I can pay $3 or $2 per gallon? Why earn just $6.25 an hour, when I can earn $625 per hour? The fundamental problem of economics is that the things we want are scarce - "infinite" needs and wants in a finite universe. Since not everyone can have what they want, we need to have some system in place so that people get what they are willing to settle for. The market does that quite well. In the absence of interference, every transaction occurs because the parties to the transaction agree to it. And because there are choices, there is competition for these transactions.

Re:Only one way out of this mess

[paulgrant]

>>we have both of those already.
>Except for the massive unemployment and I'm not supporting a "family" on a minimum job.

a) check your headlines - unemployment at 26 year high
b) try it sometime before you attempt to speak intelligently on the subject.

>>LORD. Yer landlord outsources said importation of Chinese workers for free (re: landscaping companies all use either illegal labor or recently legalized temporary labor)
>But why do that when we can have our own employee for the whole month? Mow lawns, fix up the house, cook food, fetch the mail, wash the cars, etc.

its called the H1-B program. we also have that.

>>A market does that efficiently - everbody parrots that, nobody actually proves that statement.
>There's a simpler explanation. You ignore the evidence. Markets are everywhere. You get more than a few people together who have stuff and need other stuff, then markets spontaneous crop up. There's millennia of history here.

So to does war crop up everywhere - you get more than a few people together who have stuff, need stuff and disagree, and wars sponstaneously crop up - there's a millenia of history there to. Doesn't mean its efficient or desireable.

>What gross errors? The tasks are not equivalent because they aren't taking place in the same location, aren't serving the same customers, etc. The former janitor is simply 30 times as valuable.

At this point I would think you are trolling.

>>take into account the actual exchange rates for cross-currency transactions (of which we *all* pay the price in the form of duties, financial fees etc). I take the extreme example here, but realistically this sort of disparate valuation exists throughout.

>>These inefficiencies would still exist in a one currency world. You'd have to eliminate the segregation imposed by having more than one government.

I'ld settle for the orders of magnitude less reduction (read: multiplicative inefficiencies) as a start. certes it would not be a complete solution - but a good start.

>>How is your market efficient if 100% of the people who are getting screwed would want a higher hourly wage for *exactly* the same labor.
And now we get to the very core of your ignorance. Almost everyone wants more than they currently have. Why pay $4 per gallon for gas, when I can pay $3 or $2 per gallon? Why earn just $6.25 an hour, when I can earn $625 per hour? The fundamental problem of economics is that the things we want are scarce - "infinite" needs and wants in a finite universe.

Reconcile scarcity with your patent system and "digital rights" management. That's a classic example of an infinitably copy-able non-scarce resource and yet under your thinking, a cd is worth 17$ USD.

>> Since not everyone can have what they want, we need to have some system in place so that people get what they are willing to settle for.

oho and here we come to the crux of your argument - it isn't about getting what you want; its about getting what you're willing to settle for. Joy - just what I want in the main mechanism for allocation of resources - sheer mediocrity.

>>The market does that quite well. In the absence of interference, every transaction occurs because the parties to the transaction agree to it. And because there are choices, there is competition for these transactions. ...in the absence of interference..... LOL. what world do you live in? and you forget my favorite, transaction under duress - certes paying taxes is a transaction and falls under that category - what happens if I try to evade my taxes I wonder?

Sir your method of valuation is both naive and crude. Its like you read a micro/macro economics book and actually *believed* everything you read.

100,000 not 10,000 Fake Employees?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you make up $1bn in assets in a Labor-focused business? If they admit to 10,000 fakes they probably really had 100,000 fakes.

It looks FTA that it's GE's India division (not GE in America) that's pledging to continue to work with them "for now", so I don't understand the poster's comments about H1B and L visas. GE builds water treatment and other kinds of major plants over there.
In current US regulatory environment, any company here pledging to work with a company like Satyam would be stopped.

Uh oh

[Anonymous Coward]

'Obstruction of justice'? Enron, anyone?

(I don't think it will come to that though, in part for good reason - but it's a tantalizing thought)

Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

As an East Indian, do these corporate assholes not realise the extent of their greed?

Due to the US Economy
1. Outsourcing is getting slashed as jobs need to to be retained on US soil.(rightfully so I guess)
2. Crap like above effing kills whatever reputation we have, there enough jokes flying around about the lack of quality or whatever from Indian work. This just made things worse.

Now this is not a flamebait, or troll post, I am not bashing my fellow Indians or the Americans/whoever.

I am however rightfully pissed at these corporate assholes who did this. There are folks who had purchased homes, property rates were rising, and now they'll plummet, people will be laid off.

Most of all, the company's name was Satyam (truth), and this came out of it. All of us Indians who work overseas have to deal with this in addition to the rest the usual crap.

To you effing lying executives, own up to your crap, you've put all of us in misery.

-Angry Brown Dude.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

Best wishes to you, Indian friend. May our two economies prosper and your standard of living dramatically increase.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[wintermute000]

Well you might be pleased to know that your reputation amongst IT engineers is already shredded due to the sheer number of underqualified, incompetent IT 'professionals' who simply lie about what they know / do not know, and / or are pure paper test passers.

I have met many brilliant Indian IT techs, and for every one I meet, they have ten incompetent comrades (and I'm not talking about the language barrier).

Having been on both sides of the fence (i.e. lost my job to an Indian outsourcer, gained a fat short term contract implementing such outsourcing) its patently clear that the issues lie with the Indian outsourcing execs who promise the world knowing (or do they really not know, being pointy haired bosses and all?) that they can't deliver the quality of service they promise. Of course the underqualified sods they send into the front line bear the brunt of the customers' angst. I could launch into my amateur sociological observations backed up with pure anecdotal evidence but thats treading into potentially dangerous grounds lol

If I have to explain IIS error codes to another .Net dev from Bangalore I will seriously go postal - for the last time, a 5xx error means its coming from the remote server goddammit - think about what that means (I'm a cisco techie, and such is the level of questions I have to fend off everyday from the outsourced areas).

Oh yes and explain to me why I see Indian CCNPs googling 'routing' and unable to answer simple queries re: spanning tree and OSPF. I have personally seen an Indian CCNP unable to locate the console port on a switch (hint: its at the back, not the front like a router). Oh the hilarity.... and how about when their senior dev asks me 'but network is down from X to Y', I RDP from server X to server Y, and he replies 'what does that prove'....

Sorry to go off on a bit of a rant here, but Satyam are at my work and boy does their incompetence rankle me. But as I said I've seen it before and I'm sure I'll see it again. Until they can actually deliver what is being promised their reputations (amongst the engineers at least) will always be deservedly tarnished.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

Although your examples are anecdotal, and only prove that those people are inept, I quit my last job because it was acquired by ITCTech. India Tobacco Company tech division. I was a contractor at a large game company and the company I worked thru was bought. I had no desire to support a foreign company absorbing contract IT work in the states.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of corporate types are clinically insane.

The film "The Corporation" goes into this. I've actually worked on the investigation of a CEO that went to prison-and it was incredible how much in lied to himself and those around him.

My favorite story was when he was walking out the door. This guy was facing prison time. He had lost a bunch of investors money. He had endangered the jobs of a lot of people that trusted him. Now, this might be considered a time for some introspection. Instead, on his way out the door, he's attempting to steal office furniture!!

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[metlin]

The problem is that as a developing economy, a lot of people in tech in India took up engineering or IT because it is a great chance to make money.

While there were a few talented techs and a few people who loved tech for its own sake, the very attitude in that region is to study something that would get you a well paying job. Most families there push for engineering or medicine - maybe law or finance every once in a while. Doing anything else, immaterial of your where your talents and interests lie is looked down upon.

The end result is that for every talented person, there are a ton of others who have no clue whatsoever. This is made worse by corporate greed by the various outsourcing companies who just use folks with backgrounds in anything vaguely technical, "train" them in IT and get them to do the grunt work. These people do not understand technology, do not care for technology and are nothing more than grunt workers, every single one of them. Wipro? TCS? Infosys? Satyam? They are ALL the same.

IT in India is a joke. The vast majority of them have no clue, and worse yet, do not have a passion for what they do. The problem is endemic, and results in poor quality code, service and the worst of all - attitude.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[wintermute000]

They may be grunt workers but are they really, when they earn 20x the wage of a factory worked (anecdotally told to me by my Indian colleagues when I was in Bangalore 2 years ago).

Good points about the sociological aspect, another thing I noticed immediately is that Indian IT is drawn from their upper class twit population i.e. those with enough money to have learnt English. I think that this, combined with the effects of the class system (ooh VIctorian England would be proud) to produce a perfect storm of mismatched expectations and outcomes.

Of course the bean counters are always quick to calculate a cost saving via lower prices but they never ever seem to have any way of figuring out how much cost is being incurred due to this lack of competency and accompanied operational disruption. Not to mention the lack of plan B, as now all your good local staff have left or been given the arse. Heck if I was an Indian outsourcer that would be my exact ploy - rope 'em in, then once I got them by the balls, slowly start squeezing... how can anybody not see that one coming.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how well it translates to english but... We have a saying "The guy who asks isn't stupid. The guy who pays is.". The reason for unqualified foreign labor isn't that people claim to be qualified/have qualified workers. Of course they do. It is because of we accept that with no evidence.

When I was still a project leader in one very large software and hardware company that we have all heard about, we rented 10 highly qualified Debian experts from India. And we paid quite well for them. It very quickly became evident that what we got was 10 indians who had gone through a three weeks long Debian course. The company had already sent the experts somewhere else so we were sent those guys...

Though I tried to tell my superior that the project was doomed to fail with those, the company refused to send them back and either abandon the project or demand more competent people. (I am to this day uncertain of why this was so)

I don't work there anymore and don't know if any other companies do such idiocies. But if they do, we have only ourselves to blame

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you might be pleased to know that your reputation amongst IT engineers is already shredded due to the sheer number of underqualified, incompetent IT 'professionals' who simply lie about what they know / do not know, and / or are pure paper test passers.

This is very true. I know many Indians who scored better than me on the verbal part of the GRE but cannot write a technical paper at all. Gaming tests is a popular pastime there for sure.

I am currently a graduate student at a well-known tech school and approximately 30% of incoming graduate engineering classes are Indian. The difference in culture is astounding, especially when it comes to things like honesty. When they arrive here, they are made to go through special classes on ethics and academic honesty because things like plagiarism are such huge problems. I have many Indian friends, and they say one more or less cheats their way through college in India because it's part of the system there. Having been a teaching assistant, it's unsurprising to me that most of the Indian undergrads here usually turn in the exact same homework (up to the point where the same inane comments that have nothing to do with the problem appear).

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[DerekLyons]

The problem is that as a developing economy, a lot of people in tech in India took up engineering or IT because it is a great chance to make money.
 
While there were a few talented techs and a few people who loved tech for its own sake, the very attitude in that region is to study something that would get you a well paying job. Most families there push for engineering or medicine - maybe law or finance every once in a while. Doing anything else, immaterial of your where your talents and interests lie is looked down upon.

That doesn't sound like a developing nation - that sounds like pretty much any nation.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Kneo24]

The problem is management never likes being proven wrong. They don't like it when you point out that individual(s) xyz are just milking money from the company, even when you have clear evidence. I don't know how many times I've gotten into these such arguments with my bosses and seen nothing done about it. It's such a shame that the route for management is just having bodies to fill seats. There are a lot of qualified people in any given type of field you work in. Getting your bosses to recognize that, even while providing any sort of cost benefit analysis is often a wasted effort. I don't know how companies like this stay in business, but they do.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Kneo24]

As a TA, you can get them in trouble for cheating. I know I would. Surely the same people have the same track record for turning in the exact same assignments. How hard is it to keep track of that? Not very. Do the world a favor and out them.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

As a TA, you can get them in trouble for cheating. I know I would. Surely the same people have the same track record for turning in the exact same assignments. How hard is it to keep track of that? Not very. Do the world a favor and out them.

In a perfect world, I could have easily "outed them". However, I have no power to officially report it as a TA and thus rely on the instructor to give a crap. I reported it to him the very first homework, but he simply "don't worry about it, they'll be screwed for the test". As it turned out, his class was really easy and everyone made a good grade, so the cheaters learned nothing.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[YrWrstNtmr]

I have met many brilliant Indian IT techs, and for every one I meet, they have ten incompetent comrades (and I'm not talking about the language barrier).

My experience exactly. And THEN you toss the language/timezone barriers on top of it, and you have a real clusterfuck.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the points you make are specific to India or any country for that matter. I don't want to start a flamewar but I have seen enough clueless non-Indian programmers who had obviously no passion and were doing the jobs just for the money.

Indian programmers take the blame as they are the most hated ones to offshoring and H-1B and there are a large number of them in that field. If you try to recruit a similar number of programmers in _any_ country you are likely going to end up saying "vast majority of them are crap" .

Acknowledging the problem is a good first start but blaming everything on Indian programmers and making highly generalized statements like "IT in India is a joke" doesn't help anything except may be making you feel better. In my experience though Indian guys lack the "self marketing" and most always do not go the extra mile to make the work "look" quality but otherwise the code does what it was asked to do. A little effort in those directions could go a long way.

On the other hand I get quite pissed by the programmers wanting to tout their work as quality and doing largely pointless rhetorical things in the name of differentiating - it adds little value.

Pick your poison - you pay less for one, more for other.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[the_B0fh]

Oh yes and explain to me why I see Indian CCNPs googling 'routing' and unable to answer simple queries re: spanning tree and OSPF.

That's OK. I used to work with a "I'm ccnp, but cisco lost my results, so I don't have the cert yet" NotWork engineer. Fucking lying bastard asshole. Set up a 10/8 flat network for 3000 people, 42 remote sites. Good ole white american.

What's my point? It's not the nationality or the outsourcing that is the issue, it's the damned incompetence.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[JAlexoi]

IT in India is the same joke as in all other countries, just it's a really, really, bloated joke.
Being a techie, is not something you learn at a later stage in your life, it's something you grow up to be. Most Indian IT workers, just don't "cut it".

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

You an remove the word "Indian" from the above statement and it's pretty much still going to be true.

Not to downplay language, timezone, cultural or attitude problems, but the #1 problem is that people are willing to pay for **** - as long as they don't have to pay too much for it - and there's no shortage of people willing to sell it. If customers ever started demanding quality, a lot of these losers would be looking for a new career.

Then again, what does it say that a big-name US auditing firm signed off on the fraud?

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[YrWrstNtmr]

You an remove the word "Indian" from the above statement and it's pretty much still going to be true.

As my dad (tech wizard from WAY back) used to say..."if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys".

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[pmarini]

while I perfectly agree with your post (1 our of 10 seems about right, and not just for people from India...), I have to comment the HTTP 5xx errors, one of which I recently got while investigating a customer's issue and it said in the error description "something that the client browser is sending caused this wrong reply by the server" - mind you, it was IE on IIS, so it might just have been a chair thrown at the server in the data centre...

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like someone I work for. Especially the "truth" part. But, he isn't Indian. His skin may be brown but he is an American. There is a major difference here.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[pmarini]

it makes me laugh each time I see an advert on TV here in UK about being trained as an IT "professional" to easily get a salary up to £30K (just before another advert which says exactly the same thing for driving instructors...)
I wonder why this type of advert is never aimed at lawyers or accountants... I mean, how difficult can it be ? (to me a lawyer is just like someone in marketing, but that's another story...)

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[cvd6262]

I could launch into my amateur sociological observations backed up with pure anecdotal evidence but thats treading into potentially dangerous grounds lol

Umm, or you would just be a "social scientist." At least, what we call them in Academia. Of course, they (sometimes) get paod, so you;d have to drop the "amateur" moniker.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

..."if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys".

Corollary has not a guarantee of being true - Pay more and you get sophisticated monkeys - ones that are smart enough to avoid looking like a monkey.

Point is that you have to be extremely lucky, extremely good or extremely extravagant to be able to hire the truly great programmers. Rest of the reasonable bunch 'manage' it all - and that is fine, it serves the purpose well. There really isn't a big enough need tor truly 'great' programmers if even that term has a widely accepted definition.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Luscious868]

Welcome to the new globalized corporate economy. The same greedy corporate types that have been screwing things up here for all of us are arising everywhere. Get used to it. With all of the influx of cash will come enormous greed. On the plus side a rising tide will lift all boats. On the minus side you'll see amazing acts of greed that will do a hell of a lot of damage if it's left unchecked. Your government must be vigilant in it's oversight and your people must hold your government accountable if it isn't.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[metlin]

Not entirely true. I've a lot of friends who studied anything from Classics to Art History to Philosophy who are quite gainfully employed, making 6 and 7 figure incomes. That's only possible in developed countries.

In a place like India, what and where you study has a much bigger bearing on how much you make and where you end up. More so than most countries.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Clover_Kicker]

to me a lawyer is just like someone in marketing, but that's another story

If it's so easy, why don't you go to law school and make the big bucks?

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[wintermute000]

Sometimes is the word. I do have an honours degree (first class lol) in political science, so I guess that does qualify me for a slashdot soapbox

guess why network engineering is how I earn my crust (hint: here in Oz at least 30% of any unemployment benefits queue holds an arts degree)

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[guruevi]

The problem is that as a developing economy, a lot of people in tech in India took up engineering or IT because it is a great chance to make money.
That was the same a few years ago in the west. Almost all of the youngsters in my family took up IT classes just because they followed my example (I consider myself a valuable employee and I make quite a bit of money) and one of them is actually good at it, the other ones however have their knowledge only from playing games and whatever crap they teach in colleges. A lot of people in my high school went to IT but they all failed miserably. The problem is that nobody could afford to outsource TO us.

The end result is that for every talented person, there are a ton of others who have no clue whatsoever. This is made worse by corporate greed by the various outsourcing companies who just use folks with backgrounds in anything vaguely technical, "train" them in IT and get them to do the grunt work. These people do not understand technology, do not care for technology and are nothing more than grunt workers, every single one of them. Wipro? TCS? Infosys? Satyam? They are ALL the same.
TekSystems, Robert Half...

IT in India is a joke. The vast majority of them have no clue, and worse yet, do not have a passion for what they do. The problem is endemic, and results in poor quality code, service and the worst of all - attitude.
I have the same problem with a lot of people here in the US too, they have a worst attitude. Some Indian guys (especially if they had a rural upbringing) are quite mellow and can be thought though but some of these US people... especially managers.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Mohan S]

I'm Indian. I think such flame baits are a bloody joke. Most Americans think they have god given or endowed knowledge to do things better just by the gift of the gab. How else do you explain Bush getting elected twice?? I've been in the US and have worked with so called successful execs. All this talk of incompetencies apply to Americans too. Like all capitalist tendencies, Americans have learned to pay less for incompetencies, thats all. And they have cost savings to justify the action. I'll bet the US can do with a fifth of the IT and still do better if they are multi-skilled and committed. Mohan

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[mattwarden]

Stop acting like "5+ years experience" is Indian for "5 day training course", and maybe the jokes will stop.

Seriously. When I review resumes, I just don't even pay attention to that part anymore. It's pointless. I wish I could disqualify anyone I thought was lying, but that's hard to do when that would disqualify all the resumes on my desk.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I talk to "your kind" everyday at work. It takes hours to get across a simple idea and doing something out of the box is a serious hardwork for "them". Obviously, generalization is easy to come in such situations, but I am yet to label all of "your kind" as overfed, overconfident, underskilled, haters. :)

One more thing, have a concept of genuine respect for all mankind, without judging this race or that. Everytime you do this, karma auto debt is killing your world image. I can ask you to understand what is meant by "Hate the game not the player" [for lack of better translation], but then again, that would require humility and understanding, which I have stopped expecting from you.

-Guy in the next cubicle.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[bladesjester]

Actually, as a TA you should also have the ability to bring it to the attention of the department if the professor doesn't do anything about it. Most engineering departments take a dim view of cheating. The one at my alma mater ended up uncovering cheating that had occurred a few years prior when a student was, I believe, researching a thesis.

He reported his findings, and the dept dug deeper. I think they ended up pulling the degrees from a few people.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

ITC was Imperial Tobacco Company, once, but never India Tobacco Company.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

Er .... what is an 'East Indian', pray? An Indonesian, maybe, the place that used to be known as the 'East Indies'. In this day and age when Americans are actually beginning to learn geography some slashdotter uses the quaint term 'East Indian'? ROTFL!!!!

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

"The problem is that as a developing economy, a lot of people in tech in India took up engineering or IT because it is a great chance to make money."

Being originally from India and having taught at a US university for many years, may I weigh in on this? Before the dotbomb crash, we had numerous students blessed with barely more than a pulse enroll in our MIS program for precisely the same reason - to make money. They had no interest in technology or in mathematics for that matter. They were incompetents. It was sheer torture to have them in my classes. None of these students should ever have been admitted to a university; they should have stuck to becoming shop floor supervisors, fast-food supervisors and so on. (Of course, our college and department welcomed them because we needed the numbers to justify the faculty.) The dotbomb bust was a boon -- it weeded out the bulk of them. But after a couple of years, the numbers started going up again -- for the money, of course. But now, I think they are going away forever. Our department is very nervous; we many not last many more years. I doubt there will be any more new hires hence.

Anyway, my point is, don't just blame Indians for taking up engineering/IT for the money. Happens all the time, in every culture/nation/economy. Why do you think business schools and financial institutions are filled with engineers, physicists and the like; heck even people who have studied the classics. It's money, dude.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

As an East Indian,

-Angry Brown Dude.

Who are You "Brown Dude"?

  As an Indian this is the first time I have seen the term "East Indian" used to refer to us in recent time. The common term is either Asian Indian Or south Asian Indian

Imposter?

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

While what you say is true, it misses the cultural aspect of the problem. I've worked with a bunch of foreign IT people... some are good... some not, but in particular, I've worked with Indian folks from high caste backgrounds, and if they know their stuff, they're fantastic. However, if they don't, my god are they painful. Imagine a generations-long chip on their shoulder, and a genuine belief that they are as good as they think they are. Problems are never their fault, always some other person/department/company. Their solutions, no matter how convoluted and misdirected are always the optimal one, while a simple and elegant - or even standard - solution is dismissed outright. Then, when it starts to get difficult and it all falls apart, you won't see them for dust because they've moved on to the next client to leave others holding the baby - it must be very important to keep appearances up. Lack of skills is one thing, but apply that attitude as well... it's insufferable.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[pmarini]

because someone's patented the judicial system, and only those rich enough to afford it can actually access it...
not to count that defending criminals is not my style (although I do believe in justice - in principle), so I'll leave that to those who keep benefiting from it...

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[MemoryDragon]

Well as an outsider think of it this way, a few years back american employees were threatened by loosing their jobs to indian companies who basically did not promise quality just cheap work, do you expect that exactly those guys (often smart people who do not have a high but rather average income) expect you to welcome you with open arms?

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Hognoxious]

Ever heard of the British East India Company? I assume in both cases the "East" is there to emphasise that it's not referring to the West Indies (Jamaica etc).

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Clover_Kicker]

because someone's patented the judicial system, and only those rich enough to afford it can actually access it...

Everyone in law school right now has student loans out the wazoo, you could join them easily enough.

not to count that defending criminals is not my style (although I do believe in justice - in principle), so I'll leave that to those who keep benefiting from it...

There's lots of boring law that you don't see on TV, corporate law, tax law, family law...

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[TheLink]

1) Only a very few are really good, so you are more likely to get average or crap.
2) It's hard to figure out who can do the job, of the subset who WANT to. You could try to get some famous OSS coder to code for you, but he'll probably want a lot more money and he'll probably get bored and leave after a few months.

So given 1 and 2, it's no surprise bosses prefer to pay an Indian programmer to do a crap job, than to pay a US programmer many times more to do a crap job.

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[Anonymous Coward]

You an remove the word "Indian" from the above statement and it's pretty much still going to be true.

And yet when the company I work for switched from an Indian outsourcesing firm, to a Russian one, the end product quality went up dramatically.

Oddly you'd think there would be more problems since verbal communication became more of an issue (the Russians read/write english, but are not fluent enough to communicate), but any issue with language is more than made up for by an increase in critical thinking. The Russian programmers seem more interested in looking at their work in a holistic way and making sure the pieces fit together in a way that makes sense where-as the Indian programmers took indulged in no critical thinking, often introducing extra bugs because the new code did what it was supposed to, but did it in a way that broke the rest of the system (instead of doing it a different way that was either more efficient, or better at preserving the system as a whole).

Re:Great, more fuel to the flames

[metlin]

Well, I'm an Indian as well (albeit an Indian-American), and I am always amused when Indians chime into pretend that things are all fine and dandy in India. Or worse yet, when the same specious arguments (e.g. Bush) are brought up.

To think that education and skills are not commoditized in India is a joke. Except for the very top schools, most places offer next to nothing in the way of education.

Yes, there are incompetents in the US, but it is a lot harder for incompetents here to get a job at a top tech US firm (think Google) than it is for a joe blow idiot in India to get a job at a top Indian tech firm (think Infosys).

If you want to argue the reasoning behind outsourcing and the finer points of capitalism, I'll concede that paying less for competencies is a valid point. However, let me just tell you that apples to apples, the quality of tech skills in India are dismal compared to a similar pool in the US. You're paying less for competency because your skill set is also comparably poor, and you spend a lot more time finding something that works.

The cost of overhead and TCO is something that most people forget.

Being arrested is no big deal, being CHARGED is

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why the world's media gets its giggles from reporting on people arrested. Police arrest people all the time and after questioning, let them go and never talk to them again. If they are CHARGED it's a much bigger deal. But tell that to Bloomberg.com who also went wild with Martha Stewart's rather mild "crimes" and made her out to be worse than Charles Manson

Best programmers

[mounthood]

...confessed to making up more than 10,000 employees to siphon money from the software company.

This must be what Brooks meant about the best programmers being 10 times more productive.

Re:Best programmers

[kbrasee]

I am infintely more productive than an imaginary programmer.

Please hold...

[retech]

Your call is important to us.

Press 1 if you'd like you're information stolen, 2 if you'd like to participate in a pyramid scheme, 3 if you would like to speak directly to a lawyer.

Thank you.

Re:Please hold...

[Nocturnal Deviant]

OK I'm having a really bad day.....and after reading this, it got a lot better, this is one of the best comments I've seen lately

Re:Please hold...

[jonaskoelker]

Press 1 if you'd like you're information stolen,

Press 4 if you want to correct the grammar of this message.

*beep*

It's "your" (~ my), not "you're" (~ I'm).

*beep*

Thank you for your correction. Press 1 if you'd like ...

Re:Please hold...

[kbrasee]

You grammar is impeccable. If I had mod points, I would give you +1 Impeccable Grammar.

Notice to Sourceforge: Kill off Slashdot!

[Anonymous Coward]

A much better website: http://www.madonna.com

Notice to Sourceforge, Inc. management: Close down Slashdot, sell the domain to a squatter, and focus on your core competency: Sourceforge. It needs a lot of work.

Slashdot no longer serves a unique purpose. The forum is a mess of buggy AJAX, it is irrelevant, the editors have no talent, and the news sucks!

News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters. NOT!

It's not news, it's not written by journalists and it's not stuff that matters. The only true part about their tagline is that it's for nerds. Stupid ones. Ones who are probably wearing some lame t-shirt from ThinkGeek with a stupid expression like "All your haXoRz are belong to us."

This thread about the 2.4.18 kernel release is a typical Slashdot news item. Idiocy, misinformation, testosterone-poisoned posturing, technology punditry, arrogance, bad logic: just another day in Slashdot-land.

The classic exchange is one Slashdotter complaining about ACs (people posting as Anonymous Cowards, i.e., not registered) and another Slashdotter blasting him for being so stupid and then outlining the steps need to get a for-all-intents-and-purposes anonymous Hotmail account and registering on Slashdot with a bogus name.
Lame personalities

Some of the Slashdot people have personality cults which is weird because they are incredibly lame. Every single poll seems to have a reference to a character named CowboyNeal. One of the founders/editors, Rob Malda, goes by the handle CmdrTaco, and his posts are incredibly shallow and stupid (although admittedly not much more than those of the other editors).

Every Slashdot-hater will claim to have a particularly dark place in their hearts for a certain individual, but frankly, they're all about the same. I ran into them in the Linux pavilion of Comdex a couple of years ago and they're a truly sorry bunch of humans. Just more proof that if you had the choice to be smart or lucky, you're much better off being lucky.
The problem with online forums: Why Slashdot isn't different than the rest

Admittedly, Slashdot's lameness isn't unique. As a matter of fact, it's normal. The main problem with online communities is that they do not scale well. While engineers argue about whether or not MySQL-backed sites can handle significant traffic, etc., they are really missing the point. Even if the software can handle it, the community can't.

Throwing more hardware at it doesn't help the problem. Nor does throwing more software. Nor does throwing more moderation. Nor does adding big warning messages to "please search the archives before posting a question." People get tired of hearing the same old questions over and over. What was once a place where new and innovative discussions sprang up every day is now a place where the same ten questions get asked over and over. Many of the most valuable contributors are the first to leave, just like talented employees bailing out of a foundering corporation.

The only hope is to pick a topic that is so esoteric that growth is extremely limited. Splitting up a community into sub-communities is also a possibility, but one that doesn't always work. If done too late, the majority of the most valuable contributors will have already left. Splitting a big blob of noise will result in many little blobs of noise. If done too early, there might not be sufficient energy/critical mass to nurture the newly-founded subcommunities.
What makes FC different?

The, uh, community citizens at F---edCompany.com contribute about the same quality of knowledge as your average forum participant, but unlike Slashdotters, A.) they aren't as arrogant, B.) they all seem to realize where they're posting (i.e., after all, the website is called F---edCompany.com), and C.) Pud (the founder/editor) knows he's a lucky idiot.
The very worst part about online forums

For the newcomer, a vibrant, high-traffic online forum seems like the El Dorado of information. It's not. It's a Pandora's Box, but even worse. The biggest single probl

Re:Notice to Sourceforge: Kill off Slashdot!

[daveime]

And yet for all your lambasting of the system, you still posted as Anonymous Coward.

GE Comment Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for GE. GE is hardly standing by Satyam. We need proof of breach of contract before we can legally severe ties. Give the lawyers a bit of time and it will happen.

Re:GE Comment Misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean you need more time to move your outsourcing from India to Mexico, the Philippines, Malaysia, etc, before you server ties.

If you work for GE in IT for anything other than onsite monitor swapping, you're just one of the overpaid people that manages outsourced developers, hoping the sensitive data you send overseas is safe.

I've never worked there but new a few that did and had to interview a few. Lots of people will be in for a big surprise when they realize a black belt doesn't mean anything for companies that care about long term sustainability, not just short term bogus stats. Seriously, black belt as the second level?

Anyway, GE's been so piss poor after their screwups during the dot com years with GE Capital, then GE Consumer Finance's horrible missteps in subprime, draining money from other business units to give credit to people that couldn't afford to pay it, AFTER the subprime train already left the station.

Bye bye, GE, you'll be missed once the bailout money is gone.

Poor Thomas Edision must be turning in his grave 60 times per second.

Let's check the sympathy meter

[HangingChad]

Indian police arrested two employees from the affiliate of PricewaterhouseCoopers who audited Satyam Computer Services, the IT outsourcing giant at the center of the nation's largest fraud inquiry.

Let's see, companies ship thousands of jobs to places that don't have the reporting and oversight capabilities we have here (or at least used to have) and are outside the jurisdiction of US courts in order to save a few bucks at the expense of several thousand local employees. They deal with the language barrier, the cost of travel, a culture where bribery can be a way of life, and time zone issues. Then said companies get taken to the cleaners because they can't audit their operations on that side of the world properly.

Hmmmm, let me be the first to say HA-HA! I guess we need new batteries in the sympathy meter because it's showing a big, fat ZERO right now.

Re:Let's check the sympathy meter

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a wild guess, but that could be what laid-off Microsoft employees think about FOSS. Or what laid-off record industry employees think about people who illegally download their music (and then add insult to injury by proclaiming that they never would've bought the worthless music anyway!).

Perspective is an interesting thing.

Re:Let's check the sympathy meter

[Anonymous Coward]

places that don't have the reporting and oversight capabilities we have here

Sorry try again. India has been better at handling this economic crisis than many of the western nations:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/20/business/20nocera.html

Lessons from India

Yup, India is corrupt and India has had it's share of scams and bad companies. However, this does not mean that all Indian companies are bad and that India has a complete lack of regulations.

Re:Let's check the sympathy meter

[Anonymous Coward]

Goes on to say how overpaid those people are over "there"...

Re:Let's check the sympathy meter

[Dogtanian]

I guess we need new batteries in the sympathy meter because it's showing a big, fat ZERO right now.

<smartass>If the situation this hypothetical sympathy meter was measuring was as you implied, it would read zero even if there *were* batteries in it. :)</smartass>

Re:Let's check the sympathy meter

[oxygen_deprived]

"Let's see, companies ship thousands of jobs to places that don't have the reporting and oversight capabilities we have here (or at least used to have) and are outside the jurisdiction of US courts in order to save a few bucks at the expense of several thousand local employees"

-------
Yeah sure. Enron was an Indian firm. So was Lehmann. How exactly did the US jurisdictions and having the reporting and oversight prevent them from happening ?

Then said companies get taken to the cleaners because they can't audit their operations on that side of the world properly.

-------
In case you missed the TFA, PwC is from your side of the world, and are complicit in the fraud. Here in India, we have a proverb, which roughly translates to "When you point a finger at someone, 3 of your fingers point to you"

Re:Let's check the sympathy meter

[HangingChad]

One of us missed something for sure because the article says they were arrested by Indian police in India. And that the auditors were a local subsidiary of PwC, well outside of US jurisdiction.

Enron was an Indian firm. So was Lehmann. How exactly did the US jurisdictions and having the reporting and oversight prevent them from happening ?

That's our problem, now isn't it? One could point to the recent elections and suggest that there is some unhappiness with the regulatory climate on this side of the pond. We'll deal with our own issues. That really wasn't the point.

We outsource some of our development, but they're local companies. If something goes south we can take them to court, but short of that I can drive over to their office and find out for myself what's going on. Not so easy to do if your vendor is in Bangladore, now is it?

I have zero sympathy...and the meter readings to prove it...for companies shipping jobs overseas to save money and getting burned. Too bad, bucko. We can fix our regulatory environment and I frankly don't give a crap what happens in yours.

Maybe stick to managing your own problems, that might be a good start.

Re:Let's check the sympathy meter

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe stick to managing your own problems, that might be a good start.

Let's see, who brought it up? This is right wing talk show host crap. "I know who I am and I'm OK, but I don't know about you people."

Microsoft makes the same kind of insinuations about a "lack of accountability" when it comes to Linux. Whenever there's a loud bug in GNU/Linux software, well, that just goes to show.

Re:Let's check the sympathy meter

[oxygen_deprived]

And that the auditors were a local subsidiary of PwC, well outside of US jurisdiction.

AFAIK, a US firm is responsible for ethical conduct irrespective of the country it operates in. For example, if your US firm's subsidiary bribes an Indian official , US courts have jurisdiction over the parent company in the matter

If something goes south we can take them to court, but short of that I can drive over to their office and find out for myself what's going on. Not so easy to do if your vendor is in Bangladore, now is it?

Outsourcing is a skill. You cant outsource work to the first tom dick or harry that quotes the lowest. You need to do your homework.Its challenging, and those from your side of the pond who have lived upto the challenge have saved millions of dollars in labor costs.

I have zero sympathy...and the meter readings to prove it

I have zero sympathy too. I and countless others lost our investments overnight as Satyam plummedted 80% within hours.

We can fix our regulatory environment and I frankly don't give a crap what happens in yours.

Unfortunately, the days , when people/comapnies/nations could island themselves economically and didnt give a crap what happened elsewhere, are over.You cannot stay unaffected, and sooner or later, you will be splashing in the very same crap.

Maybe stick to managing your own problems, that might be a good start.

Actually thats exactly what I was doing. I work for a shared project team half of which works in US and half is in Bangalore. Your very own US guy coded a deadlock in a "single writer multiple reader", and yours truly, the cheap coder fixes it.

Re:Let's check the sympathy meter

[Artifakt]

What's wrong with this analogy?

Lets see - FOSS developers are doing something totally legal and ethical that benefits many other people, and even offers some benefits to the laid off Microsoft employee if he or she can still afford to use a computer. Hate them if you must, but it's like being a buggy whip maker who hates the inventors of that new-fangled horseless carriage.

Illegal downloaders inflict damage to a company's bottom line in at least some cases, but laid off employees are there because of that, plus lots of perfectly legal actions, (i.e. boycotts, spending your entertainment dollars on something else besides music, or your being too broke to have descressionary spending anymore). A big chunk of it is the industry's own choice. Illegal downloading by itself hasn't done nearly all the damage, and it's a least reasonable to claim that the industry's own mistakes were big enough to screw their own people without illegal downloading having any impact at all. Hate the downloaders if you must, but you'll do better in the long run if you at least apportion blame fairly, and don't let your former management pass the buck for its own share of the causes. (So sure, go ahead and hate, but don't hate blindly).

For this mess, 100% of the pain coming back is the consequences of these person's own unethical choices, and any hatred they feel is like the hatred of a caught criminal for the witnesses who fingered him. The rest of us either don't care or actively wish they'd catch a bullet. If you're one of their employees, and genuinely didn't know your management were viciously treasonous bastards, sorry.

Perspective sure is an interesting thing. I'm sure there's some guy on death row right now who killed a whole family because he wanted money for his fix, and from his perspective, there's no difference between him and Jesus walking to the cross, but for the rest of us, there is.

Re:Let's check the sympathy meter

[Anonymous Coward]

Like most analogies, it's not exact, but I'll spell out the common thread:

A group of companies and their workers think it's unfair that competition is coming from a new, unexpected quarter, with radical cost or other advantages.

Here's another example: Detroit cried foul when Japanese automakers suddenly emerged with hit products in the late 1970's. Because to people at Ford, the legitimate competition was at GM, Chrysler, Mercedes, and Volvo, not from some place they had trouble finding on a child's globe.

If you one of those whose livelihoods is under attack, you can argue until you are blue in the face about how unfair it is, and nobody will convince you otherwise. That's what I mean about perspective.

Re:Let's check the sympathy meter

[Anonymous Coward]

> a culture where bribery can be a way of life

I hate to break it to you, but there are places where that's true in the U.S., too. There are places where it's difficult to impossible to get a water meter put in or a building plan approved without bribery. Doing it legally makes you the exception rather than the rule, it takes months or years longer to get it done, and you've got a good chance at being rejected on spurious grounds.

Re:Let's check the sympathy meter

[outlander78]

Not that I doubt you, but I've never heard of this happening in the US. I'm interested in reading about it, if you could link to an article or give me some key phrases to seach for. Thanks in advance.

H1B Fraud?

[recoiledsnake]

Looks like the submtitter likes to bash on the H1B visas, but in this case where is the H1B fraud? Satyam seems to have brought in employees to work on-site and they seem to working there. I see no hint of H1B fraud anywhere in the links provided at all.

Re:H1B Fraud?

[DustyShadow]

Some of us don't like H1B visas whether they are fraudulent or not...

Re:H1B Fraud?

[dbcad7]

I see none either.. He does get some marks from me for mentioning the facts (I didn't know about the $500 fee), but totally loses them for saying there is visa fraud when this is not what it is about.. Now if he said something to the effect of "I hope someone looks into the visa aspects of the company because falsifying employees doesn't give me good feelings about them" that would be ok.. but to imply that visa fraud exists because they are guilty of one crime so must be guilty of the other is not accurate.

To comment on the $500 fee.. Well, that is perhaps a good idea.. but I really just see it as money collected for the sake of collecting money. The INS as an enforcement agency is totally ineffective. When people overstay their visas they rarely do squat about it, even when they know where the people are.. and the number of illegal immigrants.. well there you go.

Re:H1B Fraud?

[Achromatic1978]

To comment on the $500 fee.. Well, that is perhaps a good idea.. but I really just see it as money collected for the sake of collecting money. The INS as an enforcement agency is totally ineffective. When people overstay their visas they rarely do squat about it, even when they know where the people are.. and the number of illegal immigrants.. well there you go.

I met my wife when I was living in Australia. We decided that I'd move to the US, and begun going through the proper channels, filing for a fiancee visa (essentially a three month visa - if you marry within the 3 months, you "adjust status" to conditional residency, which then has the conditions removed after two years, if not, you leave).

The process took 10 months from filing of paperwork (she had to file the paperwork while she was in the US, and while I was -not-, so that there could be no appearance of coercion. $455. Criminal records check: $130. Medical checkup in Australia: $260. Cost of getting documentation sent from the US to Australia: $50. Appointment Fee for interview in Sydney consulate: $160. Flight to Sydney, and accommodation: $350.

Arrival in US. Application for travel document (so I can travel outside of US until residency is granted): $340. After marriage, Application to Adjust Status to Conditional Residency: $930. Biometrics Fee: $80. Application to continue Employment Authorization from Adjustment of Status through to Conditional Residency (your fine for the backlog in USCIS): $340. Application to Remove Conditions on Residency: $465. Biometrics Fee: $80 (although you've had biometrics taken 2 years prior, and these are the same, they take them again, a 5 min process).

We worked out that it would be a CHEAPER, AND FASTER, process, if I had come here as a tourist, breach my visa and marry my wife, apply for permission to stay anyway. What fun.

Re:H1B Fraud?

[hiryuu]

We worked out that it would be a CHEAPER, AND FASTER, process, if I had come here as a tourist, breach my visa and marry my wife, apply for permission to stay anyway. What fun.

Know what you mean - my ex-wife is an Aussie (Melbourne area), came here on the usual tourist visa waiver for short visits, and stayed most of that time with me. About a week before she was supposed to go home, we decided to marry, so down to the courthouse we went. It was a long while before we got her residency, but that had more to do with being dirt-poor students who moved through a few states before settling down than it was anything else. Comparing notes with those who did it "legally," we had a fairly streamlined process all in all.

For what it's worth, wish you better long-term luck than I had. :)

Re:H1B Fraud?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

We worked out that it would be a CHEAPER, AND FASTER, process, if I had come here as a tourist, breach my visa and marry my wife, apply for permission to stay anyway. What fun.

That's really no surprise - the legal system here considers the "crime" of over-staying a tourist visa as roughly on the level of jaywalking. Few people would expect that a single case of jaywalking should impact that ability to get a driver's license. Same sort of thing is going on here with immigration, it is just easier to do whether you are validly in country or not.

The thing to remember is that you came from australia, if you had come from one of the countries from which there are a large surplus of immigrants (not that I agree with the INS's definition of surplus, but that's another thread) you would have found it extremely difficult to come here on a tourist visa to begin with. The only people from a 3rd world country that can come to the US on a tourist visa are those from the upper class, who have so many assets at home that they have very little incentive to over stay the visa.

Re:H1B Fraud?

[demachina]

A more interesting recent event on H1B Visas are the layoffs announced at Microsoft. I think Congressmen Waxman used those layoffs to call in to question Microsoft's constant demands for more H1B visas. Like why do you need more H1B visas now that you are laying off your U.S. staff. I think he is also interested to know what the ratio of American citizens to H1B visa holders will be in the layoffs.

Re:H1B Fraud?

[Anonymous Coward]

With H1B or not, outsourcing is a loophole for sub-minimum-wage, tax-saving, benefit-waiving technical labor without violating the EEOC rule.

Mr. President, congressmen: Close this darn loophole-- These poor, overworked fellows for the American overlords deserve the same legal responsibilities and protections as with their headquarter counterparts.

Re:H1B Fraud?

[Anonymous Coward]

Company data (including revenues, and number of employees) are supplied to the DHS(INS). If that revenue/employee count was exaggerated, then every H-1B/L1/GC application applied for by Satyam is suspect.

Unfortunately, the holder suffers.

The irony

[no-body]

is that "Satyam" is truth in Sanskrit - or even more, something like ultimate truth...

I can't believe...

[fiendy]

that the US is now even outsourcing corporate accounting fraud.

Re:I can't believe...

[el cisne]

HA!! I personally mod this up +5 "Funny Coz It's True."

Re:I can't believe...

[DeadDecoy]

Well think of the savings. A US fraud amounts to 50 billion, whereas an Indian fraud amounts to only 1 billion. Why, with the extra money, we could get shafted 50 times over.

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish!

[Anonymous Coward]

HAH. I lost my job due to outsourcing to these idiots at Satyam, and let me say, they are TERRIBLE at what they do. They are apparently trained to just say "Yes" to everything, and lack technical skills. When the outsourced IT support don't know to use ssh to connect to a server something is very wrong... I have no sympathy whatsoever to any of them that get sent back to where they came from.

What is important about PWC

[randall_burns]

These folks are virtually a privatized branch of government. The US elites depend on companies like PWC to understand what is going on in big organizations. If PWC is compromised, that means the US elites are effectively flying blind.

Now, personally I think use of H-1b workers for critical financial infrastructure is stupid. It is impossible for an American to do a good background check on someone in/from India.

Nobody really knows how they will react when they have a chance to steal millions of dollars. Putting a young guy far from home into the position where he can do that-and the costs are born by citizens of a country he may not identify much with isn't doing that country or the young guy any favor.

Re:What is important about PWC

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't go as far as saying that they're a privatized branch of government - they are a huge accounting firm, and many depend on them, but in some ways they are just a scaled up version of smaller accounting firms. Each company is audited separately as well. In theory, the auditing work that PwC does for a FTSE100 company is not different in nature than the work that a small accountant does for a 200-employee exporter. Consulting comes on top of this though, but that's been scaled a bit down after Enron.

Re:What is important about PWC

[the_B0fh]

What the fuck are you smoking, and would you like to share it?

Re:What is important about PWC

[quarterbuck]

India in the past has limited corporate fraud. It has usually been much more open power grabs or cash grabs by the promoters of the company -- but they were never secret. They were more like Boone Pickens operations in the US in the 80's.
As a result (or just laziness) the reporting standards in India are lax even compared to pre-Enron USA. You can fit in a whole quarterly report in less than 10 pages ( here for example ).
This fraud by Satyam is the perfect storm - it involves largely foreign held company, it is dual listed on NASDAQ and involves undeniable fraud and falsification. I hope this provides an impetus for India to adopt something like Sarbanes-Oxley.
And about PWC messing this one up, they have been involved in all sort of corporate frauds on both the good and the bad side. Look up the fight for Gazprom in Russia between Britishers the Russian stockholders -- Britishers hated PWC in that case. (or for a case where russians think PWC is bad look up TNK http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-53194732.html). I don't think PWC is unable to do its job -- just that they are too big and that ones in a while they have a few bad apples.

Re:What is important about PWC

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is a Britisher?

Re:What is important about PWC

[demachina]

"I hope this provides an impetus for India to adopt something like Sarbanes-Oxley."

A lot of good Sarbanes Oxley did. It didn't even put a dent in all the creative off balance sheet vehicles that have destroyed AIG, all but two of the major investment banks and may still take down Citi, BofA and JP Morgan. It didn't do a thing to stop John Thain from hoodwinking BofA in to buying Merrill Lynch and then forgetting to tell them about the extra $15 billion in losses. Not sure if its true but I recently read Merrill was still buying toxic mortgage backed securities in 2008, even though they had destroyed the company. They thought they had bottomed so they started buying them again.

Holding up Sarbanes Oxley and the U.S. as a model India should emulate is pretty comical on your part. A 10 page quarterly report is just as good as a 1000 page one if the 1000 page report still doesn't tell the truth.

Re:What is important about PWC

[randall_burns]

Corruption in general is very much part of south Asian culture. I would suggest taking a look at Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index. I don't think that the security mechanisms companies like PWC are used to are really applicable in a difficult situation like India. I'm not saying that all Indians are corrupt. I'm saying that there is enough of this sort of thing that it is a VERY different problem than dealing with Americans-which is hard enough.

Re:What is important about PWC

[hicksw]

... the US elites are now known to be flying blind....

PWC has gorwn too big

[Anonymous Coward]

I've dealt with PWC extensively for years and after Enron and SOX IBM management has allowed them to run roughshod over everything. PWC no longer audits to process and instead audits how they want, so it is impossible to pass audits. I could go on for hours about the stupid things I've argued with PWC over the meaning of words.

Then management has decided that no matter what an RCA that goes to auditors can never ever mention that the root cause was they let go half the staff for a particular department and the remaining people couldn't keep up with the work.

It is too bad that human nature means that the power in audits will swing way back into the corporations being audited in the near future instead of getting to a nice balance.

What are you on about?

[Frankie70]

Who is this guy who is far away from home & has a chance to steal millions of dollars?
In this particular story?

Re:What are you on about?

[randall_burns]

Lots of folks managing stuff like systems that handle credit card data, insurance data have those kinds of options. There are also niches of that type in companies like Microsoft and Cisco-which are both heavy users of H-1b visas-and the various big financial firms and accounting firms.

I've worked both on a credit card fraud detection system and in an investigation of a crooked insurance company CEO that involve PWC doing the audit(kind of a mini-enron). I'm not saying that all H-1b visas are being used in those types of situations-but right now, there are no security regulations preventing it from being done and PWC is a heavy user now of H-1b visas as are many basic technology providing companies.

I personally think that is a serious potential security hole. When I worked in the credit card fraud detection system, we had gangs that were doing serious social engineering to commit credit card fraud on a large scale-and many of those gangs were based overseas.

As a State Farm customer I say HAHAHAHA

[Anonymous Coward]

You need me to have a job and pay your premiums, then ship jobs overseas. How's anybody in the U.S. supposed to have money to pay you if nobody here has a job? No jobs here, no cars or houses bought, no insurance needed, State Farm gets no more revenue. Duhhhhh. Start supporting American jobs and maybe American companies won't have to keep going to the taxpayers for bailouts.

Re: PWC the next Author Anderson?

[milkasing]

Spoke to someone in does IT compliance for her company and the one thing she did not understand was how an audit of Cash Balances could go so wrong. After all a lot of things can be faked, but the cash on hand can always be verfied (by calling up banks, etc). PWC's actions were either criminally negligent or just criminal. I hope they bite the dust.

America needs him, new!

[Anonymous Coward]

he had fabricated $1 billion of assets and confessed to making up more than 10,000 employees

Sounds like excellent credentials for running both the Fed and the Labor Dept.

And he's going to be cheap! Win-win all round!

Re: Of course this is an INDIAN company

[milkasing]

They were listed in US and have to follow SOX. And stop rubbishing the Indian laws already. The executives are already in prison. On the other hand isn't Bernie Madoff still in his penthouse.

WWot fp

[Anonymous Coward]

niggernees? And perspective, the

It's just like the dot-com boom

[ShinmaWa]

What's going on in India right now is no different than what went on the US in the late 90's with the dot-com boom. During the boom, demand far, far outstripped supply so people who could barely *spell* HTML were being hired as web designers and 90% of them were incompetent.

Same thing is happening in India right now, with approximately the same results. I have a feeling that one of the fallouts of this global credit crunch is that, just like the eventual dot-BOMB in 2000 and 2001, India is going face a major market correction.

The bottom line is that this is not an "India" thing or a "US" thing. It's a basic Economics 101 thing. Let's try not to make it too personal.

Re:It's just like the dot-com boom

[xant]

Exactly right, but there is another angle here: India has far less regulation, and US companies sending work there have far less insight into how their work is being done. Turns out that matters.

And still, this is not an India thing, it's a regulation vs. deregulation thing. The U.S. has been becoming steadily more deregulated and, predictably, steadily more corrupt over the last 8 years, and we know how that worked out.

Re:It's just like the dot-com boom

[ShinmaWa]

Couldn't agree with you more.

Re:It's just like the dot-com boom

[Mohan S]

Wrong. India has more regulations like the British system it is based on. Enforcement is lax. Again, all systems can be fooled and worked around, SOX or no SOX. US has had its own share of junk bonds and pyramid/Ponzi schemes where such frauds are done with elan. Does not make them any less criminal. India socially too has a taboo against cheating - stronger than many others. Very obviously, this did not work in Satyam. I'm Indian and am angry that these guys have made a laughing stock of India in the world's eyes. I do agree that most guys in the US do not know what clicks in India. Mohan

Re:It's just like the dot-com boom

[Anonymous Coward]

India has a social taboo against cheating? Do you know the same India I do? Where people still worship 'Harshad Mehta the genius'?

Re:It's just like the dot-com boom

[Anonymous Coward]

Hinduism is the root of all evil in India.
1. It explicitly creates irrational hierarchy among Indians which is against Article 14.
2. Parents covertly brainwash their children to coerce other children as per the caste hierarchies.

I am pretty sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

... all the oversight capabilities helps us here is the good old USA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securities_fraud

You are an idiot.

[HornWumpus]

Wage is the value of the labor by definition. The value of something is what you can get for it. Duh!

To assume otherwise is to assume the market for labor is not working. Granting there are places where it is broken, rich kids and minimum wage earners are both overpaid for what they do.

$100/month is a very poor wage even for China. If they had valuable work to do they would find someone to pay them more.

Re:You are an idiot.

[paulgrant]

>To assume otherwise is to assume the market for labor is not working

to assume that assuming otherwise is an assumption, is in and of itself an assumption :P

Would you like to discuss the relative worth of an hour of a man's labor in a dictatorship?

Look up "tautology" and reparse your statement.

The problem is not in India.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is what all those geniuses managing companies in rich countries, those wonderful CEOs that don't know that when something sounds too good to be true most probably it is.

Companies in rich countries were offered this pool of people that would charge you peanuts for doing top tier work, so they outsourced full operations to teams of unexperienced and often overworked people.

The reality in Indina towns was and is very different. If all these people were in a place without companies, infrastructure and in general an environment not conducive to develop their knowledge, then how it come they could be the experienced folk that could replace experienced people in rich countires? The answer is tha they weren't in general terms. They are enthusiastic newcomers that have not seen a mission critical system in their short professional carriers.

The best proof that rich countries' companies were far too gullible is that as soon as people in India and other poor localities become any good, they immidiately switch jobs or immigrate, demanding higher salaries that approach or meet rich countries' standards, so normally the people working outsourced or remotely for companies in rich countries are either relatively novices or not the brigthest spark since thay have not managed to move on to better jobs.

And yet still now, companies continue to do this, they don't see people in India as resources to be nurtured who require training. Forget about loyalty, our Indian counterparts are not stupid: they know they are replacing people in other countries that are technically more proficient (they are working with them day in day out, often learning as much as they can from them before replacing them) and they realize that if people with a broader depth of knowledge and expertise are dumped with such abandon, they surely can't expect to fare any better.

The blame is elsewhere. Those same CEOs that were flying private jets and buying expensive decoration for their offices bought this fairy tale system in which you replace knowledgeable people with almost beginners.

Re:The problem is not in India.

[Slumdog]

The best proof that rich countries' companies were far too gullible is that as soon as people in India and other poor localities become any good, they immidiately switch jobs or immigrate, demanding higher salaries that approach or meet rich countries' standards, so normally the people working outsourced or remotely for companies in rich countries are either relatively novices or not the brigthest spark since thay have not managed to move on to better jobs.

How much would you pay a slumdog to fix your spelling errors?

disappearing tag ?

[Anonymous Coward]

is it just me, or did a tag disappear from the summary ?
i believe there was originally a tag "enjoyprison" which is no longer attached.
how do tags work, anyhow ?

Off topic

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I lost my job to some Humanoid overseas, I found that some recruiters were even outsourcing their talent search to some Humanoid overseas.

Once in a while, some disorganized dude with thick accent calls my number 6pm to have a "Telephonic Consultation", speeds thru a page's worth of their history, their client's history (sans name), some list of specification involving Saabs, Jeeps, See-Pound (they have no idea what that means, I asked), 6 months, Texas, at least 5 years experience, graduate degree from Ivy League, non manager (They didn't study my resume and online profile at all, I am a recent grad from a "Top" school, looking for jobs at the Northeast).

Then, since I have an Asian name, they asked me if I have a Green Card (sometimes, if I am "illegal" to work in the YouAss).

From a Satyam Employee

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to be a Satyam employee and let me give you a clear picture on this entire story till now

1. Investigation is still going on the details of the fraud. There is still no clue on the missing cash and where did it go. The current numbers are just from the arrested's (Raju, Founder) mouth which cannot be trusted.

2. Within 5 days of scam the govt had stepped in. appointed new directors. Directors appointed audit and 2 new accounting firms to do complete audit of company from 2001. The 8 week audit will give a clear picture of the fraud numbers.
They are also hunting for new CEO and CFO. Even in US corporates are happy the way indian govt and intervened.

3. US employees have been paid their Jan month Salary. Indian employees wait for theirs and it will be announced next week (In India we get have monthly pay cycle)

4. The founder and his brother and CFO were arrested in 4 days after founder confessed to the scam. He is in an ordinary Jail along with his bro and CFO. Multiple agencies: SEBI, CID, CB-CID, CBI are investigating the case.

5. The lack of 10K employees is a baseless argument. Its currently under investigation though. One of the directors has also agreed that the 53K employee strength is true (http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2009/01/26/stories/2009012651330100.htm)

6. Satyam like TCS, WIPRO, Infosys and other multitude companies operate on the outsourcing model. The working culture, people, environment and pay scale is extremely well compared to other indian jobs. Due to this indians are very professional, well mannered and living a better lifestyle. They have absorbed the american culture completely. Indian IT also has reflected into other industries with better pays and more professionalism and higher ambitions which is fueling india's growth.
This FSCK up is due to a bunch of family greed.

7. Many clients have shown support. They have personally called up project teams and shown support. People working on projects are continuing with their deliverables though the morale has fallen a little.

8. We have daily global calls where the entire company is addressed with the progress of company's future.

9. There are tons and tons of rumors flying around. I would suggest to wait and watch few weeks till all the investigation results comes out.

Re:From a Satyam Employee

[Anonymous Coward]

I to work for Satyam and have heard rumors from friends on other teams that a number of large contracts have already called to say they are not being renewed.

This has been VERY damaging for our reputation and for the morale of the groups I talk to.

Re:From a Satyam Employee

[mahadiga]

Investigation is still going on the details of the fraud. There is still no clue on the missing cash and where did it go. The current numbers are just from the arrested's (Raju, Founder) mouth which cannot be trusted.

Within 5 days of scam the govt had stepped in. appointed new directors. Directors appointed audit and 2 new accounting firms to do complete audit of company from 2001. The 8 week audit will give a clear picture of the fraud numbers. They are also hunting for new CEO and CFO. Even in US corporates are happy the way indian govt and intervened.

PAT(Profit After Tax) typically would be Rs 1000 crores per quarter for a company of Satyam size. Hence the fraud will be well over Rs 50,000 crores. Wondering why none of the Satyam Directors or Employees have filed a formal complaint with police (satyamfraud@cid.gov.in) http://satyastory.com/people/wage-slavery/

. The founder and his brother and CFO were arrested in 4 days after founder confessed to the scam. He is in an ordinary Jail along with his bro and CFO. Multiple agencies: SEBI, CID, CB-CID, CBI are investigating the case.

SEBI did not get Raju brothers custody to investigate the case. There is no CBI investigation. And surprising none of the political parties in India are demanding CBI investigation.

The lack of 10K employees is a baseless argument. Its currently under investigation though. One of the directors has also agreed that the 53K employee strength is true (http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2009/01/26/stories/2009012651330100.htm)

This is not a reliable. The best source to ask for the number of employees in Satyam is some one in the accounts dept.

Satyam like TCS, WIPRO, Infosys and other multitude companies operate on the outsourcing model. The working culture, people, environment and pay scale is extremely well compared to other indian jobs. Due to this indians are very professional, well mannered and living a better lifestyle. They have absorbed the american culture completely. Indian IT also has reflected into other industries with better pays and more professionalism and higher ambitions which is fueling india's growth. This FSCK up is due to a bunch of family greed.

To prevent Wage Slavery and Frauds(1) These companies must give Stock Options to all its employees.(2) These companies must comply with RTI Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTI_Act

Finally, I suppose Satyam employees can seek Stock Options as Salary for January month.

Unknown India

[mahadiga]

Only 15% of one billion Indians are earning more than $2 a day.
And they prefer to evade Taxes.
No Taxes means no Civilization.
And One Indian does not want fellow Indian to succeed.
Bribe or Caste is the only professional relation between any two individuals in India (politicians, business men, govt officials, judiciary etc).
Source of revenue for govt is corporate taxes.
Source of funds for political parties is corporate bribes.

We are doomed :-(

[Anonymous Coward]

Democrats globalized the good of Freedom;
Republicans globalized the evil of Slavery.

A Democrat balanced the budget, then, a Republican took over and topple the budget.

IT in India is NOT a joke

[mahadiga]

WTF is wrong in making programming commodious?
There are lots of socio-economic problems in the world.
And software can play a major role in solving these problems.
The onus is on programmers to create a business model and solve these problems.

$7 billion fraud

[mahadiga]

Anatomy of Satyam fraud http://www.rediff.com/money/satyam.html?zcc=rl

1. Ramalinga Raju has siphoned away $7 billion of Satyam cash.
2. Most of this money landed in foreign banks through Hawala channels.

And the most surprising aspect till date is none of these Satyam Directors and Employees http://www.satyastory.com/ have filed a formal complaint with police (satyam@cid.gov.in)

Satyam Directors
Ram Mynampati
Vinod Dham
Mangalam Srinivasan
Vadlamani Srninavas
Rammohan Rao
Krishna Palepu
V.S. Raju
T.R. Prasad