Indian Site Offers Reward For Googler Vandal

An anonymous reader writes "Indian website Techgoss, which offered a reward of Rs. 10,000 to get photos of Facebook founder in India, did manage to get photos of Zuckerberg attired in Indian clothes at an Indian wedding. They have followed up the success of the reward for photos of the Facebook founder with a bounty of Rs. 15,000 for the identity / details of the Google India employee who vandalized open source OpenStreetMaps in Jan, 2012. (Rs. 15,000 is one week's wages for a programmer at a top IT company in India)."

Comments

Free time

[erick99]

Lots of free time in India??

For those in the U.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's about $300, or roughly what a cashier at Safeway makes in the U.S.

Re:For those in the U.S.

[orlanz]

People in the US forget that most jobs in many companies require minimum wage and benefits. I am going to exclude the less than 40 hours and tip based compensations as, to include those, most of the world would beat the pants off of us.

The minimum wage in the US is $7.25/hour; benefits and all support structure (ie: IT, janitorial, break room, etc) will easily bring that up to $10/hour. So the minimum cost of an American is ~$400/week. Although the IT guy gets $300/week, this support structure will easily bring him into the $11/hour range. Most Indian IT companies maintain campuses, employee transportation, state of the art gyms, & cafeterias with subsidized meals. They really are the top of the cream in the job market.

So India's top of the line job costs about 10% more than the minimum in the US. So even if that job generates 1/4 the value of an equivalent position, it is still worth it for most companies. As someone who partially manages support for a large organization, I can tell you that the majority of helpdesk's time is spent on questions that are just 1-2 levels above "Did you plug it in?"; where a simple troubleshooting script is enough. Any wonder why so many jobs, such as support, get outsourced to India?

Of course there are many many other factors that change that value & cost proposition (ie: unpaid overtime, education, dedication, culture, language, etc) but don't show up in the business case but do in the results. Personally, I would take a one year US vet over a 4 man outsourced team for my product's development and infrastructure maintenance. But would prefer the outsourced team for front end support, and testing.

Article summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not trying to be trollish (although just by saying that I may have just pigeonholed myself) but this summary is *really* bad. I can barely follow the logic, grammar, or even the train of thought of those sentences!

Slashdot editors, going downhill, get off my lawn, grumblegrumble....

Re:Article summary

[santosh.k83]

Well, considering that English is not a native language, I'd say we aren't doing too bad on the whole, though there's always room for improvement. I wonder how many Americans know a second language at all, never mind whether they're good or bad in it. Seriously, many of us can speak and write pretty good English. You might try easing off on the stereotyping.

Re:Article summary

[PCM2]

Well, considering that English is not a native language, I'd say we aren't doing too bad on the whole, though there's always room for improvement.

It may not be a "native" language, but it is an official language of the country and it's been part of Indian society for nigh on 200 years. You'd think business people, at least, would be fluent -- and I say "business people" because TFA is obviously an advertisement for this obscure Indian company's contest, rather than anything of interest to the /. audience at large. (Damn, am I flaming Indians, Techgoss, or Slashdot? I can't even tell anymore!)

Re:Article summary

[Larryish]

peeple in murka don ned no dang forin langwujes

we doin rel gud with spekin plan ol murkun

Re:Article summary

[Runaway1956]

I can order a cold beer in dozens of countries. I can ask about hot women in most of them too. What more does a guy need?

Re:Article summary

[artor3]

I wonder how many Americans know a second language at all, never mind whether they're good or bad in it.

Why wonder, when the data is at your finger tips? Unless by "wonder" you actually mean "insinuate"?

According to Wikipedia, around 16% of Americans speak a foreign language fluently.
Also according to Wikipedia, around 11% of Indians speak English fluently.

And if you really mean it when you say "whether they're good or bad in it", then the number for Americans would be very high (I'd estimate 80%+) since high school students are required to take three to five years of training in a foreign language of their choosing.

Re:300 bucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Rs is a symbol for currencies called 'rupee' much like $ is a symbol for most currencies called 'dollar' or 'peso' or £ is a symbol for most currencies called 'pound' or ¥ is a symbol for currencies called 'yen' or 'yuan'. It's not offensive, it was the main sign for the currency (and, if you read TFA, you'll see that the Indian website in question is where it came from in the first place.)

Apparently it was replaced in India in 2010 with a new symbol that Slashdot is filtering out (oh noes, Unicode!!), although the fact that you can approximate the old symbol with two Latin letters (it has its own Unicode code point) makes me think that the old one will never truly go away in informal typed use in English (and there are a hell of a lot of English speakers in India).