First - while we have 5 weeks of vacation we do not have statuatory sick leave if a member of the family is sick. US has up to 2 of those. So if you have two kids under 14 in the family and both parents are working the numbers roughly add up to the same - 3 weeks of effective holiday.
You're severely misinformed. The US has 0 weeks of paid vacation, and 0 weeks of statutory sick leave. Yes that's right, you can get a job here that has no vacation at all. It's up to the company to give you vacation, in fact in many companies it's part of the compensation bargaining process. Some individual states have their own labor laws which may grant more vacation or additional rights. California does have quite a few laws, especially involving maternity, although they are nothing compared to what I've heard of some EU countries.
Culture - While I understand your bile I have to disagree with it. The highest productivity in Europe in the high tech industry is in the country that works least per day. Spain. The lowest productivity is in the country that works most - UK. This is actually reasonable if you think about it. If you work with your brain it does not help working yourself out flat and burning it.
I'd like to see a link to these statistics. While I would believe that if Spain in fact does have higher productivity, I'd only believe that it would be higher productivity per hour. Which does make sense. Personally I get the lions' share of my work done in the first 6 hours of any day. After that, productivity drops rapidly. I still get work done and am still productive up to about 12 hours. After that point I find working any longer to be counter productive.
I've worked with alot of Indian programmers over the years.
I'll break down the problems I've seen.
1) Cultural - India's a class based society. If you're working side by side with an Indian programmer, and he doesn't view you as his boss, he wont take any input from you... For example, you say "I need your interface to do X so I can do Y" - Indian programmer says ""....Nothing... Interface never changes... You go to your boss and complain a few times, finally your boss tells him "change it!" and it changes... Repeat, repeat, repeat. Productivity SUCKS because of this. On the other hand, if he DOES view you as your boss, he'll never question you, or ask you to change your interface to match his needs. Again, end product sucks. The Tech world is no place for a class based society. You need the "right" answer, the "technically correct" answer, not just the answer of who's higher up the food chain.
2) Newbie factor. How long have computers been in India? How many Indian computer programmers were hacking on an 8080 in 1980? They're all nubs... they are all being trained by nubs. There's no historical knowledge base to counteract what they learn in school from other nubs. A seasoned, principal softweare engineer in india has at most 5-10 years of experience... it's 2 to 3 times that in the US or the UK.
3) Bad communication. a) It's real difficult to have team meetings over the phone when it's 5pm for you it's 2am for them. b) Most tech companies have tons of problems communicating even when tech workers are in-house, much less telecommuting when the worker is still in the same time zone. Communication fails miserably when someone is across the globe, and is exacerbated by 1) above.
4) Bad track record. Every project I've heard of that was outsourced to India has ended in failure. Every one! Why? See above.
5) Fake programmers. Ever hear of "the guy in the room" syndrome? A good percentage of the Indian programmers I've run across have completely faked up resumes and skillsets. In short they don't know how to program at all. One company I worked at checked every reference of "sanjay", all gave glowing reviews. Come to find out later that Sanjay didn't even know how to program and was trying to hire someone on the cheap on the outside to do the actual work for him... ("Programmer by proxy"). It was actually hillarious because he asked his friend to find someone to do the work... his friend asked me to do work for his friend "Jay" who was working with all these "assholes"... lol. Finally I put 2 and 2 together and he was escorted out the door.
I'm not prejudice against Indians, in fact I've liked most I've known on a personal level, but you can't ignore the facts. Especially when you've seen them repeated over and over again.
Dan K
Lets see... The russians presumably have a failed launch, and you use it to criticize NASA... How twisted people have become these days in search of the opportunity to criticize any US government agency.
Slashdot Mirror
You're severely misinformed. The US has 0 weeks of paid vacation, and 0 weeks of statutory sick leave. Yes that's right, you can get a job here that has no vacation at all. It's up to the company to give you vacation, in fact in many companies it's part of the compensation bargaining process. Some individual states have their own labor laws which may grant more vacation or additional rights. California does have quite a few laws, especially involving maternity, although they are nothing compared to what I've heard of some EU countries.
I'd like to see a link to these statistics. While I would believe that if Spain in fact does have higher productivity, I'd only believe that it would be higher productivity per hour. Which does make sense. Personally I get the lions' share of my work done in the first 6 hours of any day. After that, productivity drops rapidly. I still get work done and am still productive up to about 12 hours. After that point I find working any longer to be counter productive.
Dan K
I've worked with alot of Indian programmers over the years. I'll break down the problems I've seen. 1) Cultural - India's a class based society. If you're working side by side with an Indian programmer, and he doesn't view you as his boss, he wont take any input from you... For example, you say "I need your interface to do X so I can do Y" - Indian programmer says "". ...Nothing... Interface never changes... You go to your boss and complain a few times, finally your boss tells him "change it!" and it changes... Repeat, repeat, repeat. Productivity SUCKS because of this. On the other hand, if he DOES view you as your boss, he'll never question you, or ask you to change your interface to match his needs. Again, end product sucks. The Tech world is no place for a class based society. You need the "right" answer, the "technically correct" answer, not just the answer of who's higher up the food chain.
2) Newbie factor. How long have computers been in India? How many Indian computer programmers were hacking on an 8080 in 1980? They're all nubs... they are all being trained by nubs. There's no historical knowledge base to counteract what they learn in school from other nubs. A seasoned, principal softweare engineer in india has at most 5-10 years of experience... it's 2 to 3 times that in the US or the UK.
3) Bad communication. a) It's real difficult to have team meetings over the phone when it's 5pm for you it's 2am for them. b) Most tech companies have tons of problems communicating even when tech workers are in-house, much less telecommuting when the worker is still in the same time zone. Communication fails miserably when someone is across the globe, and is exacerbated by 1) above.
4) Bad track record. Every project I've heard of that was outsourced to India has ended in failure. Every one! Why? See above.
5) Fake programmers. Ever hear of "the guy in the room" syndrome? A good percentage of the Indian programmers I've run across have completely faked up resumes and skillsets. In short they don't know how to program at all. One company I worked at checked every reference of "sanjay", all gave glowing reviews. Come to find out later that Sanjay didn't even know how to program and was trying to hire someone on the cheap on the outside to do the actual work for him... ("Programmer by proxy"). It was actually hillarious because he asked his friend to find someone to do the work... his friend asked me to do work for his friend "Jay" who was working with all these "assholes"... lol. Finally I put 2 and 2 together and he was escorted out the door.
I'm not prejudice against Indians, in fact I've liked most I've known on a personal level, but you can't ignore the facts. Especially when you've seen them repeated over and over again.
Dan K
Lets see... The russians presumably have a failed launch, and you use it to criticize NASA... How twisted people have become these days in search of the opportunity to criticize any US government agency.