Well as a note regarding outsourcing and Indian IT Bellwethers.
I can tell you that you are likely to hear extreme management bashing in this case. But after personally working in a very famous IT bellwether here in India for 5 years, and now in another famous global web company. I can tell you half the people who crib, complain and whine are basically people who expect to get rich by 'getting lucky'.
The most common complain is They didn't give me good stuff to work on, yet when you ask the same people what exactly stops them from downloading <insert their favorite programming language compiler/tool>, or why they didn't work on their favorite database while all of it is freely available on the internet- The answer is generally a blank stare. Tons of automation opportunities exist in almost all projects that these big companies take, yet most people you are likely to meet still expect work to be given to them. I have seen this attitude among all freshers and even among some very experienced people. The fact is most of these people arrive at a software industry after having the heard 'Get rich quick' stories from the 90's while somebody joined a IT services company, went to an foriegn onsite location for 5-6 years, became a manager in 4 years and made tons of money in the IPO.
In fact most complaints of 'Indian IT sucks' generally smells of 'I could not get rich quick'. With no real desire to make a career in software, and waiting to jump to a management role at the earliest is the hallmark of Indian IT. Getting promotions and holding fancy designations is considered extremely honorable. Let alone most technical leads who managed to win corporate politics race, I know- Can't write a 100 line program. Not getting promoted to managerial role by 27 is considered a sign of incompetence, Not being able to go to a foriegn onsite location is considered a sign of incompetence. Its almost like a blind rush for money, money and only money. I know of many so called Technical leads who boast that they don't write code anymore, trying to imply that people who write code or who are good at tech stuff are generally incompetent people not deserving of progress. How do you expect to make progress or do anything big, with this kind of people stacked from top to down?
After doing a lot of analysis, I have finally realized these people never wanted to be programmers ever. They have 0 interest in learning, building and making stuff. They don't have what it takes to make a career in software. These people just arrive at software companies thinking they will get rich very quickly, when they don't, they find every reason under the sun to justify how worse career options in software are. Those who do get rich by usual promotion->onsite cycles, generally go on to become managers and then ulitimately glorified supervisors, who seem to hold very high opinions about tech without knowing a jack about it. Regional and liguistic politics is too common, being the managers best man and bootlicking helps to get better appraisal ratings, promotions and onsite chances.
Having said all this, I still meet some very good technical people from whom I learned a lot(In the same big companies). I continue to meet such people.
As a last note, the rewards vs efforts system is all messed up and needs immediate fixing. These companies need to bring back meritocracy.
> I can tell you that you are likely to hear extreme management bashing in this case... people who crib, complain and whine are basically people who expect to get rich by 'getting lucky'.
Clueless managers who don't understand technology even on a superficial level are a real problem. Has nothing to do with how much engineer makes.
> The most common complain is They didn't give me good stuff to work on, yet when you ask the same people what exactly stops them from downloading...
Premise is people don't use technologies they like for their personal projects. I don't think that's true for the good hackers out there of course. But what they are talking here is about the work environment and technologies used (enforce) there. Just because you can use better tools for personal projects doesn't mean people shouldn't complain about the prehistoric tools at the their workplace. (And then you go on about money again.)
> After doing a lot of analysis...
Can you share more details please? Because all the smart people I've known no longer work at Indian firms if they ever did. I no longer work at them either, and trust me it's a (very) very very different environment. My college for a short period tried to not let these Indian consultancies recruit on campus.
A question for you. How do you justify developer happiness in an environment where there's no real source control, an impossible to use ticketing system, manager thinks a crawler is an actual hardware device like a photocopy machine, automation code is thrown away as you can't charge the client for that, load-testing results are manipulated to match the requirement (you keep requesting where for some reason out of 10 requests you get 3 "acceptable" data points and take screenshots only of those and report them) and I could go on an on. It's not about the money.
I've experienced all the trouble you describe. But really if a person is truly interested in learning something, there is nothing really stopping him. It hardly takes anything to go to the internet download python, a tutorial and start building something. If a person can't even do as simple a thing like this for his career, than I seriously doubt he will go through the grind and do all tough work required for success.
By all means, complain about getting put into a shitty project. But you can't blame the the company for all your troubles. Because career management really is up to the individual, waiting for somebody else to do it for you really shows lack of seriousness on your part.
I know of a few friends who work on COBOL/Mainframes. Quite few times I had advised to pick up a language like Python for their own good. But often the answers are 'What will I get', 'Will I go onsite doing that', 'Look the other guy did nothing and is still at onsite, why cant I get lucky like that'.
Trust me these people never want to learn. They just want to have it the easy way. Fast forward when they see a good programmer making it big in a product company suddenly they start cribbing about how company/manager didn't help them grow technically. While the fact is all the while they themselves didn't want to go the technical way.
The other parts I totally agree with you. I have faced the same frustration as you do. I even know of managers who had never heard of version control systems. Who never knew what a unit test is, or even simple things like a Excel Macro(Which falls into much of their own work).
Coming to those kind of managers, most of them are now facing the heat. Big Corps are cutting down on managerial layers big time. The 90's and early 2000's rush is over. Every one knows that.
> "In fact most complaints of 'Indian IT sucks' generally smells of 'I could not get rich quick'. With no real desire to make a career in software, and waiting to jump to a management role at the earliest is the hallmark of Indian IT"
I'd say that's about the same as the average brazilian graduating from the more obscure (read: easy to get in and out) private universities.
Salary is what attracts those people. And companies fail to screen them out, because they are staffed by the same sort of people. AKA Bozo Explosion.
"The most common complain is They didn't give me good stuff to work on, yet when you ask the same people what exactly stops them from downloading <insert their favorite programming language compiler/tool>, or why they didn't work on their favorite database while all of it is freely available on the internet- The answer is generally a blank stare."
Though not an excuse but average commute time here is 3-4 hours, add 9-10 hours of office presence. Most people do not have energy to do any meaningful work after such a tiring schedule.
I am also from the same very famous IT bellwether, Most of the employees dont even have admin rights enabled on their machice, so one can forget about installing their fav compiler.
I felt as though i am a idiot. I went on to learning ruby,Obj C and made myself a mobile developer, now i can sleep well, feeling worthy of having a brain.
There are only a handful of people who can be called as programmers in these indian IT companies, rest of them are just code monkeys.
And thanks to Kamaal for he is the one who introduced me to HN :) and congrant to you on moving on.
"I know of many so called Technical leads who boast that they don't write code anymore, trying to imply that people who write code or who are good at tech stuff are generally incompetent people not deserving of progress."
very true, in fact I know a bunch of people who want to become tech lead so that they don't have to write any code. Such companies are surviving only due to $ - Rs conversion rates. People outsourcing work to such companies are bound to get hurt.
I can tell you that you are likely to hear extreme management bashing in this case. But after personally working in a very famous IT bellwether here in India for 5 years, and now in another famous global web company. I can tell you half the people who crib, complain and whine are basically people who expect to get rich by 'getting lucky'.
The most common complain is They didn't give me good stuff to work on, yet when you ask the same people what exactly stops them from downloading <insert their favorite programming language compiler/tool>, or why they didn't work on their favorite database while all of it is freely available on the internet- The answer is generally a blank stare. Tons of automation opportunities exist in almost all projects that these big companies take, yet most people you are likely to meet still expect work to be given to them. I have seen this attitude among all freshers and even among some very experienced people. The fact is most of these people arrive at a software industry after having the heard 'Get rich quick' stories from the 90's while somebody joined a IT services company, went to an foriegn onsite location for 5-6 years, became a manager in 4 years and made tons of money in the IPO.
In fact most complaints of 'Indian IT sucks' generally smells of 'I could not get rich quick'. With no real desire to make a career in software, and waiting to jump to a management role at the earliest is the hallmark of Indian IT. Getting promotions and holding fancy designations is considered extremely honorable. Let alone most technical leads who managed to win corporate politics race, I know- Can't write a 100 line program. Not getting promoted to managerial role by 27 is considered a sign of incompetence, Not being able to go to a foriegn onsite location is considered a sign of incompetence. Its almost like a blind rush for money, money and only money. I know of many so called Technical leads who boast that they don't write code anymore, trying to imply that people who write code or who are good at tech stuff are generally incompetent people not deserving of progress. How do you expect to make progress or do anything big, with this kind of people stacked from top to down?
After doing a lot of analysis, I have finally realized these people never wanted to be programmers ever. They have 0 interest in learning, building and making stuff. They don't have what it takes to make a career in software. These people just arrive at software companies thinking they will get rich very quickly, when they don't, they find every reason under the sun to justify how worse career options in software are. Those who do get rich by usual promotion->onsite cycles, generally go on to become managers and then ulitimately glorified supervisors, who seem to hold very high opinions about tech without knowing a jack about it. Regional and liguistic politics is too common, being the managers best man and bootlicking helps to get better appraisal ratings, promotions and onsite chances.
Having said all this, I still meet some very good technical people from whom I learned a lot(In the same big companies). I continue to meet such people.
As a last note, the rewards vs efforts system is all messed up and needs immediate fixing. These companies need to bring back meritocracy.