Working with some splendid gents from the Indian sub-continent

[fullyautomatix]

3g dongle = crap and slow, expensive.

Would be ok like you said if you could just buy a Gb or whatever for £10 and then use it only in emergencies. Trouble is they expire after 30 days. Dont think theres anyone that does a non-expiring one so you end up having to pay EVERY 30 days if you want to keep it.

I have heard that a mobile broadband subscription on a monthly fee provides better bandwidth. Apart from the fact that is is unfair to pay as you go customers that they get a crap service, it assumes people want a monthly subscription more than pay as you go.

Also, there are dongles out there, ex Vodafone, where you buy a top up and it lasts for 2 years. But I have found the bandwidth outside London to be really bad. Mobile companies havent invested into upgrading the infrastructure recently it would seem.

[TheFaQQer]

I'm tempted to get a 3g internet dongle as emergency backup, though don't want to be trapped into regular payments so only worthwhile if there's PAYG that doesn't expire if not used.

I used to have a T-Mobile USB stick.

Now, I just plug my phone into the computer using a USB cable, or set the phone up as a WiFi hotspot that I can connect to.

[aussielong]

I've been in my current gig for a couple of months, and it's been four years since I've worked on an I.T. project. We're just exiting testing at the moment and the supplier (which is pretty shoddy in many ways) has supplied a couple of testers to work alongside our testers. They are two guys from the Indian sub-continent, not long over here, I would guess. They really are very impressive, not just in their commitment and ability in testing. What amazes me is their insight into really quite specialist areas of business process (I work in healthcare). They're able to see well beyond the test scripts to identify issues that would slip by lesser professionals.

So in the interest of balance, well done, guys!

A lot of Indian software developers are top end, no doubt. Most of the good ones stay in India though.

[NotAllThere]

A lot of Indian software developers are top end, no doubt. Most of the good ones stay in India though.

Er no. The good ones stay in Europe or the US where they can get paid shed loads more and have a better quality of life for themselves and their children.

[minestrone]

The average is much lower than UK based workers but their communication can be extremely poor and that is not down to English as a second language.

Someone I worked with who ran a team of onshore support workers said it is like every day is their first day, constantly telling them the same things every bloody morning. They are very often resource drains on UK workers greater than the resources needed to do the actual task itself.

We had offshore testers working on a web system and if you turned your back for 5 minutes they were logging bugs about how the site does not render the same if you change the encoding on IE. Then you had to close the bugs and explain why these were closed in meetings by which point they had thought of some other equally stupid way of entering a bug on the system.

[d000hg]

Logic was never your strong point.

Well he is only a tester

A lot of Indian software developers are top end, no doubt. Most of the good ones stay in India though.

Er no. The good ones stay in Europe or the US where they can get paid shed loads more and have a better quality of life for themselves and their children.

Indeed - or work from India for western clients directly... either way they aren't much cheaper any more and don't work for the giant bob-shops. In fact they're not really bobs anymore, just Indian developers.

[russell]

My experience has been that most of the Indian contractors are extremely poor and totally useless. They are only hired because it looks good on a spreadsheet to some management bod. I think the fact that folks are praising them says more about their own ability.

[d000hg]

My experience has been that most of the Indian contractors are extremely poor and totally useless. They are only hired because it looks good on a spreadsheet to some management bod. I think the fact that folks are praising them says more about their own ability.

You clearly work for companies with poor hiring criteria. Of course we could have guessed that. < raspberry >

On a serious note, you can find good people but not if you try to buy them in bulk... hiring individual people you can vet them as you would local people and weed out the dross (which is the bulk).

[NotAllThere]

... I think...

I frankly doubt it. Brainfart possibly.

[PAH]

Now, I just plug my phone into the computer using a USB cable, or set the phone up as a WiFi hotspot that I can connect to.

Bingo!

I now remember I looked into this a few months ago and decided a phone with Android 2.2 or supported tethering would be a good alternative for getting an internet connection when staying in a b&b or the broadband was down.

Thanks for jogging my memory.