A general discussion on Indian consultancies and racism...

[Sid]

Isn't there a general term for this? RACISM.
Are you telling me that no English ppl have the above qualities? Please! I've seen tons of them. It all boils down to work ethics and personal value system.

And wait... An Indian graduate gets 3months of full time training - with countless tests, assignments. There is screening at every stage. You don't perform to the expected standard, you are out! In some companies, the last 3% of the batch are out- so its relative grading. Now coming to the real job itself, ppl work on avg 10hrs a day. And people less than 3-4 yrs experience usually are not sent onsite. What 'Indian workers not good' song are you singing?

I am an Indian and I find your post very offensive. I am a contractor and I have excellent reputation where ever I worked.

bluedrop, this is no racism....its pure local frustation...

I don't see the problem here with all the whining and moaning about Indian IT consultants.

1. Indian IT consultancy delivery crappy code.

2. The crappy stuff is supported in production eventually by another Indian IT consultancy

I have not read anything in the media which says,

"NHS IT systems breaks down, wrong medication administered and 100 patients die",

"HMRC admits to £10 billion tax goofup because of new IT system",

"Train derails, kills 300 because of faulty software developed at Nationalrail"

The real frustation is-

I lost my £550/day contract to a bunch of techies from delhi working a £100/day; and I can't anymore buy the new iPad3-made in China by suicidal workers.

[Mich the Tester]

I have not yet read anything in the media which says,

"NHS IT systems breaks down, wrong medication administered and 100 patients die",

"HMRC admits to £10 billion tax goofup because of new IT system",

"Train derails, kills 300 because of faulty software developed at Nationalrail"

ftfy

[ChimpMaster]

I think its more to do with a public black lash against off shoring

I know how I feel when I have to call up Sky or BT or Barclays and I end up speaking to someone 4000 miles away who has very little interest in my issue and practically no authority to do anything about it.

I think BT are one of the worst for this (going back to my 'net outage a few weeks back), but I'm more worried when I have to discuss my confidential bank information with someone abroad. When I had the trojan scare on my Barclays online account, I had to get one of the Barclays' offshore staff to read my company account balance to me... I was (am) dead concerned he'll be plotting something to siphon off some for him and his buddies. Not only that but I had to be put through 3 different offshore staff before I eventually got put back to the UK team who helped me out. What is the point?

[ChimpMaster]

bluedrop, this is no racism....its pure local frustation...

I don't see the problem here with all the whining and moaning about Indian IT consultants.

1. Indian IT consultancy delivery crappy code.

2. The crappy stuff is supported in production eventually by another Indian IT consultancy

I have not read anything in the media which says,

"NHS IT systems breaks down, wrong medication administered and 100 patients die",

"HMRC admits to £10 billion tax goofup because of new IT system",

"Train derails, kills 300 because of faulty software developed at Nationalrail"

The real frustation is-

I lost my £550/day contract to a bunch of techies from delhi working a £100/day; and I can't anymore buy the new iPad3-made in China by suicidal workers.

Yeah and you can go sh1t in your back garden but you choose to do in in a private toilet. Both achieve the same result but one way is better than the other, isn't it?

Your problem is (I mean apart from an inability to write coherently and without error) is that you accept mediocre as your normal standard. I hold my work to very high standards and I expect the same of others, regardless of what you are being paid: if you accept the job you damn well better be capable of doing it to a decent standard.

[Arturo Bassick]

"NHS IT systems breaks down, wrong medication administered and 100 patients die",

The NHS system never went live due to cost over runs and not being fit for purpose.

"HMRC admits to £10 billion tax goofup because of new IT system",

That is exactly what they said.

"Train derails, kills 300 because of faulty software developed at Nationalrail"

This system is still under dev I believe.

I dont know if any of these were outsourced to India, but all of the last dozen major Government systems have failed and all were outsourced. Certainly Tec Mahindra, Wipro and EDS were involved.

[sasguru]

Yeah and you can go sh1t in your back garden but you choose to do in in a private toilet. Both achieve the same result but one way is better than the other, isn't it?

Your problem is (I mean apart from an inability to write coherently and without error) is that you accept mediocre as your normal standard. I hold my work to very high standards and I accept the same of others, regardless of what you are being paid: if you accept the job you damn well better be capable of doing it to a decent standard.

Nil Point.

[vetran]

I have worked for a number of multinationals. The key thing you see is the further the staff are from the business or local issues the further they are from reality.

This can be a good thing, they come in and say its wrong lets fix it, it can also be bad because they have no idea what local issues there are.

Dealing with overseas outsourcers & departments you frequently find they are less interested in your issues because they are rarely marked on fixing those. Because they don't understand your issues they design / support things in the way they perceive the world.

As many people selected for International support are hired with great schooling but little experience because they are cheap you tend to find small islands of experienced competence and many large areas of compliant but undeveloped employees. The managers promoted to positions because of their ability to play politics.

Telling comment was 'carrying employees' I have spent a few years doing that but they were British, they left a trail of disaster because they didn't care. The most competent and reliable was non british but he wasn't of a great standard. They had been badly managed for decades. They frequently reminded me of outsourcers.

All were disliked intensely by my second generation Indian colleague, not based on their nationally but mainly because of their lack of attention to detail. Interestingly like the rest of us she grades people based on competence regardless of race and our opinions frequently agree.

Poorly performing and difficult to communicate people tend to be more common in the Indian outsourcers we use. In my opinion because they rush in and rarely originate any processes to improve communication.

More experienced managers and colleagues would normally simplify communications and reign in exuberance, the lack of these tend to be part of outsourcers issues.

I work with pretty much every nationality and race but I tend to see where there is a high concentration of a particular culture it gets sticky.

[bobspud]

This would suggest that they had more than one table. I saw an Indian built core banking system that stored everything from metadata through operational data to variables in one big table. Yep, really, I know, I struggled to believe it when I saw it, but it's real and your bank might be using it.

I would be pleased if cowboy bob used a single table. As long as it is not stored in the tempdb or system table space. There is a very very important financial system out there that thanks to cowboy bob and his mates, has the entire database in the Oracle tempdb table space...

I have no hatred of offshore guys doing this stuff for a living They just need to pick a manual up and learn this stuff properly the same way I did. The hacking at and botching of stuff is far too prevalent and obvious.

[yetanotherbob]

My professional opinion of Indian consultancies is in line with the rest of the board here,

So is mine.

and I have actively warned I.T. directors to be especially diligent and thorough when looking at such hires. I personally have been lumbered with dragging too many dead horses around and I'm not going to do it any longer.

Unfortunately management ONLY look at the cost per consultant - they either have no clue about or disregard quality, technical ability.

I should also add that there are indeed a few good (offshore) Indian consultants, but they are a rare find.

And probably cost as much as 'good consultants/contractors' do, Indian, European or any other nationality.

It's changing though, as more and more skills are being developed offshore - but costs are rising as well. On the whole, the skilled visa system was a good thing had these huge bodyshop Indian consultancies not abused it for ICT's -
they flooded the market with cheap, sub-standard workers produced on their assembly lines.

I work as a contractor in the UK and bring some niche skills that wouldn't be available otherwise (I also identify with the liberal social values and ethics here, as long as they're around. Quite saddened by the sense of 'decay' you perceive day by day :-( but still hopeful, and hopefully, contributing to making things better etc.).
Thankfully, i've been able to differentiate myself from the vast majority but the generalisations do create prejudice.

[yetanotherbob]

She would describe how the culture was the most rude to fellow citizens she had ever come across. Civilians would just ignore each other and use any opportunity to climb further up the ladder, no matter who they had to crap on to get up there. She has a better experience of India and native Indians than a lot of British-Indians.

Rude - most people have permanent pissed off expressions on their faces all the time.

And the cut-throat, dog eat dog mentality might have to do with deprivation. Too much poverty makes people fight for survival. These habits remain ingrained in the society as a whole.
I'm Indian born and I hate these and aspects of society there.