Well, there's an in-between sort of status, where you're not a "developer" or a "software engineer" but you're not a "network/system admin" either. Maybe your title is "programmer analyst" or "systems analyst" for instance.
I don't know where "here" is for you, but any systems person that's been employed in the last 5 years should be able to write syntactically and logically correct code. At least that's my experience and expectation from working in the North Eastern part of North America.
The portion of network and system administrators that can write compliable, functional code is high. Amongst those that hold degrees, it's likely near 100%, as almost all courses include multiple programming modules.
A friend of mine left a profitable company because he was tired of dealing with offshore engineers. The company's strategy was to have a few people in the USA and have other work done for cheap in India; where they got what they paid for...
If you try to scrape the bottom of the barrel pay-wise, you’re making the wager that someone good enough to write solid code doesn’t know enough math to know that they could get a 3-5x raise by going to a company paying a locally competitive wage.
We get excellent results overall from our teams in India, but we also pay quite a bit over the bottom of the market there...
> If you try to scrape the bottom of the barrel pay-wise, you’re making the wager that someone good enough to write solid code doesn’t know enough math to know
This, you nailed it and honestly what else matters. 100% of "offshore labor" and "india labor" and whatever is about exploiting people for personal gain. It's short-sighted selfish greedy Americans mostly, and they honestly believe that brown people living in other countries exist to be their slave labor. These same people are the ones who are constantly trying to abuse the "intern" program.
If you hire someone in India for $20/hr to do a job you damn well know is worth $100/hr then you're a ....ing ....ole. Every time I see job postings looking to exploit third world labor markets, I hope those underpaid developers burn the employer's entire operation to the ground.
It's not enough to bear witness to evil. We should be taking action to stop it.
I believe there's a wide middle ground where qualified developers in India can do excellent work, for a well-above Indian average salary, for American companies, and where the American company can get excellent talent for cheaper than state-side. Everyone is made better off when the American company decides to make this type of hire versus hiring no one.
The companies trying to hire/exploit developers for 8-10 Lakh are going to have a way worse experience than those trying to hire developers for 35 or 50 Lakh (and they deserve the experience, IMO).
In other words, you think it's okay to exploit people?
If you're writing software for a global corporation on a global marketplace (The internet), why would it be acceptable to be paid based on regional politics, which is what local economies are reflective of.? Especially considering the politics of third world nations is manipulated and controlled by the governments of first world nations for profitable gains.
No, the only acceptable answer is to pay all developers equally regardless of region, based only on their capability, and perhaps their investment of time and effort into their own improvement.
The Pre-Internet Planet Earth and all the little tricks that our ancestors injected to make it easier to take advantage of less fortunate people needs to end. Their guilt isn't yours until you decide to ignore your morality so you can make a few easier bucks. You cannot be a willing and informed participant in this systemic evil and pretend that it's anything but.
Just as we pay relevant to local markets in Prague, Barcelona, Zurich, Boston, and Seattle, we also reference local markets in India. (We don't only reference local markets when it suits us.)
Unless you take the view that all profitable employers exploit their employees (a view that I understand but do not share nor agree with), I don't believe that we're unfairly nor inappropriately exploiting our talent in any of our locations.
We seek to make a profit above the cost of our inputs (including risk premium) and I'm not ashamed of what we pay our employees in any of our markets anywhere in the world. If you choose to pay your employees using a different system, I support your right to do so.
I guess I'm challenging you to justify this policy without naming greed as your justification. You are exploiting people for what amounts to slave labor. You're saying that because someone has the unfortunate luck of being born in a third world country that they deserve a smaller salary than you. Admitting that you are not ashamed of yourself for exploiting poor people for cheap labor I mean.. what else is there to say I guess.
No, I don't think it's OK to exploit people; I think I said as much.
I don't believe that it's exploitive to make an offer of salary that an employee is overjoyed to accept. If you believe that's exploitive, you should run your company differently or work for a company that doesn't do that.
But it is. You aren't paying them based on their capabilities or merit, you're paying them based on what region of the world they were born into, which is completely out of their control. The message your "offer" sends is this, you aren't worth a real developer's salary, because you were born in India. So work for peanuts for me, your privileged first-world master, until you've earned enough to move out of the nation you were born in, and then maybe you can earn a salary equal to your peers.
That is exactly what you're doing, and that is exploitative. I know it's exploitative because it is exactly what American plantation owners did in the slave-owning south 250 years ago. "Work for me for some length of time and you can earn your freedom". It's the same scam. "But these developers are being paid" uh huh, they get $5-$20/hr for what I get $100/hr for. It is dishonest to call that fair.
If you don't believe in equal pay for equal merit then stand behind your opinion, but don't pretend that you're doing these poverty stricken people some kind of favor by paying them fast-food salaries to develop your million dollar applications. If someone spends their life becoming an expert developer they deserve to make expert-developer salaries regardless of what region of the world they call home.
The economic "tool" of outsourcing has always been about exploiting poverty and literally everyone actually knows that.
Since this comment flagrantly breaks the HN guidelines and we'd just asked you to stop doing so, I've banned the account. Please don't create accounts to do this with.
I have no idea how good this “study” was or representative, but there’s a clear agenda in the “reporting.” I’m sure there’s validity in looking at the Tata’s of the world with skepticism and abuse of visas, but no one with credibility could look across the top talent of Silicon Valley and say it’s not important to get Indians work visas.... or those from any country, really. It’s a strategic advantage to get the world’s best talent in and wanting to stay in the US.
Also, when the word “IT” does not exactly sound like top engineering talent.
Now all of my comments expressing displeasure with this website are getting downvoted. I suspect whatever network of accounts colluded to upvote this trash briefly into the top 30(before it got flagged), are now downvoting anyone who says something bad negative about them. There is fuckery afoot!
Actually I upvoted it hoping for some meaningful discussion regarding the findings from the report. However, the website is rubbish and it seems most comments seem to focus on that instead of the findings.
The 95% number seems high. I'd be interested in seeing the test, but I'm sure it's proprietary.
>Over 36,000 engineering students from IT related branches of over 500 colleges
Well they're students. In my experience you build most of your chops "on the street." I would hope they wouldn't include freshmen or sophomores who haven't even really dug into the major curriculum (assuming their colleges work the same way as our accredited ones).
I agree it is interesting, but I think as a whole we should not reward sites like that with traffic from our community. I'd bet $20 someone affliated with the site posted this to drive traffic, & it briefly rose into the top 30 before getting flagged. Any normal person would have linked to the main study or a repetubale source.
1. The scare quotes around "Engineers" seems inappropriate.
2. "In India" is pretty broad; did they go out and test every self-proclaimed engineer in India?
3. "Candidate is not able to write compilable code" sounds questionable; how were they assessed? Were they allowed to use an IDE? Were they allowed to fix compiler errors and were unable, or did they instantly fail if their code didn't compile on the first try?
4. I think the assumption that people who self-select to apply for Aspiring Minds represent a fair slice of Indian Engineers seems weak at best.
This is my main gripe. It's not that the topic isn't interesting, I think it's very likely someone affliliated with the site linked to it. I'm a relative newcomer to HN, & I love the things I discover & learn here, But Because of my displeasure with this flagged article I've lost what little reputaion I scraped together(another sign I think there are bad actors at work here)
I think we shouldn't upvote these sites so they are not rewarded them with advertising exposures. I would imagine trending HN stories drive good traffic to the linked sites.
37 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 84.8 ms ] threadWe get excellent results overall from our teams in India, but we also pay quite a bit over the bottom of the market there...
This, you nailed it and honestly what else matters. 100% of "offshore labor" and "india labor" and whatever is about exploiting people for personal gain. It's short-sighted selfish greedy Americans mostly, and they honestly believe that brown people living in other countries exist to be their slave labor. These same people are the ones who are constantly trying to abuse the "intern" program.
If you hire someone in India for $20/hr to do a job you damn well know is worth $100/hr then you're a ....ing ....ole. Every time I see job postings looking to exploit third world labor markets, I hope those underpaid developers burn the employer's entire operation to the ground.
It's not enough to bear witness to evil. We should be taking action to stop it.
The companies trying to hire/exploit developers for 8-10 Lakh are going to have a way worse experience than those trying to hire developers for 35 or 50 Lakh (and they deserve the experience, IMO).
In other words, you think it's okay to exploit people?
If you're writing software for a global corporation on a global marketplace (The internet), why would it be acceptable to be paid based on regional politics, which is what local economies are reflective of.? Especially considering the politics of third world nations is manipulated and controlled by the governments of first world nations for profitable gains.
No, the only acceptable answer is to pay all developers equally regardless of region, based only on their capability, and perhaps their investment of time and effort into their own improvement.
The Pre-Internet Planet Earth and all the little tricks that our ancestors injected to make it easier to take advantage of less fortunate people needs to end. Their guilt isn't yours until you decide to ignore your morality so you can make a few easier bucks. You cannot be a willing and informed participant in this systemic evil and pretend that it's anything but.
Unless you take the view that all profitable employers exploit their employees (a view that I understand but do not share nor agree with), I don't believe that we're unfairly nor inappropriately exploiting our talent in any of our locations.
We seek to make a profit above the cost of our inputs (including risk premium) and I'm not ashamed of what we pay our employees in any of our markets anywhere in the world. If you choose to pay your employees using a different system, I support your right to do so.
I guess I'm challenging you to justify this policy without naming greed as your justification. You are exploiting people for what amounts to slave labor. You're saying that because someone has the unfortunate luck of being born in a third world country that they deserve a smaller salary than you. Admitting that you are not ashamed of yourself for exploiting poor people for cheap labor I mean.. what else is there to say I guess.
I don't believe that it's exploitive to make an offer of salary that an employee is overjoyed to accept. If you believe that's exploitive, you should run your company differently or work for a company that doesn't do that.
> I don't believe that it's exploitive
But it is. You aren't paying them based on their capabilities or merit, you're paying them based on what region of the world they were born into, which is completely out of their control. The message your "offer" sends is this, you aren't worth a real developer's salary, because you were born in India. So work for peanuts for me, your privileged first-world master, until you've earned enough to move out of the nation you were born in, and then maybe you can earn a salary equal to your peers.
That is exactly what you're doing, and that is exploitative. I know it's exploitative because it is exactly what American plantation owners did in the slave-owning south 250 years ago. "Work for me for some length of time and you can earn your freedom". It's the same scam. "But these developers are being paid" uh huh, they get $5-$20/hr for what I get $100/hr for. It is dishonest to call that fair.
If you don't believe in equal pay for equal merit then stand behind your opinion, but don't pretend that you're doing these poverty stricken people some kind of favor by paying them fast-food salaries to develop your million dollar applications. If someone spends their life becoming an expert developer they deserve to make expert-developer salaries regardless of what region of the world they call home.
The economic "tool" of outsourcing has always been about exploiting poverty and literally everyone actually knows that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Also, when the word “IT” does not exactly sound like top engineering talent.
>Over 36,000 engineering students from IT related branches of over 500 colleges
Well they're students. In my experience you build most of your chops "on the street." I would hope they wouldn't include freshmen or sophomores who haven't even really dug into the major curriculum (assuming their colleges work the same way as our accredited ones).
The stats show that most programs had syntax errors. I don't think it's fair to ask someone to write strictly correct Java/C#/C++ using pen and paper.
http://newobserveronline.com/about-us/
> We are staffed by professional writers who all have extensive experience in news and journalism from around the globe.
No names, or headshots, or bios, or contact info of any of their "professional writers".
>Jews in US Congress Urge Israel to Accept UN “Deal” to Deport African Invaders to White Countries
I don't think this would qualify as a creditable new source for IT information.
1. The scare quotes around "Engineers" seems inappropriate.
2. "In India" is pretty broad; did they go out and test every self-proclaimed engineer in India?
3. "Candidate is not able to write compilable code" sounds questionable; how were they assessed? Were they allowed to use an IDE? Were they allowed to fix compiler errors and were unable, or did they instantly fail if their code didn't compile on the first try?
4. I think the assumption that people who self-select to apply for Aspiring Minds represent a fair slice of Indian Engineers seems weak at best.
I think we shouldn't upvote these sites so they are not rewarded them with advertising exposures. I would imagine trending HN stories drive good traffic to the linked sites.