Frankly, his complaints are why the West has nothing to fear from India any time soon. As an Indian, there is nothing more important than external verification of one's social status. For example, in India, they ISO certify everything. FFS, the number one dating (I wish I could use strikethrough on HN and put matrimonial after, but c'est la vie) website for Indians is ISO certified: http://www.shaadi.com/customer_relations/faq/iso-certificati...
Indians are fantastic at rote memorization and will listen to directions to the letter - no freelancing there. To India's benefit, it should mean that they'll be spitting out really, really good cars (as long as they're designed elsewhere) and large industrial output in the near future.
"Indians are fantastic at rote memorization" , and you know what being an Indian, I hate that lot of the crowd. There is a lack of independent thinkers here, and the rotten education system that puts emphasis on memorization (eg. my college) are the ones responsible for creating such a crowd of fantastic memorizers...
I wish they encouraged more of learning by doing here and we could've had better people to boast about.
You're being too hard on India. In every country there is a small % of talented programmers. Many of those smart Indian programmers are doing fantastic work in grad schools around the world. They are a huge part of Silicon Valley (as are Chinese ex-pats). Of course, there's a larger % of code monkeys. Indian code monkeys are, IMO, better than American code monkeys because they follow instructions and work hard despite their limited talents. Rote memorization and checklists and "process" are necessary to get less capable programmers to function.
"Indian code monkeys are, IMO, better than American code monkeys because they follow instructions and work hard despite their limited talents. Rote memorization and checklists and "process" are necessary to get less capable programmers to function."
I don't think I'd use the word "better" here. As a US senior developer who delegates a lot of work to both Indian contractors and in-house junior developers, it really doesn't help me when the person I'm delegating to can't do the job well, but works real hard at it. That just wastes time and still produces inferior code. I'd much rather have the person tell me "I'm lost and can't do this" right away, so I can either delegate to someone else or provide more detailed directions earlier rather than later.
Also, consider applying that statement to any other professional career. Would you want your less-capable doctor to be allowed to practice medicine because he can memorize really well and follow checklists? No, of course not: the less-capable doctor should be forced to find a career he's good at.
Sadly, I'm a critical care nurse, and I've worked with a lot of doctors that aren't really capable, but they practice medicine because they were able to memorize really well and follow checklists.
The person who graduates at the bottom of his medical school class still gets to write "Md" after his name.
"Many of those smart Indian programmers are doing fantastic work in grad schools around the world."
They may be at those grad schools "around the world" precisely because their native culture does not value creative, innovative work that goes beyond rote memorization and checklists. There are brilliant and creative people everywhere, but the culture you are born into has a lot to say about how brilliance and creativity can be expressed, if at all.
Is it cultural, or is it just the result of the boom cycle making it easier to make a rupee by following rather than leading?
My gut instinct is that the sad state of Indian IT is purely a result of being supported by clueless management in developed countries thinking they can easily save big bucks by outsourcing. India is just filling a demand.
After a decade or two of Indians growing up in this economy and seeing the failures first hand, I predict things will have equalized quite a bit, and the smart Indians will all be saying "Why work for clueless bosses when we can do better and we have huge markets of our own?" Of course that process will be kickstarted by Indian expats witnessing the failures of enterprise IT firsthand in the richest corporations of the world.
Throughout school they're ranked against their peers. This extends to a National ranking, where only the top n% can get into IIT. Their high schools are also heavily basied on rote memorization-type learning.
Frankly, his complaints are why the West has nothing to fear from India any time soon.
Well, the rich countries aren't going to lose their edge in tech innovation in the short term, but that doesn't mean that a lot of jobs won't continue to migrate to poorer countries.
This is an old tune though -- as technologies slip away from the leading edge they tend to relocate to places where they can be produced at a lower cost. It sounds like what the CEO quoted in the article is saying is that Americans don't fit the bill for that kind of development.
In international trade with the US, it is sometimes important for foreign companies to have some sort of quality / improvement program in place. It garners better trust. There may have been a culture of implementing these programs and it simply became a standard operating procedure. I'm not sure if this is the case but it wouldn't surprise me. Along the same lines, if India does have a culture of memorization, it might be best that they establish rigid business practices to keep themselves as productive as possible.
Indians are fantastic at rote memorization and will listen to directions to the letter - no freelancing there. To India's benefit, it should mean that they'll be spitting out really, really good cars (as long as they're designed elsewhere) and large industrial output in the near future.