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- Nahor, on 10/12/2007, -33/+61From what I have seen, Google tends to only hire people with PHDs from Stanford. If they really can't find anyone from Stanford, they might consider an IV league school, but forget hiring "common folk" - no matter how good they are.
They don't hire "talented people" - only people with advanced degrees (or pompous, "let me tell you how great I am" people with mildly advanced degrees). There are tons of talented people Google completely shuns because ... well because they *can* shun real talent I guess (and substitute talent with a bunch of theoretically, "do nothing but think about it", smart people). They pretty much buy everything now because they are too heavy with people so "smart" they can't actually do anything.
My point is, their method of hiring people is horked, and there are plenty of talented people in India as well as everywhere else regardless of if Google thinks so.
(bit jaded, sure, but still the truth) - alanspach, on 10/12/2007, -9/+30sounds like someone didn't get hired, boohoo
- misteral, on 10/12/2007, -9/+30@Nahor
My guess is you applied and didn't get in. I don't work at Google - fam doesn't want to relocate there, but I know of several people there who don't even have a univeristy degree. They got their jobs by proving just how smart they are. You don't need a university degree, and many (good) companies recognize this and go after those people - guytoronto, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20Welcome to the world of business.
If you can't find qualified people, you train them, then pay them well enough so they don't jump ship. - Arevos, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18Nahor is incorrect. I lack a phD, nor did I graduate from Stanford, yet Google still approached me for an interview. They seemed to pick up on the number of programming languages I was versed on, and my practical expertise, rather than my degree, which I don't believe was ever mentioned. Alas, my lack of knowledge of low-level networking let me down in the end, so I didn't get the job, but the reasons weren't to do with my academic record.
- sovereign3, on 10/12/2007, -5/+20@Nahor
Did you read the article?
It's not that Google is having a hard time finding talented individuals with highly advanced degrees in India, but they are having trouble finding certain skill sets. Specifically Web Development. I would imagine that there are far too many "technical" individuals in India and not enough workers to fill call center and web dev. roles. Plus, with so many companies moving into the popular Bangalore area, wage competition is increasing and maintaining talented workers is proving to be far more difficult. - Sithlrd, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19Anyone who's had to work with the people in India to transition their responsibilities offshore (read: "train your replacement") knows that the title of this submission hits the nail on the head. Meanwhile consulting companies like Indenture keep telling their clients in the boardroom that the skills in India are equivalent, KNOWING that they're lying.
I had this told to me by more than one Indian immigrant, and my experience has confirmed it: Indians programming in India are the worst of the bunch. they're lazy, dont care, and when they do, they just dont get it. All the good technical talent finds a way to come to America. - PrimeNumber, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15My primary job is working with offshore teams in India everyday. Your comment resonates completely with my situation. Indians do not do "out of the box" period. Everything has to be spelled out to the Nth degree, and even then its 50/50 that they will "get it".
Not only that you constantly have to keep tabs on them to make sure they are doing the job, and they constantly give you stupid excuses as to why nothing is being accomplished. Just last week an offshore guy told me that he didn't send me an email because he didn't want to disturb my *sleep*. It was already being disturbed, because I was already awake fruitlessly waiting until 2am for his stupid email.
I have a team of five programmers that took a week to get me an estimate, that one mid-level programmer in the U.S. could have already finished coding in the same amount of time. Needless to say the confidence factor is 0 at this point and we are considering nixing this offshore experiment and doing the work on-site.
Also a point to keep in mind: run and never look back when an Indian company tells you they are CMM level 5 compliant. All that means is that they spend inordinate amounts of time with "process" instead of coding, of course billing the client for all of these hours.
Just my $0.02 - zigamorph, on 10/12/2007, -11/+24Hey guys I read the article and your comments and it sounds like something else is really going on. From what I understand about Googles hiring is that they look for real talent. Not book smarts and from most of my experience, maybe a little jadded too, but many Indian people are very book smart, but when it comes to conceptualizing new ideas their schools seem to come up short in nurturing creativity in young minds. I was once gave a great answer about why this is by a good friend of mine. He explained it like this:
In english we have probably one of the lowest word counts in world languages. So from our very birth we are taught indirectly to form sentences using words that have many different meanings but putting them together in creative ways. So from age one until we die we are constantly creating new ways to say the same thing with different words.
In Indian and many of the Asian languages, they are very high context languages, meaning that there are many many more words than in english. So there is most often only one way to say something, and you might have 5 different words to express different ways of saying the same one word in english. So from their birth they are taught structure which is very good when you need to be book smart, but it doesn't help you when you need to creatively use those book smarts.
Now this is just a generalogy that I tend to beleive I know this isn't true for 100% of the people in either country. India has had many great thinkers and truely creative people, as well as the english lanaguage has had some totally unimaginative people. But from what I have personally seen, what my friend told me really rang true. - cadavreexquis, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13How do you know any of this? Perhaps they only hire people who've actually delivered on their talent and have something to show for it?
- smohan123, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11@zigamorph
People don't speak "Indian". It's Kannada or Hindi or Bengali or whatever. Also, you've made up a word: "generalogy". I believe the word you were looking for is generality.
Now as far as generalities go, I think that some of you guys are making many incorrect ones. The prejudice that some of you display in your posts is blatent and appalling.
There are benefits as well as drawbacks to outsourcing jobs to other countries. Many companies recognize this, and as such there will always be a certain degree of job security for many people who work for companies that outsource a percentage of their employees. If your job just got outsourced, go back to school or get more certifications in your field. Then come back to your sector with a more robust resume. You WILL get a job IF you put the effort in to look for one.
Frankly, America is getting lazy as a whole (I am an American). With this surge of job competition from people we don't see, know, or care to know, it will inevitably spur us to growth in knowledge and competency. Too long have we been the top dogs by leaps and bounds (we still are, but you know what I mean). Our academic and professional quality has gone, for the most part, unchecked. Now we face competition that will only better us in that regard. Yes there will be some growing pains, but we'll be in a better state because of it. I'm not trying to trivialize anyone's job or job security, but things look a lot less bleak when you 1) examine your options 2) look at the bigger picture.
I'll end there. I could ramble on about IIT or how America in particular is raping India of its native talent and leaving none for the country's betterment, but what do I know?
Maybe I'm an idealist. Or a cynic. - sv650touring, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9They would probably only pay the Indians a tenth as much as the average Google employee. So, even if the Indian guy was only a quarter as "talented", he'd still be a bargain.
- netferret, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9When I was trying to sort out some work with someone in India I found that their methodology was weak and they seem to mash code together in order to just get it working.
I think google might be right about talented people, but its a big country, so they probably havent looked hard enough. As I say this is just from my experience, but hopefully their are some talented people out there. - brightspark, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Please read this part of the article..
"The people are smart, innately smart but don’t have this particular skill set yet," said Shriram, an Indian who is a founding member of Google’s board of directors.
It says the particular skill set which google is interested is uncommon...
IMHO, title is tabloid stunt.. if yahoo can get it right then its inefficiency on part of google HR - mooreshyguy, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12lack of talented people in india, i seriously disagree. i believe this video will prove my point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx-NLPH8JeM - vinodk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6There are two types of companies that have come to India,
1. Companies that have come here for talent
2. Companies who are here for cheap labor
The type 1 companies never have any problem in finding talent because their goal is different. Any costing saving is a added advantage.
Google and many other companies fall into Type 2 they expect the sun and the moon but are not willing to do anything concrete about this. In long run they have to compromise on quality if they want monetary savings. - tommasz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Outsourcing isn't about finding superior talent, it's about finding "good enough" talent at rock-bottom pricing. I would have expected all of the superior talent to already have come to the US (where they can make US salaries).
- fatdog789, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Having seen the "quality" of some of Google's "products" I highly question that they are looking for talent in their hires.
And the tech department is their best; the legal and marketing departments are so incompetent that they've cost the company 100's of millions of dollars in unwarranted expenses and fees. - Tyr7BE, on 10/12/2007, -10/+14"I would imagine that there are far too many "technical" individuals in India and not enough workers to fill call center and web dev. roles."
Is India not the call center capital of the planet? It seems to be the first thing companies outsource. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I could have told Google this after my last phone call to Dell tech "support".
All the talented ones move to the U.S. - vudicarus, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8time to outsource.
- lapog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Prejudices aside, here's the relevant portion FTA,
"In particular, the venture capitalist cited a shortage of web development skills such as knowledge of Javascript and Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), the web design technology used in the latest generation of websites like Google Maps and Flickr. Middle managers also are in short supply, he said.
"The people are smart, innately smart but don’t have this particular skill set yet," said Shriram, an Indian who is a founding member of Google’s board of directors."
It is true that the technology takes some time to penetrate into the education stream and something like AJAX is still cutting the ice there. So, with the current level of demand, it is not a wonder that Google is finding it hard to hire. Wait for a couple of years and things and supply would show up. Time, it is a question of time, not talent. - jeffyjones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've worked with a number of Indian guys at various gigs (all quite brilliant), and the reason they're not in India is because they can make a hell of a lot more money here in the states. India is suffering from brain drain.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The talented ones I seem to run into are all at Fry`s ! BTW Indians are primarily Hindus and DON`T bow themselves up.
- Dissonance, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yes, that video is awesome! Pure classic!
And here's an example of Indian's doing a pretty good (and funny) job of implementing and imitating Western standards with less technology and lower budgets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWit8ckPkxg - willcode4beer, on 10/12/2007, -7/+9Nahor, you might want to recheck your facts. I know a few people who don't have degrees writing code at google.
- lexhead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm an American living in India and my kids went to school for a year at a "Convent school" (i.e. a better than average school here).
One day my middle son came home with a test result in which he got the question, "Name two kinds of seeds" wrong. His answer was, "Apple seeds and Orange seeds" and the teacher marked his answer wrong.
When we went to talk with her about this, her reply was that in class she taught "Pea seeds and gram seeds" and that was the answer she was expecting.
This highlights one of the problems with education in India that some people have hinted at: they're focus is not on understanding, but rather memorization.
We though my son's answer was even better than the answer she was looking for because it showed that he understood the concept; he extrapolated from what she had taught and gave a new/different answer. But that's not what she wanted...
I think the researcher's name was Black or Block or something like that who came up with different categorizations for learning. They were something like:
Category 1: knowledge (which is primarily memorization of facts
Category 2: synthesis (the ability to merge different facts into a new fact
Category 3: extrapolation... etc...
Anyway, there may be no one better on the planet at category 1 than Indians. They can literally memorize huge books in preparation for IIT entrance exams. An American friend (fulbright scholar who taught at an IIT in India) literally laughed at me when I suggested that I was going to try get into an IIT for studies. He knew that there was no chance that I would ever be able to pass it (not having that kind of skill being educated in America).
So this is a great way of educating people if you want them to have lots of facts memorized (perhaps a doctor?). But if you need someone who can extrapolate and synthesize information, then... perhaps looking elsewhere is (on the average) more appropriate.
By the way, another thing I noted: I was helping another American friend set up a school in South India and we were trying to compare the curriculum that the school was currently using with those that he'd brought to use. For the first grade, the Indian curriculum English book was 60 pages long, while the first grade curriculum he'd he'd brought was ten 60 page books. We calculated that the Indian curriculum book worked out to 2.5 days/page: obviously the kids were going to learn the heck out of each page, while the American curriculum was 4 pages/day... Much broader; less depth... - teclo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I worked for a company that decieded to farm work out to India because they thought getting 6 indian programmers for the price of one good local programmer was worth it.
I said at the time, "You can teach someone to program, but you can't teach them to be a programmer." We received the work and it was dreadful, I ended up spending three months fixing the piece of crap that was produced at additional cost.
I stand by my feelings regarding doing that. These guys may be taught how to code, but they can't be taught how to think and develop creatively. - psilanthropist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2one more point, this article seems really funny because it comes right after IBM's announcment yesterday that they are scaling up their investment in india (after a $6 billion intial investment) and are increasing headcount from 9,000 to 43,000 employees.
how come IBM has no trouble finding people ? looks like Google should look harder ! - psilanthropist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2my brother got hired by google hyderabad as an adwords advisor. but he turned it down at the last minute and dedcied to start his own web-dev company along with his friends.
anyways, i completely agree with marlinspike, your news is only as good as the source. the gulf times ? come on guys ! - Dissonance, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yes I remember learning that English has one of the largest vocabularies around.
Also remember most Indians speak 3 to 5 languages. A typical person from Mumbai (Bombay) will likely speak Hindi, English, Tamil, Marathi, and his mother tongue from where in India he/she is from. Now they won't speak all of these languages well, but will likely be able to get along fine conversationally in most of them.
Some argue that the fact that a typical Indian knows so many languages is one of the reasons that they are so good at programming languages.
Whatever the case, I don't think language is a significant factor in one's creativity. - vavasthi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think this is just the mismatch between their expectations and what market has to offer. India is a very hierarchical society where titles matter, but google places everybody at software engineer level and at the same time they look for people with very deep knowledge of algorithms etc. I attended an interview with them and a person who interviewed me won't hire me because I did not know djikstra's shortest path algorithm. Now I am sure I read about this damn thing in my college in 1989 but I never needed to use it so I forgot.
Now it may be possible that all the work that google does needs djikstra's shortest path algorithm. But being that finicky about that surprises me. - vinodk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2All superior talent does not end up in US. Maybe its a cultural thing but quite a large number of Indians prefer working in India as opposed to being in a country on other side of the globe. But many off them do spend a few years in US/Europe ... making some money before getting back.
But I agree Outsourcing for most companies is finding 4 people to do the job done by 1 person at 1/10 of the cost :) - marlinspike, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This debate will quickly boil down to one to thinly veiled xenophobia -- apparently, few of us Americans think that Indians can do what we can do as well as we can.
I have to point out then, that over half of the PH.D. students in our top schools are from India and China, and that over 1/4 of new startups in Silicon Valley were started by Indians.
It also helps that Indians, (like many other Asian countries), has people that value education (esp. in science, engineering and medicine), more than we do in the US. The competition is intense -- it's about 40 times harder to get into IIT (Indian Institute of Technology), than it is to get into MIT!
At the end of the day, what's so special about American programmers? It's just programming and math, and heck, math is one of the subjects with the lowest barrier to entry.
I will say, however, that on the average, I find American programmers more rounded than their Indian counterparts. I suppose that may have lots to do with how wealthy we are compared to Indians. That will change soon, then I suppose. - nixdoctor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That's true. I graduated five years back, and the top guys from my class are all in the US. Few are in Europe, and only the unlucky or incompetent ones remain in India. Reason? Not enough salaries, and lack of freedom in work-culture. I'm not even going to discuss corruption.
- neoknight, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Gulf-Times.com has the ugliest web header I have ever seen. OMG!
- apollo13, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I wonder one thing. If google is not able to find enough talented indians, how come they're able to find enough talended indians for thier american campus? Similiarly other giants like Microsoft, NASA etc. It seems to be a Human Resouce management failure at google's Indian office. First they will have to appoint a good HR team to hunt.
As far as I know, google is offering pea nuts and work culture is not too good when compared to companies like adobe and amazon. Amazon has got a success story on recruiting at thier Indian office. It;s not the population which decides how many people are smarter. One could smartly quote a CIA fact book, but why dont you understand a fact that India is one of the world's largest software exporting country (This is not call center story friend !) with that limited talent.
smohan123 quoted "Frankly, America is getting lazy as a whole (I am an American). ". I strongly concur with this. They want money to write few lines of ajax code. Out of too many educated americans how many know about the world outside america? They still think India is a land of kings and snakes, elephants. How many are opting for computer science and jumping to hardcore application development? How many are hard working like chinese, japanese and Indians?
If google is not able to find resources in india, on what basis they have opened thier office in india? Dont they do a proper business strategy analysis when they invest so much money (shareholders money). are they blind ? let them close the office in india ..nobody cares ! - techykid, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Lets look at the actual STATS wrt to cost advantage.
Living expenses in India are damn cheap.
If you maintain a certain lifestyle with 5000$/month in US, you can do it in India for 50,000Rs . But in actual money, 5000$ = 225,000 Rs. That's more than 4 times.
So In India Google pays its employees 2000$ or 100,000 Rs (which is double than what Oracle pays) and that is a very good salary. So its a Win-Win situation for both Employer & Employee. Atleast from this point of view..
But the indian guys are not satisfied with that. Coz even if he works for a smaller company in US he gets paid 5000$/month. Lets say he spends 3000$ and saves 2000$. Thats still more than what he could make working for Google in India.
So the bottomline is Indians are making lot of money everywhere coz of the dollar to Rupee advantage. Damn to the skills, AREN'T THEY SMART ??
P.S: All the figures mentioned are net salary's for 1-2yrs exp. ;)
For comparison, a typical indian goverment employee makes 200$/month which is a decent salary. - wholewheat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You're not taking into account the management cost of dealing with a ***** employee who doesn't produce. He may even produce negative value for the company by holding everything up.
- marlinspike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Are you confusing India with the Middle East? Geezz.. It's people like you who give Americans a bad rap everywhere -- read/listen the news more and pay attention! Get a world map!
- nasteratu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3@Nahor
You are very wrong, I am friends with a number of google employees and none graduated from very prestigious colleges and have no higher than a BS. Google hires based upon real world experience, knowledge, and ability to think and create. - JackyTreehorn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@zigamorph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#Number_of_words_in_English
Sorry to burst your bubble, but by some estimates, English contains up to 990,000 words. German contains 185,000 and French 100,000. Are Germany or France not also creative?
It's an interesting concept - to relate creativity to one's native language - but your argument is not based on fact.
Dugg down as inaccurate. - ProTibet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1All the talented Indian people are already in America. Indian ethnic group in America earns more on average than any other ethnic group, even more than white american people.
- ianhobbies, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1well.. since all major call centers are now shifting to the philippines, y not give us a try eh? and we speak better english as well
- riplikethat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2OK, I am an Indian, and I can tell you that 70% of the 'Indian' code I have come across (like my retarded ISP's "net logon" software) is total crap. Forget making it trouble free, the interface of the apps is retarded... it's like Windows XP with it's default blue skin. You know the programmers know it looks pretty, but in the end, the user wants his Classic theme back and ignore the razzmatazz.
Other than that, I have to agree with the part that Google isn't looking harder. Hell, even Indian companies manage to hire crappiest programmers from every corner of India, paying them next to nothing of course. If companies spend time, they will find good talent in India without doubt. Except maybe for the part about finding people for call centers who can speak proper english.. even we in India have trouble understanding wtf most of them are saying (half of them can't even speak Hindi properly, forget english).. but that's a different topic. - marlinspike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ok, this is from the Gulf Times -- hee hee. On the subsequent page they probably have some diatribe against the Great Satan and calling us all sorts of names. Hey, if we doubt that crap, how come we trust their other stories?!
- leonbev, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I'm sure that there is plenty of talent in India, but no one seems to be willing to pay for it. Most companies outsource overseas to the lowest bidder to cut costs, and end up with lazy and untrained support staff who couldn't figure out how to do basic tasks like create a user account or even reboot a computer without following a script. Then those companies seem suprised when quality and productivity goes all to hell due to poor support :(
Unfortunately, most companies don't seem to understand that there is more to outsourcing than hiring four untalented workers for the price of one talented one. That one talented worker will probably end up doing three times more work than those other bozos, with far fewer mistakes. - trialofmiles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It seems to be a Reuters story. Here's another source that credits Reuters.
http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=40610&r=hstory - muyuu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2By saying that "indians are innately smart" is this guy trying to be PC? or is he implying americans are dumber than indians?
Either way I call *****. You can't find the heap of cheap talent you expected. Tough luck. Time to go for plan B. - r©ain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Indian developers for the large majority produce absolute trash code. We're talking code that is riddled with bugs, poorly designed and not even worth the headache of maintenance.
I say large majority as on one occasion, I did see some decent code produced,but I am exposed to a lot of code from various parties and on the whole, the code from India is a joke. -
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