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Vivek Wadhwa of Duke Univeristy has been engaged in a comparative study of this engineering gap between US, India and China...it is interesting what he and his team unearthed during their research.
Kamla
For instance, Infosys reached $ 2 billion in revenues in FY 05-06 ( India has April-March FY), on the strength of 50,000 `billable' Engineers. Now like any other company, if it sets its sight on $ 20 billion in 5 years, it needs 500,000 engineers to back that effort. Same is the case of TCS, WIPRO, SATYAM, HCL TECH AND NOW IBM, MICROSOFT, MOTOROLA, ACCENTURE, EDS who have joined the ranks. Now this is the case of just one company. India itself has hundreds of software companies of all shapes and sizes devouring engineers, besides feeding the global employers who absorb Engineers in thousands. It's only natural that the dearth of talent is felt.
Another reason is that salary levels in India have crept up to global standards and now there is a clear reluctance on part of Indian Engineers to go overseas. [ With Indian economy booming, there is in fact a reverse brain drain that's happening now.] Under severe pressure to hire in droves, sometimes HR managers compromise on hiring efficiencies and end up getting inferior candidates. And this is bound to happen. Why are we surprised...?
It's another matter that media gets it only when a Ram Shriram speaks about it and NYT reports.
So, If you look outside of IITs, NITs and other premier colleges the quality is not satisfying to do complex stuff. Maybe for general business programming an average engineer is good enough.
At the same time , future looks bright. With yahoo,google,netapp and other good companies opening shop in india; the quality and availability of engineers would improve a lot in future.
The education is different neighborhood by neighborhood in the US, let alone throughout the world. Yet the assumption is that an engineer in the US == the engineer anywhere else in the world. That a "good engineer" in the US is the same as a "good engineer" elsewhere; the ideal soft skills wouldn't even be the same!
Go join a pick up basketball game in Palo Alto. Now go join one in East Palo Alto. Think you need the same soft skills?
Do people realize the bizarreness of expecting superstars at the top and absolute faceless interchangeability two rungs down?
When people actually understand precisely how individuals individuate and in what ways they're produced by and reflective of their environment, then more reasoned decisions will be made regarding sourcing.
I hope I live to see the day when won't hear alternating idiotic cries of "shortage! quick... those people in [country one] are the same as in [country two] but cheaper!" "ack! those people in [country one] *aren't* the same!" every few years.
Perhaps if firms became more concerned with longer term projections and the concept of transparency and trust in building important messaging pathways -- thus minimizing those negative surprises -- this whiplash wouldn't be such an issue.
In the interest of being more constructive, the first thing I'd do would be to fund comparative ethnographic research to determine different teaching methods and outcomes in schools that produce excellent technology managers vs. those that don't.
The important part is to focus on how the curriculum and teaching methods affect effectiveness rather than actual grades/scores. This can be done throughout the formal educational structures and extended into other educational ecologies.
Just my two cents.
I've completed my education in India. The main reason for the lack of skilled engineers (in AJAX,web design technology etc.) is because of the quality of education in several of the engineering schools in India (except the Ivy Leagues).
In some of the schools,they still teach Fortran and Cobol. Unlike schools in the US which are on the cutting edge of technology (and often the incubators for emerging technologies), curriculum in India does not change so rapidly -- to keep up the pace with the industry.
That's pretty scary.
However, there are a number of reasons why the engineering skills in India are so narrow. The local job market mainly supports engineers with Java and .NET skills which are the areas where bulk of the indian software industry is seeing its services revenues from. So an engineer thinks twice when working on Ruby/Rails or any new technology which is sweeping the US. They want to keep themselves marketable locally. They do not realize that they are making themselves a commodity.
Secondly, Indian companies are to be blamed as well. Most engineers work with a very narrow understanding of their project/code. They don't get the big picture at all. The companies kind of force them into a habit which makes those engineers somewhat useless when you give them a full app to architect or build. So its difficult to groom engineering middle management.
I don't really agree with startupdunia's comment. While that may be true, every Indian engineer pretty much learns on his own and picks up latest/locally marketable stuff.
Many more angles to this. But I do see that things are improving now.
I dont agree that every engineer learns on his own and picks up the latest stuff -- it isnt a very large percentage. Not many take it upon themselves to break the rule and learn RoR and other emerging technologies on their own.
As a example - it is very easy to find lots of companies for your outsourcing needs, if your project involves PHP,j2ee etc. If you are looking for anythign cutting edge, it really becomes a challenge to find a right fit..This pretty much treads on the point Ram makes.
Due to the nature of work in India over the last 10-15, the mentality here is quite different - its geared towards getting the coding done where most of the design is pre-determined. Hence, there is hardly any room for understanding the big picture or even questioning the solution. So, a guy could start his career in this fashion with a basic knowledge of c++ or JAVA and code for a couple of years, then he would become a 'lead' after say 3-4 yrs and finally into management. Services companies require such people to handle 'accounts'. If an experienced developer were to quit, the company would pull in a fresher and train him.
Product companies work differently. They require self starters that can work on their own without constant supervision or micro-mgmt. I work for a product company and I find it very very difficult to get people of this caliber. But, in the last 2 years I have seen some changes. I have noticed that the environment makes a huge difference - companies that foster Silicon Valley style of work are able to groom such developers. Something missing in Indian companies is good career counselling. Companies like Yahoo, Google etc. do take a lot of effort to provide some serious career paths based on employee feedback.
I have been here 2.5 years and I am still adjusting to the way things are done in India. Do you have a JobBoard for VC backed companies in India ;-)
please mail me at prateekcapooryahoo.com
thanks
kind regards
prateek
I believe the best people to hire are people fresh out of school who have the desire to learn new things.