Indian CEO says American tech grads are 'unemployable'

[OhioChick]

June 23, 2009

We've all heard the mostly negative stereotypes about Indian IT types.

They're smart, they're driven and they work for a pittance compared to their Western counterparts, we're told. Yet they lack certain 'creative' and 'critical thinking' skills, and as a result, function like robots, or so we're led to believe.

Several months ago, a few Western CEOs had claimed that although India produces the second largest number of engineers in the world, more than half of them are 'unemployable.'

Now, the shoe is on the other foot, as a respected Indian business leader has called out American tech graduates, for refusing to do the jobs that Indian techies eagerly perform.

Perhaps tired of hearing Americans' constant critique of his countrymen, HCL Technologies' < Get Quote > highly respected chief executive Vineet Nayar recently told an audience in New York City that American tech graduates are basically 'unemployable', according to an InformationWeek report.

Claiming that he views American tech grads as inferior to those from India, China and Brazil < Images >, Nayar reportedly said that American students only enter the field to get rich or to dream up the next big thing. Meanwhile, he continued, students from India and China are more willing to handle the boring aspects of the industry, like ITIL and Six Sigma.

Nayar also said that most Americans are too costly to train in the everyday minutiae of the field, whereas Indian graduates are generally well-versed and highly trained in real-life applications, thanks to vocational training programmes and other opportunities for hands-on experience.

HCL, however, has recently announced that it plans to open a delivery centre in North Carolina with an investment of $3.2 million and will hire over 500 employees over the next five years under a US's Job Development Investment Grant.

Of course, whether or not it was intended, Nayar's remarks have ruffled a few feathers. InformationWeek's Robert Preston wrote: "Imagine if the CEO of a US-based tech company marched into Mumbai < Images > seeking a bigger share of the country's multibillion-dollar market and declared the locals to be unemployable and untrainable. A culture of innovation isn't inconsistent with one that values attention to detail."

And protectionist web site JobDestruction.com has fired off an e-mail newsletter that uses Nayar's remarks as a launching pad for chest beating: "Vineet Nayar, an Indian CEO of the bodyshop HCL, said that Americans who graduate from our universities are unemployable. He feels that students 'from developing countries' like India are superior employees in part because they aren't obsessed with getting rich quickly. In other words, he won't hire American grads because they are too expensive. HCL hires Indians almost exclusively, so it's safe to assume that Nayar's disparaging comments don't just apply to our young college graduates -- he thinks ALL Americans are unemployable."

No response or clarification from Nayar has as yet been issued.

http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/jun/23/indian-ceo-says-american-tech-grads-are-unemployable.htm

Yet.....


"Wipro (Indian IT Co) finds fewer than 25% of Indian grads employable:"

"The problem extends even to India's much-hyped engineering graduates, who have been the backbone of the country's booming outsourcing industry in the past decade.
Every year, India produces about 650,000 engineers. But Pratik Kumar, executive vice president for human resources at the information-technology and outsourcing giant Wipro, says his company considers fewer than a quarter of them employable."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/02/AR2009050200702.html?hpid=moreheadlines

[Skittles]

1. hilarious

why is it that India seems to be able to handle the day to day mundane stuff but when things fall apart I have to contact Americans to bail them out? This is ROUTINE.

[ChromeFoundry]

6. I had to laugh when I read this comment...

Indian graduates are generally well-versed and highly trained in real-life applications

ANYONE that has worked for more than 2-hours with one of these "geniuses" knows by first hand experience that this guy is full of shit. I worked with an individual (with a resume touting of 5-years experience in C#, mind you) that could not understand the concept of an ASP.Net Postbacks and Viewstates! If these are the so-called geniuses that will move technology into the next decade... God help us!

[Skittles]

7. of all the countries I work with, India is second to worse

I'd have to say Brazil has everyone beat simply for their sheer lack of urgency in ANY situation

[ChromeFoundry]

10. I have not had the misfortune of working with that crew, yet...

Do they do the "up-and-down head-nodding" thing, when you know damn well they have NO fucking clue what you are talking about???

[Skittles]

11. I don't have to see them; deal with them on phone and IM

but when they IM'd me they'd be doing a "fool restore" I replied, "INDEED YOU WILL" :7

[OhioChick]

13. "fool restore"

Now, that's fucking priceless! :rofl:

[ChromeFoundry]

15. Good thing...

this way, access to their neck region is out of the question.

[Skittles]

16. the other day, they punched a system and never noticed the onlines did not come up

yes, access to their neck regions was my first thought :mad:

[bertman]

23. maybe they believe in reincarnation and figure they can deal with it next lifetime, if need be.

[Grinchie]

38. Lol. Now that is very funny, and typical..

[Hydra]

2. Hehe

The race to the bottom- who will spend tens of thousands getting trained only to offer their services at only slightly over minimum wage? Step right up, people! We have 100 others coming in right after you...

[PM Martin]

3. With all their flaws, Americans are still the greatest inovators around.

I say this as a Canadian.

Vineet Nayar (Jackass-Bangalore) does not see the value of innovation which brings about new products to the marketplace. Also, considering the amount of talent and time worked, one should expect an income in which they can live.

Innovation is important to growing the economy. India AND China have the ability to manipulate the system and offer inferior products, cheap labor, that is all.

Oh, I offer no apology for this: "Vineet Nayar (Jackass-Bangalore)".

[Double T]

4. ALL ceos are a pile.

[liberal N proud]

5. In a nut shell: they work for a pittance

The Indian CEO doesn't want to pay western prices.

And those IT techs we all talk to on the phone are just working from note books. Caller has problem, turn to page 2. Can not click on program, turn to page 666.

I have spent my share of time on the phone with Indian techies.

Thank you very much

Oh and the outsourcing of technical work to India, we have found you spend as much time cleaning up the work as it would have originally taken to do in the first place.

Good thing they work for a pittance

[OhioChick]

8. Part of my job is to clean up their code....aka....untangling spaghetti

:banghead:

[PM Martin]

9. I have had the misfortune of dealing with tech support from India.

Their scrips are shameless because you can tell by their dialect and phrases where they are really from.
John, Peter, and Mark?!? From New Delhi of course. :eyes:

[Skittles]

12. when they tell me their name is Chuck, I tell them I am Dinesha

yes INDEED

[PM Martin]

14. ROFL!

[cascadiance]

30. Do they then spin a whole slew of sentences in Indian at you?

[OhioChick]

18. "John, Peter, and Mark?!? From New Delhi "

That's about as plausible as "Dabeet" from Kentucky. :eyes:

[XanaDUer]

31. I had a "Rusty"

Hmmmmm.....

[dbonds]

17. Its a basic rewrite.

I don't attribute this to the intelligence of the Indian people, it is because the people that work for the lowest price either don't have the experience or the skill needed. Many times in these projects the remote team will loose members because they have used the experience to leverage them a better paying job. The ones with experience want comparable pay to US workers.

[liberal N proud]

19. I have staved off elimination of the guys that work under me

I have a huge folder with documents and examples of work from India and how much more it cost for quality.

I pull the folder out every time a manager or the vice president of engineering suggest we outsource.

[OhioChick]

20. Good for you!

You should publish those documents in Hardback.

[ChromeFoundry]

21. unfortunately...

CEOs and bean-counters cannot comprehend the raw data like this. They see everything as (Project Hours * Head Count * Hourly Salary) and never account for the shit-factor that usually equates to a (4x) on that originally low number.

End result: extended the Time to Market, and a lowering of the ROI.

Technology usually changes about midway through, so the project is obsolete before it even makes it to release.

[Grinchie]

39. I feel for you. Cleaning up code is not the most enjoyable thing to spend time on

The truth of the matter is that the IT outsourcer certainly product mass quantities of code. Unfortunately, most of it is dead, unused, and has a nest of vipers lurking within.

I used to be the SWAT team called in to fix the mess caused by teams that promised the IT Manager that hired them the world, but then delivered a steaming hot pile of mutated requirements, that somehow has made it into production.

What surprised me the most was that this was at a company that once employed John McCain's sweetheart, Carly Fiorina, who I found to be generally hated within the walls of her own company by the employee's.

When I saw the IT industry get purged to death in the early part of the millenium, I gave it all up and took up farming. All of the analytical skills learned in 25 years of software engineer are amazingly useful when working in the fresh air, growing food for my family, and basically getting the exercise denied to me for all the years I was chained to the computer.


My philosophy now is that the coder has to take ownership of the codebase. I believe that philosophy is predominant among Americans, which is why Americans are considered "Untouchable" by the Indian firms.

[Jim Sagle]

22. Gobble gobble said the offshore turkey.

[jgraz]

24. Hmm... I used to have a response for CEOs like this. Let me see if I can recall it.

Oh yeah...

FUCK YOU

[cascadiance]

29. Hey, I had the EXACT same line in mind with this thread!

Now, I have many very good Indian friends who I've worked with over the years, but I've also known a few jerks too! This guy is one of the jerks!

Yes, if you subsidized American's bachelor's degrees in high tech like is currently done in India, guaranteed them jobs in India, and get a decent job in another country where you can earn ten times the salary needed to live a decent life in your own country for a year, then YEAH, most people would go in to that field and get trained so the statistics would show they are better trained.

If you are asked to do a difficult job where jobs are being sent overseas, or others are being hired at wages where you can't afford to live (because THEY can fund their families back home even though you can't), and education in this field costs a lot and is difficult to boot, wouldn't you rather try to get a degree in something else more "local" than that?

These MYTHS these guys keep trying to push onto us are disgusting if they weren't so laughable.

[HughMoran]

25. Yeah, this shit was posted last week

Some of the criticism is valid, but I'd hate to have a discussion about this every week - it's a downer.

[OhioChick]

26. I saw it posted last week and last month....

This jackass just keeps preaching this bullshit over and over...... :eyes:

[ananda]

27. Indian techies really are amazing and wonderful!

I just got a new MacBook at a nearby store
run by Indians. And boy have I gotten good
service figuring out how to transfer all my
email files and internet bookmarks, etc.

It was a huge complex job, and the store
techie was fantastic at figuring it all out.
He was sweet and personable, and let me watch
and, dammdoubledamm, was I impressed!

My old G4 was a Beta with Panther, and without
Airport and Firewire.. and he still managed
to transfer everything exactly as I required.
He tried all sorts of things that didn't work
and still didn't give up. He even installed
Tiger on the old computer, free of charge, to
see if the migration assistant would work.

When that didn't work, he took out the old hard
drive and hooked it up to all kinds of cables
and my new computer, which was also linked to
an older iBook which acted as some sort of
conduit between the two computers. You should
have seen him moving around cables, hooking up
new ones, going in and out of files and folders
until he found the right ones and went through
the magical process of getting them all exactly
in the right place.

Now my new computer has Firefox and Safari with the exact
same bookmarks and toolbar folders as my old one;
and the new Thunderbird email program has all my
old folders and emails in it.

Next step: use Boot Camp to install Windows XP
on the new computer and then go back to the store
and have Maresh.. that's his name.. do the same
thing .. only this time it will be much easier
because my Dell laptop is newer and has wireless
already.

And by the way.. I LOVE MY NEW MAC!!! It's so
fucking fast, beautiful to look at,with a battery
life of around five hours, and only 4.5 pounds.

Sue

[troubledamerican]

28. Top 25% IQs in China = Greater than entire population of North America

Top 27% of IQs in India population = Greater than entire population of North America.

It's over, folks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljbI-363A2Q

[HughMoran]

33. Funny how that math works

I wonder how many of the brightest coming to the USA effects that?

[troubledamerican]

37. If you watched the statistics at the link, you'd know your point is moot

If every U.S. job was shipped to China, they would still have a labor surplus.

Are you even aware of the sheer size of China and India?

Your remarks miss that point entirely.

[Cowpunk]

32. Translation: Americans won't work for dogfood. nt

[Recursion]

34. Bwah! Six Sigma!

*snicker*

We don't do it because it's F***ING USELESS

[PM Martin]

35. I have no use for Six Sigma either.

Perhaps in certain situations (very rare) such as precision manufacturing it would be useful?!?

[mule_train]

36. So should oppose in state tuition for H-1b families, since the education is ineffective

....unless this guy isnt talking about Indian students at American universities, ie he's being RACIST

[cap]

40. yup american programmers prefer to lose their homes and go on unemployment

they prefer to have their credit rating ruined and go into bankruptcy and not have a retirement and not send their kids to college....and...

[sasquatch]

41. By "unemployable" he means they won't be corpratist Helots

[Pubslayer]

42. "sweet but useless"

My employer has been trying to set up a "sister" company in India. We've been really nervous about this for obvious reasons. They sent a team over to train them and after one year most of the team is coming back. The conclusion? Well everyone really loved the culture, loved the people, said it was an amazing experience. But the workers are completely "useless" and "hopeless". We couldn't figure out what makes them tick: they don't seem to take pride in their work, they don't seem to fear losing their jobs, they don't compete with each other, they don't compete with themselves. Short hours and lots of ping pong. Corporate is determined to make this work, so they are replacing our first training team with a second. The first were A+ people... it don't get better than that.

I think it speaks volumes that India's leaders are desperately trying to get other countries to take their people.