Google to Train 2 Million Indian Android Developers
economictimes.indiatimes.com
economictimes.indiatimes.com
Why would more Indians getting Android training increase malware apps (as one of the posts here seem to have suggested)? Are you telling me that somehow there is a more-than-average percentage of people in India with malicious intent? Another post here seems to suggest this will increase number of crappy apps on Android. Really? How does better training lead to crappy apps?
If there are good quality Android developers in India, I can see it helping the local economy. There's a ton of opportunities to make apps that help in developing economies and not enough quality developers to do it. Not to mention, India is a big potential market for Android phones, once the western markets are saturated.
Suggesting that this is something bad is absurd.
Sorry for the rant. But I am Indian and take great effort to learn things in depth and write quality software no matter what I'm working on. Stereotyping all Indian devs as makers of crappy software is a little sad.
But not everyone.
Something I get discouraged by is when coding schools lure students by talking about salaries, because the people who are really motivated by that oftentimes don't invest the extra time to get good. They see a quick paycheck, and they signup, they put in just enough work, and then they take off. Maybe they'll put in the extra work because they're still motivated to either make more money or because they genuinely like coding, but this doesn't always happen.
In highly industrialized economies I've noticed a lot of people give up when they realize that their training doesn't give them enough to make the money they were hoping for, unless they decide to put in more self-sacrifice. If you live in an economy where the US dollar has more purchasing power, then the money that comes out of basic training might be enough to satisfy people. They got their quick paycheck. They don't have to learn the extra stuff, the stuff that makes you really good.
That's where my negativity stems from. I'll admit, just a theory, one that I've come up with to rationalize patterns when people hire me to fix outsourced projects. There's nothing inherently wrong with any country and the software developers that work there. It's a universal human desire to make money relatively painlessly and the disparities between wealth in different economies.
You could say this very same thing about Coursera or MIT Open Courseware. And you're right, people in Coursera sometimes learn just enough to get started but nothing more. That's just the thing, "Learning just enough to get started" is not an Indian Specific phenomenon.
People dropping out of training courses happens all over the world and that's normal when Educating and Training. If Google's "training" gives you a negative feeling, then your negativity should be directed towards Coursera and MIT Open Courseware and other Training Institutes, not just Google's Training Courses for Indians.
In less industrialized economies, or at the very least economies where the US dollar has a lot of purchasing power, the "novice rate" is actually quite a lot, so much that unless you really like programming you might not have any desire to get better, you just settle for a novice skill set, continue working for overseas contracts for $8 an hour, and produce low-quality Android apps that become the ire of people like me.
Also, people generally take Coursera and MIT Open Courseware for intrinsic reasons. I took a course on Coursera a while back about logic because I found it interesting. Very few people would take a course on logic to make money off of it. By contrast, more people taking a short Android development training take it for extrinsic reasons. They want to make money. Again, in countries where the the US Dollar has a lot of purchasing power compared to the local currency and $8 an hour to make an Android app is worthwhile, there's little incentive to improve and get better if you're primarily motivated by the money factor, unless you're especially interested in making even more money, otherwise you'll likely just settle.
Seems like the big concern from everybody here is Indian Malware Apps. To get closer to better security, I think now would be a good time to encourage Google to offer Secure Android Coding Courses too.
I don't know why this is the case. My suspicion is that far more Indians get into IT for money or status. People who go into IT for those reasons almost always are mediocre to poor devs. Regardless, i don't see this google training program improving the ratio.
I don't understand. Training is training. If you don't think training improves the ratio of good to bad developers, then why do we have all these training programs in the US like Coursera or Stanford's Open Computer Science Courses? The reason we have MIT Open Courseware is to train and improve developers...thereby improving the ratio of good to bad developers. That logic holds true for any training program. The Google Training Program should improve the ratio as well.
The kind of IT devs usually associated with mediocre work are typically not the ones who are going to end up taking advantage of these courses. My experience is that they are typically just interested in doing the bare minimum needed and don't have to curiosity needed to improve or learn new things. Forget about them.They form a small percentage of the 1.3 Billion population and unfortunately are the ones most people end up interacting with when outsourcing dev work to India. This is unfortunate.
However, on the other hand, there is huge generation of college age kids who look up to famous founders and CEOs (Zuckerberg, Nadella, Pichai, etc.) and aspire to start companies and write kick-ass apps. Traditionally, it has been difficult to get access to good quality training material in India for a variety of reasons: lack of internet connectivity, lack of good CS curriculum and teachers in most colleges, lack of maker spaces and maker culture, and so on. I am not making excuses for those people, but when you have a 512 Kbps internet connection, watching Google IO sessions on YouTube is a struggle.
Growing up, I was lucky to have access to all resources I needed, but a lot of other people weren't. My hope here is that this sort of training schemes coupled with the internet access Google is rolling out across the country really helps people who really want to learn. The program mentioned in the article: "NPTEL" has a good track record of making quality content available to universities and libraries.
Tl;dr: I am painfully aware of the bad experiences people have on outsourced projects. This program is going to attract a different crowd of people.
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Or we'll have 2 million more Android developers who take shortcuts, create malware, can't figure out security, and overall turn the Play Store into an even larger dumpster-fire, because I still have nightmares from fixing outsourced projects. Kinda like a softer form of outsourcing-induced PTSD.
Overall, I consider this a net positive. Granted, I haven't done Android development in a while (again, dumpster-fire), but the sudden influx of novice developers will spur companies to make an investment in an Android app, the Android app will look / feel awful more than 9 times out of 10, companies will get frustrated, companies will inevitably turn to developers who still have battle scars from having to worry about memory management on image-intensive apps. People like me.
Emphasis on net positive. The downside is that the ride never ends.
Hey, at least I got my job because my employer had been bitten too many times trying to go the "cheap" route.
It will create a new pool of cheaper android development shops in India though.
And if that Android App actually makes money, then you now have leverage to charge a high hourly rate to fix the questionably-made app.
Sounds like a win for you.
immigrants come to steal our jobs; outsourcing move jobs to India; wages will decrease.
It doesn't matter that there is no proof for that if it feeds your fears.
Oh, but then we'd have to pay them decent salaries! Good move.
/s
If it is, then I would argue that the people writing malware apps are educated at a level beyond the training Google will likely provide.
Full disclosure, I'm an Indian person who has training in Android app development, but don't worry, I'm not yet harbouring any malware-producing urges.
This makes complete sense economically. In China, a smart engineer could make $5k a year writing software 80 hours a week or could develop a botnet and make $100K, with no risk of legal issues. Can't blame him one bit.
The same good developer in the US or Western Europe could just work a normal job, make decent money without risking jail. Why bother with the scams?
It's econ 101.
Or it could be racism, xenophobia, or misogyny. But I doubt it.
By rule, good developers you get by self-thought guys. Certification is attended by people who might not be as good.
So... there. I don't think it is bad per se to have people trained in Android, since there is a lot of Java people in India, I just don't see mobile development going this route.
Here, the training is being provided in partnerships with existing universities. The program NPTEL which would carry this course material has a good track record in making quality course material accessible for free in universities and libraries.
A typical kid in India harboring dreams of becoming a kick-ass Android developer has to currently deal with the limitations imposed by having a 512 Kbps internet connections. It's impossible frustrating to watch Google IO sessions or download an IDE more than once a month.
Programs like these tend to focus on colleges and universities and would lead to better outcomes for everyone involved.
The main problem I can see with this plan is that high-prestige in-house development organizations like Microsoft, Google, etc. have soaked up all the really good engineers in India. If there are any left, the higher-priced systems integrators have the rest. Cheap, middle sized outsourcing shops make do with the second and third tier. There is a smattering of truly entrepreneurial software development in India, but prestige consciousness and compensation make it hard to break out of these boxes.
At best, Google, and the ISVs who use cheap outsourcing, are going to end up with an incrementally better grade of sludge.
Engineers can be created through training. Some of them will be just as good as any of the ones who already work at prestigious companies.
Plus it takes good general education to be a good software developer. Once you get outside of first tier Indian universities, it gets thin pretty fast.
This is conceptuallyu similar to a nanodegree but modified to suit an environment where internet access is limited.
Why? Most Android Devs today spend a lot more time in the android support apis and internals than they did with android 4.0..its developing to the point where there are two classes of android devs, the ones that know the android support lib internals and how to backport and those who do not...
Guess which ones the training/certs produce?
Are you saying that Indians who get trained in Development will consciously become more nefarious and wittingly release more malware?
I honestly feel like you can say that about any group of developers in the world. There's bound to be 1 bad actor in every group. That's just security.
Hello this is Pajeet from Microsoft I think your computer crash because you didn't do the reality check.
I am not sure what you are trying to imply.
1.The fact that you could buy neatly stitched Calvin Klein , H&M , GAP or Zara apparel is because some 'Trained and Skilled' bangladeshi tailor is stitching all of those clothes.
2.The fact that you could kick around Adidas, Nike, Puma, Select, Litto, Umbro, Mitre, Micassa, Diadora, Wilsoms and Decathion footballs around is because some 'trained and skilled' person in Sialkot is sitting and making them.
3.The reason you could wear stylish Adidas and Nike shoes is because , some'skilled and trained' vietnamese people in a factory somewhere outside Ho Chi Min City are making them !
I could endlessly add things to this list, which showcases how trained labour from south american countries , Africa , Eastern Europe and other parts of the world make stuff that is sold as 'premium'/'top of the line' products. I am not sure if you understand Globalization and International Trade enough, May be some research in those area might realign your perspective.
On a different Note , I am not sure if you might have thought there would be more Malware Apps on the Apple AppStore if there were 2 million more iOS/ Swift Developers. It suggests something about how you perceive Google Vs Apple's Appstore Approval criteria.
Reid Hoffman visited Shenzen last year , and made some really interesting observations. I'll try and add a link to his article, But I think the essence of his trip was - How small groups built ,tinkered , hacked, learnt and became technicians by themselves ( in often cases even without a college degree). On top of this they also layered , other cost optimizations , spoke English and were self made entrepreneurs. I have seen similar trends in other parts of the world too, though not at the scale of Shenzhen . In the City I come from , a certain suburb was well known for Automobile repair work - Most of them could disassemble and reassemble entire cars , and sometime construct a car from disparate parts ! This eventually turned to a smaller version of 'Orange County Choppers'.
Its really hard to create/recreate such environments,but may be thats what Google is trying to do here. Or May be they are trying to build something similar to the 'Manufacturing' examples I gave above.
If you want cold hard evidence with this look no further then with the proliferation of fake Microsoft Service Providers, which was a direct result of continued efforts by North American companies to outsource IT support to India.
I don't give a flying fuck what the color of a person's skin is. And it is indeed a terrible tragedy to the endless number of talented Indian developers that their nationality is associated with malware and online scams. I suspect this is ultimately a result of being a nationality of 1.252 BILLION people, but having spent countless hours recovering users devices who were unfortunate enough to fall to such criminal activity, I can't help but notice a recurrent theme and have an incessant need to call out the butterfly effect of such initiatives in naive hope that something will be done about it.
Furthermore the Apple Appstore Approval criteria is absolutely relevant at reducing malware on Apple's platform, as well as the countless other barriers to entry of developing for Apple such as having a god damn expensive Apple computer, and the fact that Android devices are infinitely more popular in third world countries due to the cost of the equivalent Android phones and phone plans.
But no I'm probably just racist right.
We were able make are own overpriced, shoddy quality GAP and Nike apparel long before sweat shops in Asia were popular with our wealthy capital owners. The only difference is the execs of these companies only earned 50x the rest of us instead of the 300x now common. It's amazing what child labor, wage arbitrage, and lack of unions can do for profits.
I feel bad about the shitty conditions for these workers, but I am tired of being told to feel guilty and indebted to everyone on the Earth.