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Comment by bradwood | Hacker News Reader

This has been a long time coming. INFY and others like them have been slave-driving their staff with huge markups for eons. I’m glad the chickens are finally coming home to roost.

I’ve worked in wholesale finance for decades and seen how these guys are treated both on- and offshore by their employers. It’s frankly despicable.

Let’s hope the market in India finally pivots and smaller, more nimble shops take more and more market share.

That being said, I wonder how much of this is embedded in cultural norms that will not be easy to shake. For example: saying yes to your client’s every request, even if it’s stupid, is not something that comes easily, I suspect, if you’re ingrained to just say yes...

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That particular cultural norm (or way of doing business, in deference to 'flarg' who is better acquainted with this than I am) has got in the way of producing quality work several times in the past, and ruined the productivity we were trying to get from outsourcing in the first place (it was not my decision, I just had to try and make it work).

  "So you understand what you have to do?"
  "Yes"
  "And you have all the documentation and information you need?"
  "Yes"
  "OK great, let's get this thing going, get in touch if you need any help"

Two weeks later -

  "How's progress on the project?"
  "I have not been able to start the work because I could not understand..."

With Indian contractors, you can't use questions that require them to give a yes or no answer.

You need to phrase things differently: "What will be the first thing you'll be working on?" instead of "Do you understand?", for example.

open ended questions are just better in general.

Describe your next steps...

Please create a step by step project plan in {tool name}...

Another issue is waiting two weeks. Never, ever, wait two weeks. With any outsourced team you need much more frequent check-ins otherwise you run the risk of being blind-sided by huge project delays.

Lessons learned I guess!

We assumed that we were dealing with a (semi-) autonomous developer or team of developers, who would ask for clarification or assistance if needed.

We made ourselves available, we didn't expect miracles (it was big product with a team you had years of knowledge about it attached, though they were working on a small, isolated area), but our expectations were just out of line with what we got.

In the end the developer turned out to be able to do the work, though did not excel. The biggest hurdle to cross was this mismatch of expectations.

I've explained this multiple times now at large (even fortune 500) organizations. I had a project where they kept asking 'can you finish this on Monday?' or 'we need this by Monday, when can you finish it?' Every time, they'd confirm it would be finished on Monday, but it never was.

When we changed tactics to just asking for an estimation without any direction from us, we would get much more realistic estimates. Took a lot of work to convince our project manager though.

I guess asking specific questions that don't have a yes/no answer would have helped here.

The other person being honest would have helped much more.

This isn't an honesty thing. Many cultures (both in terms of social culture and work culture) have a strong aversion to saying no. Some languages barely have a word for it.

Even when those aren't issues yes/no questions rarely have the precision that you want, often you can phrase a question to seem like it only has a binary answer, but the real answer is way more complicated. Basic project management principles come into play here. As other posters have commented, asking what someone will be working on first, setting up tracking tasks etc.

That is your problem: You have not taken the time to understand other cultures.

You believe they are not being honest but they ARE!!

If they can not do the work, they tell you, but in their own language, not directly but in subtle ways.

They are expressing it, and in their mind you understand them, because they are actually saying it. It is just that you are deaf to their language, you are not looking to the nuances, and just ignore those signals they are emitting.

Then comes the blaming and the pointing fingers.

They are a service provider and we are their customers, it's up to them to adapt to our needs and adapt to our culture.

I can't help you here.

I'm just a lowly eastern-European contractor banking on real estate prices in Silicon Valley remaining ridiculous on one side, and Indian contractors[0] remaining unreliable on the other.

[0] Those of them who have lower rates of course. Reliable Indian contractors have proper rates - and good for them.

Maybe we can use a riddle here? Ask someone "will you tell a lie if I ask you a yes no question?"

(I think I screwed up but you get the idea!)

Imagine asking interview questions only in this manner.

That would probably be equally evil and effective.

"Tell me about a time you failed" is the tech interview equivalent of "When did you stop beating your wife?"

Yeah. Fortunately it's enough to tell a story from your junior years to pass this one.

This gives me nervous twitches and flashbacks to my time dealing with Cognizant for IT services and development while contracting for a large energy company.

The level of incompetence was at a level where you kind of look around and wonder if you are on some kind of hidden camera tv-show.

Never again will I work with a client that has outsourced anything that touches my work to Cognizant, Infosys or Cap Gemini.

You never ask a Chinese or an Indian direct questions.

It is so rude for them.

You are not telling them what you believe you are telling.

Could you elaborate on this? I do not have extensive experience with or cultural knowledge of India, so I would be very interested to know about the cultural background for your statement. Maybe it can save me from inadvertently being rude to someone in the future.

Two weeks later -

I wonder exactly what he or she had been doing for those two weeks, just staring into space? Were you being billed for that time?

Ex-Infosys guy here. It's just the mid-level managers are clueless. So their best shot is appeasing clients. I was lucky to have a manager for a while who knew his stuff and he did push back on irrational demands pretty systematically.

Yes, but to point out the obvious: when people at the top don't care about culture, what you get is toxic culture.

It is toxic. Two kinds of people actually do survive there, those who can out-toxicate the environment and the ones blissfully ignorant.

you’re ingrained to just say yes...

This is not limited to the IT industry. Never ask “is this the train to New Delhi?” for example...

I'm reminded of Dave Barry's "Ways to Say No In Japan", which is essentially the same idea.

Synonyms for "no" include:

I see

Ah-hah

Of course

That is difficult

Interesting

Yes

Is not a cultural norm in India, it's just a way of doing business. Source, have worked in India many times.

Things have changed with newer companies especially those which are building and selling their own products. Though work life balance is still poor but at least people are not saying yes to everything just to appease.

the difference being?

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