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Comment by sgt | Hacker News Reader

Nobody is doubting that there's amazingly talented Indian developers out there. Some of them are running huge IT companies in the US, as you know. However, anyone who has worked with a "random" outsourced IT company from India knows how atrocious it can be. Between hiring US developers (much more expensive) and average Indian ones, the difference is usually night and day.

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I've worked with under-skilled developers all over the world. Including NL where I currently reside - none of them are Indian, all Europeans.

Either way, I wouldn't call entire swathes of any of them "bottom of the barrel".

"bottom of the barrel X developers" means the cheapest/worst among X developers. You can say bottom of the barrel European developers, bottom of the barrel American developers, bottom of the barrel Indian developers etc. None of those statements says anything about how the quality of those developers relates to developers outside of that area, it just says you take the bottom for that particular group.

"bottom of the barrel X developers" can also be really easily read as "developers who are X and therefore bottom of the barrel", and whenever I've heard similar phrases in real life, there's always at least some level of insult being cast on whatever X is.

If he just said "bottom of the barrel developers" people would have assumed he meant "bottom of the barrel developers in USA" and not "bottom of the barrel developers in the World". You can get developers much cheaper in India, which is why you have to add that part as otherwise people would protest the number as unrealistic because not even bottom of the barrel developers are paid that low in the area they were thinking of.

The more accurate description would be "bottom of the barrel developers in India", but people would complain about that as well, but maybe not as much.

I may have worked with ‘under skilled’ developers in the Netherlands (but not really), but I’ve never worked with someone that I would describe as bottom-of-the-barrel (if the barrel is world sized).

These people are arguing with you over something so basic as common decency and acknowledgement of casual racism. Even here on HN, we are not immune to the density of the ego.

Nobody here said that racism against Indians doesn't exist. But this post isn't an example of that. Right now all you guys are accomplishing is making people feel you are over entitled and not that you are fighting racism. I've seen many people complain about racism against Indians here on HN rightfully, there is no reason to assume Indians are bad or speak as if Indian developers are bad and many people still do those things. But this post isn't one of those racist posts, this post is completely reasonable.

And you can think that, just like people can think you are racist for telling Indians what they can and can’t find reasonable about their own stereotypes.

“I should hire some bottom of the barrel bootcamp graduates”.

Bootcamp graduates in this example is a derogatory name for sub-par devs. We know this because there is a stigma around bootcamp devs in the industry. If you said this, no one is doing the mental gymnastics of “oh, they are separating the great bootcampers from the bottom of the barrel”. No, they assume you look down on bootcamps. Context matters. History matters. Saying “bottom of the barrel Indian devs” in todays software industry, is a racist remark.

> Context matters.

Right. And the context in this case is cost to run a company with a given headcount. The cost of 200 bottom of the barrel developers in America and 200 bottom of the barrel developers in India is substantial, which is why you have to include the location in this context.

If the context was talking about the efficiency of developers instead of cost you would have a point, but it isn't.

“Bottom of the barrel devs in India” !== “bottom of the barrel Indian devs”

Way to move the goal posts. Do I need to explain this? You’ve contextualized the bucket in your new statement.

Why do you think that efficiency difference exists in the first place?

Maybe because Indian/Asian developers are not valued as much as other parts of the world.

Almost as if people treat and talk about them like the bottom of the barrel…

It’s a cycle that you continue to enforce by using that terminology.

> Maybe because Indian/Asian developers are not valued as much as other parts of the world.

Maybe Indian/Asian developer not sell their services at rates they consider cheap. It's a cycle that will continue if they keep selling their labor at low price.

You’re right - I hear other less fortunate parts of the world are ready for their turn to get overworked and underpaid. Not like it has to do with the fact they hold the worlds largest populations or anything. Nah, you’re right. Their boards should tell them to raise prices and reject all else. Who cares if the kids don’t eat?

Then maybe it's you who need to get down from high horse and realize people do not live beyond space and time. And people just can't choose the best things at any place and any time.

> Who cares if the kids don’t eat?

Ah, I thought kids in poor countries could just eat virtues provided free of cost from otherwise no-good virtue signalers.

> Context matters. History matters.

More than that it seems outrage matters. That's what you are trying to do here.

I'd say the phrasing is casually racist. I hear nasty shit said about "white men" near-daily these days and I think of it in the same terms. Do these people think or mean to be racist? Maybe not, but it really doesn't matter.

Agree it’s the same thing! Two wrongs don’t make a right. Others behavior does not excuse my own. In this instance we are not talking about white men though so to use that as a counter argument would be plain whataboutism, but I understand you have not done that and have blasted casual racism altogether. Fair enough, and I agree.

Downvoting for continued violation of HN rules around best interpretation, and worst interpretation.

This type of low effort fault finding is very unsociable.

I feel we all have regardless of nationality. And I commend you for standing up to casual racism its disappointing to see this on HN but unfortunately very common here.

There's shit developers everywhere. No need to call out people from a specific culture as being worse on average.

Nobody said that Indian developers are worse than average. Just that there is a big difference if you take cheap Indian developers instead of expensive Indian developers in terms of cost per head, which is why you say that you picked the cheapest Indian developers. Not sure why you would read that as if Indian developers are worse, it is really hard to read it that way. I guess people here just react because it is fun to react, but it really just reads as if they picked the cheapest among Indians and no how Indians relates to other groups at all.

And by Indian developers most likely they meant developers stationed in India and not ethnic group, as location is the main degerminator of cost. So the description was for the cheapest developers you can find in India.

> No need to call out people from a specific culture as being worse on average.

Agreed, it would've been fine if they just left out "Indians" and "Western" the original comment.

But then the running cost wouldn't make sense. The cost of having 200 tech people around is way above $5 million if most of them aren't stationed in a low cost country like India.

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