Comment by rjzzleep | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rjzzleep | Hacker News Reader

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it doesn't really matter if the job is good or crap. the guy that hires you already thinks you're crap, and why would you care about some job they outsource to you because they don't even want to pay minimum wage?

you don't think that value comes across exactly that way?

that said indians have a major cultural problem. they're way too nice, and they're also way too enduring, and they find other ways to vent that. when i was in the US they were putting their shit on the indians, because they knew that since they really wanted to stay in the US they would endure all the shit, and not talk back. some of these people got dumped on their 6th year, because that's when the employer has to decide on whether they sponsor a green card or just get a new one.

odesk encourages crap, because the people that come there generally don't think hey i'll get an awesome guy on there who i can't find in my environment. they think hey my project is super easy anyway. i'll get a cheap dude to build exactly what i want.

don't get me wrong i know some really good developers, and employers on odesk(well truth be told it's just 1 of either). but they're there no doubt.

what disgusted me the most was that the guy i was working with (who used odesk to get cheap developers) was thinking that he was doing them a favor. he thought of himself of some kind of savior, because he was helping indians so much.

>> that said indians have a major cultural problem. they're way too nice, and they're also way too enduring, and they find other ways to vent that.

When I've dealt with teams in India (rather than Indian folk in western nations) I've had problems with this. It's not niceness, it's being non-confrontational. To excess. When you ask if they understand (so you could offer help or training on a technical question, for example) it's "yes, certainly". And then a week later you get the email saying no progress has been made because they don't understand something.

It's irritating.

One of the really hard things about setting up the Bangalore office for NetApp was getting around people unwilling to confront their managers (which is taken as a given in the US). One of the engineers created a game of 'spot the crap' which was basically sets of statements where one was bogus. And trying to reward/incent people for identifying it and raising it.

Although, when the collapse finally comes, and you've just accused someone of lying about understanding and they finally come clean and it walks all the way back to a guy they paid in school to help with their CS classes, then you can start to make progress. I was not in the office but the stories I heard of people being scared of being fired because they didn't "know" something were rampant. NetApp really tried to amplify the message that saying you knew when you didn't was a more egregious affront than saying you didn't know.

Sorry Chuck, I don't think you understand our culture here. I stay in Bangalore. Never visited any country. I was born and raised in Bangalore. I've stayed here in Bangalore all my life.

>>getting around people unwilling to confront their managers

Almost every time I've tried to do this, I've been screwed. The only option after that even I have is to go work under a different manager. You really have to play nice, actually that's putting in mildly. You have to show super sycophancy towards your manager, if you want anything that looks like a raise, promotion or a foreign travel.

Often you are just screwed if you don't belong to your manager's state, or don't speak his mother tongue.

I've been pulled up and scolded inside meeting rooms even for mild and faint feedback, let alone direct confrontation. Some times in the line of 'You don't want me as your enemy'.

That's one big reason why Indian IT is such deep irrecoverable mess. Good people get nothing, have no scope for growth. If you are good its assumed you are going to sacrifice your life working for everybody. To get anything you have to be a super sycophant. Or belong to your manager's state or speak his/her mother tongue.

So the only option for good people here is:

1. Immigrate to a western country. Get treated like crap. If you are luck you might get citizenship in a decade or two. Else get ready to go through putting up with crap for years.

2. Work in smaller teams of your mindset and do a start up.

This is a southern Indian thing dude. Come to Pune.

Are you seriously suggesting that there is no corruption in Pune? Or that people across the country who go to Pune automatically get better?

This is an endemic problem across India.

We need broader cultural changes. I don't think I will ever see them in my lifetime or even in the next few generations. And merely going to a different place where there is the same problem with same people is hardly going to address any issue.

Places like Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai etc or even private companies/MNC hardly solve(d) these issues. They just offered a bigger playground for such issues to come to play.

This is basically 'sarkari naukri', your old Indian government job all over again. Except that just with small time cosmetic changes.

You've clearly not experienced Marathi pride, then?

Some companies here have quite the reputation for being Maharashtrian strongholds where only locals are valued and promoted. And these aren't your tiny software shops; I'm talking machine-so-huge-you're-just-a-tiny-cog type companies.

Sorry to hear about your experiences, nave you worked for NetApp? I've not been there since 2006 but if you were treated that way at NetApp I would like to know when and I'll see that information gets to the right people.

>>Often you are just screwed if you don't belong to your manager's state, or don't speak his mother tongue.

This is a typical South India problem. Not to say that North would be a fair game for south indians but it is still not that harsh from what I have seen.

People do try to get in a comfortable group based on common factors and Language in India is a great factor.

As an Indian undergraduate who is looking forward to a job, I find this very intimidating. I have always known consultancy based companies are shit and treat employees none better than a herd of sheeps, too easy to get another one. But I had better thoughts about product companies.

I can suggest another option though, start building a portfolio and have open source contribution that put you out of the cheap crowd.I am sure there are enough jobs at good hourly rates for people who can deliver quality. Even our hacker news "seeking freelancer" thread s offer pretty amazing set of opportunities.

> As an Indian undergraduate who is looking forward to a job, I find this very intimidating.

Please don't. Because those of us who have good experiences do not find it particularly necessary to be vocal about it. There are good places and there are bad places i.e. you have a choice. Even if you start with a bad place, then don't think twice and quit the job the day it starts to suck. As for the culture, I worked for all sorts of managers and never experienced any cultural bias.

Isn't this pretty much how your country works? Why do you expect to be treated different in a specific situation (IT industry and your job) when that is the overall attitude anyways?

Worked with an offshore team in India, can confirm this. Very irritating.

What you're running into is a cultural clash where you have someone from a low power distance and highly individual culture [1] dealing with people from a high power distance and distinctively collective culture. Thus while literal communication might be clear, you're not getting the sort of culturally clear communication you might expect.

In short, you have to deal with offshore teams in a way that is different from the way you'd deal with someone in your office. You either have to manage them in a way that is effective for them - but probably feels foreign to you - or you need to go back to local teams (or at least teams from cultures closer to your own).

Essentially, if you were a pilot, and your indian dev-lead was your co-pilot, you'd both probably crash a plane because he would be too polite to tell you that you forgot to put the wheels down. His way of saying this would be something like 'we found that more research into the wheels problem might be a useful idea', rather than 'hey captain, you idiot, the wheels aren't down!'.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede's_cultural_dimensions_...

It's certainly a cultural difference but it's gone beyond politeness when they actually lie to you because they don't want to admit they don't already know something, when we're already in a training session!

You're most likely spot on about the cultural reasons for the behaviour, I just wanted to point out that it doesn't come across to me as nice. It comes across as passive and obstructive.

And I'm English, we're pretty good at passive...

I don't know whether they are lying because they are dishonest - I don't know enough about the particular indian culture you're dealing with. It could be just an imcompetent set of people, or it could be the sort of thing that some cultures acceptably lie about (like when we say 'no, you don't look fat in that'). You see it as the height of rudeness, perhaps they see it as saving face or something.

I guess my point is that unless you're well versed in the culture, it's easy to trip over these things.

It's been multiple experiences with a variety of teams in the megacorp I used to work for, as well as third party contracting/outsourcing firms.

I have no doubt it's a cultural misunderstanding rather than an attempt at deceit, but then... how the hell do you communicate technical knowledge to people who won't tell you what it is they need to know from you?

>I have no doubt it's a cultural misunderstanding rather than an attempt at deceit, but then... how the hell do you communicate technical knowledge to people who won't tell you what it is they need to know from you?

Well, I have been in that same boat. My answer? Don't hire them in the first place, and try and avoid projects if that decision is made for you.

Indeed. Why can't people just act like rational automatons? Its almost as if they think that their emotions, feelings, perceptions of social status, cultural 'way its done' behaviors etc. matter to them!

Actually, I just want to point out if you've had any training on how to run a training session, you ought to know that asking "do you understand?" is pointless in every culture. From an asian culture it can even come across as threatening and dominating. Its like asking "do you want to keep your job?". Who is going to stand up and say "actually, no I don't" to that? Work in a western company is often the very first time in peoples lives where voluntarily admitting you don't know something doesn't carry significant penalties.

I believe that's true but you're verging on going too far in the direction of cultural relativism. Regardless of culture it's still the case that intelligent people should see the value of answering "do you understand" as a straight question.

>> Actually, I just want to point out if you've had any training on how to run a training session, you ought to know that asking "do you understand?" is pointless in every culture.

I've never phrased it as confrontationally as you're assuming, it's always been a genuine offer of help.

Never has been pointless when dealing with European, American or Australian resident engineers (regardless of racial or cultural background), it's simply opening the floor to new questions. So now's who's guilty of sweeping assumptions?

Regardless, the original point still stands - this is not niceness, it's cultural conditioning to be non-confrontational to the point of dishonesty, and it's highly counterproductive.

Well the culture is really really diverse to cast into a single type. You have to be extra nice AND enduring when there are 100s more like you wanting the same job. The only way out of it is to make yourself better so the competition isn't as fierce or just bend over and take it all in.

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