[r_singh]

I can't help but notice the bias people from the west tend to have against Indian outsourcing companies. They have issues and downsides, sure. Major long term downsides, as an Indian programmer (not working for any of these companies), I agree (just like outsourcing to ANY company, be it American e.g. Cognizant).

Comments talking about Infosys/TCS, not being a brand: programmers are not Infosys' customers, in fact it's quite the opposite of that. Infosys' services replace programmers for their customers, who are non-technical managers who want to abstract the IT part of their projects and not be taken for a ride by technical people (not saying that all of them do, but a lot of times engineering department heads demand HUGE budgets to just become more important) and managers feel that a dependency like that makes it necessary for them to be obedient.

Just because they have downsides, does not mean that they are not brands. Infosys has innovation labs in universities all around the world. They award the Infosys prize to the tune of $6.5M to scientists for research. TCS is a strategic partner for projects like the British Rail Network.

I actually view Indian outsourcing firms to be firms that trade human hours, which turns out, are a lot cheaper in India. Maybe POTUS should actually impose duties on importing software too.

Update:

I also agree with fellow developers on the fact that these outsourcing cos. produce bad code and documentation and usually result in a net loss for organisations where technology is in inherent competitive advantage.

However, these downsides are not because of the lack of skill. It's because of the nature of project based model that outsourcing firms follow. If anyone is to blame, it's the myopic or misconstrued managers who employ them for projects where outsourcing is not the solution.

However, there are many applications where outsourcing firms do just fine. And hiring a separate engineering department could be a risky alternative.

[primax]

I would agree if Wipro, Infosys, Tata, Cognizant and HCL were in the business of offering up skilled people that they have promised to clients. But every single one of my clients who engages these companies has a story where they were sold X cloud or devops or security people and the people put on their engagements had 0 experience.

I've moved into a consulting company that has an offshore branch and it's the same thing. And the managers overseas want to charge me expert rates while I have to train up their staff on the basics of how to do their job. And I mean the ABSOLUTE basics.

I really don't see how it's not fraud.

[r_singh]

There's probably barely any big consulting firm or bank that does not have offshore mega offices (in India) where a lot of important work happens in equities, commodities, etc. Citibank, BOA, PWC, you name it. All employ tens of thousands of people in India.

Even tech cos. like Amazon are hiring their next wave of knowledge workers offshore.

It's not like the offshore heads can force anyone to do so, or the Indian government is providing huge incentives (like for manufacturing in china). It's because the decision makers believe doing so is the right thing. If it's anyones fault, it's the heads of these organisations that are to blame, for prioritising perceived cost savings over what their own workforce thinks or does.

Having a great sales pitch and not being able to deliver is not a fraud. It's something that companies trying to bite more than they can chew often result in.

Also, I agree that having to teach your offshore counterpart how to do their job is absolutely ridiculous. It makes me wonder, how selfish can these corporates be, that they prioritise their profit or share price or bonus, over their own workforce.

[dsfyu404ed]

>Having a great sales pitch and not being able to deliver is not a fraud.

When you do it over and over and over again it sure starts to quack like the fraud duck.

[r_singh]

In that case their customers should be aware of this by now and they should be out of business (maybe soon).

[purplex]

I have worked for two of the Big 4 consulting firms, in security domain. They have the same story - they promise client to provide resources on subject A and B, ask the ones who have less project to learn subject A and B (these resources are expert in subject X and Y, but since the client wants A and B - they are asked to learn that in a day or two. I have seen many colleagues going to the client location, searching on Google "how to do A" in the morning and then provide some PPT with basic information.

Currently working for an American software dev company.

What I mean to say is, the issue you mentioned is not limited to these 5-6 companies, but for the whole IT industry.

[primax]

No direct experience in a given tech is ok sometimes, if they have transferrable experience (i.e. ansible to chef, cloudformation to terraform et al).

Having no experience on any cloud platform and being sold as an expert however is a different story.

[tonyedgecombe]

That's a common problem across all big consulting companies, it's not specific to India.

I think the real problem is that many of these corporates haven't realised how important IT is to their business. The idea that a bank should outsource development is ridiculous, most of their interaction with customers is going to be through these systems. If they want to differentiate themselves from their competitors then they need strong IT.

[r_singh]

> The idea that a bank should outsource development is ridiculous, most of their interaction with customers is going to be through these systems. If they want to differentiate themselves from their competitors then they need strong IT.

I agree with this too. However, this arises 2 doubts in my head:

1. Is Apple outsourcing manufacturing to Foxconn any different from banks outsourcing their IT?[1]

2. Is hiring offshore talent the same as outsourcing? Can the talent still not be in-house and the company be a multinational?

[1] Yes, it is because a lot of times firms outsource their entire IT/System design to these outsourcing firms too. And this is because of lack of knowledge from the manager's part, laziness or just greed. But it is still comparable because they both have certain shared downsides in the long run.

[viraptor]

Foxconn has a very direct impact on Apple's product, so any issues with quality would come back to them pretty quickly. Foxconn also has an ongoing partnership which I would expect to be worth a lot of money to them.

On the other hand, everything I've seen so far outsourced in IT in a standard way could come back in any condition. Worst case, it's unusable, but contractors get paid anyway and move to the next client.

[nkrisc]

Regarding Apple, they seem to have a very close and special relationship with Foxconn in order to ensure the quality of production. So while it is a similar arrangement, it seems very different to me.

[grilledyam]

Basically all of the offshore devs I've had the pleasure of working with are at the very beginner end of the spectrum, bar one or two. Even had to teach a "senior" developer how to write a unit test the other day... it's ridiculous.

[iamsb]

Here is an anecdote which might help you understand why.

One of my classmates joined infy out of college. His job for the first one year was - email the list of files changed in the day to the client. This friend was called newton in the college, one of the smartest person around. And he was doing one of the most boring job. Client was paying more than 3000 USD per month for this. Of course he automated the work on second day, used time to study for CAT and left to enroll in IIMA.

Not implying that there isnt anything good with these big companies, but there are lot of such stories. This particular one sounds more like defrauding the client more than anything else to be honest.

[vmurthy]

> used time to study for CAT and left to enroll in IIMA.

For those of you who don't know about CAT: think GMAT but with 200000 people appearing for it at the same time-frame (maybe a 15 day window)

IIMA - Harvard equivalent in India. Only about 400 people out of 200000 make it to IIMA.

[r_singh]

If you consider overcharging (perceivably) to be akin to defrauding, then a lot more doctors, pharmacy cos. and lawyers are defrauding clients than outsourcing cos. Even though the repercussions of them defrauding their clients is a lot higher. Also it's a fraud because of the oaths they take, of which outsourcing cos. are obliged to take none.

[TeMPOraL]

Given how it's such a common thing that it doesn't surprise anyone on the engineering side of things, I'd expect that the corporate management would've wised up to this already. This makes me wonder if both sides of the deal are in on it, and are together extracting money from the larger corporate entity.

[goatinaboat]

It’s not bias, it’s experience.

TCS is a strategic partner for projects like the British Rail Network.

That project is a disaster of overblown budgets and under delivery. Like everything these companies touch. But the imaginary savings earned a few Western managers big bonuses before they quickly moved on before the chickens came home to roost.

[r_singh]

In that case, TCS will pay a price for it in the long run.

[goatinaboat]

They will not, the British taxpayers will, just as for every project outsourced to Tata, Capita, or anywhere else.

Every penny of revenue earned by those companies is by fraud.

[GordonS]

You've got to wonder when the government continually awards huge projects to the same outsourcing firms time after time, and time after time the project is either a total failure or not fit for purpose, and it's delivered years late at a multiple of the original price. And the next big project that comes along? They'll award it to one of the same companies again, and they'll get the same outcome again.

There simply has to be some major skullduggery afoot.

The internal GDS seem to be bucking the trend, delivering good services and contributing to OSS. Surely this demonstrates that an internal team is a better way? Even if they don't deliver entire projects themselvea, they could lead them from a requirements, architect and tech perspective, and have sway over which firm gets the outsourced part.

[r_singh]

Not sure what your definition of fraud is (for me it's more like what the British India company did). Wining a tender process that probably needs fixing (because it's obsolete) is not fraud.

[close04]

Doing it with the intention of underdelivering and ballooning costs and time to make more money is fraud though. And make no mistake, no outsourcing company goes to a tender intending to be on time and on budget. It’s not good business for them.

[r_singh]

And just how commonly do we see such[1] fraud across any business or industry?

Cough, pharmaceutical cos, doctors, social media & search giants, car manufacturing giants. Any of these ring a bell?

[1]As in, the above (your) definition of fraud i.e. misleading customers, by deliberately under delivering and over promising. With this definition, many businesses and accepted practices are fraud.

IMO, true fraud is what VW with their cheating device. Facebook did with integrating WhatsApp profiles. Theranos did with fake IP. Opioid manufacturers do by indirectly incentivising doctors. Don't you think so too?