Passion And Caste
Wed, 2006-09-27 01:18 — heartcrossings
A few years ago, an American coworker, Dave had made an interesting observation on the career progression of desi IT professionals. “In your culture, a developer is considered to be lower caste than a project manager. So whether or not they have the talent or inclination everyone wants to graduate from being a low caste developer to a high caste manager. That’s not how Americans see things. I have been a developer for the last twenty years and I will continue being a developer for the rest of my IT career. “
This man had an encyclopedic knowledge of Unix and C. There was scarce a problem that he had not solved before or could not solve in short order. One would expect the company would recognize how valuable he was and not trade him for five cheap bodies from India with six years of total experience between them. But that is exactly what happened. His billing rate was considered too high to be supportable long term and he was let go. I have not been in touch with him but I hope someone somewhere has recognized the wealth of knowledge and passion he brings to his job - recognized that he is well worth is billing rate if not much more.
A month ago I wrote up some requirements for a simple application and gave it to the onsite development lead, Shailaja to work on. She is quick on the uptake, produces very readable code and requires no supervision - which is a whole lot more than can be said of the offshore team she leads. The product she turned out matched my specifications to the tee but lacked in speed. I would have lived with it like most customers do with sub-optimal performance unless Beth had stopped by one afternoon and watched me using it.
She offered to tweak it on her spare time and I gladly agreed. Two days later I had a product that exceeded my expectations on all counts and had delivered on a bunch requirements that I had not even anticipated. To say I was elated would be understating the case. Beth like Dave has been a programmer all her life and still gets the adrenalin high from compiling and executing code. Back in the time of the dot com boom she must have been as expensive as Dave (and like him very much worth it) but is now fairly inexpensive - she tries hard to protect her job from being taken offshore. It is probably a losing battle. How much longer can she hold out when pitted against five bodies whose combined bill rate is still lower than hers ?
I think Dave was right in his observation about caste system. Shailaja has what it takes to become a Dave or Beth one day - she needs to hone her skills every day for many more years to reach their level. She is already the “lead developer” with administrative responsibilities. It is her preferred career path. She is ready to move to the next level and become a project lead as soon as the opportunity presents itself. In a few years she would have little to no programming skills left and would not feel even a twinge of regret. She would have fulfilled her goal of becoming higher (and in as such more respectable) caste .
Every time companies trade a Dave or Beth for someone like her, they demonstrate their myopia, lack of understanding of cultural differences and utter disregard for fine workmanship that only real passion can produce.
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Comments
IQ versus passion
Ausph - my observation has nothing to do with the IQ of Dave vs Dev. It is common knowledge that India’s grueling education system produces among the best engineering talent in the world. Dave is not losing out to Dev on account of the later’s higher IQ - that would have been fair competition and everyone would have been the better for it.
For every Dev in India there are a gazillion rank amateur programmers who would be anywhere but toiling in the “trenches”. A manager type enjoys a cachet in India that is a fall back on our caste system. We as a society have yet to recognize all jobs as equally respectable.
As long as being some type of manager is more prestigious that being a “mere” developer, the pool of our programming talent and by extension software design and architecture talent will remain lacking. You seem to view the services industry in some way inferior to product development - yet another telling example of casteism.
Having worked in different capacities in both types of companies, I find it hard to understand how resources that work for one type are better or worse than those that work for the other. Excellence in the service industry is no less challenging than world class product development.
okay, another go, HC
> Dave is not losing out to Dev on account of the later’s higher IQ - that would have been fair competition and everyone would have been the better for it.
Oh but thousands of Dev’s ARE losing to Dave on account of his being born in US and they in a third-world country, where unless they learn to catch on the first opportunity (which itself is rare), they’re in dumps.
> A manager type enjoys a cachet in India that is a fall back on our caste system. We as a society have yet to recognize all jobs as equally respectable.
While on paper it sounds very romantic, all jobs will start looking equally tmpting when they start paying above avarage. My point is, it’s got nothing to do with castism, but more with the cut-throat competition back home. Where developers get paid well, they don’t suddenly want to jump the gun and go into management. To reiterate, there are lot of companies back in India, which have Dave equivalents in terms of passion too, who stick to development – they’re found in startups, and even in established companies. Many a times moving into managerial role is forced upon them, as they’re seen as natural leaders and more useful in people management role. It’s lot more complex world out here than Dave’s (and yours too, I believe) prejudiced views.
> As long as being some type of manager is more prestigious that being a “mere” developer, the pool of our programming talent and by extension software design and architecture talent will remain lacking.
Well I don’t buy this idea that there is lack of software design and architecture talent in India. That is distorted picture that you’re painting to peddle your pet “castism” theory. Get your Dave here in my company, and let’s see how he fares in his design/architectural skills wrt to guys here.
> You seem to view the services industry in some way inferior to product development - yet another telling example of casteism.
I never said that services companies are better/worse than product companies. Read right. I said I don’t know about them. Although I’ve heard from ppl in services companies that the model there is fundamentally tuned in favour of managers/group-leads. That’s again got nothing to do with any castism, but pure business requirements. And those business requirements is why American companies are sending work down here.
> Having worked in different capacities in both types of companies, I find it hard to understand how resources that work for one type are better or worse than those that work for the other. Excellence in the service industry is no less challenging than world class product development.
Well to start with different types of excellence is required for different types of work profiles. So maybe for product companies individual technical skills is requirement for new initiatives, while for service companies it’s more about cost-economies and getting quality with whatever human resources you’ve access to. Don’t tell me both require the same set of skills. And don’t tell me that one type of individual will be highly saught after in the two.
regards,
asuph.
cheap labour?
i think this is another generalization! this might be true for service companies (i don’t know, i’ve never worked in one) but there are also product companies here which do quality work. people who work there get paid a lot less than their US counterparts due to the dollar-rupee difference (although even that gap is closing in at alarming rate). some of these guys are also as or even more intelligent and doing core work comparable to this Dave category but just because they’re in India get paid less. such guys however are going to cut Dave’s position, whether he likes it or not.
in our company, in India, there is a strict technical career path, and such guys are valued a lot more than pure-managers or even techies-turned-managers. and it’s insulting to have to be referred as cheap labour all the time. more than half patents are filed from India, and more than half the dev team is in india, with little to no remote control… there is a trend called “component responsibility” that is gaining these days where the Us arm shifts whole product dev to India, managed by Indian managers.
the kind of cheap labour that’s killing the US is the one that doesn’t deserve to be paid that much in a capitalistic world anyways, and those in US should be the last one to crib about it. it’s hillarious to say the least. enuf is enuf.
regards,
asuph.
quality vs quantity ...
One of my profs used to say …
“do a small amount of quality work or a Humoongous amount of work … which is the same”
I guess thats the situation with “outsourcing” and “body replacement” ! While Dave is irreplaceable … Dev some how balances that equation and shows a cost benefit … thats the whole annoying point !
Crossings, You bring up a
Crossings,
You bring up a very good point here. And i think Cheti in his Jotting series brought up something similar with a different perspective. Companies that are bent upon quality output which is variably related to the cost involved in providing such will continue doing so while innovating new ways to increase profitshare, exploring new mkts, etc. But those stuggling to stay in the market by cutting expenses and building more and moreof cost centers across the world, the quality while not the prime factor will be a concern. Finding middle ground btwn quality work and cost efficiency is a tough ask when like you correctly mentioned the presence of cultural inequities, short sighted goalsetting in an international business.
While Dave won’t be willing to stretch an additional hour (w/o extra pay), there’s a Dev who’s willing to go for 4 extra hours for a quarter of the american counterpart’s pay. Qualitywise, it’ll be time before Dev catches up with Dave, moreover if the quality was ‘that’ bad… we wouldn’t have survived this long…would we?