NYT: Skills Gap Hurts Technology Boom in India

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/world/asia/17india.html?hp&ex=1161057600&en=33dd8a85cda25a4e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

As its technology companies soar to the outsourcing skies, India is bumping up against an improbable challenge. In a country once regarded as a bottomless well of low-cost, ready-to-work, English-speaking engineers, a shortage looms.

India still produces plenty of engineers, nearly 400,000 a year at last count. But their competence has become the issue.

A study commissioned by a trade group, the National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom, found only one in four engineering graduates to be employable. The rest were deficient in the required technical skills, fluency in English or ability to work in a team or deliver basic oral presentations.

The skills gap reflects the narrow availability of high-quality college education in India and the galloping pace of the country’s service-driven economy, which is growing faster than nearly all but China’s. The software and service companies provide technology services to foreign companies, many of them based in the United States. Software exports alone expanded by 33 percent in the last year.

The university systems of few countries would be able to keep up with such demand, and India is certainly having trouble. The best and most selective universities generate too few graduates, and new private colleges are producing graduates of uneven quality.

[Bitwit1234]

1. Graduating

Well, what these colleges are learning is just cause you have a degree does not mean you know what you are doing. I think if you can make the grade you should not pass the course. Just remember how well you learn helps you in the future.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. There has been a lot of talk in the IT industry...

About the shoddy quality of the work product that comes out of India. Another problem is that the costs have a nasty habit of ballooning about 6 months into the contract.

So much for another panacae.

[rwenos]

3. Good News for American Engineers

I don't mean to be insensitive, but this is probably good news for American software jocks. As awesome as the Indian progress has been, I'd rather see Americans (in my neighborhood, many of which are of Indian extraction) get those jobs.

Free trade has a dark side, mates.

[MADem]

4. Maybe India will come up with a guest worker program for out of work

Americans....sure, you get less pay, but it costs less to live over there, too!! Think of it as a working holiday!!!!! Here's your visa, come on over!

[FormerOstrich]

5. More bad developers....

I think what is really the case is moving the IT work from the US to India didn't solve all the problems. Once again, all the ills falls on the developers, this time the Indian ones.

I seriously doubt if lack of education is all of it. I use to interview Indian candidates. I was always amazed at how much more education the Indian developers had versus the US.

I can't count the number of times I've seen a worthless management crew, that did not have a clue about which they were tasked to do, constantly blame the Software Engineers. I've seen so much development get shelved that was not for lack of technical skills, but for lack of management and/or organizational issues.

I have expected all along that they would soon find the Indian developers were as worthless as the US developers which are as worthless as their damn leaders (only not paid nearly as well). But you won't here any mega-dollar CEO standing up and saying I just didn't understand the nature of the beast.

[OhioChick]

6. This is why

only one fourth of the projects are usable when they have to be re-written back here in the states.

on edit: morning spelling

[mikeytherat]

7. Stereotyping and racism bite the ass of the stereotyping racists!

In the early '90s, I interviewed quite a few Indian engineers. These folks were the best of the best - the brightest, hardest working, and most-connected, as they were able to travel to the US for some or all of their higher education. During this time, I heard more than one manager make assumptions that "they" (Indians) must ALL be like that, and wouldn't it be great to have all the workers be like them. The possibility of Indian slackers never occurred to them. Since the Indians who worked for us were skilled, dedicated and hard-working, management thought they could extrapolate that to cover an entire continent. Funny that we lowly worker bees could see the folly...

mikey_the_rat

[AndyTiedye]

8. All the Best Engineers in India Have Been Hired Long Ago

Those who try to hire engineers on the cheap in India now find themselves scraping the bottom of the barrel.

If you want good people, you'll have to pay what it takes to hire them away from your competitors, just like here.

The value of the dollar has also dropped quite a bit since the outsourcing boom began, further increasing the costs.