Is India a space of incompetent software developers?
Very often, I have heard that Indian developers lack in quality when compared to their Western counterparts. Development teams in Western countries often blame their offshore peers for slowing them down. It has been said that Indians are technically incompetent, write poor code and have poor problem-solving skills.
Do you agree? Do you really think that Indians do not possess the quality and intellect to outwit developers in the West?
A fair percentage of the technology wizards working for the technology giants across the world are Indians and we are considered top quality resources there. However, the quality of most IT professionals working in India is debatable.
Where does that point to? Do Indians exhibit low quality characteristics only when they work in India?
Here’s why I think Indian developers pale in comparison to those in the West.
1. Developer by chance and not by choice
IT jobs are some of the most luring white-collar options for Indian engineers. A good percentage of students land in engineering courses due to parental/peer pressure. Even those with non-IT background end up choosing IT jobs at campus interviews, attracted by their hefty pay packages. They are usually not driven by any real interest for the profession but just go with the flow as it is a good source of income. Many such resources work mechanically, without understanding what they do and become the so-called “Ctl + C, Ctl +V” developers. This explains why they write poor code which in turn makes their jobs more stressful and less interesting.
2. Ineffective college education
College education in our country aims to mould graduates with high scores. A good percentage of students mug up textbooks, acquiring no practical knowledge of the subject. It also goes without saying that most teachers rely on books than any real practical experience.
New technical information is said to double every two years. For students starting a four year long technical degree, half of what they learn in their first year of study gets outdated by their third year of study. With effective syllabus updating only a distant dream, it is imperative to understand that the years spent in college does not complete a students’ learning process, but only lays a foundation for enhanced learning throughout their career.
3.Trapped in echo chambers
There is a vast majority of developers in our community who are trapped in ‘echo chambers’, unaware of the technological advancements happening around them, focused only on what they already know, and unwilling to budge from their comfort zones. Mostly, they are unaware of their ignorance, and believe that they are the masters of their craft.
The situation of the rare few who do try to learn by themselves, is not perfect either. They have an entry barrier as the technology space has become crowded with highways and cross-roads of technology jargon. A supportive ecosystem that helps developers to trace relevant updates and gauge themselves against the industry standards is missing in our community.
Thus a developer tends to learn only under compulsive situations and stays passive otherwise.
4. Non-coding managers
Most IT professionals in our community are in a rat-race to acquire a minimum of five years of experience and get promoted as Team Leads in their company pyramid. Other than for their salary hike, what the Team Lead tag often gives a developer is the option to not code. They make do with the technology they already know and focuses more on assigning tasks to their team members, spending their hours filling excel sheets. This is a vicious cycle that causes technology stagnation and stunts the growth of developer resources.
5. Task-oriented work-life
An enthusiastic developer landing a job of his interest and falling prey to the monotonous routine of task-oriented 9-to-6 work-life in the company, is a common sight in the IT industry. An overload of unnecessary policies without humane consideration in companies, ends up hindering the growth of an employee. Each policy implemented is a choice removed from an employee’s interest-book. These policies are really strong enough to kill the passion of an IT professional and make his job boring.
This lifestyle fits him in a loop which ultimately makes him feel that his job is just to accomplish a set of assigned ‘tasks’ that has to be done for someone else. This makes them limit to somehow complete his/her task easily at a minimum quality standard.
6. Companies Treat developers as moving crowd
Attrition has now become commonplace for all IT Companies in India. I consider companies as equally responsible for this problem. Even though they provide attractive packages at the time of hiring, they try to be stringent while giving hikes. Eventually new hires will be paid higher than the people who stay. This made a trend of job hopping among developers for better packages which in turn increased attrition rates.
As the attrition rate is higher, companies consider developers as moving crowd. Training developers in new technologies is considered as a dead investment as it will enable them to perform better in interviews to switch jobs.
Thus companies find it convenient to hire new people to handle new technologies instead of upgrading their existing employees. Even the training provided by many companies in their respective technologies is highly specific to their tasks. Developers rarely get a complete outlook of the technology in most of these cases and remain within the shell.
7. Dormant Tech Communities
In the West, they have ecosystems with strong and active technology communities that accelerate its learning and adoption. They involve in these communities with utmost enthusiasm and passion. While in India, even though we have a good number of tech communities, majority are dormant as they face a lack of participation. Our developers make excuses for having no time to learn or be part of any technology community as they are always under pressure at work to meet the ever-present DEADLINES.
8. Negligible Open Source contribution
Open source is a huge platform for bringing better technology to the world. It provides an opportunity for developers to tweak and improve their skills to match industry standards. They are encouraged to collaborate with the best brains of the world to develop technology by solving real world problems.
But our community has negligible open source contribution. This is because most of them feel that it is of some other standards beyond their reach. Even when they use open source libraries, they simply copy-paste, and wouldn’t try to understand how it works. They dislike reading or understanding code written by others. This attitude prevents them from improving their coding standards.
Without having a strong community that practice open source contribution, it is hard for us to break this barrier.
9. The non-existent conversations
There is nothing more neglected and unthought of than the lack of effective communication skills that young and even veteran developers possess. It is quite depressing to see highly skilled development professionals unable to convey their ideas effectively with others, both during client meetings and within their respective teams.
More often, they believe coding is the end of story and wouldn’t require anymore talk at all. But in reality, coding is only one aspect of the job, the rest of it being the systematic conveyance of ideas and code to their colleagues and clients to make sure that in the end, they both are on the same page when executing time consuming projects.
The notorious ‘Yes’ men in companies who are poor at communication are creating more confusion than progress all in an effort to avoid deep conversations and lengthy client meetings.
This crucial skill has caused tremendous loss of opportunities simply because of a lack in communication skills or the nonexistent ‘connection’ people may experience among colleagues who work in a team.
Conclusion
Indians do have the quality and intellect. However, majority of potential talents are underutilized/not utilized at all due to the lack of a proper ecosystem to attain the most desired Industry standards.
We need to equip ourselves with the right growth mind-set that will empower us to be the ‘best’ in our trade. An ecosystem with active technology communities and companies promoting participation of their employees in such communities should help our resources break the echo chambers they are currently in.
Being the topmost youth power in the world, India has the true potential than any other country to be a Super Power of the IT Landscape.
It is as Darwin said ,“It is not the strongest, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change”.
Be prepared for the change as it is the only ‘constant’ in our Industry.
P.S. : I don’t agree that all the developers in western countries are of high quality. Lack of quality is a problem everywhere, but unlike ours, they have a good percentage of technology geeks who are contributing to push the technology framework forward.
