ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by ham-shank

They are 'hire-able' and many are also very good. However, they are not as cheap nor as 'flexible' as their Indian competitors. To give an example, the Company to which I was recently contracted to in SE UK had an IT Dept of several hundred that was, apart from a few departmental heads, made up exclusively of male Indian staff. None was an employee and responsibility for tax and NI contributions lay with the agency that had brought them over to the UK. The contracting company was responsible only for paying the absolute minimum fee that would allow an individual to meet the minimum annual salary rules that would qualify them for a 'professional' visa.The agency, furthermore, owns numerous properties in neighbouring towns which are used to house these guys in not the most comfortable of conditions (4 bed house converted to hold 12 people etc) and they are bussed into work each day. These guys pay a premium for the accomodation and the transport out of salaries that are only mildly better than official minimum wage. Many of these guys can be found moonlighting outside of the professional work for which they were originally issued a visa and most of their net pay is sent back to India, either to support families, to pay back education loans or to pay back agency fixers who got them a lucrative agency place. Very little of this money will be re-circulated into the UK economy. The whole system is a corrupt and corrupting charade which, far from helping or stimulating the overall UK economy, is allowing large multi-national corporations and shady employment agencies with only a passing relationship to the UK, to abuse the professional visa system and input nothing into the wider economy.

Exactly, They work for the smaller wages because they can afford to. And unlike the Brits, they dont have the luxury of spending it all on UK, heck why should they? They are a Cheap, and good labour force. surely your company thinks it can extract work at a higher cost efficiency from them than the ones in the UK, no? Why else should they employ them in the first place?

Again, by that logic, we can ask our Govt to ban the investments(thats what this is about ;)) going to UK and the Imports to UK. You see we are a poor country and we cant afford to import from your country and lose investment to your country. So we are better off investing the money in India and Making the local manufacturer produce it than import it from England, or import it from the countries like France or Germany who dont make a fuss like this. As i said, Tit for tat. By that we can protect the Indian companies here, now can we do that?

Whilst it may be a good move for your average Indian IT graduate since, even on minimum wage, they'll earn far more in the UK than in India, and outsourcing multi-nationals, the UK is being shortchanged and the next generation of indigenous UK IT professionals will see themselves undercut by distinctly average IT workers from India who, in the majority of cases. will be in the visa system solely on the basis that they could stump up the cash to pay an agency fixer. Do you think this is a satisfactory situation? I would suggest that you take note of the unpleasant situation that has recently been highlighted in Southall, Greater London. Hundreds of Indian nationals are living rough in the area after entering the UK illegally or outstaying their visas. All had jobs at some time (either legally or on the black) but were undercut by even more desperate Indians and Bangladeshis who are working as manual labourers, waiters etc for the princely sums of £15 a day in many cases. What happens when the agencies become increasingly greedy (as they are want to do) and start paying less than minimum wage and reducing earnings to those that can be found in India? It benefits nobody, not Indian economic migrants, not indigenous IT workers in the UK, nor the UK economy.

In my opinion, the reason the Indians are so upset about the changes is that the options for graft and corruption, so representative of the Indian elite, may have been curtailed.

Actually no. This is not about protecting the illegal ones staying there. If you confuse it with that, then it is not really worth debating about:(

Originally Posted by Grownup_Rafbrat

Add to that the ones who come to the UK for their twelve weeks' training (to take over from people who have been running the systems for years) then go back to India, resign because they have 'UK experience' and can get more money elsewhere, and leave an untrained colleague to cover. Or as you say, the original UK staff brought back/retained to fix the mess.

you are talking about people who back to India , about whom this is not even about. Why dont you comment on the stuff which is at hand?

And Such people are our concern and not your problem. You dont have to worry about that.

Also the total inability to report progress accurately? 'Of course it will be ready on time.' 'Are you sure?' 'Why, yes'. Right up to the deadline, when 'It will be ready tomorrow.' and tomorrow. and tomorrow. and tomorrow.

And hence why are your firms ready to pay up those Indians there if it is going to cause them delays and stuff? Unless of course there is a a better efficiency in paying up the Indians for that work and not the Brits?

Originally Posted by PBUH

Can't "like" this enough. I have lost several "trained" staff to the "UK experience thing"' people who had promised they would not do that. I have also had to delay go live dates twice for that exact reason in the last 9 months. But they aren't bothered because it's not them that has to face the customer and take the flak and loss of personal reputation.

Tomorrow never comes


And no-one has mentioned the "common language" issue yet. Telecons are a nightmare. Whether people like it or not so much time is lost due top people not being tuned to each other"s accent, vocal grammar, speed of speech etc

And yet your firms employ Indians, right? Thats because it is still far more economically efficient to employ Indians for that job, despite those problems. Thats the truth

I work for a big software multinational. The company has offices in a wide variety of countries including India. Many of the Indian offices are in Bangalore (I've been there - and shit myself in the traffic...)

The general policy my company has vis a vis Indians (as far as I can tell) is:

- Use them for basic coding. Don't give them complex tasks to do.

- Maintain the 'intellectual/high cost' side of the operation in the US and Europe.

- Cherry pick the very best of the Indian employees and give them the opportunity to move to the US.

This model of doing the high volume/low skilled coding in India has three flaws:

- As was mentioned earlier, there can be a high cost of remediation.

- There is a high level of job turnover in India. As soon as an India employee gets enough on their CV to apply for a higher paid job, they're off. This means they gain a lot of superficial knowledge, but its not a deep knowledge.

- Inflation in India is running at about 10% long term. This is eroding the 'low cost' advantage of using India.

As such Indian people coming to the UK don't really impact on me.

As to the skill levels, I think they are on average lower in India, but there are exceptions. The developer I'm working with at the moment is a class act. Conversely, I've just helped out a developer in the US with information on some functionality. On a scale of 1 - 10 for knowledge, he's a Norway....

Wordsmith

Originally Posted by Mad Indian

Mate, i suggest you to broaden your mind and look beyond the protectionist mindset. What about the stuff UK exports? Can the Importing countries ban it too, for protecting their local goods? Tit for Tat? If UK does not respect free trade and thinks about banning imports(here Services) then what will happen if the other countries don't import your stuff?

is this on on your induction course..??..together with 'plates of meat/apples 'n' pears/me 'ol' china..today its 'M8'..

Originally Posted by Mad Indian

Exactly, They work for the smaller wages because they can afford to. And unlike the Brits, they dont have the luxury of spending it all on UK, heck why should they? They are a Cheap, and good labour force. surely your company thinks it can extract work at a higher cost efficiency from them than the ones in the UK, no? Why else should they employ them in the first place?

Again, by that logic, we can ask our Govt to ban the investments(thats what this is about ;)) going to UK and the Imports to UK. You see we are a poor country and we cant afford to import from your country and lose investment to your country. So we are better off investing the money in India and Making the local manufacturer produce it than import it from England, or import it from the countries like France or Germany who dont make a fuss like this. As i said, Tit for tat. By that we can protect the Indian companies here, now can we do that?



Actually no. This is not about protecting the illegal ones staying there. If you confuse it with that, then it is not really worth debating about:(

I don't think you quite understand the underlying premise of what I am trying to say here. So, let's get a few things straight:

1. India does not have an IT industry in the pure sense. It has no IT R&D to speak of and Indian IT 'development' is mediocre at best . The Indian export market doesn't, on the whole, export cutting edge knowledge or talent. It exports bodies. Period. Saying that India has a IT industry is like saying that they have an aircraft industry because Gate Gourmet employs a predominantly Indian workforce to service airline catering. India provides, at best, services TO the IT industry in the UK.

2. The Indian Government is pissed that its 'talent' is being required to show a minimum of a Master's degree and a basic salary of £20,000+ in order to qualify for a 'professional' visa for the UK. Join the club, mate! My daughter has a First in software and architecture engineering from Imperial College. London and is working towards a PhD (part-time and at her own expense) in some unfathomably niche IT field. The multi-national she works for refuses to sponsor her studies or give her study leave but has her leading £multi-million development contracts. She routinely mentors her Indian colleagues in her spare time because a) they have nowhere near the skills she has to undertake the task in hand and b) she risks being fired for underperformance as a project leader as her charges are pretty much clueless for all the reasons PUBH has listed in his previous posts Her salary? £18000 a year. She was fortunate not to be forced to pay the new yearly fees of £9000 a year that are being introduced by the British Government but still has a student loan of £15000 to pay off. Had I not helped her out financially, she would be looking at paying back treble that. I'm not a rich man by any stretch of the imagination and I have been forced. like many Indian parents, to make sacrifices for my child'd education. However, she does have a degree from a top tier university which she got on merit and hard work, not a piece of paper from a 'private' technology conveyor belt in India based on how much she could pay the principal.

3. You talk of Indians being a cheap and good labour force. I agree. They are cheap and are abused by both agencies and multi-nationals. They are probably a good workforce because, between them, the contracting companies and the agencies they employ in the UK have Indian nationals so far over a barrel that individuals daren't challenge the status quo and stand up for their basic employment rights. That, Sir or Madam. is the only thing that seperates Indian and British IT workers.

4. You ask why companies employ mediocre Indian contractors? Because they can. You seem to think that there is a correlation between the employment of Indian workers and their efficiency. There isn't. They're cheap, don't complain and are not on headcount, therefore this can be introduced to Company shareholders as a profit margin and a 'throw-away' minimal investment. If you had any experience of how multi-nationals operate, you'd see this advantage also.

5. I'm not having a pop at you or Indians in general. I'm just laying it out as it is. If you think you can come along with illiterate nonsense to justify your smugness as the rising sun of the BRICS (BTW India's sun is starting to go down in that respect), think again. India accounts for 2.6% of the EU’s total exports and 2.2% of the EU’s total imports. You're not indispensable. Pride comes before a fall and India's next step is creaking.

Finally, we in the UK have always had a problem with illegal immigration. Indian migrants are just part of the problem. What I was trying to say was that in the near future, Indian 'talent' will no longer be needed as other fast growing economies will have your cheap advantage out from underneath your feet like a worn-out old rug. And where will your smugness get you then?

Fuck em. We've got plenty of unemployed and under-employed British IT professionals and graduates. We don't need India's.

I read somewhere that the EU was conducting trade negotiations with India, and their number one wish was for more visas for Indian citizens to come to EU countries. Britain will get most of them of course. http://migrationwatchuk.com/briefingPaper/document/209