[grey_whiskers]

I think the problem is (whether "diversity" or the "all Indians have an IQ of 300" syndrome began it) is that a few Indians gravitated to influential positions in tech industries and began hiring their countrymen like mad.

And (as I have seen repeatedly from experience) they share knowledge and finish each other's work to make sure they *all* look good, much more than Americans. And they "freeze out" those whom they perceive to be a threat.

The catch is, most of the Indians I have seen are good at *absorbing* information, but not at creative, independent thinking. So when you need to go outside the box, they begin to spin their wheels, and blow smoke.

E.g. the whole "capability maturity model" covers management's process for managing the project; it doesn't do anything about whether the code under the hood is any good, or manageable, or easily modified.

As far as managing, by the way, it is not only the lower labor cost, but the fact that all of the higher costs associated with the offshoring/outsourcing get divided among a large number of different accounting buckets:

--more managerial time giving instructions

--rework

--late nights/early mornings for trans-global phone meetings

--missed days caused by a problem arising after the other side of the Earth has gone to bed

--blind alleys where the requirements were not written *EXPLICITLY* and so someone just "took a guess" and never verified

etc. etc.

Cheers!

[mbraynard]

You know what? All of those problems are common insourcing with American firms, too. Except, for many of these tasks, the American firms are 10x more expensive.

I've sourced to China, India, Eastern Europe, South America, France, and all over the US. Right now I am US exclusive except for some data entry-type tasks. The only heuristic is that there are no heuristics.

And even when I find myself wanting to come up with a generalization for a sex or a geography, like magic, someone comes along and proves me wrong.

[OpeEdMunkey]

FWIW Indians do not count for any diversity measures since they are not an official minority in our country.