Posted on 06/24/2009 6:13:28 PM PDT by Flavius
HCL Technologies is one of India's most powerful and respected tech firms. The company scored a massive $170M USD outsourcing contract from Microsoft last year. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer lavished them with praise, stating, "That extra mile walk by the team (at HCL) has increased our mutual trust and has taken our relationship to newer heights. "
Now HCL's CEO Vineet Nayar has gone on record with some controversial remarks about the quality of American technology college graduates. Tired of hearing stereotypes about Indian tech grads, Mr. Nayar, speaking before an audience of business partners in New York City, blasted American tech grads as "unemployable".
He elaborated that he views American tech grads as inferior to those from India, China, and Brazil as the Americans only want to "get rich" and dream up "the next big thing". He says students from countries like India, China, and Brazil are more willing to put the effort into "boring" details of tech process and methodology, such as ITIL, Six Sigma, etc.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytech.com ...
Out of 15 new grads that I just interviewed, I wouldn't hire even one of them.
They don't want to pay their dues, they want to start at the top. They come in demanding to earn what someone with 10 or 15 years experience is earning with 4 or 5 weeks vacation right off the bat. And them with absolutely no experience at all.
When asked why they feel that they should be compensated in this manner, I'm told that this is what their professors have told them they should be receiving immediately upon graduation.
It's really obscene what they hold as their requirements if they choose your company to go to work for.
So the attitude with new grad engineers has not chnged since the late 80’s. Right out of college, the engineering position is seen only as a steppingstone into management, and the only valid goal is the executive suite. No technical curiosity, some of the worst cookie cutter work, and the excuse that once in management, the kid does not have to know anything technical. Believe it or not there was one engineering firm in Houston that for a while had some HR people encouraging that attitude.
So now I’m in management in a small engineering/tech service company, and I still have to know the tech stuff since I have to design/program/commission some of it as well.
IT governance, stuff that CIO's love to talk about but don't practice. Makes IBM and the other bandits lots of money make lots of suits lots of money.
Man you guys are total tight wades....What kind of engineering shop are you...damn...
More demanding then MIT what a load....Many can barely speak English.
I wonder if their lack of a work ethic and poor interviewing skills is due in part to no required summer internship. One hand-on engineering school in Maine has a very good power engineering program and the students are required to work 3 months under faculty supervision at a power plant for 2 summers. They learn what is expected of them in the workforce and seem to be ready to go to work after graduation.
Each graduate of this program received 2-3 job offers after graduation this past month.
If an engineering student at the college came to an interview like that, his/her professor would send them back to his or her room to change. If the professor did not, the director of career services would.
What a steaming pile of poo. Indians (among others) work for peanuts, that is why they get the business.
Darn! Too late for me. I'm over 50 now; spent 14 years as a WAN manager (started in the days when a 9600 BAUD modem was the size of a shoebox).
Took the company I worked for through MUXes and into frame-relay circuit routers. This was back in the day when there weren't too many people who handled multi-WAN circuits; I had over 70 coming into our server farms and you could not just turn on RIP and let 'em run - these were all separate clients, they could not be allowed to be able to see each other's data, much less take up BW.
Got cut in the '01 "recession and downsizing. Got a lot of interviews, but only a few callbacks and NO job offers. You'll forgive me if I believe they went with younger people, as I always saw much younger people than me wating to be interviewd, too.
Now I'm back in school studying healthcare. I figure older people would feel more comfortable dealing with me than some pierced and tattooed young'un, and hospital admins realize that, too.
That's pretty respectable pay for the engineering equivalent of an apprentice. A few years of real-world experience and they'll be at the $60K+ level.
I'm old-school - I'm in a technical field, having worked my way up to my position through the years. I work along side some electrical engineers. Oddly, the more recent hiring practices seem to support hiring engineers with no experience over experienced personnel with no degree or a degree in another discipline (I have a degree in business administration, which is all but useless in my line of work). Anyway, these young engineers have to be "broken" much like a new recruit in the military - they are full of ego and theory, but short on practical knowledge. The good ones shed that attitude in a few months. The hopeless ones never shed the attitude, often to their own detriment.
So, if there is a takeaway, Americans have a high standard deviation: the smartest and the dumbest. The Indians have a a very low standard deviation: a few dunces, a few brilliant ones, a sea of mediocre. I definitely do not see what this Indian CEO sees!
I asked one of my Indian friends about this quality problem, and he said that Indians are not allowed to be creative in India. He said they are taught to obey orders and always say yes. He has lived here a long time, and he said he too was that way for the first few years.
This mentality has crept into every area. I was speaking with a coworker today about townhomes that are under contract for $250,000 and $312,000 . . . with FHA loans. This is not in New York or California, it's in Georgia. Hell, my first two houses put together don't come close to that much.
We have lots of friends with two incomes and big houses. Up to their eyeballs in debt and panicking heavily. They all thought they got to start where their parents left off.
I don't really see this as obscene. If a grad came to me and demanded 300K, I would say no, and he'd be on his way. People can ask whatever they want, and they should. At some point, reality smacks them, and they take what they can get. As far as I'm concerned, there is no obscene price, just the beauty of economics. :)
“Man you guys are total tight wades....What kind of engineering shop are you...damn...”
Tight wads for offering $45K to a 22 year old fresh out of college in DFW?
I don’t think so. That is good wages for someone with ZERO real world experience.
I looked it up. It sounds a lot like Six Sigma. It makes the training companies a ton of money but doesn't really create anything new.
Six Sigma IS a joke
I've got a beef about interviewing in a suit and think they're out of date for most jobs. However, I've never had anyone come for an interview without shaving. I don't interview often, though. If anyone ever came to me without shaving, had inappropriate clothing (flip flops are way beyond that point), tattoos or piercings, I'd show him or her the door.
I have worked with a lot of Indian IT people and cannot understand most of them. I communicate with them mostly via email or IM. Their english is hard to understand in person and way worse over the phone. Anything I do that involves interfacing with them takes a lot longer because of the communication barrier. Is the amount of money that corporations save by using cheap Indian IT people worth the amount of losses caused by the communication issues?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.