Developers in Russia and India - the view of the technical director
Disclaimer: I am aware that the “Hindu code” is a very strong negative brand among developers in Russia and most of the heads have a lot of prejudice on this topic. I would not like to get chauvinist srach in the comments, although I am almost sure that this can not be avoided. I am also pretty sure that my Indian colleagues will read this post at least in translation. So let's try to look like civilized professionals in questions and comments.
My professional career was such that at the moment I work as a technical director at Knoema and a very unusual team consisting of Russian (Perm) and Indian (Bangalore) developers was in my submission. For almost 2 years of such work, many useful observations have accumulated. And in general the topic is quite interesting because almost all of my IT friends know how it is there in India and how Russian developers differ from Indian ones. Before that, I had been working in software development in Russia and the USA for more than 10 years, of which for more than 7 years I was the head of various ranks. So I decided to share the accumulated "international" experience.
I wanted to start with the fact that although there are quite significant differences, but in general, specific people work in IT, not Indians or Russians, and I observe much more fluctuations on a personal level than I see differences in mentality or local specifics.
In my opinion, the biggest differences between India and Russia are in the process of hiring employees, and I must say honestly, I like the situation in India much less than in Russia. The main difference lies in the fact that in India resumes of specialists cannot be completely trusted and it is necessary to carry out a thorough selection before hiring people.
In Russia (in Perm) you rarely find a resume of a technical specialist with a length of more than 2 pages. Most of the techies do not know how to advertise themselves and apply through the resume, many people write it only to have it. But if there is a resume, then, as a rule, the information in it can generally be trusted. If a person writes that he is an expert in C # and MS.NET, then it probably will.
')
In India, a typical resume is a wrapper on 10 pages with a list of a lot of different technologies, a lot of projects, roles and tasks performed. In general, the resume is gold, not people. In practice, if a person has ever participated in a project that uses technology X and has never touched it himself, then he can calmly indicate it in the summary. Knowledge of all the technologies and frameworks you need to be surely and thoroughly checked during interviews. I have repeatedly encountered cases of blatant lies, when a person must have a good experience with a certain technology on a resume, but in reality there is zero knowledge. With these, I parted immediately.
Another unpleasant problem in India is that even after the interview passed and the offer accepted, there is no guarantee that a person will come to work. The standard practice in India is the so-called notice period in which the employee is obliged to work for the company, usually 45-60 days after the submission of the letter of resignation. In Russia, as a rule, if a person has already written a letter of resignation from his current job, then with a high degree of probability you will see him in 2 weeks, or a little more if he agreed with the employer. In India, the person who signed the job offer disappears from your sight for a month or two and a half, and this often leads to the fact that it disappears altogether. The normal situation is absenteeism at a specified time, although before that they had called each other weekly and confirmed the date of arrival at work.
A positive moment in India is still a much wider market of specialists and, in absolute figures, a greater number of interesting candidates. In Bangalore alone, it works in the IT industry for a hundred thousand people. Of course, far from all of them are developers and high-quality, but still interesting candidates are much more. It should also be noted that in Bangalore and significantly higher competition among employers, because almost all the major global software companies have opened development centers there.
In general, being a developer in India is very prestigious and is a good social elevator for many. On the general rather poor social background, experienced developers have very good salaries and can afford a lot relative to other social strata. Accordingly, many aspire to this sector and natural selection does its job. Do not forget that in India there are 1.2 billion people and the current world chess champion is Hindu.
In my subjective view, there is no fundamental difference between developers in Russia and India. I work talented guys in India and exactly the same talented in Russia. I do not see any fundamental difference in the level and knowledge. Very likely this is due to my strict selection criteria. From my point of view, the “Hindu code” is such a Russian myth, based on not the most successful work experience. In India, there are really a lot of those whom we call “govnocoders” (sorry for the expression), working at the outsourcing of doing what if and like issuing a “Hindu code”. But in Russia it is also full of unrecognized geniuses, which are commonly called bydlokodery. Just because of the incomparable absolute values in India, this effect is much more noticeable than in Russia (1200 vs. 140 million people).
One very important and serious competitive advantage of India is that all more or less serious specialists speak English at a good level. In this regard, Russian specialists are losing out on Indian and, in my opinion, this is why so few well-known Russian international names in IT are.
The salaries of developers of the same level in Perm and in Bangalore are almost the same. If you compare with Moscow or St. Petersburg, the intelligent developer in Bangalore will cost significantly less. Compared to the USA and Europe, the difference will be even more noticeable. Coupled with quality English, this is what made India so attractive for IT outsourcing.
In terms of mentality, there are two significant differences. Hindus, like many other Asian nations, are not very fond of direct and tough conversations on difficult or unpleasant topics. Often you have to elicit answers to simple, binary questions to which people, if the answer is unpleasant for them, try to answer evasively, and not yes or no. It is noticeable that the requirement of a direct response causes them to break the pattern. On the other hand, there is less sharpness in everyday communication, people communicate more culturally and more responsibly. In Russia, nevertheless, it is not uncommon for them to first say and then think. Another important cultural moment is that some Indians will lie more than conditionally lose face. It should be stopped in the bud and explain to people that screw it up is not fatal and happens to everyone.
The second important difference is that in my opinion the Russians are more creative and creative in their work, and the Indians are more executive and controllable. I think the phenomenon of “creative crisis” is familiar to many IT managers in Russia: “they don’t appreciate me,” “do some kind of garbage”, “there is no free billiard”. Among the Hindus, I practically do not notice these creative problems, they are more than mercantile and the level of salary and position is more important for them than for Russians.
Summing up, I would like to note that in our team the Russians and Hindus work together on common code, they communicate perfectly perfectly via Skype, mail, and the output seems to be even something sensible :-) Maybe I am cruelly mistaken, but it seems to me that I like both Hindus and Russians because the possibility of regular communication with representatives of another country and culture, anyway, useful experience is well expanding horizons. We all together, as well as haborgiteli, firmly believe in karma :-) and try to increase it only by giving out a quality code, reviewing the code and helping each other.
In the article I covered only the main points. I will try to answer the questions in the comments. Thanks for attention.
My professional career was such that at the moment I work as a technical director at Knoema and a very unusual team consisting of Russian (Perm) and Indian (Bangalore) developers was in my submission. For almost 2 years of such work, many useful observations have accumulated. And in general the topic is quite interesting because almost all of my IT friends know how it is there in India and how Russian developers differ from Indian ones. Before that, I had been working in software development in Russia and the USA for more than 10 years, of which for more than 7 years I was the head of various ranks. So I decided to share the accumulated "international" experience.
I wanted to start with the fact that although there are quite significant differences, but in general, specific people work in IT, not Indians or Russians, and I observe much more fluctuations on a personal level than I see differences in mentality or local specifics.
Hiring employees
In my opinion, the biggest differences between India and Russia are in the process of hiring employees, and I must say honestly, I like the situation in India much less than in Russia. The main difference lies in the fact that in India resumes of specialists cannot be completely trusted and it is necessary to carry out a thorough selection before hiring people.
In Russia (in Perm) you rarely find a resume of a technical specialist with a length of more than 2 pages. Most of the techies do not know how to advertise themselves and apply through the resume, many people write it only to have it. But if there is a resume, then, as a rule, the information in it can generally be trusted. If a person writes that he is an expert in C # and MS.NET, then it probably will.
')
In India, a typical resume is a wrapper on 10 pages with a list of a lot of different technologies, a lot of projects, roles and tasks performed. In general, the resume is gold, not people. In practice, if a person has ever participated in a project that uses technology X and has never touched it himself, then he can calmly indicate it in the summary. Knowledge of all the technologies and frameworks you need to be surely and thoroughly checked during interviews. I have repeatedly encountered cases of blatant lies, when a person must have a good experience with a certain technology on a resume, but in reality there is zero knowledge. With these, I parted immediately.
Another unpleasant problem in India is that even after the interview passed and the offer accepted, there is no guarantee that a person will come to work. The standard practice in India is the so-called notice period in which the employee is obliged to work for the company, usually 45-60 days after the submission of the letter of resignation. In Russia, as a rule, if a person has already written a letter of resignation from his current job, then with a high degree of probability you will see him in 2 weeks, or a little more if he agreed with the employer. In India, the person who signed the job offer disappears from your sight for a month or two and a half, and this often leads to the fact that it disappears altogether. The normal situation is absenteeism at a specified time, although before that they had called each other weekly and confirmed the date of arrival at work.
A positive moment in India is still a much wider market of specialists and, in absolute figures, a greater number of interesting candidates. In Bangalore alone, it works in the IT industry for a hundred thousand people. Of course, far from all of them are developers and high-quality, but still interesting candidates are much more. It should also be noted that in Bangalore and significantly higher competition among employers, because almost all the major global software companies have opened development centers there.
In general, being a developer in India is very prestigious and is a good social elevator for many. On the general rather poor social background, experienced developers have very good salaries and can afford a lot relative to other social strata. Accordingly, many aspire to this sector and natural selection does its job. Do not forget that in India there are 1.2 billion people and the current world chess champion is Hindu.
Level of specialists
In my subjective view, there is no fundamental difference between developers in Russia and India. I work talented guys in India and exactly the same talented in Russia. I do not see any fundamental difference in the level and knowledge. Very likely this is due to my strict selection criteria. From my point of view, the “Hindu code” is such a Russian myth, based on not the most successful work experience. In India, there are really a lot of those whom we call “govnocoders” (sorry for the expression), working at the outsourcing of doing what if and like issuing a “Hindu code”. But in Russia it is also full of unrecognized geniuses, which are commonly called bydlokodery. Just because of the incomparable absolute values in India, this effect is much more noticeable than in Russia (1200 vs. 140 million people).
One very important and serious competitive advantage of India is that all more or less serious specialists speak English at a good level. In this regard, Russian specialists are losing out on Indian and, in my opinion, this is why so few well-known Russian international names in IT are.
Salaries
The salaries of developers of the same level in Perm and in Bangalore are almost the same. If you compare with Moscow or St. Petersburg, the intelligent developer in Bangalore will cost significantly less. Compared to the USA and Europe, the difference will be even more noticeable. Coupled with quality English, this is what made India so attractive for IT outsourcing.
Mentality
In terms of mentality, there are two significant differences. Hindus, like many other Asian nations, are not very fond of direct and tough conversations on difficult or unpleasant topics. Often you have to elicit answers to simple, binary questions to which people, if the answer is unpleasant for them, try to answer evasively, and not yes or no. It is noticeable that the requirement of a direct response causes them to break the pattern. On the other hand, there is less sharpness in everyday communication, people communicate more culturally and more responsibly. In Russia, nevertheless, it is not uncommon for them to first say and then think. Another important cultural moment is that some Indians will lie more than conditionally lose face. It should be stopped in the bud and explain to people that screw it up is not fatal and happens to everyone.
The second important difference is that in my opinion the Russians are more creative and creative in their work, and the Indians are more executive and controllable. I think the phenomenon of “creative crisis” is familiar to many IT managers in Russia: “they don’t appreciate me,” “do some kind of garbage”, “there is no free billiard”. Among the Hindus, I practically do not notice these creative problems, they are more than mercantile and the level of salary and position is more important for them than for Russians.
Summing up, I would like to note that in our team the Russians and Hindus work together on common code, they communicate perfectly perfectly via Skype, mail, and the output seems to be even something sensible :-) Maybe I am cruelly mistaken, but it seems to me that I like both Hindus and Russians because the possibility of regular communication with representatives of another country and culture, anyway, useful experience is well expanding horizons. We all together, as well as haborgiteli, firmly believe in karma :-) and try to increase it only by giving out a quality code, reviewing the code and helping each other.
In the article I covered only the main points. I will try to answer the questions in the comments. Thanks for attention.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/149976/
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