>> India's inherent advantage of having not just one MIT clone (IIT,) but ten, and having very motivated and bright students who respond to the national imperative to modernize.
Sam, Aren't there more than enough problems in India to keep busy the graduates of even 10 IIT's ? If modernization is truly a national imperative, then the IIT folks are wasting their time staffing help centers to answer questions from US consumers.
With four times the population of the US, you'd think at least health care innovation would be burgeoning in India, since there is proportionate number of sick people. Yet I've never heard of a single pharmaceutical drug from India. So where is the innovation ?
If I design a software application, and partition it into functions and write the specifications for each function. Then yes, I can have people in India write the software functions. But the innovation is not in coding the software functions (on machines using chips and software made in the US). The innovation is in recognizing the need for the product and designing the software and system to implement it. When we see complete products coming from India, to solve problems we weren't aware of, then we can worry.
What is happening now is that routine work is migrating to low cost India. That is not the same as buying Japanese cars for their superior design, quality and reliability. Even used Japanese cars fetch a higher price than same age and miles American cars. Very likely, software contracted out to lowest-cost teams will be one-time use, and have no long-term value.
But there is another reason why Dr. Grove is completely wrong again. Just as there is an expression: "the spirit of the law", there is also a "spirit of the design" in software. In my opinion it is counter productive to have software produced by anonymous teams who have not signed up to its purpose and place in the over-all system. My expectation is that all the software produced cheap in India will be discarded and done all over again by in-house long-duration teams. Probably IIT gradutes who migrated to Silicon Valley, or Redmond.
Sarmad |
