Monday, May 28, 2007

US techies 10-times more productive than Indian

US techies 10-times more productive than Indian
If the above link didn't work, here is the gist:
Wipro's earnings is $50K per employee while top US IT companies make close to a million dollars per employee.

First some questions:
  • What is the ratio of expenses vs income per employee in the US and India? There may not be such a big difference in this criteria.
  • When talking about IBM, Dell etc., does the statistics include their operations in India and other countries or not?
  • Does the statistics include the contract workers or consultants for US companies?
  • Would American companies have the same efficiency if the cost of outsourcing increases?

I am fine with Indian companies generating less revenue per employee as Indian companies contribute a lot toward employment and overall spread of wealth.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Giving up on Microsoft

Giving up on Microsoft

Like Jeff and Mike, I started programming with MSC 6 and used almost every version of developer tools from MS, including MFC, ATL and a console based editor called PWB for Programmer Work Bench (I would like to call it a People's Work Bench for its simplicity and utility). At times, I strayed into Open source for more practical solutions. For our organization, we chose Linux based server apps like Samba domain controller, Postfix / Sendmail mail servers and portals based on Liferay. We had time to play around with these and weren't willing spend money on Windows and Exchange servers. I chose Lucene on .NET over full text search as we needed search to work remotely. And Lucene seemed to be a lot more fun to develop than FTS. But I would always choose the developer tools from MS over Open Source tools. Even if Eclipse offers a plug-in for C#, I would consider the express editions of C#/ASP.NET a lot easier to use if cost is a factor. If I have the luxury of spending a few thousand dollars, I will always choose MS developer tools.

At one stage in my career I wanted to work for MS. And within a few months after I was rejected, I was scared of competition from MS as they could build a better product faster and market it easier as compared to the product I was working on. From time-to-time, I might choose between MS and Open Source, but I can't hate either.

For those who choose one and hate the other, don't blame it on MS or Open Source. Blame it on your upbringing that doesn't allow you to stay in shades of gray but expects you choose between black or white.