
Ask HN: If you are fully/partially remote, would you hire devs in India? - sachingupta006
There is so much talk around companies going permanently remote. If that is really the case then what&#x27;s the need to compete for talent in the Silicon Valley? Keeping aside the challenges due to different time zones, if a person&#x27;s skill can be validated would you hire developers in India, or for that matter any other country?
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codingdave
I've led teams from India. The skills and talent were fine, although the
interview process to find good talent was harder then in the US. I'll skip the
horror stories of people googling interview questions... because that isn't
really what you are asking about.

There were challenges - The communications needed extra effort, and the
results were not as good when they were given autonomy over their work. They
also were not happy being on a project long-term - they always were looking
for their next promotion. Which means it was difficult to get a true senior-
level talent on the team, because the better someone is... the quicker they
move on to something else.

Ultimately, my answer is yes, I am willing to hire people no matter where they
come from -- but I'd be far more inclined to hire someone who has already
spent a couple years working in the USA, so they have a better understanding
of both how we communicate, and our business culture.

~~~
sachingupta006
I totally relate to your challenges. But things have changed a lot of now.
Developers are more exposed to product development environment and while they
will still need to understand the US business culture there is a far greater
willingness to learn. When I look at my friends who did their education in
India but now working here in the US and compare them with their peers in
India, I don't see a difference in skills, only a lack of exposure.

~~~
dragonsh
Just personal anecdote. The original comment is spot on because the money
saved on salary is spend on time spend on communicating ideas at much granular
and micro level details to get work done and everyone is looking for an
opportunity for moving out of the country first.

So if a company do not offer an option for overseas job sooner or later the
person will try to move to an outfit which promises them for some overseas
job.

I had better success with teams from Ukraine, Poland and Europe in general
compared to Indian teams and costed about the same for finished project. For
detail and innovative work the EU team performed n general much better than
Indian team. In Asia my Vietnamese staff got a team from Vietnam and quality
was also very good, especially with Ruby on rails, C# and are more stable than
the team in India. The only thing favouring India is its large population, but
still quality matters over quantity and when it comes to quality USA, EU
perform better as the culture of quality is ingrained. In India people have to
do Jugaad from the very beginning so most find shortcuts to do things
especially in code they copy/paste by googling and work based on continuous
trial/error without figuring out fundamentals on how it worked (there are
brilliant people from India in my team just few though and hard to find). For
mobile development especially iOS and swift teams from China did better, but
still for long term the quality of EU and US teams in code is better.

------
cmdshiftf4
Absolutely not. I work hard and pay high taxes without much complaint to try
and help enrich both myself and the society I am a part of.

Helping companies offshore work destroys local jobs, depresses salaries and
helps the rich get all the richer at a time where they've already taken a
disproportionate amount of the gains from the increases in productivity since
the 70s and in that time, as the panama papers et al. have shown, have done
all they can to hide those profits from the societies that generated them.

I'm also pretty staunchly anti-globalism so it would make a hypocrite of me if
I did.

As a hiring manager, a large part of my filtering of candidate resumes /
applications is focused on being able to validate their credentials e.g. who
they've worked for, where they were educated and how they did there, any repos
/ sideprojects etc. and make my opinion based on the composite.

If I can't easily validate those credentials then I move on. India has a
reputation for spinning up "colleges" to pump out "engineers"[0], to the point
where they now recognize the issue caused and are trying to put further
efforts on hold [1], and so assessing the educational credentials of a
candidate who has not explicitly attended IIT becomes a minefield.

Validating non-local experience is a similar minefield. Instead of recognizing
previous employers and having some idea of the work they do and the quality of
it, one has to start googling the companies, diving into websites / glassdoor
/ etc. to find out what calibre they are. Another point against hiring
globally for me.

Overall, I would be no more hesitant about hiring Indians in India than I
would anyone else in a foreign country with a resume that is difficult to
validate, but it's not something I will ever support as I believe in creating
local jobs and supporting the local society and economy wherever possible.

[0] [https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-
degree/](https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/)

[1] [https://www.theweek.in/news/sci-tech/2020/02/14/AICTE-No-
new...](https://www.theweek.in/news/sci-tech/2020/02/14/AICTE-No-new-
engineering-college-for-2-yrs.html)

~~~
naruvimama
One of the reasons why the quality has gone down drastically is that
engineering colleges have started catering to the manpower needs of low-tech,
back office and BPO jobs.

Western companies did make a big mistake in not embracing the large talent
pool in India early enough for more cutting edge R&D or engineering work. This
has worked to harm both sides.

Now it has lost the competitive edge to Huawei which has access to a large and
cheap pool of talent. While neither Huawei or Ericsson work on essential/Core
R&D in India,

Huawei has a larger presence in India than Ericsson which just runs back
office jobs and backend SW development.

India is Ericsson's largest and most promising future market and has been
there for 100 years but has always lacked the commitment, thanks to "misplaced
nationalism". While I am suspicious of Huawei and China in general, I am happy
that Ericsson has competition.

------
hiram112
No.

I lived and worked for one of the big offshoring companies in Karnataka and
also the US in my 20s. I'm glad I had the experience to do so, and, as an
American, I was never treated so well in another country (I've also lived in
the EU several times).

But the whole experience really showed me that it had nothing to do with
diversity, cultural exchange, getting the 'best and brightest, nor all the
other bullshit that executives and lobbyists use to push offshoring and
unlimited visas for foreign workers. It is about wage arbitrage, screwing over
US workers while enriching management and shareholders, and ignoring a
company's responsibility to pay back the society which provides them the
environment they use to create a profitable business.

It is very short-term thinking, and has probably had more to do with the
growing inequality between the 0.1% and the rest of us than anything else.

The H1B and other visas, along with offshoring and 'global employees' is way
more supported on HN than it would be on any other US based tech site, and
that's because HN has way more wanna-be Zuckerburgs and Bezos, and less 50
year old System Admins who've had the unfortunate experience of training their
own replacements from India on H1b visas, right before being fired themselves.

~~~
codegeek
"has probably had more to do with the growing inequality between the 0.1% and
the rest of us than anything else."

I disagree. The growing wage inequality between the rich and poor has many
other factors. Tech companies are just one small part of it. Before 2004, most
of these big techs did not even exist. But wage gap has been increasing for
almost last 45 years or so in the US if you look at the data. Take Walmart for
example. They employ plenty of Americans but look at the shit wages they pay.
They can still get away with it because our politicians have tipped the scale
heavily in favor of large corporations. Visa or not, large corporations can
get away with almost anything because they are "too big to fail".

"ignoring a company's responsibility to pay back the society"

I agree with you on moral grounds but that is not how capitalism works. A
private corporation's highest priority is to serve its shareholders and
executives, period. It does not care about paying back to society. Should they
care ? Yes I think so. But by definition of capitalism, they are not obligated
to. Unless we change the thinking and mindset, it won't happen.
Offshoring/tech visas are again a small portion of it and gets blamed way more
than it should.

~~~
hiram112
> I disagree. The growing wage inequality between the rich and poor has many
> other factors.

I didn't mean just one specific visa, e.g. H1B or any other. I mean that
globalization has allowed large companies to play all sorts of games like
moving their manufacturing and service centers to the lowest wages countries,
their headquarters to tax shelters like Ireland or the Caymans, and lobbied
laws to ensure a never-ending supply of foreign workers and recently
immigrated citizens to push wages for the jobs that can't be moved.

Meanwhile, employees can't just move to some country to take advantage of
lower COL, or declare their 'official' residence in a tax shelter. We can't
even import drugs from Canada or pay the same price for digital goods like
Steam games offered to low wage nations.

> I agree with you on moral grounds but that is not how capitalism works.

There is no strict rule that says capitalist economies can't enforce equal
playing fields for capital and labor. If the US or any other high wage country
weren't beholden to the wealthy, they could easily pass laws that forced
companies to pay tariffs for any goods and services developed in countries
without similar labor laws, environmental protections, and even tax rates.

------
jqpabc123
<i>...if a person's skill can be validated...</i>

Just as important as skill is productivity. And both are more difficult to
access remotely.

Credentials have limited substance in the US labor market. In India they have
even less --- in my experience.

There is no way to sugar coat this --- India has a credibility deficit in my
opinion which translates into additional management oversight required.

~~~
sachingupta006
Agreed but will you be wiling to put in their additional oversight (at least
in the beginning)for more cost effective labor and potentially more work
output (if effective systems are in place and there is good oversight).

Note that the same devs are able to compete with their US peers in companies
like Google, MS etc. who have local presence.

~~~
jqpabc123
I really think your approach is kinda inside out.

The real question is, what are companies in India willing to do to gain
credibility? Assembling a "warm body shop" doesn't add much.

Pick a problem space to specialize in, assemble a competent team and develop
an open source app for it. Then use this as "proof of work" for marketing
purposes.

You undoubtedly know Indian culture better than me --- what do you think is
the most likely response to this sort of selection process?

------
indian_dev
A bunch of white people bashing devs in India and another group of wannabe
NRIs sucking up to them.

Let me show the perspective of an Indian engineer. I don't want to work for
remotely for a team with half a day of time zone difference. India has tons of
interesting startups doing exciting work.

Most of the bright engineers are happy with the jobs or have their own network
of other bright engineers to help with job hunting. Very few good engineers
sign for remote work.

~~~
jqpabc123
No one understands Indian culture better than Indians.

I'm sure the marketplace will reward you with all that you earn and deserve.
Best of luck and we'll see you out there.

------
gas9S9zw3P9c
No. At least not through the normal application process. I have worked with
many brilliant Indian people, and some of my favorite colleagues were Indian.
However, there is so much "noise" in India's talent pool [1] - bad
communication, fake degrees, fake profiles, sloppy work - that it just takes
too much effort filtering through it. I understand that it's biased, but
simply not hiring from India seems to be the better business decision when
there is good talent elsewhere.

Of course, the exception are people that come through the network, not through
a "normal" application process.

[1] [https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-
degree/](https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/)

~~~
entha_saava
I am studying in an "engineering" "college" of India. ("top" college by Indian
norms, but not IIT[1]). And I totally understand this.

The mentality of 'gaming the system' is deep rooted in education system here,
probably because education is so rote-oriented, mechanical and namesake.

[1] I would have difficulty believing current generation of IIT students would
be any good either. These days the entrance process for IITs has become pretty
game-able and people with money and time do that.

------
Shorel
I work for a distributed company.

This means we have over ten offices all over the world.

There is at least one office in India. It used to have many engineers, now it
has few.

The reasons: Engineers in India have this culture that values position more
than skills. They think they must work only three years as developers and move
to management as soon as they can, otherwise they are wasting time, or they
think they are a professional failure.

Now development is mostly done in Europe.

~~~
entha_saava
> They think they must work only three years as developers and move to
> management as soon as they can, otherwise they are wasting time, or they
> think they are a professional failure.

I am an Indian and to be honest, the hierarchical culture is horrible. People
misattribute it to caste system but it is much much more than that. We aren't
actually expected to straightforwardly say the professor / senior / elders are
wrong.

------
divby0
Would you consider Github/tech blogs before rejecting the applicant right
away? As an Indian I agree with the sloppy work culture and almost zero effort
in actually learning things.

~~~
ayush--s
I'd say that only 10% of the people I've worked with can hang with a world-
class team.

------
curryst
I would avoid it for most roles. And not just India, but really anywhere
that's more than a 6 hour time difference from where I work (and even then, I
would prefer less than a 4 hour time difference).

I work on a globally distributed team currently. It is exceptionally difficult
to maintain cohesiveness as a team given that there are 0 hours per day that
we are all online. What has ended up happening is that we have virtually
fragmented into 3 separate teams with our own products. For instance, my team
members in Asia are working on a product that I can't effectively support
because my shift doesn't overlap. If someone asks me a question about that
app, which my team is supposed to support, I have to go start reading source
code. Lacking documentation is also an issue there, but that's nearly a
universal problem.

Remote working tools are the hot new thing, but nothing effectively solves the
timezone issue. Sure, we have async communication, but unless someone is
logging in after hours (which I would heavily discourage), you only get one
exchange (i.e. an email or Slack message) per day. That's a painfully slow way
to collaborate.

That being said, there are roles where the time difference doesn't matter, and
is advantageous. NOC and helpdesk (if helpdesk is 24 hours) are well suited to
a "follow the sun" model. The team communication seems largely limited to
passing off info about incidents, with very occasional full group meetings to
give new policy info. They just aren't the prestigious roles typically
associated with SV.

------
nine_k
I've worked with wonderful, brilliant, all-around great developers who came
from India. What helped me a lot is that they had passed a strict self-
selection process of going to the US and working for a US company (or
several).

When searching for equally brilliant developers in India itself, I would have
to somehow reproduce the effect of this self-selection to get the same
wonderful results.

Same applies to a few other countries from which I've seen brilliant
colleagues, such as Russia, China, or Turkey.

------
scottporad
I am in Seattle, and have worked on teams with engineers located across the
US, across Europe and in Mexico. I have found talented engineers everywhere.

As mentioned below, there are political reasons you might not want to this.
And, there are some logistical hurdles in terms of local regulations which, in
my experience, can be overcome and plenty of companies have shown that is the
case.

So, to answer your question specifically, the reason to compete for talent in
Silicon Valley/locally is exactly what you mentioned: the challenges due to
different time zones.

Engineering is inherently a collaborative discipline despite the fact that
much of the work is done in a solitary fashion.

Each degree of separation makes collaboration harder. The first degree is when
you are not sitting next to your collaborators. And it goes on from there:
perhaps when the are on another floor, or even another building, in another
city, country, timezone, etc.

The most distance you add to the equation, the harder collaboration becomes.

~~~
Shorel
All you say is true. The solution is to centralize engineering in a time zone.

It doesn't need to be a time zone in the US.

~~~
scottporad
To my way of thinking, there is also a lot of communication with "requesters"
(business people, designers, product managers, etc.), so they need to be in
the time zone as the engineers too.

~~~
Shorel
One or two hours a day of overlap seems to work fine from my experience.

------
tmaly
I have hired two programmers in my team. Both are located in Mumbai. I am very
happy with their work.

I think the biggest challenge is finding the right people that meet your level
of expectations. This is a challenge no matter where the person is located.

------
_bxg1
I think we're going to see some divergence in the remote-work frenzy. I
believe that when your product is still in an open-ended stage, and/or when
your engineers are closer to the product side of things, there's still benefit
to be had from in-person collaboration. Whiteboarding, ad hoc discussion, etc.
Of course the older and bigger a company/product is, the less important this
factor becomes, and the more suited they are to having everyone just do their
work remotely and check it in. But I would wager that many smaller
companies/startups will continue having physical offices even as this trend
permeates.

------
shakkhar
I think the biggest hurdle in hiring offshore employees is a legal one. A
company has to comply with local labor laws and tax code. In some countries,
you may even be required to have some form of physical presence. The hassle of
working these out is only worth it when you are hiring thousands of employees
in a country.

~~~
njhaveri
I've never used one, but I have heard of some "Employer of Record" companies
that have a physical presence in the country you're looking into hiring in.
They'll effectively hire the employee on your behalf, and then you just pay
their sister entity (in the same country as you) a consulting fee equal to the
employee's salary plus whatever fees are applicable. Could be an option for
companies looking to start doing this.

------
perl4ever
I don't understand all this talk about "if you hire remote, you can hire
globally". Everybody already did!

Why are people constantly threatening us with things that happened 20 years
ago? Especially when we've been buried in hysteria over it for decades.

------
naveen99
I wonder if devs in india would be willing to do night shifts to sync their
times with us teams.

~~~
samdamsamm
Are you paying the same as US teams?

~~~
sachingupta006
I don't think the pay will be the same, you can be the best paymaster but you
should also look at local wage benchmarks and stay within ballpark.

~~~
samdamsamm
Congrats on this bold justification you’ve created to justify your role in the
exploitation process, but you’re not fooling anyone. There is no moral or
material logic for this nonsense.

~~~
bruce511
But hang on, not all US teams are paid the same either. A dev in kansas gets
less than a dev in SV.

Are you arguing that all devs everywhere should be paid the same for moral
reasons? (genuine question)

Is it not more morally ethical to hire 2 devs in denver for the price of 1 in
New York, thus providing employment for twice as many americans?

~~~
samdamsamm
I am simply saying there is no moral justification for any of it.

It’s important to take seriously because the logical outcome of this turn to
remote work will otherwise be greater class divisions than the world has ever
known, within the same economic structures.

~~~
bruce511
I would agree that since there's no agreement of morals or ethics, it's easy
to justify or vilify any action. So discussing the morality of employment is
fruitless.

Equally Labour entropy suggests that jobs will flow from high-cost locations
to low cost locations. Remote work reduces the friction of this flow. If you
can work from home in SV you can do the same job from home in ohio, or Latvia
or India.

External forces are at work to increase or decrease the friction of this
entropy, but for the most part it seems to be flowing in one direction.

Whether this is moral or nor seems to be in the eye of the beholder.

------
ReticentVole
No, I do not even accept applications from India. The credentials are usually
faked and the work sloppy.

~~~
entha_saava
> sloppy work

Or as I have recently taken to call it, geeksforgeeks culture.

~~~
ayush--s
if your problem is geeksforgeeks culture (which translates to poor knowledge
of software coding standards I guess), then you're clearly not filtering your
candidates well enough. Does your interview process has any debugging or
refactoring rounds?

~~~
entha_saava
Sorry bro. I am a college student in India and that's just my observation.

