

Who are the polite Indians? - jgrahamc

There's a post over on Reddit about the large number of polite Indians who seem to pop up when interesting programs are posted asking for help (often, really basic or odd help).<p>http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/e39xr/the_posting_of_an_open_source_payroll_app_with_a/<p>I've experienced exactly this on my own blog (see, for example, comments on this post: http://blog.jgc.org/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-myself-aston.html)<p>Does anyone have insight into who these folks are?  Are they students?  This seems like an interesting cultural phenomenon.  These folks are universally polite, but seem to have little clue.  Often asking the most basic questions which seem to indicate that they have little knowledge. Given their low level of knowledge it's striking that they are often trying to download and understand quite complex programs.   Many times they seem to not even be able to locate the download link for source code.<p>In almost all cases it appears that these folks are from India.
======
stan_rogers
It's not just students. Nor are the requests always polite, even if they are
couched in a sort of ritualized language that uses formal and polite terms of
address (that is a cultural phenomenon we in the west have mostly abandoned;
most Asian cultures still use it to speak across social and generational
hierachies). What follows in an excerpt from a blog posting I made back in
2004 (the blog itself kind of went off on a tangent and then died of neglect
when shortly afterward due to my Parkinsonism and a series of small strokes,
so it's probably best left unlinked). I was a well-known developer on the
Lotus Domino platform at the time...

"What seems like forever ago, I made the mistake of mentioning in one or the
other of the developerWorks forums that I had a way to create a pretty-looking
categorized calendar on the web. I say 'mistake' because the requests for the
code have reached the level that they actually swamp out the spam in my inbox
(proving once and for all that Domino, at least, is not dead yet). I've sent
out demo databases in response, and they have helped a few people. Many, many
more people have just turned around and outright demanded that I do the work
it would take to integrate the calendar into their applications. For free,
mind you.

"When did that kind of behaviour become acceptable? I really hate to unfairly
categorize these requests, but the vast majority have come from the same
people and organisations that are trying to put me out of work by claiming to
be able to do my job for less money. (I should point out here that I make a
whole lot less than most Americans and Europeans in the Notes development game
would make as the consequences of being Canadian, of how I got this job, and
of the vagaries of corporate M&A.) Now, I've been beyond broke, and I can
understand beggars, but I never imagined that I would regularly encounter the
equivalent of streetcorner beggars who are fully employed and ask not for
spare change, but for passers-by to go to the office and do their work for
them, gratis, so that they can collect their salaries.

"I'm quite well aware that there are a lot (and I do mean a lot) more people
working in places like Bangalore and Mumbai than have ever requested code from
me, but there still seems to be a disproportionate number of people from the
major outsourcing centres who feel entitled to demand that I do their work for
them. I'm not talking about 'borrowing' code here — anyone who has embarked on
a developer's career without peeking at other people's code can probably be
fairly classified as an idiot. Nor am I talking about people who are merely
trying to learn the sort of stuff you don't get in the 'Introduction to Domino
Designer' course; I generally have a high tolerance for newbies who actually
seem to want to learn. I did, after all, offer the code base, and I have no
problem working with people who have made an effort to understand what I've
done and may have a lingering question or two. I'm just wondering what kind of
cultural climate would persuade anyone, anywhere, to believe that it's
perfectly okay to demand that I (or anyone else, for that matter) do work for
free so that they can be paid for 'work' they got by undercutting my wages."

~~~
aniket_ray
I'm sorry to hear that this happened to you. I'm sure I'd feel the same way
but I must reiterate something I mentioned in another comment, never help even
one person who acts in such a way.

Information that a particular person is helpful spreads fast within
organizations (and with the web across organizations). So a barrage of request
might happen.

I'd actually recommend turning this situation to your advantage. Create a
template mail that quotes your consulting charges. Whenever somebody makes
such a request, send them your template mail.

Some outsourcing shops would actually gladly pay you top dollars for your
services.

~~~
stan_rogers
Good advice going forward for anyone who finds themselves in a similar
situation. I'm out of the game myself these days, but I actually did that when
I was still active (after this little rant bomb went off). And I know that
there are undertones of bitterness and racism in that original posting, but I
was especially frustrated by nearly five hundred unread emails that particular
morning -- my main client at the time thought I was ignoring her because it
took me hours to find the one message that was actually important among the
pile of messages all tagged as high priority. That's not a real excuse, but
once I clicked Post it was on the intarwebz forever, and I've got enough
integrity to let my personal lapses stand for posterity.

(By the way, Indians were not and are not the only people who had a highly
developed sense of entitlement. It's the thin and poorly applied synthetic
varnish of _politesse_ laid over the demand that made the Asian emails
especially annoying. An honest "gimme-e-e!" hurts the teeth much less than
dishonest, disrespectful "respect".)

------
FraaJad
Most "CS" students in India don't go to engineering schools because they like
it. They take up CS because that's the most lucrative career option right now.

The competition is cut throat to get into major IT companies (GPA of 3.75 or
higher is required by most "Grade A" companies just to take the preliminary
written tests.)

Unfortunately, most of the companies value grades and how "consistent" you
have been through school, going all the way back to 10th grade. (I'm looking
at you Infosys. I should write up my own interview experience with them :)

As long as they get their grades, the students are least bothered about how
they got it.

Given this pressure, one can hardly expect 18-21 year olds to be cognizant of
how rest of the world perceives them. What matters to them is their social
circle and family priorities. If it means asking 100 people to bump up the
grade, so be it.

~~~
aniket_ray
I think a lot of what you say is the correct. I'll just add to that.

Most of these "polite Indians" are college students from not-so good colleges
(or bad students at good colleges). They are studying Engineering just because
of parental/peer pressure. I'm sure every Indian would know more than 3-4
friends who are studying just to make somebody else proud.

Each semester, these students have some courses with assignments. The first
thing they do is "Google" the assignment. If they don't find the solutions on
the front page of Google, they either raid forums (including comment sections
of blogs) asking for help or else they contact a small coding shop and
"outsource" their assignments. These coding shops are small shops that charge
extremely low rates too, so they don't have the best programmers either. Quite
often coding shop employees raid the web for help too. A friend of mine has
actually hired 3-4 "sub-standard" coders proceeds of which he uses to
bootstrap his main startup.

Unfortunately, in this storm sometimes even genuine students who just wish to
learn get crowded out. My suggestion (and what I do generally) is to answer
people as long as it is just about concepts. If you start doing somebody
else's homework the whole batch might start asking you for help. So, my advice
is just don't do anybody's homework.

~~~
jgrahamc
I try to help people to help themselves. At some point I have to give up. For
example: <http://imgur.com/qdV0B.png>

------
seltzered
I'm indian american, and honestly don't have many indian or indian american
friends (just never found many in the social circles I like). But I have a few
fun stories:

1) Someone in another group hired some fresh-out-grad-school Indians, and a
few months ago I was bored and googled their names. One of them was asking for
code for some algorithm on a java forum. I didn't care much about it, I was
more impressed that the guy used his full name on the forum. I realized though
that indians have a bigger problem with not fully sharing the problem they're
trying to solve, and just come off as asking for random things instead.

2) I had to work with a big name customer who hired two foreign university
kids trying to leverage an API I wrote. On a call they demanded source code
for everything the API supplied in order to write their app (they didn't need
it all), and constantly emailed me about questions reading a industry-wide
spec would've answered. Luckily they eventually stopped working there and my
email got a lot easier.

3) I tried to hire a contractor recently, and after struggling with agencies,
I decided to give craigslist a try. I'm going to write a blog post about this
one day, but basically 75% of the names I received were of south asian
descent. Nothing wrong with that, I read every one of those emails. The
problem is that of that 75%, half of those were outsourcing "$9 / hour"
agencies, and a good portion of the other half didn't have experience relevant
to the position.

Big lesson learned with 3. As an indian american, I gotta really step up my
networking skills in order to find other positions. If I want to apply for a
position over the internet, I ABSOLUTELY must do things to stand out from the
piles of emails. I already take time to write personalized cover letters, but
have to have a non-standard title to stick out, and have some internet
presence for them to feel comfortable with me.

Make no racial generalizations though. I've met indian folks out there that
are truly amazing geeks, and can comfortably talk to you about lisp / clojure
/ rethinkdb / etc. I last met one in an IRS office of all places.

~~~
megrimlock
> If I want to apply for a position over the internet, I ABSOLUTELY must do
> things to stand out from the piles of emails

Agreed! Regardless of your background, taking the time to write a specific
cover letter and tweak your resume to highlight experience you think a
particular place would appreciate is well worth it.

Consider it this way: your application is one entry into a huge priority queue
heap. You want it to be picked up by the comparison operator in every
significant way you can. Don't be afraid to leave out work you did if it
doesn't seem relevant; it will just dilute the signal.

------
suraj
Most of the students in India lack basic problem solving skills. They tackle
exams (even maths) by rote memorizing a set of questions and answers. In real
life this has caused profusion of "guides" i.e. books that contain questions
most likely to appear in exams.

When these students start engineering studies, they are flabbergasted by lack
of "guides" for problems. These students will fail the FizzBuzz test, however
will be able to answer questions about C++ quirks. They can not ask
intelligent questions because they can neither understand problem nor
investigate the root cause. They are studying just to get a degree (which
would help them get a job) not to get educated.

Even if we assume that only 50% of the students fit this criteria, there are
over five hundred thousand students who are looking for shortcuts! Which
should account for these kind of posts.

The education system in India is geared towards producing clerks not free
thinking individuals. Sadly, this the is the end result.

~~~
rkwz
_> >The education system in India is geared towards producing clerks not free
thinking individuals._

When I was in school, I was always told by my teachers to memorize the
solution/essay rather than understand them. And whenever I tried to answer a
question using my own words I always got less marks because my answer was not
_as per what's in the book_

~~~
rick_2047
I studied in a Kendriya Vidyalaya (Government run centralized schools), and
it's been my impression that the CBSE board in geared towards problem solving
rather than rote learning.

Recently they introduced a new type of question in their exams, which are
called High Order Thinking questions. They tend to test the knowledge and
problem solving skills of an individual.

But yes, most of the state boards, do put much more emphasis on rote learning

~~~
flashgordon
Really? So did I. But without digressing, I felt that KV syllabus was based
more on problem solving. Either that or I had been lucky enough to get
teachers who encouraged open thinking rather than hitting the books to
pointless memorising. Having said that the unit tests - monthly tests - were
administered by the teacher for a particular class and what we had found was
that some teachers were notorious for ensuring answers matched word-by-word to
what was in the guides!

But this was about 18 years ago so things may have changed (unfortunately for
the worse) by now, especially to cater for a spike in demand for outsourcing.

------
FraaJad
As usual, most people here are trying to "understand" Indians by looking at
some comments.

Some people would like nothing better than shoe horn every Indian student into
"them stupid Indian" and feel smug.

The amount of clue-less students is fairly constant across countries. But,
when you multiply that with the _huge_ number of Indian students taking CS for
better job prospects, you end up with this horde of n00bs.

It's just that most Indian students can read/write/speak English than, say,
Chinese or eastern Europeans. So, all the English speaking world's internet is
_their_ internet too.

Chinese have their own internet. Russians have their own language forums and
websites. Indians don't need that. So, India has "outsourced" student
"guidance" system to the internet.

sorry about that? ;)

~~~
roel_v
No offense, but if that's the full explanation, then why aren't the helpful
Indians in the majority, too (there should be 2 or 3 times as much 'good'
content from Indians than there is from Americans / Western Europeans)? Now
there are plenty of Indians who do provide good content, on this site and
elsewhere, but not in the per-capita rate one would expect from your theory (I
feel, I don't have data on this). So IMO at best your theory only explains
part of the phenomenon.

~~~
aniket_ray
People have down-voted you but I actually agree with your empirical evidence.
Most knowledgeable Indians don't really give much back to the greater
community.

Most Indians (including me unfortunately) consume far far more content than we
produce. I am concerned about this too and I've been thinking about this and I
do not have concrete reasons for this yet.

I could throw up a few reasons though. It may be cultural, since many of us
just do not know how to share. It may be a work-life balance issue where
people who-know-stuff consider this work and won't do this in their free time.
It may also be because the Indian economy is growing fast, growth
opportunities are immense, so spending time on tasks that don't directly give
them anything has a huge opportunity cost.

------
safij
In the recent past, in India, there is a surge of IT companies mostly
consulting, outsourcing or services based ones who employ in thousands.

These companies are fuelled by a large pool of people, who learn computers
only because these jobs pay well than any other job. Engineering is a basic
eligiblity criteria to get into these IT companies. Hence people flood into
engineering schools to take up engineering courses in computers or electronics
or mechanical or even civil courses.Most of the engineering institutes here
are of quite poor quality(needs a seperate thread to discuss ;) ).

Sometimes, in order to patch up the lag between academics and employability
they take up crash courses in Java or .Net. Even worse, IT services companies
pick hundreds from campuses(from different disciplines like mechanical) and
put them for training programmes in J2EE or .Net which lasts for 3-5 months.
Clearly without getting the basics of computers right many get into the jobs.

Most of the job is outsourced from other companies and folks here in these
companies work on maintenance or support projects which doesn't require much
of designing or programming skills. Sometimes in need they turn to internet
forums, open-source mailing lists etc. May be thats the reason behind "polite
Indians" ;).

Sadly enough, most of the folks here are deliberately into computers rather
than by passion.

------
anjanb
I'm an Indian developer who's in Bangalore, India and was in the US for over 9
years. So, I've worked with Indians in India as well as in the US and it's
usually the same reasons someone asks for answers desperately -- they have
taken an assignment(at school or work) for which they're NOT always best
suited.

They don't know where to start BUT they need to submit the assignments soon.
They start asking their friends (through phone, chat and email). If they don't
have friends, they ask on the net.

The anonymity that internet affords makes these normally polite Indians
aggressive -- if you were to meet these Indians, they certainly would NOT
demand the same of you.

Most of them don't understand that asking a question the wrong
way(<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>) is considered
offensive. I wish more forums had an auto-responder which sent this link to
"clue in" those Indians.

------
kang
These people are of course Indian students trying to download code.

The root problem is population. Only few elite colleges have phd/masters
teachers. To get into these elite few the ratio of candidates appearing is 130
PER SEAT !!

Now even if you are a brilliant student, you are not guaranteed admission due
to a certain 'balancing factor'. You need good marks in all subjects equally,
not just the ones you are interested in. (I scored 4 times the cutoff in
physics but still couldn't get into IIT, due to 2 marks lower in chem. I hated
cramming inorganic salt colors.) As a result even many brilliant students
enter bad colleges with very bad teachers. Again the 'balancing factor' jumps
in. The aim, it seems, is to keep the student busy (with useless things that
mostly involve nothing more than microsoft office.) At the end of degree, you
know nothing. (Nobody in my class could write a c program if you mentioned the
word file handling).

Infosys hired 40% of my class and only one student was asked 1 technical
question. 6 students were asked riddles. Rest 48 were just thrown through a
basic HR.

In the pre-final year of college 'balancing factor' by the parents jump in.
Students are mostly advised (family/peer pressure) to ride the 'MBA' wave.
Nothing is knowledge driven. Everything is money driven.

------
hsuresh
My guess is these are final year students at engineering colleges doing the
final year "project" that is mandatory to secure the degree. These folks (i
was one of them too) never really have a chance to think and do stuff on their
own till this project, and then all of a sudden you are required to do
something interesting all by yourself to secure a degree. Most of them end up
doing really horrible projects (but no one really cares about them actually,
so they do get a degree after all).

For some, this is when things start to turn around for good :)

------
IgorPartola
I got these comments even without posting any code. When I posted this:
[http://igorpartola.com/web-development/a-clever-way-to-
fight...](http://igorpartola.com/web-development/a-clever-way-to-fight-ie6)

I got comments like this:

"Substantially, the write-up is really the freshest on that deserving subject.
I harmonise along with your conclusions as well as surely will eagerly look
ahead for your long term updates. Saying many thanks certainly will not simply
just be sufficient, for your exceptional lucidity as part of your creating. I
can directly seize your rss feed to remain privy of any sort of updates.
Gratifying operate and in addition much accomplishment in your organization
enterprize!"

No idea where it all came from. The links they leave are along the lines of
<http://Yourwebsite>, so can't really be spam I guess. I don't get what the
angle is.

~~~
timrobinson
I'm pretty sure they're SEO spam: the flattering comment is to make sure it
gets approved by the blog admin, but the aim is to increase the number of
links to <http://Yourwebsite>.

I get stacks of these daily, so I make sure I only approve rude or
unflattering comments on my blog.

~~~
zavulon
I think he meant <http://Yourwebsite> is actually how it looks like (i.e. not
a real website), so it can't be spam

~~~
rmc
Maybe it's intended as SEO spam, but the people who wrote it made a mistake?

~~~
IgorPartola
zavulon is correct, that is literally what they wrote. There were several like
this. I suppose the great-grandparent post is correct: they are using this to
make sure their name comes up with clean results on Google.

------
bryanwb
I knew quite a lot of "polite Nepalis" that met this description when I lived
and worked in Nepal. There are lots and lots of CS programs but few good
professors. Students have to do much of their learning on their own. They
reach out to the Internet for these reasons. They also may not have grown up
with Internet access but only gotten it after moving to the city for school.

------
Robin_Message
It doesn't seem that polite to me to keep asking for basic information in
someone's blog comments. In particular, you tell Ghiayas you can't help him,
and then pradeep kumar starts asking the same question (which implies a sock
puppet to me) and later Ghiayas comes back with even more questions. If that
seems polite to you, then you are a very tolerant and kind man indeed.

~~~
jgrahamc
I really do try to respond in a decent manner to everyone who writes to me be
it on my blog or via email.

------
iuguy
You're probably asking the wrong question. India is huge, about 1/3rd the size
of the US, with a population of over a billion.

In any environment of that size you're going to get idiots as well as great
people. Thankfully most of my experiences with Indians in and out of India
have been with great, hard working, optimistic and fun people.

------
amitshah
The problem stems from the expectations that are placed on people here. For
example, in school, home-work assignments are due "tomorrow without fail", and
then the students just take the easiest way out for the submission.

The mentality plays a second role: once you're in some position of power (a
manager), you want to boss around everyone and prove that you're the person in
charge. So managers of projects want everything in 20 days when they might
charge clients for 90 days. There's hardly time for the people involved to
understand the problem and solve it: they just want to make sure the manager
gets what he wants.

Moreover, the employees are in a different set of mentality: they think they
don't have much power and that they shouldn't question the manager else their
job/backside will be on the line. So they just do what's needed, else come up
with creative arguments on the last day.

------
throw10102010
In Australia we have an additional problem. We have a strong, English speaking
education system but unfortunately the CS schools here aren't as prestigious
as MIT/Stanford/CMU etc, and Australia isn't seen as good a destination as the
US for Indian emigrants.

That means we get Indians who can't get into US colleges and/or can't get US
jobs: ie, the second rate developers. Unfortunately that means that any good
Indians here will have to work twice as hard to overcome that reputation.

Interestingly, for some reason we seem to get a lot of really good Chinese
students and immigrants, so they don't have the reputation problems to
overcome.

Throwaway account for the first time on HN :(

------
notrick
With so many people already giving the reason behind why Polite Indians do
that, I need not repeat them. But I will like to add one very important point.
India is a huge country - Population wise. They have millions of Software
Engineers I guess. You cannot expect all of them to be Experts or have lot of
knowledge. But they do have a substantial amount of talent. I am not sure, but
the percentage ratio might be as good as that of USA or UK or any other
country. Its probably their huge numbers, that you feel that "In almost all
cases it appears that these folks are from India."

------
codyguy
Do you have the problem with a) polite? b) Indian? c) inappropriate questions?

------
basileileis123
Jealous and hatefulness makes you feel like that. Just think of everyone as a
human being. No race, culture , country, color and gender defines somebody. If
you think you're superior than anyone or everyone then you're mistaken. If you
look for any such kind of people then you can find it just in your
neighborhood. I've seen many people doing that but never differentiated them
on the country,gender and color basis.

HTH

Regards, basileis

------
rick_2047
I will just say it, I hate such people. These are mostly engineering students
from second grade college (like me) either trying to do their homework or
trying to do some odd jobs for some small company in their locality. They
usually just ask for the solution point blank without even trying to
understand the problem space ( _not_ like me). And then they call this
"learning something which is not in the textbook". If you have asked for a
solution directly from some random guy/chick from the internet, where does
learning comes in all this?

They make us all look stupid. I started bidding on some freelancer projects a
few days back and 1 out of 3 projects from US or UK have a strict No-Indian
policy.

