The following appeared as a comment to an earlier post The Great Indian Outsourcing Ride from Nomad. Its a really interesting comparison and was posted by Anzil.
Silicon Valley companies are based on ‘know what.’ They know the market, they know the technology and they know what products to make to earn money.
Indian IT companies are based on ‘know how.’ They do the software coding for other companies that have the ‘know what.’ If you tell them what to do, they know how and will do it for you.
Silicon Valley companies invest huge sums of money on R&D. They generate new ideas and are constantly developing new ways of doing things.
Indian IT companies have nothing called R&D. They do not generate any new ideas.
A typical Silicon Valley engineer is a specialist in a particular technology, like inkjet printing or virus detection. He spends all his life working in this technology area.
A typical Indian IT engineer is a specialist in a few languages. He is not concerned about the technology that he is working on and is willing to develop any software with the languages that he knows.
A typical Silicon Valley engineer’s education and work experience all relate to a technology. When he changes jobs, he changes to another company working on the same technology.
A typical Indian IT engineer’s work experience does not teach him any technology. He may be a mechanical engineer currently working for three months on banking software, and then the next three months on shoe retailing software.
Silicon Valley is all about the excitement of creating things out of nothing. Companies like HP actually started in the garages of their founders.
Indian IT does not know the meaning of creativity. Some companies are started by people who quit other companies and take some of the parent firm’s software development contracts with them.
Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs bet on people, ideas and inventions.
Indian IT’s entrepreneurs bet on certainties. They start a firm after getting software development contracts.
Silicon Valley’s firms are about technology management.
Indian IT’s firms are about man management.
this person is making a lot of statements and asserting them as universal truth. its good for creating punchlines but not so good when you are a creative person from indian IT. branding everything like this give the wrong impression, lets say many are like this and lets pray many learn to me not like this.
Comment by Juwal — February 9, 2009 @ 3:39 pm
My comparison was based on the following Tech companies in california and the so called Tech companies in india.
Adobe Systems (Acrobat Reader), Apple Computer (computer), Hewlett-Packard (printer), Intel (the CPU in your PC), Netscape (Internet browser), Seagate Technology (the hard disk in your PC), Yahoo (Internet portal), Symantec (Norton anti-virus software), etc.
Indian It -Infosys ,TCS ,Wipro ,Satyam …
Even a novice can notice the diffrence.
Comment by Ansil — February 9, 2009 @ 4:41 pm
Many Indian companies are (more than 50% any way) service oriented, for which they are known world wide in their way. Like I said in the previous post, R&D is time consuming for which the result is outstanding, provided the efforts are slanding enough to meet the crisis while an emergency landing
.
What is good with products when there is too less services on it?
Making a kid and growing up a kid are two diff type of tasks.
May be Indians are more brilliant to learn things than outsiders
Services rule the business market, product based are lucky stars
Comment by SAF — February 9, 2009 @ 5:01 pm
@Juwal,
Please define ‘creative person from Indian IT’.
As far as I know, the term ‘creative’ is not known to Indian IT majors.
Comment by The Nomad — February 9, 2009 @ 10:38 pm
[:}] this is a gem Anzil.
Comment by Domestic Avalanche — February 9, 2009 @ 11:28 pm
I think “IBS” (started by malayali V.K Mathews), stands out from the crowd. They started it as a service outsourcing firm, but later transformed to “Aviation Software Products” developer and marketer. I dunno much details, the above written are as per my readings from a magazine!
Comment by Jojo — February 10, 2009 @ 10:12 am
Its a great posts….. Its true the company’s in India doesn’t knows the word ‘creativity or technology ‘.
The India’s largest company’s like Infosys or Wipro, didnt create a thing for themselves or for the society….
It a big truth tht ” People start the firm when gets the contract for outsourcing “
Comment by Milin Paul — February 10, 2009 @ 10:46 am
Why cant you guys go and create a product? Lets the world see it. Who is stopping you? Americans bribe you for not creating any useful products? A** holes complaining about the lack of products in India. Phoooo…
Mathews started IBS with his 20 years of experience in the Aviation industry.
Comment by George M — February 10, 2009 @ 3:49 pm
Well, George as a matter of fact, the person running this website did not go to work for one of these companies upon graduation. He, along with a few others founded a company which came out with several innovative products and has been very successful.
So, to answer your quetions, we created the products, nobody stopped us, and it has been quite fine.
Check out a recent story that we had out here about the NASSCOM awards.
So, my point is that, Kenney has walked the walk and is now talking the talk.
And well, there is this thing about freedom of speech.We respect that, that is why we have your comments posted for all to see. As the saying goes, you can proclaim from mountains that we are crooks and we be hanged, but we will die for protecting your right to say so.
[I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer and historian.]
Comment by Domestic Avalanche — February 10, 2009 @ 9:15 pm
That’s an awesome comment Domestic Avalanche….
I still don’t get the logic behind making personal pointed atacks…
Comment by The Nomad — February 10, 2009 @ 10:00 pm
In my company, our Java developers now undergoing a training on .Net. Soon they will convert into .net proffesionals. Some other may a php developer. After some time they will forget what .Net, java and php
Comment by Little Insider — February 11, 2009 @ 1:45 pm
Don’t know why everyone is Guru these days, specially when its about bashing.
A humble request to writer, please do little more research before drawing conclusions. Here are pointers if you want to rethink…
Zoho, pramati …..
Comment by MK — June 16, 2009 @ 9:29 am
I totally agree with the post!
When Industrial Revolution began, countries which invested in making machines were rewarded heavily. Those countries who invested in mass production by buying these machines from other countries didn’t end up rich!
Just like this, in IT revolution, US corporates builds the machines (Microsoft-Windows,.Net and Visual Studio, Sun-Java and its variants, Intel – processors, HP-servers….,IBM- databases….).. and we poor Indians buy these ‘machines/tools’ to build applications to other US companies!:D
All typical Indian firms are ‘services business’ , just need to know either .net/jee/php to develop applications. And like the post says US Firms are ‘technology’ firms.
This doesn’t mean Indians are not talented. Coz the backbones of these silicon valley Industries are all Indians! But something exists in India which prevents us from moving to high-tech country!
Comment by Cijo Thomas — June 21, 2009 @ 9:20 am
FYI: Fact file about Indian innovations (that too recent ones):
1. Fastest surface to air missile – Akash
2. Cheapest (yet good) car – Nano
3. Best satellite – Recently launched one of Gset (US itself is been hiring india’s satellite services for taking pics of terrorist states since late 90s)
4. Best IT company for financial products – I-Flex – Now acquired by Oracle
This is just on top of my brain .. debate can go as long as u want
Comment by hurricane — July 10, 2009 @ 7:39 pm
Nice debate! Indians have the potential to upcome and shine in any field. But the thing where we are lagging is everyone here needs self protection. The most common mindset of Indians is working in a big company which supports foreign contries and which provide good salary is more than enough for their satisfaction and safety to lead a life.
Thats why Indians normally not concentrating much on innovating, but servicing for other contries
Comment by Indian girl — October 12, 2011 @ 8:54 am