But when it comes to consumer applications, like say Microsoft Office or Blogger or a GMail, it is a totally different ball game.
Unlike IT work, the user interface design, the technology, the features everything has to be designed from scratch. In IT software development, much of the design work has already been done by the client before it is passed on to an engineer. Also, enterprise software built by by IT cos do not have too much of a performance constraint. You can always throw more hardware at it to make it fast enough.
Modern programming languages like Java and .Net have evolved so much that much of the technology is abstracted and the engineer can just focus on converting business requirements into software. That is why IT cos like Infosys, TCS etc can afford to hire engineers outside Computer Science streams because it is easy to train a reasonably smart engineer in these skills. Because of the job availability, even Computer Science curriculams are getting focussed on IT related skills rather than core computer science skills which are more likely to be useful in product development.
So now we have most engineers becoming 'Jacks of all trades' and 'Masters of None'. Cyber coolies is what they call Indian IT engineers.
Why do we need product companies if IT is doing good enough?
You just have to look at this to understand that. The market cap of product companies is not tied to the size of the companies. Product companies, the tenth of the size of an Infy make much more money than IT cos. For an Infy, the only way to make more revenue is to hire more people who are then billed $25 per hour if they get a project. Compare this to YouTube which was built by 2 people and sold to Google for $1 billion.
And then, the other problem with IT is that the work is distributed solely on the basis of labour cost arbitrage. The day other countries like China, Vietnam and Philipines are able to provide English speaking engineers at a lower cost, the jobs will move out of countries like India.
I think there is clearly a dearth in top quality colleges which can train engineers in skills useful for product development. And it can even be an evening course for working IT professionals. This will sow the seeds for hundreds of product companies which can innovate on par with global standards.
2 comments:
US bets on the future... the ideas....in india its more of the present....Thats why the risk taking ability, the Out of box thinking is also not very prevalent.. Give us a situation, constraints and an objective and we will have smart asses that best even the amazing americans... Give us a white board and ask us to come up with some thing creative and we come up with a duece.. Our schooling, our social culture prevents us from taking risks...that translates to the businesses, the markets and the Industries Indians focus o
So true. But I would say, we need both worlds. That is probably one reason why US is going down. They are great at making great leaps forward but don't seem to have the patience to make the small steps to perfect it. Perhaps that is why Japanese auto makers are giving US automakers a hard time.
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