back to article Will Westerners soon be getting their IT direct from Asian players?

Singapore’s money is made of plastic, which makes it incredibly hard-wearing but also slightly slick and unreal. Which is just as well, given the amount of cash which was moving around when the Asia Pacific region’s channel players descended on the city state for the Canalys Channels forum last month. The event was held at the …

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  1. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Career advice for western IT workers ...

    Learn chinese. Then learn whichever IT skills are in short supply in the CST timezone (China Standard Time) . Then find a low cost place to live. Then brace yourself while the job offers come flooding in -but not in english.

    For a short time the novelty of employing a native english speaker should get you a position. But after that, you'll need to have embraced the culture and be able to demonstrate a string of successful projects.

    Oh and don't go flashing your iPhone during the interview.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But are they any good at it?

    Quote

    “The Indians we see all over the world (in systems integration)”, he says. “We haven’t seen that much from the Chinese.”

    You may well have seen them but unless they have a darn sight more people who can think outside the box IMHO is that they will continue to be piss poor at real worls SI.

    It is all well and good having 6 sigma and a gazillion other certs but sadly given the bunch of bozos I'm trying to deal with at the moment, there couldn't integrate their way out of a paper bag inside a month of virtual sundays.

    The only decent ones are those who has been educated in the west.

    1. graeme leggett Silver badge

      Re: But are they any good at it?

      "educated in the West"

      Perhaps those ones have a better understanding of the culture, business environment and therefore the requirements

      1. An(other) Droid

        Re: But are they any good at it?

        Or a more acceptable skin color. Come on it is okay to accept your real issues.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: But are they any good at it?

          @Or a more acceptable skin color. Come on it is okay to accept your real issues.

          Considering most of the time you won't have to see offshore devs I don't think anyone cares about their "skin colour" as long as you can understand them. The main issues with Indian devs in particular is that they seem to be willing to accept any project without being able estimate whether they can actually do it or not (which is why you see lots first posters with Indian sounding names on StackOverflow etc asking PLEASE HELP ME NOW!!!!) and aren't up to date (For Android for example, Indian devs will still produce apps that look like Android 1.6 because they haven't kept or have the desire to update their skills).

          They certainly have a place in the code'o'sphere, but that place is much like Chinese manfacturering.. They do the cheap and unimportant jobs massproduction jobs. If the job is important you either do it locally or fly someone over to supervise the work.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: But are they any good at it?

      Too true, India has a massive IT industry, but all that it does is provide basic services to western companies. Given the apparant Glut of IT skills and resources, why isn't there a big IT software player over there actually using those skills and producing things for itself?

      From experience, no-one has probably ever taken the initiative to do it, or they've tried and failed! Certainly all the projects I've had involvement with that have been pushed entirely offshore to Indian 'partners' have not ended well... nor started well, nor really had any indication that they might succeed throughout their life. It's a cultural issue/attitude unfortunately, and unless it changes things are going to stay the way they are, if not go downhill as the western companies get fed up with dealing with it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: But are they any good at it?

        "why isn't there a big IT software player over there"

        Tata?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: But are they any good at it?

          Tata are a big software house, but not exactly a big player, they don't produce anything directly, they just provide contrated services to other companies.

          My experience of TCS is that they are no better, or worse, than any of the other companies we've contracted.

          When we give a software project to one of these offshore IT houses and they deliver a decent quality product within the timescales ( and I don't mean just quoting 2 days for a 10 minute job), ideally with some decent (ie bear some resemblence to reality) progress reports, I'll be happier than anyone.

  3. TwoWolves
    Mushroom

    I Remember...

    When the Japs were going to take over the world and we were all going to have to learn Japanese.

    As it turned out their economy imploded and it all went sour. The funny thing is, the whole China/India Asian tiger thing now looks ten times more unstable than the Japanese gadget empire ever did.

    We may be crap but their crap is much crappier than our crap ever was. Even on a bad day.

    Think I'll just wait for this to blow over thanks.

  4. JaitcH
    WTF?

    It's not 'palstic; ...

    it's polymer - that notes are made from now..

    As for the IT part of the story - do you really think the US Congress would allow it to happen with their 'back door' paranoia?

  5. dssf

    Will Westerners Get Their 30-Seconds Cancer Test from Korea?

    http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2012/12/325_126348.html

    " Anyone can check whether a person has cancer cells in about half a minute with a new high tech to analyze a drop of blood without medical doctors.

    The tech is expected to be commercialized within two years, according to a domestic information and telecommunications research institute.

    The state-run Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced Wednesday that it has developed a whole blood processing chip and bio-sensor array chip, which enable anyone check diseases or food toxins at an earlier stage.

    The whole blood processing chip enables anyone to easily screen cancers within 30 seconds, as it separates even one drop of blood into blood cells and plasma."

  6. John Styles

    If the actual work is being done by Indians in India anyway...

    ... then that must mean the only reason for hiring a UK (or more likely UK subsidiary of a US company) will be the superiority of the UK / US managers and their strategic vision etc...

    HA HA HA HA HA [FX: Falls off perch laughing]

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