As a fresh graduate I use to wonder and dream of becoming the best in software design & analysis world. My impression was that IT consulting is very high-tech and respected job. Good blessed me with a job in an IT company soon after my graduation. My high aspirations and the big US dream was very much alive and true.
Entered the industry and realized that the reality was something else. Use of computers and electronic in the US is common because of high cost of manpower, hence the effort always is to automate the processes in an organization. This mindset leads to very high level of automation and computerization. Another fact of US is lack of skilled and educated work force. Although the government has provided free high school education BUT graduation and higher studies is very expensive even for an average American to afford. The US economy is rich and technology surly offers convenience to people and makes ‘work’ people independent.
To solve this manpower issue and to further automate things, organizations spend millions of dollars. Technologies take birth and die faster than the speed of human birth rate in India. In the web programming space CGI was hot then came PHP, then XML on the web followed by ColdFusion, JSP and ASP, then ASP.NET … soon distributed computing also became the buzz word with RPC, RMI, COM, EJB, CORBA then web services were HOT thing and now service oriented arch. Its a non ending story …
Technology is a broad term and is always meant to solve a business problem ! business problem could be of multiple kinds … need of a new technology for enhanced security at home gave birth to virtual security systems which allow you to control your house over the net. Now that sounds cool … but some smart person thought about this concept which will sell and mean a lot of business hence the need for such a technology. Similarly, their are other scenarios when business houses has already implemented systems and that needs further enhancement or revamp due to expansion of business and inability of the existing system to handle that volume, again the need for better technology. Then we have scenarios where the technology implemented is excellent but is obsolete now and the organization cannot find people with those skills, hence they have to consider upgradation of the systems although their is no change in the business process. So in every perspective, a technology lives and dies with the business need in the US.
You might say … great, nice to know that US angle, but how does this lead to growth of companies in India ? The answer is that Indians are smart and intelligent people available for cheap. Higher education is not that expensive and we have lot of hard working people with a dream to grow in life willing to take that extra pain to learn. And most importantly we CAN communicate in English. Its like a discount store where you get good stuff at a lesser price and hence US companies see dollar savings. A person in the US might charge anywhere between $90 to $100 per hour for utilizng his skills in a given technology or subject area. In India, companies offer the same skilled resources for $25 to $35 per hour which is 3 to 4 times cheaper. Internet has proven a boon to India for connectivity to US systems and the time difference of 9 to 12 hours makes it possible for us to work during our day time when it is night in US.
How do Indian companies afford to pay high salary ? a typical $25 per hour billing rate coverts to Rs. 1125 per hour @ Rs.45 per dollar. A simple calculation revels that Rs.1125 per hour becomes Rs. 9000 a day (1125 X 8 hours a day), Rs. 45,000 a week (9000 X 5 working days in a week) and Rs. 1,80,000 a month (45,000 X 4 weeks) !!! Even if offer a salary of 90,000 a month you still have another 90,000 to look forward to in order to meet your business expenses. We are till now talking about 1 person at $25 per hour. TCS has a workforce of 83,000 employees and many others in the range of 7,000 to 40,000. Even if you leave aside the support staff (non-billable) which is typically 10% to 15% of the workforce, this model means a LOT of money !!
My original dream of becoming best in design and analysis is still there but the perspective has changed. US dream is not live anymore as I have visited US 3 to 4 times now and understand that its not my kind of place. Its just a different place with people belonging to a different culture and mindset !!