It is extremely wrong to say Managerial roles are there for the taking and good developers are not taking them.
If you are a good developer most managers are extremely hostile to you. Because they think if you become a manager you become a threat to their job. Therefore they prevent you from becoming a manager.
Its typical power play.
If you are really good and have real chops in you to do any big stuff, you are ruined in India. People will try to get rid of you anyway they can. The society as a whole hates merit people here. Because most are crooks and they don't like seeing real people getting rewards. That would disrupt their ecosystem.
If you are good, India is the last place you want to be. Move out, one way or other for your own good.
The issue isn't just limited to software companies. You see in a country like India question papers leak, people cheat in exams. Teachers have their favorite pets at schools and colleges whom they reward with marks unfairly. What happens when a populace of this kids goes to do jobs? They bring the same culture everywhere. Which is why you will see every one wants to cheat at everything.
Everything from cheating at taxes(fake rent receipts), jumping traffic signals, promotions at office, voting for wrong interests, bribes, corruption etc etc. This permeates to every aspect of our nations very existing character.
People, society and governments have wrong priorities in India. Most think building roads or some fancy infrastructure will solve their issues.
In reality Human resources are what matters in building a country. The rest happens on auto pilot.
I won't say everything on west runs on Merit. But the situation is definitely better than India in my experience. Most importantly I have seen better the quality of human resources better a country turns out to be.
My guess is India will take a lot of time, several decades, may be even centuries to fix its core issues.
A large part of the country is undeveloped. Fixing roads and infrastructure definitely helps but reducing population and creating better health should help as well.
India is a huge exporter of engineering talent. This is bad because it's a brain drain for the country. If I was getting SV level salaries, India would make sense.
Yes, I've seen them too, that's their typical attitude :) I still remember dejected co-worker (who resigned and took back his resignation because manager made false promise to retain him) said, "these guys shouldn't called managers, they are cheats,cheaters"
I think this is largely a cultural thing - many Indians just don't see development itself as a career, everyone just wants to be a manager with people working below them. Sort of a 'face' thing. And of course when you have that attitude, you are generally not going to be excited or even really interested in development, which is perhaps one of the reasons why so many Indian developers are just not very good*
* Source: I've been team leader for an Indian dev team working out of Mumbai for several years. I am not saying India doesn't have good developers who care - it does, but they are extremely rare are companies like Capgemini and Cognizant, who simply don't pay enough to attract such people.
There are people, especially who can't play the poisonous political game for too far that their mileage is limited to a point. These people have to retrain themselves with some hard hands on skills, or will suffer at the next purge.
Read my other comments. Management fanciness is Indias national culture.
I don't quite agree with cultural thing view. Honestly, 11 yrs back when I started with Cognizant, I was asked so many times by managers "how long you going to be technical? you can write programs now, do you want to continue that even after 5 yr or 10 yrs?"
Its not cultural thing, its being imposed by less talented management people, who see 'people/project management' is the only path for growth.
Assuming these managers you mention were also Indian, couldn't their behaviour also be part of it being a 'cultural thing'?
true, these managers are Indians too :) They follow the rules set by their high management, it has to be company culture set by founders.
Edit: you mentioned many Indian wants to be managers and dont see development as career choice, I disagree. I view the situation as, many Indians forced to follow companies culture set by founders. There is difference between the two.
Edit2: >My Indian friends who work or worked at such companies tell me this comes not just from management and the company itself, but also from a desire for the perception of prestige; to appear 'important' to their families in particular.
hmm, i think your Indian friend shared wrong info with you. Indian Families doesn't know difference between manager or tech-lead, technical architect. Most often middle class families doesn't care about the designation in IT but they do care about salary :)
In a population of 1.2 billion, of course not everyone fully buys in to this. I've had the pleasure of working with some Indian devs who were interested and excited by development, and saw a good, non-administrative career ahead of them irregardless of what others thought of them. Of course I never have this pleasure for long - they always leave for product companies, and usually get 200% or more salary into the bargain!
No, but they know the difference between 'manager' and 'not a manager'. It's not just one friend, it's multiple people across Capgemini and Cognizant. You make a good point about salary being important, but it's far easier and more common to become a manager at Capgemini, Cognizant etc than it is to become a good developer anywhere.
Not new. This culture has existed since forever.
You will see in India there is wild craze for MBA degrees. Everyone wants an MBA. Like every single person. I even know house wife's who do MBA's because 'Just in case'.
Even before that, non impactful, unreal and very little value adding desk jobs have always been valued heavily in Indian culture.
To give you an example IAS. People know the job involves forwarding a few memos, approving leaves and vacation requests and supervising a few juniors. You get luxury free accommodation, handful pay and other myriad benefits.
Even in the private world its the same.
It all comes down to a simple thing: "In management, you get a lot of big stuff for free, which others don't get even after work".
On the other side, I've known a lot of Indian developers at product companies here in the US and they're mostly brilliant. I'm sure it's self selected to a degree because you've gotta be pretty smart to get a job on the other side of the world. Still, I think taking down these big visa abusing companies is good for the US and India. The good engineers in both countries will get the pay they deserve, and Indian developers will get a better shot at working at companies that aren't just body shops
Like not changing your oil, it's not something you can recover from.
These sheep are work horses for the political cartels, and these people do bulk of the heavy lifting as the plum money, opportunities and rewards are eaten office politicians and their minions.
Most of this kind of talent is used and thrown like tissues or they grow a brain and move to different companies.
For the H1B, you only need to be applying to work in a "specialty occupation" and earn more than the prevailing wage for that occupation in the US.
From the USCIS website, "Generally speaking, a job is a specialty occupation if the occupation normally requires a bachelors degree in a related field of study. Jobs in fields such as engineering, math, and business, as well as many technology fields often qualify as a specialty occupation."
https://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/h-1b-specialty-occupati...
You haven't met everyone of them to apply such a broad characterization. You have a point to make - that these three businesses abuse the Visa - but that gets lost in your attempt to pass judgment on a group of people you haven't met, and yet feel at home grouping them together as "shoe-lickers". Get off your high horse.
On the other hand, Your ill-informed view paints a poor picture of you. As I said before - stop thinking you are better. Instead, you came across as a massive douche.
Yes not all people are bad. But Most are. Buy this is in every single company. Not just outsourcing firms.
The issue in India is scarcity. Which is every one wants their pound of flesh even if that comes from their own brother. They want it.
The Op is right though. You can't get anything through work in most Indian companies. Regional politics, linguistic politics, connections in high places, politics is what you need to progress in India.
In India work doesn't get you too far. Society doesn't reward work or merit. In fact rewards corrupt practices both in government and private sectors.
Yet people in India wonder why no good things happen here.
Experience with Cognizant: I've seen people, just after 2 years asked to give-up technical career and focus on management stuffs like setting up conference calls, excel work, estimation and email etc. Just after 2 years you are expected to 'mentor' (aka dump work to) the juniors.
I see, strict H1B rules is good for India too. This way, Management learns to respect real talents and not shoe-lickers(highly suspect this will happen, but slight chance) . Then people who want to go to USA, will prepare themselves technically rather than saying 'yes to boss' for everything in an attempt to get visa.
There is also misconception (i believe) among Americans, they think if these are talented one from India, then what about rest of people working in offshore! Fact is, Most often, the real work will be done by employee in India, and definitely each team will have at-least couple of high-skilled person, but these guys don't have email-communication/shoe-licking skills. They are honestly happy about this strict visa rules.