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".
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.