Jason Merrill wrote: > I'm assisting with an Actionscript outsourcing project right now with > some Flash game coders in Mumbai, so far so good, though they are a > little behind in skills - but would be interested to learn any cultural > things people have experienced with Flash developers in India.
A few things I have noticed: People in other cultures use software differently, and may have different priorities. For example, the new version of Director, just released, was done by a crack team in India. They did a bang-up job coming up to speed on a complex code base, fixed a lot of bugs, added Unicode support, and lots of other neat stuff. However, the new text-rendering engine they wrote is taking a lot of heat, and the message window, one of a developer's best friends, is now virtually unusable. It's not because they are inferior programmers--they just didn't completely understand how Western developers use the tool. I had a similar experience when I moved to Beijing in 1988 to manage a team of Chinese programmers. They had developed a nice piece of vertical-market software, and they wanted to market it in the West. They were good programmers, and hard-working, but their concept of a user interface was radically different from the West's. India is relatively new to the programming world. There was a major political shift 10-15 years ago that allowed India to compete on the world tech market, and they have done so with remarkable success. But, you don't have the silverback programmers there--the ones who wrote a 3D engine 15 years ago in C, or even assembler. Think back to perhaps 1985, 1990 in America. That's their accumulated experience level. Expect Indians to be very polite, even deferential. You'll never get flamed by an Indian--courtesy is too much a part of their culture. But don't even try to understand Indian office politics or professional relations. Their culture developed for millennia without significant influence from the West (the same could be said about Western culture, in reverse, of course). So, expect to be able to direct them on _what_ needs to be done, but don't expect to have a say in _how_ they do it. In America, you can expect a student to get a decent education, even at a small community college. They will work with modern equipment and modern software, and be taught modern, if not cutting-edge, techniques. In India, you find that environment only at the better colleges. Smaller, provincial colleges are still teaching Turbo Pascal on DOS, using 80286 machines. As a result, the best and brightest are a match for their peers anywhere in the world--they're as smart as anybody, and some of the top technical schools in India rival MIT or Cal Tech. But, once you get out of that tier of programmers, there is a sharp drop-off in skill levels. The Microsofts, Adobes, and IBMs of the world snap up that top tier of programmers. For the rest of us, hiring a team of Indian programmers is hit and miss--you could get a decent team, or you could end up with a hodge-podge of code that has to be scrapped and done over from scratch. Part of that appears to be the result of high turnover, or perhaps rapid advancement. I would find a part of my project was going well, then all of a sudden it would change drastically--different coding style, schedule slippage, and the like--and I would find that a new programmer, even a novice, had been assigned to that task. I hope this doesn't come across as overly critical. It's not meant to be. I've had some very good experiences with Indian teams, and some not so good experiences. At the end of the day, Indians are, well, people. Outside of cultural issues, there is no significant difference between a Gunjeet Parma and a Sharon Jones. Cordially, Kerry Thompson _______________________________________________ Flashcoders mailing list Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders
