I was watching Bill Gates address the governors of the American states on a high school education summit the other day. He pointed out that America cannot produce enough knowledge workers since their high school & college dropout rate is hovering at about 50%. ( India school dropout is like 51%). India apparently churns out 1 million college grads more every year while China is still further ahead.

Hence there will be a need for knowledgeable and highly skilled workers in the US without which their economy cannot grow. Now we know why Gates has set development centres in India ! The question is can we rise up to the occasion and provide the world with enough high- quality knowledge workers ? Looking at how pathetic our IT workforce quality is , this seems to be a rather daunting task. European tech people seem to have a high rate of productivity than us probably forced to cover up for their lack of manpower. HR professionals in IT companies need to tell point-blank their top management folk that the quality (and attitude) of IT manpower is pathetic.

masterhr

I do not agree with you. I think we have the ability to rise to the occassion and provide the world with enough high quality knowledge workers.

Go to Microsoft Web site and look at the team working on performance enhancements for Visual Studio. There are a good number of Indians there. Indians who have studied here, worked here and then moved to greener pastures. Look at innovations in parallel computing. You will find gaint leaps have been taken by Indians.

The question remains why we cannot work the same magic while standing on our own soil. Let us believe we can do, and let us brain storm in this forum how we can do. Self-despair does not take us anywhere. Attitude of the IT workforce is a different issue. Let us discuss that separately. Let us not generalize some specific bad experiences we have had. And let us introspect, as HR fraternity, are we also to blame for the mess?

ayesha

Hi,

The question remains why we cannot work the same magic while standing on our own soil. Let us believe we can do, and let us brain storm in this  forum how we can do. Self-despair does not take us anywhere.  Attitude of the IT workforce is a different issue. Let us discuss that  separately. Let us not generalize some specific bad experiences we have  had. And let us introspect, as HR fraternity, are we also to blame for not to crib, but the Indian success stories you mention are a definite minority. How long will we keep singing about the pentium chip and the grid computing ? Even the Indians who have made it in the US did so not solely based on merit but bcos of opportunity.

Having been with software professionals for over a decade now Even Indian business owners in the west are not very impressed with Indian manpower quality. They are not impressed with the decision making skills or maturity of project mangers, with the defect rates per 1000 lines of code, nor with the delivery. How many offshore projects are going way beyond schedule and budget !

Atleast 4 factors we need to build into the workforce are

1) a change in mindset from mute spectators to active participants
2) team work than individual game plans
3) soft skills
4) ability to apply knowledge at the workplace

But with the HR professional hardly being heard in the top management room, who will bell the cat ?

Cheers

Benny