its cultural as well. independent thought is valued here. not so there is in fact sometimes dangerous
This more than anything. Indians are incredibly culturally conservative by their own standards, and most anyone else's too. In actual practice, stricter than most Muslims, who seem to have a dozen-odd loopholes in "Allah's Will" that allow them to cut loose (Allah can't see me on Thursday, or when I'm over the horizon from Mecca or whatever, etc...), or just do so when no one else is looking.
It's not quite the same flavor as the Japanese/Korean/Chinese obedience-conformity. Working in the contracted IT sector that also had HUGE BPO operations (ACS out of Texas, they do entire state .govs practically...) we'd bring over Indian team members from Bangalore to cross-train etc.
Nice people. Very eager to please. These guys would have post-post graduate degrees in comp-sci and IT certs that would have someone here in the states making six figures, if not more, and on the fast track to being VP of IS/IT/MIS for a fourtune-500 company. Their resumes are
terrifying... at first.
But while they are
diligent, they lack any
initiative, and squirm worse than snails dipped in salt if you try and put them on the spot to develop a process, or make some executive decision on their own. And since these guys, actually rising even above level 1-2-3 call center/helpdesk/support are examples of India's best and brightest... I'm not completely sure how India has accomplished becoming a nuclear and space-capable state, much less functioned since the British gave them their independence.
And that's where the mistakes, and Americans having to come in and troubleshoot all their work comes in, and eating up almost all the "savings" you get from Indian outsourcing. Net result, some H.S. Dropout dork 4Channer who drives the black and white VW Beetle for GeekSquad is often worth more than an Indian PhD in Computer Science and Information Theroy on simple initiative and independent problem solving.
The meanest thing I've ever done to one of them is tell them (innocently) about how McDonalds was in a bit of a scandal with vegetarians a few years back over how the fry oil had some beef broth in it as a flavoring. Poor Anjit... He seriously looked like he was going to cry.