OT: The effect of outsourcing to the quality of posts (?)

- T
- tum_
  
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posted
16 years ago

Wed, Jul 25, 2007 2:42 PM

Hi NG,

I've been reading this and other similar groups/forums/discussion boards for quite a while now. Has anyone else noticed that in the last year or so the quality of questions posted has fallen dramatically?

I mean, the posts like this (not real, I've made it up):

------------------------------------------- Subject: DISABLE INTERUPT Hi, Please tell me how I disable interupt? Compiler say:

xxx\yyy> error: in test.c, line:34 "undefined _XXX_YYY_"

Thank u.

-------------------------------------------

are now appearing in the software related groups in abandunce. And, I'm not intended to offend anyone, most of them are coming from people with Indian-like names.

What is this? A dramatic increase of the number of "software developers" in India in the recent year(s)? Most probably. But why on Earth they don't even try to formulate the question properly to give someone a chance to answer?

Basically, I would like to hear an opinion from some experienced Indian engineer with proper communication skills (so that I could understand the answer) - maybe this can be explained by some cultural differences I'm not aware of?

Sorry for off-topic, Group.

- C
- Chris Hills
  
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posted
16 years ago

Wed, Jul 25, 2007 3:34 PM

In article , tum_ writes

Yes..... You post is a pale copy of one by Grant Edwards about a year ago :-)

He was complaining of similar things. You are not the first one to notice it. For those of use who have been here over a decade the changes are even more marked.

:-) Some are that bad you can't make them up!!!

Snipped the (accurate) generalisation and steryotyping.

Probably.

English may not be their first language. Though it is widely used in India etc However part of it I think is down to the way they are taught in collage and how they view the Internet.

The worse ones are those who use WKS (Wanky Kid Speak) or txt lngage nd xpct u 2 no wot i mean cos all sw is cool.

pls rigt my asignmnt 4 me cos i is 2 cool to use google to srch

However they tend not to be Indians.

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\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org      www.phaedsys.org \/\/\
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- T
- tum_
  
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posted
16 years ago

Wed, Jul 25, 2007 4:33 PM

Indeed. You're talking about this thread I reckon, looks like I've missed it (holidays ;) )

formatting link

Well, in most cases English is _definitely_ not their first language, this is pretty obvious, but that's not the main problem. What strikes me is that they don't learn (communicating on usenet et al.), the same people (well, nicknames) keep asking questions in the same manner despite being told multiple times that this is not the way to go and explained why.

yup, seeing this too...

Hmm? You mean those using txt language? I've noticed that indians also overuse it...

- S
- ssubbarayan
  
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posted
16 years ago

Thu, Jul 26, 2007 5:05 AM

Hi, I am from India.The problem you are seeing is due to multiple reasons:

1)Most people may be good at english but not good at communicating what they want in a clear manner 2)Freshers especially are not given chance to interact with their clients and its always through manager the communication happens to outside world. 3)College education on technical side is not really relevant with the work people do here. 4)Companies keep the freshers in self learning mode and not formal training for communication skills.So when they first start opening up themselves to international forum,they are clueless about the way they should ask for help. 5)I have even seen people of managerial level not having good communication inspite of being good technically 6)Startup companies rarely train their employees.So people have only this type of groups to turn for. 7)SMS and chatting are very popular over here,they tend to treat people in this group as friends and post queries as like talking to friends. 8)Cultural differences between how the words are understood between different parts of world.

I am not saying all of them in India are like this,but the above said are real problems techies face here.It takes nearly 5 to ten years to develop yourself to be a good communicator,provided you are given an oppurtunity to interact with clients.

Regards, s.subbarayan