Software Business in the Middle East

I’ve been working with Indian developers for about 5 years when I was employed by Siemens in Gothenburg. The project we developed was very large, about 2’000 people in US, Sweden, Norway, Germany and India. There were about 300 people in our office in Bangalore.

I had couple business trips to Bangalore staying there for several weeks. Just before I quit Siemens to move to Dubai I was staying in India for about half a year working in our office over there.

The experience was amazing, and here come some of the points.

Technical Knowledge
I worked with brilliant developers. It was really exciting to have technical discussions with some of them, as they had smart ideas. Yes, there is a number of average and bad developers, but this is the same in any other country. I think that technically, Indian developers are of the same level as developers in any country like US, Sweden, Russia etc.

Relationships with the Manager
This is where the whole bunch of problems starts. Manager is a kind of superman and his word is very often a law. If he does not like or does not understand your idea, it will not be implemented, and developer will not normally argue with that. Especially, if the manager is from top level, like the chief of the entire office in Indian branch.

Admission of Errors or Lack of Knowledge
For some reasons Indians have problems to admit they made a mistake or they do not know anything. They will try to finish the work and solve all problems until the deadline without telling it to your, and you will know about those problems just before the deadline. Kind of surprise when you were told before that everything was all right.

It happens not only in the office, but also on the streets. Many times we simply came to some kind of slum in the middle of nowhere after we’d asked for the right way to the place we wanted to visit on the week-end. People could not tell they’re not aware of it, so they simply pointed to any directions they wanted. It took us a few weeks to understand that it is useless to ask for the direction on the street.

You could find a way back home from the slum, but it causes more problems if it happens in your daily work. Once we had very bad situation that was later escalated to the top management of our project. Let’s say we had a deadline for the next version development last Friday. During couple months before the deadline, our Indian office reported that progress went fine, they’re on track. Then on Thursday, they reported that we would delay the release because they got about 500 bugs left to fix. Although on Wednesday, nobody had any idea about those bugs.

Infrastructure
Quality of phone calls from office or home phone, mobile connectivity and Internet are pretty poor. My colleagues were not able to reach me either by my office number or my Swedish mobile number. Conference calls with US and Swedish offices very often had troubles with the quality.

Cultural Differences
Body language, I think, is the largest difference that you notice couple minutes after you’ve started talking to Indian. When we say “yes”, we shake our head up and down. Indians shake their heads from right to left – similar to the way we say “no”.

One month after I had started working at Siemens, I went to the project meeting in Germany where I met our Indian colleagues the first time, and that was my first experience about body language differences. I explained something to my Indian colleague, and he shook his head from right to left, saying “yes” in Indian. But I had no clue about this difference, so I thought he was saying “no”. Assuming he didn’t get what I was telling, I repeated my point again. I think after the third repetition he told me by words that he understood and agreed to my point after the first explanation.

English – if Indian has lived in US, UK or even non-English speaking European country for a while, then it might be pretty easy to understand his or her English. Otherwise Indian English sounds the same as Kannada used in Karnataka state. After a while you start understanding this English too.

Indian Food – very spicy, especially from Southern states. Even breakfast. After the first couple of weeks in India you feel yourself as a dragon breathing with fire. After 6 months spent in India I thought I would never ever eat Indian food again. But now it is one of my favorite food. Living in another country for half a year definitely affects your habits and preferences.

To be continued.