These days, IT firms increasingly hiring non-engineering graduates for testing software applications and managing computer infrastructure of their clients in order to do more with fewer staff and at lower wages than computer engineers. This we can clearly see in colleges, where they allow campus recruitment for engineers from all the streams of engineering just by thinking they can train them in the organisations and need not pay as much they are paying to a normal IT graduate.
In India, normally, a computer science graduate is paid anywhere between Rs. 2 lakh and Rs. 5 lakh per annum by these software companies when they join, and with wage inflation of around 10 percent every year, the salary costs keep going up.
So friends, with the recruitment of non-techies in IT firms, won't the IT product qualities get affected?
I completely agree with the idea that a person with good logical ability and will to learn the intricacies of relevant computer technology is bound to succeed in the IT industry. And this is one of the reasons non-techies are being introduced into the IT industry (because of lack of proper talent in the IT-trained man-power).
Nonetheless, a person who has put in 4 or more years (BE(IT),MCA) in learning the concepts needed by the tech world, knows more than a non-techie. Even though the person might not be that smart but multiple years of hammering of IT concepts makes him gain some insight into the workings of IT.
Non-tech engineering grads get lured by the good pay packages IT firms dole out. They sacrifice their industry specific learning just because they could not put in some real efforts to find a job in their relevant sector. Thus taking in non-techies even though they might be engineers in other domains, doesnt make good sense unless the candidates are really good.
Apart from this the other thing is that some companies are being acting real cheap and hiring non-engineers ie people from BSC,BCOM backgrounds just to cut costs and these people are just not ripe enough to be deployed even after 1 or 2 months of training. (I know myself what kind of mastery these people have over IT concepts). Software quality is bound to suffer when these people are employed on important phases of development like testing. (It might seem to be not that important to the layman but testing is the most lengthy and important phase of s/w development). Even after companies employ testing tools as well, still the insight that a techie would have might be lacking in a non-techie. But there are exceptional cases as well where people with a natural ability to understand these concepts will be able to do a good job, even though they are non-techies.
But this has been kind of a regular practice where IT companies especially the mid-tier ones who hire people from non-IT background, even though there are capable IT candidates available. There is 1 company called Syntel which has given offer letters to 100s of IT grads all over India and has not recruited them, just because it could get cheaper labour from private institutes and BSC grads. Companies like these who have inconsistent hiring policies should be ostracised by the technical institutes as well as the companies who give them projects.
The point is that there will be a definite hit on the quality of the output when insufficiently trained man-power is used by companies looking for cost-cutting just to increase their profits and thus the share price.
I don't think that its going to affect adversely the s/w products quality simply because non-techies [commerce/science graduates] are simply not given that kindaa work which allows extensive programming skills. This trend is mainly being followed by India IT firms, PRIMARILY as a cost cutting exercise and nothing else, and they specifically place non-techies into back-office work but can easily be done by anyone having a certain amount of training and some aptitude. Most of the development [R&D to be specific] is i the safe hands of experts [nothing personal with commerce/arts/sciences grads but just for the correct skill] and let me take this opportunity to mention that even the so-called-technical guys only follow/program the design which originates from outside India... believe me its reality.
This is helping the IT companies to support their linear growth and improving the per-employee margin.
Mahalakshmi, who initially started this debate, I guess have picked it up from todays Economic Times newspaper, where their are already given some stats as to what I stated above.
So ultimatly its a cost game and its a way cut down on our i/p costs. This is the reason why IT MNCs came to India and thats what Indian IT companies are doing but its intra-country.
I completely agree with the idea that a person with good logical ability and will to learn the intricacies of relevant computer technology is bound to succeed in the IT industry.
Cost cutting by hiring low quality people is definitely bad for the industry. Indian companies are already loosing on this ground. However, a criteria of techies and non-techies should not be engineering graduates. I have seen and interviewed engineering graduates and MCAs. They have been unprofessional so many a times as compared to guys with limited 1 year training in the subject. The criteria should rather be his know-how and job experience. Professional qualification adds to the quality but its not a quality in itself. Adding further, the attrition rate with engineering and MCAs is higher then with limited trained staff. They are thus being hired.
this is true,I have practical experiance about tis in my personal life.Some people donot have knowledge/experiance about the field where they are working,but they have solid refarence or back support to get the job.As a result a qualified person did not get the chance to growup.This is not only effecting quality & product some times it is the isu of service,any body can tell me that what will be future of the people who have eligbility but dont have any refarence .Another most deficult thing is that all the companies searching for the experienced persons,then what will be with the freshers????? wher they will get the experiance???????????????. So ther are two major problems,from my poient of vew IT firms should apoient freshers & experianced booth for the better service because employees are the asset of company .
ya i agree with u sir, if it is possible to train one person in jst 6 months or one year then why engineers are taught for 4years? It will definitely effect the product quality and customer's satisfaction
I think yes. It will effect the quality. Normally a IT graduate undergoes 3-4 years of training to become a professional. If that education is given to a non-IT graduate in just 1 year, its obvious that they won't be taught everything due to which their basics won't be strongs and they won't be able to perform as nicely as a properly trained IT graduate. Hiring non-techies for the technology related work. Even with techies, project success rate is less than 25%. With non techies, they are intending to smash it to zero.
Companies hire not experienced people (the cheapest they can find) and I am always forced to teach them to do the work. For example for a project X, I plan two months (before project starts) training time, where I teach 'fresh meat' how they must program.
The projects itself I design in a way, that the programmers program as less as possible by applying horizontal layers in the project management itself. What I mean with that?
1. I get a GUI programmer and graphical designer together and let them 'program' the program (only GUI, no code and no real functionality) in the form of a project in Visual Studio.
2. Then I take the project, translate the specifications in code specs and give the project to a programmer with clear (written) instructions what they need to code
3. At the end of the day I take the project back and voila, new programs, new screens and with a minimal demand of experience
In this way I have absolute control over the project and it is easy the schedule it and if something goes wrong, I discover it at the end of the day. IN practice, this means more work for me, but all of my projects in this way are always ahead of time for the deadline.
Another way to do the same job is letting the programmers program in teams. One experienced programmer, a tester (,optionally a graphical designer) and the beginning programmers. The good thing is that the beginning programmer learns very fast to program and with the tester I get working programs and the experienced programmer I will be (almost) sure that it works at the end of the day.
The negative thing about this one is that the experienced programmer gets bored out of his head and the tempo is always the speed of the weakest link!
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I dont agree that this will affect up to Quality level...
S but this will surely will Impact on High attrition of the emplyees.... because these players will rapidly change there jobs looking ahead for boost in perks....
This is basically companys strategy to face the Industries up and downs and keep Options open for hardocre technocrats and make them work with positive Effect on overall overheads reducing Expenses on Employess and therefore ultimately adding value towards SHAREHOLDERS etc....
I dont feel Quality as an whole will get affected with this as there will be TOP & MIDDLE MANAGEMENT to take care of this....
Perhaps.. ITians are feeling it now... But this has already gone thru other manufacturing Industries and has positively helped the Organisation.... bur they are at Junior level only... thers hardly any changes on Middle and top level stars....
I think, it can be Yes/No depends on the quality of the person. Software is such an flexible component, where any person can master it provided they have the basic features like Logical thinking,smartness and willingness to debug in finding the root cause etc...
Mainly person having patience in understanding the system ( doesn't matter techy or non techy) will come up in S/W industry.
Sorry to those whose opinion goes against to mine.
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