Carl Tyler's Blog

1 - I've had to hire and fire a couple of these chaps over the years and my research indicates thus:

First source: studying for the exams
Second source: taking the exams
Third source: forums
Fourth source: folks like me taking pity on them and showing them how to redo the work I just had them do.

No offense to my Indian colleagues, but for Notes Domino developers from India, I haven't seen this pattern deviate yet.

It's not universal - I learned a lot of J2EE from a very smart Indian fellow and have a LOT of friends from India.

Here's why there's a stereotype forming: there are an awful lot of these boys entering the market. In India there are a lot of schools popped up over night to meet the need. Not all of them are "A" grade institutions and some of these guys are literally right off the farms. So I know a couple of gents with Dr. in Physics or Aeronautic Electronics who are here doing J2EE, BAAN, etc. and a lot of boys with just certificates to their names, learning on our dime. I can't really blame them though - someone over here pulled the trigger hiring them.

2 - Hi Carl,

for about 12 years I had worked on consulting companies in Brazil that had only local domestic customers. These consulting usually train their new employees by allocating them with their most experienced personal, so that the knowledge is transferred while actually doing the job. Usually there is some kind of introductory internal training, and then they visit the customers together, to develop the applications contracted. First, the experienced guy assign simple tasks to the new one, then increases the level of complexity constantly. The customer pays for one senior and one junior consultants, in this scenario.

I think maybe they do this kind of thing in India also, and I'm not sure if the same rule applies to off shored services.

3 - I saw something similar with one *large* Indian firm but it typically played out as Sr. people were involved in the up front meetings and requirements gathering and then the project was staffed with fresh jr. staff... minus the disclosure that they were fresh and jr.

4 - Ditto to comment #3 - Sr. staff up front and then we became the training provider for the outsourced IT company. It has been a total disaster, but the execs who pulled the trigger refuse to acknowledge it. They constantly try to manipulate different metrics like "number of rings before phone is answered" to prove that the outsourced model is an improvement. This has created a kind of black market for IT services where users go directly to knowledgeable IT staff and avoid the help desk.

5 - Hi,

I am from India and have been working on Lotus Notes for almost 9 years now. I have to admit that the quality of the developers is not so good, or most of them are rather forced. What I mean by this they are forced to support LN apps for their big customers because it is there and they need to maintain it. They are ill-equipped they do it badly. The apps are eventually phased out as they have very little idea of how LN apps and development works.

There is no where you can go and get professional training, of course IBM has some trainings but most of it is very expensive and inaccessible to developers.

Unlike say in Java / J2EE or some microsoft technology there is no knowledge base within the company, so the developers in the last few years spend more time in the forums to get their "fixes" that work for their customer and not bother to understand from a technology point of view.

6 - IMHO You probably don't see these developers at Lotusphere as they can't afford to go because of what they are paid, and the companies they work for won't send them becuase that would increase costs and lower profits. Ditto concerning their training.

7 - Hey Carl,
I am working as a domino developer since last 4 years,As @6 Jim mentioned above, the budget is the primary reason for that you won't find any indian developer in Lotusphere and regarding the learning thing, i follow the Lotus community(blogs) very much especially thru planetlotus.

I am very fortunate that previously i worked for a telecom major, which is one of the biggest client of IBM in India, where I had learnt a lot. But the offshore companies here in India are not ready to invest a single penny on Lotus technologies as they treat it as a dead one,main problem here is the projects that the companies are dealing and the budget associated with that.We are getting the projects to do service only,I had hardly find a single company which is working on developing some products using Lotus Domino.Hope the situation would improve now with the new release of 8.5.

@1.I had to admit that fact that our education system is on negative side but If a University produces some brilliant Java developers or .Net developers why not Domino developers ?
According to me, It is purely the failure of IBM. Reason: In college we used to work on C,C++,VB or Java... But we hardly know any other products from IBM. And I am sure that this is the case of more than 90% of fresh graduates. Why not IBM go for the universities and introduce their products to the students ?

Any way I am attending the Lotusphere Comes to you 2010 sessions here in Mumbai scheduled for next month, Hope I will find the sessions are usefull.