India's IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1152683/indian-it-layoffs-in-2017-top-56000-led-by-tcs-infosys-cognizant/ <comment><USER2> There will be many more. The India IT sector's main play was cheap labor for low value-add IT tasks like basic dev or ops. The play a while back was to move day-to-day ops jobs to this cheap labor. Now the play is to automate this work so the jobs are disappearing. E.g when you move to the cloud with good architecture you don't need tons of people pushing buttons and tweaking servers all day long.

The India firms haven't really moved up the value chain much and thus there's just less work there. They put fancy marketing on the front but their main product is still cheap labor for low value IT work. While there's certainly advanced stuff happening in India, at the big scale the top R&D and engineering work still generally occurs in the home countries that were sending work to India and there's little evidence that these jobs could, at scale, be done successfully by the Indian firms offshore.

<comment><USER3> Might be the case with many IT services firms but assuming that so called home countries brains only can do serious engineering is quite short sighted.

I head an engineering team from India and our team is local talent for a firm which is outside India. We believe we do some serious engineering.

There is this west fixation that serious engineering can't be done outside. I am not saying it isn't true on most cases but assuming they only can do is so demeaning. I get asked a lot - so who does the heavy lifting?. Nothing gives more satisfaction than to say - we do the engineering and it gets maintained by westerners in our organization.

<comment><USER4> >but assuming that so called home countries brains only can do serious engineering is quite short sighted.

I don't think thats the point he's trying to make. The Indian IT industry was designed and built for a certain type of labor/outsourcing market. It will take serious investment and attitude shift internally for local startups to grow and retain talent. Much of that talent that is able to perform the serious engineering you describe continually leave the country for the U.S. and other markets.

<comment><USER3> > at the big scale the top R&D and engineering work still generally occurs in > the home countries that were sending work to India and there's little > evidence that these jobs could, at scale, be done successfully by the Indian > firms offshore.

I was talking about this outright dismissal without any ground.

> Indian IT industry was designed and built for a certain type of > labor/outsourcing market.

Indian IT industry got shaped by the demand. You wanted cheaper options and you got provided one.

> It will take serious investment and attitude shift internally for local > startups to grow and retain talent.

Pay good and you will retain talent.

> Much of that talent that is able to perform the serious engineering you > describe continually leave the country for the U.S. and other markets.

Please speak for yourself. The west fixation does not apply to all folks. We get to do awesome engineering work here so don't have to be in a foreign land to do so. With remote teams coming into the picture having a preset notion that a team has to be local is an outdated mindset. And also - we can afford couple of maids in a decent paying job and have a better lifestyle here than the west can afford.

<comment><USER5> > And also - we can afford couple of maids in a decent paying job

Which is nothing to be proud of, the maids are affordable because lot of poor people did not have the same privileges like you had.

<comment><USER6> Yea why do Indians always brag about having maids. That's disgusting.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately the poor people who are usually illiterate are treated as a lower class.

The rich or upper middle class kids while growing up see that they and their parents can order the maids to do almost anything and so when the kids grow up they see the maids as a class of people who are not equal to them.

It becomes a status issue as well if you say you dont have maids then your affluent peers will think you are weird or that you cant even afford a maid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see a large number of bright Indian developers now staying back in country because its almost impossible to get H1B visas (that was actually the case even without Trump and now its getting much worse). This has started interesting trends in India. All of the sudden, now there is VC culture shaping up and I'm seeing lots of Indian developers doing their own startups. Indian newspapers frequently are putting spotlights on these young trailblazers and writing stories of their struggle and triumphs. There are startup events, meet ups and conferences going on virtually every week somewhere. And in fairly short amount of time, India has racked up some huge successes like Ola, Gaana, Oyo, Flipkart with stories to match with their SV counterparts. This scene is very different from what I had known 5-10 years ago where India held massive number of IT professionals but top 10% of talent pool kept getting drained out of the country. Despite having largest number of IT professionals, country was without its top talents and consequently without any products and startup vision. The scarcity of H1B visa had been magical for Indian startup scene and if this trend continues, US software dominance should have contender in future.

<comment><USER8> Your narrative has some flaws. Startup events have been happening in India since past 10 years or so. Ever since Google won the war with Microsoft.

Flipkart was founded in 2007. Ola soon after. This H1B visa issue is more of past 2-3 year issue. Admittedly it will have some impact. But definitely not the narrative you paint.

<comment><USER9> I know one example: [http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/02/news/india/snapdeal- india-ku...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/02/news/india/snapdeal-india-kunal- bahl-h1b-visa/index.html)

He was denied h1b visa in 2007, came back to India, started a company that created jobs in India.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for that link, I didn't know that. But in any case, my point is not that H1B can't be an issue for any case. But that Startups scene in India got a boost around 2005-2007, when many companies started, and it was nothing to do with the H1B visa issue. Some failed as well. Guruji the Indian search engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It'll probably get worse for a lot of people. I work in the public sector, in a municipality. Our IT department has been relatively big on the server side, utilizing consultants ever so often to ensure best practices.

To be honest I'm not an operations guy, and never have been, but I do work in management and my good friend who heads the IT department is struggling to find new roles for the operations people as we're heading into the cloud. It's quite obvious to be frank, but without on premise servers we don't as many need techs to run our setup, and we'll probably need a lot less consultants as well as Microsoft offers this as part of the Azure package.

Financially it'll save us around 16 million Danish annually, which is roughly 32 jobs, and that's just operations.

In development things are changing as well. When we did our first webpage it was a huge project, involving a lot of developers. The most recent one didn't require a single developer because we used a standard product that one of our designers happened to know.

Not that it's all bad. We're looking for people who do blockchain, machine learning and big data, as well as project-managers who understand both digitization and business. Of course these requirements will pose a significant challenge for a huge part of the "traditional" IT workforce, which unfortunately isn't very business savvy or mathematical. I mean, parts of it is certainly very good at math, but typically not the people we can afford in public IT.

<comment><USER11> Are you kidding me?

All of those operations people should be immediately trained in cybersecurity and deployed literally anywhere in the country.

If you've seen the latest password dumps and how bad they are, cybersecurity is getting worse if anything.

Also, as of 2015 the Chinese had 60,000 dedicated cyber security engineers. This year the US I think has 9,000, maybe less, and they can't even protect the US, much less the rest of the world (unlike the globally deployed US Navy).

Ops people are so important.

NOTE: I actually am an AWS Engineer and I like moving to the cloud, but still.

<comment><USER12> China has one cyber security engineer per 22k Chinese and United States has one per 35k Americans. To match China we need to increase our amount of engineers by about 60%, or increase the effectiveness of an engineer by about 37%.

<comment><USER13> and what exactly are these "cyber security engineers" doing in china or is this just a fancy title for those monitoring the take from china's surveillance state

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of the articles linking from this one ([https://qz.com/964843/less- than-5-of-india-engineers-are-cut...](https://qz.com/964843/less-than-5-of- india-engineers-are-cut-out-for-high-skill-programming-jobs/)) made me laugh:

> More than two-thirds of the candidates from the top 100 universities in the > country were able to write "compilable code," or that which does not throw > errors when compiled into machine-readable code.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean? Most devs make typos or errors when writing new code at some point; the compiler spits out the reason (or your IDE helpfully points it out), you go back and fix it.

> One reason for the poor performance is the dearth of good instructors as > well as misaligned college curriculums. "The school curriculum focusing on > MS-Word, Powerpoint, Excel, etc., rather teaching programming using > elementary languages such as Basic and Logo is also the culprit," said Varun > Aggarwal, the co-founder and chief technology officer at Aspiring Minds.

Basic and Logo? What in the world?

<comment><USER15> This is plain BS. I don't recall any CS department in India (and I know 100's) teaching, MS-word, Logo, Basic, Powerpoint, excel etc. However, I did TA'ed at Rice University, TX, Excel course for freshman.

<comment><USER16> they don't teach excel in the comp sci department at Rice.

<comment><USER17> You might want to check out their course catalog: [https://www.clear.rice.edu/comp100/17-spring/](https://www.clear.rice.edu/comp100/17-spring/)

COMP 100 teaches students how to use common software for organizing, searching, and computing on information, with an emphasis on business-related tasks. It introduces engineering design via a medium-sized team project. The course examines

databases — Microsoft Access spreadsheets — Microsoft Excel

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I truly believe offshore IT work was mostly a scam in the first place. The work they produced was of very low quality, and often was more expensive because you had to go back in and fix everything. The whole game was to overcharge western firms for cheap crap produced by shoddy programmers overseas. The IT outsourcing firms would pocket the difference. Come in and promise the world, overbill and underdeliver. Then the client is stuck with your crap and needs to pay you to maintain it.

It was on a matter of time before companies figured it out. Add to that advances in automation and the move to the cloud, and this was guaranteed to happen.

<comment><USER19> There are 3 types of companies here in India.

1\. The likes of TCS, Wipro and Infosys. These have a huge workforce and literally hire in wholesale. Even this month, Wipro hired something like 50 students from a nearby college. They don't look for your programming skills or even CS theory knowledge. Nope. They hire based on marks, group discussion, English skills and even looks. Basically, anything that is not related to CS. Hell, they even hire mechanical engineers. In my college, students got placed this year because, a. They had good relations with faculty. b. Looks(for women) c. Acting "friendly" to a middleman(applies to women) If you deal with these companies, I guarantee you, you'd get a poor product.

2\. smaller outsourcing companies. Some of these are good, some of these are bad. Again, some manager might hire a student because she looks hot, while some other might genuinely look for skilled students. I'd suggest dealing with these companies, after getting good feedback about them from someone.

3\. Startups. These are few, but the number is growing. I hope to get selected in one of these.

<comment><USER20> Are you in college? You will find that 3 is not all rosy as it seems to you right now, if you are not from a top tier or atleast decent tier college. I was like you back in college when I realized that heading to TCS etc was a dead career path from the start.

The better product startups all look for "IIT/NIT/whatever other brand college" students. Snapdeal, for eg, first switched the application engineer position that I applied for to other secondary positions, and then rejected me when I asked for the original position on this basis. There is no guarantee that you will find good things in other startups. I realize now that these companies have no better way of screening candidates, because the candidate pool quality in India errs on the side of less than decent. Doesn't justify the bait-and-switch but oh well.

If you do end up like I did, make sure that atleast the peer group in your startup is exceptionally talented, and that the startup is good with tech. The pay is shit in these kinds of startups (for eg those running as a small service company, but building their product behind the scenes), but the idea is to become really good at what you do and then jump ship to a good product startup.

Also, if you are still in college, it helps to have GSoC under your belt.

<comment><USER19> So did you make it to a good company?

Yes, I'm still in college, although I'm in final year, so only 6 months left. What you said is true, I realize that most companies are ignoring my resume(as I am not from IIT/NIT, I am not even from a autonomous institute). But I hope I can at least get placed in small scale startups, or small product businesses.

Wish I had concentrated more on OSS contribution/ side projects rather than competitive programming. Let's see what happens now. But I'm sure I won't join the likes of TCS. Worst case, I'll become a Uber driver.

<comment><USER20> You can still do OSS contributions and make small side projects to get noticed. The likes of us merely start X years behind the likes of those that go to a prestigious engineering college when it comes to work. X is as big a gulf as you let it be. Factor that into your growth and make of it what you will.

>I'm sure I won't join the likes of TCS

TCS is fine if you're fine with maintenance work and/or want to pivot into doing an MBA or something similar. However, even TCS etc are laying off a lot of people and will probably shrink their "bench" pools greatly in the near future, due to the death of outsourcing.

>I'll become an Uber driver

I'm sure it won't have to come to that, but yes, the job market slowdown is real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> These people are mainly relatively unskilled. These companies are notorious for hiring entire batches of graduating students.

Situation in top tier colleges is lot better. This can be seen from increase in placements in IITs this year.

<comment><USER22> > These people are mainly relatively unskilled. These companies are notorious > for hiring entire batches of graduating students.

I guess the best interview should also add a touch-type test and the candidate should require at least 30wpm or so (if typing is very much required for the work).

When I was at college I have only seen less than 5 such students from the 250 total.

<comment><USER23> That's my secret tell to see if someone is a good, experienced developer or not.

I've never met a good, experienced developer who was a slow typist.

<comment><USER24> > I've never met a good, experienced developer who was a slow typist.

You will.

There is a reason "fast typist" was not a required skill in any software jobs I've ever applied for, and I doubt developer strength has any correlation with typing speed.

<comment><USER23> It's not that fast typist is an indicator of a good developer, but a slow typist is an indicator of someone who hasn't spent a whole lot of time in front of a keyboard.

<comment><USER25> Or they have some motor disabilities in their arm/hand, which you should check for before making a judgement. Some people have carpal tunnel, some people have tremors, some people might have other condition they might not have even know themselves or would like to talk about openly.

<comment><USER23> Or if they don't have any fingers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> These are mostly outsourcing companies.

India's IT industry is realigning towards domestic markets and #MakeInIndia companies - it is more aspirational to join Paytm, Ola, Zomato in India than to work for a US based outsourcer.

It is not even a competition anymore - I'm able to very easily get highly qualified Indians in Silicon Valley to move back and work on something cool in India.

This is the reason that nobody in India (incl the govt) gives a shit about the H1B rule changes in the US. The entire focus of the IT industry is shifting to move up the value chain. We are trying to build more Freshdesk in India and sell them to the world... Rather than body shopping.

It is going to be a time of massive upheaval as a lot of jobs will be lost - both as a consequence of the US pushback on visas as well as the change in strategic focus.

<comment><USER27> > I'm able to very easily get highly qualified Indians in Silicon Valley to > move back and work on something cool in India.

We understand your sentimence. But please don't exaggerate too much :)

<comment><USER28> I'm Indian and I agree with you. Parent overdid it a little bit. People gives many shits about the H1B, and it isn't that easy to pull Indians back from the US.

Relatively easier than say ten years ago, but not at the level of bravado that parent exhibits.

<comment><USER26> This is not incorrect. YMMV obviously...but I stand by what I say.

However you misunderstood the reason - they are not coming because of _me_. They were coming back anyway because they want to work in India and build something here.

That was my point all along - I'm not uniquely positioned. It's happening all over.

<comment><USER29> >>They were coming back anyway because they want to work in India and build something here.

As a former NRI, who stayed in the US. Not one person I know has/or-is moving back because they want to 'build stuff here'.

Most of the times its unworkable visa situations, old parents or something on those lines at play.

<comment><USER26> I suggest you go and check the senior leadership on LinkedIn for the current stream of startups and large companies.

Even more - we have expats actually building _successful_ and _highly funded_ startups in India. Take a look at Zoomcar, Zestmoney and CreditMate. India is extremely startup friendly for foreigners - maybe not as friendly as the US, but definitely more than Europe, China, etc.

We are one of the world's largest consumer internet and smartphone market ... oh and with strong net neutrality guarantees. Everyone wants to tap into that. India is moving very differently now !

In the last week, I have had 2 conversations with CXO level leadership of companies in the Bay Area, who want to move back to India and build startups here. I get to do this a lot because I run one of the earliest YC funded companies in India (when it was "special" for YC to fund an Indian startup). I end up being the sounding board for a lot of CXO level talent moving back to India.

BTW - Indian startups form the second largest pool for YC applications now (after the US). Not sure what the funding stats are.

<comment><USER29> Yeah sure. You can get senior leadership anything, as long as you pay 5x the market standard pay. This is for companies who are a net negative in profit.

'Funding stats' don't mean anything in this case where they have to keep dumping money never to see any returns. This will hurt the long term ecosystem even for genuine start ups. As investors will largely look at India as some kind of a money sink, where rogue upper managements splurge by paying big money salaries to their own.

>>We are one of the world's largest consumer internet and smartphone market

Is this why Tata Docomo is shutting operations. Jio is in the debt of the tune 1,25,000 crores and Airtel is enduring losses just to survive?

>>oh and with strong net neutrality guarantees.

We all saw how 2G lobbying went.

>>Everyone wants to tap into that. India is moving very differently now !

Tap into what? Losses?

>>who want to move back to India...

Most of them hold US passports, and will bail at any hint of trouble. They will continue to work as long as their obscene compensations are sustained. They did the same during the 2008 crash. Moved to India, made big money and moved back to US the moment the honey was sweeter there.

Let them put their money where there mouth is, give up US passports, take up Indians passports and work here. Until then nothing much can be expected from this loot-and-scoot crowd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This article has a random sprinkling of numbers that really do not give you the big picture. Here is some context about the outsourcing industry in India. Good stats to know (assuming the media is right):

1\. the entire IT outsourcing industry is ~$150 billion large and employs ~3.9 million people.

2\. the top 7 largest IT companies employ ~1.3 million people

3\. I cannot calculate the exact revenue of the top 7 companies because they are part of larger groups (e.g.: TCS, Wipro). But the Top IT companies headcount and revenue

a) Infosys: ~200,000 employees ($10 billion revenue)

b) Wipro: ~180,000 employees ($7.7 billion)

c) TCS: ~390,000 employees ($17.5 billion)

d) Capgemini: ~200,000 employees (I don't know)

e) CTS: ~260,000 employees ($13.5 billion)

f) Tech Mahindra: ~120,000 lakh employees ($4 billion)

Stories like these come around routinely in the April-June timeframe (every year!) around appraisal time. This '56000' number is simply a random quote 5% of the entire workforce of the top 7 companies. I have seen different media outlets report the numbers as 28,000 this year to 200,000 in 3 years. Honestly, they don't know nor do I.

FWIW, I run an outsourcing testing services firm in India. I am too small to feel market trends. However, I have been reading and talking and interviewing several candidates across India. I can tell you that the tension has been palpable for the last 8 months or so. Many senior folks are feeling a quiet sense of desperation. I don't know if the media sentiment started the tension or if the ground reality is indeed going to force layoffs of senior employees.

</comment><comment><USER31> As someone who recently moved from USA To India this is the best thing that is happening to India.

Coupled with racist immigration laws in USA this is helping smaller companies like mine to attract far superior talent. I was engineer number 1 in a Machine Learning division of an American company. I negotiated with my employer that I will move the whole division to India, hire in India at American salaries and deliver results.

Since then our ML division is running pretty smoothly and I am able to poach the brightest kids on the block.

The imminent collapse of India's outsourcing industry will be good for India's homegrown tech sector as brighter kids will move to work on tougher and more India specific problems.

With falling birth rates in developed countries and racially charged environment I think the future of tech will be determined by China and partly India and not in silicon valley.

<comment><USER32> Even with Trump's immigration changes, our immigration standards are equally if not more liberal than India and much better than Chinese immigration. Citizens can't even move around China without government approval. Over 13% of the US population is foreign born, not including the over 11 million illegal aliens we have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The issue has to do with Institutions & services firms here in India.

It is normal to see IT Engineers (coders) define they career as X programmer where it's now time for every programmer to have full-stack skills and treat programming language as a drill-bit in a tool-box.

Since the services companies benefited earlier by recruiting a graduate and training them to be X programmer for life, the institutions didn't have a reason to adapt to changing times because 99% of their students were placed in these companies and remaining 1 % in Google, MS etc. [Fun note - Sundar, Satya, Shantanu, Sanjay Jha , George Kurian etc. belong to that 1% and yet capable enough climb to the top-most seat.]

But I wouldn't buy the 'Indians not hardworking' stereotype,for an average Indian every opportunity in their life has to be fought for with thousands (some times millions) of other competitors. I've seen several people who were the first graduate from their entire family history while living in a hut and create a sustainable life for them; thanks to these services companies.

But it's time for a change, Institutions should build skills which make their students recruit-able by startups.

<comment><USER29> Its strange that you take the names of CEOs and proceed to deduce that as a proof of them being good programmers. Most of them go to Ivy league engineering schools, and then Ivy league management schools. And then from there straight jump into management barely spending any time at all in engineering. And the whole reason why they do engineering is largely because they need a bridge course to get into a masters level management degree. Once you get into a Ivy league management school, going wherever from there is essentially a networking activity not exactly a great indicator of your engineering performance. It helps to have friends in high places.

Management positions have long been seen as replacements for IAS.

The 1% you talk about parse XMLs at Google and Microsoft. The 99% parse the same XMLs at services firms. The 1% thinks they are special because of a association with a certain Ivy league brand name.

Lets talk of the Indian 1% when somebody in a Indian university writes some thing the equivalent of a Linux, Perl or FreeBSD.

Lets not over glorify these placement agencies as some institutes of engineering excellence.

For what its worth the 99% what people generally berudge look down upon essentially is employed in Indias space programs that sends probes to mars and moon, built bulk of Indias pretty advanced tech defence infrastructure.

Only thing IITians are good at is self worship.

<comment><USER34> > Only thing IITians are good at is self worship.

It's almost as though you've got an axe to grind with people having any respectable pedigree.

<comment><USER29> They did damage to their own selves by flashing their degrees as some kind of life long privilege, while contributing a net negative to the Indian economy(As their education is heavily subsidized at the Indian tax payers expense).

<comment><USER35> > while contributing a net negative to the Indian economy (As their education > is heavily subsidized at the Indian tax payers expense).

Below a link to a study from '08 that tried to assess the contribution of IITs to the economy. Perhaps some numbers might change your mind? (It's incomplete but includes the executive summary.)

[https://www.ibef.org/download/Content_19dec.pdf](https://www.ibef.org/download/Content_19dec.pdf)

Perhaps an article (from TOI nonetheless)? - [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/IITians- contributi...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/IITians-contribution- to-economy-is-Rs-20-lakh-crore-Study/articleshow/3752658.cms)

Before you dismiss these with whatever reason, perhaps you can show some data to back up your point?

<comment><USER29> Amount of non-IITians running/starting industries far exceeds in number. And they don't get the same funding or training or any human resources help in return. Of course if you run institutions for decades eventually good people are going to come out of it. But by and large most IITs are largely places to train people, and send them to foreign countries. Why should the tax payers pay for them?

An argument could be made to spend this money to improve public schooling infrastructure in India. And people coming out of that obviously would contribute way more. The scenario is a net loss for Indian tax payers. This is way more in lost opportunity costs.

Most of these arguments sound very similar the arguments against privatization in 1980s India. You can talk of the benefits of using tax payers money to manufacture bulbs while you don't invest the same money else where, where some thing real can happen.

Please feel free to run IITs using fees or whatever endowments you can get. Also most of these people harp day and night about how awesome they are, makes sense to generate some IP, sell that and make some money to fund themselves.

<comment><USER35> > Amount of non-IITians running/starting industries far exceeds in number. And > they don't get the same funding...

Can you give me a source on this? One that compares the economic contribution of students from the next-10 colleges in India and finds it to be more than that of the IITs. Because otherwise, you're comparing different sample sizes and your statement becomes trivially true as a result.

> But by and large most IITs are largely places to train people, and send them > to foreign countries.

Try looking up statistics of what % of students go abroad immediately after graduating from an IIT. Perhaps that might help you revisit this assertion.

> An argument could be made to spend this money to improve public schooling > infrastructure in India.

The government's already spending 10x on that than they are on Higher Education. (2009) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_India#Budget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_India#Budget) How much would an extra 0.5x help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is fundamentally a value-addition adjustment. For many IT engineers, their value addition to the project/client/company is very limited, primarily because most of them are from degree mills and most of them join an IT company for reasons other than to really work on IT stuff.

There are awesome Indian IT people out there and most of them are gobbled up by product firms like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc. IT services firms are mostly left with mediocre IT guys whose eye is mostly on "on-site" positions.

Like many have said, it's going to get even more ugly and sincerely I feel this sort of adjustment is required for Indian IT companies to be ready for future challenges and future demanding work. They have to shed their bodyshop images if they have to be taken seriously. It's time to move up the value chain or die.

<comment><USER37> And really all the blame has to be apportioned to the founding fathers and what not glorious terms used for the Indian IT body shopping industry leaders? (Kohli's, Murthy's blah blah)

Sc __w these forefathers for they started on a super negative note with a begging bowl (probably a hangover of multiple years of colonialism) and instead not being aggressive for high end work.

Just give me some work was the attitude these fathers started with, no wonder the son's will do the same. Like father, like son!!!

It is high time the narrative starts changing to cause a change in the mindset of young engineering students and this has to start at a very low level, from engineering schools. The first narrative is to show these forefathers in a more negative light, than positive.

>> It's time to move up the value chain or die.

Die, is the most likely outcome (7/10).

<comment><USER36> Yes. The narrative has to change. And frankly, the culture should move towards more risk taking.

Barring a few, most startups take a very conservative approach to expansion and investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Well, yeah, entry-level IT stuff was always a target for automation because the human component should have been almost completely unnecessary from the start.

As the industry matures and execs and staff become aware of the degree of automation that's possible, they also understand that a lot of the services offered by consultancy services are mostly fluff and way to add FTEs.

<comment><USER39> >Well, yeah, entry-level IT stuff was always a target for automation

I see this as a progress. Since you replace the first-level IT stuff with automated processes, the now second-level IT stuff will sooner or later become first-level and so on. Therefore all the levels are pushed upwards and we tend to go to higher levels, no matter if we speak about developing, researching, improving etc.

<comment><USER40> At least in this case, 56,000 people in the 1st level lost their jobs. What's the total number of level 1's who matriculated to level 2? And is there a net job loss or are the laid off people finding other jobs that pay as well or better?

Without answers for these and related questions, it's uncertain if this is good progress.

<comment><USER17> From the source article - [http://www.livemint.com/Industry/4CXsLIIZXf8uVQLs6uFQvK/Top-...](http://www.livemint.com/Industry/4CXsLIIZXf8uVQLs6uFQvK/Top-7-IT- firms-including-Infosys-Wipro-to-lay-off-at-least.html)

> Preparing the ground for layoffs, each of these seven companies has already > put a higher number of employees on notice by awarding them the lowest > ratings. Cognizant has placed more than 15,000 employees in the lowest > category (bucket IV), and Infosys has placed more than 3,000 senior managers > in the category of employees needing improvement.

This isn't 56k entry level jobs. This is 56k jobs up and down the structure of the companies.

> As IT companies start working on newer technologies such as cloud computing, > they are fast moving from a people-led model, which means they need fewer > employees. Meanwhile, many of the IT companies have embraced automation > tools to perform the mundane, repeatable tasks that were performed by an > army of engineers earlier.

> "The entire pyramid structure (organizational structure) is getting > disrupted," the second HR head cited earlier added.

> That speaks of a bigger problem, said an expert.

> "What required 50 programmers, analysts or accountants 5 years ago can be > done by a handful of smart thinkers and much smarter systems," said Phil > Fersht, CEO of US-based HfS Research, an outsourcing-research firm. "If I > were Prime Minister Narendra Modi, I would be very concerned that a whole > workforce generation needs reorienting to address work activities that are > growing in demand."

None of the articles speak to where the people who have lost their jobs are going.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> There are approx. 3.1 million employees[1] in India's IT sector. Is 56k (which is lower than 2%) so much?

[1] [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-approximate-number-of- IT-e...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-approximate-number-of-IT-employees- in-India)

<comment><USER7> US tech companies actually had much larger layoffs however this were again in very low ends. The high and middle ends are booming as if we are back in 2000 bubble. Due to such disparity one should always clarify what _kind_ of tech jobs one is talking about.

From [https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/news/2017/02/17/tech...](https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/news/2017/02/17/tech- layoffs-surged-in-2016-and-2017-doesnt-look.html)

 _Computer, electronics and telecommunications companies shed more than 90,000 jobs last year, compared to nearly 80,000 in 2015, according to a new report out from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement firm based in Chicago. Tech layoffs accounted for 18 percent of the total 526,915 U.S. job cuts announced in 2016.

Computer companies were hit especially hard; layoffs in the sector were up 7 percent in 2016. Dell Technologies (NYSE: DVMT) was responsible for much of the uptick when it converged with EMC last year and cut thousands of positions. Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) also shed jobs, with Intel laying off 12,000 employees, or 11 percent of its workforce, per the report._

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Sadly, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. As an Indian IT guy, I was lucky enough to work in product companies all my life. My many friends in the service industry haven't had that luck. I've heard horror stories and I've sworn not to work for bodyshop firms.

I feel its a systematic issue - too many IT related courses and seats in colleges, companies hiring for head count rather than quality, a huge number of maintenance projects which provide little scope for learning, etc.

Sure the employees do share a part of the blame, but only a part. There is no incentive for them to change anything in a highly bureaucratic environment, so this vicious cycle will continue. I just hope the industry as a whole learns and adapts before its too late and millions lose their job.

</comment><comment><USER43> System integration is a proximity job. The last mile of a software delivery.

With no physical access to their top market (H1B reform), it will continue to be tough. Capgemini, which has about the same headcount, will end with 30% more revenue than Infosys in 2017. Accenture, x3.4 the revenue for only x2 the headcount.

With limited access to market with better hourly rates, they would continue to struggle. Unless they bet on more vertical market, selling licenses of software they own or have shares in, which is exactly their current strategies. It may work.

<comment><USER44> Those are entirely different business models - services vs products. Companies aren't always successful in making such transitions.

<comment><USER45> Infosys, capgemini and accenture are all service companies, re selling employees by the hour. They don't develop their own products.

<comment><USER44> If you bothered to read my comment, you'll see that's what I was saying in the first place.

<comment><USER46> You're missing the point though, the point s/he's trying to make is Capgemini doesn't undervalue the price of labour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The quality of the work has been subpar from what I have seen at my company.

Though the biggest challenge is timezone problems and the sheer challenge it is to communicate.

Though I'm sure people have had different experiences in their sectors.

<comment><USER48> The one time I worked with outsourced people from India or Pakistan (I don't actually know which country the people were hired out of, could be somewhere else) was a disaster, but what do you expect when you get the absolute lowest bid you can?

I know other people have had great success stories, but you get what you pay for. Even if the cost-of-living is much lower that doesn't mean that you can buy the bottom of the barrel people and expect it to be worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I briefly worked as a contractor for one of the largest ad networks in the world and we outsourced 20K ad review jobs to South Asia over 3 year period. But then came advancement in machine learning and now you only needed a few people to review ads after the adversary networks flagged them.

</comment><comment><USER50> Are the legions of "recruiters" constantly spamming my phone and inbox part of IT? I won't shed a tear for them.

<comment><USER51> Come on these are real people trying to get by. Have some empathy. It sucks being at the low end.

<comment><USER23> Most recruiters get paid more than $100K which is better than most IT folks.

[https://www.topechelon.com/blog/how-much-do-recruiters- make-...](https://www.topechelon.com/blog/how-much-do-recruiters-make-charge/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The claim is that India will be the third largest economy in 2032, as China becomes #1.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-26/china- to-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-26/china-to-overtake- u-s-economy-by-2032-as-asian-might-builds)

Hopefully, this is simply a wake up call as the economy grows and diversifies.

<comment><USER53> Economic instability is a large reason for the push towards protectionism in America. Could those same forces lead to an Indian IT protectionism? Or do they lack enough industry currently?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Given the number of graduates who join the workforce every year in India, plus the traditional model of companies to maintain a bench for graduate engineer in anticipation of big contracts, the number doesn't look disproportionate. Apart from all the politics and shifting revenue targets (which are the culprit to a great extent), todays technology trends clearly indicates a lot of "high-valued" job are going to be redundant as well, one report from CBRE predicts 50% of occupations today will no longer exist in 2025. whats shall everyone do? skill up . Is that anything new in software development? Nopes, in my 11 years I have already jumped through hoops of yet another modern day tech stack a few times to stay afloat.So I'd imagine its not just the low value IT jobs which are at risk, even the bleeding edge development practices might face the same fate. Any mobile developer thinking about joining the blockchain, ML bandwagon? or wait, carpentry anyone? :sigh

<comment><USER55> On the one hand you basically say things will change too much too fast:

> CBRE predicts 50% of occupations today will no longer exist in 2025

But on the other hand, things don't change fast enough:

> whats shall everyone do? skill up . Is that anything new in software > development? Nopes

These two positions, change and no change, can't be simultaneously true. If there is change, then there are new applications where humans are needed. If there is no change, then human jobs remain untaken by automation.

There will never be a lack of jobs for people as long as people have desires and needs that are unfulfilled. Even if all our needs today are fulfilled, we create new goals and new entitlements for which we have to work.

Take, for example, medicine and movies - these two occupations existed as pre- modern medicine and theatre even 1000 years ago. But now, that we have automated many aspects such as blood tests, pill production, medical scanning, and in the case of movies, copying and broadcasting - they should reduce the need for doctors and actors, but instead, they increase 100x the number of doctors and actors. Why? Because we want more, much more than a millenia ago.

We have expanded our entitlement more than 100x and we're busier than ever, in the middle of automation. Believe in our desire for more, in our greed and ever raising entitlement! They'll keep us employed.

<comment><USER54> Not entirely sure about your inferences from my comment, I didn't say there are not going to be jobs, of course there will be jobs. However, perhaps amidst the Artificial intelligence, jobs will require more creative, social , emotional intelligence. Thats where we need to skill up and point I made above was just to highlight that this re-structuring is not just relevant for todays low valued work but for the entire spectrum of whats a super-skill today and going to be "low valued" few years down the line. Also, I'd argue that in the context of your examples (which are slightly digressing from this thread), medicine and movies , reason why we have more doctors and actors could strongly be attributed to the socio-economic growth of the rising population, a lot more people can/need medical service and go to cinema that what we had 1000 years ago. Technology here solves the problem of efficiency and scale which is just complementing the progression.

<comment><USER55> I'll try another example. Let's say we automate cleaning of cities. Suddenly people are going to want drones that can trim trees and bushes, devices that can clean walls, bots that can scour woods and lakes for plastic and junk, and 100 other things that we didn't have the time and energy to do, but now are possible. Each of these applications need to be designed, produced, deployed and managed.

My point is that automation creates new applications, and thus, jobs that sit on top of it. Like SEO - who would have guessed what SEO is 25 years ago? And now there is a whole field. We create new desires, we raise our entitlement to the equal of what we can achieve, no matter how much it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Honest question: is that a lot for a whole country?

<comment><USER57> No. Frankly demand for "skilled" IT professional is high as ever. Even in traditional tech like .net and Java(spring).

This is just some big IT staffing companies cleaning house.

Source: Anecdotal - I work in Indian IT. In fact hiring for at least 10 positions at my company. It's mainly the skills gap. At these big companies people get stuck in routine jobs and don't keep up with changing tech landscape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> As a final year undergraduate, this scares me a lot.

Not sure why this made such big news because this is pretty much evident once you talk to a majority of cs undergrads, they literally have no idea and interest in cs but are in it because it is, well, 'trending'.

<comment><USER19> As a final year undergraduate, this makes me happy. Finally the trimming that IT industry badly needs is happening.

And as a domino effect, admissions are also falling. I hope shitty colleges, like the one I belong from, close down.

Surely, I am having bad time too. I haven't found a job yet. And despite applying to 50-100 companies, hardly 1-2 replied. But I gotta keep trying, hopefully I'll find a job one day. If not, well, it's better not to worry about things out of control. One can always do something to pass that day, and hope for a better tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > For Indian techies, 2017 was the stuff of nightmares.

I still believe qualified engineers had no problems keeping their job or finding a new one. In any country.

No wonder that unqualified employees will _always_ be laid off _at some time_.

</comment><comment><USER59> What is the percentage attrition? 2%? I wasn't able to get it clearly from the article. I think percentage is what we should focusing on instead of the total numbers considering the total population.

</comment><comment><USER60> Why don't NRI's quit their Bay Area job to come and contribute to the motherland?

<comment><USER5> Probably because India cannot match the salaries and quality of life in US.

<comment><USER60> I'd argue about quality of life. But definitely absolute income.

<comment><USER5> Then you would be arguing with facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Far more companies are replacing India talent with Pakistan talent. The per person cost is what India was about 5 - 10 years ago. However, things will slowly change again, but I'm hoping that these economies start just doing their own projects and competing at the company level not just the outsourcing as there are definitely people we should be paying locally to do the work (at a higher price - remember that extra 1 trillion dollars to the top 500 people?).

</comment><comment><USER62> To be honest, it seems like they have better opportunities with these jobs available, but these people are probably better off in the long run without it, and our companies are probably better off not depending on these services in the first place. Its kind of an unnecessary evil.

There are some jobs I've had in the past that didn't pan out, and I'm glad they didn't because I wouldn't have grown if I had stayed in them.

</comment><comment><USER63> To me, one of the indications that Indian IT is out of ideas & unlikely to move up the value chain was a string of stock buybacks this year by all major players. I believe a company invests in stock buyback when it feels that it does not have any other better uses of the money. Basically, they dont have/ can't find avenues to invest money where the shareholder growth will be much better than buyback.

<comment><USER64> Just as an aside: economically stock buybacks are equivalent to dividends, but get a better tax treatment in most jurisdiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> What I really don't understand is, I'm 1 guy with a very small SMB. I do everything myself and tried in the cloud.

Except from some maintenance, it just seems to be cheaper to upscale a VM in many cases.

The biggest cost at my work ( full-time job) seems to be management ( development too off course) and planning.

I'm not sure if the scale that cloud provides is required 90% of the times

<comment><USER66> That's exactly the point... there's less for you to manage (at least at reasonable scale) - you leave management of those people and processes up to Amazon (or whoever your cloud provider is), so you can focus on your core business and not get distracted by managing getting new servers, backups, recovery plans, etc... it "just works".

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> 56K is 0.01% of the overall workforce of India.

</comment><comment><USER68> The article refers to digitisation and automation as one of the reasons for the layoffs.

Can someone please explain what processes those two terms involve. Does automation mean writing Unix shell scripts and setting it up under Cron. But that has been done since very long time. I see don't get what digitisation and automation mean.

</comment><comment><USER69> One thing I was hoping to get answered is, what is the revenue growth or dip these companies have seen. I think that may give a better context to this story. Job loss headlines alone sounds like doom and gloom, but that may or may not be the case depending on how the money is flowing...

</comment><comment><USER29> Those people trying to understand why there is this level of mess in the Indian IT, let me give you some perspective. India was large a socialist economy focussed heavily on self reliance before the 1990's. To be precise 1992. This had both good and bad effects. Unions were rampant, production and engineering were largely focussed on delivering services and schemes administered through the government. Computerization was its bare minimal as unions largely thought of automation as some kind massive job killer. Trust me when I say this the luddite movement back then was so crazy there were national strikes every time the government tried to anything progressive.

Round about the same time, around mid 1980s, people were tiring as they were watching west take leaps way ahead of India. There were a few companies building products and providing services to many firms back then. They were not exactly very successful but they managed to hang on. Until 1992, when India opened up its markets. Import regulations were relaxed, and FDI was encouraged. Round about the same time, US and Europe was gradually outsourcing bulk of its work to India. These companies thanks to double benefits of both the sides of domestic and international economy, now experienced run away success. Early employees tasted success and growth never witnessed in the history of Indian economics. Companies grew 100% YoY. Head counts increased by 2x every year. Most employees came from middle class to lower middle class families. These were promoted in waves after waves, year after year. You could easily net a decent mid to senior management position in 5 - 7 years. They also got to travel abroad frequently, some of them even settled in US and Europe. Land prices in Bangalore and rest of India were at scrap levels. Dollar exchange rate to rupee was 35-40 rupees. So you had a lot of value available for bird feed prices. Salaries of course were gargantuan. While the ordinary Indian worker made a average of 5 - 10 K a month, Im talking of the really well of ones. Software and IT folks made in lacs, bonuses came in lacs. Stock options came in crores. Back then these kind of riches were unheard in Indian middle class households, unless you came from politics or bribe giving government jobs.

IT jobs now became the most sought after jobs in India. Needless to say this also caused a lot of bad habit to creep into most companies. Almost everybody aspires to be a manager. Largely because the perks are just too awesome, all you have to do is forward emails, circulate memos, approve leaves and do appraisals. It was the Indian private company equivalent of posh sought after Indian administrative services jobs. You get paid disproportionately more in all possible ways, Salaries, bonuses and stock options. You also get to travel business class frequently. Think of it like fully paid luxury vacation every few months.

Companies now have layers and layers of dead wood unproductive management, consuming too much resources and providing little to zero value in return. Most junior level folks are completely unmotivated to pursue a hard career in tech due to dismal financial prospects. Many mass immigrate to west to catch up on lost years. Every time US has a recessions these companies benefit as work gets outsourced. When US economy is good they get shafted.

VCs and US firms largely pay Indian salaries. Start up scene is not bright either. Most are started by Ivy league folks and graciously over spend all the cash on paying fat salaries to people from the alma mater. In short, with money drying up and automation coming in. Management jobs are getting eliminated. Not enough free money to go around. Many junior level testing and first/second line support jobs too are going. Next crash will be ugly. People will lose homes, jewelry will be sold. Kids will be pulled out of international schools.

They can't be reskilled and re-employed for the same reasons why someone weighing 150 kgs can't one just wake up and run a ultra marathon. Too much of entitlement.

Lastly this is just a repeat of the decade of the 1990s. With liberalization bulk of the people got shafted the same way.

Free money never did any good to people on the longer run.

</comment><comment><USER70> There is also a lot of competition around the world for IT out sourcing besides India. I have had really good luck using some remote developers in Uruguay for example. A couple friends out source all of their work to Vietnam and the Philippines.

</comment><comment><USER71> If I read the article correctly, mostly or only the low-level jobs in the industry are laid off. Does this even consider all other low-level personnel like cleaners? That would make the whole story quite different.

</comment><comment><USER72> Going to be interesting to see what happens to all those in the country as well. since all this goes back to India it won't be long before the state side people run into issues

</comment><comment><USER73> And added about a million. What's the point here?

</comment><comment><USER74> Pleasantly surprised by comments here which were lot more specific and relevant than the hive mind attitude of Reddit for the same thread.

</comment><comment><USER75> Hopefully the indigenous market for these skills develops for those affected to develop a career into.

</comment><comment><USER76> Indian IT makes money by selling software engineers, not software to US clients.

</comment><comment><USER77> > 56k employees

They're laying people off at modem speed!

</comment><comment> andy-x 56k is soooo old, we have broadband already.

</comment><comment><USER78> 33.6k is still OG

</comment><comment><USER79> As someone here has already mentioned, it's more likely due more tech and indian tech especially moving towards clouds for the derivative cost savings ( less manpower ).

This happened in the US as well. Lots of IT positions got cut as companies consolidated much of their backend to cloud services.

But I wouldn't hold my breath on cheaper indian tech industry losing any steam and I'd still betting H1-B visas are only going to be delayed.

India has seen an increase, not a decrease, in FDI ( primarily directed to their tech sector ). It means that foreign companies/governments/etc are still investing in the indian tech sector.

</comment><comment><USER80> Ah the same old argument that everything that can be outsourced is cheap and repetitive. But again we hate the outsourcing industry for taking away our jobs. Seriously why should someone retain you and pay you top $ in the first place, if your job was repetitive and lack specialized skills?

And I have hired & worked with multiple consultants at my company. The quality of the code consultants create is sub-par irrespective of their country of origin. The end of the day, there don't have any skin in the game, and care only about the billing.

</comment><comment><USER81> I wish there was more info on the drivers of this.

Is it less demand from US firms due to slowdown? Market saturation? Shifting needs?

</comment><comment><USER82> I'm sorry, but all "talent" I've worked with in India has all been very lousy and in retrospect makes total sense. You get what you pay for.

I recently left a software company due to their codebase. Low and behold it was constructed by a bunch of cheap worker ants. Sorry, not for me.

</comment><comment><USER83> 1.3 Billion People and a significant number of that work in this industry.</comment>


Disney's Bob Iger walked away from a Twitter purchase because of "nastiness" - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1713764/disneys-bob-iger-walked-away-from-a-twitter-purchase-because-of-nastiness/ <comment><USER2> Thank fuck

</comment><comment><USER3> >> Iger cited the possibility that toxic dimensions of the Twitter experience could hurt Disney's family focused brand

Wow, Disney showing some actual integrity. Color me surprised.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure that decision required integrity as much as it did understanding Disney's place in the market. Disney makes big, uncontroversial, _safe_ mass- market entertainment products for the broadest possible audiences. Twitter is the exact opposite of all those things: it's a product covered in sharp edges that appeals to a relatively small but enthusiastic-slash-rabid niche. Disney would consider it a failure if a group of people walked out of one of their movies or theme parks yelling at each other, but Twitter's whole engagement strategy is based on pitting its users against each other. It's the least Disney-like thing you could imagine.

The amazing thing isn't that the acquisition eventually fell apart, it's that it got as far as it did.</comment></comment>


Dry Stone Walls – Principles of structurally sound construction (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.masonrymagazine.com/blog/2018/11/01/dry-stone-walls-principles-of-structurally-sound-construction/ <comment><USER2> I picked up a wonderful concept from a teenage summer spent dry stone walling in the Cotswolds.

When you pick up a stone from the pile, it MUST be placed on the wall. You either have to make it fit your intended spot through rotation or another adjustment, or you have to find another place on the wall for it. It CANNOT be placed back on the pile. I'm sure these rules are not adhered to that widely but they had some great benefits.

1\. You eye your intended location very well, thinking in 3D. 2\. You pick your stone very carefully. 3\. You learn something each time the stone doesn't fit.

Before too long this restrictive practice becomes an advantage not a hindrance, and has many conceptual parallels with other physical and mental tasks. It's a beautiful thing.

<comment><USER3> This is an excellent rule for cleaning up (a room, a house, an office...): touch any given thing once at most.

In extreme cases, it doesn't work because you don't actually know where things are going to go, in which case a two-round approach is good: everything gets pulled out and sorted in round one, and things go to their destinations in round two.

<comment><USER4> That's how I clean - pull everything out, assess, and put it all away. It's very efficient if you have enough space, but it drives people nuts because they see it as causing more of a mess.

<comment><USER5> My wife attempts to use this method, but usually gets distracted at peak- messiness and things just end up worse off than they started.

<comment><USER6> No, you can't blame your wife for that method.

It was my method first.

She must have stolen it from me. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm from Mallorca, a little Mediterranean island near Barcelona, and we have a great dry stone walls tradition there.

The people that do it are called _margers_ in the local language. They never really disappeared, and they finally formed a guild a couple of years ago.

Here are some pictures if anyone is interested:

[https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&biw=1745&bih=906&t...](https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&biw=1745&bih=906&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=1XwwXabsFoKMtAaTzIfwDg&q=marjades+mallorca&oq=marjad+mallorca&gs_l=img.3.0.0i7i30.374334.374979..376163...0.0..0.83.444.6......0....1..gws- wiz-img.......0i7i5i30.aCskKZN-4Hk)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=margers+mallorca&newwindow=1...](https://www.google.com/search?q=margers+mallorca&newwindow=1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj5pITD0b7jAhVK2qwKHRplBbAQ_AUIESgB&cshid=1563458771469782&biw=1745&bih=906)

<comment><USER8> I lived in Palma de Mallorca for 6 months. An enchanting place - my wife and I dream of moving back to the island someday and making a home in one of the small, old and hauntingly beautiful towns like Alcudia or Soller.

<comment><USER9> A 20 minute drive from Alcudia (which I visited today!) is Pollença, another beautiful town ( _not_ the nearby Port de Pollença, mind). It also doesn't get nearly as many tourists as Alcudia - if you get back to Mallorca, you should definitely have a visit!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the pictures is from Skara Brae on Orkney - which is over 5000 years old, but its not even the oldest site on Orkney which is Knap of Howar which is ~700 years older:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knap_of_Howar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knap_of_Howar)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skara_Brae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skara_Brae)

One of the ancient sites on Orkney did have some relatively recent problem with vandalism though:

[http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm](http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm)

<comment><USER11> relatively recent :) Everything is relative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the Bluegrass region of Kentucky [0], there is a rich heritage of stone fences, which are associated with thoroughbred horse farms, but they exist throughout the area because of the abundance of limestone rock available. It is one of the highest concentrations of dry rock structures in the US [1].

There is a similar organization, the Dry Stone Conservancy [2], that runs a similar certification program and workshops, but more focused on the specific needs of the area, including conservancy.

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluegrass_region](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluegrass_region)

[1] - [https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_cultural_history/3/](https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_cultural_history/3/)

[2] - [https://www.drystone.org](https://www.drystone.org)

<comment><USER13> Eh, the fences are nice and I love Lexington, but I would credit the fences mostly to the legacy of slavery. Lots of places have limestone. Those fences didn't build themselves. It's great that people nowadays are conserving them, but I haven't seen many _new_ fences down there.

<comment><USER12> This is actually a huge misconception and false. The majority of fences were built by immigrant Irish stonemasons, although it is obvious that slave labor probably played some role in this. The style of stone fence was directly imported from Ulster & Northern Ireland, with Irish immigrants. If you'd like to know more about the history of the fences, and more specifically, the masons that built them, the authoritative source is "Rock Fences of Kentucky" [0].

That's not to say that slavery does not play a role in the history of the area (and the entire country), but much of the heritage of the stone fences has little to do with slavery or slave labor. Post emancipation, the number of freedmen stonemasons slowly grew and displaced Irish stonemasons.

[0] - [https://books.google.com/books?id=UDHQjDJ677MC&pg=PA84&sourc...](https://books.google.com/books?id=UDHQjDJ677MC&pg=PA84&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false)

<comment><USER13> That's a great link; thanks! I've heard the slave explanation from numerous people at various stud farms, but not everything we hear is true...

Still, southern Missouri has lots of limestone (it's "the cave state"), and had lots of Irish and Scottish immigrants, and I can think of precisely one "slave fence" in the whole state. If the difference wasn't limestone, and it wasn't Irishmen, maybe it was that Kentucky had lots of rich tobacco plantation owners, and Missouri didn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Famous historical and archeological sites with extensive dry stone walling:

The megalithic acropolis and vaulted tombs at Mycenae:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenae)

The megalithic Nuraghe forts in Sardinia, also with vaulted ceilings:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuraghe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuraghe)

Osaka castle, in Japan (the base wall is made of dry stone):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_Castle)

The central buildings in Macchu Pitchu (hand-cut dry stone, called ashlar):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machu_Picchu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machu_Picchu)

</comment><comment><USER15> >There are examples of dry stonewalls and structures that date back 5000 years and are still standing today. Nearly anywhere in the world where stone of suitable sizes was plentiful, walls were built.

What I'd like to know is are there any patterns to where the second is true, but said walls haven't lasted thousands of years like the first sentence says? Are there places where ancient stone structures could have been built, but are no longer standing for reasons other than human interference? Perhaps they fail to survive more in earthquake prone areas, or when there is heavy vegetation that pushes roots through the rocks?

<comment><USER16> I have seen plenty of collapsed dry stone walls.

Often the reason for the collapse isn't obvious - I suspect rather than a catastrophic event, it's more that the stones right on the top of the wall aren't held in by interlocking and friction as well as the other stones, so storms and animals can dislodge them. Plants growing in the top of the wall can knock stones off too.

If plant matter gets inside the wall, pools of water can form between stones, which then freezes and pushes stones apart and cracks them.

Do that for 2000 years, and the walls turn into a scattered line of stones in the ground 30 feet wide.

<comment><USER17> > rather than a catastrophic event

I'll give you catastrophic. Quite a few years ago me and some mates were camping in a field at night and a lady misjudged a turn and took her car through the dry stone wall. The car threw hefty blocks for an astonishing distance. What was odder was that after the initial smash I could hear heavy thuds as blocks dropped from the sky for what seemed to be up to 10 seconds. Far, far too many seconds to be credible, but that's what I noticed at the time.

Being dark we heard it but didn't see it happen. The full glory was revealed next morning.

If that wall hadn't been in the way the car would have gone all over our tents - and us.

We owe some anonymous derbyshire dry waller a lot of beer for putting it in the way.

(The lady was uninjured if extremely shocked)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In a similar vein, I like this youtube channel: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1By4oBZiv9u8qnkcdCgdqw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1By4oBZiv9u8qnkcdCgdqw)

My favorite videos are the ones where he walks around a famous stone structure and talks about all the craftsmanship that goes into them.

</comment><comment><USER19> Thought initially this was from the UK's National Stone Centre in Wirksworth, Derbyshire [1]. It used to be a visitor attraction - not sure if that's still the case [1] [http://www.nationalstonecentre.org.uk/](http://www.nationalstonecentre.org.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there an optimum somewhere between a fully-mortared wall and a drystone wall? i.e. mortar which gives some reinforcement but also allows rain or groundwater to run out?

<comment><USER21> You sometimes see a drystone wall that has a mortared top. Here's one example: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-2.0573352,3a,24.1...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-2.0573352,3a,24.1y,242.19h,83.72t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1s8cyXu5hSVCJuB3S4MQO32Q!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D8cyXu5hSVCJuB3S4MQO32Q%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D173.7214%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100)

Just down the road there's another, less attractive, example: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-2.0568722,3a,46.6y...](https://email@example.com,-2.0568722,3a,46.6y,104.31h,77.07t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sh8frKx8azhN7IXR6G6KZEA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm hoping to build one of these next year, along the 2' slope in my front yard that's annoying to mow and won't grow grass the same as the rest of the yard. It'd be cheaper and easier to do with manufactured blocks, but my spouse and I think a dry stone wall will look far better with our 100+ year old stucco/stone bungalow. And it'll be more engaging to build.

<comment><USER23> Just be careful if you're putting fill behind the wall--like all retaining walls these aren't really designed to 'hold back' anything. Their strength comes in compression, not lateral loads. At a bare minimum make sure you put a layer of crushed rock next to the wall, separating the dirt from the wall. This will mitigate water and decomposing plant material from resting against wall swelling and causing the wall to be shoved apart.

<comment><USER24> > aren't really designed to 'hold back' anything

Don't tell the Europeans that! You see them throughout the med:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=stone+terraces+majorca&prmd=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=stone+terraces+majorca&prmd=imnv&tbm=isch&sa=X)

<comment><USER23> Those aren't designed to stop the hillside from sliding. They're there to stop erosion and crumbling at the edge. If those hillsides want to move, those walls will not hold them back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A friend of mine did a practical course on building dry stone walls recently. She was taught various building styles from different parts of the UK. There's more than one way to pile a rock!

</comment><comment><USER26> Sorry if too OT, but I wished we used stuff like this more in the US. Stick construction is really bad at noise and vibration isolation.

</comment><comment><USER27> Damn you, HN. I have enough hobbies already, plus I am old. Now I want to build a dry stone wall somewhere.

<comment><USER28> Not sure old counts, Churchill had brick laying as hobby into his sixties. He wrote to Stanley Baldwin in 1927: "I have had a delightful month—building a cottage and dictating a book. 200 bricks and 2,000 words per day." He started with garden walls.

Have fun with your new hobby. :)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/708sxb/winston...](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/708sxb/winston_churchill_was_a_qualified_bricklayer_who/)

<comment><USER27> What a lovely answer. Thank you. I am in fact working on a book and a compiler at the moment!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There are many dry stone (lava) structures on the Hawaiian islands.</comment>


How Have I Been Pwned became the keeper of the internet's biggest data breaches - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/03/have-i-been-pwned/ <comment><USER2> I have several dozen accounts on different websites and every time I check, I'm always in the clear.</comment>


Programming languages in coding interviews ranked - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hackerrank.com/emerging-languages-still-overshadowed-by-incumbents-java-python-in-coding-interviews/ <comment><USER2> Considering the flood of Rust-related discussions posted here, I was surprised to learn that the language isn't present in the ranking.</comment>


Since the FCC Won't Act on robo-calls, Congress Finally Passes Traced Act - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/04/congress_robocalls_traced/ <comment><USER2> Instead of fines, I would rather see mandatory SS7 circuit decom for any business that facilitates these calls, spoofed text messages, etc. Same goes for ISP's. Facilitate this nonsense, lose your AS number and IP allocations.

</comment><comment><USER3> If the statutory damages are that high, why not offer a consumer-targeted service that automates the attorney-sue-part of the whole ordeal? Or at least everything except the small claims date, so you just get told when yo appear and are given some briefing by the service to know what you'll need to do in court.

Take commission, and take care of all collection that might be needed. Drag non-payers to criminal court/liquidate their assets. It's not so much about individual-claim-level ROI, but about making robocall operations as dangerous if not more so than running a meth lab.

<comment><USER4> The robocall operations will just outsource to some foreign country.

<comment><USER5> Then we brand robocall operators as terrorists and bomb them. America, fuck yeah.

<comment><USER6> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure why it's not mentioned in the article but if I'm reading it right the act does appear to require phone companies to implement the STIR/SHAKEN protocols to authenticate calls so this isn't just giving the FCC powers it already had to fine callers it had no way to identify.

</comment><comment><USER8> Goes to Senate, goes to sleep.

<comment><AUTHOR> TFA says it's passed the Senate and head to Trump's desk for signature.</comment></comment>


Fwd: Amazon EC2 mandatory reboot - <AUTHOR> http://mailp.in/IzWouhuH/ <comment><USER2> So? This is not particularly uncommon if you run a large number of EC2 instances.

<comment><AUTHOR> True... but it is a lot of trouble with a large number of EC2 instances. Anyway, have to deal with it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where does one find new advances in algorithms - <AUTHOR>

I don't have a university footing the bill (and I find Elsevier et al to be ethically repugnant) but I would like to keep up with new advances in algorithms. What are some good ways to do so?<p>Thanks :) <comment><USER2> Many CS papers appear on the Arxiv, if you can keep up with it: [http://arxiv.org/list/cs/new](http://arxiv.org/list/cs/new)

</comment><comment><USER3> Pay for an IEEE and ACM membership. If you can't do both, I'd prioritize ACM over IEEE. ACM is $100/yr if you want the magazine, and $200/yr if you want the backlog. In the grand scheme of things, it's not that much. I spend more on coffee and booze in a month.</comment>


Byte - <AUTHOR> http://byte.co/

<comment><USER2> "A nightmare GIF party straight out of GeoCities 1998".

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/29/8860347/byte-app-dom- hofma...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/29/8860347/byte-app-dom-hofmann-vine)

</comment><comment><USER3> Rather unusable due to the byte:// URLs which apparently need the app, but break the web.</comment>


Show HN: Monopoly Monte Carlo Using Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kalbfled/monopoly-monte-carlo <comment><AUTHOR> As in life, where you start matters. To see the results of the simulation in tabular and graphical format, open simulation_results.ods.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your techniques to improve public speaking and talk smart? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Reading. There are different styles of speech that sound "smart" to different people. If you like academic (especially, statistical/mathematical) jibber- jabber, you would have to read (ideally study) a lot of academic works (textbooks, papers, blog posts, whatever). In time, you'll pick up a lot of that style of speech. If you think the political/financial articles in NYT, Economist and other such publications are the epitome of the sophisticated speech, you should definitely read those papers voraciously. Their jive will rub off on you whether you like it or not. The only problem: if you're not a native speaker of English(I am not, btw), your speech will sound a bit stilted. Anyhow, this is my experience. As a kid I used to prefer spending my time reading 19th century Russian writers (hand-me-downs from older generations) and newspaper articles on current matters to spending time with my peers. My speech definitely reflected that for a long time because people would often comment how weird (and funny) it was.

Personally, the smartest sounding speech to me is the one where people get their point across in fewest words and clearest way possible.

One of the current stylistic techniques(?) that I really dislike is using a long winded quote as a descriptor of something/one.</comment>


Ask HN: What makes your product unique? - <AUTHOR> 1-  What is your product?
2- In one sentence (just one) explain what makes your product unique from the rest of the market.
3- In one more sentence (just one more) explain how you got to find the niche you're building the product for.
4- Are you pre or post-revenue (any revenue). Just say Pre or Post. <comment><USER2> 1\. I used to sell retro video games on Amazon and through my own site.

2\. I'm not a dick, so I was hoping people would choose to buy my stuff because they liked me and trusted me more than some random seller on Amazon. Didn't work.

3\. This niche is pretty crowded now and there is a lot of turnover and consolidation and competition between vendors. There are less people though who tried to make a personality out of it.

4\. Post, because revenue is easy, profit is not</comment>


For Frustrated Gifted Kids, A World of Online Opportunities - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/for-frustrated-gifted-kids-a-world-of-online-opportunities/ <comment><USER2> We need to be doing _something_ for these kids. I know when I was in school I was incredibly bored and underwhelmed. I'd typically understand a concept pretty quickly when it was introduced, and then have nothing to do while the teacher had to explain it a million times for the next several days, and I'd finish my tests and work much more quickly than most, too. I dunno if I was necessarily one of the brightest minds out there, but school did always come easy to me.

So, I'd do other things when I didn't need to pay attention. When I was really little, I'd act out. Doctors tried to tell my parents I had ADD and prescribe drugs -- fortunately my parents knew better (my dad had the same issues when he was a kid). Later, I actually found a healthy outlet -- I brought a sketchpad to school and drew pictures when I wasn't learning anything. Still, the teachers got upset and eventually took that away.

I feel like it would've been a lot more beneficial to me if there had been some alternative. Or, at least, if I hadn't constantly got in trouble for what essentially amounts to being bored.

<comment><USER3> We don't need to do anything for these kids. They have the internet now, that is all that is needed.

<comment> barry-cotter Charitably assuming that was sarcasm, no that is not all that is needed. Boring the crap out of children and teaching them that no one cares what they want and that people with authority can shit all over them with impunity may be good preparation for adult life but one can in fact do better. Even working under the constraint that there must be a place for parents to park their children while they go work one can do a lot better.

Montessori and Sudbury/Democratic schools do not work on the sit down shut up and do as you're told model and they do very well.

And if we're going to do the sit down, shut up and do as you're told model why can't we at least use the best method for it, Direct Instruction?

<comment><USER3> It's not sarcasm. There is nothing you can do for them that will be better than allowing them the free time to learn at their own pace from the internet.

A highly gifted or profoundly gifted child does not need education in the traditional sense, they need emotional support. The intellectual support the average teacher is going to be able to provide will very frequently be inadequate.

It was suggested I go to a democratic school, but I declined. Such a thing would have been good for me,but what would have been better: Just let me get on with learning about the world with a group of my peers.

<comment><USER2> I think I understand what you're saying. Allowing them to learn at their own pace would still be doing something, though.

In school, whenever a new concept was introduced, I often found that I understood it pretty quickly, but that we'd spend days on the topic while several other students in class struggled to grasp it. During that time, I was expected to sit there and pay attention -- even though it was a waste of time. Even creative outlets, like drawing, were not allowed. If I could have used that time to learn something new on my own, through the Internet or whatever else, that would have been a lot better than just sitting there. Even just letting the students who understand the topic out to play or something until the next topic is introduced would be better and more productive than just having them sit there.

Once I got to college it got a lot better -- I was able to skip classes that I knew would be a waste of time and do more productive things, or bring a laptop to class and do something else when the professor was explaining something I already understood. But prior to college I didn't own a laptop -- not that it would have been allowed even if I did!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My son was converting binary to decimal when he was 5, found (x+1)^2 = x^2 + 2x + 1 by himself at the age of 6. Now he's interested in logarithmic calculations, doing very well on Chesstempo, learns languages using Duolingo and loves reading heavy books on his Kindle at the age of 7.

On the other hand, he never interested in any kind of sports (only exception is, thanks to Strider balance bikes, he's good at cycling). He's having trouble building relations with other kids around his age, sometimes hits or creatively frustrates them to cover his lack of physical skills.

Any parent can find billions of great things online for the gifted child. It would be great if it was that easy for my child to deal with the real world.

<comment><USER5> This is a long shot, but have you tried taking him to an indoor bouldering gym? It is a very mentally demanding physical activity, that does not require any outside interaction with others but at the same time encourages it while also developing an appreciation for physicality.

My friend's son started going when he was 3, so no there is no time too early.

<comment><USER4> I once researched for it but we don't have such a gym in my city. There are a couple of them in Istanbul (1 hr), I'll take a look. I didn't know that bouldering is a mentally demanding sport but now understand the routes and colored handles' purpose when I think of them, my son would love such challenges. Thanks.

<comment><USER6> You might also consider getting slacklind. You can set a line up between two trees, and learning to balance is extremely mentally taxing. I live in central Istanbul and have found a group of people regularly slacklining in Macka Park, so there must be supplies available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "These students are going to produce an outsized portion of the major technological, medical, mathematical, scientific, economic advances of the next generation,"

When I was In school, there was a GATE program (gifted and talented education ???). But I think it was meant to target the top 10% or 20% of students. But when you think about where the really big advances for civilization will come from, maybe there should be a focus on the top 1% or 2%. That's sort of the opposite of public school today. I suppose instead of No Child Left Behind, it's No Child Left Unchallenged.

<comment><USER8> Plenty of children struggle in school and go on to do amazing things afterward, and plenty of "child geniuses" are lavished with attention and go on to do nothing notable.

The purpose of a school should be to encourage all students to flourish, not to pick the ones who will "advance civilization" at age 5.

<comment><USER9> This is a bit of a straw-man.

No one is suggesting teaching just the top 1% and leaving the rest to fend for themselves. Just putting them in a separate class for a few hour a week so they can be with other smart kids and be challenged.

The bottom 10-20% in every subject could probably use something similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a profoundly gifted child the having the Internet would have transformed my life. If I had had access to the knowledge I have access to now I would have been where I am now at 32 by the time I went to University at 20. I would probably not have fallen into the dark depression in my teens, induced primarily by boredom. It is going to be exciting to see what the exceptional people of the next generation will look like, very exciting :)

<comment><USER11> I thought along the same lines of what having the internet would have meant in terms of supercharging my progress as well, but also thought about the number of easy distractions it provides. Would you have been where you are at 32 in terms of knowledge, or would you have spend 80 percent of your time leveling up on Wow or some other easy temptation? Always helps to reflect on the total context of the situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> By the time I was 16 I was ready to do university level subjects in my chosen field and was even on a course that would have articulated to it - so instead of graduating high school I would have dropped out. School principal didn't want me to drop out, so organised a meeting with myself, her and the careers counsellor which left me shaken up! I ended up finishing high school but at some personal cost - failed a subject, got depressed and ended skipping 1-2 days per week.

</comment><comment><USER13> My elementary school had an "academically gifted" program which I was a part of. They put us there during the school day, isolating us from our classmates and making us seem even more "weird" than we already were. It didn't bother me, because I've never really been a "people person." But I'm sure it wasn't the best idea for some of the rest.

Of note: we were the only students in the school that were allowed unsupervised computer access, and it's where I pulled off my very first "computer crime." I found a special menu that was accessible via a series of held keys, one of which happened to be "print screen." I got caught because stacks and stacks of papers were printed off in the office, and I was officially banned from the computers. Fun times :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> General question (I know nothing, just musing).

Is there any specific reason or logic behind accelerating gifted kids through the primary-secondary-college system? If you had school dedicated to these kids, could they just go through the standard material faster,2 hours a day, 2 days a week or 2 months a year?

That would take care of the boredom problem. There are stimulating things other than school.

I don't see any particular advantage in entering college at 14.

<comment><USER14> For your average, middle-class parents this isn't practical. They have jobs & school is pretty much free daycare they wouldn't want to give up.

There are so many advantages to entering college at 14. For a start, it looks great on your resume. Which means you have a whole host of cool work opportunities when you graduate, meaning you can start a fun and interesting career at 18- rather than slog on through the system, waiting to be recognised at 22-25. Source: know a lot of Thiel fellows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a 'gifted' but bored student, I see so many programs (online, self paced programs) that I would have loved. My youngest brother was able to graduate from high school a year early with honors, yet he was the least academic out of all of us kids (5 total). I went to small high school with only AP Spanish and AP Calculus, of which getting into depended on what track you were put into in middle school (didn't make it due to just moving into the area). My parents were also very wary about not screwing us up socially (no skipping grades). Having these types of programs that go with you if your family moves, interest changes or anything else, would have been amazing!

<comment><USER16> "gifted" ..phew who told you so ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> all I can say is, thanks you to my elementary school for running a gifted and talented program, and for the nearby university letting me use their internet access (this was in the era of 1200 baud modems). Everything I get to do today is because those things enabled me to learn on my own.

Anyway, I don't know that reading at a high level at a young age really is a good predictor for future success (measured in impact, rather than, say, dollars).

</comment><comment><USER16> how this will not create more divide in already divided society ? Counter argument could be made that everyone starts at level zero and their environment/condition make them learn slow or fast. Just telling your kids that they are gifted won't make them gifted. I know hundred of cases where parents told their child since early childhood that they are special, they are gifted but eventually child failed, fall behind even behind those considered "slow" All people commenting here that "they are gifted" should really take second look. Solving a math equation fast doesn't make you gifted. Life is far far complex than classroom maths. So STFU and have beer. Its friday !

</comment><comment><USER18> Ask any teacher, and they'll tell you that any given school is only capable of properly serving the middle 90%, or, at best, 95%, of its students.</comment>