Trump Vows to At Least Quadruple US-Pakistan Trade

[guest9999]

Last day I was doing some research for an upcoming lecture I am giving to some Uni students, I will put in my detailed thoughts later today, shortly, Pakistan's IT exports have crossed $4.1 billion p.a. From the following data which I got from online labor index I was really impressed with Pakistan's stat remember $4.1 billion does not include (my assessment) freelancers. We are slightly ahead of US in software and development technology, not doing bad in creative and multimedia.

It would be a good idea for PTI-govt. to organize IT conferences - with intent to gather some of these freelancers together, as well as investors. Pakistan can try to create its own version of Silicon valley. Let's say some of these freelancers group together, pitch ideas, with investors deciding on funding. This can lead to new start-ups and the investors turning towards business ventures instead of the usual real estate plot-dealing, and import-oriented businesses that are dragging the country down.

 

[313ghazi]

The recent debacle of Boeing's control software for B737max is due to HCL and hence many are realising the mistake of outsourcing to India.

To be fair to them, it's not being Indian that makes the end product rubbish, it's the poor work culture.

I had the misfortune of working alongside infosys on a project for my company for a few years. Most of the Indian staff were competent, but the management was awful and the attitude to quality control was atrocious. These guys worked long hours, under pressure, because to secure contracts their management would over-promise. QC processes were overlooked, documentation was non existent, business analysis was sparce and testing was just a tick box exercise with as much descoped as possible. If you ever have a tester saying "i need this to pass", that person is doing their job wrong. As a tester you are supposed to run your tests impartially and if they pass great, if they fail, ok. You should never be wishing for something to pass to reduce your workload. It leads to mistakes and at worst, people deliberately overlooking faults.

Infosys had that culture, especially with their overseas based staff. The management also had a habit of regularly reporting progress inaccurately to the client, so as to look good and then screwing behind the scenes trying to catch up.

 

[nahtanbob]

To be fair to them, it's not being Indian that makes the end product rubbish, it's the poor work culture.

it is lack of software project management skills - especially soft skills

 

[ps3linux]

This is Pakistan's export mix country wise, I was just wondering should a new thread be created to discuss Pakistan's export vs import mix country wise, product wise and come up with some ideas on capacity building and improving exports.

And following the export mix product wise:

 

[nahtanbob]

I'm going to a be a bit blunt here. I wouldn't trust the average white executive to make smart decisions regarding the long-term direction a company may take - particularly in technology. The same executives are known for engaging in "herd mentality" - where outsourcing migration patterns are based on "everyone's doing it" - for example, moving production to China, now Vietnam.

Biggest example is the US-China trade war. These executives failed to see the long term consequences when moving their technology manufacturing to China. As if the joint venture requirement for a "Chinese partner" wasn't enough. What is to be said when a company gives up the crown jewels of its technology partnering up a with Chinese partner, for short term benefit, essentially giving birth to its own rival. The Chinese starting kicking these foreign companies out through under-handed tactics years ago, when their usefulness was utilized and the Chinese had their own local, home-grown champions that could fill local demand and outcompete the same company that gave them the technology in the first place. It seems one of the few smart enough to realize what was going on was Trump - then came tariffs and an attempt to decouple Chinese manufacturing from US supply chains. Of course, these white executives being the abused housewife - hoping for her man to change one day - insist that Trump withdraws tariffs so they could go back to their short-term profits and long-term eventual death.

Pakistan, understandably is not a stable country. Although, much has improved significantly in the last 2 years. I'm not really interested in western companies investing there. They don't have much to contribute as of right now and Pakistan doesn't have the technology base to absorb whatever they contribute, at this point in time. What I'm more interested in, is Pakistan's local efforts to incubate its own start-ups - in IT sector.

You should read the book "Tipping Point"

Tell what you want about China. You do not see "Death to America" protests, burning US flags protests and acts of terrorism in China.

On a practical matter you have to undercut Indian industry on costs.

When the first projects were relocated to India in Oracle the Indian software engineers were paid $500 per month. Apparently that was the above the market rate. Salaries in USA were $100,000 for experienced software engineer. We are talking year 1995.

Right now engineers in India are paid $20,000 - $40,000. The question is whether good Pakistani software engineers are willing to work for $5,000-10,000 to undercut Indians. These are salaries per year we are talking.
We are not talking about one engineer teams. We are talking teams of 100+ engineers.
Otherwise this whole thing is dead on arrival.

Plus there are alternatives to India - China, Eastern Europe, Mexico

 

[My-Analogous]

India’s IT & ITeS industry grew to US$ 181 billion in 2018-19. Exports from the industry increased to US$ 137 billion in FY19 while domestic revenues (including hardware) advanced to US$ 44 billion.

Spending on Information Technology in India is expected to grow over 9 per cent to reach US$ 87.1 billion in 2018.*

Revenue from digital segment is expected to comprise 38 per cent of the forecasted US$ 350 billion industry revenue by 2025.

-------

Who's laughing now?

Your God Mr, Trump

https://www.facebook.com/

 

[313ghazi]

it is lack of software project management skills - especially soft skills

My experience is only limited to 1 project with infosys. I couldn't really comment any further.

 

[Syed1.]

My personal experience of having work outsourced to India has been very bad. I used to work for a massive engineering consulting firm (the largest in the world) and they had a big design center in India where they would offload a lot of the drafting and other similar work to India. However, the output from the India offices weren't as expected and lacked in quality and the company decided to develop a major design center in Poland which handles most of the work now from North American offices.

The Indian offices are now just doing work for India, Middle East and some of South East Asia.

 

[guest9999]

You should read the book "Tipping Point"

Tell what you want about China. You do not see "Death to America" protests, burning US flags protests and acts of terrorism in China.

Although you don't see it openly in public, it doesn't mean it's not happening in the minds of people there
Read about the "Century of Humiliation" and how it's ingrained in the mindset of young school children.

In any case, the tariffs are having severe effect on their exports. Manufacturing is leaving the mainland. Major beneficiaries are Vietnam (although that won't last long), Bangladesh. Even Pakistan has benefited with an increase in textile exports, although that might have been due to rupee devaluation.

On a practical matter you have to undercut Indian industry on costs.

When the first projects were relocated to India in Oracle the Indian software engineers were paid $5000 per month. Apparently that was the above the market rate. Salaries in USA were $100,000 for experienced software engineer. We are talking year 1995.

Right now engineers in India are paid $20,000 - $40,000. The question is whether good Pakistani software engineers are willing to work for $5,000-10,000 to undercut Indians. These are salaries per year we are talking.
We are not talking about one engineer teams. We are talking teams of 100+ engineers.
Otherwise this whole thing is dead on arrival.

Plus there are alternatives to India - China, Eastern Europe, Mexico

I feel Pakistan pursuing the Indian model in becoming an outsourcing hub is not going to work. As I've alluded in some of my other posts here, there has been a paradigm shift in technology, architecture, and the availability of coders in the US. This is a toxic combination for outsourcing to India.

The big monolithic and outdated web applications of old are being phased out. No longer do you need those IT sweatshops in India to churn out these things - rote-style. Now the world has moved on towards microservices, big data, AI, etc. I don't see much talent coming from India when it comes to these things. Microservices has led to abandonment of monolithic, licensed software, produced in India - in exchange for open-source software developed in-house by more talented developers here.

There is more growth & potential in product development that thrives on social networking-i.e, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram- as opposed to the typical outsourcing services that would churn out web applications, CRM, ERP, etc. Look at China, their focus is towards producing local versions of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon -> Baidu, Weibo, WeChat, Alibaba - not becoming an outsourcing hub. Although India is an outsourcing hub, it can't be compared to China in the sheer scale of computing resources, local technological & social ecosystem. Indians will churn out outdated applications, rote-style. Chinese on the other hand, will churn out alternatives to Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Ebay, and the numerous "unicorns" & start-ups. Let's not even get into how China is far ahead of India in adopting Big Data technologies or AI.

This is a very deep topic, but my point is that Pakistan should focus on building its own local technology ecosystem by incubating tech start-ups. It should focus efforts on re-creating Silicon Valley or Shenzhen within the territory. This is the better route, in the long term, for prosperity. Local tech giants and start-ups will cater to local demand - the economy will be more consumer-driven, at the same time these same companies can expand to near-by regions like GCC. The industry won't be held hostage to exports decreasing because of shifts in political, technological environment. Furthermore, having local e-commerce giants will help document the economy - another critical issue Pakistan seems to suffer from.

 

[ps3linux]

Although you don't see it openly in public, it doesn't mean it's not happening in the minds of people there
Read about the "Century of Humiliation" and how it's ingrained in the mindset of young school children.

There is more growth & potential in product development that thrives on social networking-i.e, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram- as opposed to the typical outsourcing services that would churn out web applications, CRM, ERP, etc. Look at China, their focus is towards producing local versions of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon -> Baidu, Weibo, WeChat, Alibaba - not becoming an outsourcing hub. Although India is an outsourcing hub, it can't be compared to China in the sheer scale of computing resources, local technological & social ecosystem. Indians will churn out outdated applications, rote-style. Chinese on the other hand, will churn out alternatives to Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Ebay, and the numerous "unicorns" & start-ups. Let's not even get into how China is far ahead of India in adopting Big Data technologies or AI.

This is a very deep topic, but my point is that Pakistan should focus on building its own local technology ecosystem by incubating tech start-ups. It should focus efforts on re-creating Silicon Valley or Shenzhen within the territory. This is the better route, in the long term, for prosperity. Local tech giants and start-ups will cater to local demand - the economy will be more consumer-driven, at the same time these same companies can expand to near-by regions like GCC. The industry won't be held hostage to exports decreasing because of shifts in political, technological environment. Furthermore, having local e-commerce giants will help document the economy - another critical issue Pakistan seems to suffer from.

Two thumbs up, well articulated and analysed. It is a lengthy topic of why we Pakistanis are here. Ever since I came back to Pakistan I have seen a steady improvement in IT skills and in the last 5 years it has become exponential. I myself was part of three bottom up IT projects.

One a bottom up business IT system was developed because the existing system was supplied by a vendor in UAE who sourced it from India, there were too many road blocks, errors and every time we hit a snag the trouble shooting and fixing took 3-6 months. To cut the story short we developed an in house system which is way better than the one which we were using, we tested it ourselves with the regulator, auditor and a consultant operating out of singapore. Now the software is deployed in at least three other companies in Pakistan and they have received their first multi-million dollar export order. That in house team is now working in 5 to 6 other companies in the same line of business none of them has moved abroad and each of them is getting insane salaries in Pakistan.

What I am trying to say is that we have our moments but once like minded band together atleast in IT we are pretty good, there are couple of incubation centers which are doing exceptional work. I was drawing some conclusions from the charts I posted earlier if we look at the ILO chart number of people employed in programming are almost at par with US and bangladesh, lower than india but if take population into account perhaps way better than US, lower than bangladesh but definitely not 1/7 of India. Second variable is quality I think that comes with experience and exposure.

Courtesy my profession I do meet up regularly with IT educational fraternity, the students and the professional IT firms give us a decade or so the kind of ideas I hear from them are wonderful to the extent that I am confident we will be among top three in the world.
All this is despite the fact that we have incompetent bureaucrats and equally idiot politicians or law maker, any positive change among them and well...

 

[nahtanbob]

Although you don't see it openly in public, it doesn't mean it's not happening in the minds of people there
Read about the "Century of Humiliation" and how it's ingrained in the mindset of young school children.

In any case, the tariffs are having severe effect on their exports. Manufacturing is leaving the mainland. Major beneficiaries are Vietnam (although that won't last long), Bangladesh. Even Pakistan has benefited with an increase in textile exports, although that might have been due to rupee devaluation.

I feel Pakistan pursuing the Indian model in becoming an outsourcing hub is not going to work. As I've alluded in some of my other posts here, there has been a paradigm shift in technology, architecture, and the availability of coders in the US. This is a toxic combination for outsourcing to India.

The point in China is that a white man does not get killed by a mob unlike some parts of the Muslim world. there are tens of thousands of expatriates in China. Other than a few arbitrary detentions by chinese state I have not seen anyone subject to abuse much less death. Pakistan has to decide to dump militant groups for the rule of law. All it takes is one Daniel Pearl to tar your image for a few years. Malaysia is a good model here.

I doubt the Indian model is even an option on a large scale for Pakistan. Looking to China and Middle East for contracts is a good start. the real issue is the lack of software startups. Why risk starting a software firm when you can make money in real estate ?

Two thumbs up, well articulated and analysed. It is a lengthy topic of why we Pakistanis are here. Ever since I came back to Pakistan I have seen a steady improvement in IT skills and in the last 5 years it has become exponential. I myself was part of three bottom up IT projects.

One a bottom up business IT system was developed because the existing system was supplied by a vendor in UAE who sourced it from India, there were too many road blocks, errors and every time we hit a snag the trouble shooting and fixing took 3-6 months. To cut the story short we developed an in house system which is way better than the one which we were using, we tested it ourselves with the regulator, auditor and a consultant operating out of singapore. Now the software is deployed in at least three other companies in Pakistan and they have received their first multi-million dollar export order. That in house team is now working in 5 to 6 other companies in the same line of business none of them has moved abroad and each of them is getting insane salaries in Pakistan.

What I am trying to say is that we have our moments but once like minded band together atleast in IT we are pretty good, there are couple of incubation centers which are doing exceptional work. I was drawing some conclusions from the charts I posted earlier if we look at the ILO chart number of people employed in programming are almost at par with US and bangladesh, lower than india but if take population into account perhaps way better than US, lower than bangladesh but definitely not 1/7 of India. Second variable is quality I think that comes with experience and exposure.

Courtesy my profession I do meet up regularly with IT educational fraternity, the students and the professional IT firms give us a decade or so the kind of ideas I hear from them are wonderful to the extent that I am confident we will be among top three in the world.
All this is despite the fact that we have incompetent bureaucrats and equally idiot politicians or law maker, any positive change among them and well...

the only reason the software industry took off in India is that the incompetent bureaucrats and equally idiot politicians could not do anything to mess it up. why would it be any different in pakistan ?

list the top 10 software companies based in Pakistan. it is one thing to execute ad hoc projects. it is another thing to build software firms

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Reasonable to go from 5 billion to 20 billion trade high demand

 

[guest9999]

Two thumbs up, well articulated and analysed. It is a lengthy topic of why we Pakistanis are here. Ever since I came back to Pakistan I have seen a steady improvement in IT skills and in the last 5 years it has become exponential. I myself was part of three bottom up IT projects.

One a bottom up business IT system was developed because the existing system was supplied by a vendor in UAE who sourced it from India, there were too many road blocks, errors and every time we hit a snag the trouble shooting and fixing took 3-6 months. To cut the story short we developed an in house system which is way better than the one which we were using, we tested it ourselves with the regulator, auditor and a consultant operating out of singapore. Now the software is deployed in at least three other companies in Pakistan and they have received their first multi-million dollar export order. That in house team is now working in 5 to 6 other companies in the same line of business none of them has moved abroad and each of them is getting insane salaries in Pakistan.

What I am trying to say is that we have our moments but once like minded band together atleast in IT we are pretty good, there are couple of incubation centers which are doing exceptional work. I was drawing some conclusions from the charts I posted earlier if we look at the ILO chart number of people employed in programming are almost at par with US and bangladesh, lower than india but if take population into account perhaps way better than US, lower than bangladesh but definitely not 1/7 of India. Second variable is quality I think that comes with experience and exposure.

Courtesy my profession I do meet up regularly with IT educational fraternity, the students and the professional IT firms give us a decade or so the kind of ideas I hear from them are wonderful to the extent that I am confident we will be among top three in the world.
All this is despite the fact that we have incompetent bureaucrats and equally idiot politicians or law maker, any positive change among them and well...

Thank you sir, appreciate the comment. Definitely Pakistani developers are there and are capable. It wouldn't hurt to have more. I think the President Arif Alvi's Artificial Intelligence Initiative is a really good idea-to cultivate existing talent even further with more advanced software developer skills. Hope it takes off - but needs way more funding and support. What matters at this stage is to gather that talent and group it together, to make something come out of it. This is how the next local Facebook, Google, etc will be born. Universities are the first place to start.

However, I think the government needs to put its weight behind it. Sadly, the only thing I'm seeing from the government & previous ones is the idea of "building IT parks". As if that will magically solve every problem. It's the same line of thinking that is failing to boost exports - the idea that if you give exporters subsidies, that will boost exports.

If by chance, you were to advise the government on anything, please push my recommendations:

• Organize Software conferences with invites to developers & investors
• Encourage the formation of start-ups in these conferences, similar to how developers pitch ideas at networking events and angel investors fund them
• Provide business management, legal, tax advice to start-ups
• Create a government-owned investment vehicle that provides "seed money" to these start-ups, in exchange for 50% ownership. The government will do its part to preserve patents. This will provide funding for start-ups and later, badly needed revenue for the government
• Pass legislation forcing all companies, especially tech companies to partner up with a local partner in the respective field. Similar to how tech giants were forced to create their own rivals in China. Pakistan is behind in manufacturing, so it will be difficult in hardware. However, software is definitely one area it can benefit from
• Pass legislation forcing all data to be stored in local data centers
• Develop Silicon Valley(s), by forcing master plans & zoning laws in major cities. One section of Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar should be specifically for IT companies, etc. with no residential units near by. This will force companies to concentrate in one area and will "accidentally" become IT hub of that city. This type of thing also appeals to foreign companies like Google, that will be looking for places to build their center. The concentration of businesses in specific sector has a positive effect on supply chain and a domino-effect in terms of inviting foreign investment, check out Shenzhen and how location & proximity make it irresistable for companies to manufacture electronics there.
• Expats hold the key to reviving economy with local, in-house talent. New high-rise residential units should be developed in safer parts of cities, with all the necessary luxuries & amenities- malls, convenience stores, sewage, water, police, etc. Expats should be encouraged to settle here and be provided with incentives to do so. Government needs a serious policy to bring back expats - this is really make or break for Pakistan's economy in the future. One of the major reasons India had IT boom is due to their expats coming back from Silicon Valley and starting companies.

 

[Max Pain]

That's because they have abused the H-1B visa program. Their strategy is to

(1) Get H-1B visa for Indians to fill up IT jobs in US
(2) Eventually shift those jobs back to India, using their influence
(3) For the Indians that remain, use their monetary and political influence to push pro-Indian legislation

What pisses me off is how unqualified some of these visa applicants are. They literally lie completely about their experience and skillset. I know a team that hired two Indians that had different Indians interview for them by phone. When those Indians arrived on-site, they were nothing like the person giving the interview. One didn't even know how to code.

Nonetheless, our people aren't even in the game. I don't see too many Pakistani's in IT. You can also forget about most of them using their influence to hire Pakistani's, let alone outsource IT work to Pakistan. It seems when many of our people leave the motherland, they don't want to have anything to do with it. I hope we can see the Pakistan Imran Khan envisions soon. Maybe that may change the attitude of expats towards the motherland.

This however isn't always the case, a cousin of mine (who was a brilliant coder) got H1B visa back in 2001. He worked for Microsoft and Philips Healthcare USA and then later on became CTO of an organization there that has Walmart and Nissan as clients and has done tremendously well. back in 2013 he slowly started shifting the IT part here and now the entire development is done here in Pakistan, the organization is very happy and they say that our engineers and overall infrastructure is much much easier and cheaper to get as compared to India let alone USA. back in 2016 I was an intern there and now that organization has quadrupled in size in just a span of 3 years.

the even better part is, my cousin had a very close Indian friend in USA who started his own organization that provided IT solutions for Old age Healthcare industry and guess what? he himself approached my cousin to start an office in Pakistan and get the entire development done there. I currently work in that organization now, our CEO is Indian and is quite happy with us, since 2017 we kept on scaling and the work just keeps on increasing. The CEO despite being an Indian realizes our business value and gets all the development done from us simply because we are cheaper and skilled (I'm a COMSATS graduate and also am doing MS(Software Engineering) from FAST). I know many FASTIANS who are excellent programmers.

I firmly believe if we have more representation in USA and are portrayed well in USA, we can get massive business here and this certainly would help in reversing our current economic situation.

 

[denel]

*********denel, post: 11660903, member: 147846"]Indians are liars of nth degree; their offshore claims of turn keys are garbage. I am asked to consult with various Financial institutions here including MTN - they got burnt bad with trash from TCS, Wipro etc. My recommendation was to get them thrown out and replaced with onshore model - they provide monkeys who cannot think or if it was not scripted they are clueless; i can provide tonnes of actual stories across multiple large scale institutions; the funny part; when you get their bill - their offshore cost is nearly as much as onshore; what are my clients paying for? Just providing funds to Make India Great Again. No thanks, keep money to your own companies.
Over hyped curry muncher IT services based on lies.
We had a joke - how many Tata Consulting service people are needed to write a basic Hello World; 5. One to take the question, 2nd to write the requirement of the question, 3rd to translate the requirement to Indian language, 4th to code the requirement, 5th to escalate to a senior developer because he cannot google the solution.*****


hahhahahhaha


it is the same here in Dubai, true some of them are good however they extremely overated....



buddy that is the oldest trick in the book... hahhahah. a switch interviewee... or like how they give exams pay a guy to sit for their test.

My 2 cents..



We need first focus on industries where we have a competitive advantage i.e. textiles, agriculture, etc and get cash flow rolling from there. of course IT is important but given our limitation i say we go through that option first.

denel said: ↑
Indians are liars of nth degree; their offshore claims of turn keys are garbage. I am asked to consult with various Financial institutions here including MTN - they got burnt bad with trash from TCS, Wipro etc. My recommendation was to get them thrown out and replaced with onshore model - they provide monkeys who cannot think or if it was not scripted they are clueless; i can provide tonnes of actual stories across multiple large scale institutions; the funny part; when you get their bill - their offshore cost is nearly as much as onshore; what are my clients paying for? Just providing funds to Make India Great Again. No thanks, keep money to your own companies.
Over hyped curry muncher IT services based on lies.
We had a joke - how many Tata Consulting service people are needed to write a basic Hello World; 5. One to take the question, 2nd to write the requirement of the question, 3rd to translate the requirement to Indian language, 4th to code the requirement, 5th to escalate to a senior developer because he cannot google the solution.[/QUOTE


hahhahahhaha


it is the same here in Dubai, true some of them are good however they extremely overated....



*****What pisses me off is how unqualified some of these visa applicants are. They literally lie completely about their experience and skillset. I know a team that hired two Indians that had different Indians interview for them by phone. When those Indians arrived on-site, they were nothing like the person giving the interview. One didn't even know how to code.****

.
buddy that is the oldest trick in the book... hahhahah. a switch interviewee... or like how they give exams pay a guy to sit for their test.[/QUOTE]


btw - this is latest scams - forget about telephone interviews where they put others to speak on the phone; even with video - they are now dubbing the voice and lip syncing. I heard this last week from one of the partners; they have stopped all interviews from offshore; all business going to local companies.

My experience is only limited to 1 project with infosys. I couldn't really comment any further.

infosys is the better of the rest; i can tell you having gone thru the rest with a spade and shovel plus a whip; just pray you dont have to deal with kakheads like Wipro, TCS, HCL. Just garbage - throw them out is what i say.