November 02, 2004

Indian companies hiring engineers in ChinaBusiness

This is fascinating: Indian outsourcing companies, caught short-staffed by surging sales, are subcontracting some of the work to China.

"We need a deep reservoir of talent as well as an alternative low-cost center like India as we continue to grow," said Nandan Nilekani, chief executive of Infosys, who has talked of his company's scaling up to become the Wal-Mart of outsourcing. "And only China can match up."... China has some 200,000 information technology workers--compared with India's 850,000--in 6,000 local companies... More than 50,000 Chinese software programmers are being added to this pool annually.

... even with wages rising in India, China's information technology workers are more expensive "because a combination of English-language and technical skills is at a premium," Nilekani of Infosys said.

So a country which couldn't defeat its neighbor on the battlefield is employing it instead. And it's all thanks to unwanted colonization by an empire which left behind its language. It's not only the law of unintended consequences, it's also slick jujitsu.

manish on November 2, 2004 09:24 AM in Business · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post