Never ever do business with Samsung India Software Operations

http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2012/03/never_ever_do_b.html

by etfb • 14 years ago

157 54 14 years ago

etfb2• 14 years ago

PPK is usually such a polite lad, so it's all the more effective when he really goes off. This is how bad customers should be outed, in public. Bravo!

jnbiche• 14 years ago

Well done!

hermanius2• 14 years ago

Sounds like PPK didn't do the legwork. If you're going to get paid for a cross-border contract, make sure you know what you're doing or pay someone who does. Saying "fucking" doesn't solve anything.

electrichead• 14 years ago

You created an account just to say that?

hermanius2• 14 years ago

Yes.

niyazpk• 14 years ago

Exactly what I was thinking. I can imagine that he has to deal with a few _ssholes. I see how a foreigner would feel like he is hitting a wall when he is dealing with the bureaucracy in many Indian organisations (blanket statement), but at the same time, you have to understand that the only way you can get anything done in this scene is to have a little patience and have a cool head about the way stuff happens here.

I am not saying that being patient is a the right way to fix the bureaucracy, but being patient looks to me like the right way to navigate your way around.

BTW I am not judging the way the OP responded to his particular scenario.

jey2• 14 years ago

> I am not saying that being patient is a the right way to fix the bureaucracy, but being patient looks to me like the right way to navigate your way around.

Or just avoid situations involving bureaucracies instead of bending over for them.

etfb2• 14 years ago

I suspect that if thirteen months isn't sufficiently patient, then there is no such thing as sufficiently patient.

kghose• 14 years ago

FWIW a PAN card is a photo id document that has a tax payer identification number. You can use it to open bank accounts too.

Cash deposits into a bank above a certain amount need a PAN number.

It is widely used as an id document in India (where a passport or voter id document was once used).

I didn't know people without Indian citizenship could get PAN cards.

PS. One way of handling Indian bureaucracy is by hiring a middleman (say a tax consultant) who handles the necessary formalities, including bribes and leg work.

India is what India is.

intended• 14 years ago

> India is what India is. I know what you mean, but in this case, think of it from the foreigners perspective. I don't think anyone in their right mind is really prepared for the kind of insanity you begin to accept as natural after being in India.

India is what India is: which can be traumatically scarring, especially when dealing with the bureaucrats - as the blog points out.

Also - the idea of hiring a middle man, to just fill paper and interface with the system, is probably unthinkable to anyone who deals with a working system.

------------------------------------------------

If anyone thinks that this is an opportunity, have at it. I hope you succeed.

More importantly I hope that you survive and are better for it.

YetAnotherAlias• 14 years ago

>India is what India is.

Reminds me of Dev Dutt's TED Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/devdutt_pattanaik.html

lisperforlife• 14 years ago

But we need to simplify things. As an Indian business serving Indian customers I can tell you that the whole thing is pretty fucked up. I cannot put it more politely than this. Most of the enterprise clients of mine have 30 to 60 day payment cycles which involve a lot of paper, rubber stamps and signatures. That is just retarded. To add insult to injury the government expects you to pay service tax (due on the date of invoice) for the money that you have not collected yet. I regret setting up a business in India. There are too many unsavoury things to deal with.

mattmanser• 14 years ago

30 to 60 day payment cycles are in every country, nothing special about India. One main contractor I worked for in the UK (manages the building of buildings) used to have a dashboard showing how late payments to them were in 30, 60, 90, 90+ slots.

There are plenty of guides and advice on what you should be doing to avoid this as an SME or sole contractor.

nsns• 14 years ago

From my own experience, private Indian businesses tend to pay promptly and are very reliable, yet become hopelessly entangled in endless bureaucracy once payments become international (this is probably the Government's fault, not their own).

My solution (which isn't too practical, perhaps not even legal, yet works)- travel to India once a year and collect your fee in cash, you'll also enjoy a great trip (Bangalore Butter Dosas and mysore pauks with south Indian filter coffee, culinary heaven) ;)

csomar4• 14 years ago

Sorry, if you know that you can't pay (because of gov. restrictions) or you'll have problems doing it; why engage with an international entity?

__alexs• 14 years ago

Because you like international travel, don't mind fighting through the insane Indian Visa process and love a good curry?

bane• 14 years ago

I think he's saying that the trips abroad more than make up for the trouble in doing the business.

monsterix• 14 years ago

.."private Indian businesses tend to pay promptly and are very reliable" - no sir, they're not.

And this Government bashing, is only partially correct. It is not that hard to exchange money across borders like it has been described in SISO case. Seems more like an issue of the company, and its people at hand.

The cost of traveling and meeting people to collect money in cash is exactly what you wouldn't want to do when working on the SME tier. That doesn't scale, rather burns.

kremdela• 14 years ago

Sounds like ppk just needed to vent, I've done this before on the internet and regretted it. Totally agree that more transparency in the client-vendor relationship would always be helpful, but airing grievances should be saved for Festivus.

hans0l074• 14 years ago

Indian programmer here. Typical Indian assholes! Thanks for the tip.

asto• 14 years ago

https://www.google.co.in/webhp?q=ganesh+patel+siso

Pro-tip: Don't toy with people. Most times you will get away with it but sometimes you will get fucked.

csomar4• 14 years ago

I fully understand this guy, and if you haven't been to a third world country, you won't. Just an example that pop my mind: The people injured (because of security forces violence) during the Tunisian revolution are still not treated and compensated. The fucking reason? "I'm still making a list of these people, ehh, it should be ready hopefully by the next month... ehh, hey look there are around 900 of them. I'm doing a really great job. Once the list is ready, we'll see what to do". It's more than a year and just a fucking list of people names who have been injured is not ready.

NEVER, EVER do a business in a third-world country where the law isn't imposed properly. NEVER, EVER do business with a third-world company before taking up-front payment. Know this: It's impossible for them to transfer money. There are few cases when they can, and it'll take it to their central bank authorization before the money makes your hands.

PakG13• 14 years ago

I have a friend who has a Tunisian contractor. The guy went AWOL for a while and fell into major depression. He's back on track, but for a while, he was in dire financial straits, but couldn't figure out how to motivate himself out of his depression. He got injured in that revolution too. I had a long conversation with this guy. He was offered the money, but rejected it on the grounds that he couldn't accept money for service for his country. So he signed some papers saying that he refused the money, waiving his right to get it later. Later, he needed that money and couldn't even pay ISP or phone bills, which is why it was so hard for him to get in touch.

Basically, I think his story indicates to me that there were people who were given money? Or maybe they were promised, but never received it, don't know.

csomar4• 14 years ago

I didn't say the gov. didn't want to pay. They actually did massive, direct and no conditional pays in many times in the last year. The issue is with 9 person team that are complaining to work until 10 P.M. to get the list done. It's not about the will to pay or something, it's because "screw you", you know what "fuck you", who does even care?

Point is: Be careful making a business in 3rd world country.

Edit: Do you have his phone number or somehow to contact him? Maybe I could help him or something.

nir• 14 years ago

It seems like the issue here is a messed up HR dept, which is a worldwide phenomenon (and not limited to large corporations either. I had a similar experience with a small, supposedly do-gooder DC non-profit)

BTW, the author's story would actually be much more powerful if he used a more neutral tone and avoided references to "bunch of fucking assholes".

pippy• 14 years ago

I'd rank working remotely for a third world country underneath moving cities to find work. (aka, the last last resort)

Most non-western countries have a habit of under-quoting software development, blowing out schedules and producing poor quality code. It's simply a culture gap because of pressures to preform. Countries where there's no social welfare, government labour oversight or business ethics tend to resort to these tactics just to stay alive. I can't blame them as I'd do the same thing in their shoes. Private contracts are no different to business contracts, so everyone's in the same boat.

j452• 14 years ago

Sounds like you had the experience and nightmares an average Indian has in India dealing with bureaucracy, from what I've heard.

javajosh• 14 years ago

Any western programmer should be grateful: if not for this sort of thing, the world's applications would be written in Bangalore just as the world's electronic goods are produced in Shenzen. Politicians take note: fuzzy things like "fairness" really does have an influence on a nation's fortunes.

suprgeek• 14 years ago

I think this post conveys a little bit of the frustration that normal (sane) Indians feel everytime they to deal with public or private bureaucracy. After 4-5 such mind numbingly stupid episodes, your spirit is crushed and unless you are made up of a special kind of Iron in your soul, you begin to despair for India.

Unfortunately for the author, he (assumption) got caught in the double f*kup - an incompetent HR dealing with an bureaucratic Govt. ruleset regarding foreign currency, tax and payments.

This is NOT the exception. He did NOT get unlucky. This is the norm for Indian systems. If they work seamlessly first time around, it is a miracle. Let this be a warning to those with Great dreams of coming to India and making it big. The level of dysfunction, inefficiency, bureaucracy and corruption in India is just staggering.

senthilnayagam• 14 years ago

most large companies IT companies operating out of India, are tough to work with especially in contracting and sub-contracting relationships. They treat vendors and consultants badly as they know they would easily can get a replacement. Too much bureaucracy and lethargy for releasing payments.

ghoul23• 14 years ago

As an Indian, who lived in the US for a while and now back in India, this isn't surprising at all. For a foreigner who deals with working systems mostly, I can see how this is hair-tearingly painful, and it was for me when I returned for the first six months or so, but then, one makes peace with it - what choice does one have? :-|

While we are ranting, here's one of mine - it does not involve international payments or any such "usual suspects" of bureaucratic morass.

Warning: very long rant TL;DR - my chances at working for (what was then) my dream employer foiled by incompetent HR exec and the companies unwillingness to be accessible on phone.

A few years back (I was already back in India), a friend of mine, working for Google Mountain View, submitted my resume to their internal HR system as a hiring lead. Initially Mountain View handled the process directly from the US, and I had 5 rounds of telephonic interviews. The interviews were intense, and amazingly fun. Each lasted between 1.5 to 2 hours - during one, my interviewer challenged me repeatedly into rearchitechtecting the entire Youtube stack. Another interviewer told me at the end, "I hope I get to have you as a collegue soon". A third one, when I thanked him at the end for taking the time out to thank me, told me - "No, the pleasure was entirely mine. Its rare for me to have enjoyed an interview so much". Needless to say, I thought I'd done really well.

After this, I guess my file was transferred to Google India (Bangalore). Instantly the entire "feel" of the process changed. While earlier all phone calls, emails etc were polite, well written, clear and quick, now things flipped. This google HR exec - responsible for my file, initiates her first contact with me not with a phone call, or email, but as a "xyz@google.com wants to be able to chat with you" request on gtalk. No introduction, no idea who she is. I generally refuse requests that I am not expecting, but here I guessed that the person was a google employee and thus this could possibly be related to the interviewing process and accepted the request. I also sent her an email asking her about this and to let her know that the place where I was working at that time blocked gtalk (for good reason) but I had a personal blackberry so it would be better to communicate over a phone call or email rather than over gtalk IM. This mail went unanswered.

A few days later, I return from work to see a message from the HR exec saying "are you there?" on my gtalk window from earlier in the day. I see she is no longer online. I again drop her an email restating preference for email/phone. No answer yet again. She has never given me a phone number I can call so there is nothing else I can do. Google-ing also does not give me a phone number I can call either.

About 10 days go by, suddenly I receive an email from her, this time simply stating, with no preamble:

"I am arranging for you to travel to Google Bangalore for face to face interview on $date. I am booking flights for you to travel...."

This is accompanied by departure times of flights from my place of residence to Bangalore and back on the same day. The trouble is, the flight time each was is 2 hours, and she is arranging a flight that departs at 4:30AM, reaching 6:30AM to Bangalore, me arriving at Goog Bangalore office @ 9AM (yes, Bangalore traffic is THAT bad) and then return flight at 8pm. TO catch the 4:30AM departure, means I'd need to be at the airport latest by 3:00-3:15AM, which means I'd need to leave home by 2AM. That implied not sleeping at all the entire night. Having done interviews before while not having slept the previous night, I did not want to do this and told her that I'd rather fly in the previous evening, spend the night at a hotel in Bangalore, and then attend the interviews the next day. I even find an itinerary from the same online travel site she had used that would suit me perfectly, and was quite a bit cheaper, easily covering the cost of an overnight stay in a cheap hotel. No replies for a whole week. She does leave me messages "r u thr?" on gtalk a couple times which of course I am unable to respond to.

Then she gets back saying to me saying they didn't provide hotel stays at all (I know for a fact this wasn't true then, and it isn't true now). I immidiately reply again insisting that I'd not do interviews without having slept the previous night. I expressed surprise that google did not arrange for a stay in such circumstances, but then proposed to arrange for my overnight stay at my own cost if she'd just take care of the flight bookings as per my previous recommendations. Yet again I fail to hear from her for a week, except for one "r u there?" message during the week on gtalk. Each such message I respond with "I can't access gtalk during the day, could you please call or email instead" - these continue to be ignored.

Then she sends in an email, no content, just a flight itinerary and a hotel stay voucher attached as pdfs in the email. She has, in her infinite wisdom, booked me on that same 4:30AM flight that I did not want to take, but the gem is this: instead of having me fly back the same day, after the interviews on the 8:00pm flight, she had booked me on a 10AM flight the next day, and she has booked me a hotel room for me to spend the night in, AFTER having done the interviews. Both of these are already paid for.

At this stage I am having serious second thoughts about working for Google India, and am tired of the whole thing. I just decide to go with it. So I tell her simply that her itinerary was alright with me - certainly a mistake now that I look back upon the whole thing, but at that time she had had me totally worn down with her failure to communicate. So she replies, tells me she will have a taxicab waiting to pick me up from the airport on my arrival and to bring me to google. she finally gives me "her" cell number. I reply back asking for the address I am supposed to arrive at and the contact number of the cab company cause pickups at the bangalore airport were really chaotic. She doesn't reply. I try calling her, she doesn't pick. I text her, she doesn't respond.

D-day arrives. I try to sleep on the plane as much as I can. I arrive at the airport, find the cabby and we swing out of the airport. The cabby asks me - "so where am I supposed to take you?". I told him I was interviewing and lacking any other information, to take me to the google "office". He says there were six "google offices" in Bangalore. I try calling the HR exec, phone goes unpicked. After about a dozen tries, I simply tell the driver to take me to the "biggest" one guessing that largest office would probably be the engineering location, while others being possibly sales or corporate. He takes me to this large building which possible holds 800-1000 employees, entirely occupied by google. I goto the reception, and tell them I was there to interview, tell them the name of the HR exec who I was in touch with. At her name, the two people at the reception share a "look". It takes them about 45 minutes to find out that I am supposed to be at another location, they again call me a taxi, and off I goto another location. Repeat. Now I am at the third location, its past noon. I finally get to meet this HR exec and I am so mentally tired and angry that I just barely manage to maintain my civility. She takes me to a meeting room and the wait for the first interviewer begins. He comes in, 45 minutes later, looks rushed, tells me he had been given the wrong floor and meeting room number and that "there was a whole mess". We start the interview, by the end of which even he notices that my eyes are swollen and red - he asks me and I give him a brief recap. He doesn't say anything in response. I can tell I haven't done well at the interview, and at that stage I am beyond caring. In any case, I can't imagine working for a company (and here I mean Google Bangalore, not Google as a whole) that has its head stuck so far up its a. The interviewer leaves, I have another interviewer come in, I do a bit better here, but I am basically only half awake by now. There is no talk of lunch.

to be continued...

ghoul23• 14 years ago

continued:

After this, the HR exec comes in, hands me a google t-shirt, tells me there is a taxi waiting to take me to my hotel. I go out, find the taxi, ask him if he could take me to the airport instead, he says he can't as he is only allowed to take me to the hotel. I tell him to not bother, flag down an auto, rush to the airport, negotiate with the airline to let me fly the 8:00pm instead of the 10:00AM the next day, pay the are difference, and just return home.

I am thinking finally that the ordeal is over, but theres a twist. I summarize the whole thing for my friend @ Google MV, who says he will try and find out what happened, but turns out theres not much in file in their referral system.

Two weeks after this, the same HR lady send me a mail, yet again no preamble, nothing. "We want you to come in for a second day, I am booking tickets" and then the exact same content from her first email - same day return, 4:30AM flights etc, follow. I reply to her, telling her that I'd prefer to make my own bookings and inquiring if google would reimburse me for them (and any policy about such reimbursements, limits, etc). She doesn't reply. Ten days later, when she has still not responded, I request my friend @ Mountain VIew to see if he can find me another contact (and berating myself that I did not do this a lot earlier). He says he doesn't have another contact for me, but that he has conveyed my concerns to "some people". A day after his email telling me this, I get an email from the same HR person - this time responding to my last email about booking my own flight tickets, tersely telling me - "that email was for someone else. sorry. thanks for applying to google".

/end_rant.

What I have come to accept is, dealing with engineers is fine (as long as language doesn't become an issue), but others, in government, or even in most private organizations in India, are just not up to doing their jobs 99% of the time. Its not merely an issue of corruption, its just the culture does not provide for shaming people who are bad at their jobs, firing incompetents is considered evil, and its not even a solution as incompetence is everywhere. One recent report suggested that a full 80% of Indian graduates with a 4-year degree were so bad they were not employable at all in their chosen fields - not even with additional training.

j452• 14 years ago

"One recent report suggested that a full 80% of Indian graduates with a 4-year degree were so bad they were not employable at all in their chosen fields - not even with additional training."

That helps shed some light on why the developers from India who are good are so good, and the rest leave you wondering.

jaz• 14 years ago

Do you have a link to that report? I'd be interested in reading it.

kamaal2• 14 years ago

Well I interviewed at a well known Global firm. Although am an Indian and live in Bangalore, let me tell you what I faced.

The first day the HR lady gave me the address, actually there are two buildings separated by 15 minutes of walk, across the roads. She asked me to be there by 9:45 AM and so I did. The road was so dusty due to some construction work going, I don't if I had eaten some grams of dust while I was driving my bike. Nevertheless battling traffic for two hours I managed to reach their office. The moment I reached there I had no contact but her's and the security refused to let me in. She called me, after I trying to call her for 30 mins waiting in the sun and dust and now she tells me know that the office is a goddamn 15 mins walk across the road. I didn't want to fight the traffic again so I walked. But two hours of bike ride, the dust and the 15 mins of walk in summer had sapped the energy out of me.

I reached there and then a guy escorted me in. He was an engineer and he was good enough to ask me if I needed water and needed to use the restroom. I took the water. Then the first interview lasted for two hours straight, where he bought me in a laptop and asked me to code. And I wrote all the programs. Then for the next hour, there was no communication I didn't know if I had to stay or leave. I tried calling the HR lady and she didn't pick up the call. Then another engineer came in, so the interview went on for the whole day. And they were all fine people and the interviews went great. Looks like this was some special department with a different culture.

All engineers were pretty good and they even took me to the cafeteria and even paid for my lunch and snacks. After that there was dead air, no communication from them ever again. I tried emailing, calling her but no avail. Suddenly after two weeks she wrote me an email. Asking me to 'be there' at the office. Again no proper address. This time I went to the office where I was interviewed previously, only to be told that this time(again after trying to reach her for 30 minutes) it was other office. Again I walked to the other office for 15 minutes in the scorching sun taking in all the dust.

This time its probably the worst kind of people I ever faced. It rounds and rounds of interviews with people who had completely decided to humiliate me and send me out no matter what. This time no idea where I had to take lunch, no idea about restrooms, no water. The whole day was miserable. I had to run to the nearest hotel to relieve myself and eat something at the end of the day. Again after this no communication and she refused to pick up the call for three days.

Then again they asked me to come in for a third day. This time I was clever enough to take a bus, carry my own water and lunch. And careful enough to avoid myself to having need a restroom. This time it was more pathetic, none of the interviewers looked serious. One guy was continuously chatting with some one, another guy was answering emails on his Blackberry, another guy continuously reading something on his mobile and laughing. None of them were serious to listen to answers to their own questions they asked.

They asked me to come in for the fourth time 'I just plainly turned it down'. And didn't want to work with such people

But my other experiences have been good. I think some times its just purely Murphy's law and some people with horrible work culture.

mycodebreaks• 14 years ago

Bureaucracy is hurting India extremely bad. At most offices In India, government and private, you 'll see experience is given preference over performance.

outworlder• 14 years ago

That's even worse if "experience" happens to be measured in time.

jarsj• 14 years ago

Never work with anyone in India, especially the big names, without taking atleast a 50% advance, and holding the source (or some other leverage) before the other 50%. You will be surprised how fast things move when they want them to.

X4• 14 years ago

"Never ever do ______ with ______" Hope you see why this is utterly wrong.

Generalizations about country/etymology shouldn't qualify to be up-voted in HN, please.

I don't mind when people use bad words or flu as long as I can emphatically or technically understand why and the location allows it. In this sense I can feel and understand why Mr. Koch got upset.

I think he should've put the generalizations into Pandora's Box, because the internet is a public space that never forgets.

The victim's explanations are usually generalizations and overreactions, in rare cases I've seen people reacting accordingly. It's part of being gentle to react accordingly, we know it's hard to apply. You can be harsh when the situation requires it. That said, I'm sure there are better ways to "fight" for your right and the money. I agree that this looks like it's not worth the effort, but you will not know this for sure unless you try it. As long as all you loose is time, you can tell that you're enriched by another experience that will guide you in your next project into a better management.

(I'm not an Indian and my opinions aren't set in stone.)

One last word: Trust what your feeling tells you. If your customer replies after months you know you've a bad customer, even before the project starts.

masklinn2• 14 years ago

> Generalizations about country/etymology shouldn't qualify to be up-voted in HN, please.

What country? (and what does etymology have to do with the whole mess?) He said not to do business with a private company, ranted at lengths on the subject and clearly explained that the issue was solely HR/business and that his relations with the engineering side had been nothing but good?

What generalization are you talking about?

> The victim's explanations are usually generalizations and overreactions, in rare cases I've seen people reacting accordingly.

Considering PPK's history of not being a sanguine lad, the mere fact that they got him to react to such length, on a former business partner, is a huge red flag with warning sirens.

> You can be harsh when the situation requires it.

I'm guessing he thought the situation did require it.

> As long as all you loose is time, you can tell that you're enriched by another experience that will guide you in your next project into a better management.

You're joking right?

jobu• 14 years ago

Totally agree. This article is e-drama and definitely not what want to see on HackerNews. Unfortunately the title caught my eye, and I read most of it. (hard to not watch a trainwreck)

nkoren• 14 years ago

This rings true, but the OP's decision to burn his bridges is unfortunate. This is just how Indian bureaucracy is. It's a combination of 19th-century British Civil Service, crossed with 20th-century village socialism, implemented by 21st-century people who are just as confused as you are by the system they've inherited.

I've done and still do a lot of work in/for India -- mostly for the government and various quasi-governmental agencies. A couple of rules for having a successful outcome:

1.) Cash in advance: 10% to 25% the project fee, depending on my familiarity with the client. Expect to negotiate for 3-6 months before this is agreed to.

2.) Additional milestone-based payments, with a contract stipulating that no milestone will be delivered until the prior milestone payment has been received. Make sure that ALL project expenses are covered by these intermediate milestones.

3.) A final payment of 10%-25%, which is basically all margin. Expect to receive this 6-12 months late, and adjust your project costs accordingly.

This might sound unbelievably aggravating, but if you go in with these expectations then it's really not so bad. The bureaucracy just kind of washes over you eventually. (Oh, and tip #4: if you can at all afford to, pay somebody else to deal with the bureaucracy....). In truth, most Indians are tremendously honest people -- despite the impression that their bureaucracy gives -- and although I've endured screw-ups and delays that have been significantly worse that what the article describes, I've never not been paid. And in the end, India is a fantastic country with fantastic opportunities (and fantastic people and fantastic food), and it would be a shame to miss out on all that.

So I hope that this article (and others like it) doesn't scare anybody off India. Just calibrate your negotiations accordingly, and enjoy it!

masklinn2• 14 years ago

> Just calibrate your negotiations accordingly, and enjoy it!

Or just go do business with people living in countries where the insanity is more toned down, and enjoy it more.

jaseemabid2• 14 years ago

I am an Indian dreaming of silicon valley day and night. All shit happens here and this place is never going to improve.

Never ever do business with Samsung India Software Operations

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