As with the impending doom of Apple, Microsoft, your hair and libido, consider this with some skepticism/denial/salt:

Sramana Mitra comments in an article on Forbes.com:

…Yet, India, for all its glory, is still the world’s back office. India’s tech industry is a “services” industry. The Indians don’t do the thinking. The customers do. India executes.

Lets all get together and have a panel discussion on the ejaculation-inducing Indian tech industry. We’ll invite that large grey guy with the long nose and teeth that look like tusks. He’s a downer, but we’re too busy giving everybody handjobs to care.

She goes on:

Most of the 4 million people that the industry employs have now “arrived.” They have breezed through the milestones that their fathers had to toil all their lives to reach. A phone. A watch. A TV. A car. A house.

They are complacent. They will not take risks. They have “outsourced” thinking to their customers.

The thinking may have been outsourced, but the soaring self-esteem is all home-grown. Hopefully, the swagger, sneer, stylus-operated phone and flat-front pants will compensate for a lack of ability for anything other than the job of a glorified foreman.

There’s more. The author quotes some Forbes stats on the growth in salaries in India. This will be the fifth consecutive year with hikes being above the 10% range. Yay for finally affording that loan for a 2BHK in Lokhandwala/Malad/Kandivli. However,

Assuming a 15% year-to-year salary hike rate, and a 2007 cost advantage of 1:3 in favor of India, if U.S. wages remain constant, India’s cost advantage disappears by 2015. Then what?

I never had a chance at being hired by TCS/Wipro/Infosys/Satyam. Thank fucking $DIVINITY.

Disclaimer: I have good friends in the IT/ITeS industry, and they’re all very intelligent people. Some of the very few, sadly.