Recent Q&A on IS Careers, Architecture and Software Engineering

A few recent questions I answered in a forum online

How does India compare with the United States of America as far as software industry is concerned?

Thanks for asking this interesting question. I have enjoyed an interesting career in the vibrant software and IS services industry in the past couple of decades, and got to live and work in a dozen countries across three continents.

“Software industry” is a broad term that includes the business of innovating and developing software solutions and the use of software to enable business services. A brief review of India vs US ‘software industry’ from a few angles

• Talent pool: With hundreds of thousands of Computer Science and Engineering graduates, India has a much larger talent pool compared to the US.
• Cost and wages: The cost of living in India is lower than in the US and correspondingly, cost of software services are lower.
• Corporate spending on IT: Data from analysts (like Gartner) indicate that companies spend anywhere between 3- 5 % of revenues on IT. Taking this reference, multi-billion dollar, Fortune 500 and other American companies which have larger revenues spend much more on IT than their Indian counterparts.
• Government services: Federal, state and local government agencies in the US spend a lot on software and software enabled services for their citizen. Government services in India including Central and state government services continue to mature as awareness grows

Note: this is an oversimplified response to a broad question

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

Why is technology so addictive? How do you get over an electronic gadget addiction?

What is Technology? Per Wikipedia

“Technology is the collection of techniques, skills, methods and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation. Technology can be the knowledge of techniques, processes, and the like, or it can be embedded in machines which can be operated without detailed knowledge of their workings.”

Therefore one can argue,

Most technologies are not addictive. Most technologies are benign tools, intended to aid humans

Technology is a broad area that includes Information Technology and IT enabled tools like smartphones, cellphones, laptops, tablets etc (I emphasize the tools since most of the ‘addiction’ conversation is around these tools)

When the iIpad came out videos like this cute kid playing with ipads and magazines went viral

One can extend ‘technology addiction’ to the addiction for Selfies, which is a real issue. Just yesterday, there was a news about an Indian Man Trampled To Death By Elephant In A Quest For Selfie

Of course, Addiction to certain tools is a serious issue “When Technology Addiction Takes Over Your Life” - Webmd