GUEST COMMENT: I’m astonished that banks still employ so many Indian technologists
Before you say I’m racist, let me make one thing clear: I am Indian by lineage, although British by birth. I also work in technology.
My point, quite simply, is this: why do banking organisations employ such significant numbers of Indian contractors in their technology roles? It may have made sense in the past, but as far as I can see there is now absolutely no shortage of qualified technologists in the UK .
Clearly the argument in the past has been that Indian technologists are far less costly than their UK counterparts, but with UK graduates struggling to find work that price differential is eroding.
Yet my experience suggests banks continue to import contractors from India, to the detriment of morale in the UK and to the detriment of internal and external customer experience. Many of the Indian contractors I’ve come across have shocking low levels of skill and competence that would be unacceptable were they not so cheaply priced. Some are unable to conduct business, except in their mother tongue.
At the same time, I know of many UK IT contractors who are struggling to stay afloat. All of them are very skilled and all are willing to be somewhat price-flexible in the current environment.
Yet they are being shut out of the market. Banks’ tendency to go for cheaply priced, low-skilled labour is killing the market. This is a shame. As a customer I also worry that my data is being handled by people with low levels of English – particularly after that the problems at RBS.
