US techie slams Indian colleagues, alleges they avoid taking ownership: ‘Only say I agree or ok’

A US-based tech professional has raised concerns about the lack of proactive participation from their Indian colleagues following a company merger. Despite sharing the same engineering goals, the employee claimed that colleagues in India — including those in leadership roles — tend to stay silent during strategy discussions, limiting their involvement to task-based execution.

A US techie’s post about his Indian co-workers has gone viral. (Pixabay)

“Help with understanding Indian colleagues,” the techie wrote. “I am an American and work in tech in the US. Two years ago, our company of 600 acquired a company based out in India of 400. Since that time, I have struggled to understand why our India colleagues, including those who are one step above me are only delivering at an operational task-based capacity when their roles are clearly not,” the individual continued.

After writing a few more lines about the issue, the techie added, “Please help me understand the work culture in India to maybe shed light on how things are the way they are. Our department head is also getting frustrated.”

Take a look at the entire post:

How did social media react?

“I can only offer my personal experience working with teammates in India. Team effort is much more common than individualism. Every simple discussion always seems to involve 6 to 12 teammates joining in and listening in the background. If you’re lucky, the most senior individual will give you some feedback. Job hopping seems very common, so individuals don’t necessarily get very secure and forthcoming with their opinions. I find it much more effective to share tasks (not too long term) and skills/tools and periodically check-up. I find the skill level is pretty good in India, just not entrepreneurship or initiative,” an individual wrote.

Another added, “From working with teams from India, whether outsourced or internal within an international firm, this is what I can say. My team devised a way of splitting the work: my team did the heavy lifting in ideating, researching, testing, creating and building for the US, while our Indian team adapted the work for other countries, kept systems running, addressed issues when they arose, refreshed models, that sort of thing. For us, the data was business data with business meaning; for them, the data was systems data with little meaning as they were not close to the business stakeholders. This worked well, keeping both ends busy. Perhaps if you can define your individual lanes more precisely, then you and your Indian colleagues can better understand one another. Good luck to you.”

A third commented, “I can talk from my experience with my colleagues after joining teams after a company merger. There are mostly junior-level developers or, worse, with principal titles. Yes, there are a few average or above-average developers and one unicorn of a very good developer who deserves his title. I consider myself good (far from perfect), but the developers from the Indian part of the team… let’s say they are worse than our juniors and not improving despite years of experience.”