On Thursday 20 April 2006 13:21, Philip Tellis wrote: *snip*
So, to answer the question - people can't accept the fact that an Indian company is truly world class, because it isn't. It's not like there are no bad/lazy engineers in other countries (I've encountered a few terrible American engineers), it's just that in India, it's far more likely to encounter a bad engineer than it is to encounter a good one.
[rant] I guess your observation is 100% correct. But 150 years under the British whip does that to you. I am glad that I am not one of them. I am one of the new breed Indians that think for themself, take initiative and have enthusiasm.
BUT I've found this country and its people are more bent on following the beaten track than think out of the box. You know what that does? It kills whatever enthusiasm, initiative that we have. Most of us succumb to doing what we are being told - no more and no less. It's a vicious cycle that nobody is ready to break.
Nobody comes forward and says "To hell with the reservations, to hell with everything we will take in only talent". My friend and I were denied admission to a programming contest, hosted by a very well known institution, since we were too *young* ( a couple 7th graders couldn't compete. The min requirement was 9th grade ). I am not saying that we would've won but at that age we were doing some pretty amazing stuff like writing GUIs ( using VESA ) in Qbasic and starting out with C. While the typical 9th grader was still trying to understand what a FOR...NEXT loop does. What kind of sick country kills its talent?
And we aren't getting wiser by the day. Introducing quotas in our premier institutions which shelter the little talent that we have is going to see to it that we are going to completely fail as a society in the not-so-far future.
I had the rare opportunity to meet Dr.Nagarjuna and spend a few hours understanding the Gnowsys project. During one of his wonderful explanations he told me about the kind of testing that will help judging the real merit of a person. Yet nobody adopts this kind of testing ( forget about our schools. what about IT companies? )
Its simple to criticize than to change the situation. I dont know you personally but I surely hope that you do something to change the situation. There are bad engineers in India only because nobody is ready to take the lead in creating an atmosphere that will harbor talent rather than kill it. May be I am ignorant or naive. If someone knows of such an institution please let me know. [/rant]
Getting back to the topic, many people seem to have misunderstood my point. Lenovo is now under a Chinese management. The general outlook towards the Chinese is that they produce cheap ( as in Cost as well as Quality ) goods. Will the Chinese be able to maintain the brand image that IBM Thinkpads had? Ever since they have taken over, more and more people have migrated to other machines and the existing ones dont have much faith in them. People were aware of the fact that their machines were manufactured in China while the company was owned by Americans. Now that the ownership + manufacturing is in China, will people trust the Lenovo brand as much as they trusted IBM?
Most have answered my question. The brand loyalty as fallen.