Indian tech CEO: Americans are lazy and stupid

Did he also cover how we all eat cheeseburgers and scratch our asses all the time?

When questioned about his firm’s US hiring, Information Week reports that Vineet Nayar, the CEO of the Indian outsourcing giant HCL Technologies, showed he can stereotype with the best of them, telling an audience in NYC that most American tech grads are ‘unemployable’. Explaining that Americans are far less willing than students from developing economies like India, China, and Brazil to master the ‘boring’ details of tech process and methodology, the HCL chief added that most Americans are just too expensive to train. HCL, which was reportedly awarded a secretive $170 million outsourcing contract by Microsoft last April, gets a personal thumbs-up from Steve Ballmer for ‘walking the extra mile.’ Ballmer was busy last week pitching more H-1B visas as the cure for America’s job ills at The National Summit.

Iran punditry gone wild (and stale)

Democracy in America:

IT WAS embarrassing to watch yesterday morning as the networks trotted out the same old politicians and pundits to dissect America’s reaction to the events in Iran. The same people who were so wrong about Iraq and whose opinions seem to reliably fall within one or the other party’s talking points.

I propose a new rule: No American shall be allowed to comment, write a column, or blog on the situation in Iran without actually referring to the situation inside Iran and, specifically, the Iranian people, whose opinions on most matters are rather accessible. An addendum to this rule: No column shall begin with the words, “What the Iranian people need right now…”

Amen.

Kia and Hyundai boost market share

BW swallows Hyundai/Kia PR:

As Detroit’s woes grow, small carmakers Hyundai and Kia are picking up market share and together now hold 7.3% of the American market, up from 5% last year. Both the overall smaller size of the market and a new customer emphasis on quality over brand, appear to be boosting their prospects.

Isn’t it also a choice of cheap over brand or quality?

Cloud computing tipping point?

Looks like legacy software firms are being dragged into the  SaaS world:

As businesses look to cut costs many are turning to Web-based software, which saves companies from having to buy or maintain expensive back-office computers.

Instead, the software is run on servers owned by software makers and can be accessed over the Internet, making the total cost of the systems a quarter the cost of traditional software in some cases, analysts say.

Overall, online software is estimated to account for just $9.5 billion of the $284 billion businesses will spend on software this year, according to research company IDC. But online-software sales are rising more than 40% a year compared with 3.4% for software overall.

Is the current recession the start of something new? The only problem with SaaS, of course, is that its just as easy for some firm in India to serve a customer as it is for someone in Silicon Valley – and for less. There’s disintermediation and then there’s disruption happening at the same time. Yeah you still need an OS and a database but for how much?