Hand-me-down: Microsoft, Google what next?

While the world around me (in India ;-) seemed to be happy when Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft. I wasn't as much. I noticed a trend not so very different from the late 1990's. I was saying to couple of friends that this will become common soon. More Indian CEO's. Voila! history repeats!

Cost Effectiveness could be a primary factor when outsourcing started in the late 1990's with Y2K; But first set of the projects that came to India were maintenance projects. So age old code written for a Bank or Airline that hand to be monitored; not creative but mundane work. While the guys on the other side got busy with creating more applications.

Next came outsourcing of coding. We (me being one of them) were overjoyed by the fact that we get to play with a computer and churn hundreds of line of code for dollars that made me money. The brightest of our minds were busy engaged in this activity. Many of us even traveled to do same 'onsite'. But some of the brighter guys on the other side soon realized that they had time at hand to get bored (read creative), do different things; discover interesting stuff, start of companies that will become Google's & Facebook's of the world. 

Soon not just coding but testing, devops, support, project management also got outsourced. 

Doesn't surprise me now that whole companies are handed over to us after someone had enough fun with it. The companies reached a maintenance stage. They just need to be looked after while I go out an conquer other frontiers.

I strongly believe that these guys Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai are much more capable than maintaining aging companies. My humble request, don't get busy with Hand me downs. Satya will never come to my mind as easy as Bill Gates when some says Microsoft.

My friend summarized it in a one liner: Larry say's "Sundar, work hard. Make me tons of money while I go play with some new toys." :)