Having lots of friends who worked in big outsourcing firms in India, and worked myself at a offshore research center for a US company I definitely viewed progra

Having lots of friends who worked in big outsourcing firms in India, and worked myself at a offshore research center for a US company I definitely viewed programmers in the west as better programmers than we were. However, being the US for a couple of years now, I've realized it has a lot more to do with the majority composition of developers in India. (Of course all of the points below are just what I've seen or felt, and do not apply to everybody.) New developers working in big outsourcing firms in India: - Many college graduates who end up in these jobs, are only there because that is the best paying option they found. It is not something they want to do for a long period of time. It's not hard to see that there are not tons of people who are self-motivated to work on piece meal code that belongs to someone else. - Like in the US, most good developers want some control over the architecture of the code they work on, or want to work on something that they are excited about. This is usually not afforded by the environments in the outsourcing firms. It results in working just for completing the work, and not being very involved in the products. - Personally I don't think developers in the east are happier just following instructions and not imaginative. Working on different projects every few weeks, without much control over the projects assigned leads many times leads to such behavior. Again, many developers are just looking to do an MBA, move into a project management position, move to the US, or just do something else. - My friends always talked about those strange people who were content by starting jobs at outsourcing firms. Some of these people really liked development, and were able to handle the lack of control and investment in the result of their work. Others, were more focussed on the money, or external concerns such as loans, marriage etc. These are the people who sometimes are seen as the yes men - working hard, but not smart. However, it's just that their smarts are targeted elsewhere. - Developers working in outsourcing firms are the ones who come in contact with programmers in the US. The majority of that group, in my opinion, is not really looking to work long time in their position, not interested in development or move away into other areas if they are (or get) better. Only a small portion likes their work, and as mentioned - paid appropriately. - Thankfully, there is an ecosystem for good developers who want to start their own companies. Also larger companies such as Adobe, Faceboook, Google etc have more equal sharing of responsibility between their US and India centers. In the bay area most people who work in development roles, really like and want to be doing software development. On the whole, they have more say in the product, architecture and process of development, than developers working in outsourcing firms in India. Also, developers working in companies that value software engineering usually interact with a similar pool of people (which explains the surprise that most 'developers' can't solve FizzBuzz kind questions).