I think this is the natural result of "programming" or "IT" being perceived as a comparatively lucrative career. I believe it happened in North America, too, j

I think this is the natural result of "programming" or "IT" being perceived as a comparatively lucrative career. I believe it happened in North America, too, just not quite to the same degree. I first had access to a computer (an Osborne 1) in 1983, at the age of 8. I think it was inevitable from that point that I'd become an electrical engineer or computer scientist. As luck would have it, it turned out to be a reasonably lucrative career choice, but monetary considerations literally never figured into my choice of university program. I had no idea how much an engineer made. I think that most of my contemporaries were similarly-minded. Entering University in 1993, I had never had an email address, and it wasn't until second year that I first saw NCSA Mosaic and this thing walled the World Wide Web. While I was in university, a revolution quietly, but incredibly rapidly, took place. By the time I graduated in 1998, I was using the web to book travel, buy stuff in online auctions, and my mum was handy at email and finding things on the web. In my department, a huge shift took place in the incoming demographics - the new frosh were there because Computer Engineering was the hot program to be in. The Faculty halved the Electrical class and doubled the Comp class, and it was noticeable, even years later, when this younger blood graduated and was now in the industry, that many were of a very different mindset to my peers. Far fewer had followed a genuine passion and fascination with computers, and had pursued it for what seemed to be far more pragmatic and material reasons. As one acolyte put it, to my barely-contained amusement, "I'm in software engineering! Bling Bling!" I mean no disrespect to younger generations. I recognize that there are many fine folks here much younger than those I describe who are as passionate about computer science and engineering as I am, if not more. And there are some gray beards laughing at this young fool who thinks he was the last of a pure breed. But to me that brief period represented a very sudden and very sharp switch in the mentality of those entering the field. Now take that sudden demographic change, time-shift it a few years to where the global network infrastructure is in place to enable this work to be outsourced just about anywhere, and scale it appropriately considering that this lucrative new field could mean the difference between fabulous (comparative) wealth and a life of poverty. Add an economic crunch that pushed companies to reduce costs, and government initiatives to promote that industry. That's what India's IT industry has developed - a massive work force that has been suddenly conjured into being and drawing an even lower common denominator than I ever saw at school. [EDIT: disclaimer- I also mean no disrespect to many very fine Indian engineers and computer scientists; I mean only that the low-end of the spectrum has lowered dramatically]