I've worked tech in Mumbai and Fairfax County (I was one of the fleet of Americans that descended on Mumbai about 10 years ago). I think the big difference is m

I've worked tech in Mumbai and Fairfax County (I was one of the fleet of Americans that descended on Mumbai about 10 years ago). I think the big difference is more about corporate/institutional culture than anything else. You have a roughly equivalent lifestyle in a lot of ways (small apartment you're paying way too much for, insane traffic, money for all the "stuff" you want but not really enough to build wealth), modulo some specific differences like hiring a full-time housekeeper or not. But there's a huge difference in the larger corporate cultures where a lot of Indian firms try to emulate the Infosys "we have a problem for every solution" way of doing things; there's less willingness to go out on a limb and break things. OTOH there is now a tiffin delivery service in Reston, and a Krispy Kreme in Mumbai, so something tells me there's a convergence happening.