For one, there's greater value placed on these competitions outside the United States. Inside the US, a talented programmer will default to working on open sour

For one, there's greater value placed on these competitions outside the United States. Inside the US, a talented programmer will default to working on open source in order to get noticed or create a portfolio worth talking about. Outside the US, many young programmers believe that companies actually care about these kinds of programming competitions. This is my own experience, I haven't seen a study on this but have observed it to be true personally. Anecdotal evidence: http://www.quora.com/Recruiting/For-a-software-engineer-who-doesnt-find-competitive-programming-interesting-but-would-like-to-join-one-of-the-big-tech-companies-Google-Facebook-Microsoft-etc-what-are-the-options/answer/Robert-Love-1 http://www.quora.com/Recruiting/For-a-software-engineer-who-...