I was not aware there were thousands of self-taught FPGA programmers in Asia. Even accounting for that: a) I'll wager most are using pirated software; b) that

I was not aware there were thousands of self-taught FPGA programmers in Asia. Even accounting for that: a) I'll wager most are using pirated software; b) that number pales in comparison to the billions of people and millions of self-taught programmers in Asia; c) they still have a snowball's chance in hell of working for or otherwise influencing Western hardware companies.