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Comment by 0xcafecafe | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it is "way less". 80K USD converts to 5,979K INR which is about the ballpark estimate some of the senior engineers I know make in India (one of them is working for the Western European company btw).

One of the reasons to move to India would be the availability of talent even if it is at comparable cost. Companies like to scale and lack of talent is a risk they want to mitigate.

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In my experience working with outsourcing agencies - "talent available" in India is filling headcount numbers. Good developers ask for similar wages as EU based ones and are equally hard to find, probably even harder because the market is filled with scammers (eg. on several occasions I would interview a competent guy and then the work would clearly get delegated to someone inexperienced)

Sure, scammers are abound and the bad to good ratio is pretty high but due to the population size, the number of good developers is high as well.

My impression from talking with a few people from India working in UK and working with Indian outsourcing agencies/contractors is that India routinely gets cost cutting projects based on price/employee - this creates "coder farms" which breed code farm quality developers + the education system on the whole is inferior (from what I understand India took diploma mills to the next level). So the best talent emigrates because even with the remote option, the increase in life standard and opportunities from emigrating are worth it, and low skill/almost bot level development for rent culture reinforces itself.

> the bad to good ratio is pretty high but due to the population size

This is not how ratios work.

Can you elaborate why that statement is incorrect?

If B/G is high, G/B is low. But if P is a very high number G/B * P must be a decently high number as well.

When you pay per hour per head by designation, that is what businesses optimize for - inflation.

I have worked in one, 80% of the work is in making the managers both India & American look good to upper management.

India is also a huge market for uber.

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