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"bottom of the barrel X developers" means the cheapest/worst among X developers. You can say bottom of the barrel European developers, bottom of the barrel American developers, bottom of the barrel Indian developers etc. None of those statements says anything about how the quality of those developers relates to developers outside of that area, it just says you take the bottom for that particular group.

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"bottom of the barrel X developers" can also be really easily read as "developers who are X and therefore bottom of the barrel", and whenever I've heard similar phrases in real life, there's always at least some level of insult being cast on whatever X is.

If he just said "bottom of the barrel developers" people would have assumed he meant "bottom of the barrel developers in USA" and not "bottom of the barrel developers in the World". You can get developers much cheaper in India, which is why you have to add that part as otherwise people would protest the number as unrealistic because not even bottom of the barrel developers are paid that low in the area they were thinking of.

The more accurate description would be "bottom of the barrel developers in India", but people would complain about that as well, but maybe not as much.

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