Around 1998 I had to recruit programmers from Russia as I could not find enough talented programmers in North America. It seems as though India is beginning to face a similar problem.
A recent study by McKinsey posits a shortage of 500,000 programmers in India by 2010. A better gauge of the problem is the salaries now being paid. The salary of a project manager has gone from around $12,000 in 2000 to a little over $30,000 in 2004; an entry-level prgrammer who earned $4,000 in 2000 was paid over $6000 in 2004. One Indian company is offering $100,000 salaries to those who have left India for foreign shores. India is losing jobs to Poland and the Philippines.
The problem is not a lack of technology graduates; there are 17,000 colleges and universities in India. The problem is the quality of those 17,000 colleges and universities; it's just not good enough. Some colleges can't afford library books, others don't have enough classrooms. Still others are focused on making money rather than educating their students. The head of Tata, India's largest software company, says, "Unless we drastically look at paradigm shifts in education, we won't get the numbers of workers we need for the future."
India has taken many programming jobs away from the U.S. because of its low salaries and, up to now, good quality. It looks like these advantages may not be as compelling as they once were.
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