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India To Overtake US On Number of Developers By 2017
dcblogs writes "There are about 18.2 million software developers worldwide, a number that is due to rise to 26.4 million by 2019, a 45% increase, says Evans Data Corp. in its latest Global Developer Population and Demographic Study. Today, the U.S. leads the world in software developers, with about 3.6 million. India has about 2.75 million. But by 2018, India will have 5.2 million developers, a nearly 90% increase, versus 4.5 million in the U.S., a 25% increase though that period, Evans Data projects. India's software development growth rate is attributed, in part, to its population size, 1.2 billion, and relative youth, with about half the population under 25 years of age. Rapid economic growth is fueling interest in development. India's services firms hire, in many cases, thousands of new employees each quarter. Consequently, IT and software work is seen as clear path to the middle class for many of the nation's young. For instance, in one quarter this year, Tata Consultancy Services added more than 17,000 employees, gross, bringing its total headcount to 263,600. In the same quarter of 2010, the company had about 150,000 workers."
Could part of this be the cost of college here in the States? Also, would be the question, that a decade ago, a position in software development was seen by HS age individuals as strong career move; is that still the case (I think not).
This exactly. What are all these developers doing? I don't see an explosion of Indian-made software that matches these numbers.
They don't know either, the survey was outsourced to India.
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When one country has a billion more people than another country, what do you expect? A better comparison would be the percentage of the population for each country who are considered developers.
What are all these developers doing?
In my experience, they're ensuring that U.S. developers have poorly-designed software to fix.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
That's because the software they help write has already been branded by a start up in LA or New York.
The stuff you do see them building is plugins and modules for various platforms where they can take the idea of another developer, add a new logo and what not, and repackage it for sale as their code.
I have worked with many different "One Step Checkout" for the Magento platform that were developed in India. They are all basically copies of each other, with only one version (developed I believe in Ukraine) standing out as being solidly developed and easy to work with.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Sorry, the educational system over there is little more than a diploma mill.
The quality of developers over there is somewhere between "bad" and "not qualified to sell slurpees".
Yes, as with any group, there's always the exceptions. A few, here and there, with a knack for doing good, solid work.
But that's just what they are. Exceptions.
Anyone can play baseball/football/soccer/hockey.
A much smaller contingent of the population do it well.
An even smaller contingent of that sub-population do it well enough to warrant getting paid to do it.
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That's exactly what the people of Detroit said about Japanese car manufacturers way back in the 1970s.
But, my current experience has been much the same as many here have stated.
Many Indian developers seem to me to lack some critical thinking skills when it comes to working on projects. Perhaps it's a cultural issue that needs to be worked out, but it's like they know how to code.. but there is no thinking going on besides blindly following a written requirement without asking questions or trying to get clarity on something that isn't clear. Instead they code code and code until they are 'done' only to have wasted time coding something that doesn't actually meet the requirement because they didn't ask questions.
But then again.. I am dealing with developers who aren't Indian.. and well they suck too.. but I can't tell if it's their incompetence, their project manager's or just their whole company.
Every time there is a bit of news about H1Bs or immigration on tech sites, most Americans display their usual xenophobia and blame immigrants for the lack of jobs in the US.
Dismissing legitimate economic concerns as "xenophobia" is either a false assumption on your part, or a common but cheap trick. Sorry, ain't buying it.
At the same time, every single of them fails to realize that there isn't even a need for foreigners to be in America to take away their jobs.
True only to a certain extent. Being on-site, meeting face-to-face, and understanding more about a customer and a culture so that you can be more than a code monkey, are still useful.
The quantity over quality argument is also moot, foreigners not only keep improving but their low cost allows them to make mistakes while still being more affordable than Americans.
Of course "their low cost allows them to make mistakes while still being more affordable than Americans". It's the very fact that they do make so many mistakes that's part of why they're so affordable! If what you meant was that some people will always buy cheap crap, then that's an obvious truism. Whether or not that's penny wise and pound foolish is another story.
As for "foreigners not only keep improving", or more accurately the quality of foreign sourced work keeps improving, I've found just the opposite to be true. I don't know why, or even why the foreign sourced work is often of such poor quality, and I have little interest in debating theories about why. What I do know is that it's true.
would rather to have that people live, contribute and keep most the industry in your country
No, not if it means sacrificing my job for that. Save the "it's good for the country as a whole" garbage for the congressional hearings. Bonus points for honesty if you say "for the good of the American economy we must screw American programmers, IT people and engineers". Really, go ahead and say it, because it won't matter. The hearings are a formality and congress will just vote however the people that bribe them want congress to vote.
This is much incorrect! Indian designers are most making with excellent design and superiorest documentation! Their English is excellent handsome!
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You don't see what's happening on the back-end and they don't want you do know. Most consulting companies are now a shim layer of local people who outsource the actual coding, that's at least how Accenture, Deloitte, PWC, Ernst & Young, KPMG, Capgemini, McKinsey etc. operate. Other big companies just go directly to Indian consulting companies like Tata or get their own local staff in India. Locally, they still have the same brands, the same "local" image but in reality they're getting Indians to take over piece by piece. In-house development is slowly being phased out, in reality what's left is a sales front like a sophisticated version of Walmart. I was at an interview for a position like that, I'd be the only local resource and leader keeping up appearances while eight people in India would be doing all the actual work. Didn't get the job and in retrospect glad I didn't.
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It's worse that just the offshoring aspect.
When my company decided to outsource, they fired pretty much all the local developers except for one 'business analyst' who knows the code and how it works. That wasn't me, but they also kept me on as a 'consultant' to the outsourcers so something still gets done and the whole project can be viewed as something other than a total failure. The Indian devs were not great, but I figured that at least they'd be captive. Prior to outsourcing the company had taken to hiring (cheap) young programmers, and (surprise!) had a retention problem. But Indian programmers are 'happy just to have a job', right? Wrong - if anything, they're more mobile than their American counterparts, because the big outsourcing firms want it that way. They're constantly moving people off of our project, and bringing in new people to learn it all on our dime.
So the one expected productivity benefit is not there - but it's even worse. Since these guys don't hang around, there is no next generation coming up with the in-depth knowledge of these products to become the 'business analysts' and senior devs to replace us. So when I and the other guy who are still sustaining the whole contraption retire (and we're both older than 55), the whole thing sinks. Prior to outsourcing, there were other dev's with seniority that could've stepped in to take our places.
In today's world of perverse incentives, though, this isn't a 'problem'. The company is owned by a private equity firm that expects to dump it long before that final crash. But if I were a private equity firm looking to buy a piece of crap like this, I'd certainly ask what plans exist to produce the next generation of senior techs to keep the place going. As it is, it's musical chairs, at some point a buyer will get stuck with no chairs left.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
It's not racism. It's resentment and entirely justified. From my experience, here's how it grows:
1) Bids and proposals are submitted to American client 2) Middle management of said American client decides to go with lowest bidder (typically from India) 3) Lowest bidder can't satisfy contract due to incompetence 4) 1 year later, project still can't satisfy requirements. 5) American client back peddles to find American developers to fix and complete project 6) American developers review the code... it's a steaming pile of shit. 7) If American developers have sense, they decline the project and quote the client for the whole project
Now, if you're working in-house, the same thing happens except that you can't politely decline the project and are forced to deliver on a steaming pile of shit and you have to have your name attached to garbage.
It's not racism. Developers are objective; if it were good, quality code there wouldn't be any pushback or resentment.
There has been a war on the white male since the signing of Hart Celler by LBJ in 1965.
As a white American man who has been around since the civil rights era, I must say I've never noticed that. If they're waging war against me, they're sure doing a lousy job.
The deeper question is "Why is it OK for the rest of the world to be xenophobic when the same is disallowed for the Anglosphere?"
There is no such deeper question because xenophobia, by or against whomever, has nothing to do with this subject. It's about economics. It's the H-1B proponents who frame it as a xenophobia issue, and thus try to distract from what's really at stake.
BTW, it's not clear how excessive guest workers in a particular field targets white males. It targets Americans in the 99%. Last time I checked though, not all Americans are white, and they're not all male. Get your categories straight.