American universities produce the best software engineers, IT managers and programmers  in the world, but many can’t find a job or have taken pay cuts in recent years.

India’s Navin Kabra, 20+ years of being a software engineer at various levels, explains why in a comment on Quora:

Because there are too many software engineers in India, and not enough in the US.

Because India is churning out 1 million new engineers every year, whereas the industry requires only about 200,000 of them.

Because the “average” fresh software engineering graduate in India can barely program, and 40% of them fail the Fizz Buzz test (as per actual data we’ve collected over the last 2 years), whereas the average software engineering graduate in the US is likely to be much better (as per my anecdotal data).

Kahra was answering this question:

Why is the median salary of a software engineer in India around Rs 3.6 Lakh, whereas in US it is $71k(ie Rs 44Lakh), which is nearly 12.4 times that of India, but the cost of living or equivalent salary of US is considered to be only 4 to 5 times that of Indian salary?

Which brings me to the one bright hope in recent years that the abominable H-1B Continue reading →