Talent crunch debate is an elusive one. No credible data is available and we interpret to make ourselves feel good- sour grapes. One thing I would say (in my capacity as having gone to high school in India) is that there are thousands of great engineers (I'm talking about my friends from IIT and IIT) who would die to work for a Dropbox or an Airbnb. I'm guessing its a similar situation in S.America, Europe, China (?) etc.

Now, as far as I know, these companies don't hire in most of these countries. But why don't they? I don't understand. Visa stuff is less of a concern actually.. its been thrashed more than it deserves. Indian consulting companies got like 30K H1Bs last year. 30,000 engineers moved from India to the US. Surely, Dropbox can get 20 good ones. And your startup could probably get a handful too.

These engineers grew up on hacker news - so culture is not the problem. They are moving seven seas - so they work hard and aren't dicks. Their options in India are limited - so the salary negotiation is less of a nightmare.

Not sure if there are any republicans here, so I'll not defend the "Indian developer taking away American job" phenomenon. Hopefully, HNers get why immigration makes sense.

We are trying at VenturePact.com to build a vetted international talent marketplace. We launched a couple of weeks ago in Delhi and a few tech hubs in India and got hundreds of apps from developers wanting to work in the valley or NY. Well, many applications were not suitable BUT many were.

Would love to read what people think of hiring internationally. And what would the preference be between getting them to work remotely vs relocate.