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Comment by aceperry | Hacker News Reader

So, would you have to go to India to find good engineers? And if you do, what is the interview process like?

We have an office in India that is staffed by a number of exceptionally talented engineers.

Locally the talent pool is shallow, as most if not all the good engineers are well taken care of by their employers (as they should be).

If you're lucky you'll contact one at the right time who is looking for new opportunities.

If you're a Google, Amazon, or MSFT with deep pockets then you can pay to acquire talent. For others, it's not easy.

Just curious, is there a larger pool of good engineers in India than available locally? If there is, that sounds like an opportunity to fulfill the promise of the H1B program. From what I understand, the body shops that import most of the H1B workers don't source the high quality employees that employers are demanding here.

> From what I understand, the body shops that import most of the H1B workers don't source the high quality employees that employers are demanding here.

Have data to back up that statement?

Just my friends who are engineering managers. They manage teams here and overseas in China and India. Their views are, overall, the engineers from overseas are of lower quality than the engineers here. But they cost less especially overseas, they can hire 2-3 times as many engineers as over here.

> Their views are, overall, the engineers from overseas are of lower quality than the engineers here.

That is the perception.

The reality is that there are a number of top engineers from overseas, and they are compensated very well. What India and China are able to do is produce a lot more average quality engineers. Indian and Chinese average engineers are on par with average engineers in the US.

There just happens to be a lot more average quality engineers from overseas then there are in the US. US companies have figured out ways to work with overseas shops that employ average engineers because the cost basis is worth it (1/6 the cost).

With programs like Code Fellows and other coding bootcamps, you're going to see an increase of mediocre American engineers, but at a much higher cost.

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