pramodsub

You probably worked with one of the big outsourcing body shops. The average developer anywhere in the world has a poor CS education, and this is the reason why Mr. Papadimoulis' site exists. I know folks who work for the Googles, Microsofts, Yahoos and the like in India and I find it hard to believe that the guys who write the JScript.NET compiler, or Windows Live Messenger don't have a CS degree. Clearly, you need to get over your bias.

Your $40 number seems grounded in reality though. I've never worked in the outsourcing business, but Ravi claims about $40 is what you need to pay for a good coder. [http://ravimohan.blogspot.com/2007/05/faq-from-my-mail-box-1...].

True. There's a long way to go before India can be called developed. However, the good thing about the moon mission is that it is a testament to the quality of the engineering talent at ISRO. Given that ISRO is significantly behind other options as a career for Indian engineers, the fact these engineers themselves are so competent is good news for the engineering ecosystem in India.

>> Revenue per employee is largely an arbitrary number as well, hence I object to its being used as evidence for anything.

I disagree. It is a pretty good quantitative measure of how your business is setup. How much money a company has obviously affects its decisions in a big way, and it is only logical that how much money a company has to spend per empolyee affects the business decisions it makes. I am not taking a position for/against the rest of the article, but you argument that revenue per employee shouldn't be used as evidence for anything does not pass muster.