I am a Software Engineer residing in India. I have never worked for Outsourcing shops, however most of my friends work there.
I have worked for Product based companies, and I can contrast the two.
Comment on Point 1: Quality: Software applications created by CS students generally are never meant to run for years and have new features added to them. So CS students never focus much on Scalable design, modularity and engineering discipline in general. The discipline in Design, Implementation, Source control and execution was taught to me when I was an intern. Every aspect was reviewed by peers until it met the standards. However, I observed that outsourced project based companies are more focused on delivery/schedule than on quality. I feel that the quality control must be done from outsourcer's end and that too when the code is being developed. This might help them avoid unpleasant surprises.
Point 2: Passion: There is a huge imbalance between number of graduates we produce and number of jobs available in India. This works in favor of students who take up CS studies not because they like it but because they thing they will be employable.
Point 3: People look down at design?? They equally consider System Administration, Document Writing, Escalation handling as inferior.
People are already toying with many ideas to solve this issue. One such idea, was to construct self-contained satellite townships. In Pune, India, a township called "Magarpatta City", has been built. It houses, commerical spaces, Residentials spaces, schools, shopping Complexes, hospitals(http://www.magarpattacity.com/_new/unique.asp , http://www.magarpattacity.com/_new/amenities.asp). All the needs are generally satisfied within the township. This concept really helps in containing the traffic within a township. I believe, in near future, these ideas will be replicated across urban India.
My friends used to come over my place. We used to sit together, discuss what/how to do it, have drinks and complete it. So we essentially converted "Boring task completion time" into "Socializing and fun time".
SUN has variety of technologies especially in Storage(via StorageTek acquisition). Oracle can integrate backup and recovery strategy with StorageTek tapes, ZFS, for example. Also, db failover, High Availability can be achieved leveraging Solaris platform..
Fate of entire civilization is dependent on monsoon rains. In my opinion, there is hardly any way to provision supplies in vast amount. Ground water tables, dams are all dependent on monsoon. Only way is to keep in check the transmission leakages.
In Pune/Hyderabad/Bangalore,
1.Rent (a descent house in good neighbourhood) : $2400/per year
2. If you cook your food and avoid restaurants, food expenses will be around $720/per person
3. Electricity bills: $240/per annum
4. Unlimited broadband(3G - usb): $240/per annum
5. Petrol (Gas)- Assuming you travel 13-km per day : $360/per annum
Total expenses: $3960/per annum
As the matter of fact, entry level salary for software engineer in an ordinary company is $5000 per annum.
Moreover, if you share your apartment, you can still reduce your expenses, and in fact save lot of money.
This is simply not true in Bangalore (I don't know about Hyderbad/ pune). (I've been living "decently" in Bangalore for the last 15 years). But hey if you can manage it, good for you.
"entry level salary for software engineer in an ordinary company is $5000 per annum."
people being hired out of college campuses (in other words n their first job) $10,000 - $12500 these days - and that too for the generic body shopping companies.
Government jobs (often with free housing and other perks) get you 5000 $/annum as a starting rate. Software jobs pay considerably more. If you are getting 5000$/ year for programming, you are significantly underpaid.
For anyone planning to come to Bangalore with 5k$, be warned, you will be scraping by. So, unless you plan to live very (VERY) cheap , iow "roughing it" , plan on about 10,000 $/ year for Bangalore. Bangalore is arguably the most expensive place to live in India (Some parts of Bombay are costlier).
I have had many expat friends stay in Bangalore for long periods. I just chatted with a couple of them as I was writing this post and they agree that 10k is enough for a decent (not great) year in Bangalore fr a year.
My advice, talk to someone who's relocated here from the USA and stayed a year or more and let them fill you in (vs getting dubious advice from a forum, even HN).
