[falafel]

> places outside of North America and West Europe have lagged in attitudes to software development.

This is right. From my experience working with an offshore team in India, the main problem is cultural. A large majority of the developers in India I've worked with have no interest in furthering their development carrier, but see it simply as a way to transition into management as fast as possible. In practice, this means that you can go from a junior developer to a project manager in the span of 2 years or so. 2 years is not enough time to solidify your knowledge and become the t-shaped programmer that this industry requires. I think one needs at least 5 years of work and experimentation in this field to reach the level where you can contribute positively to a company, without creating huge amounts of technical debt.