[RealGeek]

I am original from India (now in New York), and I have hired over 40 developers, designers and marketers in New Delhi over the past few years.

You can hire good developers in India for $1,000 to $2,000 per month. It is viable to hire team in India, but hiring and managing them remotely is a nightmare. Remote teams in India are unreliable and not committed.

In India, you need hustle with your team to get shit done. The only way it is going to work is if you have someone one the ground.

Hiring good developers in India is difficult, retaining them is worse. Good developers are constantly bombarded by recruiters with very lucrative offers.

My 2 cents, It can be worth while if you want to go to India and build a development team. Stay away from outsourcing companies, they are only going to sink your time and money.

[starter]

Thanks for the tip! Isn't $1-2k per month pretty high for direct pay? My estimate for starting salaries was substantially lower.

[RealGeek]

The complaints you hear about Indian developers are for the $500/month developers.

The developers you can hire in India for $1,000 to $2,000 are competent and comparable with $120k to $150k US developers. These developers work with the modern frameworks and write beautiful code.

Companies like Amazon, Google, Yahoo and successful Indian startups pay upwards of $2,000/mo to great developers.

We have a small team in India and we pay $500 to $1,000 for off-site SEOs and $1,500 to $2,500 to developers.

[smoyer]

My comment above goes into more detail but if you want the best Indian software engineers, you need to pay them more than another company would (just like in any other free market in the world). This is a constantly moving target.

[sergiotapia]

Wow - you want to pay less than that for a software engineer who speaks English?

[starter]

Yes, isn't that possible with direct hiring instead of paying more to go through outsourcing firms? My understanding is that roughly $500 monthly puts an Indian in the middle class. Double that and I figure we would be really attractive to young, entry level programmers.

[RealGeek]

Those outsourcing firms usually pay between $300 to $1,000 to developers. They usually hire bad programmers who do not understand fundamentals and write spaghetti code from an ancient era.

This salary isn't attractive to good programmers any more.

[lgieron]

You're not in middle class if you need your month's wage to buy a smartphone.

[starter]

Maybe not in America but India's different and remember, smart phones made in third world countries have different markups since manufacturing is cheap and nearby.

[RealGeek]

Smartphones and other electronics are more expensive in India, almost twice of US prices.

[abhshkbtra]

You'd be wrong there. Middle class in India starts at less than a decent smart phone's cost.