There is some truth to this. A long while back when I was doing projects, I got a project from a US company.
When after a week of understanding the scope, I quoted my price at around $150/hour they were shell shocked. The work was for redesigning systems that simply were not scaling (designed originally by a US company by the way). At the last minute they backtracked and demanded that since I was from India and the cost of living was much lower, I should charge them around the standard $25/hour.
I can never compete in the project game - and I dont want to anymore - because of this attitude by every single US company that I have ever interacted with!
I passed them on eventually to a $20/hour company in Delhi, even while I explained to them that none of the coders there had any experience with designing systems that scale.
There is also a tendency to feature creep the project since it is only $20/hour which amuses me and is a sure fire recipe for failure. When we ask them if they want a project manager or an architect who can work with them on architecture/ feature set selection they refuse because they cost way more than the coders.
I am not saying your experience is not true, I am just saying that given the attitude towards India, it is bound to the experience more often than not.
The non-completion of the project above could have been for many reasons... feature creeping, inability to communicate what the client wants, language differences and yes, downright bad coding. Since you were not able to clinch the project - which I believe is simply bad salesmanship, like in my case earlier - your "I told you so" rant is based on a massive leap of faith that you or any "US based" programmers could have finished the project on time, which I am simply have no reason to buy.
When after a week of understanding the scope, I quoted my price at around $150/hour they were shell shocked. The work was for redesigning systems that simply were not scaling (designed originally by a US company by the way). At the last minute they backtracked and demanded that since I was from India and the cost of living was much lower, I should charge them around the standard $25/hour.
I can never compete in the project game - and I dont want to anymore - because of this attitude by every single US company that I have ever interacted with!
I passed them on eventually to a $20/hour company in Delhi, even while I explained to them that none of the coders there had any experience with designing systems that scale.
There is also a tendency to feature creep the project since it is only $20/hour which amuses me and is a sure fire recipe for failure. When we ask them if they want a project manager or an architect who can work with them on architecture/ feature set selection they refuse because they cost way more than the coders.
I am not saying your experience is not true, I am just saying that given the attitude towards India, it is bound to the experience more often than not.
The non-completion of the project above could have been for many reasons... feature creeping, inability to communicate what the client wants, language differences and yes, downright bad coding. Since you were not able to clinch the project - which I believe is simply bad salesmanship, like in my case earlier - your "I told you so" rant is based on a massive leap of faith that you or any "US based" programmers could have finished the project on time, which I am simply have no reason to buy.