What is the difference between an Indian and Eastern European programmer?Wat is het verschil tussen een Indiase en een Oost Europese programmeur?Vad är skillnaden mellan en Indisk och en östeuropeisk programmerare?Was ist der Unterschied zwischen einem osteuropäischen und einem indischen Programmierer?

Last week, I had a conversation with somebody about the differences between Indian and Eastern European programmers. Or maybe we spoke about programmers in general. The thing I find always hard in our business is to answer questions about these differences. For I believe the real answer actually is: it depends on the person you have in front of you. there are good and mediocre developers in the Netherlands, Sweden and any other place on earth.

Vorige week had ik met iemand een gesprek over de verschillen tussen Indiase en Oost Europese programmeurs. Of misschien spraken we over programmeurs in het algemeen. Ik vind het binnen ons bedrijf altijd moeilijk om vragen over deze verschillen te beantwoorden. Want ik geloof dat het het echte antwoord is; het hangt van de persoon af die je voor je hebt. Er zijn goede en middelmatige ontwikkelaars in Nederland, Zweden en elk ander land in de wereld.

Förra veckan hade jag en konversation med en person rörande skillnaderna mellan indiska och östeuropeiska programmerare. Eller kanske diskuterade vi programmerare generellt. Saken är att jag alltid finner det svårt att i vår bransch besvara frågor om dessa skillnader för jag tror att det riktiga svaret är; det beror på personen som du har framför dig. Det finns bra och mediokra utvecklare i Sverige, Nederländerna eller varhelst du befinner dig i världen.

Letzte Woche hatte ich eine Unterhaltung über die Unterschiede zwischen einem indischen und einem osteuropäischen Programmierer mit jemand. Oder wir sprachen über Programmierer im Allgemeinen. Die Schwierigkeiten unserer Branche sind für mich solche Fragen über diese Unterschiede zu beantworten. Denn ich glaube die richtige Frage ist eigentlich: Es hängt von der Person ab, die vor sich haben. Es gibt gute und mittelmäßige Programmierer in den Niederlanden, in Schweden und an jedem anderen Ort der Erde.

One thing he mentioned made me think. He told me that in his company, they want to hire the people that live and breath technology, people who are always playing with their pc, in the evenings, weekends, always. And always try to learn new technologies, because they have an in-built curiosity for new technology. With such people on board, you will build great products.

Then we arrived at discussing India. I told him that in India, the whole country breathes IT. IT is believed to be the main industry to put India on the map in the decades to come. This leads families to put all their savings apart just to get their children on one of the IT universities. The Indian government has stimulated this since the 90’s and this results in the massive amounts of IT specialists that India produces every year. Now the question is: if your family motivates you to start working as a programmer to bring prosperity to the family, will you become the real technology enthusiast most companies would love to have?

In the Netherlands, there are only about 2000 IT graduates per year, because most people don’t choose a technnical path in their lives. But those people must be intrinsically motivated to choose that path. The same is true for many countries in the rest of Western Europe and also Eastern Europe. The former Soviet Union stimulated people to go for a technological education but for different motives. The past decade, the IT industries in Eastern Europe have grown substantially following the success of outsourcing to India. The role of government in for example Ukraine, is less articulate in motivating people to follow a technical education as far as I know. I do not know to what extent Eastern European families put all their savings into the IT education of their children, but from what I know, this is less so than in India.

Nevertheless, there is an abundance in very smart and motivated IT people in India. And the same for Eastern Europe, where you could also find people that are not as motivated and ‘IT-fanatical’ as you would hope.

Could there be a difference in the average quality of the programmers in one country, caused by the reasons programmers become programmers?

It would be interesting to receive some perspectives on this question both from people in India and in Europe.