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.<p>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.<p>Point 3: People look down at design?? They equally consider System Administration, Document Writing, Escalation handling as inferior.
You make some interesting points about design. It's always bothered me that in a country with so much talent (both programming and design - you just have to see all the beautiful artwork in good adverts and movie sets to know that there are people who care about aesthetics) pretty much every mainstream website has terrible design. It doesn't matter how well things are programmed if everything looks cheap on the front-end. I liken it to the Chinese products I see in trade shows - they may have the same technology as the American-designed products, but they have such shoddy design and poorly proof-read verbiage that it gives off an impression of low quality. I see Indian website products in the same phase of development - the technology is excellent, but the wrapping is poor.
What's with the title of point 3 ("design is gay")? Is the author quoting a homophobic opinion of some Indian programmers, or is he being careless with his own wording?
I agree with #2, this is more common in SAARC region. It mostly happens because of how job interviews and selection are conducted.<p>Even if the job requires technical knowledge, most interviews will be carried by HR personal who lacks any technical knowledge of the said field. So having a CS degree is enough as far as merit is concerned. Only thing left is to nail the non-technical interview. Not to mention the corruption involved in this process.<p>But I'm generalizing here, there obviously are companies who does this right.
Your points suggest that it's not the technical skill of CS graduates that are lacking rather, the mental attitudes and mindsets are not there. While school can be an amazing resource, I'm not sure that any university is structured to teach its students to be passionate or to consistantly over-deliver on quality.