I'll explain it all much much easier. In India, there are very few jobs that pay money. Coding is usually the only thing one who becomes a coder, could do. Alternative is back to work in the fields for food at best. So it doesn't attract people who would be best coders, but just most greedy and socially competitive ones (and in any Indian collective office politics are super complicated and elaborate, any Westerner gets pushed out quickly because we are simply no match for them in politics).<p>That should be the case in any poor country. If you want 'coders by passion', people should have a choice of passions, each of them making comparable money. Otherwise complaining is like complaining that arranged marriage where you either marry who you told to marry to or go f..k yourself, lacks love and passion. It was simply never meant to be otherwise.<p>This is why coders from rich countries tend to be better. And even in Russia, coders from Moscow are better than provincial ones, for the same reason: working on Upwork from a poor provincial town is your only way out of poverty so if you stand any chance, you grind your way up there whatever it takes, and doing same from Moscow is one of the many options to make comparable money so you do it only if you love coding.