2 - does it have one? It seems that there is a colossal brain drain, and the quality of the engineers staying in India is tremendously diluted by those that pursued engineering purely as a safe career choice
Over the last 18 years I have regularly had the opportunity to work with engineers located in India (while I was based in the UK and the US). Some projects were huge, some were small -- ranging from 2-3 engineers to hundreds. The vast majority of individuals I worked with were excellent at their job, and a delight to work with. Same as the ones I've worked with who have emigrated to Europe or America.
Emigration is not proof of an individual's superior powers, nor is non-emigration evidence of lack thereof.
You're right. Engineering [0] and engineer quality [1] in general in China is way better than in India. It is not even a competition. For instance, Google isn't setting up shop in India for their AI labs [2]. Another instance is when large internet companies in India sought talent from overseas when faced with big-company scale problems [3].
Also, my experience having worked and interviewed candidates in India for over 8yrs doesn't seem to disagree with that sentiment at all.
[0].
I would agree that Indian startups haven't done something remarkably good technically till now. One reason can be that a lot of them didn't get to grow in isolation using government protection from foreign enterprises and resources. So they were competing against established players with a lot of experience compared to them. Initially, most of the people who used Internet in India had some knowledge of English, so it became very easy for US based companies to penetrate the market as they could mostly launch the same products without much customization.
[1] and [3]
Highly debatable and depends on which company you are hiring for. Good candidates are going to apply in companies they consider to be good. Snapdeal wasn't known for its good engineering, work culture or hiring bar. I don't know which startup the YC commenter interviewed for.
[2] might just be because of lack of active CS research going on in the country. Most people interested in research leave the country for better pastures. Btw MSR does have office in India
That seems like a gross overgeneralization. Yes, there is brain drain but it doesn't mean that the engineers working in Indian startups like Flipkart are the ones who pursued engineering as a safety net. A lot of them are as smart as their Indian counterparts who are working in US in companies like Amazon, Google etc.
Are the downvotes because of the last line? I would love to prove this with a metric but can't just like the parent comment author. The opinion I stated is mostly from personal experience of knowing those people, working with them or having interviewed them.
