I agree with your point but those $10 engineers are probably living in a shitty shared apartment in Bangalore. He doesn't have 24/7 water. Works few times a week. When he does, he has to go down his apartment to fetch it. He doesn't go to fancy restaurants. He doesn't have a dish washer or an AC or any other fancy stuff. And whole of $10 is probably not reaching him if he works for a company (It's usually $3-4/hour that he actually gets).
India is a place where a frugal lifestyle is extremely cheap. $400/month is easy for a single person.
At the same time a luxurious quality lifestyle (probably the same as the "average" in the first world) is actually higher than usual, same cars cost twice as much, electronics are always late and usually pricier, movies and nice restaurants are about the same, broadband internet is very pricy and I can go on.
I think we should keep in mind "cost of similar quality living"
Inflation is increasing the cost of living in India and China. A decent apartment (not luxury) will cost you min. $100K in any Indian city (even C and D tier cities)
While not as expensive as Manhattan or London, relative to Indian salaries everything is getting expensive.
I'm looking for a flat to invest in and I am finding them out of reach, even after taking housing loan and they are running away from me a lot faster than I can catch up, besides, I've already started to pant :( (meaning the salary going to other holes in significant portions)
I have myself bought a home in Hyderabad...And I am convinced that that it is useless. Only if you sell the home, you can make it a worth while investment. That too, in the order of 10% which is probably same as mutual funds...Plz do total cost of ownership before buying.
If you have taken a huge loan(>40 lacs) to for your apartment. Especially in India- Hyderabad or Bangalore doesn't matter. You are likely to spend the next 15 years worrying about EMI's.
Standard IT service company entry level SE salary is ~ INR 25000/month -> INR 830/day =~ $15, now divide it by 9 and it comes down to ~ $1.7/hr. Of course this is fresher salary and at a services company like Infosys, TCS, Wipro etc.
If you start with a product development(that means just fixing bugs in almost all the cases) company or some of the startup(such jobs are quite few) then the monthly salary can be sth from INR 40K to 60-70K(I'm giving an average range, it can be higher too) so that comes down to ~ $25 to $42 per day or ~ $3 to $5 per hour.
What you mention, $10/hr, is earned by either very very experienced ones at a services company(managerial level - never bloody ever someone who writes code or even reads code) or good lead/senior level engineers at other companies in their last phase of coding life cycle. It is translated as ~ INR 150,000 per month which is quite some amount here, still.
Sure, you can hire an "SE" (and I use the quotes deliberately) for $15/day also; but you won't get much use out of her/him. Decent grads from a good school regularly get Rs 100K/month offers, from what I've been told (which works out to about $10/hr or so).
Wrong. Getting paid less doesn't mean the quality is always going to be bad.
In this case getting paid less means, people don't have opportunities to begin with and are ready to do compromise with anything just to get the opportunity.
When I started out here in India, I was paid 10,000 Rs per month at a call center. And I considered my self fortunate for even having a job. My programming job salary started at 14,000 Rs per month. Back then 16 hours at office used be my regular working hours, and I didn't even complain. Heck I considered myself extremely fortunate to even get that opportunity.
>>Decent grads from a good school regularly get Rs 100K/month offers,
You are talking of an extremely minute minority, who often don't work at their first company for more than an year. And generally go the US to their MS or MBA. In short they are not even relevant to the grand scheme of things.
Getting paid less doesn't mean the quality is always going to be bad.
In most cases like this, you get what you paid for. More number of hours and not complaining doesnt mean quality. There might be cases like you, but frankly the chances are too less.
That includes medical insurance for you and your family. If you are willing to travel you can get good house for rent at INR 10K month. I pay INR 6k for 1500 sqft house and my previous office is 7 km from my house. You can do rest of the math to figure out how somebody getting $25 per day can live comfortable life. Anything above $25 is bonus.
If you are referring to me then I know all this, being a resident.
But yes, the GP commenter might find it useful. In a city like Bangalore it still is a shoe-string budget and I can say this with authority as a 26+ yr old bachelor living in a one bedroom flat.
I was just commenting on his assumption/observation that we get $10/hr in general :-)
