Charting the Indian developer

9/15/2008 12:30 PM EDT

Developers are typically very intelligent, good with numbers and abstract concepts, and have an eye for detail. They tend to live in and care about the programming life, and these highly analytical people are often passionate about chosen technologies with an almost religious fervor for or against a vendor or a vendor's technology. Developers can be extremely literal minded, sometimes to a fault. Because code logic is the process of following precise instructions, solving problems often requires exhaustive technical detail as well as a broad overview of the context in which a product is used.

All this makes them a very cohesive group when viewed from the point of view of developers vs. ordinary people. However, that homogeneity breaks down when we look at groups of developers in geographically diverse environments. Cultural and historical differences creep in and multiply and soon it becomes apparent that the concept of developers as a homogenous whole is full of cracks.

Evans Data Corp. conducts an annual study on the demographics and marketing habits of developers in North America. This year, it was replicated in India. Over three hundred Indian developers completed a comprehensive survey (see www.evansdata.com/reports/viewRelease.php?reportID=22 for some sample pages).

The differences between developers in the two geographies are striking. For example, the typical Indian developer is a single, 31-year-old male who has been working as a programmer for less than six years and earns less than 1,600,000 rupees per year, about $38,000. Thus he is far younger, poorer, less experienced, and less tied down than North American developers.