Indians Ahead of US Developers in Math and Logic, but Fall Behind at Web Programming

GILD study provides first in-depth analysis of programming talent across India and the US

GILD, the professional social networking platform that combines social gaming with career advancement, released results of a major international study comparing US and Indian developers in key programming and communication skills. The study, which examined over 1 million tests taken by nearly 500,000 developers, found Indians outshine US developers in math and logic, two of the core skills desired by US technology companies such as Oracle, Salesforce, and eBay. However, Americans clearly lead the world in web programming skills, valued by companies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

GILD’s tests give technology professionals worldwide a way to rank themselves against their peers by simulating real world coding situations, testing for the application of coding knowledge and experience. Tech giants use GILD’s proprietary ranking system to find new employees and benchmark existing employees, enabling them to discover a broad spectrum of capabilities including technical ability, personality traits, aptitude, and communication skills.

Other findings from the Study include:

• Indian developers outscore US developers by 11% on math and logic analytical skills
• US programmers slightly outperform Indian programmers on mainstream programming languages, including C (US 8% higher), JAVA (9% higher) and SQL (9% higher)
• Indian programmers slightly outshine US programmers on Advanced C++ (Indians lead by 3%)
• US professionals score higher on web programming languages: 53% higher scores on advanced PHP; 27% higher on advanced HTML
• US tech professionals are 33% better skilled than Indian counterparts at English communication skills

According to Sheeroy Desai, CEO of GILD, “GILD’s study of over 1 million skill tests shows the dramatic advances coming out of India, where in some cases engineers are clearly rivaling their counterparts in the US. America still holds a strong lead when it comes to web development, but I suspect the gap will narrow over the next few years. There is currently a shortage of software engineers in the US, especially in Silicon Valley. This is the first study that has hard data on the quality of engineers across the US and India and provides a clear guideline for what type of skills companies should outsource to India, and what they should continue to source in the US.”