A major international study by professional social networking platform GILD, comparing US and Indian developers in key programming and communication skills, finds that Indians outshine US developers in math and logic, two of the core skills desired by US technology companies like Oracle, Salesforce, and eBay.
The study, which examined over 1 million tests taken by nearly 500,000 developers, found however, that Americans clearly lead the world in web programming skills, valued by companies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
Other findings from the Study:
- 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

“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”, says Sheeroy Desai, CEO of GILD, adding, “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.”

With bases in US, China and India ( Bangalore) GILD is a site for computer programmers and other IT professionals that combines social gaming with job search and career advancement. Programmers can take GILD’s tests to see how they stack up against each other in skills like Java, HTML, C++ etc. Major IT companies use GILD’s proprietary ranking system to find new employees and benchmark existing employees for technical ability, personality traits, aptitude, and communication skills.

Useful links:
GigaOM: For GILD, a good programmer shouldn’t be hard to find http://gigaom.com/2011/06/20/for-gild-a-good-programmer-shouldnt-be-hard-to-find/  

San Francisco Chronicle: Slew of Web startups vies for job recruiting pie http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/20/BU0M1JER1M.DTL&type=tech

www.gild.com   July 9 2011