Foreign teams are just more fun to work with

After working with both Indian and foreign teams, I have started noticing something I didn't really care about before: how much the way a company treats developers changes the entire experience of building software. With foreign teams, at least from what I've experienced, work tends to be tracked properly, responsibilities are clear, people actually respect your time, and you are treated like someone who is responsible for building the product, not just someone who is supposed to keep completing Jira tickets. There is a weird sense of calm in that environment. You know what you are doing, you know why you are doing it, and nobody is constantly breathing down your neck.

Indian companies and teams can obviously have great work cultures too, and I don't think this is some universal "foreign good, India bad" thing. But I have definitely experienced environments where developers are expected to work more, communicate less, and somehow still be available for everything. Sometimes the difference isn't even the salary, it's just the attitude towards the employee. A developer isn't a machine that becomes 20% more productive because you gave them a bigger paycheck.

And honestly, that's what I value more now. Give me proper task tracking, reasonable expectations, people who communicate properly, and a chill environment where I can actually think about the software I'm building. You can pay more, give better perks, and put "we are a family" on the careers page, but if working there feels miserable, the money doesn't magically fix the experience.