Bangalore coder , or programmer ?

Developers are happy in Bangalore these days. Its raining jobs. Its common for people leaving our company to have multiple offers. Developers I know are busy building apartments on Outer Ring Road and buying new cars. People with two years of experience have been asking for ten lakh salaries and in some cases, says one proj manager in our floor, actually getting it.
Companies from the US are opening new offices or expanding operations.

But compared to the quality of work in Chip design/VLSI that is happening in the hardware domain, I think for software, Bangalore is just another code factory. I receive recruiter emails at times asking for "J2EE","struts" ,"EJB' skills. This seems to be the most in demand. I am told that most of the revenue of Indian IT comes from taking maintainence contracts. Even for product companies,though far better than consulting (in my view), apart from a few like Veritas or HP that do kernel level work, most I think have come to India as they need to scale up quickly for large projects, not for innovative work. Just compare these jobs, one listed in the US another in India:

Research engineer, Bosch
Research staff position in graphics and interaction technologies. This person will be responsible for researching and developing tools and system prototypes for the next generation of intelligent information systems in the Bosch product areas. A specific short to mid-term focus will be in the area of driver information systems.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Research, develop and implement algorithms, methods, and tools towards innovative prototype systems.
• Prototypical realization of research ideas on Bosch product platforms.
• Establish close contact with internal customers and external partners/universities.
• International travel is possible.

Education/Training/Work Experience Required:

PhD or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering or Computer Science required. Experience in industrial R&D settings is a plus. .......

AND

We have excellent opening with our Bangalore based client Realsoft for Sr. J2ee/Struts Developer for following requirement-
Position- Sr. J2ee/Struts Developer
Exp.- 5+ to 10 years
Job location- Bangalore
Must have skills-
*5+ years hands on development and some design exp. will be good in core java, JDBC, j2ee(EJB, Servlets, JSP,java_script etc.)
*Struts frame work.
*Application servers are Jboss & Tomcat
*Web service is a plus but highly desired.
*Who is intersted to be hands in design/development (Looking for the j2ee development GURU)
Worked through all phases of SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle), eager to learn latest technologies,
Can communicate directly with senior management in USA related to project functions
Must be able to work independently, research problems (analytical skills is very important)
Previous experience working with onsite clients is highly desiered

That should give the general idea.

IIT students working at our place say that no one among them bothers to go do an MS at the US anymore- you no longer get aid, and there's no perceived career advantage, like for an MBA . Besides, salaries have gone up tempting many to work. As such Indian society is obsessed with status and titles. Thus friends I know who moved on to do management degrees, frown when they hear somebody is 'still coding'.