Comment by Sandeep Panda on "General Advice for software engineers residing in India"

I agree with most of the points mentioned here. I just want to add one more point: As an engineer you should always try to generate an alternate stream of income by building side projects that bring money. You might end up solving a real problem and start working on it full time — who knows! In India the cost of living is a bit low compared to developed nations. So, it is much easier to build things, monetize them and save more.

And +1 for the fitness tip! :)

You are right about side projects. But trying to monetize a side-project is very difficult. It is better to work for a company as an expert engineer rather than do a side-project and hoping to make it big.

I completely agree. Building alternative income streams by working on side projects, especially for developers is easy. Monetizing them is still a difficult process. Stripe is in private beta in India and I think it's invite only. Stripe Atlas is a good way to go but involves a lot of paperwork. There are other home-grown options like Razorpay but if your audience is outside India, then it gets more difficult. You can always go with Paypal or similar services and they're comparatively easier to setup. Any thoughts or advice on this @sandeep?

Ilango Rajagopal In that case I would go with Razorpay and PayPal so that I can accept money globally.

As soon as you get some revenue coming in, you can always set up a company in Delaware or Singapore. You can then use Stripe (at least until they are out of private beta), get the money and wire it to your Indian account. Looks like all these problems will go away once Strip is out of the private beta program.

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