Most of us are not proud of this. Those, unfortunate enough to be forced to do such jobs are not really proud of it either.

...

Thats fine. But does a whole section of the world have to get thrashed for this? Maybe not.

Dear tmharish,

the source of these kind of stereotypes is mostly fear and envy.

IT folk always belonged to a privileged cast who got constantly raising salaries for practicing their favorite hobby. And now they are the first to experience the pressure of globalization, since the internet annihilates any of the old political and economic frontiers.

Maybe it helps you to look into the economic history of Germany or Japan, both started as agricultural countries selling bad copys of western goods for dumping prizes.

In the 1960s a Japanese camera was a synonym for a toy, and look where they are now. And the "Made in xxx" inscriptions were invented at the second half of the 19th century to protect the British market from much too cheap German copies of British products. Britain was the highest industrialized country, Germany nearly purely agricultural.

Needless to say how these countries were ridiculed, when people started to notice their growing economy.

I still remember how a French prime minister in the 1990s compared Japanese with ants ...

Or just think of how Europeans just started to ridicule "uncultivated" US-Americans when they came after the wars as far too rich tourists. Ridiculing is just a protective psychological mechanism.

Also needless to say that all these countries were seen mostly positive abroad, as long as they had no economic success.

Cheap and hard work is the natural resource of "underdeveloped" countries, it always was ... just look into history to see how some countries succeeded to "develop" themselves...

Be proud of it!

PS: Hope you understood me well, your English is for sure better than mine... :-)