If you take the article at face value--if its claims are true that $9-an-hour programmers cost Boeing billions of dollars--it is indeed a shame that, in this particular instance, Boeing was not willing to pay more for better programmers.
Are those claims true? Who knows. I'm sure that whoever hired those $9-an-hour programmers thought that if they could manage those programmers soooo well that they could get them to program as well as $100 an hour programmers.
YMMV, but in my experience, you can't manage programmers to be better programmers. No matter how much check-in approval bureaucracy, or how much QA, you will not get better programs. If you want better programs, you need to hire better programmers.
Well, for better or for worse, it is true that 9 dollar/hour or 1440 dollars/month would be a decent salary in India. Twice the current median.
I saw your other comments, so I would add that while it is a decent salary in India. That doesn't mean you can expect the same quality as you would expect from someone earning twice the median in US. Because standard of living never really scales like you want it to.
200 dollars in India still cannot buy you a cheap computer, while 1000 dollars (the equivalent in US) can definitely buy you a solid computer.
So, yeah, it is shameful for this kind of work, because it is skilled work, and skilled workers wages (because they can essentially move all around the globe) are not tied to cost of living.
