WARNING: THIS POST IS IN-YOUR-FACE UNAPOLOGETICALLY OFFENSIVE. TURN AWAY NOW!! 

This is not about what will make you happy or how to be a better programmer. This is about how to help you break out of the mold that your peers and society put you in. It's about how to be American, or else how to do well in an American society. America is a melting pot of people from around the world; it consists of people who want something more. Shameful as American thinking may be, it's a lot better, in the minds of some, than the opposite alternative.  

"Even your comedy is being outsourced!" That was a great line from an Indian guy (a dude from India, not a Native American) on Last Comic Standing a few weeks ago. His whole act was/is focused on how India's workforce has become almost entirely focused on outsourcing. Not sure how true this was, but one joke was how he'd seen a guy sitting on a bench in the park, with a laptop on his lap, and a cell phone to his ear, as he said, "Thank you for calling Customer Service, how can I help you?"

I've had a few occasonal opportunities to work with non-American technology professionals over the last 12 years of my professional career, and I've picked up a few things that have led me to want to share a few tips for your sakes.

1. Typical stereotype Americans are bastards, they'll look lowly upon you, pay you a small fraction of what they'll pay themselves, expect that you won't know your stuff, and, by default, not likely respect you. Deal with it. Prove us wrong. Make us feel ashamed. Some of the most successful executives and lead engineers are from India. But they're rare. Be one of these exceptions, and don't settle for anything less.
2. American culture values excellence, speed, innovations, even opinions. Don't deliver crap. Be a fast worker. Learn to deal with the stress of someone looking over your shoulder. Think outside the box. Express yourself and your thoughts. Be a little daring.
3. Don't push it. A little arrogance might help, but never roll your eyes in an interview. It doesn't matter how much you know, the interviewer doesn't know how much you know, and has likely come across hundreds of people who don't know anything (yes, even many Americans). So smile and give people the benefit of a doubt.
4. School isn't as important as experience. The last Indian programmer I had the opportunity to work with was also the first person I personally had to fire. (The boss was out of town, and this individual was working right alongside me.) Despite a master's degree, and full Microsoft developer certification, I sat there holding my head as I watched this person spend 15 minutes adding a hyperlink directly below an existing one. That's right, an <a> tag. 15 minutes. This person claimed during the interview an interest in AJAX and side experience with HTML, but clearly this did not suffice. Efficiency and quality are of equal importance!! Both come from experience, not from study. Study as you go, don't assume that you're ready for the real world because you studied first. Take on pet projects (personal projects you're not getting paid for). Lots of them. Strive for excellence and speed in everything you expect to focus on.
5. Many American executives who hire you will hire you in bulk and will line you up in rows on flimsy, long tables stacked with standard PCs (software sweat shops), or else might be clueless about the fact that some of you guys have an awful reputation of delivering work that usually ends up getting thrown out and replaced due to poor quality while they swear up and down that they will never hire your kind again, but then a year later they do anyway. I don't know how you can avoid this, but ..
   • If you get hired in bulk, don't assume much on your profile growth. You as a person will not likely get noticed, you're just a number, so there's not much of a ladder to climb. Do excellent, solid work so that your tasks don't go unnoticed (and so that you don't lose your job), but try to take time to meet people outside of your domain as well as grow yourself during your free time with educational pet projects.
   • If you get hired as an outsourced team member, have high expectations of the coordinator. Whoever is managing communications needs to demand complete specifications from the client, while demanding utmost highest quality and efficient output from the team. And if ever there was an important role in this space, it is the role of a rock-solid coordinator. That said, though, if your job is that of an engineer and you're imported (living in the U.S.), don't even think or wish for being a coordinator; you have a job and there is no "coordinator" ladder to climb unless you either go back home and become one or else you are somehow at the top of the ladder in a sweat shop that would later get dropped and replaced with an outsourced team from "back home".
   • If you are hired directly as a respected, equal opportunity member of an American team, you are, in fact priviledged. Indians don't have the right to work with Americans, they are given priviledges. (Don't get me wrong; it is likewise a privilege, not a right, for an American to work in India, or to fly to Paris. This is not about being better than the other, this is about the simple fact that you must get permission or earn the opportunity to do some things.) So treat the priviledge with pride. Take pride in your work. Don't output garbage. Think like an American. Be competitive, in a way that benefits both the company and your career. Do this not only by not giving management any reason to look down on you by poor quality output, but also stick your foot out and dare to speak up, innovate, refactor, and share your opinions.
6. If you are female, your culture might have limited you, and possibly has you cornered. Many female import programmers are QA testers (grunts). Some of them are database programmers, some are "normal", cross-discipline programmers. Most female engineers are so quiet that they settle for a puny role with a puny salary. There have been exceptions, though. Here's my advice: beauty might help to get you in the door. It's an embarrassing reality that isn't always true but often is. So put on some make-up during your interview and smile. But here's the deal: the pressure is on the female more than on the male to perform efficiently and with high quality. In a male-oriented industry, you're already introducing unspoken awkwardness to the team just by your gender, so people will be trigger-happy. Expectations are low, but overcoming the stereotype will take an extraordinary amount of effort. You can climb the ladder faster if you are both bold and a little tomboyish in behavior. The goal is to get the people in the work place to stop thinking of you with "nice ass!" and start thinking "kick ass!" So study hard and be as competitive as the fellas by being very good, opening your mouth, sharing ideas and innovations, and proving yourself out. Your culture might have taught you to study to be quiet, but here in America you really need to do the opposite, open your mouth!! Sucks to be you, though, having to fend off prejudice and "unwanted" attention, dudes are three-legged morons. Sexual harassment laws exist because people actually do struggle, all the time, from one extreme (prejudice) to the other.
7. Most non-American workers I've met who have managed to climb to the top actually scare me half to death. They're incredibly brilliant, so brilliant that I get a little shaky and quivery when they talk. It doesn't help that they have a strong accent, so I have to struggle to understand what they're saying. But they're so rediculously good that they tend to come across as somewhat elitist. They will court the brainiacs of the industry, while looking down at you like someone they could never waste their time with eating lunch together with you. I say these things with a little bit of animosity, but ackowledgement at the same time that these people didn't float to the top, they worked their way up and possibly climbed on top of people to get there. A couple things stand out to me about them, though: they have deep understanding, and they communicate very, very well.
8. Work on that accent. Try to get rid of it as much as you can. Most Americans don't know what it's like to grow up in one country and then make a commitment to work in or on behalf of a completely different cultue and language. They're almost all self-absorbed, spoiled rotten to the core consumers and most of them speak only English. Many Americans absolutely hate the language barrier with outsourced help. Just because you can speak and understand English doesn't mean that there isn't a barrier. If a significant amount of effort is given by the American to discern or to repeat things being said, the perception is that this is not going to work well. All things done in any corporation or business relationship happens first with communication. Written communication matters, too. Avoid chat shortcuts. Write good, clean English. "HAI JON HOW R U?" is not going to help win respect of you. Try, "Hello, Jon. How are you today?" The l33t sp33k that is often chosen between two Indians or between two Americans does not work well between an American and an Indian; the likes of "sup homey, what's new wit you yo?" is often used by me with my buddies but it's not a word choice I would use with professionals who live on the other side of the planet, and I would be really irritated if anything less than proper English is used in return. (On the other hand, now that I think about it, I would probably fall out of my chair laughing if I came across an outsourced Indian who had mastered, and who used, American gangsta speech. You'd probably be the coolest person on the planet, literally, to work with, because you'd be breaking out of a tiring stereotype of your culture, one which doesn't seem to emphasize a sense of humor. Careful, though, there's a time to be funny and a time to be business-like.) 
9. I've suggested it already but I'll say it again emphatically: The extroverted consultant who speaks clearly, has a strong grasp of what he is saying, and is business-like in demeanor already has the world at his fingertips.
10. Have a strong sense of the bigger picture. I've heard horror stories from my co-workers about how, before I joined the team, they'd worked with Indian contractors and had them write code that would pass a test, but their code was hard-coded to pass the test (to simply output the desired output) rather than actually perform the function that the assignment required. They should have been, and probably were, fired on the spot. Don't ever deliver crap! On that note, though, don't apologize frequently. Apologies don't help anyone. If you make a mistake, own it by fixing it. One apology is enough, and try not to use "soddy" (that's "sorry" with an accent). If you're not making personal offenses then there's nothing to apologize for. Here's the deal with the apology: it is a request for grace and forgiveness. Too much of this can be offensive and grinding. Just do your job well, and if you make a mistake, apologize to yourself and never settle for mediocrity in yourself again!!
11. It's not about us, it's about you, so please, please, don't IM the American during your business hours while you are sitting at your desk at the office. That's midnight over here, and the last thing I want to deal with when I've got Conan O'Brian up on the TV and I'm sitting on the sofa with my laptop trying to type up a blog or browsing the web for stupid entertainment is some technical discussion from someone in India about work-related issues. You're in India, for goodness sake, why don't you innovate and start a company that involves Indians working with just Indians rather than Americans? Speaking of which, why can't India become the fat and sassy consumers of the world, why does it have to be us?