Few topics are as controversial as outsourcing. This is understandable. To state the obvious, jobs are a fundamental part of our ability to lead a happy and productive life.
Unfortunately, jobs exists within the context of volatile global markets. The growth of outsourcing is the result of developing nations reaching a point in their economic evolution where they have the skills to compete in higher-skill domains traditionally served by rich country workers. The same cost advantages offered to lower-level manufacturing are now being brought up the value chain to software development.
In the United States, a number of congressmen have proposed bills which would protect American IT workers from foreign labour competition. Furthermore, though few are as overtly anti-trade as Dick Gephardt or Dennis Kucinich, it is increasingly clear that Democratic party contenders for the US presidency view foreign competition as a potential winning issue in the 2004 race.
I don't deny that Western IT workers will have to make adjustments to accommodate the new global reality. However, as I explain in this article, outsourcing is not the jobs catastrophe its opponents make it out to be. Furthermore, there are a number of practical reasons to maintain an open market position which have ramifications for the future health of Western economies. In short, like it or not, Western nations need outsourcing.
Don't overestimate the threat
My first job as a programmer was with Price Waterhouse. My memory of that time includes a frightening amount of airplane food, as I made weekly round-trip flights to client destinations from my home "base" (at the time, Dallas, Texas).
The reason for this was that Price Waterhouse assisted clients in creating custom software -- and this required close interaction with the client. Whole teams of developers would be flown to the site to gather requirements, generate prototypes and write code. Real-world custom development is often a trial and error process, something that works best when developers on-site can respond instantly.
Maintenance work, however, does not require such close interaction since the broad outlines of the application have already been laid out. This development was often performed off-site, therefore, saving the client airfare and housing costs.
Talkback
One words - tibbedee-dunk!
Whoever thunk this one up really
deserves the prize! OTOH how many
Indians do you know with their own
webspace?
I rest de case.
To Bob....Huh? What does that have to do with anything?
Well...
It seems to me that a nation as backward as
India still has a long way to go to catch
up with the West. Most people over there
don't have they own webspace.
All the while that is de case, all this talk of
'offshoring' is really just paranoia.
End goverment tax breaks for companies who send American jobs offshore. Why should American tax dollars subsidize big business if they are sending jobs to other countries? I'm not against big business, but where is the 'trickle down' that's supposed to come to the taxpayer from the benefit of the tax breaks etc. that these companies get? The only ones benefiting are the CEO's. We all know that the so called savings that companies get from offshoring will not get translated into cheaper prices for the consumer plus whenn all the American jobs are sent offshore what money are we going to use to buy the products that these companies are selling? It's a bad idea, and this article has obviously been written by someone who is far removed from the reality of the workforce and is in no danger from the ramifications of offshoring, so it's easy to have his opinions...