Readers of this journal may remember a recent discussion about IT outsourcing to offshore development teams. There, I mentioned how the offshore craze is a twofold movement: first to find talented developers wherever in the world they may happen to be (Moscow, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Bangalore, Ottawa or Des Moines); second, to exploit wage differences and send the low-paying "commodity work" to regions of the world where you can pay even less, and perhaps get more.
These trends have been pretty consistent over the last few years. The alarmists who are foaming at the mouth that all of our jobs are about to go to Inda are doing just that -- foaming at the mouth.
This is nothing new, either. For example, a decade ago, Ed Yourdon released his Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, where he argues we were all doomed because the "software backlog" was insurmountable[1], our software quality was horrible, and there were masses of developers elsewhere in the world able to do a better job much less expensively than we could. (He later recanted four years later in Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer, where he sees RAD, "good enough software" and practices like ship-buggy-but-early trumping ship-complete-and-very-late in the business world.)
This week, I found two new voices in the discussion.
The first, is from an anonymous developer from Kansas writes into Software Development magazine. (Sorry, no link available):
Many software engineers came to the US from India during the late '90s primarily to address the Y2K issue and to staff the dot-com wave. All those who came here used the H-1B program, and most of them applied for a green card. Although a few of these folks got their green cards, many were affected by the long processing time of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is plagued by huge backlogs. [...]Hm. Did American companies sow the seeds of their own IT implosion? Maybe, maybe not. CNet interviewed Nandan Nilekani, the CEO of InfoSys, an Indian outsourcing firm founded in 1981. He says, among other things:These engineers who return home are not only returning with a myriad of skills that they garnered in the US, but also with a strong knowledge of US work culture, and are typically employed in positions that require maximum customer interaction. Because of their strong understanding of US work culture, they're effective in bridging the culture gap between their Indian employer and their US customers.
Q: What kinds of technology jobs are safer in the United States?I don't buy the US will always lead scentiment. Europe and other parts of the world are pretty darn innovative. Maddog has some stories about a project or two in Brazil that beats the pants off of lots of what passes for "innovation" on Wall Street.
A: I think that the U.S. technology industry is the fountainhead of innovation, and I think that innovation will always be led by the United States. There is going to be a continuous stream of new technologies coming in and new companies coming to exploit that technology. That innovation cycle, I think, is the strength and heart of the U.S. model. [...]Innovation requires people who are both very close to the technology trends and people who understand customer needs--and especially customer needs that are unmet and that they can meet. So it requires both very strong technology knowledge as well as customer access and customer intimacy. So I think the United States will always lead in those matters.
It's only a matter of time before places like India become hubs of innovation in some domain or another. (I'm presuming they're not already, mostly out of ignorance; pointers greatly appreciated here!) But the general trends are clear: the high-value jobs aren't going to be leaving the US for India en masse any time soon just because of lower wages in India.
[1]: 10 points if you can name Steven P. Jobs' original answer to the "software backlog" problem. :-)
