Doug Reilly's Weblog

Lucky for me I'm in the training business. Too bad the only language I speak is english...

This sort of thing seems to be happening more and more often. The last company that I worked at essentially decimated the development department after they decided to outsource all development efforts to a software company in the Ukraine. I hear that they are sending the work to India instead of the Ukraine now. A colleague who works for a large well know Wall Street brokerage was just called into a meeting last week where he was told that fully 30% of development was getting outsourced to India. Their justification: All of our competitors are doing it, so we have to as well or we will not be competitive. Do you think that number will be more or less than 30% next year or the year after? Still have doubts? Someone in my office called Dell customer support this week. During the conversation he asked where the support rep was located. It wasn’t Austin Texas or anywhere else in the US.

In many ways I feel this is a replay of what happened to the manufacturing base during the 80’s. Sadly, I think more than a few of those folks got retrained for the computer industry. I’m sure they a thrilled to see that it’s déjà vu all over again.

The Internet has made the world a much smaller place and after wrapping the globe with fiber optic cable many times over, telecommunication costs are cheap, real cheap. It seems that if your job is to primarily interact with a computer and / or a person on a phone, you can really do that from any where on the planet. So you may as well do it from a place where you get paid about one third of what it costs to do locally.

So I guess that my point here is that it’s great to be responsible for your own career, and it is important to stay up to date with new technology. But we should all be aware that there is also an evolution-taking place in our industry that is really, for the most part, beyond our control as individuals, and it means that regardless of anyone’s years of experience and level of expertise they will be a slow but sure erosion of quality well paying development jobs in the future. Who is it that is going to fill those few positions? Will they go to the mature experienced individual who knows how to get the job done and done well? Or will it go to someone willing to work cheap?

Sorry, I’ve vented for too long. Forgive me.

You make some very good points. I think there will always be room for high quality developers, but then again, a friend just laid off as a printed circuit board driller always thought there would be a place for high quality local work in that industry as well. Apparently not.

Two things: (a) Even if you are responsible for your career and are ahead of the learning curve, the technology that you have just learned is also taught in India, China, Philippines. This open systems and open standards is the great equalizer. They know what you know, they are cheaper than you and ther's many more of them than you.

(b) "Kinda makes me glad I am self employed..."

Doug, dont lull yourself to false confidence. Your job is in danger also. If you are a contractor, you still cannot compete with the Indian dude charging one-tenth your rate. If you are a trainer in the US, who will be left to train? No one. The Indian dudes live and breath J2EE and .Net 24/7. They dont need training.

Well, I am aware that I am also vulnerable to this sort of thing, though I do think that I have some advantage being a consultant and having many "employers" rather than one.

And secondly, I continue to think that developers who keep up to date with their skills will have the best chance to continue working even as more work is farmed out overseas.