Are Software Development and IT Careers Doomed in North America?
In the Internet age, a developer can work from anywhere. I do off-site consulting work from my lakefront home in Canada’s near North.
However, as Canadians have learned this week, North American programming and support is increasingly done in India. Well-paid corporate IT jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate as companies look to low-wage outsourcing centres.
Given the alarming Canadian experience this week, a North American college student should think twice about pursuing a career in software development, especially in mid- to large-scale companies. A promising career and a comfortable living could come to an abrupt end.
The raging controversy and boycott campaign this week swirled around Canada’s biggest, richest bank – The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC).
An RBC whistleblower complained to CBC News that RBC was using the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) to bring in workers to take over 45 IT jobs, including his. To add insult, the soon-to-be-fired worker, Dave Moreau, was required to train his replacement. Canadians were outraged that a respected and extremely profitable bank would be this callous to employees and work against the economic interests of Canada.
RBC started out by denying that it has hired temporary foreign workers at all – ever. That turned out to be a half-truth because it was working closely with a huge outsourcing supplier named iGate that obtains and manages the ‘global resources’, mostly from India.
People in the software development industry were mystified as to how a replacement worker from India could get approval for a work visa here in the current economic climate. Is there really a shortage of programmers in Canada? (It’s patently ridiculous to say there’s a shortage in this instance because the guy who wrote the code is standing there showing you how it works and doesn’t want to give up his job.) It turns out the Canadian government is pretty, er, flexible on who is allowed to work here.
In reality, RBC was letting go Toronto IT staff and outsourcing their jobs to save money. To their dismay, Canadians learned that this has been going on for a long time, is accelerating, and most of the biggest Canadian companies are heavily into outsourcing IT to India. If the work were done by employees in Canada, the low salaries and working conditions would violate our labour law. But what happens offshore is not the bank’s concern. These aren’t employees but “suppliers”.
Experts say that even if the Canadian government tightens up the TFWP to close the loopholes, the general offshoring of IT projects is unstoppable. The cost savings are so significant (Canadian salaries + benefits vs cheap contractors in India) that a company that doesn’t outsource to India is at a competitive disadvantage.
This isn’t a xenophobic issue – it’s social, economic, and political. When a North American corporation outsources projects and support functions they’re not looking at where you were born - many of Canada’s top paid programmers are immigrants - but how much you cost. Immigrant or native-born, the job is gone and so are you.
Just like your Nike running shoes… once the manufacturing goes overseas nobody expects them to be made in North America again.