Outsource coding? When not if
Don asks about improving the status of developers (http://weblogs.asp.net/donxml/posts/10390.aspx). Well if you read and believe this article http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5051575.html then there is no point we might as well all change career.
A few years ago they told us there were not enough people working in IT and now we are all too expensive. The interesting thing is that outsourcing has been around for a very long time but experience has shown that it is not really practical to run projects shorter than 6 months offshore. Which means that the small projects using a few people which are very company specific will not be outsourced but all those big projects are likely to go to low cost countries. This is not just a problem for the US this a global problem. I am in Switzerland and we are feeling the pain here as well.
I think one of the big reasons, in addition to cost, that outsourcing to India and other countries is that for a lot of companies have never understood or appreciated developers. The only contact that most users have with the IT department is user support. Sadly often the user support is stressed and underskilled. So a lot of the users think that IT is trying to prevent them working by making things difficult and buggy. This is the message the mangers hear. This has the knock on effect that the backroom people and developers are thought off as people who the business cannot understand who do not play the corporate game, expensive and disposable. The whole open source "free" software movement is likely to aggregate this impression. If you can get it for "free" I must be overpaying my people or I am overstaffed.
I really enjoy programming and working in IT but if things look the same in a year from now will I still have a job in IT ?
As someone said there is no shortage of potential customers. The problem is that none of the customers have any money to spend .