IT must make choices--or lose jobs

TalkBack 26 of 34:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

Don't burn your CS degree yet.

India, China and other developing nations will undoubtedly grow IT firms in the coming decades, but these IT firms will primarily satisfy domestic demand for IT services. Some outsourcing is possible, but outsourcing software development is less practical than proponents claim. Costs are not actually lower in the developing nations. Only compensation is lower. Costs are higher, because infrastructure in these nations is less developed; otherwise, they would be "developed nations" rather than "developing nations".

Much lower compensation in developing nations does create a cost advantage from the perspective of a U.S. consumer of IT services; however, if labor markets in developing nations are truly free, compensation cannot remain much lower indefinitely. Eventually, IT workers in these nations will demand the same level of consumption in exchange for their production that workers in more developed countries demand. If they can't demand this compensation in their own nations, they can immigrate to the United States or the European Union, and IT workers in developed nations should therefore welcome their immigration; however, developing nations typically are not slave states, so compensation in these nations can rise to an international market level without this immigration, so it inevitably will rise.

In the meantime, Amit Maheshwari makes a lot of sense. Outsourcing IT services, including software development, overseas is easier said than done, but some outsourcing is presumably practical; however, professional IT managers in the U.S. make a grave mistake if they expect in the process to increase their value compared with the value of their "go to guys" in the U.S., IT professionals who have not abandoned hands-on IT work for a purely managerial role. The opposite expectation is more sensible. U.S. IT workers with the most recent, hands-on experience with the technology are the most effective interface between IT workers overseas and IT customers in the U.S. By accelerating a trend toward outsourced IT work, U.S. IT managers can only accelerate another trend they already fear, the trend toward their own obselecence.

Agile development methods are proving their worth, and these methods place more responsibility in the hands of software developers and less responsibility in the hands of software development managers. Professional managers therefore already confront software developers vying for their turf, developers who never left active, hands-on development for "design", "architecture", "leadership" and other vague categories of less stressful and less challenging work. Coding does not require less skill, less information or less experience than higher level design or requirements definition. It requires more. Every experienced developer knows it, and development managers who allow their coding skills to atrophy deny this reality at their peril.

The offshore outsourcing model that works does not replace U.S. developers with offshore developers while preserving the jobs of U.S. IT managers who simply profit from arbitrage in a competitive market for the labor of IT workers. This model is wishful thinking. The model that works is a transoceanic software development team with development resources on both sides of the Atlantic. Management occurs exclusively on neither side of the divide. It occurs on both sides. For some purposes, U.S. resources manage Indian developers, but for other purposes, Indian resources manage U.S. developers, and all of these resources are developers; otherwise, they don't effectively communicate. The jobs disappearing in this scenario are not professional development jobs but professional management jobs. Sorry blue suits. The geeks are still gaining. Imagining cheap, submissive labor in India doesn't change anything.

Posted by: MarBrock   Posted on: 11/13/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Three Steps You Need to Know to Stop Data Loss Varonis Sensitive data exposed to misuse or loss... it is the stuff of nightmares ... Download Now
• VMware Infrastructure: A Guide to Bottom-Line Benefits VMware Frustrated by the costs of maintain ever larger data centers?or building ... Download Now
• Reducing Server Total Cost of Ownership with VMware Virtualization Software VMware VMware virtualization enables customers to reduce their server TCO and ... Download Now