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Giant sucking noise

Slashdot: Giant sucking noise of higher end jobs getting off-shored to India and other third world countries.

My question is: Why is it surprising? The whole aspect of capitalism and globalization is that things will change to find a balance between supply and demand. Corporations can get good work done in far shorter time by spending lesser money. Due to time zone difference, 24 hour work day is an enticing possibility with few staff in US and 12 hours away, another group in India.

I worked for Infosys from 1995 to 1998. Top-quality software is made there. They hire mostly the best. Most cherished value in hiring process is learnability. Not proficiency with any particular language’s syntax. Strong business sense, commitment to quality and processes, and fanatical belief in doing the right thing the right way is a winning formula. Add to that , extreme commitment to employees and their career plans, it is constant growth all the time. This article pretty much describes it. It is almost like Toyota's processes applied to Honda’s engineering skills with constant measurement and data accumulation, applied to software development.

Project teams are always comprised of multiple people. Managed by people who know what the project is about, in detail.

Now think about how many US software services companies are there that have these strong values and processes. How many top leaders have a commitment towards the company? It looks like majority are there to cash in on stock options.

Once corporations here realise that they actually pay less for getting better stuff, from committed and talented people, they are going to go off-shore.

I think that for 5 more years, software services sector is going to boom, off-shore. Then it is going to stay flat. Hopefully, by then IT managers will realize that re-engineering is an expensive business and won’t chase latest technologies (eg: let us re-write this COBOL application, proven for 20 years, in Java).

Probably in 8-10 years, necessary computing power is going to be available in smart cards. When I say necessary computing power, I mean the power necessary to do 90% of daily needs. May be checking out schedule, expenses, news, instant communication etc. Well, PDAs do that now. Just make them more secure and easier to carry around. Perhaps some standard will emerge where you pay for storage space on the net and you can walk into any cyber cafe, insert your card in a dumb terminal and your desktop appears where you left if off. Such a scheme will probably serve corporate applications too - all integrated. No more specific office spaces. You go to any terminal, insert your card, instantly that becomes your office - your desktop appears; the telephone is automatically adjusted. BTW, this is not fantasy - my first job was with a company that had exactly same technology implemented in one of its offices in 1994.

Maintenance of these will be off-shored. What jobs will be here in US? Marketing, Finance, Data Analysis etc. In fact analysis and systems tuning is probably going to be a hot field. These skills coupled with knowledge of particular businesses (eg: retail, manufacturing etc.) is going to be very very sought out for.

It is just a matter of demand and supply. During dot.com era, there was a huge artificial demand. Supply caught up. Then demand turned real. Demand not for programmers, but for customers need to use the web. Things are more realistic now. Sensible IT managers are probably in demand now, when there is no more free money to sink down the drain.

So, how do I conclude this?

• I think there are going to be fewer and fewer IT jobs available here. It is going to be very small in 5 years.
• Business application software development is pretty much going to be off-shored.
• System software development is going to be there for new software. But for upgrades, it is going to go off-shore - but at a slower rate than application development.
• Biotechnology, if it delivers on its so far unfulfilled promise, might open up some software development opportunities, if the machines keep getting faster and stabler.
• Making business sense out of data is going to be a hot skill whereever corporate head quarters are.
• System Administration services are going to be consolidated. Probably not going to be off-shored. But less jobs anyway due to consolidation.

1. It's a surprise because everyone thought globalisation was a poor people problem, and the problems of the poor are invisible. Who cares? They're poor. Pass me another magazine telling me about the trials and tribulations of the rich, thanks; I want to hear more about J'Lo and Ben Affleck.

   Posted by: Garth T Kidd on February 2, 2003 08:21 PM

2. The followup of Infosys story is here: http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20030206&fname=alam&sid=1

   Posted by: Babu on February 10, 2003 06:23 AM