Can your job be outsourced?
 

A buddy of mine, who is a software engineer, recently learned that his job is being terminated in favor of outsourcing to India. Apparently, thanks to Voice over IP and the Internet, many tech and customer service jobs are going overseas. Think about it, why pay someone $7.50 an hour here in the US when you can pay someone $5 a day in India or other countries?

This isn't really that big of a surprise for lower skilled jobs. What IS surprising is that high end design/circuit engineering/product validation jobs are also being outsourced. The only jobs that seem to be SAFE against outsourcing are the jobs that require a physical presence and client confidence (doctors, lawyers, etc).

This begs the question... If you work for someone else, are you really that indispensable? Those that work for themselves, no need to answer this since, by and large, you are the beneficiaries of the lower costs that outsourcing brings about.

Outsourcing is a good thing for the US. Maybe not initially as the shock sets in but in the long run it will beneift us. I have been working as a developer for the past three years and most recently as a project manager for both US based and offshore development teams. outsourcing will hurt people who are not educated or highly trained but for those who are able to embrace this new outsourcing trend it is quite lucrative.

If you go back ten years or so and look at what happened and what is still happening to manufacturing jobs in the US, it will be the same thing. I do not think being a designer/developer in the US is going to be a great job in the future. With wonderful speed of cable connections and fiber optic lines it is so easy to higher a designer/programmer offshore many companies are having a hard time not doing so.

I can tell you the the average salary of our US based programmers is $62k while the offshore developers average salary is under 5k USD. Over time i know that 5k will increase but from a business standpoint if you have a US based manager who is able to effectiely harness 12 offshore developers for the price of 1 US based developer how can you not consider it?

I dunno. Its a global economy now and outsourcing is here to stay so you might as well get used to hearing more stories like this.

Anything that you do not physically be present for can be outsourced and over the next couple years alot of these tasks will. India/Pakistan/Phillipines etc... will be the backbone of the US and there will be alot of jobs created to oversee and manage these outsourced operations.

Just my 2 cents.