Off-Shore Engineering

[Daniel Wolstenholme]

Do you even work as a software engineer?  This idea that Free
software is going to somehow obsolete paid software is so
ridiculous, I only expect to hear it from Microsoft astroturfers
trying to FUD people into believing that programming for free
puts people out of work.

95% of paid software development is done for in-house work. 
Only a tiny fraction is sold to other people.  And of that, not
that much is of interest to Free software developers.  The only
people who won't be writing software anymore if Free software
takes over the world will be those currently employed at
Microsoft, Corel, McAfee, Symantec, and hopefully Adobe.  Some
software engineers that won't be displaced any time soon are
working at places like Synopsys, Cadence, MentorGraphics, SAP,
SAS, etc.  Don't forget all the game developers at ID software,
Sony, Nintendo, etc.  And lastly, the other 95% of programmers
working at non-software companies writing software that has
absolutely no use outside the company.  Computers wouldn't
be very useful if people and companies couldn't write their own
custom applications for them.  Free software is best for
providing components that are universally needed, like operating
systems, office suites, web browsers, web servers, etc.

But the problem is that the overseas outsourcing threatens to
replace much of the custom programming that is done by the
low-visibility 95%.  It also threatens to replace a lot of
electrical engineering work (HDL design mostly) done in this 
country.  The situation really sucks too (except for the
libertarians that are all for competition without any rules to
level the playing field), because it's impossible for someone
living in the U.S. to compete with someone in India because the
cost of living is so much lower there.  You could do better
working at McDonald's than working at their rates.  This is bad
for two reasons:

1) It takes a lot of money out of this country, and puts a lot
of software engineers out of work.  To me, this is a lot worse
than when companies were outsourcing their manual labor
overseas; it's not that hard for an unskilled laborer to get
another unskilled job, or better yet to learn some skills or a
trade and get a better job.  It's a lot harder when you have 4-8
years of college and possibly postgraduate education to just
switch to a different career path.

2) It removes all incentive for young people to go into
engineering, or to learn science and math, as people have been
whining about in this country for years.  In fact, at my own
company, the execs talk a lot in the press about encouraging
children to study science and math, and encourage us engineers
to go to schools to encourage kids to become engineers.  At the
same time, they tell us flat-out in department meetings that
they plan to open up more development centers in Bangalore
because they cost so much less than we do.  Now why would I want
to tell kids to go into this field when I've just been told they
don't want to hire any more people in this country in the
future?

Now why does it cost so much less to live in India anyway, than
in first-world countries like the U.S., the EU countries, or
Japan?  Well, we have a lot of nice benefits in these countries,
like paved roads, police who don't overtly ask for bribes,
health care for the poor (though the US could do a little better
here), good sanitation, low pollution, and all kinds of laws and
government framework which keep these things in place.

Of course, the counter-argument is that, over time, with more
such investment from the West, that India's standard of living
will rise, and its cost of living accordingly, so that things
are more equivalent.  By most accounts, India has improved
greatly over its first 50 years of independence.  But how long
will this take? Another 50 years?  In the meantime, how do we
avoid becoming a tech backwater by outsourcing all our
technology work elsewhere because it saves money in the short
term?  How do we encourage the next generation of knowledge
workers to become knowledge workers instead of something else? 
Some other people mentioned the project leads and programming
gurus staying here, and directing development overseas.  Well,
that might work for 5-10 years, until those people retire.  Then
where do their replacements come from?  We're already seeing a
huge problem in the U.S. space program where all the experienced
engineers are on the verge of retirement, and no one's bothered
to follow their path because it's been such a poor career
choice.  How exactly do we plan to build a successor to the
Space Shuttle with no competent engineers around?

What's the answer for people currently working as software
engineers?  I have no idea.  But I can't recommend this field
for anyone who's still in school.  There's fields out there with
much better long-term potential, such as biotech and
pharmaceuticals.

Dan

>On Wed, 2003-03-12 at 17:04, David Mandala wrote:
>> I can't and won't compete with $7 per hour which is what some
overseas
>> programmers are getting (and they are happy with it). I don't
think
>> their rates are going to come up much in the near future so I
don't
>> think it is going to level out.
>>
>> That said there are lots of small business that can't go of
shore, I
>> plan on working with them when possible.
>
>Maybe I am nuts, but the more Free Software comes along, the
less
>important this becomes.  The reason I say this is offshore
development
>is pretty much useless except for large coding projects.
>
>If there is sufficient Free Software available a good
consultant wont be
>'writing' much software, but rather putting together
'solutions'.=20
>Anyone will tell you its best to 'solve problems' in a hands on
fashion
>with people that speak the same language.  I mean most
implementations
>have problems when both sides speak the same natural language.
;)
>
>That said, I think that as Free Software (and its reuse
matures) the
>paid Software Engineer will have a much different (and probably
bleak)
>look at life, but Information Technology consultants as a
whole, will
>just slightly restructure the makings of their job titles.

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