You can read a thousand articles on the outsourcing of high tech jobs to India and China.
Here is the whole topic in a nutshell:
1) Jobs are being outsourced to places with educated work-forces that can produce better results for a lower cost.
2) People who are "losing" those jobs are frustrated.
3) This has happened before - in agriculture, manufacturing - now in knowledge.
4) The only constant is change.
5) Many people fight change - others try to adapt.
6) The losses felt here are gains felt elsewhere.
7) With every closed door there is another to be opened.
One interesting thing I discoved researching all of this is that Canada is ranked the number 2 place in the world to outsource your IT needs. It makes sense. Canada has a educated workforce. The adoption of technology is high. The workforce speaks English (eh?). IT workers make a bit less than their US counterparts - add to that a relatively weak Canadian dollar and the cost of outsourcing is lowered. You can check out a stolen graphic that shows Canada in the number 2 spot.
The topic also got me thinking about intellecual property. One of the arguments tossed around in the debate over outsourcing is that the rest of the world is welcome to do the grunt work - we in North America will continue to inovate. The thinking is that the places to which the work is outsourced will not become inovators - they will happily continue doing grunt work. I don't believe that. Its only a matter of time before they become innovators themselves. They will not only do the grunt work - but find new ways to do the same old things. They wont just write the same old code - they will write new - better - faster code that does things that we didn't think of. Add to that the fact that they will have our entire libraries of existing code as a starting point and the offshore innovation is almost assured.
What does this have to do with IP? Its tough to stop anyone from reverse engineering something. It happens all the time. The intellecutal property is stolen in a way and new clone products emerge. But what happens when you actually hand over the blueprints. Not just the product - but the detailed instructions on how to build it. How long will it take for that code and IP to proliferate? How long before you have cloned software that was re-writen by improving the original code?
I'm not saying such a cenario would be a bad thing - I just wonder if the outsourcers have given it any thought.
thats all for now
andre
Posted by andre at February 10, 2004 07:02 PM