I thought this article would talk about my beliefs on why Indian outsourcing is ending, but it left out any reasons, so I’ll add my thoughts.
» The Great Indian Outsourcing is over:
The Great Indian Outsourcing movement will be over within two years.
That’s what an architect turned blogger who writes anonymously from Bangalore is predicting. The author is writing from the movement’s Ground Zero, so he may have better insight than the rest of us. But I’ve got good anecdotal evidence from a local outsourcing company that lends weight to his prediction.
I live and work in Charleston, S.C., an area known more for its beautiful beaches and gorgeous live oak trees than high technology (though we do have Robert X. Cringley). But Charleston’s location can attract businesses that don’t necessarily need high technology, just smart people. Outsourcing is one of those types of businesses.
I know personally a project manager at a local outsourcing company. Our daughters go to school together. We were talking at a recent birthday party about outsourcing, cost, and the availability of talent. Business is booming, but it has little to do with cost, she tells me. She says its the lack of local talent that drives most of their business.<snip>
The Tired Architect – our Bangalorian blogger – talks about the availability of talent in Eastern Europe and China, and there’s obviously talent in Central America. Brazil is another up-and-coming technology hot spot.
I agree with The Tired Architect that India’s monopoly on the outsourcing market is over.
The real reason, of course, is money. We’ve created a vibrant middle class in countries where there currently wasn’t one.
As our money pours into the highly-skilled worker’s bank accounts, he shops locally. He funds his local merchants, and presto — the cost of housing and goods goes up in that region. Gradually, the low cost/highly-skilled pool is depleted.
This is why other locales (like Eastern Europe, China and Central America) are being tapped.
5 Comments
Mark Turansky
The original author (the blogger from Bangalore) goes into more detail about why India will be supplanted by China, Eastern Europe, and other places, but I think you make excellent points as well. Click through from my article to the original author’s site for more detail.
Love this blog theme, btw.
Dork
Thanks — I was admittedly too lazy to click through to the original author’s post, heh.
Tony
Yup, in ten years our software will be developed by people squatting in huts and talking in clicks. It will take a complete collapse of the IPO/Stock-based value system to make people realize that crappy quality is a high price to pay.
Dork
Sadly, that’s what’s at the heart of the problem. I’ve become pretty disheartened w/ the latest quarterly results reportings: companies that reported flat GROWTH had their stock prices drop….
I’m not talking about companies that lost money… they just failed to grow as much as they had in previous quarters. WTF?
Ugh.
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