Offshore Coders and Outsourcing 
 
 
 
 
Background
 
 
The offshore outsourcing of IT work, especially, software development, has got increased attention of late from all corners, including IT industry pundits, analyst firms such as Gartner, corporations in established countries considering or engaging in outsourcing and offshore coding. Most of the companies that provide such outsourcing services, as well as rank-and-file IT professionals in established countries, fear that  their jobs will be taken over by cheaper labor and resource.
 
 
Offshore programmers in emerging economies like India, Southeast Asia, China, etc., work for substantially less than their US and European counterparts, while producing code of equal or greater quality. So, in an economic climate that demands cost cutting wherever possible, it makes complete sense to move as much work as possible offshore. 
 
 
Those companies that provide offshore outsourcing services, do nothing to discourage their prospective clients from taking this view. There no doubt many readers have heard management discussing this very option, as though it presents an ingenious way to get around the unpleasantly long six-month development schedule they have just been presented. At the same time, rank-and-file programmers often (but not always) take a somewhat more pessimistic viewpoint.
 
 
Cheap laborers from undeveloped countries are stealing domestic programming jobs and gutting the domestic job market, much as they did to the manufacturing sector in the last century. Given this unsettling prospect, a number of professionals adopt a protectionist stance, choosing to view their colleagues in Asia and India as opportunistic thieves and charlatans, tricking gullible management into the Devil's Bargain that is offshore coding.
 
 
Introduction
 
Actually, this article examines the heated debate over technology outsourcing especially, the offshore outsourcing of software development jobs. While this article is sure to provoke a fusillade of flames and impassioned rhetoric, the offshore outsourcing issue must be rationally evaluated by all professional software developers, as it has career implications for almost all of us. Here the matters are verified and analyzed. 
 
 
Manufacturing Unit
 
 
It is in fearful sector and those who fear offshore coding, often cite the experiences of the manufacturing sector during the latter half of the 20th century. Since this particular discussion is still the subject of heated debate, any "objective" analysis which provides any insight is necessarily debatable, however the comparison is so instructive that it's worth stepping on a few toes to examine the subject. Japan and then China and other emerging economies began to compete with American manufacturers in the latter 20th century, producing goods in greater quantities, at substantially lower cost. These goods included not only Japanese automobiles and consumer electronics, but clothing, toys, consumer products, etc. And they export to other countries. 
 
China is a large and growing manufacturing powerhouse, and Japan is the world's 2nd largest economy, yet the US is still an economic superpower, with a substantial manufacturing industry of its own, and Japan is only now emerging from 10 years of deflation and stagnation. In some cases, unskilled factory workers earned orders of magnitude less than their American counterparts, while working longer hours in largely unregulated working conditions. The cost reductions realized by the foreign manufacturers arose from two advantages: increased efficiency, and cheaper labor. While the human rights issue of the treatment of workers is relevant here, the point is this: foreign manufacturers could produce the goods Americans and Europeans needed, at a substantially lower cost. As a result, competitive pressures depressed the American and European manufacturing sectors, with many fearing that the developed world would become utterly dependent upon Japan and the emerging economies of China and Southeast Asia for all its worldly goods.
 
Thus, we must conclude that those who dismiss offshore coding as a fad, and those who herald it as the end of the world, are equally incorrect. While comparing the offshore coding trend to the history of offshore manufacturing in this way is instructive, we will discover that significant differences exist, which prevent a simplistic comparison between the two. Nonetheless, the insight gained from the offshore manufacturing trend applies just as well to the offshore coding trend emerging now. And they are helpful!