The audio quality was troublesome, reminded me of the first few shows where you did not have the lapel mike. I’m sure you’ll get that corrected. Good show!

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The work that is being outsourced to India today involves skills which are commodities. This is stuff like maintenance of existing software and work that doesn’t demand high quality or high value. I’m not too concerned over tomorrow, for the reasons below. But if Americans sit back and become complacent, they will catch up with us in about 8-10 years.

One of the things that people don’t take into account are the cultural differences between the US and India. Indians are intensely hierarchical in nature — they’re taught it from birth, being part of their education system as well as in their religions. In Indian society, unless you are supervising someone, you have a much lower standing. As a result, a new programmer just starting work is extremely interested in getting promoted to a managerial position. A direct effect of this is they have very little interest in becoming better programmers. Ultimately this means that for American firms outsourcing work to India, they’re always dealing with fresh college graduates who are clueless about how good software gets made.

The law of supply and demand is working to balance things out. A good software developer in India makes ‘doctor money’ — that is, an income equivalent to what a physician would make. And this salary is increasing for them due to the fresh demand for talent. With the current weak dollar and higher salaries amongst Indian developers, it’s starting to get where there’s maybe a 20% savings gained by outsourcing. And for some US companies, that’s not enough savings to offset the timezone challenges, the communications difficulties, and the loss of control over projects. As well as the costs of the re-work needed of poorly written code.

Having personally seen some of the astoundingly bad software that comes out of India, I’m now starting to market myself as someone who can clean up failed outsourcing projects.

What can Americans do? My short list:
- Always be learning
- Move to where the value to the business is
- Be flexible
- If you specialize, know that you’re explicitly doing it, and not that the market is leaving you behind
- Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst

Thanks for the podcast, hope you get the audio difficulties straightened out.

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No it isn’t 8 kbps but listening to it after publishing I hear what you are saying. I think it MIGHT be that I reduced the input volume of the audio when I generated the final show. Some of the other shows have seemed a bit “harsh” due to the volume of my big mouth.

I think that was the mistake and I think today’s show may sound the same. This afternoon I am going to regenerate those two shows and see if that is the difference.

Jack

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This ain’t music, I don’t know exactly what people expect from an audio podcast.

I agree my first few shows had a TON of noise in them but now with the headset I think the sound is pretty good. I hope you and most others continue to listen.

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