The current issue of Dr. Dobb’s Journal has an article (Software Development In Eastern Europe) about the Outsourcing/Offshoring topic I posted a while ago. The article focuses in Eastern Europe. One of the interesting conclusions was that the %u00abregion%u00bb no longer competes for price with countries like India. The cheap talent seems to be gone, and prices will soon rise to that of Western countries (“one source describes the formerly crucial pool of cheap Eastern European programming talent as simply %u00abgone%u00bb”). Apparently the communication (and cultural?) barriers are lower than with other countries, which seems to be relevant to this, as well as the proximity of the EC.
The topic that really struck me as interesting was in part 4, where the article discusses how several companies are now doing their R&D work (including product development) in those countries. It’s not only dumping code made to measure, but also the R&D and creating work itself that’s being moved.
A few months back, I met two guys online in a chat. One of them worked for EDS, the other was a car mechanic. This same topic came up, and they seemed very concerned about Europe and our loss of identity because of immigration and cheap labor (not only in IT). The second guy said the “selected” that job precisely because the know it wouldn’t ever be offshored.
Kind of ironic, isn’t it?