Expanding my thoughts on productivity gains and outsourcing

Posted by Bill Rini @ 12:38 am

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The other day I made a post in which I questioned Darcy Burner’s conclusions about productivity. I had mentioned in my post that I had been thinking about this very subject recently. What I had not mentioned was that I had actually written a post but had held off posting it because I wanted to polish it up a bit. Since the cat is already out of the bag, I thought I would just go ahead and post it anyway:

Is Outsourcing The Real Threat?

I have been one of those folks very critical of the press coverage of technology outsourcing. I’m a logical person and most journalists just don’t make sense. In fact, most of those who are vocal opponents of outsourcing don’t make sense either. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m neither in favor of nor against technology outsourcing. It just is. I tend to be more harsh on those against outsourcing simply because 70% of their argument is some unrealistic expectation that the government or some other entity is going to spin back the clock and send them back to some pre-bubble-burst era where HTML programmers could command $50,000 a year.

I’ll share with you a surefire way to spot an article written by a complete moron. They’ll confuse tech workers with call center employees. Major, major portions of the “tech” jobs being outsourced aren’t even tech jobs. Someone who reads prompts off a screen is not a tech worker. Again, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to downplay call center workers but a call center employee can go from answering tech support phone calls at Dell to answering phones at a non-tech company with little change in wage because their specialty is not technology but phone support. It’s like saying that some guy working in the mailroom at a dotcom is a tech worker. He may happen to work at a tech company but if his job is outsourced to India it doesn’t mean that a tech job was outsourced.

Now the real issue I wanted to post about was whether or not outsourcing even matters.

Six years ago someone who could “code” HTML was like a rock star. Today, they’re teaching HTML in grade school. For the “real” programmers out there, I have the following question:

If the latest version of MS Visual Studio increases your productivity by 10% have they not done the same thing as shipping 10% of tech jobs overseas? I think Gartner predicted that 10% of tech jobs would be shipped overseas by 2006 but Microsoft plans on releasing a new version of MS Visual Studio soon that, they claim, makes programmers more efficient. If Microsoft even claims productivity boost of as little as 10% haven’t they reduced the labor market’s need for programmers?

The fact of the matter is that writing some simple if/then statements is no longer a high paid skill. Microsoft and a whole host of other companies are striving to make the more repetitive parts of programming obsolete. Granted, we’re not there today but I’m predicting that we’re not too far off from when better tools will eliminate more tech jobs than jobs being outsourced.

I’m sure some will cite the fact that work always seems to increase to the level of absorbing any excess labor but if that were that actually true then those who argue against jobs going to India or China would have to admit the flaw in their own reasoning. If the amount of labor worldwide has increased then American companies would simply increase the amount of development work. Ahhhh . . . but that’s not true and they have been somewhat fond of keeping the labor activity constant (or lowering the amount of work) while seeking out lower cost alternatives.

The bottom line is that common programming tasks and many other tech jobs are becoming obsolete. Those who are fighting the outsourcing trend are so blinded that they don’t realize that the very people supplying him/her with their tools are the same people who are striving to make programming so simple that any idiot can do their job after reading a “Learn How To Program ________ in 24 Hours.”

The best way to guarantee a good job is not to legislate away competition or to join a union; you have to provide some increased level of value. If most people took a step back and looked at it objectively they would see that many skills are likely to become obsolete regardless of whether or not it’s via outsourcing or advances in technology. Instead of pouring their efforts into slowing down the inevitable they should be using their energy to become more competitive. Sometimes that may be learning new tech skills. Sometimes that may mean that they leave the field altogether. Regardless, the only way you can make rational decisions is to view the big picture. Getting caught up in whether or not you think it’s fair is as pointless as trying to rationalize with a shark why he shouldn’t eat you.

License

This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider getting our free RSS feed so you can be notified of other posts like this.

• BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
• « Poker Tourney Photos Now Available
• » I’ve sold my soul

• RELATED / YOU MIGHT FIND THESE INTERESTING
• Outsourcing Roundup
• IT Outsourcing
• Programmer Productivity and Market Demand
• Iggy Folds
• Senator Feinstein Hates Online Poker