[ARCADIA]

Is this the "IT" model; or, the future of all technological and professional services in the US?

We are being reduced to a nation of cash register operators.

[Moose4]

It's already happening. I'm a contract programmer myself, and the company I'm contracted to has announced four outsourcings of various departments (programming, computer operations, analysis) in the five months I've been there. Some have been domestic, some have been offshore. Their plans for the next couple of years are to do more of the same.

The irony is, a lot of the people who are getting displaced by this aren't full-time employees, though they are getting hit hard. They're contractors who are here on visas from India. Since companies are offshoring their jobs, some of those folks who came here on H-1Bs or L-1s are actually having to think about going back to India to get work. (The company allows, in some circumstances, a full-time employee to bump a contractor out of a position when there's a downsizing, which I think is fair.)

}:-)4

[familyop]

"...in other words, decide whether - and how - to compete against external suppliers or re-structure to manage those suppliers."

..."manage those suppliers?" That's pretty funny. In the coming years, they will either sign the contracts or pay salaries/wages for inferior code, IMO. Good developers will be paid again, one way or another.

[MikefromOhio]

they have been saying this for nearly 5 years now....I think the trend will reverse itself here sooner or later too...

that said, since I am a contractor for the Air Force now, I dont really have to worry too much :)

[Nick Danger]

This is actually good news for people who are any good. In any field of endeavor where the difference between the best people and the second-best people is large in terms of returns, out-sourcing becomes the rule.

Law firms and ad agencies are like this. Saving money on a second-best lawyer who loses your case is stupid. So even though the biggest companies have their own in-house lawyers, they use outside firms for the Serious Stuff.

Same thing with ad agencies; the money isn't in producing the ads, it's running them. So the 'creative' is a stupid place to try to save money.

Programming is definitely like that. The observation that the best programmers are ten times more productive than the second-best programmers goes back to at least David Brooks in the 1970's.

[Lazamataz]

My experience tells me that this is nonsense. I have never seen a successful offshore outsourced project. I have, however, seen successful US-based outsourced projects. If they are referring to US-based outsourcing, then the REAL American IT placement will RISE, not fall.