Good developers (that are in the field because they view it as an art and a creative endeavor) will not have a problem finding work, even in this market. Developers that are in it to collect a pay check will struggle when faced with outsourced labor that will do it with the same lack of passion but cheaper.
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I ain’t no IT expert by a long shot. But my general feeling for the last several years has been: If your job can be outsourced, eventually it will be.
Mechanics and house cleaning folks – just as examples – don’t have to worry because obviously they have to be “on site” to do their jobs. Likewise, jobs that require direct relationships won’t go anywhere either – for example, face-to-face sales.
The dichotomy in finance is easily seen at an investment bank. Grunt work at the associate level and below will largely be outsourced at some point (a monkey could do most of the modeling and graphics work for pitch books). But the partners who deal directly with the clients – their jobs aren’t going anywhere in the generic sense. Likewise, the straightforward PhD-level derivatives number crunching will get outsourced, but the “creative” guys at the top will always be on site. If the job involves a lot of creativity, direct client contact, and/or security issues, it isn’t going anywhere. But if it doesn’t – look out.
As an unlikely example, my CPA is starting to outsource certain tax accounting tasks to a firm in India. Now, he hasn’t let anyone go in order to do this but he plans on outsourcing more and more as the firm grows instead of hiring more folks directly.
I’d imagine IT will be the same way. The generic engineering-type stuff will continue to be outsourced at an increasing pace. I have a friend that used to manage a team of folks in Eastern Europe for his firm. He told me that one day he woke up and realized that some of these guys were better than he was and that he needed to find something else to do because eventually he wasn’t going to be able to compete, which is exactly what he did. But the really creative and relationship-driven jobs will stay here.
If you sit down and ask yourself, “Can someone overseas do my job?” and the answer is yes, then eventually it’s either going to happen or the fact that it could happen is one day going to dramatically affect your pay. At least that’s what I suspect. But again, I ain’t no IT perfeshnul.
