If you are very very skilled in certain areas of software or electrical engineering, this outsourcing can work to your benefit, believe it or not. Many companies have laid off so many workers and moved so much overseas that they now have only a skeleton crew here in the states. I quit my day gig recently and am now operating as a contractor at a very high rate helping some of these companies out. They are rapidly learning that the quality they get from some of the Indian shops is not quite up to par and that communications and time differences really do make a difference, especially on projects with tight schedules. And, as someone pointed out earlier, US companies are already paying $50-60/hr for Indian contract workers here in the US, so the cost savings aren’t what they were 7 or 8 years ago. Also, most of these Indian kids are only a couple of years out of school but are filling positions that require more experience; this means more projects in trouble, more bugs, which means more $$$ for yours truly. While guys like me are probably okay for the next few years, the people that are really screwed are the American kids graduating with engineering degrees now. They’ve got no choice but to go to Lockheed or Raytheon and polish bombs. Death is pretty much the last growth industry left here in the US.
