Offshore outsourcing has gone from a vague threat from the book "The Rise and Fall of the American Programmer" to a daily issue in the Valley. I've talked with a lot of people, some of whom were strong advocates of outsourcing and though I never had a solid argument I always thought that there was something fundamentally wrong with the practice. Now it may be that I am slow in just coming to this, but I think it needs to be said.
The main reason for outsourcing is economic. Software engineers in other countries cost less. So if you are a bean counter and you looks at the R & D cost of a product, outsourcing looks really attractive.
What I have only come to grasp recently is that the Valley is an eco-system. The tech jobs here are the underpinning of an entire culture of innovation and experimentation. With comfortable jobs underneath them engineers are free to explore and innovate in their free time. From this type of innovation we have reaped tremendous rewards; HTML, HTTP, MP3, and MPEG, just to name a few.
The most obvious example of this eco-system is Steve Wozniak and the development of the Apple 1. Steve had a comfortable job with HP, one he was loathed to give up even when Apple started doing well. It was only with this support that he was able to find the time to join the Homebrew computer club and to develop the Apple 1. The Apple 1 is what built the Personal Computer industry. Without it we would not have the valley we see today.
What people don't see is that the short term financial gains that come from shipping jobs out of the Valley are destroying the very fertile ground upon which their companies are built. Other areas of the country would beg to have the type of tech environment that we enjoy in this valley. When it all dies because the front-line engineers have all gone because of lack of jobs it will be too late to reconstruct what we once had.
The other reason for outsourcing I hear is that American's are no longer training for high tech jobs. It's only because of outsourcing that this is happening. You can't pay for college on dreams of a good job, you need assurances that your field will last you for at least long enough to pay off your loans.
What's sad is that the kid that built Napster in his dorm room to show off to his buddies probably wouldn't have even written it today because there would be no job for him to go to after he graduated, and thus no reason for an interest in software development. Without Napster and MP3 we wouldn't have had the expansion of broadband that we saw that fed the VC and tech bubble.
We need to understand that technology innovation doesn't happen in the board rooms or product marketing cubes. That's where evolution happens, not revolution. It's the geeks that make the difference and who build our tech economy. And when the geeks go they will take all of that spirit of innovation with them.
