Is offshore development just a natural evolution of the economy, or is it an example of corporate greed destroying American jobs?
Is offshore development just a natural evolution of the economy, or is it an example of corporate greed destroying American jobs? It depends on whom you ask. American programmers say offshore outsourcing will eventually cripple the U. S. software industry. Corporations say that by going offshore they are just exercising good business sense. In fact, they may both be right.

This trend of outsourcing IT work offshore began when the Y2K threat was realized. Companies needed more work done than there were workers, so they turned to countries like India. It costs an average of $100,000 a year to employ a developer full time in the United States. A developer of comparative training can be hired in India for $25,000 to $35,000 a year. American businesses soon realized that they had found a good thing. Word quickly spread, and more companies followed suit.

Y2K came and went, and companies continued sending work offshore. Now, 2 of every 5 Fortune 500 companies outsource work to other countries. This number is expected to increase by 50 percent during the next two years, and high tech layoffs are steadily on the rise.

Many US programmers are becoming angry. They are watching their jobs disappear to a foreign market that they have little chance of competing with. In India, 73,500 students graduate every year and become IT professionals. In the United States, the number is 35,000. However, India is not the only competition American programmers face. Russia has also recently become a viable contender.

This comes as no great shock to industry professionals. After all, 3,500 of every million people in Russia are mathematicians, scientists, and engineers, making it one of the top three populated technical nations. Russia is beginning to receive its share of outsourced work from the United States, and there seems to be plenty to go around. Forrester Research, Inc., a research firm in Cambridge, Mass., predicts that more than 1 million offshore IT workers will be needed by 2005. But what