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by Douglas Dow
A confluence of email in early October has me casting my gaze offshore.
The first, forwarded to me by Mary McWilliams Johnson, is from ZDNet. The October 10th article, Global Outsourcing Helps U.S., contains research indicating that offshoring of IT jobs will ultimately benefit the U.S. ecomomy, and that policies such as restricting immigration can only make domestic IT employment worse. By October 15th, 74 responses had been posted, mostly to disparage the research, since it was conducted by a firm on the Indian subcontinent. Others proposed responses to the offshore challenge, such as establishing trade barriers, redefining or refocusing career plans, and whining to government leaders.
(In July, I received another Mary McGram (as I call—and file—her messages). This time from the New York Times (must log on to see), it indicated that the motive of management in moving jobs offshore is not so much for economical reasons but more to provide a 24-hour development cycle. This cycle allows programmers on one side of the globe to hand off to developers on the other, creating a bi-polar (in a geographical sense) model.)
The second is a press release from Judy Glick-Smith, Immediate Past President of STC, dated October 6th. Always at the forefront of trends in IT support, her new venture, The GlickSmith Group, Inc., "focuses on assisting organizations to develop models that describe their enterprise architecture." Citing the release (italics in the original):
According to the September 1, 2003, issue of CIO Magazine, economists call the changes to the current labor market structural rather than cyclical. This is due to the trend to send work offshore. This trend is permanent, "Well-defined and accepted internal software development and maintenance processes are...key to making an offshore situation work." Companies considering a move to offshore outsourcing will be more successful in their efforts by defining strategies, processes, and specifications before making the move.
The new venture is positioned to ensure the success of such companies, and shows one way in which we can redefine ourselves.
That technical communication is thriving in India should come as no surprise. I attended the 3rd India Chapter STC conference in 2001 (and reported on it). Speakers at that time made it clear that Indian firms would be aggressively pursuing opportunities in tech comm. This year, I will get a sense of how the Indian tech comm industry is progressing when I attend the 5th India Chapter STC conference in December.
Do not be fooled by India Chapter's membership numbers. Currently at 70, many more hundreds will join STC once the membership fee structure becomes more equitable. I expect to see several hundred attend the conference, and to learn from many of them.