[ale] OT: Indian outsourcing

[Fulton Green]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2004 at 10:51:44AM -0500, Alan Stewart wrote:
> A very good article on the situation:
> 
> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/india.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=

Ditto.  The most enlightening thing to me was the sidebar on the
"management consultancy" cottage industry that, the article alleges, has
cropped up almost solely for the purpose of giving CEOs a "permission
slip" to offshore.

The main takeaway of the article seems to be that the next shift in
*onshore* employment needs to be to the areas of creativity and
innovation, since we still have a perceived advantage in those realms
whereas the IT and other BPO activities offshort tend to focus solely on
the refinement of an innovation or concept (a la the Japanese car
industry).

I'd also commend the "modded-up" comments on the Slashdot discussion
thread:

http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/04/01/27/2243221.shtml?tid=126&tid=156&tid=98&tid=99

FWIW, I'm now in the applications stage of pursuing an MBA.  Naturally,
certain activities that used to require onshore MBAs or BBAs to perform
are now also being offshored.   So the comment about "just how many
Ph.D. degrees do I need to stay employed?" really hit home for me.

Just my $0.02 worth.