[ale] Flame Bait, I suppose Re: [ale] IT moving offshore

[John Mills]

ALErs -

On 20 May 2002, Jeff Hubbs wrote:

> This begs the question of why any Americans should bother going to
> school to learn how to write software, as horrible as that sounds.  

I audited an compilers/ operating systems course in 1968 (yes , _68_). The
instructor was John Donovan, who - I understood - had led the 'Multics'
team. On the last day, he said that he had directed the course all term,
and asked if any students had topics _they_ wanted discussed. One asked,
"Would you recommend programming as a career path?" Donovan said, "Not if
you mean 'writing application programs', because that is becoming easier
every day. The careers are in developing languages and operating systems."

I am sure I changed a word here or there from memory fade, but those seem
prophetic words from the perspective of more than 30 years.

> When the guy says "Where all the development is outsourced, you've got
> to have people to manage that," the people doing the managing will
> simply not understand good programming from crappy programming because
> they won't have written a line in their lives.  Of course, I've seen IT
> management people who fit that exact description, but who wants to live
> in a world where most of the software was written by the cheapest labor
> possible?  

I agree that you need some software development experience to manage
software development and IT services, but I would _not_ assume the
offshore developer would be inferior in skill nor professionalism in the
"classical" IT products which make up the bulk of our IT workloads which
I would call "commodity IT".

I would expect communications and coordination problems (distance- and
possibly language-related). Those vendors that succeed will solve the
problems.

The phrase that comes to mind is, "What have you done for me _lately_?"

> I say, reduce IT costs by using Open Source software and fast,
> readily-available commodity computer components before skimping on good,
> hardworking people at arm's reach.  Do the research and figure out how
> to buy only what you really need for HW and SW.  The sub-$5000 1TB RAID
> file server exists, for instance!

Yes - there is a lot of value-added in information-based products, and
less advantage (at the moment) in offshore development, but I would say
that commodity products (routers, say, and your file-server example) are
also at risk: the market justifies serious staff development by a
3rd-world vendor. Printers have been there for a long time.

This isn't anti-patriotism. I believe we will not succeed in putting up
technology fences, any more than the English did in the 18th century. We
need to identify areas where we really have unique value-added to
contribute, or we will not be competitive. Information technology has
"turned up the gas" tremendously on this.

With the "education content" jobs go most of those supporting jobs, of
course. Production jobs are almost impossible to keep here.

 - John Mills


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