Difference between revisions of "Talk:CSE590TU"

Revision as of 17:44, 15 October 2004

590TU Discussion

Welcome to the Discussion Page for CSE590TU. This is for general comments and announcements for the class. If you have a comment on a specific topic or lecture, please visit the lecture-specific page. Please use the + sign in the top of the screen to add comments to the page.

Talk on Electronic Voting for MS Employees

There is going to be a talk given on electronic voting by a Microsoft researcher for Microsoft employees on October 18th. You can register for the talk through MSTE. [jameswelle]

IT Worker Demand and Outsourcing

[Damon May] This topic has come up in the last two lectures, hence the main page post.

A couple times so far in class, we've seen some very optimistic projections of IT job growth, particularly for "Software Analysts", over the next 10-20 years. There are a number of inferences that can be made from the projection; it would be easy, for instance, to come away with a warm and fuzzy feeling that we're all in a field that will be booming for quite some time.

However, as we discussed in last night's (10/14) class, an increasing trend is to fill this talent vacuum with overseas resources. I myself manage a team with one developer in the US and three in India. This situation presents communication and other issues, but there's no denying the fact that companies are turning to outsourcing in great numbers. In the last three years, my department at my company has gone from roughly 5% of new development performed overseas to roughly 30%.

Along these lines, USA Today has an interesting article along these designs. It's a rather alarmist piece, describing US IT workers as an endangered species (here's the slashdot reference that led me there).

There are a number of policy issues related to outsourcing. As was discussed in last night's class, the US has a high standard of living and high wages relative to India, China, and other traditional outsourcing societies. What can the US do to make its workers productive enough to justify keeping the jobs here?

In a more protectionist vein, the article above mentions the idea of tightening the caps on H-1B visas or imposing additional restrictions on them.

How big a threat do people see to the US IT industry (and the larger US economy) from outsourcing? How much does it counterbalance the projected growth in IT jobs? Left unchecked, will the trend continue, stabilize, or reverse itself? What can government or industry do, economically and ethically, to slow or reverse the trend?

I think this might make an interesting project idea.