Bringing costs down is a vicious cycle. Your competitor is doing it, so you have to all so.

I used to think that hugh enterprise development was the only thing being sent overseas. But they've had several articles in the LA Times on outsourcing, and some of them have involved 20-30 person companies. They are proud of the fact that they have 10 analysts and 10 marketing, other support here and 10 developers in India.

PF

>Whats the best way to bring costs down?
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>Either ship jobs overseas, or threaten to ship jobs overseas. The jobs that are going overseas are so called enterprise development jobs. In the US, big teams are selling these projects. My experience has been that enterprose "team" shops have problems delivering on schedule and budget.
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>There are still a lot of vertical markets and small businesses that do not need "enterprise" solutions. I would be leary of a project vendor trying to sell me and aircraft carrier, when all I need is a jet ski. I would not want to tie my business to the reliablity of an ISP or flaws in the I/O pipe.
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>The most eloquent and appealing interfaces are those still using desktop GUIs. Browsers are still "pages", and without elaborate frame schemes, they behave like old CGI services. They are slow and slugish.
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>I stress this all the time: If developing appealing apps is important, the developer has to move away from buffering, binding, and selects (except SQL cursors). Grid controls should be well thought out and not be relied on as input controls unless absolutely necessary. Using the lower functions, like seek, replace and scan are crisper and cleaner. I have a prototype that I would bet a bottle of Grand Marinier, cannot be duplicated using buffering, binding and selects. It screams. But it relies on solid, fast lower functions.
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>My career is driven by a desire to create cool apps that the market will appreciate. I never saw programming as a career - it was an an acceptable alternative to being a rock star:-). I suppose, if individuals feel better about working for others, and relying on them to grow the market and assure the future, then that is their choice. But, the price paid by teams with no equity participation in the product can be low moral, ugly solutions, undelivered and unused projects, and jobs moving overseas.
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>Simply put, some of us would like to compete with Intuit, rather than others in a "team" for that next opening in a management slot!
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>Project purchasers in the US get burned alot when they contract out to a team. The purpose of project teams is to write billable hours. If not, they would fix the price up front!
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>And we all know that muggles will almost accept any reason (excuse) for delivery problems. Tell them "memory leak", and you you can get anoter 100 man months trying to get the system to work, even if memory leaks were not an issue!
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>In the end, though, I don't think I would call it a hoax. I still think, even with the problems of outsourcing, that the outflow will stop, or even slowdown. Shortsightness of CEOs has been mentioned here many, many times.
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>This is true! The buyers need to make better decisions. It's easy for them to think that a development shop with logo's on their tennis shirts are the real thing. They need to ask for references - and samples. CEOs tend to buy the image rather than the substance.
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>We had a web services sales team comeby to pitch their wares. They told us they did this and that for Toyota, etc.We asked if they could show the sites - and they said no - it was propietary! We told em good bye right then.
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>I think that some are only looking at the bottom line. I don't believe it's a hoax at all.
>Maybe not a hoax. Maybe a shot across the bough? What they're saying to large enterprize (team) shops is this: You're over schedule, over budget and we're miles away from delivery. If you not going to solve our problem - then we're going overseas - where it's cheap - and reduce our cost exposure. What can they do. They obviously don't have my number - because if thy did - they would be smiling:-)
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>>PF
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>>>>I am curious as to why you would make a statement that "The overseas technical job paranoia is a rumor or hoax!"
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>>>TV!
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>>>There was a special on NWI (or was it TechTV?). Anyway, the crew was in India, examining the "boom" in tech jobs.
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>>>I expected to see clean rooms and programmers in cubes writing the next killer app. The story was not about what most of us might consider to be a technical job. It was a story about young Indian graduates with technical degrees getting jobs in the new Indian economy.
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>>>The piece that delt with "programming" showed engineers messaging call lists through browse windows. The rest of the story went into what kinds of jobs young Indians with techical degrees were working.
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>>>Maybe the story missed something - but all the jobs were call room jobs (I have received several phone solicitations where I thought I detected an Indian accent) or help desk jobs (How do I install this or that or why isn't my browser working).
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>>>There were very bright, young - professional Indians, but the jobs were all phone (or boiler) room work. Not what many of us would imagine a stolen or lost US job.
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>>>I can see "team" software projects moving over there. But the piece didn't go into software development, unless browing a call list is considered development work!