We found out last Tuesday, at a meeting called for 7am. The division is ceasing all software development in North America. All the work we are doing currently will be moved to India. We are to train and certify our successors and then be on our way. There's a severance package, but it is contingent on a successful "knowledge transfer" from us to them.
It's not that much of a surprise. Outsourcing to India is huge business at the moment.
Ever since I heard the news , I've been spending much of my waking hours trying to understand what it all means. For a start, there are the questions to do with my own circumstances. I am here on a work visa, a H1B, that expires when my employment ends. Beyond that, there is obviously a trend, a scary trend for anyone working in software in the U.S.
Questions I'm asking myself:
- if people in India can do everything that can be done in the U.S. but cheaper, why do anything in the U.S.?
- is there any aspect of writing software that will not be commoditized?
- what is the value of a degree in computer science and years of experience in the I.T. industry
- Was Ed Yourdon right when he predicted that the American programmer was likely to suffer the fate of the dodo bird, as he wrote in the Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, more than ten years ago?
Beyond that, word is that the Indian outsourcing industry sees a threat of low-cost competition from China. They reckon they have a few years to move up the food chain before their current business model is affected. Who knows how this will all turn out?
How all occasions do o'erwhelm us...Hamlet (I think) but not as focus on Revenge so much as INCREDULITY! Jees, what rabbit comes out of the hat next? An audio blog?
Maybe it should read, "Now all occasions do inform against us."
Of course, Google knows the answer: Hamlet Act IV Scene IV. Having seen Fortinbras, the man of action, Hamlet goes into one of his agonized soliloquies.
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
If I recognized it, it's because this is one of the two Plays that I studied at school (the other one being the unlucky one).
No need to worry about an audio blog. It's hard enough to get thoughts down in writing, never mind stream of consciousness.
By the way, I am tickled to get not one, but two comments here. Thank you very much!