From rediff.com:
Yahoo! the global Internet communications, commerce and media company, is the latest on the block to begin outsourcing its software requirements from India by setting up a development centre in Bangalore, its first outside the United States.
There's been a lot of talk about this among some of the engineers at work. "How long until we don't bother hiring US engineers?" and stuff like that.
It's too soon to tell what it all really means, but it's a real reminder of the fact that we live in a global economy.
Amusingly, there's a typo at the end of the article: "As one of the first online navigational guides to the Web, Yahoo! caters to over 235 users in 25 countries in 13 languages." It's been pointed out in the comments, but I guess the rediff.com folks don't bother to read those.
Posted by jzawodn at July 19, 2003 10:06 AM
Sad but true, globalization , especially in the IT sector is really becoming a stark reality, and I think the glory days of IT are behind us..
I think, US Developers and other technical specialist , just have to change the focus from pure hard-core developers, to more roles as innovators, integration experts and true software analysts, solving a problem , not necessarily with all the details...
Even though the "work" can be "farmed out" A few things overseas technologists will have a hard time grappling with..
- Small to mid-size companies need a lot of on-site hand-holding, and usually dont have the time or expertise to seek and manage overseas talent, local talent or specialists are still needed (even if some work is outsourced)
- Face-to-Face communication and support... who you gonna call at 3am when you app dies, because of a hardware error, how are they going to troubleshoot and fix that remotely?
- Understanding local customs and business requirements, again small companies usually have very specific set of needs which may be regional and or culturally based , how is someone who is half-way around the world going to know that.
That's my 2cents.
-tony
Bah. This is just the official (re)launch. What were we doing since Oct 2000? It feels really odd, I'm one of the "old" fogeys......