Headlines which end with a question mark can be answered with the word “no”.

Usually, but not in this case. The bare fact is IT is going the same way as manufacturing. As an industry matures, staffing becomes a larger part of it's cost base.

Ok, as time goes by, the other parts required in the job tend to become cheaper as the industry grows and you get commodity savings - A PC you can develop on used to cost £1000, now it costs £300 for example. The problem is staff costs don't reduce over time, they tend to increase. So over time staff costs come to make up a bigger percentage of total cost of producing the good or providing the service. And when it comes down to it, staff costs in what we used to refer to as the second world are just currently way, way less than they are in the EU. I couldn't survive on what a coder in Chenai could live quite comfortably on.

So, especially when you're talking about a 'good' where the shipping costs of the final item are effectively zero, there is no way in hell I can do the work required for the money someone with equal skills - maybe not as broad skills, but for the job that's required right now just as good - sat at a PC in Nairobi can.

The killer is that this is actually (in the grand scheme of things) a short term effect. As money flows to places like India and the population as a whole becomes more educated and employed, so their expectations rise. People will always want to be paid more, will always want a better job. So in say 20 or 30 years, it probably will be that someone in Chenai will be charging much the same rates I would be for the job in hand.

The problem is, I've long since gone because the business moved my job to India so I've gone off to do something else and nobody bothered to learn it at University after me because there's no jobs to do it. So now the business has no choice but to pay the guy in India whatever he asks for. Oh Dear... there is a distinct long term value to maintaining a local skills base in any trade, be it IT or blacksmithing. I just don't think most of the people running most of corporate IT give a damn about the long term.

Sadly, if the last few years have shown us anything, it's that our 'captains of industry' have absolutely no interest in anything but short term gain so this is exactly how things will go.

I can't answer on this topic without being horribly biased.

Mark

Apart from the extensive reading I think Jon has it in a nutshell. Manufacturing, services and IT have all been major industries in the UK, and all have or are being outsourced to countries with lower employment overheads. There are still a couple of industries where we excel, but that is not something to rely on.

The UK is the world's second largest exporter of services, we do fine in that area.

Programmers though are going to have to adjust, the future for many of them is that they must adapt to working in globally dispersed teams. India isn't just going to be a big warhouseof IT talent for UK customers for long, their own industry requires software too. They will have difficulty feeding internal requirements and still growing their international business, so there will be opportunities aplenty for companies like Sage, and SAP and all the rest to sell products and services over there. I wouldn't be too surprised if Paul's next big job is to work with Indian programmers to service an Indian company.

In the next five to ten years I can actually see India having to import IT specialists because of shortages. India is growing rapidly and will need its IT specialists for indian projects not to service the rest of the world.