Who’s On Phirst

Beginning in the 90’s, American software companies began farming out development work to companies overseas, or "off-shoring". These efforts mirrored what had been taking place for quite some time in other industries, such as textile manufacturing, and sent tremors through the software community. The heady days of the dot-com boom gave way to fear and gnashing of teeth in the early part of this decade. CEO’s were pictured riding astride elephants in India, and executives were predicting that soon all non-design development work would take place off-shore. Would there be any jobs left for American software developers?

Now entering the latter part of this first decade of the 21st century, the software development community state-side finds itself in what appears to be a better situation, jobs-wise. What happened? Why did the gloom-and-doom scenarios not play out?

A couple of realities have become apparent as the decade has played itself out. First, globalization of software development has actually worked against itself, as the cost of doing business in countries like India has increased to the point where the cost savings benefit is in question. Software developers are able to demand more money there, as the need for them has increased.

But secondly, and I believe just as importantly, companies seeking to off-shore their development made critical mistakes in choosing the products that they would send overseas. The products they chose were mostly mainstream, legacy products, which tend to be, by their sheer longevity, much more complex and intricate. From my experience in this business, I have found that "old" does not equal "simple". In fact, just the opposite is true. This software has generally been developed over the years by hundreds of developers, all with different programming styles, and do not always follow textbook patterns. Asking primarily inexperienced developers to maintain or enhance these products without day-to-day guidance from at least a few senior developers is tough. Couple this fact with the risk of losing market share for these products (oh yeah, they’re probably still profitable, why else would development continue?), and you have a recipe for disaster.

What seems like such a great idea when discussed at cocktail parties 8 years ago, should now be one that should be considered with at least some trepidation.