This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by James Robertson.
Original Post: Productivity and Risk
Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants
Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml
Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general.
In my last post on this topic, I alluded to the rise of offshoring, and how it sounds an awful lot like an echo of what happened to manufacturing years ago. Now I see that Dan Gillmor of ComputerWorld is writing about that topic:
I never entirely bought their faith, though the Valley has repeatedly shown an ability to rebound to new heights after deep economic downturns. The recent evidence, notably the surge of offshoring, makes me ask again -- about the Valley and the entire nation.
And I wonder if something is genuinely different now.
Intel CEO Craig Barrett put his finger on it a few weeks ago when he stopped by my newspaper for a long chat with some reporters and editors. What's new this time, he told us in a persuasive way, is the nature of the global workforce.
For the first time in human history, Barrett said, a truly gigantic pool of well-educated, technically adept and eager-to-please labor is being created. This pool of talent, which will include hundreds of millions of people in China and India (many of whom speak English fluently), has another characteristic: a willingness to work for a fraction of what Americans expect.
This is not because they like living poorly. It's because local conditions and currency exchange rates make what would seem like a pauper's salary here a highly attractive one there.
Well, this can go one a few different ways. American development shops can keep doing what lots of developers think is "good enough" - unproductive languages that hinder more than they help (Java, C#, etc). Code in files, and the old "edit-compile-link" cycle. If that's the way people go, then they will be screwed - overseas competitors can use unproductive tools and heavyweight processes (CMM-5, anyone?) at a fraction of the cost. The results won't actually be any better, but boy, will they be cheaper. And since the level of competence in IT is so low now (just go look for IT project failure rates; the numbers are not improving), getting the same crappy results for a lesser dollar amount will be seen as huge progress
Now, what have people done in the past to overcome this kind of thing? They've gotten more agile (like some of the newer steel companies in the US). Now look at software shops - asleep at the switch, using unproductive tools and languages - and they act utterly astonished when jobs get moved overseas. Is there any awareness of the higher levels of productivity available from agile processes (see the Agile Alliance site) and dynamic languages (see the numbers I posted here? Heck no, there's a dogged insistence that all is well, and that doing the same old things in the same old ways will be just fine. Never mind that offshore developers can do those same old things at a fraction of the cost - apparently, Alfred E Newman is alive and well, and living in most US development shops
If you want to keep working in this field, you're going to have to take a hard look at what happened to auto (and other manufacturing) jobs in the last 30 years, and at what kinds of changes had to be made to keep US shops competitive. Here's a hint - it didn't involve doing the same old things in the same old ways. It's well past time for developers to look for more productive ways to work - both in the process area (agile) and in the language/tools area (dynamic vs. static). I think Gillmor is more pessimistic than he needs to be - but there will be a large jolt in this sector, and everyone who is cheerfully wedded to the mainstream is in for the biggest set of shocks....
Previous Topic
