Re: Predictions are like arseholes...
> Take all predictions with a grain of salt & take a "wait & see" stand to determine if it turns out true or not.
In general, I'll fully agree with this one, but I suspect this particular prediction has a bit more going for it than most...
in 2005 the difference between the wage for a UK or North American techie and their Indian equivalent was $92,000. By 2019 that gap had narrowed to around $40,000
Time was, offshore contractors cost peanuts - and because they were so cheap, they were in great demand. Which led to massive growth and a rise in costs, because the people being hired could very easily boost their wages by jumping over to another agency with little or no notice.
And now, we've reached the point where while they're still cheaper, it's now the difference between a junior and senior engineer, rather than the difference between a janitor and the senior engineer.
(To pick two arbitary and unresearched comparisons).
So the offshoring companies are now a bit stuck; after you stick their overheads on top and add a juicy profit margin, the cost/benefit analysis isn't looking quite as good as it used to for the various onshore PHBs.
So this leaves the offshoring companies with two choices. They either improve the quality of their services, or they find a way to cut costs back down.
Improving quality will be difficult, because there's still plenty of attrition from people jumping jobs to get a higher salary. And that leaves them with several options.
The first is that they can figure out ways to get more out of their current staff, while also balancing any changes with the risk that it'll increase the rate at which people jump ship.
The second is that they can look at offshoring their own work to somewhere cheaper. However, that's tricky, as there's not that many countries which can offer a cheap(er), educated and english-speaking workforce, reliable internet connectivity and stable government.
The third is that they can start to automate stuff, now that it's getting too expensive to throw an infinite number of wannabe-Shakespeares at an infinite number of typewriters.
And that's where things are going to start to get interesting, as by their very nature, automated processes - especially those based on open source technologies - can be ran from anywhere in the world...