(off topic) Article Discussing Offshoring

Also, Australia - and I'm sure other countries have similar issues - another effect to categorise under the globalisation phenomenon.

I think Cringely's article is a good read, but leveraging the productive worker is not exactly a new sentiment. IT people in particular are fond of it (e.g me) because one likes to identify with being that productive worker. He doesn't mention that companies don't necessarily like the "hero". To the company, the hero is a potential single point of failure in their system. Companies are systems like software modules. Predictability is what is required. If it don't work IT people will rewrite their modules or make changes, whatever at the drop of a hat - companies are "rewritten" or modified similarly I believe. Numbers are compelling and have the appearence of being objective. An interesting idea is to put yourself in the position that a large company finds itself in now. Lets assume you have a $60K a year contract to do work and lets say thats what you need to live on - ie its a salary. Now you have the opportunity to employ someone at $6K a year who will do the work you give them. You would have to feel yourself to be very productive, not to consider employing that person so that you are free to find another $60K job. Don't forget commoditisation - an extremely powerful trend. Commoditisation in IT? Packages. Corporate IT development - dissappearing, in favour of software houses selling back to corporates. This is the modularisation of companies, cohesion and coupling again. We didn't really need online Application Service Providers to do that, though ASP is a natural evolution once the networks are beefier and MS has gained critical mass with their Terminal Services on the desktop/personal device. Y2k was a big trigger. Companies paid bucket loads, paid via their own savings in computing jobs and were probably very annoyed to get locked into to more firewalled information and outsourced contracts - but hey - that's best practise. Of course the software houses and consultants are best placed to do the offshoring - so it all works out pretty well.

Your own thinking? Do tell... :^) I've just recently formalised my non-full-time-employed status by starting a company, which out the outset is providing billable hours (mine) as it first product - though other streams would be nice in the future. So I don't believe all is lost. "Niche" is the word. I figure there is always gaps created between, and as a result of, the big trends and I've heard enough from my friends in corporates to know there are always jobs to do locally. I'm still stand stupified when someone says to me X-huge-multimillion-dollar-global-company needs Excel and a typist to fill a critical information control gap in their system. This is the 21st century for goodness sakes! Some more reads: A relevant opinion piece. http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,6703749%5e15391%5e%5enbv%5e, 00.html PDF on the experience of an Australian bank doing development in India - not too long - worth a look for their insights. http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=U&start=2&q=http://www.dfat.gov.au/publicati ons/india_new_old_economy/ANZ_Report_Launch_Dec_2001.pdf&e=747 Regards, Brett.

I didn't mean to sound cryptic .... REBOL, of course! ;-) (Or more generally, high level scripting languages.) Thanks again for the reply and the extra links. --Scott Jones