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The good days are long gone.. who'd be a programmer?

Logged Thursday, 18th December 2003 - Daily - Perma-Link - Comments (3)

A fact I've come across repeatedly since moving to the UK, is the massive level of outsourcing of medium to large software projects to India, it's no wonder there's such low demand for expensive western programmers in London. A number of major projects I've read about that would of have been handled locally only 18-24 months ago were run overseas with great success. The level of outsourcing to India far exceeds what I've seen in the Australian market, I'm sure Australia isn't far behind though. Things really are looking dismal career-wise for your typical coder unless you can find a specific niche, move to India or make the jump to the business-side. Add to that the continuing drive to outsourcing taking out all the other reasonably paid technical jobs and you're left working for the likes of IBM or EDS contracted back to their outsourcer at a good deal less than what you'd get if you were working direct. Failing that you might be working for SMEs on short projects for crappy pay. The second-tier global services firms must still be suffering badly in the market, perhaps their only hope for survival is a partial move to Indian resources as well. Oh, how the industry has changed over the past few years! It was fun while it lasted. Is anyone even bothering to do Comp Sci degrees these days anymore with such poor job prospects?