Offshoring IT: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Rating:
Summary: Realistic outsourcing view from an engineer
Review: Cogent and well thought out arguments both for and against outsourcing. The author takes statistics, quotes and opinions from a variety of sources but ultimate the book is biased against outsourcing. This is a refreshing change from the prevailing pro-outsourcing wisdom of the other books on the subject.

The book is short and well written. The text is funny without going overboard. Charts and graphs are used to illustrate the point where appropriate.

I liked this book a lot. I highly recommend it for software engineers looking for an alternative opinion to the pro-outsourcing movement.

Rating:
Summary: An anti-offshoring book that's actually balanced...
Review: Following up on Blunden's Cube Farm, I read his book Offshoring IT: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (Apress). I was expecting a cynical rant with more emotion than logic. What I got instead was a book that was anti-offshoring, but that presented both sides of the issue very well (in my opinion).

Chapter breakout: Setting The Stage; Measuring The Trend; The Offshoring Obstacle Course; Arguments In Favor Of Offshoring; Arguments Against Offshoring; Index

Blunden's been around the IT world for awhile, and he's seen the effect of offshoring in the Silicon Valley area. So this isn't an academic exercise in business economics conducted in an ivory tower. He did his homework, as the book has extensive footnotes so that the reader can verify the numbers and statements. In fact, he urges the reader to get involved and question things. Rather than taking the conventional wisdom and oft-quoted reports and statistics, he digs underneath the conspiracy of corporate silence when it comes to the issue of shipping jobs offshore for cheaper labor. The chapter on the Offshoring Obstacle Course is a well-written roadmap of what an organization should do if they are planning on going that route. The chapter on arguments in favor of offshoring present all the well-worn platitudes about how this will benefit America in the long run and move our workers to more "fulfilling work" instead of the menial jobs nobody wants. He does warn you however... Those two chapters are not his voice, but the voice of balance required by the publisher. In the final chapter, he cuts loose and exposes the arguments for what they are... A simple exercise in making the rich richer and the working class poorer. He ends by urging workers to get involved and not take this all lying down.

While I think some measure of offshoring is inevitable, I think the trend of knowledge jobs heading overseas is a dangerous one. The United States is setting themselves up for long-term pain when we don't have the skills to lead the world's economy any more. It doesn't matter how much a multinational company saves with cheap labor if the US job market is made up of low wage jobs that can't buy anything but the essentials.

There are a few times when he paints foreign workers as bogeymen while ignoring the fact that the same things happen here (intellectual theft occurs in the US, too). Still, by and large, a good book to read and think about...


Rating:
Summary: Misguided
Review: In general, do you think cheaper prices are good or bad? That is a basic counterpoint to this book. Offshoring is happening because those companies practising it can often charge lower prices for their goods or services. To the benefit of their customers. If you are in IT, which is a reasonable guess, because you are considering this book, then you certainly have heard of Moore's Law. Plus there has been an accompanying vast fall in the cost of bandwidth, during the last 20 years. You have probably benefited from both trends. If you've bought any computer equipment, then you have certainly done so. Yes, it has been rough on some hardware vendors, who have gone out of business. But overall, it has greatly expanded the market for both computer hardware and software, and thusly the market for your services.

If you have no complaints about benefiting from cheaper hardware, why should you complain if your software position is under threat from cheaper programmers offshore? Blunden supplies many tables and numbers in his book, to buttress his viewpoints. He talks about the greed of corporations who do offshoring. But he never posits why offshoring is happening now? Why not 10 or 20 years ago? It's certainly not because CEOs then were less greedy. But it's because the underlying hardware and bandwidth improvements have reached a tipping point, whereby it is now economically advantageous for offshoring of services.

He does point out that some manufacturing has moved overseas. But in IT, this offshoring has been happening since the early 90s. When fabrication of commodity chips and motherboards started migrating. Yes, some US hardware engineers then lost their jobs. Do you lament for them? That migration helped Dell and others offer ever-cheaper computers.

Blunden is a smart bloke, and he is surely well aware of all this. But even if you agree with his book, you should note that it ends weakly, with very tepid suggestions on how to reverse offshoring. The fundamental reason is that Moore's Law and the falling of bandwidth costs are still proceeding unabated. Technological innovations are still happening. In other words, services offshoring has barely begun.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that offshoring is going away. That would be like an accountant circa 1980, when the first spreadsheets appeared on PCs, dismissing it as a fad. Whereas he would compute his spreadsheets manually, using only a calculator. In such a situation, it was the marginal cost of his labour, against the marginal cost of running a software spreadsheet, which even then was close to zero. (Once you bought the PC and software.)

This book is instructive. Ten or 20 years from now, it will capture perfectly a common if misguided attitude of our time. It will be worth studying then, in a course on history or economics. You don't think so? Then try searching for books on the awesome Japanese juggernaut, and how their economic model was going to overtake the inferior American economy. There were a spate of such books in the late 80s. You can't find these in bookstores now. Out of print and discredited. So too will be the fate of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Great layout, stats, and information on an important topic
Review: The best feature of this book is the way the information is presented. Bill Blunden does an excellent job of articulating the issues related to offshoring IT and other work from America. There are enough tables, graphs and citations included to keep the most analytical reader engaged.

The books starts with an overview of basic economics, labor and capital and the technological advances that gave rise to shifting work across the globe in pursuit of lower costs. The author does a credible job of outlining and detailing company practices from GE to American Express and how many consulting firms help promote this practice. The book covers various labor laws including H1-B, L-1, and student visas.

Were the book to remain a factual examination of the practice and elements of outsourcing and offshoring, I would be happy to give high marks. However, the undercurrent of the author's worldview - subtle through the first half of the book - explodes in latter chapters. When introducing the section on "Argument's In Favor Of Offshoring" the author let's his bias come through clearly with this actual quote from the book:

"To be frank, it sickens me to have to echo the sympathies of someone like Carly Firiona or Brian Valentine. Nevertheless, my publisher has requested that I present an even-handed approach to this topic and that's, ahem, what I'm going to try and do" (Page 82). It is unfortunate that the author chooses to damage any credibility built on his earlier attempts to create a factual presentation of the issue, by further stating that if you actually swallow the "pro-outsourcing view" you ought to contact the poison center. Hardly the even-handed approach the publisher wanted, but at least honest.

The final chapter, a look at "Arguments Against Offshoring", is unfortunately weak. The chapter is filled with accusations of CEO greed and poor integrity. Tyco and Worldcom CEO's in particular are singled out. There are a several good points on how the media has been bought off by the corporations that both pay their advertising and do the lions share of the offshoring. He claims this results in media silence on the subject, as opposed to an open dialog. While these points are compelling, in the end few solutions are offered outside the contextual background of a socialistic entitlement that is never stated outright - to be fair - but seems to be his point.

I recommend this book. While it is obviously biased, it does so in a way that is so overt that the rest of the data allows for some interesting insights to be gleaned from the books content. Wonderful presentation, easy to read, and well written.


Rating:
Summary: The Most Thorough Look at IT Offshoring!
Review: The Reverend Bill Blunden performs three helpful services in this book. First, he tracks down what is happening in IT offshoring and looks carefully at the projections for this trend. Second, he fairly states the corporate arguments for this offshoring. Third, he points out that the corporate arguments do not coincide with the best interests of U.S. citizens in many cases.

Many will be disturbed by an occasional rant in the book. Rants aside, the flow of most of the material is pretty logical and clear. Everyone who is interested in the long-term health of the U.S. economy should read this book. Everyone who is a programmer should read this book today!

One of his strongest points is one that I had not considered before. U.S. taxpayer dollars heavily subsidize university science education in the U.S., yet half of the most advanced degrees in science go to non-U.S. citizens (most of whom will not become U.S. citizens). While we should not close our doors to students from other nations, subsidizing this at the highest degree level doesn't make sense. These students usually receive free tuition, room, board and salaries from their universities. Someone in Congress should take this question on.

The book is a quick and pleasant read (more pleasant if you agree with the anti-corporate rants).