Oh TC what will we do with you.
Of course its absolutely Bush's fault that all these corporations decided to outsource various jobs. A little bridie told me so.
On a serious note. In some recent articles I've been reading in Buisnessweek and Fortune predictions are that these outsourced jobs will return within about 5 years because in the long run there is actually no savings for the companies who have gone down this path.
One example that was brought up was the hidden costs of outsourcing so much software development. Direct control over the end product is much less. Security issues (like stolen or leaked code) become a huge and costly concern. Turn around time for debugging of software suffers, resulting in delayed releases.
Another topic addressed was the recent move to outsource call centers to India. The article mentioned that this has backfired for many companies. Customers are fed up with the dealing with someone half a globe away for local support issues who lack the language skills (and I mean the contextual skills developed from actually living within the culture you are providing service for).
The articles' main point was that its only a matter of time before companies begin to realize that outsourcing to other countries only makes sense in certain business situations and that generally there is no costs savings and in many cases increased costs and increased problems by going this route.
