The "Gray Lady" and schizoid behavior

The NYT has a couple of 'outsourcing' articles today.

In this article, outsourcing is defended. It surely has led to cheaper goods. Particularly computer hardware.

In this article, some light is shed on what I see as a relatively new and rapidly growing trend. From the article:

The movement, known as offshore outsourcing, is growing, Mr. Mankiw acknowledged. But he said it was "just a new way of doing international trade" and "a good thing" that would make the American economy more efficient and would free American workers to eventually get better jobs.

History suggests that Mr. Mankiw may be right. The American economy has adapted to unsettling new waves of competition in the past.

Still, many industry executives, analysts and academics — not distraught American workers alone — say the nature of the economic challenge appears to be fundamentally different this time.

The differences, they say, include the kinds of jobs affected by outsourcing, the number of jobs potentially at risk and the politics of developing an effective policy response.

Globalization and technology are amplifying the impact of outsourcing. For decades, American foreign policy has been to urge developing nations and Communist countries to join the global economy in earnest. Now they have, and vast numbers of skilled workers have joined the world labor force, seemingly overnight. Countries like China, India and Russia educate large numbers of engineers. Add the low-cost, nearly instantaneous communication afforded by the Internet, and an Indian computer programmer making $20,000 a year or less can replace an American programmer making $80,000 a year or more.

"The structure of the world has changed," said Craig R. Barrett, chief executive of Intel, the Silicon Valley company that is the world's leading computer chip maker. "The U.S. no longer has a lock on high-tech, white-collar jobs."

Being in the semicon design field, I see the beginnings of what is likely to become a clear-cut trend. As Barrett points out, jobs like mine -- amongst the most highly skilled (6 years at university, and 10 more on the job) -- are now part of the outsourcing trend. As has been pointed out elsewhere, in the past, the 'truly high end' technology jobs stayed stateside. This is no longer the case.

I was really fortunate to have grown up at precisely the correct time to take advantage of the crest of American high technology dominance.

Bangalore is almost assured to have a Silicon Valley like explosion. It is in the formative stages now, but like these bright industrious people are going to produce creative entrepreneurs. This coupled with their highly educated workforce will create a long term boom where the trend is likely to be one of advancing technology, rather than being the 'farm team.'