I'm an Australian, based in the Washington, DC, area of the United States. I spend a lot of time there with Jasmine, Australia's best-known speedsolver of the Rubik's Cube. Prior to the US, Jasmine and I were based in London, UK. We have also lived previously in the United States and Australia.

I have worked for an Australian business rules and compliance company since 1999 in Australia, the US and the UK. I have also lectured in IT and Law related topics at King's College, London, and at The Australian National University.

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IT workers migrating to India?

There has been a lot of hype in the media -- especially in the US, where employment and offshoring were big issues in the recent presidential election -- about many businesses' desire to move IT and call centre work to low-cost locations like India. I found an interesting discussion today on Slashdot that discusses another angle on this issue. It refers to a BBC story about an Indian company that hires Europeans to do work that has been sent to India from their home countries. The recruits are often young people who want to travel -- and who are willing to work for local wages (although there seem to be some perks thrown in). 

The Slashdot discussion is worth a look for the range of perspectives it raises on the issue, and overall it seems less negative to the idea than the response one might normally expect from the media. Perhaps this highlights the fact that offshoring is a more complicated issue than people often make out.

On the one hand, people in countries like the US, the UK and Australia feel understandably threatened when they see job losses in their own countries while the same jobs are then offered to people elsewhere. Customer service from outsourced facilities is often questionable because offshorers want to save every cent possible and do not necessarily equip overseas employees properly or recognise the communication overheads that are involved in having an offshore workforce. There is also the potential to export particular undesirable labour or environmental practices to less regulated economies, where workers demand less or where environmental protection is less of an issue.

However, on the other hand, part of the problem is that too often people want to be comfortable doing what they have always done, the same same way they have always done it. The world is developing an increasingly global economy, and of course less developed nations have aspirations that will make them compete with more established ones. Perhaps the real threat to the older industrialised economies is that they need to make sure they work smart and innovate to find ways of maintaining a strong competitive position, rather than trying to outlaw work being done elsewhere.