Worried about being outsourced

Hi everyone, learning a ton here at freecodecamp and loving every minute of it. As I look into making a career change into web development I’m kinda worried about about web development jobs being outsourced to the point where there won’t be enough demand and hence no jobs. How can I as an aspiring web developer not lose hope that there will be a job out there for me? Any words of encouragement?

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Will outsourcing/ offshoring eventually lead to the demise of IT/software jobs as a good career? by John Colagioia

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The subject of outsourcing/offshorinig is quite complex. Thinking of it from an economics point of view (i.e. Globalization), outsourcing/offshoring would happen in almost every industry where the benefits of this process would yield tangible and substantial value either in terms of cost savings or future benefits. The software inidustry is no different.

For example:

  1. In the 1960s, the textile industry underwent the process of outsourcinig/offshoring to third world (a.k.a. poorer in terms of per capita income) countries
  2. It was followed soon after by the manufacturing industry
  3. Then came telecommunications and a subset of the service industry
  4. In the last & current decade it is the software industry

This is just the cycle of economics, globalization and business cycles.

Does that mean one should fear losing their jobs due to this process?

IMHO, Yes AND No

Let me give you an example to illustrate what I mean:

Outsourcing can and does happen within the borders of a country. For example, wages in San Francisco for software developers is a lot higher than the average or median wages in other parts of the US. Not all companies can afford to have all their employees being high wage earners. So, most of them would have satellite offices or subdivisions in other parts of the country where the cost of living is lower (borrowinig a concept from real-estate - location is important), and hence wages are lower.

Does that mean that if you are living in San Francisco you should worry about your job being outsourced to other parts of the US?

What I have experienced (in other industries) and what my software developer friends have experienced is that it is highly subjective.

These are the things my software developer friends have told me that have helped them retain their jobs:

  1. Be good at what you do. Make yourself valuable to your company
  2. Don’t underestimate the importance of human interaction. Even though the software industry values technical skills, what they told me is that the difference between two equally skilled employees is often the relationships that an individual nurtures and makes an effort to maintain.
  3. Communication skills ARE IMPORTANT - even for skilled, technical people. They have seen some highly skilled people have their jobs outsourced. At the same time, they have also observed average technically skilled people with good communication skills retain their jobs.

There may come a time when the current beneficiaries of outsourcing (for example the BRIC countries) would themselves be outsourcing to still other countries. (e.g. Brazil, Russia, India, China outsourcing to parts of Africa, Vietnam, Phillipines, Indonesia, etc.)

(Note: By the above statement, I don’t mean to demean any country or say that one country is better than another)

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I think that outsourcing will only develop further. It’s all about money, it’s more outspoken to hire a specialist abroad with the same skills than to overpay money to your people. Many outsourcing companies have specialists with excellent knowledge of English, so this adds chances for development companies from different countries, India of eastern Europe, and so on. Look at this statistics if interesting https://diceus.com/are-ukrainian-developers-good/ there is told about the advantages of outsourcing.

Let’s face it you guys nobody likes to be outsourced.
The outsource party is the enemy and there has to be counterplay.

What are some ideas?

  • keeping up with a high degree of skill
  • try to negotiate for higher pay
  • wathever ways you can think of to counterplay the oursource party

That’s my reasoning behind founding this facebook group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1828506527443614/

It’s still in it’s early stages

The content is nothing but relevant interview questions, github projects, and the latest language trends with the aim to help members of the group stay up to date to easy up the process of getting a job/ staying up to date with modern technologies

it’s still very early stages and we could really use some feedback

I think outsourcing is just gaining momentum. A lot of companies have already tried to outsource and are quite pleased with this. They got high-quality work and reduce costs, so why to stop? Here is quite engaging statistics regarding Eastern Europe: https://www.daxx.com/article/software-development-outsourcing-in-eastern-europe

No need to worry about lack of vacancies. All IT services are in demand now and the popularity will only grow in the future. Just look how trendy digital transformation is.
Moreover, the salaries are getting higher all over the world. Some countries are experiencing skill shortages, so it’s hard for them to find an expert and they agree to pay more. Countries that are outsourcing destinations also face salary growth. Check out this report if you want to know more about software development salaries in 2018: https://qubit-labs.com/software-developer-salary/

Outsourcing software development has become extremely popular nowadays so there is nothing you really can do about it but at the same time I think that’s great you can just outsource your project because it costs less and there are a lot of an experienced outsourcing software development companies around the world, you just need to choose the right one.

To my mind there is no need to worry. There a lot of companies that decided to work in this way. As a result there are no problems with vacancies or amount of work. Even when companies start to work with software developers who are outsourced it is also hard for them to trust their software product development to a remote team.