Distributed Software Development :: Outsourcing Careers Technology Essays

Distributed computer software DevelopmentAs new technologies emerge, they practi shoot the breezey eliminate certain types of jobs. History is littered with many such examples. The lean of bank tellers dropped by about 37% between 1983 and 1993.1 The new engineering science responsible for eliminating those jobs was the ATM (Automatic Teller Machine). More recently, the wide popularity of buying books oer the web has caused many book stores to close down. You may have nonice this in your own neighborhood. Since the Industrial Revolution, technology has been blamed for massive unemployment.2 However, more recently, in addition to technology eliminating certain jobs, technology is enabling the transferring (for effectual reasons) of certain jobs from the USA and Europe to far away places like India. Software development is a benefactor (or victim, depending on the viewpoint) of this technology. The technologies that were developed by the US in the 1990s boom are facil itating distributed software development. These range from international high-speed nedeucerks, ever-cheaper computers, collaborative tools, satellite communication, and the web.3 Requirements documents and software tools no longer contract to be snail mailed, rather they can be emailed to pretty much anywhere in the world. This phenomenon of having software developed in far discharge places such as India, has come to be known as outsourcing or offshoring. date their may be some small differences in these two terms, they are many times used interchangeably. Earlier, outsourcing referred to the practice of turning over noncritical parts of a business to a company that specialized in that activity.4 But now outsourcing affects a business critical components as well. While jobs have moved over seas before, like Levi Strauss jobs, which is now completely construct overseas, software jobs are getting lots of attention because this seems to be the starting line time white-c ollar jobs are being affected.5 While outsourcing can be painful for some of the parties involved, I will show that it is still an respectable practice. Outsourcing is predicted to affect a very large number of jobs in the future. In the US, about 14 million jobs (or 11%) are identified as being at risk of being sent abroad.6 While not all of these are software related, many of them are. The non-software jobs that are also at risk of being sent abroad are telephone call center, data entry, business and financial support, legal assistant, diagnostic support services, accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll.