But what scares critics of offshore outsourcing isn't the sheer number of IT jobs that will go abroad in the next year or two, but the continuing trend--the inexorable leeching of America's best employment opportunities. Application developers and support staffers may be relatively easy to replace, but where will tomorrow's U.S. technology leadership and innovation come from if much of the entry-level tech work today is going offshore?
Not every entry-level IT job can be shipped overseas, and even those jobs and projects that can must be owned and managed by counterparts in the U.S. Even if companies are losing too much technical expertise, they'll learn to pull back. Take the example of Life Time Fitness, which leaped too quickly into offshore outsourcing and is now rethinking its strategy).
Meantime, it's incumbent on U.S. IT professionals to prepare for the future rather than fall victim to it. Identify the hottest skills and seek training. Understand your company's business challenges and core competitive advantages like no one else. Make yourself indispensable. That's what the very best professionals do.
--Rob Preston, [email protected]
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
