Offshoring It: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Simple book organized in 5 chapters, it does not matter if you agree with Bill or now, if you are a knowledge-based worker like me, this is a must read to gain an overall understanding of the landscape. Bill draw from his own experience in 1992, when he graduated from Cornell with a B.A. in physics, absolutely NO ONE needed him. in his own words "After four years of school and tens of thousands of dollars of tuition payments,I was hoping to do something related to math or science. Instead, I waited tables for three years until I could make it back to graduate school and acquire skills in a different area"

I have to agree with others. I really like how Blunden lays out all of this information that he presents. I also liked how he referenced from legit sources. He wants you as the reader to get involved. I read this book after i checked it out of my schools library for a research paper i was doing for class. Probably one of the best non-fiction books i've ever read, period.

Cogent and well thought out arguments both for and against outsourcing. The author takes statistics, quotes and opinions from a variety of sources but ultimate the book is biased against outsourcing. This is a refreshing change from the prevailing pro-outsourcing wisdom of the other books on the subject. The book is short and well written. The text is funny without going overboard. Charts and graphs are used to illustrate the point where appropriate. I liked this book a lot. I highly recommend it for software engineers looking for an alternative opinion to the pro-outsourcing movement.

The Reverend Bill Blunden performs three helpful services in this book. First, he tracks down what is happening in IT offshoring and looks carefully at the projections for this trend. Second, he fairly states the corporate arguments for this offshoring. Third, he points out that the corporate arguments do not coincide with the best interests of U.S. citizens in many cases. Many will be disturbed by an occasional rant in the book. Rants aside, the flow of most of the material is pretty logical and clear. Everyone who is interested in the long-term health of the U.S. economy should read this book. Everyone who is a programmer should read this book today! One of his strongest points is one that I had not considered before. U.S. taxpayer dollars heavily subsidize university science education in the U.S., yet half of the most advanced degrees in science go to non-U.S. citizens (most of whom will not become U.S. citizens). While we should not close our doors to students from other nations, subsidizing this at the highest degree level doesn't make sense. These students usually receive free tuition, room, board and salaries from their universities. Someone in Congress should take this question on. The book is a quick and pleasant read (more pleasant if you agree with the anti-corporate rants).

Following up on Blunden's Cube Farm, I read his book Offshoring IT: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (Apress). I was expecting a cynical rant with more emotion than logic. What I got instead was a book that was anti-offshoring, but that presented both sides of the issue very well (in my opinion). Chapter breakout: Setting The Stage; Measuring The Trend; The Offshoring Obstacle Course; Arguments In Favor Of Offshoring; Arguments Against Offshoring; Index Blunden's been around the IT world for awhile, and he's seen the effect of offshoring in the Silicon Valley area. So this isn't an academic exercise in business economics conducted in an ivory tower. He did his homework, as the book has extensive footnotes so that the reader can verify the numbers and statements. In fact, he urges the reader to get involved and question things. Rather than taking the conventional wisdom and oft-quoted reports and statistics, he digs underneath the conspiracy of corporate silence when it comes to the issue of shipping jobs offshore for cheaper labor. The chapter on the Offshoring Obstacle Course is a well-written roadmap of what an organization should do if they are planning on going that route. The chapter on arguments in favor of offshoring present all the well-worn platitudes about how this will benefit America in the long run and move our workers to more "fulfilling work" instead of the menial jobs nobody wants. He does warn you however... Those two chapters are not his voice, but the voice of balance required by the publisher. In the final chapter, he cuts loose and exposes the arguments for what they are... A simple exercise in making the rich richer and the working class poorer. He ends by urging workers to get involved and not take this all lying down. While I think some measure of offshoring is inevitable, I think the trend of knowledge jobs heading overseas is a dangerous one. The United States is setting themselves up for long-term pain when we don't have the skills to lead the world's economy any more. It doesn't matter how much a multinational company saves with cheap labor if the US job market is made up of low wage jobs that can't buy anything but the essentials. There are a few times when he paints foreign workers as bogeymen while ignoring the fact that the same things happen here (intellectual theft occurs in the US, too). Still, by and large, a good book to read and think about...