Bangalore now employees 20,000 more engineers than Silicon Valley. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the trend in offshore outsourcing of IT jobs.

In a related story, Christopher Kenton writes about the changing face of offshore programming. He observes that the difference in price between US and Indian programming is shrinking. This is due to the fact that competition for experienced IT talent in India is heating up while there are many people with similar skills domestically that are looking for work. He also points out that hidden costs like additional project management and quality assurance can affect the bottom line significantly.

Increased project management and quality assurance tend to add costs to any outsourced project whether it is offshore or not. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for offshore outsourcing of technical jobs. Obviously, it will continue, but will this trend plateau in the near future?

via slashdot

Update: Don’t you hate it when you read an article only to forget where you read it a short time later? Well, maybe that only happens to me. Slashdot linked to an interesting article about how offshore outsourcing could stifle innovation. I wanted to post a link to it earlier but I… um… forgot where it was.