Seattle Times on Silicon Valley offshoring all but management

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2001884969_btsiliconvalleyjobs22.html

Not only is the talent in Canada — and in India, China and Romania — 
getting
better, it's getting easier to find. Small brokers and major consulting 
firms
now help tech companies find low-cost workers overseas.

Equally important, executives say, is the state of communications. 
High-speed
Internet connections are more pervasive, videoconferencing is routine 
and phone
calls placed over the Internet are cheap.

And more people throughout the world are using the same tools — such as 
Excel
spreadsheets made by Microsoft and database software from Oracle — making
collaboration across great distances much easier.

Vulnerable jobs

After reviewing recent offshore hiring to identify the professions most 
at risk,
UC Berkeley economist Cynthia Kroll and her colleagues reported last 
month that
15.7 percent of the Silicon Valley's employees were in vulnerable lines 
of work,
compared with 11 percent of the national work force.

"Silicon Valley has already lost 18 percent of its jobs," Kroll said.
"Outsourcing is definitely making it harder to replace even a fraction 
of those."



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