Backshoring
I saw this word – backshoring – for the first time today.
It seems somebody is interested in reversing the trend of outsourcing jobs to India. That trend is a projected 1 million jobs sent overseas between 2003 and this year, one fourth of which are in high tech.
That somebody is, Michael Fields, former president of Oracle and who is now running KANA, a $60 million/year software maker.
“Sending jobs to India,” he says, ”doesn’t make sense.” The reason - software development needs collaboration – everybody in the same room as often as is possible and necessary.
According to Fields, “If your team isn’t closely bonded, you’ll see more rewrites, more performance issues and more delays.”
The solution – send Silicon Valley to India! NO!
Bring the workers here. That, he says will raise productivity and deliver a better product in a faster amount of time with about 1/4th as many engineers.
It also means that my commute time is going to increase! Menlo Park, where Fields works and where he wants to “backshore” all these jobs is right up the highway from me.
It seems, however, he may have a point.
What do you think?
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