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"If you need custom software development, and your business is going to depend on the result, outsourcing that effort to another country, especially across cultural and maybe language barriers, can be a disaster." For now. Yes, today it often is a disaster. It won't always be so. We didn't used to have an Indian software industry at all, for example. Now there is one. And one day it will be a no brainer to send most CRUD work there. In fact it won't be "sent" there, that function will exist there. And not only because India and other countries catch up on an industrial scale, but because businesses will demand it. Supply and demand has two sides, and demand will be filled, however slowly. "yet companies don't outsource most of them. Are they crazy, or are there good reasons for that?" They haven't got good at it yet, but they're trying and learning, and suppliers are getting better. Large corporations only make one thing, money. Each one happens to do it by selling something different, but what they sell is incidental, what they're good at is making money. Part of making money is not spending money. If you're a bank, your software systems may be crucial to your business, but they're two steps away from the primary business of making money: 1) Make money, by 2) selling bank services, enabled by 3) software and other systems. If you can get the same or better quality outside your building you'll do it if it's cheaper and good enough. If you have a communication problem between the software department and the investment department, one solution is to send both departments outside the building, and let them communicate with each other in a cheaper venue. If it's possible, it will be done. I'm not saying don't go into software development. I'm saying that the world changes, and my 13 year old son's career is going to be much different than yours, inevitably. And your career is going to be much different in twenty years than it is today, not only because you'll have changed and grown, but because the world will have changed out from under you. And it gets faster every day. Here's hoping that we're all rolling in dollars in twenty years. Or rupees. |