> I've been debating for several days whether or not to post this message.
> Well...here it goes, we'll see what develops.
>
> I read a disturbing article this last week in Time magazine. It seems to
be
> available online at
> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...471198,00.html
..
> This article describes the alarming rate at which many types of jobs are
> being exported to countries such as India, where the work gets done for
darn
> near 1/10th. the cost, or less.
>
> Now, before anybody beats me over the head with a digital club, please
know
> that my intention here is to understand the trend and what it might mean
in
> general. As a small business owner facing the need to hire engineers
> (FPGA/embedded) within the next six to twelve months I have to ask myself
if
> my competitors have exported these jobs? If that were to be the case,
> competitive forces alone would almost dictate that I (and others in my
> position) look for offshore solutions.

From people I've spoken to down here in Southern California, most
of the 'famous' high-tech companies (Broadcom, Connexant, etc.) have
already begun investigating outsourcing engineering/design work. My
contact at Connexant says some departments there already outsource some
portion of back-end (place/route) designwork to Indian firms. Broadcom
is likely to follow soon (if they haven't started already.)

At this point, the engineering-design capabilities of these outsourcing
companies are 'fairly basic.' As the practice is in its infancy, the
work-quality is decidedly mixed, varying from company to company and project
to project. Projects which require ongoing input from the (US-based)
spec-writers often run into complications, due to communication errors or
other logistic problems. (Sitting down face to face still beats out
email/video-conferencing any day!) I suspect that as time goes on,
project managers will become more familiar with the process of outsourcing,
and adapt to the logistic issues.

Likewise, as the outsourcing companies compete against one another, the
better performers will garner repeat work, increase their design capacity
and sophistication.