Water and software development find their own levels

I guess with reading "The World is Flat" I am thinking about the whole outsourcing thing a lot more and how America can compete in a flat world. Dave Rosenberg over on the Open Sources blog has an interesting article that I think helps illustrate my view on this. The article notes that Wipro, the giant Indian outsourcing firm plans to open a software design center in Atlanta and will hire about 500 programmers over the next three years.  Dave talks about possible cultural differences that will make it interesting and challenging.  I don't think it will be any more challenging than Toyota or any of the other foreign car manufacturers opening plants and building cars here in America.  They will find the American worker not as lazy or ugly as advertised.  They will find them incredibly productive given the right incentives and environment.  Enough so that it makes sense for them to bring jobs here. Now you can say that Wipro, Toyota, etc are foreign companies and so they are profiting from the fruits of American labor.  But are they any more foreign than "American" companies? I think not. I think where the plants and offices are built and where people are earning good livings is what counts.

In fact I think this is the future of all of this outsourcing. Yes there are short terms differences in labor costs versus productivity as many former developing companies join the flat world.  But just as the Japanese found out, when workers who may be envious or contemptuous of our decadent lifestyle get a taste of the good life, they become not very different that Americans.  They want big cars, iPods, cell phones, good things for their families and a nice place to live and learn. Then they want to take off to take some time to smell the flowers and enjoy the good life.  Soon the advantage that had capital moving there begins to wane.  I think the relative costs begin to come into balance and the many advantages of the American labor force who have dealt with working through the "good times" come into play. 

That is not to say that we have some inalienable right for high paying jobs to automatically come here.  It means that we still have many advantages to leverage and that we should not fear other countries becoming more developed.  That makes them bigger consumers for our products and makes each of them a "little bit American" themselves.  It is a brave new flat world that we live in and in which our children will grow up in.  However, it is one full of opportunity for more people than ever before including us here in the USA.