International Competition will put American out of work. Low cost Indian workers are poised to steal U.S. high tech jobs. In the late 1990's Indian firms focused on fixing the problem of Y2K in USA and Europe, since then they have branched out into handling call centers and maintaining powerful corporate software.India is relying on its supply of university educated people to develop its economy. But like all poor countries, it has a long way to climb. Fewer than half its young people (and only 39% of its teenage girls) go to secondary school. Considering how far it has to go, there is enormous promise for the U.S. economy and for U.S.-based jobs in India's pursuit of economic development. India is getting a hand up on the ladder of development from companies in the U.S. That amounts to the cultivation of tomorrow's business, not the demolition of today's. It's not a matter of competition most American workers are better at what they do than their Indian counterparts. Part of why programming jobs are migrating to India is because Indian Firms tend to be higher rated on the CMM scale than their American counterparts. That is, not only are they cheaper, they are also "better", by one standard measurement of superiority. Especially during the .com craze, US coders were offered hired without even completing college. Even "well-trained" programmers often do not understand software engineering principles. In many universities, for instance, there is only one undergraduate class in software engineering, which is an elective. The sad truth is that management has a perception that American IT labor is not only more costly, it's also inferior. No wonder US IT services are being outsourced. As Harvard economist Robert Z. Lawrence puts it, "The assumption is that if they make software in India, they will make less of it here. But that is not a valid assumption." In other words, this country doesn't lose if there is development and business expansion in other countries.
