Panel Advises U.S. IT Pros To Consider Changing Roles

Computerworld - NEW YORK -- Unemployed U.S. IT professionals who are grumbling about lower-cost H-1B workers and offshore outsourcing firms wresting their jobs away should accept the market reality that highly skilled, cheap foreign labor is here to stay. They should also broaden their own talents beyond programming acumen. That was the assessment of panelists who spoke at Brainstorm Group Inc.'s Nearshore and Offshore Outsourcing conference here last week.

"There's certainly a feeling out there that [offshore programming is] a threat to American IT workers," said Larry Gordon, vice president of marketing at Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., a Teaneck, N.J.-based custom software developer with offshore programming interests in India. Gordon participated in a global sourcing panel discussion that was moderated by Computerworld.

"Programming is becoming commoditized. If you can do programming for $20, $25 an hour, why would you pay $150 an hour?" asked Amit Govil, managing director and CEO at Sapient India in New Delhi.

Act as a Bridge

The growing unemployment of U.S. technologists "is a very serious problem," said Kent Bauer, principal consultant at GRT Corp., a Stamford, Conn.-based data management consultancy with operations in Russia. He suggested that U.S. IT workers consider "moving up the food chain" by working more closely with business units to help steer big projects like enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management initiatives.

Govil suggested that U.S. technologists act as a bridge between IT and the business units they serve "by becoming planners and organizers" in charge of implementing "conceptual solutions."

Srinivas Raghavan, a liaison at American International Group Inc. for Troy, Mich.-based outsourcer Syntel Inc., said he believes there are "huge opportunities" for U.S. IT workers to bundle their expertise in communications and integration skills. For example, a growing number of companies are focusing on further integrating e-business systems and other types of applications throughout their organizations.