<p>Big time. I have turned down several very popular company software opportunities that, at my level of experience (30 years) involved little more than 8 hours a day conference calls. </p>
<p>Now, if you get a degree from some top 10 or some other cool place you probably won’t be outsourced, but anything below is canon fodder. Many of my coworkers were outsourced and they had degrees from usually Big 10 engineering schools. Ultimately we’ve had offshore locations for going on 15 years now and it does not work, not the way we thought it would. Some things do work, but things like R&D is much harder to do across the state, let alone the planet.</p>
<p>How to avoid being outsourced? stock up on college degrees (I have 4 :)) and experience, and stick around even if you can make more money elsewhere. I’m in a cutthroat field (consumer electronics) but you can’t find my kind of experience, even tho I’m not the brightest programmer in the building by far. </p>
<p>Or, you can do like my wife and work for a global outsourcing firm as a consultant. She has a bunch of degrees and very specialized experience and solid track record, but it ain’t easy. Find a second area beyond CS that you may like and get an MS or double BS - such domain knowledge cannot be outsourced, period. If you’re a plant rat and the plant is in the US an offshore plant rat is not of much help. (plant rat = industrial engineer). You have to speak the ‘business knowledge’ language, so when the plant supervisor starts talking about statistical process control this and process yield and master production schedule that you don’t go puppy eyes on him. </p>
<p>Outsourcing does work well if you get specialized knowledge people from offshore to work with you side by side, which is what we are doing now. But that is very expensive, so only used when needed.</p>