Last Monday, I promised a post about software development. It's the field in which I've worked for quite a few years, and is important today because it represents something of a beachhead in the struggle over globalization and offshoring. While not the only white-collar job category to follow our factory jobs overseas, SD is one of the easiest and most lucrative to move. It brings into sharp relief some of the major assumptions of the pro-side, that expertise and training are the guarantees of continued employment, that high value-added will always have a place in the economy. (These are cases a lot easier to make with entry-level call center jobs than with software architect jobs.)
Dr. Dobb's Journal (DDJ) is one of the leading magazines of SD, with a long track record of articles that give a real idea of where the industry is going from the technical side (not through think pieces, but through hands-on case studies). A couple of years ago, they subsumed Software Development magazine, which dealt more directly with industry trends in non-technical terms; it discussed offshoring as an important trend in a way that DDJ didn't (that's not criticism, they had distinctly different objectives).
The promise was that DDJ would incorporate the topics that Software Development had covered, but they really haven't at all. The magazine itself is far thinner, many of the interesting columns have been lost - far from being stronger as a combination, it has grown weaker. They've moved to more of a Web model, and my impression is that they're struggling (though I have no idea as to their financial picture).
In the current issue, the Editor-in-Chief writes his monthly column, titled "Does Geography Really Matter Anymore?" After criticizing his high school geography teacher (instead of feeling lucky he had one), Jonathan Erickson makes the observation that geography is unimportant now.
This comes from two things he's noticed, that "developers around the world use the same tools," and that programmers are immune to the need for workers to "uproot families and lifestyles to chase new jobs" because they can live one place and work in another. He does allow as to how that might lead to jobs changing countries, but that's kind of a throwaway.
Amazing, just amazing. The editor-in-chief of a major software development publication is just now noticing globalization, and just now noticing that it may affect jobs - and at that he still misses the implications. Was this written in 1995? Has he been busy programming and editing and just didn't see the major trend in the industry? Erickson titles his column, Hmmmm - seems as if it should be called ZZZZZ.
Dr. Dobb's Journal (DDJ) is one of the leading magazines of SD, with a long track record of articles that give a real idea of where the industry is going from the technical side (not through think pieces, but through hands-on case studies). A couple of years ago, they subsumed Software Development magazine, which dealt more directly with industry trends in non-technical terms; it discussed offshoring as an important trend in a way that DDJ didn't (that's not criticism, they had distinctly different objectives).
The promise was that DDJ would incorporate the topics that Software Development had covered, but they really haven't at all. The magazine itself is far thinner, many of the interesting columns have been lost - far from being stronger as a combination, it has grown weaker. They've moved to more of a Web model, and my impression is that they're struggling (though I have no idea as to their financial picture).
In the current issue, the Editor-in-Chief writes his monthly column, titled "Does Geography Really Matter Anymore?" After criticizing his high school geography teacher (instead of feeling lucky he had one), Jonathan Erickson makes the observation that geography is unimportant now.
This comes from two things he's noticed, that "developers around the world use the same tools," and that programmers are immune to the need for workers to "uproot families and lifestyles to chase new jobs" because they can live one place and work in another. He does allow as to how that might lead to jobs changing countries, but that's kind of a throwaway.
Amazing, just amazing. The editor-in-chief of a major software development publication is just now noticing globalization, and just now noticing that it may affect jobs - and at that he still misses the implications. Was this written in 1995? Has he been busy programming and editing and just didn't see the major trend in the industry? Erickson titles his column, Hmmmm - seems as if it should be called ZZZZZ.
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