[business] I didn't wanna kill my China Pig

[piggymouse]

Not so long ago some US economist made a smart prediction on the global price trends over the next couple of decades. I can't remember neither the guy's name, nor his exact words, but the general thinking went like this: everything that can be produced in China will eventually be dirt cheap; everything that can't will get obscenely expensive.

I wonder if this trend applies to software development, and, if so, in exactly which way.

Comments

[piggymouse.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but your reasoning reminds me of the proof from The Hitchhiker's Guide (which consists of a false premise and a couple of completely ridiculous deductions) where the unknown Guide author calculates the total population of the Universe. He first states that the number of inhabited worlds are finite and then, dividing that by the infinite number of all the worlds, gets zero average population.

Over the past few years, Chinese software outsourcing revenue has been to Russian more or less as Chinese population is to Russian, that is, about ten times as large. Thus, we can't see any significant differences which could be explained by cultural, educational, socio-economical, or other gaps between the two countries. They have about the same relative number of programmers as Russia has, period.

So, Russian industry's only hope is that the status quo is going to significantly change in short-to-mid term. Probably, the stupid Westerners will realize that our supply fits their demand better. Probably, their demand will somehow be affected by external factors (third world war, anyone?). Probably, the forecast I quoted is bullshit and China's labor cost will grow quicker than ours. For me, these possibilities look vague at best, but who knows?

And yes, I personally don't believe very much in interracial ability gaps which can't be overcome in a few generations.