However, after a while it gets a bit old and bland. You start to venture outside your comfort zone for greater challenges and realize that there are BIG lakes and oceans to explore.

I don’t think your value changes when you venture out into the ocean. It’s just that others may not be willing to pay for your value (at first) because you are now in an enviorment of many more fish that look just like you.

I also don’t think the hardest part of competition in globalization is necessarily in skillsets. It seems like personal branding and what makes you different is key.

Saying ‘I’m a Web Developer’ now means nothing unless you are in a pond with very few Developers. It’s more like: A) I’m a Web Developer that likes ___ B) Believes in ___ C) Passionate about ___ D) Came from ___ etc. etc. etc.

My thoughts may change but so far I see that the pond allows the development of skills and the ocean allows the development of an identitiy.

My 2…er ummm….25 cents :)

In my opinion, things are changing slowly. Apart from Outsourcing (BPO etc), some companies have staretd product development from India. For example, Macromedia India ( I workd as a part of Flex team and now some teams like Flex, Coldfusion, Jrun, Contribute etc are partially/totally based in India), Adobe India (a great success) etc…

As far as price is concerned, I think prices charged by Indian companies or salaries paid by companies based in India are no cheap/less. For example, A coke-can here costs me half of a dollar where as its around $1+ in USA. So you get the idea, what you call cheap is not cheap. Cheap is a relative word :)

Why India is getting a popular desitation:-

1) Communication (English)
2) Mathematics (Most of the folks have sold Maths background)
3) Economy where less salary (as compared to US standard) makes an engineer happy.

BTW! Programmers in India are getting better day by day. Actually there are great programmers and entrepreneurs. But still programming quality is at average level because of large numbers.

hehe…I really like the idea of globalization because it gives me an oppurtunity to work with great developers from all over world. At the same time, I am expecting more Indians to participate in OpenSource projects, mailing-lists, speak in conferences, blog, dont-maintain-low-profile-anymore, try to write clean code and buy time from they manangers to do that.

-abdul

Outsourcing is helping our biz because 90% of outsourced projects totally fail or get really late.

And the best thing is that after the totally negative experience of wasting a huge amount of time and money on outsourcing, they don’t question our process, budgets, or timelines because they’ve already learned the hard way.