I had a quick post over at System Volume. Feel free to read it. Not a lot of added commentary over there, but I think it is an interesting article in light of the economic realities of today.
The past decade brought about a swath of IT outsourcing not just to other countries, but to other vendors. What if there would be pushback against this, a culture shift that aims to bring back in-house IT and development expertise in order to create more nimble companies who can tailor their offerings to the needs of the company? Would this lead to an increase in higher-paying IT jobs here, or would it have the opposite effect by creating, at first, a glut of new positions, leading to a glut of new candidates which would then weaken the overall market?
It is also interesting to think about what this could mean for open source. What if instead of spending money on proprietary vendor solutions, a company would hire a developer and then give back to the open source community those parts which are not business critical? Does centralization always mean higher efficiency?
Lots of questions and I have no answers. It is fun to think about, though.