Tuesday, November 08, 2005

newsweek: Demand for skilled manpower

nov 8th

there was an article by dr. gangan prathap of cmmacs, a widely respected scientist, some time ago bemoaning the fact that every engineer in india was moving into software thus leaving nobody to build the roads and run the factories.

here's something along the same lines by newseek.

i think the fears are a little exaggerated. to a large extent, market forces will determine demand and supply. for instance, in the us it is now hard for even youngsters from top schools like stanford and berkeley to get software engineering jobs, so the number of people going into that discipline has fallen dramatically. similarly, scarcity will increase the value of non-IT degrees and this will increase the supply.

the cost-arbitrage business is anyway a short-term phenomenon so no point worrying about whether the IT and ITES jobs will move away from india because of increasing salaries. they will and they should -- that is, the low-end, boring ones that can easily be done anywhere. the only lasting competitive advantage is based on IPR. thus it is the knowledge process outsourcing jobs that india needs to concentrate on: legal, medical, R&D, financial analysis, etc.

http://us.rediff.com/money/2005/nov/08bweek.htm?q=tp&file=.htm?headline=India:~Desperately~seeking~talent

No comments: