Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I noticed a recent story on outsourcing. It seems the state of Ohio required work performed on state contracts to be performed  in Ohio by residents of Ohio. Imagine that! Work funded by the taxpayers of Ohio should be done by other taxpayers in Ohio.

That seems reasonable to me.

It doesn’t seem reasonable to outsourcing companies in India.

Several years ago I wrote an article for the Cutter IT Journal (a link to their base web site, not to the article I wrote). It was about how to survive as a programmer in a world where programmers in India, the Philippines, and other places would program just as well for a much smaller salary. One way to survive in such a world was to work on government contracts. Even back five years ago, governments at all levels were requiring work to be performed by residents of the contract-issuing government.

I pay taxes. I want the government to obtain the most work for the least tax money spent. Still, I don’t like my tax money going to a foreign country or to non-citizens. I have no animosity towards non-citizens. I just don’t want them to receive taxpayers’ money.

My advice to programmers in the U.S. remains largely unchanged:

live in a low-cost-of-living area of the U.S., i.e., rural

live an hour from an airport, i.e., still rural and cheap

keep your personal overhead low

if you can stomach the inherent problems, work on government contracts

if you can stomach the really bad inherent problems, work as a government employee

Some or all of the above may be repugnant to many programmers. If you can earn a living programming in the U.S. without doing any of the above, good for you. Please write me and tell me how you are doing it.