Trends in Engineering Offshoring! By: Vivek Wadhwa
"Ever since the offshore shift of engineering work blew up into a national issue four years ago, a question has nagged at economists and policy makers: Is outsourcing hurting America's engineering workforce? Or is it actually boosting engineering careers by making U.S. tech companies more competitive and allowing them to deploy engineers more effectively?Duke University has been at the forefront of assessing this issue with two major research projects -- one by the Fuqua School of Business and the other by Pratt School of Engineering. What's interesting is that the two studies, both involving surveys of U.S. executives, are coming to completely different conclusions. One finds that companies are going offshore because they are desperate for talent and are shifting more complex work to nations such as India and China for strategic reasons. The other Duke study concludes that the offshoring phenomenon is all about cost and that there is no shortage of engineers in the U.S. Therefore, the labor shift is comin
