Dylan Smith wrote:
On 2005-08-25, wrote:
Move out of New Jersey. Work as a consultant and you can live anywhere
you can get a high-speed internet connection. No commute necessary and
real estate costs a lot less. I hire developers and sales people almost

Trouble is - if as a computer professional you have a job where you
telecommute (or can telecommute), so can someone from India at a tenth
of your salary. If you want work which gives you the stability to own
and continue to fly an aircraft, you need a job that requires at least
reasonable frequent physical presence so you don't get outsourced.

The real-world picture is a bit more complicated than this. Working
with offshore resources costs a lot more than just the salary of the
guy in Bangalore. If you're contracting resources in small volume,
reasonably-skilled people can easily cost $2500/month, and in order to
get the job done you will probably need an in-country project manager
who costs another $2500. So a three-man shop costs $10k/mo.

In many cases you could do the same job here in the US with 2 good
coders who can manage themselves, live in your time zone, and
understand American business. You won't find good people for $60k/year
who live in the Manhattan area, but you might find them in Florida,
Texas, or Idaho where everything costs half as much and there's no
income tax.

Companies like GE or Accenture can push rates lower because of scale,
but most companies are not able to support those kinds of operations.
Not to mention that there are still many projects where cultural
knowledge that any American resident has will make things go much, much
easier. There is and always will be a place in the picture for American
IT workers.

-cwk.