Very true, Justin
I had to laugh when you described your $60 utility bills -- your experience was exactly the same as mine before marriage.
It's my understanding that the cost of living is increasing in many places in India. As the middle class grows in India, more people want cars, and iPods, and big screen televisions. It's inevitable that labor costs will rise in India, China, and other places that are currently outsourcing hotspots.
But, as Toni pointed out, outsource services are getting better at what they do. They'll continue digging into the software market in the US, taking away jobs from US programmers.
IMO, it's not just the loss of jobs that makes software engineering unattractive as a career. It's that outsourcing provides a low-cost alternative to hiring local talent. It means that jobs that may have paid $80,000 in the past will be offered at $50,000, simply because the employer knows they can outsource the work for $40,000 if no one takes the job.
Outsourcing degrades the profession (IMO). It's making the software engineering profession much less competitive than it used to be. In most cases, the employer couldn't care less about a person's credentials -- all they want is the product to be built or maintained at the lowest cost.
The last paragraph of your post is exactly my experience. By the time the overhead of outsourcing is figured into a project's cost, outsourcing is much less rewarding than initially planned. However, too often short-sighted management sees a $20 an hour outsource vs $60 in-house, and makes a decision that costs US jobs.
