Sponsor's Message

Having worked in the IT industry for over 20 years as a programmer, analyst, project manager, team leader and company director, I have to say that the overall standard of your average Kiwi code-cutter is very high indeed.

This excellence is reflected in the way that so many locally developed software products box far above their weight in the dog-eat-dog world that is the global marketplace.

Whether it's specialist vertical market packages addressing things such as dental care or development tools with a broader application, some of the very best systems have either been designed and built by Kiwis or have some significant Kiwi involvement.

One of the reasons we've done so well is not just our high levels of skill but the fact that we're cheap, dead cheap.

With the Kiwi dollar sitting at US 55 cents, you it costs just half as much to develop a piece of software here in NZ as it does in the USA.

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This allows us to either provide more software for a given price, or charge a lower price to develop a given piece of software.

Sounds great eh?

So why aren't overseas software companies knocking down our doors and begging us to cut their code?

Well the answer is simple -- we may be dead cheap but there are others who are even cheaper.

This story shows that when it comes to a company's bottom line, there's often a lot of pressure to cut costs when cutting code.

What US or European company would bother employing a Kiwi programmer for US$40K per year when they could employ someone from a country such as India and pay just US$8,000?

What's worse, once you get around the often poor English language skills of these third-world programmers, many of them are every bit as good as their Kiwi peers.

It's no wonder therefore, that key companies such as Microsoft prefer to use India as a development resource rather than set up major operations here in New Zealand.

My question for today is: in light of the clearly superior value offered by outsourcing software development to countries such as India, should we bother trying to steer students into programming as a career path?

Wouldn't we be better off focusing on where we have undoubted strengths over those masses of cheap code cutters?

I'm talking about the infinitely more difficult challenges of coming up with new ideas for software packages, creating new markets and delivering skillfully crafted customised solutions.

Just as our local clothing industry (with the possible exception of "fashion" garments) has largely disappeared thanks to the cheap labour rates of countries such as China and Indonesia, will our code cutters also become redundant sometime in the near future?

And of course if any Aardvark readers have an opinion on today's column or want to add something you're also invited to chip in and have your say.

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