Released on = January 6, 2006, 2:13 am

Press Release Author = Jim

Industry = Software

Press Release Summary = Stephen Haberman was one of a handful of folks in all of
Chase County, Neb., who knew how to program a computer. In the spring of 1999, at
the height of the Internet boom, the 17-year-old whiz wanted to strut his stuff
outside of his windswept patch of prairie.

Press Release Body = Stephen Haberman was one of a handful of folks in all of Chase
County, Neb., who knew how to program a computer. In the spring of 1999, at the
height of the Internet boom, the 17-year-old whiz wanted to strut his stuff outside
of his windswept patch of prairie.

He was too young for a nationwide programming competition sponsored by Microsoft
Corp. (MSFT ), so an older friend registered for him. Haberman wowed the judges with
a flashy Web page design and finished second in the country. Emboldened, Stephen
came up with a radical idea: Maybe he would skip college altogether and mine a quick
fortune in dot-com gold. His mother, Cindy, put the kibosh on his plan. She steered
him to a full scholarship at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Half a world away, in the western Indian city of Nagpur, a 19-year-old named Deepa
Paranjpe was having an argument with her father. Sure, computer science was heating
up, he told her.

Western companies were frantically hiring Indians to scour millions of software
programs and eradicate the much-feared millennium bug. But this craze would pass.
The former railroad employee urged his daughter to pursue traditional engineering, a
much safer course. Deepa had always respected her father\'s opinions.

When he demanded perfection at school, she delivered nothing less. But she turned a
deaf ear to his career advice and plunged into software. After all, this was the
industry poised to change the world.

As Stephen and Deepa emerge this summer from graduate school -- one in Pittsburgh,
the other in Bombay -- they\'ll find that their decisions of a half-decade ago placed
their dreams on a collision course. The Internet links that were being pieced
together at the turn of the century now provide broadband connections between
multinational companies and brainy programmers the world over.

For Deepa and tens of thousands of other Indian students, the globalization of
technology offers the promise of power and riches in a blossoming local tech
industry. But for Stephen and his classmates in the U.S., the sudden need to compete
with workers across the world ushers in an era of uncertainty. Will good jobs be
waiting for them when they graduate? \"I might have been better served getting an
MBA,\" Stephen says.
U.S. software programmers\' career prospects, once dazzling, are now in doubt. Just
look at global giants, from IBM (IBM ) and Electronic Data Systems (EDS ) to Lehman
Brothers (LEH ) and Merrill Lynch (MER ).

They\'re rushing to hire tech workers offshore while liquidating thousands of jobs in
America. In the past three years, offshore programming jobs have nearly tripled,
from 27,000 to an estimated 80,000, according to Forrester Research Inc. (FORR ).
And Gartner Inc. figures that by yearend, 1 of every 10 jobs in U.S. tech companies
will move to emerging markets. In other words, recruiters who look at Stephen will
also consider someone like Deepa -- who\'s willing to do the same job for one-fifth
the pay. U.S. software developers \"are competing with everyone else in the world who
has a PC,\" says Robert R. Bishop, chief executive of computer maker Silicon Graphics
Inc. (SGI).

Web Site =
http://www.tatvasoft.com/outsourcing%5C2005%5C05%5Cprogramming-jobs-are-heading-overseas.html


Contact Details = TatvaSoft - Software Development India

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S. G. Road, Nr. Bodakdev
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Gujarat, India

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