There are No Barriers for Small Business IT Outsourcing

Filed in archive E-Commerce on October 16, 2005

As an IT professional in the United States I'm well aware of offshore outsourcing but I'm still trying to digest the extent of it and have been for years now. The other day I ran across the Rent A Coder site. My initial thought was that it sounded very interesting. I visited the site thinking that it might be a way I could earn a little extra money, but walked away realizing how few barriers there are now for outsourcing IT work to places like Eastern Europe or India.

I had thought that only large companies could take advantage of offshore outsourcing. For some reason I had thought that small to medium sized businesses could never afford the expense of finding and then executing on a project using programmers overseas. How wrong I was to think such a thing. Through a quick search on Google I was able to locate the following sites:

• Rent A Coder


• GetACoder.com


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• Get a Freelancer<//li>
  


• Geek Bidder<//li>
  

I browsed through some projects on the sites and found projects from as low as $25 to $500 and more. Based on the descriptions many of the projects seemed simple enough. However, the value proposition for me, and I would think for other software developers in the United States as well, simply doesn't work. For example I would never be able to spend two solid weeks creating a web site for a client for $500. A programmer in India or Romania may think that is perfectly reasonable and take on the project without a second thought.

As an IT professional in the U.S. I see this and I'm a little concerned. There is much more to my work these days besides software programming but I still do it. If I needed to feed my family I would spend two solid weeks creating a web site for a client for $500 but not unless I absolutely had to do it. Programming is something I honestly enjoy doing. It may be less and less of what I do as I get older but I enjoy it and want to continue doing it. If I had never done any programming I don't know how I would ever be able to consider myself an IT professional. Over and over again I've heard people say that there will always be opportunities in the U.S. and I still think that is the case. However, it is getting harder and harder for me to feel that way after seeing examples like Rent A Coder.