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
• iFreelance.com<//li>
• 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.