Outsource?: Competing in the Global Productivity Race

Yourdon explains the key factors driving the offshore outsourcing of high-tech jobs, and explores the implications of outsourcing for individuals, companies, and government policy. He also offers strategies for knowledge-intensive businesses whose products and services are under competitive attack by lower-cost, higher-quality companies in other parts of the world. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Publishers Weekly

In 1992, Yourdon published Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, which predicted that U.S.-based coders would "suffer the fate of the do-do bird" as firms shifted jobs from American workers to those overseas in order to take advantage of lower pay scales and less labor regulation; following the high-flying late '90s, that prediction has proved correct for many kinds of programming. A lifetime IT veteran, Yourdon has spent the last decade on the board of directors of a U.S.-based outsourcing firm and its Indian subsidiary, and the result is this insider's look at "knowledge-based" industries: the computer industry, as well as other "back office" operations like mortgage application processing or legal services. Refreshingly, the book is explicitly not designed for managers of any kind, but rather to give employees a sense of trends and context when deciding how to move within their own industries and how to "advise their children what careers and professions they should follow." Yourdon is not an economist, but his praxis-based evaluations, bolstered by reports over the last few years culled from the business press, feel carefully digested and are clearly presented in an affable voice. (Oct.) Forecast: While not sanguine about what's coming for American knowledge workers, Yourdon has their best interests at heart, making this a rare business book indeed-look for strong word-of-mouth sales. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

OutsourceAuthor Bio

EDWARD YOURDON has been a futurist, pundit, and advisor to CEOs around the world for nearly 40 years. He has been named as one of the ten most influential people in the software industry and has been inducted into the Computer Hall of Fame along with Charles Babbage, Grace Hopper, Bill Gates, Seymour Cray, and James Martin.

A New York Times best-selling author, his two dozen books include such classics as Nations At Risk, Decline and Fall of the American Programmer, Death March, and Byte Wars. Several of his books have been translated into Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, German, and Polish. He has testified before the U.S. Senate on the Y2K problem, has served on advisory councils of the U.S. Defense Department, and has been a board member of numerous high-technology companies in the United States and India.

Yourdon received a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from MIT and has carried out graduate work at MIT and the Polytechnic Institute of New York. He has been appointed an Honorary Professor of Information Technology at Universidad CAECE in Buenos Aires, Argentina and has lectured at MIT, Harvard, UCLA, Berkeley, and other universities around the world. He has been quoted and interviewed in numerous newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek, Boston Globe, the Times of India, and several computer trade publications. He has also been interviewed on numerous TV news shows and radio programs, including CNBC, National Public Radio, ABC Evening News, and Fox News.

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