“Are you cashing in on this?”

So asked the subject line of an email my brother sent me in early 2003. “This” was what was described in an attached news story from a trade journal — I forget which one — as a “huge” and “desperate” shortage of information technology professionals, particularly software developers.

That certainly came as a big surprise to me. I’m an independent software developer and had worked only sporadically in the field the past couple of years. Many of my former clients had outsourced most or all of their information technology operations — often to “body shops” that imported Indian software engineers under the H-1B and L-1 visa programs and then set up shop right on the companies’ premises. Most other software and engineering professionals I knew were either unemployed or underemployed. One was trying to sell real estate. Another had to move to another city and saw his job outsourced a second time. (Fortunately, he was outsourced with it; the “body shop” hired him to continue doing his old job.) Some had given up and had decided to retire. Read more »