Pressure on Time

Following up on the points I have been making, you will find more and more guest posts showing up here. One of the people who will be posting from time-to-time is my Indian friend Kaushik. He writes in the mailbox about how the work pressures are getting to he. The comment about what life is like for an Indian developer in the US is, I think, to the point. (I have, of course, changed the names of the companies involved).

Lately, the work front has been a little messy. I am hoping that things will get cleaner by January. I consult for a relatively new joint venture between XYZ Technologies (which I joined a few months back) and ABC Apparel. I dont particularly enjoy the place, but the experience is rich and hard to find. It is a rather chaotic workplace and it has been very hard trying to make this work. (someone once said that policy making is like sausage making. Both look great from outside. The same statement can be applied to consulting or software development). Recently, there has been increasing XYZ ground level antipathy to Indian consultants, and increasing ABC internal pressure to meet year end revenue needs. It has been, kind of, taking its toll. We are hoping to go home to India in January. Hopefully, things will get better by then or I would feel less stressed ...

Living in China 'ambassador' Andrea has something similar to say from a different perspective:

Didn't mean to be so quiet. In fact, I've got a lot to say with regards to various conversation threads that have been going on since last week. But I have a 9.5 hrs work day (plus 1 hr commuting) these days...totally tired by the end of the day. Will write more on weekends. Some of these days, I want to give you technical help for your "Global Economics Blog Forum" - which I think has great potential for making great things happening...Well, I'll definitely write more later on the weekend or so. Now I see the beauty of moblog, MP3 players, etc...they help me to utilize all these "niche" time.

This raises an interesting point. Not everyone writing for Living in China actually does. I, for example, live in Barcelona, and Andrea is a Chinese Canadian.

Going back to the topic of IT outsourcing in India and other places, Prashant has an interesting post on India Economy Watch:

Over 40% of IT Development Work Now Outsourced

India is the preferred offshore provider. According to the META Group, about 41% of all information technology development work for U.S. businesses is now being outsourced, with India continuing to be the preferred offshore provider. The number is up from a year ago, when about 36% of development work was outsourced, META said. The firm said that Russia, the Philippines, Ireland, Israel, and China are "the up-and-comers to watch" in the offshore IT development market.

Question: As per Nasscom total software & services exports (including BPO) was US$ 9.5 billion during 2002-03, out of a global IT services market of more than US$ 600 billion (this doesn't include software products or hardware). So, what does that 40% mean!