It seems that the hottest rage in software development is not J2EE, or .NET. It seems like the biggest trend is off-shore software development. As an avid slashdot member and general member of the tech elite who feels that his job and overall career is somewhat threatened, I?m alarmed. It seems that more and more large corporations are jettisoning their software divisions in exchange for a development team based out of India or South East Asia. More over in the read more link... I can?t count the number of people who have lost their jobs over the last 18 months as companies come to terms with the high price of development versus the need to get work done in spite of shrinking revenues. I really do support the idea that a small winnowing of the IT ranks could be a good thing. There are an awful lot of people in the IT arena that really don?t like IT, or don?t have a passion for IT, but do IT work because it is more lucrative than other professions. Of course, this leads to poor quality of work, but in reality the free market can usually handle the truly hopeless. My real fear is that IT professionals may have over-priced themselves into a dangerous position. How many large companies aren?t tempted by the offer of dropping their development costs by 50% or even 75%. It was just a matter of time before college graduates demanding > $75k salaries would have a negative effect on the market. The question of the day is whether offshore software development will be a fresh breath of competition or an industry killer like foreign car companies like Honda and Toyota initially damaged the domestic car companies. Story continues at Designtechnica.