MOSHE Y. VARDI
George Professor,
Computational Engineering
Director of the Computer and
Information Technology Institute,
Rice University
Where Have All The IT Jobs Gone? There, There, and Right Here
ABSTRACT: Computer science and technology have been incredibly successful. At the same time, globalization in the last 15 years have been charging ahead, with billions of people joining the free-market world and over 100 countries joining the World Trade Organization. The result is a world in which not only goods are globally tradable, but labor is also globally tradable; no need to move workers, when labor can be sent over a wire. The software market has globalizing at a torrid pace.
The issue of IT offshore outsourcing has received significant attention recently. The impression one gets from the media is that IT jobs are simply moving away from developed countries. Indeed, the growth of the IT industry in India over the last five years has been nothing less than explosive. There is no doubt that prospective CS students are aware of the offshore-outsourcing phenomenon. Some argue that this phenomenon is partly responsible to the continuing drop in computer science enrollments in developed countries. In 2004, ACM has established the Job Migration Task Force to study offshore outsourcing and assess its implications. I will describe the findings of the study and its conclusions, the most dramatic of which is that IT in the US is booming!
BIO: Moshe Y. Vardi is the George Professor in Computational Engineering and Director of the Computer and Information Technology Institute at Rice University. His research interests include database systems, computational-complexity theory, multi-agent systems, and design specification and verification. Vardi is a co-winner of the 2000 Goedel Prize and the 2005 ACM Paris Kanellakis Award for Theory and Practice. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Saarland, Germany, and the University of Orleans, France. He is a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. He is elected as a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the European Academy of Sciences.
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