Indian outsourcers now 'insourcing' jobs to Silicon Valley

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India's $60 billion IT outsourcing industry was built on a simple model: Rely on armies of cheap engineers in the South Asian country to be the help desk for the West. Now, though, Indian outsourcers are hiring thousands of expensive engineers and business development specialists in Silicon Valley and nationwide.

The shift in strategy reflects the growing complexity of outsourced work that now requires levels of expertise not widely found in India. It's getting harder to hire the best Indian engineers -- as competition grows from such U.S. giants as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), IBM and Accenture, which have massive operations there -- and harder to move them overseas. With all that, the outsourcers are finding U.S. employees a much more attractive option.

It's also a good public relations strategy as high unemployment and anemic economic growth has led some politicians to take a dim view of these companies.

"The irony is IBM (and other tech companies) moved East and the Indian companies are moving West," said Vivek Wadhwa, a researcher on immigration and labor issues at UC Berkeley.

full: http://www.mercurynews.com/rss/ci_18625774