Potato I have

Greg Gretsch highlights the brain drain (from Silicon Valley in this article at AlwaysOn) aspect of offshoring tech work, not just the building of know-how elsewhere, but the picking-up and going-home of the considerable numbers of foreigners who came here for educations and/or good tech work.

But which know-how? Americans and others who are actively offshoring activities will of course be learning lots about how and when to offshore, what are the “crown jewels,” what is higher up the value chain for deep-skill workers. Will that be interesting work? Will it be the kind of advantage that tech has been for some decades now?

What will draw back all those people who will have gone home?

Sam Ruby has started a survival guide for internationalization. It includes some references, of which I particularly liked Joel Spolsky’s minimal i18n bar for programmers. Platonic ideals, okay, now I’ve got it.