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He was too young for a nationwide programming competition sponsored by MicrosoftCorp. (MSFT ), so an older friend registered for him. Haberman wowed the judges witha flashy Web page design and finished second in the country. Emboldened, Stephencame up with a radical idea: Maybe he would skip college altogether and mine a quickfortune in dot-com gold. His mother, Cindy, put the kibosh on his plan. She steeredhim to a full scholarship at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Half a world away, in the western Indian city of Nagpur, a 19-year-old named DeepaParanjpe was having an argument with her father. Sure, computer science was heatingup, he told her.
Western companies were frantically hiring Indians to scour millions of softwareprograms and eradicate the much-feared millennium bug. But this craze would pass.The former railroad employee urged his daughter to pursue traditional engineering, amuch safer course. Deepa had always respected her father's opinions.
When he demanded perfection at school, she delivered nothing less. But she turned adeaf ear to his career advice and plunged into software. After all, this was theindustry poised to change the world.
As Stephen and Deepa emerge this summer from graduate school -- one in Pittsburgh,the other in Bombay -- they'll find that their decisions of a half-decade ago placedtheir dreams on a collision course. The Internet links that were being piecedtogether at the turn of the century now provide broadband connections betweenmultinational companies and brainy programmers the world over.
For Deepa and tens of thousands of other Indian students, the globalization oftechnology offers the promise of power and riches in a blossoming local techindustry. But for Stephen and his classmates in the U.S., the sudden need to competewith workers across the world ushers in an era of uncertainty. Will good jobs bewaiting for them when they graduate? "I might have been better served getting anMBA," Stephen says.U.S. software programmers' career prospects, once dazzling, are now in doubt. Justlook at global giants, from IBM (IBM ) and Electronic Data Systems (EDS ) to LehmanBrothers (LEH ) and Merrill Lynch (MER ).
They're rushing to hire tech workers offshore while liquidating thousands of jobs inAmerica. In the past three years, offshore programming jobs have nearly tripled,from 27,000 to an estimated 80,000, according to Forrester Research Inc. (FORR ).And Gartner Inc. figures that by yearend, 1 of every 10 jobs in U.S. tech companieswill move to emerging markets. In other words, recruiters who look at Stephen willalso consider someone like Deepa -- who's willing to do the same job for one-fifththe pay. U.S. software developers "are competing with everyone else in the world whohas a PC," says Robert R. Bishop, chief executive of computer maker Silicon GraphicsInc. (SGI).
