the power of 0ne

I came across a very interesting link on outsourcing on Brent's blog, the article asks the question: "can lone coders reverse the outsourcing trend?". A better way to phrase that question would be "can lone coders reverse the offshoring trend?". Even though the two terms are being used interchangeably in the media, they do not mean the same thing. Outsourcing is when a company or organization has some work done by someone outside the company, offshoring is when that work is sent to another country.

It seems logical that an increase in talented lone coders in North America would increase outsourcing, but decrease offshoring. But even then, I can't really see it reversing the offshoring trend. How is a lone North American coder supposed to be able to compete with a programmer in India who makes an average salary of $2,500 USD a year? I live in a relatively inexpensive city (Sherbrooke, Qc) and I still charge over 10x that in a year.