The future of the 'programmer' doesn't look so good. Well - neither does the future of the i-banker, the VC, the equity researcher, or the strategy consultant. Interesting read nonetheless - driven by exactly what you'd suspect: efficiency and cost-cutting.
Here are three related pieces.
By the way, I don't agree with most of this: I think that outsourcing is going to cost far more than it benefits most firms, who haven't really recognized how deeply embedded competences are. And who haven't really seen what they're getting into, but are rushing blindly into it, because they're infected with the Wall St virus.
Here's a simple example of what I mean: let's pretend Dell in 1990 was teleported to 2003. It could make it's entire supply-chain generic, using the same software, outsourcing packages, etc, as it's competitors.
If it did that, it would stop being Dell: the thing that made Dell a success was that it did everything differently (and better) than it's competitors. Productivity - the measure used to justify outsourcing - never encapsulated Dell's advantage. It was just a (very) small part of it.