Shanghai Starts Up

Newsweek, June, 2006 by Steven Levy

The shanghai Pudong Software Park didn't exist a few years ago. Now about 20,000 programmers negotiate traffic jams every day to get there. Throngs of former school math champs file into boxy buildings to rabbit hutches and workstations, doing the high-tech programming jobs that used to belong to Americans--the jobs that weren't supposed to go offshore but are now commonly outsourced here or to India. The so-called good jobs.

But a few of the workers go to a somewhat different company, physically distinguished only by an impressive security system requiring electronic badges to move around the offices. The real difference in this start-up software company, called Augmentum, is in the nature of its work and its unique battle plan to jack up outsourcing to a new level....