I offer you the following process to gauged your Offshore Risk Factor. To do this, you need to look at two things: Your personal risk factor and your company's risk factor:

Let's start with the personal one. Go ahead and answer the following questions:

How much process is there in your job? Do you follow a proscribed rigid work regimen? Do you know what you are going to be doing every single hour of every single day?

Can you see a flow chart from where you're sitting right now?

Can you see a work-provided clock (not yours) from where you're sitting right now?

Do you work in customer service or technical support?

Are there big black binders which describe the work that you do?

Is there a glossary for new hires?

If you work in software development, are you handed specifications from nameless, faceless designers?

Do you NOT have a relationship with the people who are responsible for testing your work?

If you answered "Yes" to any of the above, you're may be at risk. You could be outsourced because your job is so richly defined that it can be documented and explained to any reasonable professional on the planet who might work for much less than you. Sorry. Go Capitalism!

The other way to assess your Offshore Risk Factor is to look at two things in the organization: the quality of the process and the quality of the product. Use your own judgement here. Do we have process? If so, how much? Does our product suck? Really, how bad?

If you have, LOUSY PROCESS / LOUSY PRODUCT, then:

Whether you're at a start-up or a established company, you have a bigger problems than outsourcing. Your company is about to fail, resting on it's laurels, or is just lucky. In any case, you're not in a sustainable situation, so start looking for a job. You'll be happier elsewhere. Trust me.

LOUSY PROCESS / GOOD or GREAT PRODUCT:

Most start-ups who make it through a year or two fall into this category. They've spent millions of dollars getting the product right, but, chances are, they've cut some corners on process. This is good news for you because you've got the essential process in your head and that means job security. For now.

Big fat companies fall into this category, as well. This seems odd because you'd think that it'd require good process to build a successful company. Wrong. Great product can cover a lot of process stupidity. The bad news is that the growth potential for your company is limited by the fact that you're probably spending a lot of money on process errors... poor communication... duplication of effort. The good news is that your company's inability to communicate itself makes it an unlikely outsourcing candidate. Congratulations. You'll never get rich, but you've got a job, right?