[russotto]

Originally posted by tw
Rightly so. But the computer expert that only knows how to program is called a technician.

No, he's called a programmer. A technician is someone else -- someone for whom knowledge of electricity is actually more important, not less.

Just because someone can program - knows nothing about hardware or electricity - does not make a computer expert. Such people with so limited technical knowledge are called technicians - or technical support people. A productive economy needs people who can innovate - know more than a technician so the innovator can employ (make jobs for) technicians.

And knowing something about hardware or electricity does not make -- or contribute to making -- a computer expert, at least not an expert in designing useful software systems. It's important for such a person to know how much a drive holds; it's not important for him to know how much power it takes up. It is not necessary for the system designer to know everything at every layer of abstraction; it's not even possible.

Discussion is about outsourcing. Why do the job here if top management does not have sufficient knowledge to 'innovate' a new product?

You keep using that word, but I do not think you know what it means. In any case, "outsourcing" isn't supposed to be about outsourcing innovation. The idea behind outsourcing in programming is supposed to be that top management keeps the architects and the top engineers who do the innovative work, and hand off to the cheap labor the supposedly noncreative grunt work of actually coding (or designing and coding) the system.