MIT Students Get an Education in Software Development 595
John Valenti writes "Philip Greenspun's Blog had an interesting entry for December 1: 'It turns out that most of the content editing and all of the programming work for OpenCourseware was done in India...'"
You know you're really in trouble... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You know you're really in trouble... (Score:3, Insightful)
The web page is responding very slowely, so:
Not all of our students will see this cover story in Business Week [businessweek.com] on the migration of high-paying jobs to India. But most attended a lecture in 6.171 [greenspun.com] by the folks who run MIT's latest big IT effort: OpenCourseware ( [mit.edu] http://ocw.mit.edu [mit.edu] ), which distributes syllabi, problem sets, and other materials from MIT classes (at least one semester after the class is actually given). During the lecture the students learned that, although ocw.mit.edu is
So that's that, folks... (Score:5, Insightful)
...
A PowerPoint slide contained the magic word "Delhi". It turns out that most of the content editing and all of the programming work for OpenCourseware was done in India"
If we pay exhorbitant license fees for second-rate crapware with first-rate marketing, we don't have any money left to pay American programmers. Or apparently, even to hire American grad students.
Closed source == money migrates to the vendors
Open Source == money can be used to pay programmers.
Which way do you want it?
Re:So that's that, folks... (Score:5, Interesting)
I am somewhat surprised that what MIT needed did not already exist as commercial off the shelf code. Their requirements are hardly very unusual, in fact since the content is not going to change much once it is put up there is not a great deal of difference between this site and any other web zine.
What this looks like to me is a boondoggle. $2 million is pretty easy to spend on software if you go bespoke. That is the main reason why most of the open source arguments you see on slashdot are bogus. If you can pay $100K for a product that is 90% complete you are one heck of a lot better off than you are paying $0 for a product that is 70% complete, maybe on a good day.
Open source is great provided it does exactly what you need if you have to do extensive programming then Gartner are completely right.
Building a system around Microsoft CMS is one heck of a lot better than mucking arround trying to make CVS do this type of thing. I don't have an issue with that part. But $2 million to customize it...
Incidentally MIT students are hideously expensive. The student may not get paid much, but the overhead charged by MIT is horrendous and the results can be 'variable' to say the least.
Re:So that's that, folks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Being a senior IT guy at the University of Michigan, being an Ars Digita alumni, and knowing intimately how Universities work, I can answer this question:
Academic institutions LOVE to think that they are somehow different, special, gifted, unique, and dare I say it - divine.
We like to think that no one else can know our problems and only we can solve them, and refuse to acknowledge that there are only so many different solutions to the same problem. Academic computing boils down to these areas:
1) Registration/ student records management
2) HR/Payroll management
3) Content/presence management for publicity
4) Online learning systems
5) Security/signon infrastructure
5) Coordination of back office components between the other five
You can argue that there is a need for one more area:
6) Research computing
but that normally is a separate group from ACADEMICS.
I am constantly amazed at how much universities spend on their systems, and how much customization they do - to the tune of MILLIONS of dollars a year. And then, on top of that, when one department decides to go another route, THEY spend alot of money, and then the institution has to eventually roll that structure back into the overall schema, costing even MORE money.
The bottom line is that university IT systems need to be run more and more like corporate IT, and the same amount of planning, forethought, and most of all INTELLIGENCE needs to be applied.
Re:So that's that, folks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually they are not that much different from other enterprises. People simply cannot comprehend that the cost of going bespoke is vast.
The MIT folk very proudly told me how they built their own system to replace the IT functions
Re:So that's that, folks... (Score:5, Informative)
When I was at MIT the rules were that overhead was charged at a rate of 2.75 times expenses. So if I hired someone as staff and paid them $1000 I would be charged $3750 from my budget.
The rules for students were somewhat different but still pretty grasping. Basically I would be charged the amount they were actually paid plus overhead and added to that their cost of tuition, I can't remember what overhead would be on that. Tuition at MIT these days is $29K per year. So over a year a student would cost my budget something like $60K, and the student would see less than $10K of that and I would see about 15 weeks worth of work if I was lucky.
There is also overhead on external contractors but nowhere near as much.
And yes, this is a complete stinking racket. The only reason it continues is that the government allows the major research universities to do this type of padding as a means of giving them an under the table subsidy.
I have no clue where the money goes. If you look at the amount of time that the students have contact with the faculty, the amount the faculty are paid and the cost of tuition the sums don't add up. And thats before you consider places like LCS/AI which have always been self funding through government grants. Perhaps the President has a yatch somewhere like the Stanford guy had, he would have to be a lot better hiding the thing round MIT though and if the students found it...
Re:So that's that, folks... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So that's that, folks... (Score:3, Insightful)
IANAMA (I Am Not A Microsoft Apologist), but that just doesn't add up. You would certainly have less money because of the proprietary stuff purchased up front, but they're still spending money on developers after the fact. They could have used that money to hire their own grad students and wouldn't have had to re
Re:You know you're really in trouble... (Score:5, Funny)
"You know you're really in trouble...
when Indian developers are even cheaper than" Indian developers???
Re:You know you're really in trouble... (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, thats big trouble. Thats like a paradox or something!
Re:You know you're really in trouble... (Score:5, Insightful)
But if they can only choose one, they'll go with "cheap" every time.
Re:You know you're really in trouble... (Score:3, Interesting)
If there is a disparity between mean and median, mean would be higher here, since the high paying jobs would distort the distribution and pull up the mean.
Re:Where the blame belongs (Score:3, Insightful)
It's one of the reasons unions were originally formed. They get a lot of bad press, and sometimes earned it (they sometimes have corrupt bosses, and frequently defend their member right or wrong). But when you don't have them, this is what you get. Enjoy.
The basic fault here is with the government. All levels, getting worse as you near the feds. They systematically favor those with power over those without power. This means, if you know what's good for you, you scheme to g
Funny (Score:2, Interesting)
There are equally good and equally bad firms all over the word that do development... India is no exception.
Re:Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
So you've got one of the premier software development colleges in the country outsourcing it's software development work to India. It'd be like a medical school outsourcing it's health department.
Re:Funny (Score:3, Insightful)
What choice? (Score:3, Insightful)
Derek
Re:Funny (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Funny (Score:2)
Apples and oranges...What would you say about MIT hiring an outside contractor to repair a wall on its campus when it has a civil engineering department? Hey...the poor graduate students in the civil engineering department could use the extra money..and it's related to their field, right?
Re:Funny (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Funny (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not to say that Indian developers are mediocre, of course, most of the ones I've worked with are very skilled. It's simply rather depressing that the dispa
Re:Funny (Score:3, Interesting)
But for developing production-quality software solutions, and in particular a content-management solution, I'm not sure they'd come anywhere near the "most-skilled" category. With a few years of job exper
Re:Funny (Score:2)
Student Labor vs. good money (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess that it's hard for the school administrators to soak money off a project unless it's got a big budget. Perhaps a conversation to a close friend goes like this: "Yea, we're outsourcing the project to an Indian company which is paying me to consult"
Re:Student Labor vs. good money (Score:3, Insightful)
Cost for one year of MIT undergraduate tuition in 2003-2004: $29,400.00 [mit.edu]
School runs from Sept 3 to May 21, so estimate at 39 weeks. Next, assume the student is working for 1/2 tuition credit (which a lot of colleges like to do for part time work), at ~ $14,500. Since they're working part time and going to school, lets be generous and say they work three days a week: 24 hours. You've just forked out $15.50/hour for one "cheap labor"
Re:Student Labor vs. good money (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever heard of work-study. I haven't been to college in a number of years and I don't know what the current rates are but I am sure that it doesn't pay that well. I bet there are dozens of students saying "where can I get half off my tuition", show us that link.
Also who says you have to pay them anything, hell, it could be a class project.
Last time I checked MIT was an Educational Institution, that means they are in the BUSINESS of edu
An older thread about outsourcing experiences.... (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of familiar points are made - timezone differences impede voice communications, geography impedes physical communications, "fire and forget" projects are not very common, etc. Seems like it can be made to work, though, if folks on the project take the time to keep the communication lines open.
Open Courseware not Open Source (Score:2, Insightful)
So i poked arround and its on the faq (and i seem to remember i got email from them when i asked). They made it with a microsoft CMS piece of shit software and some other stuff.
The good part about it is that teachers just do their stuff in HTML and most of the infrastructure is basicaly static with some MSCMS stuff arround it.
I guess there are many good things about it, but tech infrastructure is not one of t
The sad part... (Score:3, Insightful)
Where did $11 million go to?
That's a $400 project you just described... assuming students would voulenteer to help set it up (which they would and probably do it well)
Sad example of spending money "because we have it" if you ask me.
Stewey
I'm starting to come around in my way of thinking. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, this (in addition to a weakening dollar) will eventually lead to equilibrium and a return of jobs as manufacturing is able to afford more workers locally. Additionally, it's somewhat symbolic that India has worked on a project that will ultimately allow other disadvantaged countries to develop their own technology resources off of information, hopefully returning to the pool of public knowledge rather then proprietary.
And MIT students get a lesson in economics as well.
Re:I'm starting to come around in my way of thinki (Score:4, Insightful)
That would also explain why it took actual Federal legislation to keep 50% of the semiconductor founderies in the U.S. when we started with 90% of them.
This isn't about hating Indians because they're a different culture. This is about watching high tech U.S. jobs vanish overseas to some $2 a day worker so some corporate boardroom bozo can buy his 5th Rolls. My question is this: When all the people in the U.S. are unemployed or under employed because all the formerly high paying - high tech jobs are overseas, who's going to buy the $50 widgits (that cost $1 to make overseas)?
Re:I'm starting to come around in my way of thinki (Score:2)
> manufacturing is able to afford more workers locally.
That's the answer, all right. As long as you aren't one of the 'more and more people'.
> And MIT students get a lesson in economics as well.
Indeedy.
> If we were faultless we sho
Re:I'm starting to come around in my way of thinki (Score:3, Insightful)
Harming the local economy... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's time for me to contact my state elected representatives and let them know how MIT is harming the local economy by sending work out of the country when there are top notch people unemployed here, and suggest that I'd be unhappy if the state were to give MIT any particular financial breaks or other incentives.
Re:Harming the local economy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Harming the local economy... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Harming the local economy... (Score:5, Insightful)
India offers a service of the same quality for a lower price... you must either lower your price or offer something better...
Globalization has its downside you know...
Re:Harming the local economy... (Score:4, Insightful)
You really do get what you pay for but the PHB saved a few dollars so he's a hero.
Re:Harming the local economy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Call me "PC" if you must, but this seems like borderline racist thinking. You are, I hope, aware that India offers state of the art technical education, right? I mean, because, otherwise, you'd kind of be shooting your mouth off about something you, you know, don't know anything about.
So if education can't explain it, what is it? The hot climate? All that spicy food? What? Spell it out for us, Daytona955i. We're all ears.
I work with many people born and educated in India (and Asia, and Europe, and the former Soviet Union) and some of them are absolute cream-of-the-crop, as-good-as-you-could-ever-hope-to-be, top 10th of the top percentile good. Smart people are rare everywhere, but it's a huge world, and I don't ever kid myself that there isn't some hungry kid in Uzbekistan who could do my job better than me for half the money.
Re:Harming the local economy... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hardly think India sees the "downside" to this "globalization". Being forced to compete with others is not a downside. It's called a reality check. Quite simply, you're not as important and good as you thought you were.
Here's a reality check. (Score:5, Interesting)
Being forced to compete with others on a completely unequal scale is a downside. That's why the U.S. is being threatened with sanctions over its steel tariffs. It makes it really hard for foreign nations to compete. Ya dig?
That's the fundamental problem. We have an unequal playing field, and in an environment where cost is valued over all else it isn't a competition, it's a blowout.
I really, really hope that globalization can help India and other countries boost their economies and develop themselves into the "1st World" nations they can be*. I just wonder what damage it will do to our economy in the meantime.
* Since outsourcing is only one half of the coin, the other half being U.S. companies sucking money out of developing nations, I don't think this is certain at all.
Re:Here's a reality check. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, equaling out the scale is what globalization is. The idea behind the global market is that comparative advantage will take hold and the places that are better able to produce a given type of product will produce that product. One can argue whether this is the case in the current example, but what you're talking about amounts to bellyaching. What globalization is, is vastly different than what everyone is expecting it to be. Things won't stay the same and new markets will be opened up. This is what you're calling a downside (and the US with its steel tarriffs). That's the way it works. If the Indians are better at programing because of labor costs (which is how things appear), then the American programing industry will wither and die and move to India. Sorry, but tough. Economics isn't called the dismal science for no reason.
Get real. (Score:3, Insightful)
The people who hired Sapient were without a clue. Instead of consulting their own faculty or students, the idiots read a Gatner report and bought Microsoft snake oil. It was a typical big dog decision, breathtakingly ignorant and a hopless waste. The whole thing will have to be redone in two years when M$ decides to move the upgrade train along and another $2,000,000 will go to th
Future Headline from June 2004 Boston Globe... (Score:5, Insightful)
---anactofgod---
Dear M.I.T., (Score:5, Funny)
Yours Truly,
Lumberg
Manager,
Intertech
I must be in the wrong career track (Score:4, Funny)
Boston Local Sapient Friendly (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, that sounds pretty consistent with most companies. Take a silly task, have a outside company take care of it, and it just so happens that they do everything in India. A friend of mine works for Sapient, and he says all he does is have conference calls with the other side of world! I guess if he got hired tho, the MIT grads have a good chance too!
Another interesting spin was what a fella Rahul was saying about
Outsourcing, Good vs. Evil? (Score:5, Insightful)
Conclusion 1) US companies (among others, I'm canadian, it is no exception up here) are going to have to start doing a better job of giving customers and clients value for their budget. Call me a chump, I wanna make a ton of cash just as much as the next guy, but billing someone $100-$200 US/Hour and milking them for all they're worth is not (in my opinion) a good way to do business.
Conclusion 2) Lots of Indian guys are really smart. I hope this doesn't come as a surprise, but so are a lot of people from a lot of other ethnicities. I myself am white trash, but I know a lot of stupid canadian people too, as well as a ton of programmers in Canada who really otta be flipping burgers.
Conclusion 3) Corporations (in general) don't care about their employees, economics, or anything else, but rather, their bottom dollar. They don't care who they have to screw out of money, so long as it ends up in their own account.
Software development just seems to be the latest trend in an already downward spiral. It is the continuation of that which has already started as some slave child has made my Nike runners, and all the people that I try to talk to about why my phone bill is not being directly put onto my Visa bill have been fired in replacement of a computerizes lady who really can't tell me jack-all.
Perhaps unrelated, perhaps not. This is going to get worse, not beter, while capitalists run the world. What's going to be next? Perhaps more importantly, what can we do to change it?
Capitalism (Score:3, Interesting)
If you frame the problem as capitalism as the problem
Re:Outsourcing, Good vs. Evil? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Outsourcing, Good vs. Evil? (Score:3, Insightful)
hmm no opensource availbe?huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
so how big was the MS payoff?
But isn't the idea of OpenCourseware (Score:5, Insightful)
Just the process of evolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
As an economy (such as that of the US) grows, the quality of life and jobs of the population increases/improves.
The quality of jobs necessarily means the type of work that the population is willing to do. Jobs which were considered white-collar, and high quality slowly sink, and are no longer considered so as people get wealthier (I am talking about the entire population here--the average).
The country then looks to exporting those jobs, so that it's population can work on something better...maybe higher level jobs.
That is what happened to manufacturing...it was considered a menial process, and shipped out to China, while the higher quality jobs (management, etc) were retained in the US of A.
That is what is happening to software/IT now. I thought it was an interesting take on the issue, in which case, it is just one of the pitfalls in the process of economic evolution of the industry.
And yes, I am not an economist.
Re:Just the process of evolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Specifically, the idea that "The quality of jobs necessarily means the type of work that the population is willing to do...The country then looks to exporting those jobs, so that it's population can work on something better...maybe higher level jobs."
At risk of seeming glib, close your eyes, reach out your arms and spin in a circle. You'll probably smack an unemployed IT professional in the back of the head. That individual, and a lot more like her/him, very much want to do the type of work that is being outsourced. The fact that most of them are not being hired is not due to their lack of desire, or (in most, not all) cases their greed, but to the fact that living in the US is a lot more expensive than living in Delhi, so the minimum that a US citizen will accept for the work is higher than the minimum that someone living in Delhi will accept.
Similarly, when auto plants were closing in Michigan, et al, it wasn't because people didn't want to work, but because they couldn't afford to live on the salaries that Mexican workers would accept.
In short, "the country" didn't look to export those jobs to allow the population to do something better -- the corporations exported the jobs so that they could get more labor for the same amount of money, or the same amount of labor for less money.
Think of it as time travel. If you could send your money back to the 1920s, think of the amount of labor you could afford for a fraction of the price! Now, the health care, safety standards, environmental controls, and general quality of life sucked compared to current US conditions, but hey, you don't have to go back there -- only your money does. The goods and services produced by this labor come back into the year 2003 and are sold at today's marketplace rates. That's fundamentally what we're talking about here, and I suppose that's good capitalism.
Just don't pretend it's for the good of the unemployed, i.e., they don't want to do this kind of work. If you were asked to do your job at a salary that wouldn't pay for your share of rent on a one bedroom apartment shared with three other people, you wouldn't do the work either, no matter how "higher level" they might be.
Sorry if this seems like a rant.
PS: in my original draft, I wrote "If you could send your monkey back to the 1920s..." which is, on it's own, something interesting to think about.
Re:Just the process of evolution? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think we should also recognize that the same things have happened (in various forms) in a number of industries including, but not limited to: farming, mining, steel production, automotives, manufacturing of all stripes, textiles, etc. ad nauseum.
Interesting you should mention textiles -- the British, when they controlled India, deliberately destroyed the large and successful Indian textile industry, since it was in competition with their own industry. Truly, an example of 'what goes around, comes arou
Re:Just the process of evolution? (Score:3, Interesting)
The earliest of men hunted for food, since that was the only way they could survive. With the discovery of other tools, however, people took to development of those tools (blacksmiths/potters, etc), and as farming/hunting tools grew more efficient, only a subset of the population was required to do that work.
Then, people developed faster/mo
For whom was it cheaper to use Indian talent? (Score:3, Insightful)
The comments about Indian talent being cheaper would only apply here if MIT paid less than they would have had they used a company that employed American programmers. If they didn't get a discount, then Sapient simply improved their profit margin by using offshore programmers and MIT gained nothing from it, while indirectly hurting the US economy.
Challenge your assumptions please (Score:4, Insightful)
Many Indians might think this outsourcing is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Some MIT graduates return to India to work for Sapient and Microsoft.
Sapient and Microsoft are global organizations. MIT is an American institution which educates global students and works with global corporations.
Phil Greenspun might be outraged (and then again he might not be, his blog doesn't lean either way). I am not.
Re:Challenge your assumptions please (Score:3, Interesting)
This is only true to a small degree. MIT is very much an American institution meant to educate AMERICANS and work with AMERICAN companies. Most of the funding for MIT's research comes from none other than Uncle Sam, who has a very keen interest in promoting American success. MIT could not possibly have the number of American students it does if it did not have a highly-restrictive quota on international st
It's all good... (Score:3, Insightful)
So, we help other countries increase their standard of living with just a bit of headache on our side.
Anyway, the U.S. can't survive by being stagnant in technology. Our purpose is to innovate and create new technologies. Once something becomes standard and "script" it can be sent off to other countries with cheaper labor (Creating web pages is not innovative anymore, people!).
Because of this fact, as U.S. citizens, we have to be prepared to switch careers throughout our lifetime, depending on how new technologies are evolving. For instance, the movie, computer gaming and biotech industries here are light years ahead of most other countries and good places to find tech jobs. These things are on the cutting edge of technology and not something that can be easily exported to other countries (yet). Also, small businesses (established and entrepreneurial) also need local talent as they don't have the time or money to deal with managing offshore development. Another reason why small businesses and innovation are the lifebloods of our economy.
Re:It's all good... (Score:5, Interesting)
Its already happening. Indians are now viewed as expensive since they think they deserve up to 10k a year. But that nerve!
In Russia, you could hire a Russian to do it for 7k a year. Where does it end?
When it comes to cheap labor, there is no bottom. Only a constantly falling top price.
Oddly when it comes to upper management and CEO's, there is always a bottom and no top in terms of compensation. Hmmm why is that?
That means exploitation. Hey, I would have no problem if CEO's had salary caps and could compete with cheaper foriegn CEO's but this is quite unfair for the rest of us.
Re:Supply and Demand (Score:3, Interesting)
supply and demand. Anyway can flip burgers so McDonalds pay less. However not everyone can be a programmer or I should say a good programmer so wages were up in the 90's.
Microsoft is clever at this when they oversupplied the market with Office and then IE to bring its value down.
After competitors went under they brought the price back up. Wallmart does this illegally as well when they move into a new area to compete agaisnt local small and mom pop shops.
What happened was the H1B1 boo
Re:It all SOUNDED good...... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Much greater overhead to manage an oversees project, such that the savings is really 2. Huge assumed risks - confidentiality of data, true abilities and qualifications of remote people questionable, political instability & nearness & greater accessibility by terrorists in region, lack of legal venue when things go wrong
3. faking of true status/costs/issues of projects by those who strongly reccommended outsourcing, to save face
4. Communication problems, lack of cultural context & "common sense [by whatever definition]" knowledge
examples of an other approach (Score:3, Insightful)
Give a man a fish.... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's great until the day that Indians realize that there's nothing stopping them from setting up their own companies to compete direct against the American ones. I'm actually surprised it hasn't started happening already.
Reminds me of that old saying "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for life." That system works great -- unless you too are a fisherman.
Re:Give a man a fish.... (Score:3, Funny)
Give a man a fish, and he owes you one fish.
Teach a man to fish, and you give up your monopoly.
That seems to fit better here.
Close enough, but... (Score:3, Informative)
and it's not even funded by Microsoft (Score:3, Informative)
That's even though Microsoft has been trying to get into MIT [mit.edu].
This makes me worry... (Score:5, Funny)
Darn! Gotta go, the boss is walking this way!
Speaking as a recent MIT grad ... (Score:5, Informative)
#1. Odds are the reason that the development work got outsourced was simple comparative advantage. I'd rather have an undergrad or grad student working on something original and interesting rather than grunt level coding. As many people have noted, low-level jobs are being outsourced rather rapidly. I consider it a very GOOD thing the MIT isn't wasting its student's time with what would appear to be a dead end skill set.
#2. If you want to bitch about MIT and ties to Microsoft there are much better areas to criticize. For example, the business school is a lock-down Microsoft shop. If you don't have a Microsoft OS, you can't get a digital certificate. If you can't get a digital certificate, you can't get access to anything from your home PC. I've heard a wide number of speculations about why this is so [the rest of the University has a much more liberal policies]. I've heard lots of talk that Sloan needs to maintain its own IT department to roll out like 802.11b quicker than the rest of the University. Of course those who like conspiracy theories do note that the Dean made a fair amount of money as a hired witness for MS during the anti-trust trials.
My experiences in this... (Score:5, Informative)
Universities are a bit like ancient japan.
All departments are like little islands in a sea. Each has a ruler that does their own thing with no consideration to the other islands.
Firstly, nobody talks to anybody. If a process can be duplicated and screwed up at the same time, it will be.
Secondly, All processes will be documented in such a way that people from other departments will have no idea how to interpret or use them.
Thirdly, when purchasing software licenses and/or hardware, instead of pooling all the resources to drive down costs, each department will just do their own thing.
So, it doesn't suprise me that MIT pissed all over their own shoes.
MIT's got students who put together a grant and bought 3000 CD's, then setup a system where students could listen to any of them over the cable network for free.
Somehow I don't think the courseware stuff would have been that over their head.
I took a class in management of software engineering projects and we had to build a web interface that would allow students to access their grades, add/drop for classes, give them billing information, etc. We managed to crank out that system in one 15 week semester. We all got A's and the system worked great for over 5 years and it cost them zero. Even the server it ran on was a retired desktop (350mhz pentium 2)
It didn't get retired until the university moved away from their aging db system.( Digital unix based collegate DB system)
Tragically, the expensive commerical system they replaced it is horrible and disliked by everybody.
rip: golden age of american software development (Score:5, Insightful)
long live global software development.
i can give you for a $1.00 what you pay someone else $10.00 for.
what would you do?
fighting globalization is like fighting the tides or the rising and setting of the sun, it is inevitable.
i see the regular stream of stories like this one here on slashdot and i see the fear and horror implicit in them.
yes, my friend, you will make less, you will be fired, it really, really is the end of the golden age of american software development- and that is good! for now it is a global thing, you will sacrifice so that the world may benefit. only if you are stridently inward and protectionist and reactionary do you not see how this is a good thing overall.
you can't do anything about it, nor should you try: don't waste your energy fighting inevitable change.
"God give me the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed;
Give me courage to change things which must be changed;
And the wisdom to distinguish one from the other. "
so what would you do if you weren't working in software?
ask yourself that seriously now, american software developer.
Programmers are commodities (Score:4, Interesting)
The project was on time and under budget... (Score:5, Informative)
One of the things that we try to teach in the class (textbook is online at http://philip.greenspun.com/internet-application-w orkbook/ [greenspun.com] if you're curious to see what the students suffer through) is that being a good code monkey/CS nerd isn't sufficient to function well as an engineer. We try to give the students some experience with taking vague client specs and turning them into precise requirements, with presenting their work clearly, with constructively criticizing others' work in meetings, with conducting and learning from user testing, etc. The rationale for this is laid out in http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/one-term-web [greenspun.com]
So it was actually very gratifying that our guest speakers came in and demonstrated that state-of-the-art American IT development projects no longer involve plain-old-programmers in America. Our students need to learn this early so that they can plan their careers and further education accordingly.
...Thanks to Brute Force + Microsoft Help (Score:3, Informative)
WTF? (Score:3, Funny)
Con-fucken-gratulations
But the best and m
Re:Story has little merit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Story has little merit... (Score:2)
s/large/larger/g
s/cheap/cheaper/
s/why/why not/g
any ?s
Re:Story has little merit... (Score:5, Insightful)
The point was that the approach that MIT took would not have put food on the table of any CS grad in the US. So MIT is turning out these wonderful CS grads and then simultaneously demonstrating in a very visible, successful project that they have very little use for them - that they can rely on Gartner to tell them what software to buy and India to implement it.
What exactly are the prospects for the MIT grad when even MIT themselves employ this decision making process.
MIT students might have been able to do this more inexpensively/efficiently/quickly, but that wasn't really even considered. If the organization that has their best educational interests in mind doesn't consider them to be effective resources, how will they be received by an industry that doesn't give a damn about their best interests?
That must have been one hell of a depressing lecture to attend.
Re:Story has little merit... (Score:2)
Re:Story has little merit... (Score:3, Insightful)
And having a class whose goal would be to complete this programming task would probably not be a good idea: classes at MIT usually concentrate on the fundamentals -- not the specifics of particular hairy development tools that will be here today and gone tomorrow.
Re:Story has little merit... (Score:2)
Re:Story has little merit... (Score:2)
Nobody complained about the outsourcing of IT jobs to Ireland in the 80's and early 90's, when it was cheap. Nobody complains about the outsourcing of IT jobs to Russia and Israel now. But people complain about the outsourcing of jobs to India.
Can you give me a reasonable explanation beyond "they've got dark skins"?
Re:Story has little merit... (Score:2, Informative)
Just like our school just got sued because they didn't hire a woman for the football coach... she said it was sexual discrimination, the school said that regardless of her qualifications, a team of testosterone pumped college guys would have an extremely hard time adjusting to a female coach. Add onto that that
Re:Story has little merit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure! Because there were a lot fewer unemployed in the IT (and other) industry in the 80's and early 90's. And who has heard of any outsourcing to Russia or Israel? I haven't . . .
See, when we have plenty of work, we don't mind sharing some of it. On the other hand, when work is scarce, people get upset when it is sent out of the country without really good reasons.
How's that? Or would you just prefer to think everything is racially motivated? It is all the rage these days . . .
It has merit (Score:4, Interesting)
a) Speaks to their inability to even attempt to investigate various options WRT technology. Not encouraging from a place of learning.
b) Speaks to their inability to even attempt to use a neccessary IT project as something that could benefit their students and serve as a learning experience for the school and it's customers (the students).
I expect brainless, off-the-cuff, short-sighted decisions like this from PHB's, not from a center of learning.
Re:Story has little merit... (Score:2)
Re:Story has little merit... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Story has little merit... (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is training Americans to be software developers...
A bastion of American software development is acting in a way that furthers neither America nor software development. No further criticism or comment is needed. In the immortal words of Hunter S. Thompson, res ipsa loquitur.
what I find interesting about this article... (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus, I'd assume that most grad students (at least all the ones I know) would apreciate the flexability of open source software, thus saving even more money.
I am more shocked at the waste of money!
However, if you want to talk about India, the fact that a US univeristy outsourced it's code does not bode well for it's graduating student. CS jobs
Re:Story has little merit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is being opposed to shipping jobs off to India automatically the equivilent of being racist? That's really an unfair way to attempt to color the debate about where this work should be done and by whom.
In fact it can be argued that shipping jobs overseas is *more* racist than keeping them here. By increasing the demand for IT work in the US, you draw more workers to the field, either from the pool of the unemployed or from other fields. Since more are likely to be drawn from other fields, you actually create openings for jobs, and these new openings could actually be filled by minorities and others who have a longer history of underemployment.
By shipping formerly high-paying jobs to India, you increase pressure on "good" jobs here in the US and decrease the opportunity for minorities here in the US.
I was actually hopeful in the late 90s that perhaps we were at the point where employment demand would reach a point where we could get the unemployment levels down for minorities to levels consistant with whites now. I guess not, I guess we care more about Indians than Americans of all colors.
Re:Dollar bills, y'all (Score:2)
Re:Dollar bills, y'all (Score:2, Interesting)
I've seen at least one case where a student employee was involved in training his replacement instead of just being hired on full time for the job after graduation.
not really... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps they had faith in their undergrads, but were trying to prevent a university monoculture from forming. A lot of times Universities prefer people from the "outside world" simply because a more diverse work environment is often a more dynamic work environment.
It may work out that people of the same education, from the same University can get the job done, but they
Re:Think Before Preaching! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dear future MIT graduates (Score:3)
MIT == McProgrammer
Re:Well.. My university (Score:3, Insightful)
Let them graduate, and work under an experienced team lead, and then, IF they can make it cheaper than I can buy it, they can have the job.
Re:Why, oh why (Score:4, Interesting)
Go to ncompass.com yourself...