A Thoughtful Look at Indian Outsourcing 1772
thefinite writes "This article needs to be read by anyone interested in the outsourcing of IT jobs to India, no matter your opinion of it. It dispels some rumors (for example, if Indian IT companies do such bad work, why are over half of Carnegie Mellon's highest-rated programming companies Indian?). It addresses all of the arguments. Perhaps most importantly, it adds faces to the problem. It not only tells us about the American programmers who are out of jobs, but also about the Indians who are getting them. In the end of it, this is what Free Trade is about: people. This article makes that clear."
Cannonfodder (Score:3, Insightful)
Do yourself a favor. Realize that there are smart people in India, and there are smart people in the US. Realize that the amount of outsourcing done is ineffective and will change, but some outsourcing works and will work.
That's all well and good.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Just wait until the Indian programmers become too expensive and the jobs move to Elbonia. Can we expect a thoughtful article on how the greedy Indian programmers need to be nicer to the folks in Elbonia who are getting the jobs now.
It's all about the rich getting richer, nothing more.
BTW, First Post.
The end of the industry as we know it (Score:4, Insightful)
Realistically, IT workers (non-management) need to consider their jobs redundant and over in five years. Make sure you've got skills that require onsite presence, like cabling.
The industry is just about finished, people, and it's getting worse. Give it a little longer and we'll see the likes of Sun vanish, HP is exiting the Unix market and the Linux bubble will eventually burst.
Can *you* make coffee?
Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
No (Score:5, Insightful)
People need to realize that the exodus of jobs is a one-way ticket. Indians can come over here and work as programmers, but Americans can't go to India. This is really a story of the American worker getting shafted by the illusion of "free trade." So let's stop the propaganda and say what it really is.
It's not the Indian programmers... (Score:5, Insightful)
They get the nice fat promotions and bonuses, while our jobs go elsewhere. And we are the same people they praised just last year as invaluable assets to the company.
So what happened? They can't get rich pulling fancy accounting tricks, so this is what they've resorted to.
I seriously hope that I'm wrong when I predict that this whole thing will fail miserably (taking the off-shore jobs with it).
Re:That's all well and good.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, it also looks like it's in part about the poor getting richer.
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
america are overpaid? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe all americans are simply overpaid and we're in for a BIG correction in the coming years?
Kinda scary.
Re:Opposition is racist (Score:5, Insightful)
In some sense it is economic suicide, sure you produce cheaper goods, but those who are in this country to buy them are out of jobs. I.e. they have no money to buy those cheap goods, and the people who produced the goods are too underpayed to afford those goods. This is why MBA schools should be shut down once and for all, they have been produced miserable failures for the past 2 decades, a ton of greedy idiot savants who are unable to see the whole picture.
I could care less if Indian companies can do the same job better, or cheaper. If that was the case Indian corporations would rule the market, if there was indeed a perfect free economic system as the article sort of tried to hint.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:-1, Insightful)
And realize that there are four times as many smart people in India, simply because they have four times as many people. They're probably more effective workers too, being devoid of western egos.
In any case us western countries have had the lion's share of the distribution of wealth for far too long at the expense of poorer nations. I don't think we have the right to complain if an Indian coder takes our job.
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bigger boats
$15,000 watches
Expensive artwork
Marble dog-houses
McMegaMansions
The little guy doesn't get to assemble these either, by the way. Those jobs have also been outsourced. We get to sell them if we're lucky. This isn't the economy Adam Smith envisioned. It's capitalism to it's logical excess. The rich keep getting richer. The poor keep getting poorer. There are 5+ billion people on the planet, right? Once the 2 billion or whatever in India become too expensive, they have 4 billion more they can exploit.
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but that doesn't change a damned thing if you got laid of and still have a wife, two kids and a little Jack Russel called "Bono" to take care of.*
NOTE:
* = Does not apply to me. But I would feel pretty fcked if it did.
Outsourcing Jobs (Score:2, Insightful)
(1) Being a software engineer just out of university - i'm currently working at a major bank which has it's own Indian software development wing. Quite a few large Australian companies do this and have already gotten rid of 'small' amounts of in-house developers.
(2) This 'outsourcing' phenomenon is very cyclical in nature, and India happens to be the flavour of the month - in a decade it'll probably be some other developing country.
(3) To best protect yourself from this is too be helpful in other areas of the business. Become more involved in the 'business end' of the company, looking at bettering processes, even start training people.
(4) Not everything can be outsourced, focus on continuous self improvement in *ALL* areas of your working life and you shouldn't have anything to worry about.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, we can bitch all we want about it, as we have the right to free speach.
Now, whether we have a good basis for our complaints or not is the real question.
Re:The end of the industry as we know it (Score:1, Insightful)
No, it's only a problem of the western world.
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stolen? No. US techs give jobs away. (Score:3, Insightful)
Meet Juan... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd like to introduce you to Juan. A healthy, though very lean, eight year old boy, the rigors of his life have not yet beaten him down. His bright eyes still have a glint of boyish exuberance in them, and he still has all ten of his fingers.
Juan works in a Nike factory in Costa Rica. He has since turning four, and will most likely work there for the rest of his life. He makes 22 cents per week, not a great amount of money but decent for the area in which he lives. With a small supplemental farm, his family can feed itself between Juan's, his parents', and his seven remaining siblings' income from Nike. He spends his spare time doing odd jobs, saving up to one day buy a pair of the shoes he helps make.
Now, meet Joe. Joe lives in San Diego, California. This annoyingly whiney middle aged dead-beat dad used to work for Nike, until his plant relocated to Costa Rica. Joe spends his days begging for spare change, and protesting at WTO conferences against the loss of American jobs.
Juan does his job every bit as well as Joe used to, except that he doesn't complain constantly, doesn't demand unionization or health benefits, and doesn't even go to the bathroom during his 14-hour shifts.
So, dear readers, please see that Juan doesn't hate you, and that globalization means good things, for everybody.
SEI CMM (Score:3, Insightful)
Having worked with two Level 5 organizations, one level 4, and several level 3, I can assure you it's just expensive window dressing. Motorola foisted this fraud on the world in order to keep their Malcolm Baldridge award (they were told they had find something similiar to their six sigma program, but for software). The way you get to levels 2 through 5 is to fire the internal assessors (yes, they self assess folks), until their replacements tell you what you want to hear (Ye Gads, you're a level 3 organization!).
Unfortunately, the cost of generating the useless paper for the audit trail costs as much as generating the actual software, so they farmed out the work to their internal offshore software factories (at first in India, but now, wherever hords of programmers are cheap).
The vast majority of Indian job shops are also self assessed, and comically so (I've been told by some directors of SE that they are SEI CMM 3.5). The real problem is that the CMM has never been objectively validated. You hear wonderful claims by the SEPGs, and CMM - but their jobs depend on it, so fudging is expected. The proof is in the pudding, and when times got tough at Motorola, the CMM and Six Sigma specialists were the first to go. There's now grumbling about what to do with Global Software Group (their internal offshore outsourceing groups). Cheap is still no deal if it don't work.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:5, Insightful)
They are efficient coders because of the relative cost advantage they have over US based coders. Probably related to there being 4 times as many. US didn't have a problem that needed 4 times as many coders.
being devoid of western egos
I don't remember any part of Hindu that promotes loss of ego. In any case Indians have their own impediments with caste and family ties that probably cause as much organizational difficulties as individualism does in western organizations.
Agree with the rest but then I'm not a coder so it's 'your' job not 'our' job.
Re:You do not understand (Score:5, Insightful)
Two wrongs do not make a right, but the USA, along with most Western nations have been taking advantage of other nations through trade with developing nations for years (sweatshops anyone?), unfortunately it is just the way the world works.
Re:It's not the Indian programmers... (Score:5, Insightful)
They get the nice fat promotions and bonuses, while our jobs go elsewhere. And we are the same people they praised just last year as invaluable assets to the company.
So what happened? They can't get rich pulling fancy accounting tricks, so this is what they've resorted to.
Recall that the primary objective of most corporations is only to make money. Everything else is secondary, including you and me. You can take that $120k job but remember that you're signing with a company--and management--whose primary driver is to make money.
Don't like the system? You can start your own company. I'm going to try that out, personally.
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Their reasoning is that we're supposed to be nimble and get educated again. To what end? When I have 7 PHDs and $1million in student debt will that be enough? Will their be a job I can get? Or should I just go apply for Wal-Mart greeter now? Because this "learn more and keep up" crap is stupid. I already know what I need to know to do my job. So my choices are spend more money going to school or get a service job. Great choice.
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case India is showing that they have a competitive advantage in programming. They can produce code at the required level and do it for FAR less than the American programmer.
It is not, however, a race to the bottom. The Indian salary will not remain static. As the number of jobs and the complexity of the problems increase (remember, workers are a market just like anything else) the salary will begin to rise. As the rest of the economy begins to feel the benefits of this economic boon in India, more and more IT workers will begin to do other things. Eventually the global market will achieve Equilibrium and the competitive advantage will close.
We talk about how these theories are untested, well we've seen the results of this same phenemenon in auto manufacturing. After all, remember all of those car building jobs we 'lost' two decades ago? Well, they're coming back in droves. The Japanese auto makers are now turning to American labor to build those same cars, as the Japanese workers salary has now surpassed the American auto workers salary.. factor in the cost of shipping those cars across the ocean and American labor makes a ton of sense for that field.
Of course, you almost never hear about that outside of economic nerd circles.. I guess we all just like to whine.. A LOT.
Re:This is not rocket science (Score:2, Insightful)
This problem is not as big as some think (Score:5, Insightful)
most of the jobs that are moving out of the country are the type of jobs that are high profile. And therefor we hear a lot about it.
Typically, it is programming projects that require teams of 20 or 30 people (maybe) and that lasts for a year or longer.
But many programmers are employed where proximity is important and where the primary product isn't the software itself. Maybe it is a small financial institution or maybe a factory which needs a few programmers to build in house systems.
Sure, it sucks when HP, Sun and others move their big and fun projects to India, but many jobs will remain here, because it isn't cost effective to move them to India.
Re:america are overpaid? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a software engineer. I don't care about getting rich, I enjoy my job. All I ask is that I can make enough to pay my bills, have a little extra money for spending, and be able to save up for my retirement.
I don't make $100,000 per year (I actually make about $55,000), and I'm able to do that now, so I'm happy. I have about five years of professional experience, and tons more if you count the demos I did during my teens on the Commodore 64, and the other software I've written or contributed to in my free time.
You want me to work as cheap as a foreigner? Make my cost of living go down to the same as that foreigner.
And for the record, yes, I believe that most white-collar Americans are grossly overpaid.
-- Joe
Re:america are overpaid? (Score:4, Insightful)
We've already had the correction. When some schmuck finishing his sophomore year of college made $80,000 for making web pages with Frontpage, that was a bubble that needed correction. We're on the other side of that now - when reasonably skilled programmers out of top-tier universities can't get jobs that pay over $30,000 (and they're lucky to have that). It's obscene to say that someone who gets a four-year degree developing a fairly technical skill deserves to barely gets paid enough to get by and make payments on their university debt. There's something wrong with this picture. Quite honestly, we're crossing the threshhold where going to college may no longer be the financially "best" option out there - trade school and a good apprenticeship in auto repair gets you a more marketable skill that actually pays better, with far less education (and cost thereof.) Again - something is wrong with this picture, and it ain't that programmers are "overpaid".
It's NOT about Free Trade (Score:3, Insightful)
But, really, there is a much more important issue that doesn't seem to be getting airtime. As a software developer, I have no problem with India or any other country doing my job. However, claiming that this is all just "capitalism at work" and developers should just "suck it up" is a specious argument, at best. I pay taxes to support the government, which in turn supports the citizens and corporations here in the US (I'm not interested in addressing whether this is the proper function of govt., that's just how it is right now). These corporations are taking those government granted favors (in the form of subsidies, tax breaks, trade favors, patent and copyright protections, use of infrasturcture resources such as highways, etc etc etc ) and hiring people overseas. Now, if MS or IBM wants to move their headquarters over to India, fine, so be it. But I truly believe it's a crock to take advantage of the pro-business US laws, excellent infrastructure, a competent policing force, and all the other services that developed under our system of capitalism, and then not supporting the community that supports you. I'm not talking handouts or redistribution of wealth, I'm talking about the long-term consequences of this sort of policy. Yes, US software developers cost more, but the cost of that worker is factoring in a lot of "unseen" advantages that are granted to companies founded here.
The environment that allowed MS and IBM and all the rest to grow and prosper is unique to the United States. These companies would have never happened if they had started in India.
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not about economics, this is about culture and people. Even Adam Smith would agree that a broke consumer is no good.
Take a look at other cultures/societies and see what they do for each other. In the US, smaller ethnic groups _pay more_ for products from others in the same ethnic group so that they help each other (take that Adam). In Japan, they give people jobs instead of welfare.
Also, it is beyond extorsion for people to pay 22x the _per capita_ income to someone. That is equivalent to $792 million a year here in the us based on an average income of 36,000 [census.gov]. When you wave that much money to people, they will hop. This is why its illegal for sweepstakes in the US not to have ways of winning the prize without buying the product.
One good benefit for Americans is that this allows their employers to use that money elsewhere.
The trend for this "elsewhere" is in the C?O's pocket.
But for the most part Indians need these jobs much worse than we do.
Well fuckit dude, Vietnam was never won, go ahead and save these guys while we are at it. I could always fight with the illegals for a labor job.
I'm willing to bet that as far as possessions go, the average unemployed computer geek is significanlty better off than the Indian worker who "stole" his job.
Look again at the $792 million a year figure, and tell me this again.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:2, Insightful)
Stupid AC, obviously this is pure capitalism in action.
Spoken like a true conservative - "ME, ME, ME"
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:4, Insightful)
Why don't Indians create rather than accept being cheap labor? Let's be honest, they are no different than Mexicans who come to California to pick grapes. They just have degrees.
A national economy cannot be sustained if it doesn't encourage the creation of local businesses. This is why Mexico's primary foreign relation impetus with the U.S. is making it easier for illegal Mexican immigrants to gain legal status -- They want the money these illegals send back to Mexico.
Why can't they create jobs for their own people?
India and other countries like it may enjoy the benefits of outsourcing for now, but in the long term they are suckling at a teat that is drying up.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That's idiotic (Score:2, Insightful)
Secondly, how do you know anyone is doing a better job than me? I'm perfectly qualified. It's just a crummy job market. A buyers market, if you will. I have no control over that. Unemployment has indeed held steady, but the standard of living had gone down as middle class jobs have turned into service jobs.
So what you're saying is that once we're all working at Target/Wal-Mart we'll have the ideal economy?
Re:Bad code? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't have an outsourced Indian firm do the human interface design on a project either, and it has nothing to do with racism.
India has a different culture than the United States, so interface design assumptions that seem perfectly obvious to someone in India might be completely incomprehensible to someone from the US, and vice versa.
For example, consider that a user interface designed by programmers for programmers will have as many options as the programmers could shoehorn in. That UI will seem too complicated to use for the typical J. Random User, while a UI for J. Random will seem too constrained for the liking of a programmer. Now, multiply that sort of thing tenfold, and factor in things like the meanings of colors (red for danger/stop, etc.). That's what can happen if the human interface is designed in one culture, but used by another.
How many steel workers are left today? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mortgage -
$127,006 financed at 6.5% after 3% down for 30 years fixed. Property taxes (currently $3900/yr) and property insurance (currently $1019/yr) included. FHA-required mortgage insurance ($53/month) included.
Monthly: $1276
Annual: $15,312
Checking account balance: -$4132
And that's for a modest 3 bedroom, 2 bath house in an inexpensive suburb of Dallas.
For those of us who have a family to support, and have made the "mistake" of buying into the so-called American Dream, $11,000 per year is nowhere near enough.
Capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Yet, in the midst of all of this, what exactly is happening here? According to this Wired article a new middle class of Indian programmers is arising, and they are producing quality work (again according to the same article half of that, of the 70 or so companies in the world that have earned a Level 5 distinction [highest distinction possible], half are from India).
So who is benefitting? A handful of Indian programmers. US corporations with better and cheaper software. And US citizens who use these US corporations because the savings is passed on to the customer (please save me the ignorant response that corporations will pocket the savings because corporations are in a constant battle for clients, and the best way to win more clients is to offer comparable services at a cheaper price).
Who is losing? A handful of American programmers who are unemployed due to outsourcing. But this is only temporary, eventually American programmers will either find a employment, or a new profession. Or perhaps even go into business for themselves as another slashdot article mentioned today.
Stack the benefits against costs and you can clearly see the world gains from globalization and capitalism.
Aside: Yes, it is concievable, that someday the expected wages for a programmer in India becomes unprofitable (in the economic sense of the word, not accountant sense) for US corporations and will take their business to some other nation, say Albania. But the cycle will repeat itself, and now the same benefits that were given to Indian programmers will be given to citizens of other third-world nations. Slowly, but inevitably, raising the overall wealth of all nations that participate in capitalism and free-enterprise.
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's essentially the problem for many of us. We did what we were supposed to, or what we thought we had to to compete. We saw the manufacturing jobs fleeing, so we took out student loans, etc. to get better jobs. We got those better jobs, which came with higher taxes. So we bought houses. Now, all of a sudden, we have no jobs. Still have the houses. Still have the student loans. Now I'm supposed to live on $11,000 a year? Come join the real world (not you, but the poster before).
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, forgive me if I'm not as self depreciating as you are, but I feel as though I have *plenty* of right to bitch about my job going over seas. What's with this hippy 'let the rest of the world succeed while destroying ourselves' attitude? Why must I sacrifice my job for someone from another nation?
Look at this: (Score:2, Insightful)
I liked this bit... So basically Indian people get rich off of american companies.
An $11,000 salary in India is about a $700,000 US salary (based on 2001 statistics -- http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/regional/reis/).
What a lot of american companies don't understand is that it pays to develop talent in house. What is going to happen when the management retires and there are no qualified people to manage the outsourcing of work because it has been outsourced so long? Pay an Indian $700,000 a year to come over here and manage the outsourcing?
Me, I look at Japanese companies to understand good business strategy. The Japanese seem to know how to invest their money for the long term.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:2, Insightful)
If you have to work with someone that outsources, write their corporate offices and tell them you will work with them until any alternative appears. If you can't do it because of the way your company works, let your boss know you disagree with it on moral grounds.
Review your 401(k) or retirement plans and make sure you aren't invested in any one that outsources to India. All the little men on the street with a 401(k) or retirement plan makes up alot more money than all the freaky capitalist/financiers.
This isn't rocket science. I see messages about the rich getting richer and blah blah blah, but the fact of the matter is that if you send the money to companies that outsource to India, then you loose your job having done nothing about it, you can't really complain.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two types of wealth: natural resources, and everything else. You might argue that natural resources are "distributed" in some unfair way, but by far most of the wealth in this world is created by people. Emphasis on created.
If I mow your lawn, fix your car, or write some software for you, I've created wealth. In return, you give me money, which is a token of the wealth you created and gave to other people (unless you happen to own a lot of oil, timber, iron ore, etc., in which case you got the money by selling off this wealth that you "found").
The west didn't get all its' wealth given to it. The economic climate was designed to be (and lucky enough to be) the most conducive to economic growth. It encouraged people to create wealth because they get to keep some of it.
As more countries reform their economic systems, the populace will create wealth for themselves, and the other nations with wealth to invest will see these new markets as profitable, and do business there.
That doesn't stop you from making wealth for yourself, it just means that you have more competition.
I say, bring 'em on!
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Tough. Yes, you heard me. Tough. I want my job. My company is based in my country, and I say they have an obligation to support their own country first.
One must mix capitalism with a healthy dose of patriotism. It's in the best interest of the United States that jobs stay within the nation.
Re:Bad code? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't rely on ANY outsourced firm for that kind of work, much less one half way around the world that doesn't speak my language. It's not a matter of them being Indian, Jewish, Chinese, French, or Dutch, it's a matter of them not being able to communicate with me on the same level as someone in my own company, or at least someone I can meet with in person and have a easy conversation with. It's hard enough to explain ideas about design to someone you know in person who speaks your language. Trying to communicate that to someone far away who doesn't is harder. And that hardship is rarely worth the savings I might see in what I pay them.
That's the kind of thing that shows itself in the end. Outsourced software is of lesser quality because of the communication gaps, not because of the quality of the code that the people in other countries write. There are ways around it, but they are expensive, which is exactly what the outsourcing tried to avoid in the first place.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's all about free trade (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, it's certainly an interesting point, but that assumes that India and the US are equal in all ways. I'd say paying one American four times what another American can do the job competently for would certainly be welfare.
You blew your case apart when you called a tax break a "Favor". Sorry, when the government robs you a little less blind, it is not a "Favor".
You'll get no disagreement from me on that point...except that it is a non-sequiter. The truth is, that under our current system, right or wrong, tax money is taken from me and paid to help corporations in many ways. If that company chooses to accept (or lobby for) those funds, it needs to pay the consequences. TANSTAAFL.
And they would have never happened if they had to pay workers 4 times the value of the work, as you would like to see happen. The companies succeeded because they avoided mistakes like paying much more than the real value of things.
Nice straw-man, but I never suggested paying workers four times what they are worth. My argument is, that the "worth" of a worker is not simply just what it costs you to hire him. A company does not get created and exist in a vacuum.
You seemed to have missed the point of my argument (since you didn't address it). There is more factored into the salary of a worker than just the paycheck a company hands them. Contrary to common misconception, the US (nor any capitalistic, without the capital-C, society) is not a lawless wasteland of a bunch of individual nomads roaming and trying to find the highest bidder and destroying anything in their path to get to it. The environment that these companies thrive under has to be paid for in some sense. Does that mean workers are not paid enough? I don't know. But it seems short-sighted to ignore the community that supports these companies that used to be nothing more than two guys in a garage with a good idea.
You can't have it both ways, you can't take favors nor use resources without someone paying for it. If you want to move your company over to India, more luck to you.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:4, Insightful)
So when are you going to give me all your stuff? Come now, don't be selfish!
*pure* capitalism isn't a good thing.
*pure* communism isn't a good thing.
*pure* democracy isn't a good thing.
We must use common sense. No single ideology will succeed. The United States Government has a duty to protect the interest of it's own citizens. It does *not* have the duty to ensure that Indians get wealthy. I personally hope some sort of penalties are applied to those companies out-sourcing vast amounts of jobs. Or that large benefits are given to those who refuse to do so. Probably the latter, as I prefer to use the carrot than the stick...
'Bout Time Free Trade Bit the US in the Ass (Score:1, Insightful)
The Free Trade agreement demolished those, and now NAFTA includes Mexico so Canada gets hit a second time. So cry me a river about how US jobs are leaving the US...
India IT outsourcing b!tching is a combination of the dotcom dropout, and the glut of IT people because of the dotcom era. Programming is a minute sector of the IT landscape, and the fact that large companies are the only ones to afford such ventures further limits. There will always be ISVs, as local shops can't contract external work for the consulting and production. Jobs are out there, god forbid you have to WORK for them.
The outsourcing is just something external to make it easier to identify with. You don't hear this sort of complaining when it's [insert your nationality] contractor replacing you - such remarks are bigotted, if not racist.
Re:Bad code? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bull5hit (Score:5, Insightful)
First of there's not just one IIT; they are a system of seven institutions of higher education (Kharagpur, Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras), Kanpur, Delhi, Guwahati and the newest Roorkee).
Second, it's important to realize that many of the students from India who do the best in their undergraduate class become graduate students at those American institutions you listed as well as other institutions (some not very impressive at all) in North America and Europe. It is still a big deal in India to go a major American university. I have a few friends who did their undergad at an IIT campus. All of them left India for graduate study, because the research opportunities there are just not as good as in the West (although the situation has been improving steadily over the years). I will grant that the undergraduate education there seems to be particularly strong though.
Furthermore, it's important to realize that just because IIT admits such a small fraction of its applicants does not necessarily make the educational opportunities there better. Selectivity does not always equal quality. If anything, it calls into question India's ability to offer access to quality higher education for its population.
Learning is a cultural thing. While many american kids are focused on TV, Britney Spears, video games, etc, these kids start training hard for school at a young age, in the hope of their families to be able to enter IIT years later.
I do have to agree with this in general. In America, there is a very anti-academic tone culturally (even in schools). However, you have to question the quality of a life where from the womb all you do is study in order to get into a good university where all you do is work in order to get a code-monkey job which is your life.
Even when I went to highschool, there were probably a couple kids in a graduating class of ~400 I'd consider truly gifted students. Often I'm seeing the gifted students were foreign born, because their parents don't indulge their children with crap culture, but expect them to start preparing themselves to be citizens at a young age. It's usually the second and third generation parents who fall into the typical american lack of concern and discipline.
For this, I think you have to look at what kind of people are first-generation Americans. It doesn't just take a lot of work and/or a lot of money to immigrate to a foreign country. It takes ambition as well. Immigrants are therefore more likely to be ambitious about themselves and their kids.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:1, Insightful)
What about visits to the doctor and/or dentist? At $11k a year, you aren't likely to be getting much (if anything) in health benefits from work. Depending on luck to avoid getting seriously ill or injured?
Insurance? (You don't have a car, but you will want renter's insurance).
Kids? Your budget can work for a young single person who lives an ascetic lifestyle, but kids will torpedo those dreams HARD.
Retirement? Even if you don't retire, you will eventually grow too old/feeble to work. Planning to slit your wrists at age 65?
Your budget can be made to work while you're young, healthy, single, and have similar friends to split the rent, but eliminate any one of those, and life gets tougher in one big hurry.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:5, Insightful)
17-18 million Chinese will migrate *every year* to China's coastal manufacturing provinces and cities *for the next 18-20 years*.
2) Game Over! Software/Hardware Engineering:
*320,000 engineers graduated in the Pacific Rim in 1999 (excluding Japan, where wages are high)
*65,000 engineers graduated in the US in 1999 (80,000 - if you count graduate students)
[[*1999 National Science Foundation, audited numbers]]
3) Game Over! American Technology Services Sector (e.g. Accenture, IBM (consulting), etc):
Massive infrastructure shifts to the services sector in Pacific Rim countries who have lost manufacturing jobs to China
There is virtually nothing anyone can do about outsourcing - and the fast developing intellectual capital resources of the rest of the world - that will insulate American workers, with the exception of regressive protectionism (which will result in an even worse situation).
In fact, *anyone* who's occupation does not *require* face-to-face contact
is at risk of displacement, long-term.
The next big 'thing' will be social entrepreneurial plays that bring social
and fiscal efficiencies into mature capitalism, on a large scale. Also,
people will learn - in general, and long-term - to be happy with somewhat
more limited material horizons (and probably enjoy life more). This is as
plain as day, and already in the cards.
Politicians will not/cannot do anything to abate the outsourcing trend. Why?
Because capital is "on the wire", and doesn't know national boundaries any
longer. Corporations answer only to fiscal mandates, created by law. Game over!
So, say "ta-ta" to the gravy train; let's learn to optimize our intellectual and social capital, learn to cooperate (intra- and inter-nationally), and become creatively and commercially fierce (like the rest of the world).
There are *three* general solutions to this problem, with the third being social 'adjustment', made by Americans:
1) Unlock the potential of American economic diversity with aggressive public policy. This means mandating changes - in telecommunications, manufacturing, education, and other vital sectors - that enable Americans to take advantage of their enormous intellectual capital.
2) Encourage the growth of social entrepreneurial activity, with the goal of creating massive private and public efficiencies from the great wealth of intellectual, financial, and social capital held by Americans.
3) Social adjustment. Americans will learn to cooperate (among themselves, and with others) more - over the long-term - and realize that there are limits and consequences to great wealth.
All solutions are related.
Here's to making those solutions happen!
The article is biased and pollitically motivated (Score:5, Insightful)
I know of many US companies who make a living teaching companies in other countries like India about quality control and the way that US Businesses do business. If Indian companies had good quality, these companies would be out of business and not have business booming. I shall cite some examples of the quality of offshoring below.
Thing is, most IT workers, such as me, do not blame the people taking our jobs, but the companies making the move to other countries and cutting us loose. This is a global trend that is not going to stop unless there is some law passed against it, which I doubt will happen.
First it was a Labor Shortage [ucdavis.edu] which was a big lie by the Corporations to get rid of US workers and replace them with H1B Visa workers or outsource to India. Now that there is a surplus of IT Workers, they still claim there is an IT shortage and need to move more jobs overseas.
Where is the beef? Where is the quality that Indian companies are supposed to have? Apparently they did not have Quality at Dell [com.com] when they moved a Help Desk over to India. Where is the quality in programs written? Security issues are a big risk [computerworld.com] and we are supposed to trust someone we cannot even watch from half a world away that they will not harm source code or be a risk to security?
Of course there is always hidden Malware [computerworld.com] to consider. Really nice of them to put in a back door or virus or trojan to access the corp system after the Indian programmers are let go when the project is over.
Oh yeah, the myth that it is cheaper. Consider the Hidden costs of Ofshoring [sfgate.com] nothing like a project going over budget and full of bugs and needing US developers to fit it. Once again, where is the beef? That quality is just not there once again.
It seems that India is America's silent partner. [businessweek.com] We may not even hear about it during the election year. When a government is more interested in rewriting copyright laws so that the RIAA can sue 13 year-old girls and fair use is out of the picture, I wonder who our politicians really work for? Certainly not the US Citizens, only Corporations. So of course they support the wholesale slaughter of US IT Workers and the export of IT jobs overseas.
Ah but there is a big risk involved in Offshoring. Sort of like taking all the company stock to Las Vegas and betting it all on number 35 on the Roulette Wheel. :) Just ask those who craft the contracts about the risks involved. [computerworld.com]
Nice to meet the people that are taking the jobs moved to India. Also nice to know they are not concerned that US Workers are losing their jobs to keep the Indian workers employed. I'd think if I was given a job at someone else's expense that I would quote my religious or culutral references instead as well when asked to respond to that. :)
Maybe we should personalize the US IT Workers too. Here is Bob, he worked for a Fortune 500 company for the past 15 years developing award winning programs and his work gained the company many patents. Bob holds a Masters in Information Systems. Management decided that he earns too much, so he was terminated and his job was sent with many others over to an IT sweatshop i
Your "equilibrium" is the race to the bottom. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep. They work for less. That's the race to the bottom.
"The Indian salary will not remain static."
Well, we're pumping money into their economy so they'll see an increase, that is correct.
"As the number of jobs and the complexity of the problems increase (remember, workers are a market just like anything else) the salary will begin to rise."
Maybe. But doesn't that pre-suppose that there will eventually be more jobs than programmers and that the jobs will become more complex?
"As the rest of the economy begins to feel the benefits of this economic boon in India, more and more IT workers will begin to do other things."
I don't see this. If the IT sector is making money, why move out of it? Unless some other sector is making even MORE money?
"Eventually the global market will achieve Equilibrium and the competitive advantage will close."
That's the "bottom". The lowest price you can pay someone to do the work.
In order for that factor to INCREASE you have to have MORE JOBS than programmers. Which I do not see happening.
"We talk about how these theories are untested, well we've seen the results of this same phenemenon in auto manufacturing."
Different. It costs money and time to move cars.
"After all, remember all of those car building jobs we 'lost' two decades ago? Well, they're coming back in droves."
The ones I see "coming back" are in Mexico where the parts are assembled and shipped up to the US.
Making a car is not the same as assembling a car.
The US does not make many cars anymore.
"The Japanese auto makers are now turning to American labor to build those same cars, as the Japanese workers salary has now surpassed the American auto workers salary.. factor in the cost of shipping those cars across the ocean and American labor makes a ton of sense for that field."
It's cheaper to hire someone to assemble a car in Mexico (NAFTA) and ship it up to the US than to assemble the car in Japan and ship it to the US.
Now look at our old auto cities. Massive unemployment, still. The jobs are gone.
Re:Cannonfodder/4 times as many incompetents (Score:3, Insightful)
The other point is that it is not fair trade, the jobs leave and labor cannot follow. This is not fair trade.
Also one of the basic tenents of Demming was to carefully control the hiring process to get the right people for the job. Any time you outsource you lose control of hiring, leading once again to crappy quality.
Only mega corporations can afford to throw money down rat holes like this. Small to mid sized companys have to be more efficient than this and they in fact are where the jobs are. There was an article where a smaller company was going to be charged 40k/yr for each outsourced programmer and the manager said "for that price I can buy American" and he did! If you are looking at IBM, HP, CA or other mega-corps, look elsewhere. Large corporations are not the norm even in the US. It is just thier marketing that makes you think that.
Also, as the dollar weakens, any advantage will somewhat disappear. So basicly I am saying adapt, fight for true fair trade and tell the large coporates to piss off (boycotting thier goods is a good idea).
Re:Bull5hit (Score:5, Insightful)
While I take offense and you trying to rank IIT above Caltech (as I'm sure the many Nobel prize winners from Caltech would as well,) I think you hit on an important aspect of American culture. We have a culture that does not promote education. We ridicule our smartest people (look at how many words we have in our vernacular for making fun of smart people.) We praise athletes or singers or pleasant looking people, but not scientists or mathematicians...
Large corporations (HP and Intel immediately come to mind) are fond of saying that they 1.) have to offshore to stay compettitive but 2.) America needs better education system because they can't find quality engineers here. These two thing seemingly contradictory at first, but they're not once you realize that maybe Intel would outsource to Arkansas if it was possible. Don't you think that if Corporation XYZ could open a new office in Arkansas, or South Carolina, or Wyoming, i.e. a place with lower cost of living and lower pay scales, then they would've done that before they "sent" their jobs to India? For that matter, even here in California you'd have a hard time hiring 100 programmers in Fresno, which is only a few hours from Silicon Valley and has 500,000 people living there. Of course there's no shortage of programmers in Silicon Valley, all needing $70K just to pay rent, but you cannot go to less expensive parts of the country and find skilled labor.
Re:The end of the industry as we know it (Score:4, Insightful)
I've had ZERO luck doing so much as speaking with a non-HR person in any of the large companies, but I've had a much better time of it with smaller companies. My advice for those of you that are unemployed and pissed off about outsourcing is to start reading the local business journals, something many geeks are adverse to doing, because they only care about the code (administering Linux boxes, etc), and find out who are the growing, privately-owned companieis in the area, and get on the damn phone and start calling. There's likely very little you can do to stop Dell or IBM from outsourcing to India, but I guarantee a 5-person development company in the US is not going to outsource your job.
Getting pissed off about the whole thing is just a waste of energy.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:5, Insightful)
You didn't sacrifice your job. Your job disappeared, and no amount of wishing, screaming, arguing, protesting, legislating, hoping, lobbying, letter-writing, bribing, petitioning, imagining, discussing, complaining, worrying, fretting, bothering, sign-writing, stalking, or planning will bring it back.
Your best bet is to find another job.
This is how it is; it cannot be otherwise.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:5, Insightful)
You better stop visiting Slashdot then, because their parent company VA Software is a big producer of software that assists in "offshoring" of jobs.
Just see their recent press releases here:
http://www.vasoftware.com/press.php/2003/1164.h
Hell, just look at their home page!
CMM (Score:3, Insightful)
CMM does not rate a company on its programming skills or quality, but on its development process. It's a very different thing. My company is trying to get to CMM level 3, and the process is a nightmare. The people in charge are not developers, software engineers or in any way technical. They're paper pushers and meeting schedulers. We flunked a preliminary audit because t's weren't crossed and i's weren't dotted.
Process is important, but like anything that is good, too much is fattening. Too little process and you flounder in ignorance and miscommunications. Too much and you flounder in the paperwork. The purpose of a process to get things done, and not to be an end in itself. CMM only cares about the process.
Indian software engineers are top notch. Their programming skills are excellent. They also have a more keen sense of the bureaucratic corporate culture than most US programmers, which explains the abundance of CMM Level 5 companies in India.
Re:The problems with outsourcing (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, the problem will correct itself.
I hope that Americans are wise enough not to do something so foolish as to enact legislation to stop outsourcing. Unfortunately, people are that stupid.
Re:It's not the Indian programmers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Value can be about much more than money especially when you are thinking farther than 1 or 2 quarters ahead, which is where the upper level execs should be looking. A good value increasing strategy can be a loser for short term profits but beneficial to the company overall in the longer term.
Outsourcing your core business (which I admit many companies who are outsourcing to India arent doing) is very dangerous in the mid to long term outlook for the value of your company because you are eventually going to create your own strong competitors in your own markets, while reducing your own staff including some of the employees who produce the value in your company.
However its very attractive in the very short term because cutting costs results in an immediate increase in the bottom line - and profits cause shares to go up in the current market environment regardless if they are wise in the long term.
Re:Jealous still? (Score:3, Insightful)
For the record, the only way in which I'm jealous is that I'm jealous I don't live in a country where the cost of living is this low. I'm not jealous of the rich. Never wanted to be rich. Just wanted to take care of my wife and I and not be poor. Apparantly that makes me greedy.
Indian isn't even a free trading country... (Score:2, Insightful)
Bottom line, it's not the responsibility of US workers or the US government to improve the Indian economy and help Indian programmers get jobs. The responsibility of US elected officials is quite the opposite, it's to see that highly trained US workers don't become redundant. And that too many of these highly skilled jobs don't move offshore to third world countries.
And for those who suggest everyone should have an equal chance to get a job no matter where in the world they live, you are living in a world of make-believe on lollypop lane. One might as well say "Gee, why don't all the countries of the world won't simply open their borders and let anyone to immigrate anywhere."
The truth is, there is very little totally "free trade" in the world, especially little of it India. And those that suggest anything that's not completely "free trade" must be "protectionism" are just drinking the free-trade kool-aid.
Most of the goods and services in the world are somewhere in the middle, not totally free trade, but neither are they totally restricted. That's where US high tech jobs need to be, somewhere in the middle. We can't afford to allow all of the United States technical base to migrate overseas, yet neither can we afford to totally cut ourselves off from the world. There will have to be reasonable restrictions. Reasonable restrictions do not equal protectionism.
Also keep in mind that India is one of the most restrictive, anti-free trade countries in the entire world. The offshoring of US jobs isn't an example of free trade, it's actually an example of very unfair trade. The Indian workforce doesn't have nearly the same worker protections and regulations affecting US workers and companies. The Indian government disallows many American products from being imported and actually manufacturers many US products in India without paying the US patent holders for their products. The US pharmaceutical industry alone loses billions a year in un-paid license fees.
So before any suggest offshoring is "Free Trade" Let's see India walk the "free trade" walk by paying those license fees to US patent holders. Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
Au Contrair (Score:4, Insightful)
You are quite wrong. Much of the debate of the next Presidential election will focus on the "free trade" policies that are gutting the middle class in the U.S. to the benefit of U.S. Big Business. Many many middle class people who used to have decent jobs who now are out of work, or working at WalMart, are mad as hell. American workers are coming to realize that they cannot compete with overseas workers who earn a pittance. In the end, no amount of money from Big Business will keep the electorate from kicking the guilty parties out of office. Thankfully Indian programmers cannot vote for American congressmen and Presidents.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:4, Insightful)
India has some of the highest import tarrifs in the world, local content laws, and property ownership laws.
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the point you're missing is that we're not talking about a doctor updating his skills. We're not taking about programmers unwilling to learn a new languages. We're talking about saying to IT to go study chemistry since there are no more IT jobs.
Back when manufacturing was lost we said we'd retrain people and we did. But their original training might have lasted a month and cost the employee nothing. Now you're talking about training, such as a college education, that costs perhaps $30,000 (if you go to a state school) and takes 4+ years. The economists are saying we'll just retrain folks. What that means is one of two things:
1) Sorry, you get to go back to college and spend another 4 years and maybe $30K to start all over again and hope that you pick right this time.
or
2) Well we'll retrain you for something that doesn't take a college degree. Welcome to WalMart.
Either doens't sound too good.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:5, Insightful)
Misplaced scorn. (Score:4, Insightful)
OF COURSE it is a "good thing" to the recipients of the work in underdeveloped countries. However, CEO salaries are on average thirty times what even the President of the United States makes. The CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch makes about half of the compensation for the entire House of Representatives and Senate combined. The AVERAGE CEO compensation is $11,000,000 per year--thats 39,285% more than the average American. A Dilbert cartoon recently opined on this where Alice is speaking to the CEO and asks, "I work 70 hour weeks and I don't make $40 million per year. Do you work twenty-eight thousand hours per week?" Note, this is a characterization of someone making $100,000 per year -- in the top eight percent in the United States.
This "they need the jobs more than we do" is ridiculous. That's a race to the bottom. Almost EVERYONE needs the jobs more than we do. By comparison, the unemployed computer programmer needs the $60k that used to be his salary about two hundred times more than the CEO who outsourced his job. Put your scorn for the overpaid where it belongs.
$60k in 2004 is $27k in 1980 dollars. Anyone who remembers 1980 remembers that was a painfully modest salary then. We're getting lost in a collective memory lapse where the numbers we see today are impressive compared to what we experienced a decade or two ago. In 1980, the pay gap between worker and CEO was only about 42:1. In 1990, it was 84:1. In 2000, it was 531:1. That's a jump of 44,700% in ten years. That's a compounded 192% raise every year. If a $60k computer programmer performed that well, they'd be making $40 million per year after ten years. In the meantime, we can all sit back and party like it's 1981. YAY.
As for this argument from possessions, the cost of possessions is relative to the location. Anyone who has travelled abroad at all realizes that the standard of living that $50k affords in the United States costs $100k in Sweden, costs $25k in Poland and about $15k in India. A $7.50/hour engineer in India is SIGNIFICANTLY better off than an unemployed computer programmer in the United States by virtue of the fact that it costs many times as much just to stay alive in the United States as it does to live in luxury in India.
That is the nature of arbitrage. You'd think by blathering Adam Smith you'd realize that.
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't get it, do you? The only reason they can do it for far less than the American programmer is that they live in a different economy. It has nothing to do with the individual programmer and everything to do with differences between the economies of the countries in question.
Don't you people see what's happening here? As soon as India starts to see some of the benefits of the money being pumped into their economy and starts to use that money to improve the standard of living there, the corporations will shift their gaze towards other countries that have a lower standard of living (and thus a lower cost of living). India's economy will thus go into the drink, just like ours (the U.S.) is beginning to. The corporations will play entire countries against each other until they all have rock-bottom standards of living. This is inevitably what must happen as long as the price of shifting the demand for labor remains low -- economics doesn't allow for any other outcome.
Remember: the cheapest source of labor is an individual to whom you're paying a subsistence wage where that wage is barely enough to buy food. Electricity costs money. Running water costs money. Sewage costs money. The more basic services you add to the mix the higher the cost of living and thus the higher the cost of labor. Put pressure on countries to reduce the cost of living and they eventually must reduce or eliminate such services in order to compete against countries that don't have such services. It's that simple.
Bottomless pit of talent... or is it? (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of the proponents of outsourcing claim India as a bottomless supply of talent because they have a population close to a billion of mostly educated people. This is wrong.
India is a country of diversity where there are hundreds if not thousands of languages, having a caste system which means that there are the educated and non educated as it has been for thousands of years. Many indians do not become more than what they are because they believe it is bad karma. If you are a begger than you stay a begger because you believe that you will be something better when you become reincarnated.
Most of the IT companies in India are concentrated on the west coast of India (bounded by the mountain ranges to the east) and therefore only a fraction of the population of India would be highly skilled. Moves to expand the IT industry in India will stalled because of cultural reasons.
It is possible that most of the companies that have taken advantage of India's talent would have taken the cream of the crop. As with anything that has a great amount of hype behind it, Indian outsourcing will suffer from a bubble effect... Early adopters benefit while others find that the later they outsource the benefits become diminished. Others will find a detremental effect to their business.
Perhaps a policy to slow down outsourcing to India would be good thing for America in the same way that raising interest rates - in order to stop the economy overheating - is a good thing. This will have the benefit of stopping the bubble effect described above and at the same time will give time for American programmers to adjust and adapt to the new outsourcing reality.
The blind rush of people outsourcing to India also means that people forget that there are other countries with highly educated and undervalued people.
There are many professions that may never be outsourced like programmers. Managers, doctors and lawyers they have a competative advantage that professionals in other countries cannot imitate. In order to survive software developers need to be able to think and act like a business. Things like finding a competative advantage which outsourcing cannot compete against. Maybe rebranding yourself. Maybe building your capability to take advantage of new opportunities out there. But its frigging tough when one moment you have a job and the next you don't.
One more thing I want to add... corporations have a primitive drive to increase profit by either increasing revenue, decreasing costs or both. So therefore much of the politics related to business involve 1. protecting revenue sources, 2. reducing costs.
Now patents/copyrights is a actively discussed in /. and really is a form of protectionism that enables sustainable development of intellectual property and maintains corporate revenue. Outsourcing is also actively discussed on /. and is against job protection.
Now people who argue for job protection are also arguing against intellectual property protection and people who argue against intellectual property protection probably argue for job protection. My point is that beauty and sustainability must be a balance between nurture and freedom. Like a garden you pull out the weeds if you can, or if you can't destroy the weeds because you will hurt the good plants then you leave the weeds alone.
Re:It's not the Indian programmers... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, yeah? Then why aren't they offshoring the management jobs, too, huh?
Right. It's not just about making money for the corporation.
Move. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand the problem. I'm a Canadian, and the economy here has never been what the US economy has been. I've always admired the feeling in US cities that things are getting done, money is being made, and the government stays out of your way.
But, that's right. Move. Sell your apartment on the street and hitchhike out of town. There are loads of small towns in the US where you can eek out a living with a tech background. If it's too expensive, those boots were made for walkin'.
Or become a mechanic. Learn to weld. Move to texas and work in the oil fields - or Alaska, for that matter. Figure out how to make things out of wood. Learn to take care of old people. Learn a martial art and teach people.There's lots of ways to make money besides bitching about outsourcing. Go into business managing outsourcing operations. Etc.
My own piece of constructive advice is move to a smaller city, and get employed by a small company that can't afford to outsource and can pay a living wage - and a living wage isn't $100,000, but it isn't $10,000 either.
I thought people here were supposed to be resourceful?
Christ? Why don't we just repeal all the US labor. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:3, Insightful)
Fact: The average US employee works more hours per week then every other country in the world. reference [hartford-hwp.com]
So, pretty much it takes at LEAST 3 Indians to do 1 American's job. I don't care if you compare smart people to smart people or stupid people to stupid people.
Try explaining that to my past co-worker who got laid off (along with 35 other people) 1 week after his wife had a premature baby with complications. Explain to him why his job went to India!
Just remember that this "lion" gives more of its wealth to foreign countries that any other 3 countries combined, in foreign aid.
Are you one of those not so smart Indian exchange students? You sure sound like it.
And if they think that we are outsourcing to them because they are better instead of just plain cheaper then why must they come to the US for most of their training and education?
Anyone who thinks outsourcing to India is any more then a political chess move, or for the capitalist companies of America to save a few million dollars a year, needs to rethink the facts. And if you think this is all "Ok", and live in the US maybe it's time for you to outsource yourself!
Cheap workers in America (Score:4, Insightful)
What? The people living there have little education? They don't even know how to use a computer? Well, I'd be glad to live in the sticks and telecommute - just like those Indian workers. While some may prefer the city, I'm sure that quite a few geeks would prefer the sticks, like I do.
The problem is, the corporation won't let you live in the sticks. They insist that you relocate to the most expensive regions. Then they complain that you are too expensive - because the cost of living in NYC, NoVa, SFO, LAX, etc is so high - and outsource your job to India.
My distaste for the city prevented my from taking a number of high salary offers. Also partly because the salary wasn't really all that high after talking to people who lived where I would have to move to. My friends were in incredulous that I wouild turn down $90K. But $90K is peanuts in SFO (even 10 years ago when I had the offer). Now I am glad that I stayed away.
There is really only one fundamental problem preventing cheaper Tech labor in America. Lack of infrastructure. Lack of education can be worked around by moving people like me to low cost areas. This creates more demand for technical education, and more qualified native workers will turn up as local kids get turned on to tech. However, telecommuting requires a decent broadband internet connection. In the sticks, you can't get DSL or Cable, so you have to get T1. That runs $600/mo, which adds $7500 to your salary right off the bat.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a good thing our country was founded off of John Stuart Mill, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Pain, et al. and not Adam Smith, or else I might think differently.
Its called Slavery (Score:1, Insightful)
Let me entertain you with some simple FACTS:
When U.S. programmers loses his/her job to a foreign worker the money they would usually make doing thier job is lost to the community where they live. This causes the following problems:
1) They become a burden to all tax payers by claiming Unemployment. They are highly skilled in a profession that no longer exists.
2) The money they would usually spend on taxs, bills, and general living (groceries, house supplies, etc.) are no longer spent. This means local jobs that sell services to these people lose money. They eventually die.
Ive wrote about this several times in several different news publications. I can given examples all day where outsourcing and other means of cost cutting by companies have killed local communities. I know for a fact that Indians could care a crap less since they dont live here.
If you want an example of where things go wrong go to Gary Indiana and have a look around. Explain why this once proud city is now an urban decay nightmare. Remember to wear a bullet proof vest because the locals can become hostile.
Wired and "The NEW New Economy!" (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, now we have "The NEW New Economy" which is supposed to be based out of Bangalore or something.
Has Wired ever gotten any fundamentals correct?
Free travel (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not the money it's the quality of life. It's just cheaper to offer a high quality of life over there. If I can't take advantage of it then my job is being stolen!
Missing Important Fact (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a lot of fallacies with this article presented here.
In almost every major pro-outsourcing argument, history is mentioned that back in the turn of the century farmers moved to the factories. And in mid 30's and 40's, migration from the factories to the cities started. So essentially a lot of the workers were trained in newer "better" jobs.
True...
Except everyone fails to mention this important fact: it all happened internally within one economy so overall affect was positive for the U.S. worker/economy/country. Workers moved from farms to factories then offices (spanning generations), to higher salaries, better standard of life and etc.
So what is just the U.S. IT worker will do? Train for a better a job? Such as law, or medicine? If one wanted to become a lawyer, s/he would have never majored in computer science. And worse, loss of IT job in the U.S. means lost income and tax revenue.
Ultimately, the Indian IT worker's salary will also go high, but then there will be Malaysia, Indonesia, and etc. Don't forget China.
Just what are Americans are supposed to do?
Here's a question: with the low-end (farm and service industry) jobs to be filled by Mexican workers, mid-level (such as customer service - AOL anyone?) jobs to be outsourced to India and others, manufacturing jobs gone forever (challenging to find any product made in U.S.A anymore), high-tech jobs and products outsourced to India and made in Taiwan, steel industry succumbs to cheaper import, I ask again just what are Americans are supposed to do? How many lawyers, dentists, and doctors do we need? Or are we supposed to become car salesmen at local dealerships?
Re:Au Contrair (Score:5, Insightful)
You are quite wrong. Much of the debate of the next Presidential election will focus on the "free trade" policies that are gutting the middle class in the U.S. to the benefit of U.S. Big Business. Many many middle class people who used to have decent jobs who now are out of work, or working at WalMart, are mad as hell. American workers are coming to realize that they cannot compete with overseas workers who earn a pittance. In the end, no amount of money from Big Business will keep the electorate from kicking the guilty parties out of office. Thankfully Indian programmers cannot vote for American congressmen and Presidents
if not anything else, americans are myopic forgetful idiots. Everything about america reflects this... Let me explain myself before you can call me a flame bait -
Everyone today is complaining about "Walmartization" of the country, at the same time enjoying the fruits of it i.e. cheap goods. Have you realized how much the dollar fell in the last 2 years or so? Did that reflect in inflation? Do you even know how tough it would be once the inflation starts spiralling? ( I do, because I come from a different country). So, if you stop walmartization aka globalization, the next thing you see is that a deoderant stick will cost 10 bucks in your *local owned* store and a replacement part for your computer will cost several times the cost of the market value of the PC u are using. At the same time, health care costs will spiral up and employers will be reluctant to increase pay while covering ur health care costs. The cheap mortgage you got because of other countries putting their money in US treasuries and bonds will no longer be viable and you will be forced to renegotiate for a higher interest rate or face forclosure, because those countries will shift investments to euro instead of the dollar. If u dont think this is possible, then pull up a list of nations that "invested" in USSR and not USA.
Having explained myself, let me point out your myopia - you are crying hoarse at the negative impact of globalization on you but not looking at what it has done positively. You are also forgetting that how protectionist measures have beggered countries - eastern bloc and soviet union and many other nations including India and Brazil. I dont have a solution to all your personal problems. But what I am telling you is that you are not factoring in many things into your own reasoning.
What an entertaining discussion (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Au Contrair (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? Are Indians fundamentally less deserving of well paid jobs than Americans?
While I am very worried for my career, I just can't bring myself to think, "I was born an American and therefore deserve a higher standard of living, even at the expense of others." Reports are claiming that these $11,000 a year jobs are creating a healthy middle class who enjoys roughly the same sort of lifestyle I do. While I do see the specific appeal of "I would rather have a good job than someone else," it's harder to say, "I would rather my country has jobs instead of your country having jobs." Ultimately we're all on the same planet and we're all human beings.
I love my country, but I can't bring myself to wish ill on other countries, and that's exactly what you're suggesting.
On a barely related note, if you want world peace, we need an international middle class. Once you're reasonably comfortable it's hard to justify putting your life on the line. There are exceptions, but on the whole terrorism is an activity of the poor and desperate.
Bah, superstition! (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason businesses choose to hire cheap programmers is because that is how much they are willing to pay. If you artificially try to raise that price, they will not hire programmers at the higher price; the projects will simply go away.
You will not make your job come back. It is gone FOREVER. It is a dead issue. Politics and greed are simply irrelevant; this is the reality you must face and deal with constructively, by looking for ways to adapt your skills.
A brief aside:
I have little sympathy for the millions of my fellow Americans who charged into the gold rush of computers in the 90's who now have no jobs. I did not choose this lifestyle because I had dollar signs in my eyes. I chose it because it is who I am and have always been.
I am fortunate that people are willing to continue to pay me to do something which I enjoy and do well. But I am not so naive to think that this will always be the case; I am mostly concerned with whether or not I am providing more value to my employer than I cost. If I fail to do so, then it is up to me to find new ways to be productive.
And I'm lucky in that my employer actually asked me to provide weekly status reports. Imagine that -- he actually ASKED me to do something which I really wanted to do anyway: Once a week, I remind my bosses how I am contributing more value to him than he is having to pay me. And by doing so, he is happy because he feels he is getting a bargain, and I am happy because I am well-paid, enjoying my job, and likely to keep it.
But there's more than that. I'm also keeping up on the industries we're in, and the trends in those industries. And I am using that to get advance warning of what skills I will need to brush up on, and the likelihood of my company succeeding in certain areas, and most importantly, when the project I am is in danger of becoming cancelled by the company.
My resume' is a marvel of marketing: It tells an employer not just that I have skills, but that I do this because I enjoy it, have always enjoyed it, and have a history of seeking to make value for my employers.
I don't have to like doing this. I just have to do it. That is part of being a professional. That is part of adapting to reality.
This is how you deal with a down job market constructively! You can go ahead and do your superstitious lobbying and your arcane petitions to the witch doctors in Congress to somehow magically summon your long-dead, buried, and decomposed job from the grave. There is no evidence that such mythical sorcery has ever managed to successfully resurrect a job, and it's not for a lack of trying!
Fuck politics. Instead, market yourself well. Learn about the industry you work in. Make your goal to produce more value than you cost. Do these things, and you never need worry about having a job, regardless of what you do or where you do it.
Re:Look at this: (Score:5, Insightful)
scripsit rmassa:
That's a somewhat misleading statistic. I assume you're basing that on median income or something similar rather than cost of living data (I didn't find where you got your figures on the site you cited). As someone who has lived and worked both in the States and in a developing country, I fully appreciate how much farther a dollar goes in a poor country. It is quite nice, for example, to be able to afford to eat out all the time, have a maid, etc., while making less than U.S. minimum wage. However, once you move beyond food, domestic servants, and (to a lesser extent) housing, you realize just how poor you are. Want a car? Those are quite a bit more expensive than in the States. Ditto for any kind of electronics (computers, stereos, TVs). Travel abroad? That costs you just as much as it costs an American.
Bottom line: That $11,000 may make you as rich, compared to other Indians, as making $700,000 does in the States, but it still makes you poor on a global scale. For a geek, that's significant: imagine how rich $700,000 would make you feel if the shiny new laptop you wanted cost $200,000, and if a compact car cost about $2,000,000!
Re:Au Contrair (Score:2, Insightful)
Blame the corporations who care most about fattening their dividends, not the workers they employ for less, to reach that goal. I'm sure everyone wants to work, not just you.
And because someone else has always said it a litle better... Oops! You're racist. [xmission.com] (not that I'm implying anyone's racist... yeah)
Re:Bull5hit (Score:4, Insightful)
This is true, but from the American perspective, it's not very encouraging to see that you can work hard, study, blow some serious cash on school, and then have your job sold out from under you, leaving you with $7/hour flipping burgers and trying to pay off those student loans. That's one aspect of the Wired article that was almost completely ignored - with all of the people saying, "just move laterally into another field", no one seems to have a good idea just how to afford that lateral move and the training it entails, especially for the poor schmucks that are just now graduating.
There are lots of comparisons made with the steel and textile industries, but those didn't require an expensive specialized education that suddenly became worthless. Also, there is *such* a gap between the COL between here and India - the Wired article mentions that the project manager they interviewed makes $11,000 per year and lives quite comfortably - that's practically at U.S. minimum wage and not really a sum you could live on here.
I guess that this whole thing is an object lesson in going into business for oneself - when it comes down to it, you're the only person that can really be trusted to look out for you, because you can't trust an employer to give a damn.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:5, Insightful)
God save this country from busybodies and good-government types who want "mandates" and "aggressive public policy". That horse shit has been tried for years in Europe, with unsurprisingly poor results.
Keep taxes low, spending down, and government regulations minimized and predictable. Everything else government does is secondary, if not counterproductive.
-ccm
Taxes (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Au Contrair (Score:2, Insightful)
Vote?...No BUT...We are already firing entry level call center people serving unemployment benefit and food stamp recipients (e.g. a Wisconsin call center processing New Jersey food stamp claims was outsourced to India). After they are layed off they may very well have to call an Indian call center...someone isn't looking at the big picture here.
How long before we outsource those amazing election systems (the ones with negative totals etc.) to Bangaldesh?
I am comforted though that GW is going to retrain the millions of factory workers for jobs in the IT industry. Warms my heart it does.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:2, Insightful)
That's one of the hypocrisies that I find most disturbing aboout Americans (myself included). We're not willing to put our money where our mouth is.
"Down with cheap foreign labor! Down with outsourcing! (insert $protectionism_slogan)"
"Oh, but wait, we like the cheaper products - cheaper vehicles, cheaper produce, cheaper projects." We can't have it both ways - protectionism has its costs. Businesses go outside the US for manufacturing / IT / customer support because American consumers aren't willing to pay those costs. Until we are (or until we adapt & change our economy to fit the next Big Thing(tm)), we get stuck with our own hypocrisy.
Re:Bah, superstition! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bah, superstition! (Score:4, Insightful)
That job you're so proud of? Dust in the wind. Good luck to you...
Re:Au Contrair (Score:5, Insightful)
Nor do prices go down substantially when products are shipped overseas, have you seen any sort of dramatic drop in the cost of any sort of software(buisness or otherwise) accompanying this move to outsourcing overseas, or even to the continued use of contractors for jobs here rather than salaried employees with benefits packages. I haven't.
The problem with free trade, at least as it exists now is that it doesn't really help the regular American populace at all, the companies benefit(temporarily) because they can sell products at American prices while paying overseas costs increasing their profits. The overseas employees benefit because for them, the lower costs earn them a good living.
The problem is that the system relies on people being able to pay American scaled prices for the items, as more jobs get shipped overseas this simply won't be possible anymore. We're not talking about people being forced to work for less, we're talking about people being out of work all together. Even if prices did drop people who are out of work all together or working for close to minimum wage don't really care, even a 50% reduction if cost wouldn't make up for an 80% reduction in income.
Internationalist egalitarian (Score:3, Insightful)
"Stolen" implies that one group of people has the right to property or resources.
Nature IS competition for resources. Does the wolf steal from the mountain lion because it killed the lamb first, thus depriving the lion of food?
Ever since the first single celled organisms in the primordial ocean began to consume each other due to the exhaustion of glucose in that ancient environment, life forms have been stealing resources from one another.
The lie you are perpetuating is that amongst humans, this is unique to white men. The fact is only they were good enough at it to affect the whole world. What about the mongels? Who got all the way to vienna? Or the huns?
Every major war, every revolution, every system of society, and every culture has come into being to assist that extended tribe in the conquest of and competition for natural resources.
Yes, since then, most of the wealth of the west has been generated. You have to understand, however, that it takes wealth to make wealth. The rest of the world is only just now starting to bounce back thanks to globalisation, despite the best efforts of wealthy countries to keep protectionism alive in all industries except the ones they do well.
It takes human ingenuity and civilized behavior to create wealth. It should be clear that wealth in the material sense is insufficient, otherwise Africa would be the wealthiest continent. For primitive people, wealth cannot be created. Their instincts only allow for the most basic form of resource exploitation.
I would also question your suggestion internationalism helps third world countries. The major issue with India never discussed is why they as a people are focusing on software engineering and not improving the country they are in. We are talking about a country where the vast majority of people live in housing inferior to most urban housing in the Roman Empire over 2000 years. India is a prime example of how Internationalism only benefits a select elite. The average Indian citizen is probably worse off today than under British rule.
What hope does the average fellow have in India except to work as a servant for the wealthy who get their money from the US?
Internationalism is only going to further the caste system in India, except that even the upper echelons of society there will be little more than parasites on the great fat Internationalists.
Re:Bah, superstition! (Score:5, Insightful)
I wasn't aware that only the upper middle class voted in the United States.
It's called capitalism. Americans have reminded the rest of the world of this fact for decades, remember?
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:5, Insightful)
But the consumers won't have money anyways, because all their jobs were shipped to India.
Get it? That's the problem. It's called the "race to the bottom". In a world with totally free trade, wages would quickly become as low as possible. I'm talking "don't ever think about owning a car or buying a house" low. This is not a good thing. What you end up with is not this magic thing where "everyone gets uplifted". What you get is companies bargain-shopping for the hungriest people.
Sure, tariffs and such can hurt if relied on to much, be they exist for a very good reason.
If you want to know what you're talking about, you should do a little research on Flint, Michigan. Sure those cars got made cheaper, but do you think any of those new workers in Mexico could afford to buy one? And what about the total devistation of Flint? There's more to worry about that "costs being passed on to consumers". There are things like human costs.
Re:Bah, superstition! (Score:2, Insightful)
Bullshit. You're making all kinds of invalid assumptions by saying this.
The demand curve for a product is not a cliff! If it costs more, the demand decreases, not disappears. The market will get smaller, in terms of quantity sold, but some demand will still be there for the product at a higher price.
What you're saying is like saying "People are willing to buy DVD players for $40, but not for $50". It's a completely silly assumption.
Fuck politics.
No, politics are fucking you. Welcome to the "race to the bottom". They only way to fix it is with politics. I repeat, this is the only way to prevent our standard of living from falling to that of a third-world nation.
Agreed, and a few more points! (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Unskilled vs. Skilled labor. Farmers, while skilled in their own right, didn't require expensive formal education to practice their craft. It was learned from the generations before them. Textile workers didn't go to college and sometimes didn't even graduate high school. Skilled programmers now-days often attend prestigious 4 year universities with high and ever increasing tuitions. It hard to tell someone who spent $18,000 per year (the current cost of my alma-madre) to 'just retrain.'
3. Trimming the wrong corners. Look at the stats in the article. Top 400 wealthiest Americas, y2k average salary $174 million. Yes... One hundred seventy four million! Many of these top 400 are CEOs of the very companies moving their IT workforce overseas. Let's see... at 50 grand a programmer per year that's 3480 programmers per CEO. Let's speculate and say 100 of these top 400 are IT oursourcing CEOs... that's the equivalent of 348,000 programmer jobs. By the way, their incoming is growing about 15% faster than the average Americans and this number is sure to increase as unemployment stays high.
Ok, these points being stated, I agree that IT is on an irreversible decline in the US. That's unfortunate as the reason I got into computers wasn't because that's where the money was; it was because I really like computers. Luckily, the company I work for is stable enough and my job is such that outsourcing would be between difficult if not pointless. Regardless, the plight of the IT worker must be addressed. Companies are moving their workforce like ants marching.
Unfortunately, you can't place a tariff on a service like you can a good. I'm not sure that would even be the best answer as most people seem to thing that 'protectionism' is a very bad thing. It just seems odd that a company can reap all of the benefits of being and doing business in America while still getting all of the benefits of international cheap labor all the while, American jobs are dropping like flies and the rich are getting richer.
Re:Bah, superstition! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I'm saying that adjusting to the realities of the economy is more important.
I admit I'm a "nerd before nerd was cool" snob. But there are a large number of people on this thread and elsewhere who seem to believe that they are entitled to a job because they have a CS/MIS/EE degree. In fact, the degree just gives you a license to hunt. It is -- and always has been -- a necessary but not sufficient condition to having a successful career in IT/IS/engineering. Even having programmed for most of my life, and being very skilled at it, my contributions are not obvious to those in charge if I don't point them out to them. And that is my responsibility to point out my value, and no one else's.
No job is guaranteed, other than Judgeships and Tenured Professorships. The rest of us have to pull our heads away from the computer every now and then and observe the industry trends, and continually re-mold ourselves.
"If you want to sit there and wait for your job to be shipped overseas, go for it, but some people just might be interested in preventing it from happening in the first place."
At that point, it's not "my" job any more, is it? It will be someone else's job. The key is to already not be in that job by the time it becomes someone else's -- to have someone else already in line for it.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:2, Insightful)
So your wonderful tariffs create a less competitive domestic industry, a more competitive foreign industry, a stagnant export market, and an increased cost of living for Americans in general (compared to no tariff). Wow, now that's some effective public policy.
Now substitute "IT industry" for "Steel industry".
The problem will correct itself (Score:2, Insightful)
The other option is to have an entirely protected economy. This should work very well if human greed did not exist. A model that we could try is Gandhi's concept of Gram swaraj. Each village is self-sufficient. They grow their own food, make their own clothes, and consume only what they themselves can produce. Everybody is happy and satisfied. There is no competition between countries, let alone competition between villages. Of course, the whole system is made unstable by the greed of a single person. Gandhi said, the world has enough resources to satisfy the need of everyone, but does not have enough to satisfy the greed of a single one.
Outsourcing similar to Open Source? (Score:4, Insightful)
Similarly, Western IT professionals (it is not just the US having to deal with this issue by the way) concerned at this trend should try to acquire a broader-based skillset which includes business and creative as well as "pure" technical skills - and local knowledge that cannot be easily duplicated by an overseas company (in most organisations, it still is a case of not what you know but who you know).
Also the companies outsourcing are mostly major corporations - which by their nature tend to stifle innovation with bureaucracy. Freeing up their workforce will make it easier for smaller companies to start, recruit, expand and innovate (provided the DOJ manages to rein in Microsoft). And it is only a matter of time before senior management and CEOs find themselves being outsourced (who needs a US-based board of directors when all the real decisions are being taken overseas?).
Finally, this also provides the English language with a massive boost - India is gaining a real advantage due to their widespread use of English and other nations like China and Vietnam will have to do the same in order to grab a significant slice of the outsourcing pie (French/German/Spanish supremacists beware!).
Re:Outsourcing is a good thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
WHAT?!!?! You mean you've worked hard for the last seven years or so - to be succesful and "earn" it you have to demonstrate alot of value to people who are willing to give you wealth in exchange for that value. You have *not* done that, obviously, or you would not be on here bitching.
The old adage of "work smarter, not harder" has never been more applicable. If you're not getting what you want from your chosen direction, chagne it. No-one owes you anything, hell you owe OTHER PEOPLE money in the form of student loans for your education, and it looks like you made bad choices there... they were your bad choices though, and you reap the consequences.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all very remeniscent of the early days of computing and submitting programs to be run and then receiving the output a week later to debug. As I said above my experiences may not be common. Also outsourcing hasn't completely killed recruitment at the company and to be honest can be an advantage as we can pick the best candidates who then get exiting work to do rather than testing or writing test suites and the like.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is, outsourcing won't drive wages and employment down so far that nothing can be afforded. The US dollar will weaken long before that making out sourcing too expensive. The exchange rate reflects the general health of the economy... which is why it's so savings destroyingly low at the moment. What you're seeing is a painful correction for the economic bubble of the 90s.
As for tariffs: take a look at steel. European manufactures work in higher cost countries, yet they have been able to (painfully) restructure and become more competitive than the US, and thus deliver a cheaper product. This is in part due to the US attitude towards other countries and insisting that their markets stay open to US steel. Well now the US companies have to restructure or go bust too... unless of course Americans are a bunch of greedy hypocrits. Losing jobs in the US steel industry is better for Flint, MI... in fact, more jobs are lost in the US due to steel tariffs than the job losses that would occur in the steel industry without the tariffs. The same can be said IT vs. industries that buy IT products.
It sucks though when you're in an industry that can't compete anymore.
Re:Cannonfodder (Score:2, Insightful)
> the interest of it's own citizens. It does *not*
> have the duty to ensure that Indians get wealthy.
The same argument works in reverse too. The Indian government has a duty to protect the interest of its citizens too, and I bet they'd be very interested in anything that could potentially derail their huge and growing IT businesses.
Consider: most US-based IT companies stopped being "US companies" a long time ago. Companies like Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, etc are now global companies that started and are based in the US. They *don't* have to support their country of origin, or even their employees, as a "prime directive"; they're primarily answerable to their shareholders.
If Microsoft was to stop using Indian coders (disclaimer: I only assume they're doing so), then the Indian govt would go straight to MS India and tell them "give us back *our* jobs or we'll stop buying your product". MS India would then relay that to MS Redmond, who would then have to weigh up the potential loss in Indian sales vs. other alternatives. With the amount of dollars being talked about and the global nature of their customers and workforce, there's probably a good argument for MS to move out of the US - they could relocate their head office to some other country that didn't try to control where their workers came from.
Would the US government punish MS if they did this? Almost certainly, although that punishment would have to be based on not buying MS' products and the US govt is probably lagging behind govts elsewhere in the world in investigating the viability of non-MS software. Even though the US govt is the single biggest customer for MS, I'm not sure that the scope of punishment that would/could be dished out by the US govt would be sufficient to sway the decision.
If MS moved its base to e.g. India, what would the Indian govt do? Probably commit to buying more MS software, and probably allow MS to go into govt markets that they previously haven't had access to.
What would MS' current shareholders do? I bet they'd support it, on the basis that MS should be able to reduce their costs significantly and a loss of sales in the US should be compensated by additional sales in India (in the case where MS relocated to India).
I'm not saying that this is likely to happen, but I bet it's a scenario that the US govt and the large "US IT companies" have investigated fairly thoroughly.
Lot's of wasted energy... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll tell you why...because it's easier to be a victim than to accept the responsibility of taking care of yourself. IT'S NOT ANYONE ELSE'S FAULT BUT YOUR OWN! Those same forces that are taking "your" jobs to India are available for you to take advantage of. Got design skills? Got a good idea (we all have some)? Get a team of India programmers to bring that idea to life and sell it! Get together with your buddies that had their jobs "stolen" and have them help you design and manage it while on unemployment. Sure...you will have to adjust your standard of living...but that standard is not guaranteed to you by anyone else...you create your own.
Now I know some of you will say that it takes lots of money and lots of time and its very risky. Well...if you are creative enough you will find that isn't necessarily the case. And what's more risky? Having a job you can lose at ANY time to an offshore programmer or taking your future into your own hands and having a go at it? Are you going to outsource your own job overseas? I doubt it.
I know I am going to get flamed or whatever but I don't care. I am sick of hearing all the whining. Yes...I still have my programming job (not sure for how much longer...but I do work for a small shop so maybe I won't be a "victim") and yes...I am taking my own advice. What am I doing? Looking into investment real-estate to create cash flow since the rates are so low. Everyone and their dog's cousin's uncle wants to loan me money to buy a house. And don't tell me you have to have money to do it either. I am finding out very quickly that isn't the case. You can ask the seller to help with your down payment. If you have a renter in place before the closing of the loan (signed lease for a year) then the bank/investor/mortgage company will loan you the cash. If you can charge more in rent then your expenses then you have a monthly cash-flow that won't stop if you manage it correctly. Repeat as necessary.
Get out of the consumer mentality. Get out of the mindset that the ONLY way to support yourself is to have a job. Having a job is by far the easiest way to support yourself and your family...but with that comes the (almost) complete loss of control over it as we are seeing now. Companies are in business to MAKE MONEY! That is done by lowering costs and increasing revenue. The most expensive part of running a business is labor.
Flame away.
B
Love your statistics... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you could shrink the Earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, keeping the same ratios, this is what it would look like:
57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 Western Hemisphere, and 6 Africans
51 female, 49 male
70 non-white, 30 white
70 non-Christian, 30 Christian
50% of the world's wealth would be held by only 6 people who would be U.S. citizens
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death, 1 near birth
1 would have a college degree
0 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for both tolerance and understanding becomes glaringly apparent.
That would be a valid argument if wealth is a scarce resource... in other words, if you looked at the world like the 6 Americans were "hogging" all of the resources, and the rest of the world was suffering for said "hogging." Unfortunately, there are resources aplenty on this planet that create wealth, mostly just lying around, matter of fact, we go to many other impoverished countries precisely because those resources are literally lying around undeveloped and are so glaringly easy to get to.
Nations and wealth are built from within. Don't speak as though the rest of the world is suffering because my ancestors died in coal mine cave-ins to build a real infrastructure... that is an inconsistent conclusion. There were these people from other times, called the ROMANS, that built wealth from vineyards and cattle farms. They didn't steal to get there. They organized. We did the same.
So let me adjust those statistics you quoted at us like we are a-holes that have it so great:
-fifty percent of those starving in that "global village" live in perfectly great growing locations with real, if not constant, growing seasons with real resources to make crops.
-80% of those that live in substandard housing live in countries with no concept of the words "building code," and thus spend all of their time keeping out the rain instead of doing it, by hand, correctly the first time. My people made log cabins. Certainly better than sheet metal and a pole.
-illiteracy is not a resource, and you cannot imply poor living to illiteracy.
Face facts. The reality of why the rest of the world is poor has to do with their lack of education and skills, not with some exploitation of the rest of the world, or these scarce resources you speak of. Most of the countries that scream "exploitation!" are upset that they can't read and are jealous when people from cultures worldwide come in and can read. See the history of the British Empire on this one. This was the first time that some people ever saw steel mechanics and other things like a record player. The lack of science was holding them back, and little tips like this:
Handy Third World Tip-
If you place rock next to the river bank, and place your house in and high, then your home doesn't wash away every other year with all of your possesions, livestock, and children.
You just can't blame science... so you blame the people that know it, call them the devils, exploiters, and then when you see an ignorant face in the wilderness on the Discovery Channel that is living just like we all used to live, (and you notice that you are living in air conditioned, clean, vermin-free glory) you feel guilty.
You assume in the back of your mind that you made them suffer, that you are responsible, like that lumber that came from American forests by American workers for your American house, is actually coming from their forest, and they are living like this because of SOMETHING YOU DID. The truth of the matter is it is NOTHING YOU OR YOUR ANCESTORS DID, other than the fact that they innovated and busted their tails to improve their childrens lives, and these poor villagers don't have a mechanism or a concept of how to do
Logic check ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's check this logic
All jobs in the US can be done by someone else from another
country, by bringing them here via L1 visa or sending the
job overseas
Thus, we end up with millions of bankruptcies, repossesions,
and foreclosures, all costing billions of dollars
Even the lawyers could be outsourced
Even the court clerks filing the death slips of america
could be outsourced
We could outsource the police force to go and bodily remove
ppl from their homess and cars
I think the "race to the bottom" logic misses the point
Destablizing the largest economy in the world will send shockwaves
thru the entire world
I for one think that shafting millions of US workers will
have a long term negative impact on this country
There are NO jobs that cannot be outsourced
If over 50% of the jobs are worked by imported hispanics,
or imported visa workers, or sent overseas , it will be the
beginning of the end of the US
It is like a snake eating it own tail
The world's largest economy is about to collapse under its
own greed, because its largest consumer
to be replaced by someone that will not spend the majority
of their money here, they will send it home
They will not put it in US banks, they will put it in foreign banks
Most of the imported labor hates the US, but loves its money
The only loyalty is to the bottom line
This will cause a ripple effect thru every sector, and once it
gets enough momentum ppl will be leaving the big cities in droves
due to their outrageous costs
The burden to welfare and other social services will
not be supportable as less money will be paid in, as the foreign
contract workers do not pay into our system
Thus it will collapse like a house of cards
No more welfare, no more jobs, no more anything
Finito
Peace,
Ex-MislTech