My Job Went To India 396
Josh Skillings writes "The author, Chad Fowler, draws upon his experiences as a software engineer, a team leader over a group of Indian developers, and as a jazz musician, to describe 52 ways or tips that will help you to become a more valuable employee. These tips are described in two or three pages each, and are usually illustrated by a practical example or story. The tips are well thought-out, well-explained and make sense. Chad draws upon the open source movement as well, highlighting ways that contributing to and learning from open source can improve your career. These tips gave me greater respect and appreciation for the open source movement in general." Read on for the rest of Josh's review.
Chad encourages the you to think of your career as life cycle of a product, and as such divides the 52 tips into the four areas of "Choosing Your Market", "Invest in your Product", "Execute", and "Market", and then two extra groups called, "Maintaining Your Edge", and "If you Can't Beat 'Em". This grouping works surprisingly well and provides an overarching context that makes sense. Many of the tips have specific calls to action at the end, which are useful if you don't already have ideas on how to apply the tip.
| My Job Went To India (and All I Got was This Lousy Book) | |
| author | Chad Fowler |
| pages | 185 |
| publisher | The Pragmatic Bookshelf |
| rating | 8 |
| reviewer | Josh Skillings |
| ISBN | 0-9766940-1-8 |
| summary | Offers 52 ways you can keep your software engineering job, or grow yourself into an even better job. |
For example, under "Choosing Your Market", tip #7 "Don't Put Your Eggs In Someone Else's Basket", Chad encourages you to refrain from learning vendor-specific technologies that can disappear with the vendor, and then calls you to action by suggesting you write a small project in a technology that competes with the technology you are used to using. This will help you understand why the technology exists to start with and what opens your horizons for what might be coming next.
Under the section "Investing in your Product", tip #14 called "Practice, Practice, Practice", Chad offers suggestions on how software engineers can get even better by specific kinds of focused practice. The action items at the end of the section suggests practicing "Code Katas" katas similar to martial artists, but instead in code and in different languages.
With 52 tips, this book has a lot of tips, a tip for every week of the year, but you should expect to spend much longer than a week on most of them. A few of the tips you are probably doing already, but many of them you aren't. Some of the tips are fairly straight forward and easy to put in to practice. You could spend your entire life attempting and never achieve some of the other tips, such as tip #39, "Release Your Code." The ultimate goal of this tip is to be able to say in a job interview, "Oh, are you running Nifty++? I can help you with that- I wrote it." Chances are this scenario won't ever happen to you, but by working towards this goal in the ways the book outlines, you will definitely become a better, more valuable software engineer. Many of the tips will make you a better person in general, regardless of your career, such as tip #28, "Learn How To Fail", where Chad emphasizes how to fail gracefully and the rewards that can be learned from failure. This wide range of time, difficult, and application of the tips gives you something to work on today, next week, and next year.
The title of the book is silly. Yes, it was catchy enough for me to notice in the bookstore, with the red cover and the homeless (software engineer?) holding a sign, "Will Code For Food". So from that point of view, the cover worked. However, unless you've read the book, you might think it's as campy as the cover and wonder if it is somehow anti-Indian. I think a better title would be along the lines of "How to Get Any Job You Want", since if you can master all of these tips, you'll be the best there ever was.
While I didn't expect any specific technical advice, I would have liked some. I understand that an author needs to be sensitive to how fast technology changes, however just one tip with a warning: "This information is my opinion on April 11, 2007 and will probably change tomorrow". And then describes about how Subversion is a great tool, Python is a great language to learn, and learning design patterns can make your life easier, would have been appreciated. A tip like this would help you to understand the author a bit better and further encourage you to learn more.
If you want to improve yourself and you can accept advice, this book is for you. You will find things you can do better and skills you've never considered. Like some of the other Pragmatic Programmer books, I will never be able to master everything in this book, so I'll be reading this book again and again, trying to get better every time. Don't let the cover put you off, this is a great book.
You can purchase My Job Went To India (and All I Got was This Lousy Book) from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
They took my job (Score:5, Insightful)
They took my job; they took my job; they took my job.
The American companies are to blame, it has nothing to do with America or India. If Dell, HP, GE outsource to India, don't buy their products anymore. Simple as that. But don't blame the poor people over there trying to make a living with what the CEO of Dell does.
Anyway, Python is a great tool, yeah.
Re:First arrival (Score:2, Insightful)
The best thing to do if you are in IT now, try to get out.
If you have kids, or know people you care about. DON'T let them go into IT, or major in it in university.
Doesn't OSS Make it Worse? (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm not against OSS per se, but I'm skeptical that an individual contributing to an OSS project is a good idea. It's one thing for IBM to invest in Linux (for example). If you invest in Linux, you're effectively donating money to for-profit organizations like IBM and Red Hat. This seems to go *against* your self interest of keeping a healthy job pool for software developers. Sure, read and study OSS, but don't lower your own value by working for free.
No big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey boss, be sure to take your malaria shots before you go!
What irks me is that they've been trying to offshore computer works for 50 years with mixed results. What the real problem is that they keep asking for more guest workers (who can't change jobs [easily], who aren't citizens, who can't form unions, and restricted to certain employment). Is it our government's role to provide subsidies for wealthy companies and stifle small business? If we're going to have immigrant workers, why can't they use the usual immigration process and not H-1B non-immigrant guest worker policies?
It's a management vision problem, not an American worker productivity problem.
I'm sorry... (Score:2, Insightful)
...but if your job went to India, you're expendable. Learn some new skills, get better at what you do, etc. The company I work for now is 70% India, 30% US. They trimmed the fat and sent the cheap labor to India.
If you haven't learned by now that you need to stand out from the crowd with an invaluable skill, your job is going to keep going to India.
You become more valuable (Score:3, Insightful)
by having multiple trades. Don't be so specialized.
No Chapter On The "Failed Off-Shoring"?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the author should stop by where I work. He can talk to the people they are hiring *back* after the off-shore company ripped us off for millions giving us crap code which was basically unsupportable written by the "experts".
Re:Interview questions (Score:4, Insightful)
Inflation in India (Score:5, Insightful)
12%
An indian software engineer can earn about 400,000 rupees ($10k)at the moment. In 10 years that will match the west, but long before then the difference will be too marginal to make it worth offshoring.
Confucius say (Score:4, Insightful)
Confucius say "Job is like a woman. Smartest programmer in world cannot keep job from leaving if it wants to."
Survivors (Score:4, Insightful)
Indians have access to the internet too, you know.
They can learn all this new stuff and provide the same service cheaper.
Some random points:
(1) People who code, administer or test will not survive. If you write/fix any kind of code or scripts or do any kind of testing at least once a day your job is in danger.
(2) People who are unable to create something from nothing will not survive. If you need a well-defined set of requirements and design before you can do your work, your job is in danger. If you need someone else to take some vague problem from the customer/boss and come up with a solution that you can implement, your job is in danger. If, however, you invent solutions, you will be fine.
(3) People with inability to solve problems will not survive. This goes to general smartness/intelligence. If you are the kind who can use a cool-head and solve most of problems (job-related or not) through a combination of steps such as keeping a cool head, knowing what to do, who to approach etc, you will be fine. Many problems are tough but you would be surprised to see many people give up before they even take a stab at the easy ones.
As an example: Here is a problem given to you by a customer: "Size the work effort that you personally will require to install DB2 on my AS400 box"
Bad answer: We are a C++ coding shop. We dont do DB2 admin. We dont know how to size this.
Good answer: 6 months (cuz we have to learn all the shit first)
(4) People who will survive are those who can talk to customers to elicit business requirements, design tecnhnical solutions and coordinate project activities - not people who know how to change a config file to get Linux to play mp3 files.
(5) Good-looking people who can talk with management and customers in a confident non-geeky way in perfect English will survive.
(6) If you can relate well with people and can get them to do favors for you, you will survive. If you are the type of person who ends up leading meetings and discussions, you will survive.
(7) If your job is in IT but deals with some kind of calculation involving dollars at least once a day, you will survive.
Re:They took my job (Score:5, Insightful)
Tuition benefit (Score:4, Insightful)
This is overlooked by too many people. I'm a physicist/computer guy by training, but I decided to broaden my employability a bit. I used my employer's tuition discount to take some business classes at the local community college, enjoyed them, and went on to earn a MBA at Vanderbilt at nights/weekends. I've started taking pre-med classes at the community college partly for fun, but also because Nashville is a major medical town and I suspect it will increase my employability even more.
I get a 70% discount on a 3 hour class. At the local community college, that works out to ~$300 per class including the textbook. That's $900 a year. That's a no-brainer in my book. I've never bought an asset, never owned a stock, never owned a mutual fund, that has a higher rate of return than my brain.
While I don't think my job is going to India anytime soon, you can't be sure about tomorrow, and why wait until tomorrow when you can do something about it *today*. Most people ignore their tuition benefit. I'm sure most people fail to fund their 401K to the company match too; that's not the company's fault. Take control.
Re:They took my job (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than reading The World is Flat, have someone hit you over the head with it. The experience will be equally revelatory, but in the end, less painful.
(Anybody who thinks that the United States can somehow maintain a lead (in education, ability, know-how, etc) over the top 20% of Indians and Chinese is delusional, that 20% is more people than live in the U.S. The U.S. will compete and succeed just fine, but the idea that it will be the center of enterprise in this century that it was last century is not supported by reality)
Re:They took my job (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah... and it sounds like by the time you are through that you
might as well just go into business for yourself, throw off the
shackles of corporate America and take home a bigger part of the
value of your labor.
If you've got to start thinking/acting like a small businessman
in order to hold onto your w-2 job then you might as well BE a
small businessman.
Those kinds of skills are FAR more valuable outside the cubicle.
Re:First arrival (Score:2, Insightful)
It's pretty simple really:
Nationalism = what's best for us, at the cost of everyone else
Globalism = what's best for the world, at the cost of the least efficient (in this case us)
Re:At least for software developers (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with outsourcing in general is that you change the business
relationship between what used to be internal customers and internal
providers to one where you've got some outside company with interests
that are probably completely different than your own.
You're no longer a cohesive team. Those other people will not necessarily
pull together for you anymore. They will have their own bosses and their
own sucess metrics.
Your relationship will be defined by a contract that is designed to
prevent you from abusing them too much. Processes will have to be
formalized far better. Changes will be far more tightly controlled.
Depending on the project, it may be dramatically more expensive to
outsource (like something with insane dev schedules).
Re:Okay.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Chad encourages you to refrain from learning vendor-specific technologies that can disappear with the vendor.
Then Chad is hopelessly naive about what it takes to get a job in IT. If you apply for a job that requires experience with Websphere, and your resume only has Tomcat, JBoss, SunOne, and Weblogic, you will not be called in for an interview. It doesn't matter that they're all N-tier frameworks designed to work with Java, you don't have the specific skill needed, so unless the hiring manager is clueful AND does all of the initial resume screening himself instead of letting HR do it, you won't ever get that job.
Face it, there are a lot of idiots in IT management who only know the names of the vendors, and don't even understand what the technologies do. You have to list those vendors on your resume if you ever want to get a job, being vague about working with N-tier architectures just won't cut it in today's environment.
Re:They took my job (Score:2, Insightful)
The difference is significant.
Why is your prior role now filled by one (or two or three) people in India/China/Nigeria/Brasil?
Because you did not provide enough value to the company to justify your salary.
Life is unfair. Deal with it.
On a related note, *if* you are really worth the extra cash, then you should be able to figure out how to use your skills to demonstrate that to your employer... and on the plus side, you will be contributing more to the economy and society. Otherwise, suck it up... it's time to face the reality that being an American doesn't mean you never have to compete with foreign labor.
One other thing -- if you are going to complain and suggest a boycott of outsourcing companies, I suggest you make sure not to buy any goods made offshore either. Have fun paying for locally made clothes, consumer products, and food. Offshoring of labor, while difficult to deal with when it's *your* job on the line, has led to a vast increase in our American quality of life, based upon the variety and price of consumer goods available. You need to take the bad with the good, and if you were personally affected, I'm sorry, but that's the price of globalization.
Re:No Chapter On The "Failed Off-Shoring"?? (Score:1, Insightful)
You are quite right. There should be a chapter(s) on off-shore. In 1995 the company I worked for brought in some off-shore people to learn our systems. Then they went back and started up. My boss denied me a raise that year, 4 weeks later I left and haven't looked back. Not only did the operations hear close, the lack of a usable product(s) from the off-shore operations almost bankrupted them, and may yet.
My second bout with this was more recent. But is quickly shaping up towards the same outcome. They wanted me back, so I asked for a raise. They were thinking more like India wages in North America. Needless to say, I said no. Besides, who needs the problems of a disorganized business, 2-3 years behind in a business critical venture that is costing them a fortune, to work for managers that don't factor in performance, contributions, dependability, track record and ethical work habits before RIFing you.
I don't feel sorry for companies outsourcing that find they get ripped off.
Re:Doesn't OSS Make it Worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you a Microsoft astroturfer? You sure sound like one.
OSS increases the total size of the market, providing more jobs for software engineers. The only companies OSS is bad for is software companies like MS, that have a business model built on proprietary software.
Personally, I work at a semiconductor company developing Linux kernel code to support our products. If OSS didn't exist, we would either have to contract outside companies to develop firmware for us, which would be inefficient and very expensive, making our product probably not viable in the marketplace. Quite likely, many, many products simply wouldn't exist without the presence of OSS.
Imagine a world where almost everyone was illiterate, because a few ivory towers held all the dictionaries and books about written language, and only allowed people to see these books for a high fee. There wouldn't be any writers/authors out there, and all the other industries that rely on written communication simply wouldn't exist. Having access to these tools for free or cheap (remember, education is free in most developed countries) makes the size of the overall market much larger. It's the same way for OSS. Unfortunately, there's some companies like MS who don't like this state of affairs, and want to keep everything secret and under their control.
Re:I'm sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
amazing. your whole post was 'stop whining'. what a content-free post!
No, the content was "stop whining" AND "value is not based on what you think it ought to be".
I'm a principle engineer with a few decades of field experience. I'm far from entry-level yet you tell me to 'grow up'?
Damn straight. Apparently you have a mistaken notion that the world owes you something for having a "few decades" of experience. I'm sure the buggy-whip makers with decades of experience were pissed off when they were no longer able to make as much money.
even if I'm the best contributor in my field, if the bean counters are swayed by cost and cost alone, this is a losing battle.
If you're the best contributor in your field, and that's not enough for someone to pay you what *YOU* think you're worth, then -- shock -- do something else that's more valuable. The world changes. Adapt or perish.
clearly you have not lived this experience. YOU grow up and then you'll see it, first hand.
You're right, I haven't lived this experience -- primarily because I've adapted my working knowledge to the world as it has changed (If I was still doing what I was doing 20 years ago, I'd be making peanuts). But if, for some reason, I found myself left high and dry because my particular niche wasn't as valuable, I assure you I wouldn't be blaming the "bean counters". I would be looking at the market to see what *was* making money. In fact, I typically do that anyway.
Re:I'm sorry... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow! The "tough love" is really touching!
It obvious that you're still a relatively young person or at least someone who doesn't have many responsibilities outside of work. I would print out and frame your response so when the really hard times come in your life, and they ALWAYS do, you'll understand why no one around you seems to care.
You're not looking at this systemically (Score:5, Insightful)
I entirely agree that individually you need to be as valuable as possible. That's why all the CCNPs I know are working to finish their CCIEs and the CCIEs are working on their Juniper/Avaya certs. All of this is on top of their technical degrees.
The problem is that you and your "invaluable" skills really aren't being taken into account. It doesn't matter if firing you would cripple the company because we're typically thinking 90 days at a time. If you replace a $150K CCIE with a $20K wanna-be, then you as a manager can claim a $130K dollar "savings." Hooray for you, here's your bonus.
When that $20K wonder takes all of your customers down -- and here's the beauty part -- you aren't blamed for it. No one is currently drawing the line between your $130K savings and the customers that walked with their millions of dollars.
The really scary part? I frequently work on municipal, hospital and 911 systems. Infrastructure disasters here can cost lives. I've watched the cheap guys take down emergency systems, and I tried not to think about the calls that were getting dropped as I fought to get them back online. I push the frantic calls for help out of my mind, because if I let my imagination run with what an unanswered 911 call could mean...
The cheap guy's response as I berated him for putting lives at risk? Basically, what do I care? It's not my country.
Every one of the guys I know are putting in 60-hours weeks routinely. Hours like that mean divorces. They mean early heart attacks. They mean neglected children left to raise themselves. They mean broken homes with the societal carnage that goes with it.
It's the classic tragedy of the commons. The people who lead our country are insulated from the carnage associated with gutting our workforce. In the meantime, my country is falling apart. I've got a CS degree from a prestigious college, a CCIE, and a decade of international experience and even I am feeling the heat. I weep for those not as lucky as I.
We're gutting our middle class. We just are, and if you don't see it, it's probably because you're young. I hear your "Well, it's not a problem if you're the best of the best" bravado, and I wonder what you propose to do with the other 99% percent of the population, because they're not just going to just disappear.
I was downtown during the LA Riots of '92. Rodney King and Daryl Gates might have been the spark that set it off, but that riot burned on the fuel of unemployed people. Last time I was in LA, more than a decade later, the damage still hadn't been repaired.
I'd really prefer not to see that happen on a country-wide scale. But me and the other gray-hairs are worried, especially the people I know out in LA. We're getting that "vibe" again.
Things are stretched beyond breaking. Our teachers have flat-out given up. Our cops are showing the sort of violent and unstable behavior you would expect from PTSD. The wave of earnest enlistees that flooded the military after 9/11 have become the sort of weary jaded bastards that could put the most burned-out Vietnam Vet to shame.
We are, for the first time in history, routinely using mercenaries in almost every level of our military and law enforcement. I'm seeing military families, families with generations of service, hang up their uniforms and forbid their children from serving.
Our hospitals are literally allowing people to die from neglect in the ER. Our bridges are falling down. Our electrical grid is one snapped breaker from going dark.
Katrina should have been our moment of clarity. The fact that it so clearly wasn't scares me to death.
But you go ahead, and keep humming that "I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the best" mantra. Keep closing your eyes as tight as you can and shut your ears tighter. Find a good teddy bear, because the old man, the old man has seen all this before.
I'm terrified of where this train is going.
Re:First arrival (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are in your early 20s, and want to have a family, or own a house definitely change to something that will help you 20 years from now when you are in your 40s. Given the globalization issues, I wouldn't recommend putting all your eggs into any job that could be done through an internet pipe.
I'm in my late 40s, the mortgage is over halfway paid off, and there's no kids to worry about. Worse case is that I lose my permanent position job (for whatever reason), and have to take a pay cut, or do temporary consulting at bargain rates.
I chose IT 25 years ago because I knew it would afford me a nice standard of living, that at least for the foreseeable future there likely would be a job that would pay enough to cover the kind of house I wanted to live in, and leave a little extra for vacations, emergencies, retirement, weddings, etc. It worked out, but I wouldn't recommend it for someone starting their career today. It's definitely a sad state of affairs.
I'd say that one could learn to do something that you can't outsource, like nursing - but even that isn't guaranteed. Many of those jobs are being "insourced" - that is people from developing countries are being hired here at a lower rate than what us locals are willing to bear.
I guess the best bet (if you don't want to deal with the uncertainty of working for yourself) is for whatever you decide to do, to find a job working for a small company that has a good business model. One, which as part of its culture, tries to keep money local -including the money that it pays to its employees. One that really doesn't have the resources to outsource or sponsor people for insourcing.
Re:I'm sorry... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is unfair, but life isn't fair and you're going to have to deal with it. The bean counters who are swayed by cost and cost alone are making mistakes, and that opens the field up for someone else to step in and not make the mistakes. Instead of focusing on the part of your life that you have no control over, focus on the part that you do and take control that way. So, to reiterate the GP, grow up.
Re:I'm sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it is your attitude.
When you are shopping, do you always buy the cheapest clothes, vegetables, meat, shampoo, magazines, etc? No you don't, and neither does the "bean counters." In fact, they are real persons with real emotions, you know. They try to take rational decisions in the best interest of the company. If they were bean counters, they would count beans, and you would be a bean counted. Is that the value you place on your work?
Kalvin Klein isn't worried that people will stop buying his 200$ shirts just because 5$ shirts works just fine. He is perfectly capable of projecting an image making consumers spend 195$ more and believing that it was worth it. Your job is the same. Your price tag is 10x of theirs, can you have them believe that it is worth it? Can the Indians be on site within an hour? Can they write legible English documentation? Can they talk about a problem of strategic importance over a lunch with the boss? Can they chit-chat about the game during coffee breaks?
You say that you are "the best contributor in my field," does anyone but Slashdot readers know that? If not, then you have no one but yourself to blame.
Re:They took my job (Score:2, Insightful)
What exactly are you whining about? True, some people can't just drop everything and start a business. Sucks to be them. For everybody else the OP has a good point.
Re:First arrival (Score:5, Insightful)
I know of very few administrators who can effecively "code"
Okay, next topic.
Eggs and Baskets... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a touchy subject for everyone, I'm sure. However, you have to admit there's some good nuggets of advice in there.
My background is in systems administration and engineering. We're not as bad off as software developers...yet. But I do know the day will come when it will be deemed too expensive to hire anyone but the best from my field locally too. Right or wrong, short-sighted or not, no one can compete with the greater numbers of lower-paid workers in other parts of the world. Look at what happened to manufacturing -- that's coming for almost every non-management job in the US and Europe. It's a done deal, we let it happen, and now we have to work with the resulting landscape.
So, if you want to stay employed, you have a couple of choices.
I freely admit that I'm not a big fan of outsourcing...projects take way too long because of the language barrier, incomplete requirements, and the difficulty of coordinating efforts. BUT...it's here. Instead of fighting and complaining about it, work within the system you're given. Become really good at what you do. Study. Keep learning outside of your skill set. Get yourself a reputation for being a problem solver.
Why do I say this? One of the tips was to never put your eggs in one basket. That's excellent advice. I'm constantly learning outside of my specialty because I know Microsoft isn't going to be the king forever.
Anyone who's tried hiring people lately knows that the field is still full of people who truly don't understand things beyond the narrow scope of duties they have. These are the "eggs in one basket people" and the most likely to be replaced if they are deemed too expensive. I would much rather hire a natural troubleshooter and problem solver who can figure out the details of a system after reading the manuals and playing a little. The innate ability has to be there. Everything else is teachable.
Some specialization is good too. You have to balance the need to be a good generalist with having a current, in-depth subset of your skills that you can market. Look at all the OpenVMS and IBM mainframe consultants out there. They print their own paychecks going from one weird specialist project to the other. Along the way, they pick up skills.
In summary, stay educated to stay employed. Never assume your job situation won't change, and be ready for anything.
Re:They took my job (Score:3, Insightful)
This is nonsense. Jobs do not move overseas on an individual basis that would allow a single developer to demonstrate anything to his employer that would change anything.
Because you're not just competing with foreign labor. You're competing with foreign economies. Indian programmers don't work for less because they're more industrious or less greedy. They do it because they can maintain a relatively high standard of living for far less than an American developer can.
It's not as if the American has a choice in the matter either. The qualifications demanded by employers here just to get your foot in the door include a college degree that costs $40,000 to acquire, and that's on the cheap side, plus at least four years of time; probably longer. There has to be adequate compensation to make the investment worthwhile. If they even make a comparable demand on their foreign outsourcing, it's far cheaper.
Re:First arrival (Score:2, Insightful)
Attorneys get respect by Joe Sixpack. The tech field sadly gets nothing but contempt.
I think you got that backwards. How many lawyer jokes are there compared to IT worker jokes?
Re:Interview questions (Score:3, Insightful)
Your mod points were offshored? Here, have a (Belgian-owned) Bud.
Re:Doesn't OSS Make it Worse? (Score:3, Insightful)
As somebody that hires developers - and has been doing so for 10+ years, there is a point but not much of one.
Work on a large open-source project might be an indication that a developer can work with others well. Work on a solitare open-source project is an indication often of a huge ego and complete inability to work with others. Not only that, but it strongly suggests the candidate eats, sleeps and codes and has no life away from the keyboard.
If you are looking for a "coding god" and this person comes along the ego might be tolerable because of the work output. In a team environment this sort of person is a disaster.
Re:They took my job (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing something. If 100 developers lose their job, and 2 or 3 are encouraged to become successful by starting new businesses, then those companies will be hiring a significant portion of the remaining unemployed developers. They will also become corporate leaders with first hand knowledge of how it feels to lose your job due to out-sourcing.
Not every developer is capable of accomplishing this, but all you need is a few successful ones. The advice, although not pertinent to everyone, is still good advice.
Re:Survivors (Score:4, Insightful)
People who code, administer or test will not survive.
Wrong. Pure and simple. People who code badly, administer inflexibly or test poorly won't survive, but that's always been the case. People outsource, realise it's not actually as good, then insource again. I keep hearing about these jobs disappearing but every time I've been even remotely in danger of being outsourced I've learnt new skills and moved to a coding job that was more secure.
People who are unable to create something from nothing will not survive. If you need a well-defined set of requirements and design before you can do your work, your job is in danger. If you need someone else to take some vague problem from the customer/boss and come up with a solution that you can implement, your job is in danger. If, however, you invent solutions, you will be fine.
You're not describing "creating something from nothing". You're discribing being a good analyst/programmer (with some emphasis on the analysis part). If you code like a monkey you won't survive, nor should you. However most good designs aren't innovative. Most businesses do very similar things - capture data, store data, retrieve it and display it, consolidate and report on it. A good understanding of how things work in business in general is more important than the ability to innovate.
People with inability to solve problems will not survive.
This is the same as your last point. No they won't survive. Nor should they.
Good answer: 6 months (cuz we have to learn all the shit first)
If you're competing on that basis you won't survive either. There are people in outsourcing companies that either know the technologies you need to learn, or will claim to know them even if they don't. However if you can convince the company that learning a new skill set is going to be beneficial in he long term on multiple projects you're a step closer to being more viable. Better still if you can provide a compelling argument that you should do the job using a skillset you already have, the idea of outsourcing the work becomes less attractive.
People who will survive are those who can talk to customers to elicit business requirements, design tecnhnical solutions and coordinate project activities - not people who know how to change a config file to get Linux to play mp3 files.
Nope. People who survive will know how to do BOTH.
Good-looking people who can talk with management and customers in a confident non-geeky way in perfect English will survive.
Perfect English is not a requirement. English that is easy to understand, and difficult to confuse is. Good-looking is only a requirement if your job is going to require communication outside the company because that's when it's important. However most managers will hire a glue eating geek that doesn't shower if his job has limited scope and exposure. They will however prefer someone with basic hygeine that doesn't look like crap as they're more versatile. You don't need to be on magazine covers or have the elocution of a British royal. Just dress well, take care of the basics and put on some cologne.
Re:First arrival (Score:3, Insightful)
Median annual earnings for wage and salary funeral directors were $49,620 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $37,200 and $65,260. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $28,410 and the top 10 percent earned more than $91,800.
Have fun trying to live on $50K in any major or minor city in the USA, particularly if you want to have a family.
Of course not (Score:4, Insightful)
If today's corporations want their regular rank-and-file employees to wear many hats, be multi-talented, and have a lot of business skills, then they're simply not doing their own jobs correctly.
When you are one of the major players in a monopoly or cartel-controlled industry, you can get away with that kind of sloth. All you really have to worry about is using your leverage in the market to make sure that when your employees leave and start their own business, they fail.
Re:They took my job (Score:3, Insightful)
Less jobs, but more ppl.
The entire purpose of the economy and the whole creation of wealth relies on that; it takes less work to accomplish the same thing. That's a good thing. Making things labour intensive aren't an end in itself.
Of course, during earlier eras of increased productivity, such as when going from an agrarian to industrial society, we also cut down on working hours. These days it appears more popular to drive the working part of the population to burnout while they get to support the non-working population. All while whining about 'disappearing jobs'.
Re:At least for software developers (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless you've worked to maintain code over a very long term, often you don't know the impact of poor coding, or have the insight from that to fix your final deliverable. At the same time, work cannot be outsourced to body-houses based on maintainability, only on functionality at time of payment.
Experience only generates deliverables that are comparatively better in the long-term, but you need to be an employee, rather than an outsource-body, to leverage the benefit of ease-of-maintenance.
The act of shopping by price alone gets you software that will require more work to maintain. Iterative shopping means that you'll get repeated slap-together quick-jobs to get paid. resulting code quality can only degrade, but how can we truly make that known?