Jobs to India -- A Broad Look 902
dumpster_dave writes "Wired has an excellent 7 page article on the current and future trend and nature of IT outsourcing from the United States. The conclusion: the smell of inevitability--the economy will survive, though your job, as it is currently, will likely not. Outsourcing is expected to expand from Service and code projects to the creative aspects as well, with obvious correlations experienced in the manufacturing industry during the 70s and 80s. An excellent read that provides good coverage of the perspectives of players on all sides."
Holy crap! (Score:2, Insightful)
Please explain.... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's Left? (Score:5, Insightful)
So if service jobs, creative jobs, research jobs, and development jobs all get outsourced... What's left and why, exactly, will the economy survive? Oh, right, we'll all get jobs dealing with people face-to-face, selling things to people with no money. Or we'll all wind up being managers.
Excuse me while I look skeptical and write this off as one more piece to make executives feel more comfortable about destroying their country and killing the population.
Re:Note to fat USians (Score:5, Insightful)
average college cost - $70,000
average apartment cost - $800
daily lunch - around $7
just a few items. hey, to be honest i'd be happy making $20,000 per year if my lunch would cost 50 cents daily, apartment $30 per month (or free, as it is in many countries) and the best college runs around $3,000 for all 4 years.
all the amounts people make are relative to what they have to spend. would you like to make $300,000 per year? if your rent becomes $20,000 per month (hypothetically, for the sake of comparison), all of a sudden that doesn't seem like that much money.
I just love how people assume that in america everybody is fat and have free money growing on trees. we work 50 hours per week and our bills are very expensive!!!
Re:Please explain.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good question, and one no-one seems to want to answer. Most will handwave and make vague comments about "expanding economy" or "dealing with people" or "management", but that's bull. This is the start of an offensive to eliminate the American middle class, and replace it with a permanent base of slave labour in "developing countries".
Worrisome (Score:4, Insightful)
Cry me a river (Score:2, Insightful)
Your country profits from the exploitation of child labor and people caught in poverty traps... You there, unemployed developer, reading this... reap what you sow.
Don't trip over the FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:IT Fads (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please explain.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Anyway, I thought this was a good article the first time it was posted.
Re:IT Fads (Score:5, Insightful)
Times are different now. The bubble has burst and the companies (in a true capitalist way) are looking to strengthen the bottomline. If you cannot make money, well then atleast cut the costs (and yeah, I am aware of the cultural,social et al differences that are not factored but add up) and effectively, you've *made* money.
I do not want to rob you of your 'fad' but I have a feeling that this one is for real.
Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
If so, I do think this is just a "fad" that will die out once people start complaining on a huge level.
I just hope it doesn't turn around like the car industry did, now american cars are (arguably) worse than chaper foreign cars, unlike 2 decades ago.
Re:What's Left? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's all about perspective, man. Look at the big picture.
This is programming (Score:3, Insightful)
That about says it all. No wonder it's so easy to fire people. "All you do all day is hit return!"
This is what happens when people are asked to manage something they refuse to understand. Knowledge is destroyed and the economy is damaged. Think of the thousands of years and tens of millions of dollars worth of education that are being wasted right now.
Re:Choose One: (Score:2, Insightful)
And it follows: who are the ones in the company choosing to outsource?
Re:IT Fads (Score:5, Insightful)
And probably one of the main reasons was they weren't ready for it. Now they are and as one indian service provider stated, they've worked to improve their product. Even getting the indian workers to adopt western names, 'Shawn', 'Jessica' etc. and working on pronounciation. While these may seem to be minor, consider the last time you had a grad student lecturing for the instructor of a college course and you couldn't understand a word he said (real teachers don't teach, they get grunts to do it and are actually working on grant projects or university fundraising, those who can't, do teach)
Power and communications were a problem, now these people who own and run the companies have their own generators and satellite communications systems.
Don't assume they didn't learn something and everything is as bad as it was. Dell's failure may well be attributed to only one service vendor who wasn't as polished as others.
Obviously this article is biased. (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought sending manufacturing jobs overseas was a bad idea 20 years ago and sending Software jobs overseas is a bad idea. Eventully you have to do or make something cars, planes, software, genetic s, spaceships SOMETHING. We can't all sit around selling each other stuff at wal-mart.
People poo-poo this point of view, but I have yet to see any of these supposed "pure knowlege worker" positions advertised in the local paper. My guess is they don't exist and never will. They are the very wealthy elite's attempts to smoke screen the middle class.
In the 90's the laid off manufacturing were promised great jobs in IT or related fields. Now those jobs are being sent overseas. Next we are promised jobs as 'knowlege works' WTF is that. I 'm waiting for someone, anyone to show me ONE of these supposed position anywhere. You can't because they don't exist.
Re:Please explain.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And I hate to put it in these terms, but I don't see a whole lot of difference between a certain class of programmer jobs and manufacturing jobs. I mean, isn't that the whole point of languages like Java? To structure things so tightly that programmers are basically just there to put pre-built parts together in a certain order? Does it really less skill to assemble a car engine than to make a Java servlet that processes customer transactions?
Re:Please explain.... (Score:4, Insightful)
When an American company -- a company which sells the majority of its services or goods in America, for American dollars -- hires an Indian, the American company must either:
a) Pay the Indian employee in American dollars, or
b) Convert the American dollars to rupies, and pay the Indian employee in rupies
Either way, the result is the same: At some point in the chain, someone is taking dollars for rupies, whether it's the employee or a third party. That party is not taking dollars because they like the smell of them. They're taking the dollars because they intend to buy American goods with the dollars. (Or they intend to convert the currency to another foreign currency -- and so the chain goes).
That we cannot import more than we export -- over the long term -- is true. To believe otherwise would mean we somehow live in a bubble where foreign countries work for us for free.
There is simply no way, over the long term, that we could outsource all of our jobs, to India or anywhere else anymore than they outsource their jobs to us. (More on that below). It's just not possible.
The special interests will come up with all sorts of nonsense, all manner of jargon to support their fear mongering. They'll talk of
races to the bottom, living wages, social justice and other such things. But what they really mean is "gimme." (Read: I deserve to be making higher real wages for the same equivalent work because I am an American. When protectionists speak of races to the bottom, they ignore the flip side of the coin: a race to the top).
We can rack up debt in the way of trade deficits. Debt which will doubtlessly have to be paid off eventually. But sooner or later the dollar will fall against foreign currencies -- as it is currently, btw -- and foreigners will begin to receive repayment of their loans to us, by way of American exports.
As American exports increase, so too will employment, barring commensurate increases in productivity.
One other important point to make is the falsity of the assumption that only American companies are offshoring. This is the most ridiculous assumption of all, and I suspect it's the root cause of Americans' uneasyness towards offshoring.
Foreign companies offshore jops to America, too. In fact, more jobs are presently "offshored" -to- America from foreign companies than the opposite.
We all know how Flint, MI was hurt by General Motors' offshoring of factories to Mexico. Michael Moore even made a movie about it. But most people don't know about the tens of thousands who are employed in America by Toyota, by Mazda, or other Japanese car manufacturers. An American factory closing and moving to Mexico makes a great fear-mongering evening news story, but a similar-sized new factory operated by a foreign company in America does not.
Capitalism is inherently cyclical. It's the job of policy makers to make these cycles as painless as possible. But the cycles will always remain.
There is no need to blow a fuse over it.
All this talk about a new global economy (Score:2, Insightful)
But the thing that we kept going back to was the way salary and cost of living were related to location. The differences even in portions of the US is extreme (the wife and I were goofing off one day and found several places in the states where we could triple the size of our house and property for the price of our current place). I just don't see the world sustaining a global economy much longer supporting these kinds of differences. Eventually, everything must begin to even out. Their cost of living and salaries are going to eventually increase and ours will drop. The burning question in my mind is... How much? Will we have significant drops as they have only minor increases, or will they have major increases and our's drops a little. I'm not so much worried about finding a job... if you really want to work, you will work. I'm just worried about those unbalanced moments when the salary has dropped and the cost of living hasn't
Re:Note to fat USians (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stop government aide (Score:3, Insightful)
lots of details to work out but it would slow job leakage and what does still happen would feed domestic job growth.
parallel example (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, Coke hired an Indian ad agency. These guys made commercials with sexy women and fast cars, and Coke sold like hotcakes.
The moral of the story: creative work is more likely to be relevant in the culture it was created in.
And so it goes... unless we the people stop it! (Score:4, Insightful)
Back in the early part of the previous century, few middle class, and certainly no upper class people complained when textile, glass production, steel, and later manufacturing were shipped off shore. Many people just smiled and wagged their heads whenever Unions complained about jobs going overseas. Some people warned that off-shore job movement would sink the US economy.
Fast forward to the present. Who's complaining now? It appears to be whoever is left in the middle class. The upper class still doesn't care. One difference this time is that the middle class is largely un-unionized and therefore un-represented during job/salary reviews and other decision making activities.
If people want to change things, here are several things to consider:
Corporate law specifically states that actions taken or products produced by corporations must be in the public interest. Yes, it says that. So a good question to ask is Is it in the public interest to put them out of work by moving their jobs overseas?
Corporate leaders currently earn over 600 times the average salary of their employees. Moving jobs off-shore is likely to make a small percentage of the US population even more wealthy.
Yes, it's still about the economy. For all his other failings, Henry Ford had an interesting idea that his employees should be paid well enough to be able to afford one of his products.
Until corporate officers are encouraged to employ people from the country that issues their charters, the gap between the have's and the have nots in the US will continue to grow.
Re:What's Left? (Score:1, Insightful)
The cycle will repeat itself until eventually the U.S. is the cheapest place to 'outsource' jobs to.
Wait until the US is the "cheapest place"? So, until our living condition is severely degraded, all of our brightest fled, and other countries even out with us? What the heck are you thinking??? If so, then how about the vision of the US being the leader of technology?
Re:What's Left? (Score:3, Insightful)
You could learn a trade, but don't expect to work your way up to running your own business. Trades will be corporatized, so if you want to be a plumber you'll have to work for National Plumbers, inc.
So, basically there will be a two class system, since they've effectively figured out how to eliminate the merchant class and the professional class.
Re:Holy crap! (Score:3, Insightful)
The automotive industry (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't the automotive industry heavily regulated regarding foreign content? Isn't that the case for precisely the reason that Wired is blithering on about?
Also in the past fourty years haven't we seen the demise of the single-income family? Hasn't the price of goods, services, taxes etc all outpaced the increase in income? Don't Americans have the least time off and the worst hours in the industrialized world?
I don't see how the automotive industry is an example of how outsourcing overseas is a win/win scenario.
Am I missing something?
Moral (Score:1, Insightful)
Whatever happened to morals in the vision of Capitalism? Adam Smith wrote that in order for Capitalism to be sustained, morals must be an integral part of it. Now that companies have no morals and will always go to the lowest bidder, will the principles of capitalism hold? Or is a redefinition of capitalism needed?
I nominate the name for the new definition "Corporate-Whorism."
Look man, I don't think our country will survive if we all end up having to work at 10 bucks an hour as the top paid job. Either the cost of things in our lives will have to SIGNIFICANTLY decrease, or we will all be homeless bums on the street while 10% of the population in the U.S. enjoys their huge mansions and comforts all day long.
I'm sorry, but this country will be destroyed before that happens. It's a nice wetdream for the corporate CEOs, but it's just not feasible.
Re:Here we go again!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
I predict this will NOT work out in the long term:
Indian companies will lie about their competency to get work
They will sell proprietary information
They will take advantage of no legal venue to steal & commit fraud & breach of contract
they will employ people without regard to background problems, because there is no way to do meaningful background check in India
the commnication, time zone, and cultural differences will cause customer alienation
it will be found that the managers in the U.S. who recommended outsourcing are cooking the books to bury the true costs
it will be found that high technology is leaked, given, and sold to terrorist organiations
thank our tariffs on auto imports for those jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Countries and economies need to advance... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody in the developed world needs to be developing code anymore, we need to use the minds we have for aids and cancer research, building hover bots and interactive hologramatic entertainment stations.
As an individual it's a harsh world, industries are going to turn over faster and faster in the future, we have to be ready to retrain and move on.
There is a reason why most European countries have worked hard over the last two decades to reduce the number of blue collar workers building cars or mining coal. This is just a natural extension of the same macro economics...a weak government will bend their policies and stop the flow of offshore low end jobs, a forward looking one will encourage it.
Sorry, I'm in a funny mood.
Re:Holy crap! (Score:4, Insightful)
Your .sig is so ironic.
Re:An indian perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
I have 1 billion people, 200,000 jobs, and tax revenue of 1 billion dollars. I now have a huge net export of goods and services.
Political climate in US changes ...
Pipeline of jobs to India shuts down. Now you're back to 1 billion people, 10,000 jobs, and tax revenue of 100 million with which to feed them.
things always seem alot worse when youre homeless and used to have a house than if youve been homeless your whole lifeCombine this with a shutdown of the job pipe, and you have a recipe for civil unrest.
It is true that it is unlikely that the outsourcing will stop anytime soon. But no nation should rely on the bulk of their economy coming from a single outside source. Putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea.
Re:An indian perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems as though Americans are being punished today for having forefathers who loved them and worked hard to give them a better life, because now the fact that our communities are relatively safe, sanitary, and aesthetic is a liability when competing for jobs offered by multinational corporations who pledge allegiance only to money.
recent studies (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a difference between manufacturing and software development, and to compare the two will lead to some pretty specious arguments.
I have had the 'opportunity' to be interviewing for a job. In many of those interview, the subject of oursourcing has come up. In every one, there projects had failed, and internally, the project managment has started to prevent outsourceing do to its cost.
Re:Think ahead (Score:2, Insightful)
So having thrown generations of highly skilled manufacturing workers into the trash we are about to throw generations of highly skilled high tech workers into the trash. Sadly this is not going to change unless people start getting organised and changing the way our education system and our businesses work.
Outsourcing to developing countries addresses some of the wealth imbalances in the world and can only be viewed as a positive thing if their economies improve to the point where they can supply clean water to the whole population etc. However we should be looking for smart ways to help ourselves and since we have democracy this should be coming from our politicians.
So far all I hear is a deafening silence, no change from when the manufacturing jobs went.
Today not only can you not expect to have a job for life, but its doubtfull whether your particular skill and expertise will be needed in ten years time.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way the US will compete, ever, is if our standard of living drops...a lot.
Now, If everything I need to survive decently had its cost cut by 90%, then I'd be able to compete.
Personally, I'd like all corporat tax breaks be removed from any company that outsouces. If it makes them so much money, it shouldn't be a problem, right?
Re:Please explain.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sort of. I claim that every dollar we send to India is eventually either spent on American goods, or converted to another currency. Not necessarily immediately. The propogation is not instant. It could even take years. But eventually someone is going to come looking for their due, an American export.
Otherwise you're suggesting we're getting something for nothing. And if we're getting something for nothing, why wouldn't everyone else be getting something for nothing to? And where then is this something coming from? (Or if others could not do as we do, what are we doing that's so special which causes us to get something for nothing?)
I'm not debating the current state of the economy. It's not great. It's not great in Bangalore either. Things could probably be done to make the situation better. (Though smarter people than I at the policy-maker levels are certainly trying, without much luck)
If it's true that people with multiple doctorates are stuck working at fast food joints, I would guess they either chose a particularly esoteric field for study, or live in the wrong city or town for their work. I think that's the exception, not the norm.
That being said, if there really is no work to be done in their chosen field field, what would you do, if you were king, to rectify the situation?
Full employment is one of the easiest things in the world to create. All you have to do, as a government, is print money and put the people to work. But the trouble is if you don't put them to work efficiently -- an almost impossible task at such a large scale -- you create inflation, and everyone suffers as their real wages decline.
I'm not advocating a pure Smithesque invisible hand, market-driven survival of the fittest economy. I'm just saying the problem is probably not offshoring.
Re:Cry me a river (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Please explain.... (Score:3, Insightful)
*end spoof*
There's no similarity between programming and manufacturing, since the goal of manufacturing is to reproduce a given design as quickly and cheaply as possible, whereas the goal of programming is to create the design that is reproduced.
Biased and misleading article (Score:2, Insightful)
It also leads the reader to believe that the product is 'better' somehow. I can tell you from firsthand observation (as a user of several corporate applications, the development of which has been outsourced) that this view is simplistic at best and flat out wrong at worst. The poor communication across the Big Pond alone insures that there are more than a normal amount of bumps in integration.
The thing that people miss is that there is only one source of new wealth. That is the labor of people who create something others will pay for. Any change in value outside that is inflation, pure and simple.
We're steadily exporting everything Americans do that creates wealth, moving more and more of our population into 'service' jobs that are parasitic on the creation of wealth by 'producers'. We've moved out much of our manufacturing infrastructure, and corporatized our farms, the source of much of the wealth that made the US economy the powerhouse of the mid-20th century.
Now, we've moved into the information age - leading the charge, as it were - and just as quickly as we can, we're exporting these positions that produce value as well. There can be some debate about whether or not IP is 'real wealth' in the sense of food or manufactured goods, but I don't think many will challenge the position that America's economy certainly depends on these producers.
When all that is left is a chain of service (I wash your car, you serve John lunch, John cuts down a tree for Pete, and Pete fixes my deck), we're circling the drain, economically; with no infusion of new wealth, we're living on our savings.
The failure of the "Globalization" process is that it's not India or America that benefits, but the CEOs of corporations; this increases the divide between the 1% that controls most of the wealth and the 99% that control 10%. If Nairobi happens to figure out how to put together a solid programming base next year, Bangalores' economy will be in the shitter overnight.
The mutinational corporations (in the form of the most wealthy stockholders) are taking advantage of standard of living, population pressures, and the artificial barriers of visas, borders, and the like.
My far-feaching, unlikely prediction: (Score:2, Insightful)
The above stands for privately-owned corps. I have no idea what may happen with publicly-traded ones. It's obviously a bit more complicated.
Please explain where this all ends (Score:5, Insightful)
Big Picture (Score:4, Insightful)
"In the long run, we're all dead" - Keynes
No matter how true the rosy big picture may be, the devil is still in the details for those suffering from the change. If there are things we can do to make the transitionless volatile, why not do them?
Re:Obviously this article is biased. (Score:5, Insightful)
'They're called lawyers, professors, researchers, and executives.'
Most laywers don't care one way or the other. Academics (professors) are fairly split over whether all this is a good idea. Executives love it because they give themselves fat bonuses with the money they make sending jobs overseas. Most researches are either blissfully unaware or are wondering when they will be outsourced as well.
After all research can be done much more cheaply in India than here. PHD's grow on trees, no EPA to deal with, no FDA. Want to run clinical trials, go get some low caste individuals sleeping on the sidewalk and wala test subjects. If a few die no one will care. Point is, almost everyjob can be done overseas more cheaply, including yours, however we americans have to SOMETHING.
In your world Jonas Salk would'nt have cured polio either, because his work could've been done more cheaply in India. Then the Drup company that paid for it could supply the vacine to the suffering masses at outrageous prices, and if some could'nt aford well, who cares, certainly not George Bush or his friends.
Jonas Salk did what he did to help suffering people, not to help the corporate profit sheet.
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
Or if the standard of living in India rises...a lot.
Re:IT Fads (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to strain you here, but if we have 1% of the population actually producing something, and the rest simply serving those elite few, A) we have no middle class, B) we have a HUGE trade imbalance and C)we are making other countries rich off of American ingenuity. This doesn't bother you? Maybe you want your children to compete for a few highly coveted jobs which pay extremely well but are taxed at 50%, or else give up and work at burger world as a slave to the rich. The rest of us want the US to actually produce and sell a variety of good all over the world so the US can grow and prosper even more. And yes, we would be better off if we made memory chips here and charged enought to make a profit. We can counter competition from other countries by adding tariffs to cover differences in price and use that money to pay off the deficit. Of course the deficit wouldn't be nearly as high because we would actually be producing and selling stuff rather than just consuming as fast as we can.
-Comedian
Re:It's a risk that they think we can afford? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's Our Own Fault, Programmers! (Score:2, Insightful)
Corporations want code thats easy to write, easy to debug, has limited impact, and can be taught to anyone. This will allow them to still at least break even while reducing risk immensely, in turn increasing their profits elsewhere. THEY DON'T WANT YOUR PROGRAMMING SKILLS. (this is why IT is often billed as an "expense" rather than as an "investment" in most corporate accounting books)
Face it people, RMS is right.
Re:An indian perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a newsflash: India is neither self-reliant nor powerful. Open trade improves the economy and the living standards. There are no self-reliant countries anymore. Every country depends upon other countries for essential resources.
And it's not as if the call-center jobs are taking resources away from other, more productive endeavors. Until recently the unemployment rate in India has been through the roof. You would have a very good point if these outsourced jobs meant that people were not doing other stuff that would be more useful to the national economy, however that is not the case.
The East India company took natural resources away from the country. No money was input into the country in exchange for these resources - rather money was taken away from the country when the products of these resources were sold back to India. This is not the case here. Outsourced jobs infuse valuable foreign exchange into the country and provide employment to a large number of people, improving the overall lifestyle.
re: Shawn & Jessica Nahasapeemapetilon (Score:3, Insightful)
You can replace "Patel" with "Josh" all day long (which BTW totally fucking cracks me up) but it is extremely difficult to get rid of the accent. Hell, you see the same problem in the US with children of immigrants who, while they've essentially grown up here, simply don't speak English outside of school due to their family situation or their circle of friends. I actually feel sorry for them, because many sound no better than their cousins who are FOB (Fresh Off the Boat, a word I learned from some Iranian immigrant pals) arrivals to the US. Call me racist if that's convenient for you, but I've found that in the case of Shawn and Jessica working for Dell in Bangalore it totally impedes the support process.
Even worse, there is a common tendency to be extremely polite and deferential (perhaps a cultural thing?) while simultaneously simply not understanding what the fuck I'm getting at yet refusing to deviate from the script or think outside the box. I count it among the most maddening things I've ever experienced on a telephone.
Re:IT Fads (Score:2, Insightful)
No, real teachers teach. Self absorbed pricks piggybacking the educational institution for their own projects have others do their job for them while getting paid a fraction for it.
Don't confuse researchers with teachers.
Turd happens. (Score:2, Insightful)
Simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Give in and realize that
a. Software for life critical things (airplanes, military, nuculear reactors, etc) will remain the the US.
b. Software jobs for just about everything else will move outside of the US.
c. Linux and open source software will lower the costs of software so that there are significantly less paying software development jobs worldwide.
d. US based IT jobs will center around:
1. Data managament and security (DBA for a bank)
2. Data analysis - high level decision support for financial data
3. Physical presence jobs - on site IT/network work (pulling network cables, rebuilding pc's, etc)
e. The total number of IT related gradutes from US universities will drastically decline since the perceived job prospects are declining.
f. Commodity hardware ($300 dell machine), bootable OS CD's/firmware, and web based services will greatly reduce the number, type and size of programs installed on an end user's local machine. This compounds the reduction in support and development jobs since all of those installation program developers will be obsolete.
g. Mainframe type data centers will be the big dollar items in corporate IT budgets.
I think, with 10+ years paid programming under my belt + 2 CS degrees, that
a. there will be IT jobs in the US
b. the jobs will pay better than other skilled jobs
c. the pay will be lower in real terms than the current level when adjusted for inflation
d. that it workers in the US will have a lower standard of living than now, unless there is a drastic lowering of taxes at federal, state and local level from their 50% plus percent today.
e. that significant simplifications in government regulation at all levels are needed to make the US more compelling to operation businesses and employ US workers
f. that the ratio of people producing product to the people not producing product will have to be corrected from the projected major decline from todays level. The not producing product includes government workers at all levels plus those receiving handouts from the government (e.g., social security, medicare, ssi, unemployment, etc)
Re:IT Fads (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is the real problem - there is no sustainable advantage in outsourcing. Eventually, everyone who can outsource something does outsource it and then you're back in the same boat of no revenue growth, but it's five years later and you actually have less control over the situation. Plus, you've given your new foreign competitors the capital they need to create most of the infrastructure required to invade your market. The idea that capitalism requires the destruction of your economy ten years from now because it makes money a year from now is the main reason why we Capitalists are going to see our system collapse the same way that the Soviet system did. The main issue is that rewards will flow to those who have the discipline to wait for rewards, not those who choose to have them today. It's simply a case of short-term vs. long-term and we're on the wrong side of the equation here. If you think you're getting bit in the ass now, just wait a few years when the chickens finally come home to roost.
Re:IT Fads (Score:5, Insightful)
If people did what you actually suggested, the global economy would revert to the 1700s.
Clue: Free trade is good. Economists say it is good. Economic theory shows trade tarrifs always lead to a reduced GDP in the long term. History shows it is good. Consider France. Before Napoleon, the various provinces were independent, and each had trade barriers (tarrifs, laws, etc) with each other. Napoleon got rid of them, and the entire economy prospored. Consider Europe as a whole. By tearing down trade barriers between countries, the European economy as a whole is becoming more competitive in the world. Consider the US trade relationship with Canada. It directly supports millions of jobs in each country. Hell, despite early criticism, even NAFTA has been successful!
Re:Holy crap! (Score:5, Insightful)
What did we produce after we stopped producing shoes, then cars, etc? Other stuff!
When the jobs in agriculture started disappearing, people were told to retrain and get jobs in manufacturing. When the textile and manufacturing jobs were being sent overseas, we were told to reeducate ourselves and move up the food chain to knowledge work. If you'd read the article (either time it was posted), the looming question that nobody can answer is, *what comes after knowledge?* The author waved his hands, and like you, said *oh, something else*.
The point is, this is the first time in history when people have been educated for and lost two careers to outsourcing in a lifetime. The agricultural period lasted about 100 years, the manufacturing period lasted about 40 years, and the IT period about 20 years. It takes many people 25 years to pay off an education in the U.S. It is now a losing proposition. Whatever this next, great unknown thing is, the trend indicates it will last for 10 years (if it happens). Tell us now what the people who are losing their jobs need to be learning.
Capitalism works because human progress is unlimited.
Can you supply some proof that capitalism works? Where has it been tried? Certainly not in the U.S., where we have the worst mismash of capitalism and a centralized, regulated economy. Ever heard of the FRB, the FTC or a dozen other federal regulatory agencies? Ever heard of wage/price limits, minimum wages, tariffs, duties, NAFTA, favored trade status, or fast-track trade agreements? How about H-1B/L1 visas where certain industries are allowed to freely import cheaper labor denied to other sectors?
Unless you believe that progress will come to an end, you can rest assured that things will work out in the long term.
Nursing a burger patty from frozen pink disk to hot brown lunch is "progress". Got anything a little more substantial? As a previous poster pointed out, having your sig on that comment is classic.
Re:Note to fat USians (Score:3, Insightful)
That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? Honestly, where the hell is that more than $50,000 they save on each and every outsourced job? It's disappeared! People complain about the $8,000 per worked put into the Indian economy, but the disappearance of that much larger sum is a much greater issue.
Hey, it could be put to use giving an American another, slightly-lower paying job! Would anybody have a problem with that?
Re:Obviously this article is biased. (Score:3, Insightful)
And what is a decent living? Americans have an incredibly high standard of living and, barring an invasion, they will from this point forward. The geographical advantages of the United States, combined with the incredibly high education rate, will ensure that the average American can feed and clothe himself with more disposable income left over than workers in most other countries, regardless of brute labor outsourcing.
Just because you don't have the education to pull down a mid-6 figure salary doesn't mean the system is broken. If you don't like your job, get a new one or go back to school instead of whining about some guy in India who is better suited to do your job than you are.
What we are gravitating towards is a society composed mainly of very poor people controlled by a few very rich people. When that happens you should review your French history particlulary the period from say 1780 through 1812, give or take a few years. Alternately look at Russian history from say 1905 - 1920.
How can someone dense enough to think like this actually float? I know you're trolling, but I'll answer anyway. The United States has a far more even distribution of wealth now than Russia or France had during their revolutionary periods. It's less equal now than it was 5 or 10 years ago, but there are fluctuations up and down w.r.t. the distribution of wealth. Anyway, if you have a job, odds are you get paid a lot better than the military you'd be counting on to help you with your revolution, and whining to some soldier about how you're only making $20k more than them instead of $30k because you're no better educated than some guy in India isn't really going to win him over.
Most laywers don't care one way or the other. Academics (professors) are fairly split over whether all this is a good idea. Executives love it because they give themselves fat bonuses with the money they make sending jobs overseas. Most researches are either blissfully unaware or are wondering when they will be outsourced as well.
Whether or not these workers are aware of the situation has nothing to do with the fact that they are the "pure knowledge workers" that you claimed do not exist. Believe it or not, a company won't outsource their CEO's and it's not possible to outsource legal work. Our professors are the foundation of our economy and our researchers develop the technology that is new enough to manufacture profitably in the united states. The united states has the best higher education system in the world and, because of critical mass issues, this is unlikely to change. The pre-college education system in the united states is also much broader than it is in almost any other country, and while the graduates of most other countries' school systems have more developed skills, American graduates have a broader range of skills and knowledge, making them ideally suited to the entrepreneurial environment encouraged by the current economic climate.
After all research can be done much more cheaply in India than here. PHD's grow on trees, no EPA to deal with, no FDA. Want to run clinical trials, go get some low caste individuals sleeping on the sidewalk and wala test subjects. If a few die no one will care. Point is, almost everyjob can be done overseas more cheaply, including yours, however we americans have to SOMETHING.
The cost of the medical research you seem to be focusing on isn't product development, but FDA approval. Why do they get this? Because they want to market the drug in the U.S. They could sell the drugs in india much earlier, often ten years or more earlier, than they could sell them in the United States. This is why many patients awaiting unapproved medication go to mexican pharmacies when conventional treatments fail to cure them. Unsurprisingly, most of the research is conducted in developed countries, and b
Is if you are goof (Score:3, Insightful)
The other important thing is good problem solving skills. When you have to write something new and different in code or when you encounter a new problem, can you sit down and solve it efficiently, or do you just give up when it's not covered in the book.
If someone likes computer and is a problem solver, then they will probably do well.
However, if you are going into it just for the money, you probably shouldn't. Why? Because likely you will be value-wise on par with the bunches of people in India, only they charge less than you.
The tech market does not need, and these days for the most part won't support, poorly qualified people who just took the job because they thought there was money in it.
As for experience, you do like all other jobs: Get it slowly. The whining you hear from people on places like
So start off with something that doesn't require much experience. Maybe a student job at the school you go to doing something simple like helpdesk. Once you get some experience, you can try for a bit better job that requires more experience (and will give you more skills). Just keep moving up. YOu will also find this is quite possible in a company. You get hired to do helpdesk stuff but prove you are competent and willing to be a system guy, you have a good chance of getting it next time a job opens up.
There are very, very, very few industries where you simply get trained and then get a top level job making lots of money. You start small, then as your skills and experience build, you move up.
I have a friend that started working as a student in the finincal division of our campus's network operations team. He showed a great proficiency with computers and an intrest in networks, and got a staff job after a while. He started as a low-level systems guy doing Windows support. As he learned more about the network and got more skills with it, he shifted over there and continued to be promoted. Now, he's the technial leader of network operations, head of the network, and a CCIE. In a year or so, he'll probably leave for priavte industry (since the university has a much lower pay scale) and be looking at $150,000+ per year. It didn't happen overnight though, he worked and learned to get where he is.
So you can do the same, but you need to be willing to work your way up, and be able to do your job well. An associates degree and a couple certs will not get you a great job, they will get you a starting job that will allow you to work up to a great job.
Re:The automotive industry (Score:2, Insightful)
Single income families have become double income families. How this is a bad thing I don't understand.
REAL prices (adjusted for inflation) have steadily decreased. Income (and real GDP) have all been icnreasing. Standards of living are going up.
Trade is, and always has been, a win-win scenario. Econ101 will tell you that.
Re:Note to fat USians (Score:1, Insightful)
Unfortunately. when considering financial assistance there is no middle class. "Rich" means anyone with parents who make more than $20,000 a year.
Re:IT Fads (Score:4, Insightful)
The US is manufacturing virtually nothing compared to what we used to. Take a look at our trade imbalances with EVERYONE and then tell me Free Trade is good. Also don't believe everything you read or hear, take a look around you and see for yourself. I see people with Masters Degrees working at Circuit City, and some people have been out of work for almost a year with no end in sight. Doesn't sound like moving into the future to me. Sounds like the a bunch of our states are nearly bankrupt and the US debt is huge.
Every job we send overseas is less money and less power for the US. But believe what you want.
-Comedian
Re:Duped article, so I'll dupe my comments (Score:3, Insightful)
Ive completed a MS in CS, and it seems harder and harder to find jobs that let you "get your foot in the door". Everybody wants 10 years of blah-blah experience . . .
The job ads looking for a laundry list of experience in wildly different areas or 15 years of Java experience are bogus.
- Placing an ad that no local worker can fill: $50.
- Spending only $50 to comply with federal regulations that make you seek local workers first: Priceless.
Re:Please explain.... (Score:2, Insightful)
So, if I buy $100 and my money raises 10% compared to dollar, I'll only be able to buy worth 91 old dollars of american work. And there, money leaked from USA! Moreover, next time I won't trust the dollar's stability, and bill more dollars for the same work, thus depreciating the dollar even more. Eventually, the situation will be stabilized when the price of work (and thus standard of living) will be comparable among countries...
Cheer up, this is gonna stop as soon as the average american guy will be about as wealthy as the average Indian one!
USA kept its higher way of life because it innovated so fast that no other country could follow. If innovation stops, then you go back with other countries.
Poverty factor (Score:2, Insightful)
India, like Africa, is founded on a deep and utterly degrading exploitation that Western Europe has never experienced. The professional classes there see it every day, wallow in it, and turn their eyes away from it. We can compete with the Indians as long as we are willing to drive wages for those below us down to $100 per year, watch them live and die in squalor, and in general, reengineer our society back to levels of exploitation never before considered tolerable in any Christian country anywhere.
Gentlemen, I have been there. I have stepped over dead bodies in the streets of Calcutta and Chittagong. I have seen women whoring themseves to pay off their husbands' debts of as little as $200 to $300. I have seen women bought and sold over there for $100, and happy to BE sold when they were released from sexual bondage with a $500 dollar bonus. I have seen children of four and five who were deliberately mutilated by removing fingers, hands, eyes, and feet, to make them more "attractive" as beggars.
Look at the Indian programmer next to you. They all know this. They have walked past these children each day. They know this happens, and they have done and will do nothing about it. They are Hindu and Muslim, Jains and Sikhs, Brahmins and Untouchables (yes, they still exist and are still untouchable!) and their cultures accept poverty, squalor, and exploitation as a natural part of life.
This is not Japan, a first world monoculture in which everyone is treated the same and there is no one to exploit. This is the third world, with a thin veneer of civilization over an inflamed suppurating wound of humanity. No unemployment pay. No social security. No safety net. No doctor. No lawyer. No reading. No writing. No clean water. No clean water or soil standards. Gentlemen, India makes Mexico look like a worker's paradise.
Re: Shawn & Jessica Nahasapeemapetilon (Score:5, Insightful)
My Dell phone call from two weeks ago: (note: My company has a three year next-day service contract with Dell -- they are no longer supposed to be sending the Commercial Clients to India yet somehow I wound up there)
[Indian accent]: "Thank you so much for calling Dell support my name is Josh how may I assist you with your problem today?"
[Upstate NY accent]: "Yes, this is Timothy [xxx] from [xxx], I have a Dell here with a bad power supply, I need to get a replacement sent to me. The service tag is [xxx]."
[Indian accent]: "Yes sir, thank you so much. Let me pull up your information sir. Ah yes sir I have it here. Tell me Sir what is your name?"
[Upstate NY accent]: "I already told you, my name is Timothy [xxx]. I'm listed on the account as the contact."
[Indian accent]: "Ah yes sir, thank you so much for giving me that information. Sir I need to understand your address."
[Upstate NY accent]: "It's [xxx]."
[Indian accent]: "Ah yes sir, thank you so much for giving me that information. Sir I need to understand your telephone number."
[Upstate NY accent]: "*sigh* This is all listed on the account. It's [xxx]."
[Indian accent]: "Ah yes sir, thank you so much for giving me that information. This is a Dell Optiplex correct sir?"
[Upstate NY accent]: "That's correct."
[Indian accent]: "Ah yes sir, thank you so much for giving me that information. How may I assist you with your problem today?"
[Upstate NY accent]: "Like I said, this unit has a dead power supply and I need to have a replacement sent out. We have a service agreement."
[Indian accent]: "Ah yes sir, I am understanding that you have such agreement. It expires in March 2005."
[Upstate NY accent]: "That's right, now can we make this happen?"
[Indian accent]: "Yes sir, we will do that. I need you to insert your Dell resource CD so we can run system diagnostics to confirm the problem."
[Upstate NY accent]: "Umm... the power supply is dead. I know what the problem is."
[Indian accent]: "Yes sir I am understanding that you think the problem is that, but I need you to insert your Dell resources cd so we can run diagnostic to confirm the problem."
[Upstate NY accent]: "Your not listening to me. The power supply is dead. I can't turn the unit on."
[Indian accent]: "Yes yes, I am understanding your problem, but we need to follow procedure. Please insert your Dell resources CD so we can run diagnostic to confirm the problem."
[Upstate NY accent]: "I can't open the CD-ROM drawer because the computer has no power. What part of that can't you understand?"
[Indian accent]: "Yes sir, I am understanding that the computer has no power. Is the computer plugged in to the wall outlet sir?"
[Upstate NY accent -- getting louder by the minute]: "You are not listening to me. The power supply is dead. That means it's not working. I can't turn the damn thing on -- please set up the service call for me."
[Indian accent]: "Yes sir I am understanding that you think that is problem, but we need to confirm it."
[Upstate NY accent]: "Alright this is going no where. Let me talk to your supervisor."
[Indian accent]: "No no sir, I can help you with this problem. Please insert your Dell Resource CD into the CD-ROM drive so we can run diagnostic to confirm the problem."
[Upstate NY accent - loud enough that the entire office can hear me]: "Ya know what? Fuck off. That's an American insult if they didn't teach you that in training."
[Indian accent]: "Yes sir, I am understanding your problem. Please insert the Dell resourc...."
[sound of phone slamming onto receiver]
[sound of me walking around the office threate
Hypocritical (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Note to fat USians (Score:2, Insightful)
Puppies, with spikes driven through their skull and abdomen. Swallowed down my throat. It's so much easier than watching a fucking Indian musical.
I'm gonna need some Bactine.
You can't say it often enough, so say it again (Score:3, Insightful)
"Don't you think we're helping the US economy by doing the work here?" asks an exasperated Lalit Suryawanshi. It frees up Americans to do other things so the economy can grow, adds Jairam.
It frees up Americans to "do other things" -- such as what? Pick cotton? Flip burgers?? These minimum wage jobs help the economy grow how??
Another exchange that sums up the problem:
"But isn't part of this country's vitality its ability to make these kinds of changes?" I counter. "We've done it before - going from farm to factory, from factory to knowledge work, and from knowledge work to whatever's next."
[Senator Turner] looks at me. Then she says, "I'd like to know where you go from knowledge."
Apparently, one goes back to general labour (farm work or flipping burgers). Except those jobs are already overflowing with illegal aliens. So what is an unemployed citizen to do??
Re:IT Fads (Score:1, Insightful)
Outsourcing is progress (Score:3, Insightful)
What is this "progress" of which you speak, my friend?
Outsourcing, for instance, is progress. Outsourcing represents progress for capital. Capital, having found a new lever to maximize returns, now sends American jobs to India. By any rational measure, that is progress -- for capitalists.
But social progress for Americans it definitely is not. What is in America's larger interest here? Greater wealth for its tiny number of investors? Or the expansion of its middle class even at the expense of greater wealth for a few?
On these critical questions, capital is answering with a resounding, Screw you all! I'm off to India! But no sane society can accept such a verdict from its elite.
The time is nigh for those of you who have cast your lot with right wing politicians and the debased libertarianism of Wired to rethink your mistakes. You had your fun in the 90s pretending the market would roar forever, and you swallowed load after load from the likes of Gilder and Friedman. Well, it didn't; it won't again like that in your lifetime; that dream is over. You've been had. Worse, now you are facing irrelevance. You are being replaced, and your erstwhile prophets are telling you it's inevitable.
So! It's time to wake up and ask: how can you afford your right wing lifestyle when you're flipping burgers? You are at a crossroads, and the ethos of unbridled greed has sold you out, so now what will you do? There is an election coming; think about it.
Re:IT Fads (Score:2, Insightful)
Thermodynamics as applied to economics... (Score:2, Insightful)
What they don't say or don't get is that this is an unsustainable ecology.
For the last 150 years, America has been hard at work building an economic vacuum outside it's borders. We built through trade control, an artificially high wall to keep wealth and resources inside our borders, in effect a dramatic pressure differential. During the 1980s the seal on that vacuum was broken by providing support for, and even encouraging the globalization of American corporations. Once these businesses began to establish themselves beyond the reach of American government, they began to lose any sense of accountability to the country which spawned them, and the standard pressures of business dictated that they use foreign resources to compete in a global market.
Since then, such programs as Nafta have made the breach in our economic system huge. The flow of wealth out of our country in now an exploding torrent. This is simple thermodynamics. Without sufficiently strong barrier to create an artificially high standard of living for our populace, the tendency is for our wealth to rush out into the world. Combine a tremendous trade imbalance with vanishing wage opportunity, manufacturing, then IP production, and finally services, and wealth go only go one way. This process will repeat itself at every level... India is now outsourcing to China, because it is cheaper for Indian business men to use even cheaper Chinese labor, than to utilize their own countrymen. So a cascade of wealth gushes from our shores leaving behind an American economy that'll ultimately reach equilibrium with the wealth in the world.
This is the scary part. People used to having the highest standard of living on the planet are about to discover that the distance in quality of life between themselves and a Ethiopian goat herder is about to shrink dramatically. In fact, this terrible problem our nation currently has with obesity, is almost certainly about to be a problem of the past. The wonder of Walmart only works as long as you have a realtively wealthy middle class to support the economics of tremendous consumption. When the masses are reduced to minimum wage incomes...
1. People can't make a living wage for themselves let alone their families...
2. People are forced to use wellfare to supplement their income for basic needs, and services...
3. The tax base for the Government collapses...
4. Wellfare vanishes, leaving the entire population without critical resources, and services...
5. The economy implodes. Deflation, depression, mass riots, revolution...
6. Here's the biggie... The world economy as we now know it collapses. Without the economic engine (America) powering tremendous economic flow through other nations... business falls to the dance between western nations and the new economic engine (China), and China just isn't built to provide (or is even interested in building) the kind of broad economic growth worldwide that America has over the last half of the twentieth century. American then begins to hemmorhage it's talent to Europe, and the Far East. Leaving it a third world nation not unlike Ireland before the tech boom.
The last nail in the coffin, is that the wealth as it flows from the U.S. is being concentrated into the hands of a very few. When this process is complete, a significant amount of the world's wealth will lay in the hands of a very tiny group. Much more wealth, much more concentrated than it is even now. The kind of wealth the moves countries, and controls governments. We can expect that the standard of living for the typical world citizen will be very low. We can expect that Americans will share that fate. We can
Re:IT Fads (Score:3, Insightful)
"Every job we send overseas is less money and less power for the US. But you believe what you want."
I shall skip the lecture on the law of comparative advantage. I shall avoid talking about how spinning jennys put home textile workers out of business, or how coding software is not bending buts of metal. I shall avoid pointing out the America has lost jobs in manufacturing cars since the '60s, electronics since the '70s, memory chips since the '80s, computer programming since the '90s... and has grown richer not poorer. Accoding to John Mauldin, a distinguished economist (www.frontlinethoughts.com), 96% of the world economy's growth since '98 has been generated in the US. I shall pass on mentioning that the US still has one of the lowest rates of unemplyment in the world. (Certainly compared to more protectionist Europe.)
Instead I shall mention rights and freedom.
Lets say I have a San Jose based consulting business, and am bidding against Cap Gemini E&Y in France for a contract at a Brazilian aerospace company. If Cap E&Y can offer cheaper prices because it hives SOME of the work of to India, then I lose, my company loses, and all my employees lose. What right do YOU have to stop me hiring workers in India, or outsourcing some of my work there?
What right do you have to make ME lose that contract.
Robert
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Give in and realize that
a. Software for life critical things (airplanes, military, nuculear reactors, etc) will remain the the US.
b. Software jobs for just about everything else will move outside of the US.
Your response is interesting, but moot... it ignores;
1. Business will do what it bloody well feels like doing, and unless you write laws or change laws forbidding the export of jobs from the U.S., you can pucker up now, because those jobs will be gone sometime early tomorrow morning, and you might want to kiss them bye before they get on board that jet to India. Welcome to economics 101...
2. The nature of software must dramatically change. Our hardware is thousands of times more powerful today than 25 years ago, but our software keeps finding new and horrible ways to piss away useful work, meaningful process, and sane cooperation between it's desparate parts. We as a technological community need to stop this incessant process of polishing turds for business people who have spent the last quarter century trying to carve up the IP universe so that they might better charge us for the bits of data flowing through the wires. Instead we need to actually begin to look ahead and design software that utilizes the tremendous horsepower now available in new and exciting ways, and truly lay down a pathway to creating externalizations of our own intellect, that we might begin to finally draw from our inventions that which we dreamed of when we first began this journey of conception...
3. The use of software is soon going to be a diverse universe unlike anything any of us have ever imagined, from smart household appliances, to intelligence in your car's tires, to bioinformatics, and advanced modeling in proteomics, to 3-D interfaces designed to allow molecular engineers the needed tools to model nanotechnological systems manufacture. The stuff IT engineers do today is going to change tremendously over the next few years. How much of that should be outsourced? None? Some? All? The impacts of any of this stuff could be tremendous. How do you choose? What of software that writes software? What of software that converts human intent into meaningful instruction?...
There needs to be a completely different model for the production of software. Maybe we need a guild. Maybe we need some sort of Protected Status, as a critical and endangered national resource. If American allows it's intelligence to emmigrate, it will ultimately collapse. We need to create an environment conducive to the growth and development of human intelligence through the medium of external process... it must ultimatele be unhitched from the profit motive because profit takes IT in stupid directions. That is, direction inherently contrary to the expanding expression of human intelligence. Business must benefit from the fruit of that work, and should therefore contribute to it's perpetuation, but IT must be free to grow where it needs to grow to address and resolve larger social and human problems. Problems supplied by business should be resolved, or problems should be refactored to prevent unseen conflicts between the business intent and larger social considerations (eg. don't give a businessman a working program to run a fusion reactor that is itself poorly designed and will make a 6 kilometer crater when first tested.) Let collaborations between software engineers, social engineers, mathematicians, cosmologists, anthropologists, philosophers, artists and asthetics, architects, business visionaries, and financial planners occur, in fact make them occur. Generate societal infrastructure to make the creation, management, flow, storage, and utilization of information, in all it's forms consistent, seamless, and transparent to the average citizen. Begin laying down a future by design, as opposed to one that is mindlessly sputter blasted across the scenery.
Use labor resources around the world, but make sure tha
Rubish. (Score:3, Insightful)
Do not invent the wheel.
If you are trying to re-invent it the one that is completely out of toucvh is you, not your Indian counterparts.
Re:Holy crap! (Score:5, Insightful)
Try the US at the end of the 19th century, and to a lesser degree, the early 20th. The results (depressions, dislocations, mass poverty, child labor, corporate thugs beating and killing workers who object to being exploited, wealth concentrating in the rich investor class, etc.) show that capitalism doesn't work. Of course, communism doesn't work either. The lesson we as a nation should take from the last 150 years is that what does work is a system in which capitalism provides the engine of the economy, but its excesses are restrained by strong government regulation. Too bad the right didn't learn this lesson.
Re:Simple solution (Score:2, Insightful)
My point being that these types of jobs are far from secure.
Re:Please explain.... (Score:2, Insightful)
That this fact has been true since the 70's does not make it right, or acceptable. Nor does it absolve us of the responsibility of getting off our apathy-encrusted asses and doing something about it.
Life sucks. So what? It is we who do nothing to help our fellow man that make it suck.
Smaller software companies will survive.
This is the only thing you said which remotely gets to the point, and as such is interesting. Please elaborate.
Re:IT Fads (Score:1, Insightful)
What right do you have to make ME lose that contract.
The same right by which WE permitted you to incorporate your business, so that if it fails you do not lose all of your personal possessions. The same right by which WE have set up a system whereby you can offer investors part of your company to raise capital, and then those investors can freely trade those investments (shares), and the capability to do so makes those shares far more valuable in the first place. The same right by which WE subsidized the begining of the building of the Internet by which you can even consider farming out work overseas. The same right by which WE pay for the roads so you can live somewhere other than your office and still commute. The same right by which WE subsidized the electrical grid which makes any of your computers, lights, air conditioning, etc. even work.
You take the complete social and legal framework in which you operate so much for granted. You fail to realize that if enough of the people around you no longer feel as if this society is worth protecting, that framework you unconsciously depend upon can go the hell away.
Re:Rubish. (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. Reuse is great. Where it makes sense.
>>If you are trying to re-invent it the one that is completely out of toucvh is you, not your Indian counterparts.
I'm not advocating reinventing the wheel. What I'm saying is that you need to lay out and understand the problem that you have to solve.
Then pick the proper tools and components with which to solve the problem. It doesn't make sense to 'turn the problem around' and shovel it into a solution.
Show me how Java and J2EE can solve the business problem. Show me how this code block or an Entity Bean will solve the problem. Not how the problem can be looked at in such a way that it fits the code/framework.
There's a subtle difference there. Knowing that difference is part of knowing the difference between good and bad design. A 'closed in' design methodology does not work, it is not flexible, is not extendable and will not handle future requirements gracefully.
Reuse rocks. But good design rules.
wbs.
Re: Shawn & Jessica Nahasapeemapetilon (Score:3, Insightful)
[Upstate NY accent]: "Your not listening to me. The power supply is dead. I can't turn the unit on."
I hate to burst your bubble, but that's not an Indian problem, that's a competence problem. Way before outsourcing to India started, I was having the same problems with Good-ol-American tech reps from time to time. People who lived off of call scripts and laminated notebook pages. Not only that, many of them were rude, too!
Also, I have seen videos of these people. Many of them don't have the *slightest* Indian accent. Some are even taught to mimic Minnesotan accents, southern accents, you name it. That guy "Mike" could have been from "Texas," a small shanty town named for convenience in trade (in Japan, there is a town called Usa, in the Oita Prefecture, for instance, as in "MADE IN USA!"), or he could have just been outright lying to you, knowing he'd get abuse if he said, "No, I am from Jaipur, sir." He did say he wasn't from the US in your example, but I don't know if you meant that if he was Texan, whether he considered Texas not part of the US because he was being state-centric, or just really uneducated.
These Indian aren't dumbasses, either. Those images of brown-skinned people wearing wrapped cloth around their groin is inaccurate to modern India. They are hard-working, well-educated, quality-focused people. Maybe you didn't mean it to sound this way, but a lot of the comments in this Slashdot thread sound a bit like racism, or at least living in some stereotype of a universe where Indians are portrayed as a mass of unwashed dumb third-world people. How many people here have actually BEEN to India? Like outside the tourist areas? India has many subcultures, just like the US. Indian exists outside of New Delhi, it's a big country with a lot of people.
But aside from all that, the article mentions that even they know they will be outsourced someday. I have worked Internationally, and I know the conditions in some of these countries aren't so hot. All they have to do is pick a war with Pakistan, and BOOM... there goes all that outsourced talent. We used to have a site in Afghanistan under the old Taliban rule in the late 1990s, and we constantly lost contact with it because of all the local fighting. "Sorry, the phones are down, someone cut the cable... again."
But in the long run? It's inevitable. Complaining just slows me down and prevents me of thinking of where to go next.
at least I'll have an American to yell at on the phone if anything goes wrong.
And where do you think this "American" comes from? Unless he's Native American, like Pawnee or Dakota, I can bet this "American," including you, have roots back in another country. Maybe even as close as 2-4 generations back, your anscetors were Irish, German, or Italian.
Re: Shawn & Jessica Nahasapeemapetilon (Score:3, Insightful)
Your faith is inspiring, but my experience differs, and I used to train people on the phones for an ISP. I had one guy, for instance, who blamed all modem outages with, "Was there a lightning storm in your area in the last month, sir? Well, your modem is fried..." He was from Virginia, not India, so I still don't know how that example could be an "Indian problem." Now, if he said, "Have you had any monsoon weather?" or "Did you ask her holiness, Sri Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, what she thought?" Now THAT would be more related to an Indian cultural miscommunication.
Go ahead -- keep outsourcing all the middle-class American jobs.
You can't look at it that way. Read the article. You can't outsource everything. Until they build really good remote controlled robots, they still need lots of hardware people, designers, and so on. All the grunt, back-end work is being done outside the US. Our goal is not to make sure everyone stays dumb and doing the same thing, but to educate people so they can get better jobs. Bettering yourself is the American way. Keeping everything the same and safe is more of a socialist way, and it's not doing France very much good.
All of these companies will screw themselves when there is nobody left to buy their products.
Then they will go out of business, and the outsourcing problem is moot. But in reality, those who outsource will save a TON of money. Pay a programmer $75,000 plus expenses, or pay three programmers $8,000 a piece and let another company worry about the free coffee? Dude, business wise, it's a no-brainer, and whether we like it or not, it's going to happen. Those companies that stay domestic will not be able to compete. Take the computer you are typing on right now. Who made it? Some US factory worker getting paid Union wages, or some factory worker in Taiwan, getting paid less a day than you paid for your lunch today? Say WidgetCo tried to make all their computers in the US. It would cost about $5000 to make one, once you factor in wages and changing the current supply line to the US (with tariffs, shipping, containment, storage, EPA, etc.). Get some people to do it in the Philippines, and that cost drops dramatically.
Like it or not, global labor is a commodity, like rice or orange juice. And no matter how tight we close our eyes, or shut other countries out with laws and trade discrimination, they are coming, and we can't stop being global if we're going to survive. Just look at China, as an example of not only the hypocrisy of xenophobia, but how it's hurting them as well.
If you want to stay the same, Sweden might be a great place to move, if you don't mind the huge tax rate such a "cradle to grave" policy must endure. But they do have a lot of great historical "living factories" and so on. I have been there, I know, and those who work at such places are as enthusiastic about things like centuries-old linen mills as you are now about IT jobs. Where did all the Swedish people go when linen production and distribution moved to another country? Just whither and die? No. They got other jobs, and I would never call Sweden a country of piss-poor unemployed people. They have a very high standard of well-educated living.
I know, you're scared. I'm scared. The IT industry is scared. But we will survive. Have faith in America, as well as your own ability to adapt. Don't waste your time with clutching your knowledge like handfuls of sand, but spend time figuring out what to do next.
Change, as they say, is inevitable.