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How A Mysterious Tech Billionaire Created Two Fortunes -- And a Global Software Sweatshop (forbes.com) 192

An anonymous reader writes: Forbes magazine has an in-depth piece on Joe Liemandt. As you may be aware, Liemandt was the founder of Trilogy, a startup which has been credited to help put Austin on the tech map. He is also founder of ESW Capital, a private equity firm that is scooping up software startups left and right. Forbes called him "one of the most mysterious and innovative figures in technology."

But the story explores the approach Liemandt and his team took to acquire enterprise software companies, install new leadership, lay off staff and hire significantly cheaper tech labor abroad. And the numbers are compelling -- $15 an hour C++ programmers. Those are Amazon warehouse wages -- and those $15 programming gigs don't come with much for benefits. Plus, they require you to install software to your computer that tracks surfing, keystrokes and even takes screen grabs and photos via your computer's camera -- and this is typically on a gig worker's personal computer, not an employers' machine.
The story opens with this: From an office suite on the 26th floor of the iconic Frost Bank Tower in Austin, Texas, a little-known recruiting firm called Crossover is searching the globe for software engineers. Crossover is looking for anyone who can commit to a 40- or 50-hour workweek, but it has no interest in full-time employees. It wants contract workers who are willing to toil from their homes or even in local cafes. "The best people in the world aren't in your Zip code," says Andy Tryba, chief executive of Crossover, in a promotional YouTube video. Which, Tryba emphasizes, also means you don't have to pay them like they are your neighbors. "The world is going to a cloud wage."

Tryba's video has 61,717 views, but he is no random YouTube proselytizer. He worked in sales at Intel for 14 years before serving in the White House as an advisor to President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Since 2014, Tryba has been the right-hand man of Joe Liemandt, one of the most mysterious and innovative figures in technology. In the 1990s Liemandt was the golden boy of enterprise software, a 30 Under 30 wunderkind before there was a Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Like Bill Gates before him, he dropped out of college, in his case Stanford, to start a company, Trilogy, and build his fortune. In 1996, at the age of 27, he made the cover of Forbes, and a few months later he appeared as the youngest self-made member of The Forbes 400, with a $500 million net worth.

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How A Mysterious Tech Billionaire Created Two Fortunes -- And a Global Software Sweatshop

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24, 2018 @01:56PM (#57693424)

    After 25 years in the software industry, I saw that this was becoming the norm. Outsourcing and cost cutting. And people wonder why software has gone to shit these days? The best people walk away from the industry as soon as they can.

    • Software, in general, is a race to zero. There is always someone who will program cheaper than you, and the cost of replication/distribution is rapidly approaching zero. So there is always a potential to "do the same thing but cheaper" out there. Look at the cost of web hosting, OSes, productivity tools, etc. If the cost of replication and distribution is effectively zero, then the only real costs borne are the NRE costs. And that will always get cheaper. So the drive is always to zero.

      Hardware, on th

      • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday November 24, 2018 @03:39PM (#57693800)

        Software, in general, is a race to zero.

        This is the exact opposite of reality. Wages for developers have gone up far more than the average wage over the last 20 years. With unemployment for programmers under 3%, this trend is unlikely to reverse.

        Wages for developers are going up even faster in poor countries. $15 an hour may not sound like much to you, but in India, and even China, that is a very good wage. Five times the average wage in China, and ten times the average Indian wage.

        • Man you're full of crap

          From this site 4 days ago and you even commented on it with a reply to the first post

          Out of Every 10 Silicon Valley Jobs Pays Less Than In 1997, Report Finds
          https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

          https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]

          • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday November 24, 2018 @04:24PM (#57693972)

            Out of Every 10 Silicon Valley Jobs Pays Less Than In 1997, Report Finds

            Go back and RTFA. That article talking about NON-technical jobs in Silicon Valley: Grocery clerks, truck drivers, waitresses.

            These non-techs have seen their incomes stagnate in the face of soaring housing prices, while the techs have prospered.

        • by jonwil ( 467024 )

          I dont like the idea of having to install spy software but $15/hour for software development C++ work (which I am good at) may well in theory be better than what I do now. Especially if it qualified as "commercial experience in software development" for my resume.

          • 15$ an hour is pretty good. There are places in Europe (Greece, Spain, the former Warsaw pact states) where this is a pretty decent wage. The average wage for high skilled employees in Greece is 1500 euro per month, so 15$ an hour doesn't sound bad at all. And in fact, Dutch companies outsource to Greece and Spain already because of this.

            But even more important, for younger people it's extremely hard to get a job due to ossified labour laws, in Italy, Spain and Greece. But by working for this outfit they ar

            • by HuguesT ( 84078 )

              15$ without benefits (health insurance, retirement, etc) comes to 2500$ per month if working 40h week. Doing much more than that is hard if you are truly developing. Then you have to pay for health insurance, and save for retirement. Your net pay will end up being be far less than 1500 euros.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    But if they are any good they can do better. You aren't going to get the best people at those wages. Also maintenance is going to be a bitch.

    • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday November 24, 2018 @02:03PM (#57693450) Journal
      This has been my experience as well. You can try to hire people in Eastern Europe or South America, but if you want working software, you're going to need to pay the same order of magnitude as in America.
      • by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Saturday November 24, 2018 @02:06PM (#57693464)

        I'm looking forward to the epiphany when Western managers and "entrepreneurs" discover that foreigners can do their work far better too.

        • To some degree this is already happening: some large firms outsourcing not just a couple of teams or some projects, but entire departments like IT or R&D to low wage countries. The local shops are predominantly run by local cheap managers.

          On the other hand, I've known a few managers who are good at managing remote workers, organizing remote teams or organisations, getting results where others failed and blamed it on the rubbish foreign workers. That's a valuable and highly sought after skill, and i
        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by cheesybagel ( 670288 )

          It has already happened. Meet Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai.

        • I've met some quite good Indian managers. I don't see why this wouldn't be possible in theory. In practice, however, management positions go to "people like me".

      • I get really good results using UpWork [upwork.com] for contract SW services. This includes website development, some C++ code, IT management, etc. I've had really positive results over the last 8 years, predominantly hiring SW engineers from Eastern Europe and Asia (the best IT guy I ever had was from Vietnam; awesome service, done quickly and efficiently, and $8/hour). It helps to have really good specs and directions, though...
        • My advice for anyone who thinks they will remain coding all of their lives: coding is going out the door everywhere. Low-code development platforms will make specification ever more important, and coding ever less so.

          But information analysis, domain knowledge, requirements analysis and business process modeling/data modeling, these are for ever. Architecture too, although changing faster than the other areas.

      • by dknj ( 441802 )

        You all are missing the point. I was approached by ESW capital. They have an efficient structure in which they pay $150k, $300k, and up to $500k for management roles. The $150k positions are the ones "interfacing" with maintenance. They are hiring a lot of those positions, the $300 and $500k are the elite level of management/eneigneering/sales positions. From the people I saw in the interview process, very very few fit that bill.

        If you don't think $150k to work from home for 40-50 hours a week is nothi

      • That sounds like a very complacent comment. What exactly stops Eastern Europeans making good software? They have a strong education system and a thriving tech sector. People used to think Japanese manufactured goods were junk.

    • I mean, what is $15/hour C++ going to look like? The mind boggles.

      • by mentil ( 1748130 )

        Every line ends with a GOTO statement.

      • It will have wariables without walues in them.

      • It will probably look pretty good. The universities in Estonia and other former Warsaw pact countries are very good, and turn out a lot of competent IT developers that would be very happy with $15/hour.

        And to be clear: their universities are not *that* far behind MIT, in terms of competence. How many overpaid US developers have never had any formal CS training? Quite a few, I bet. A decent CS grad student in Eastern Europe is competent, and overjoyed at being paid $15/hour. I wouldn't mind outsourcing my de

  • C++ programmers at $15/hr? Written at home or in a cafe? What kind of software is it? Where is the demand for that kind of stuff?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I got some advanced C++ for a 3D FEA magnetics engine for $10/hour. Written by a physics post-doc in Russia, it was well-documented, efficient, accurate, and did exactly what I wanted. He did it in about 70 hours, where I got a few US local contractors estimating 300 hours at $125 per hour...
      • Christmas must have come early. Training up your future competitors like that. Now that's generous.

        [wipes away a tear]

    • C++ programmers at $15/hr? Written at home or in a cafe? What kind of software is it? Where is the demand for that kind of stuff?

      The Internet of Things :-/

    • by _merlin ( 160982 ) on Saturday November 24, 2018 @08:24PM (#57694892) Homepage Journal

      Have you used any software lately? There's no sense of quality or pride in work.

      macOS had a bug where you could log in as root without a password.

      Microsoft keeps breaking MSVC in horrible ways and their response is to tell you to wait a couple of years for the next major update. Windows gets bugs like preventing you from changing keyboard/layout input method settings, and they won't fix it until the next six-monthly update, by which time they'll have broken more stuff. The bug where files were deleted if you had custom library paths had been reported by "insiders" yet they still rolled out the update without fixing it. Oh and the way they've sacked their QA department and try to sell being an unpaid beta tester as being an "insider" is disgusting. You're just doing unpaid testing at the risk of your own data/productivity, you're not an "insider" in any meaningful sense.

      Meanwhile, Red Hat has forgotten what "stability" means. RHEL7 has broken not just binary compatibility but also source compatibility for kernel extensions on a point release (the APIs for IPv6 stuff changed in an incompatible way), and they subsequently completely changed how Infiniband and RDMA work on a point release, breaking compatibility with everything that uses it. Their graphical installer now needs 2GB of RAM to run properly, even though you can actually run an installed system in 512MB. The default installation contains a whole pile of WiFi firmware packages and daemons that are only useful if your network configuration changes dynamically (like a notebook used on public WiFi) which you'd never need on a server. They've completely lost touch with their customers.

      Games are all developed with a "ship buggy, patch later" mentality. There have been games released in a state where it's impossible to finish the first level. You know what was good about cartridge-based consoles with no connectivity? They needed some QA because it was expensive to pay for a run of mask ROMs that you had to dump in landfill.

      Software is almost uniformly shit these days. Apparently no-one thinks it's worth making good software any more.

    • by MrKaos ( 858439 )

      C++ programmers at $15/hr?

      You get what you pay for.

      Written at home or in a cafe?

      They can't afford either.

      What kind of software is it?

      Shit.

      Where is the demand for that kind of stuff?

      Very high, however the demand to fix their broken crap shitty code is even higher. Any fool that invests their money in business infrastructure this cheap deserves all of the downtime, errors and customer problems their non existent QA department didn't pick up on.

      They pay their management highly so they have no qualms about being cunts whilst they earn people's contempt.

  • by DatbeDank ( 4580343 ) on Saturday November 24, 2018 @02:03PM (#57693452)

    I'd love to see some try and propose a tariff on all tech outsourcing efforts.

    Want to hire cheap coders in some trash pit somewhere? 25% tariff.

    Want to outsource your US teams to some shared services center in Timbuktu? 40%.

    It won't happen, but it's good to watch certain types squirm.

    • Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      All it would take is for people to stop voting for anyone who accepts money from corporate PACs and to vote in their primary election. Hell, if the population of /. would just show up to their primaries with that mindset it would probably be enough. If you think voter turnout's bad in a mid term you ain't seen nothing like a mid term's primary. If you want political power for the working class, that's where it is.
      • All it would take is for people to stop voting for anyone who accepts money from corporate PACs and to vote in their primary election. Hell, if the population of /. would just show up to their primaries with that mindset it would probably be enough. If you think voter turnout's bad in a mid term you ain't seen nothing like a mid term's primary. If you want political power for the working class, that's where it is.

        Hmm, there is a prominent US politician (and linked movement) who wants to limit or stop the loss of jobs to cheap foreigners.

        Perhaps you could throw some support that way ...

        • Hmm, there is a prominent US politician (and linked movement) who wants to limit or stop the loss of jobs to cheap foreigners.

          Said US politician says that, but has not practiced it in his own companies. Also, said US politician renegotiated a NAFTA deal which it turns out will remove some protections from US-based jobs; and was seemingly more alarmed about the loss of Chinese jobs than the US workers who would gain them when ZTE complained they might be driven out of business (coincidentally this happened a day or two after Chinese interests invested $500 million in said US politician’s new hotel and casino).

        • Hmm, there is a prominent US politician (and linked movement) who wants to limit or stop the loss of jobs to cheap foreigners.

          Unfortunately, he is unable to comprehend the existence or value of any occupation that wasn't practiced by the 1890s. So he'd be of no use at all in this case.

    • Good luck with that. The US is a huge net exporter of software, there's no way you could win a trade war on that. It would cripple the US software industry and create new ones elsewhere. India and Europe would end up with their own Googles, Amazons, Microsofts etc.

      Wait, you are aware that other countries would hit back with their own tariffs, aren't you? Or are you like Donald Trump who thinks crying 'America first' means the world will do what America wants?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    And for $15/hr I'd rather bag groceries.

    I bill around $80/hr, a bit less for certain customers. Even so, I'm considered cheap compared to many other contractors in my industry.

    ZIP

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Say one thing in politics, do the exact opposite when no one is looking. That's why they are good to follow to know where to invest.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 24, 2018 @02:20PM (#57693522)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      These guys are fucking scum. Nothing but parasites that drain value from productive people under the guise of "job creators". The 21st century's robber barons and sweat shop owners, except their products are far inferior to that of their late predecessors.

      The digital and legal shackles they put on their employees and the slave-like hours they demand "employees" work mean that we're not far off from people being paid in scrip and being forced to buy their goods in the company store, which will probably be Am

    • Plus, they require you to install software to your computer that tracks surfing, keystrokes and even takes screen grabs and photos via your computer's camera -- and this is typically on a gig worker's personal computer, not an employers' machine.

      Good grief. That is fucking appalling. This Liemandt guy sounds like a complete sociopath.

      Obviously, one would (should) get a separate PC and use it *solely* for this work. This also makes it easier to deduct it 100% as a business expense.

      • Obviously, one would (should) get a separate PC and use it *solely* for this work.

        You're not going to be happy doing that at $15 an hour.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • That is just a repetition of that axiom that "behind every great fortune is a crime" of some sort.

      • This also makes it easier to deduct it 100% as a business expense.

        Home office deductions are an American, or at least 1st world, concept.

        These 3rd world workers are not reporting their income, or even filing tax returns. So they don't need any deductions.

    • âoe Good grief. That is fucking appalling. This Liemandt guy sounds like a complete sociopath âoe

      Corporate surveillance of employees is fairly common. Here, they just call it âoe metrics âoe.

      • by _merlin ( 160982 )

        Corporate surveillance of employees is fairly common.

        In the US maybe. It's not legal in most of Europe.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Sure, any kid from Cairo can "teach himself to code" by watching Youtube videos. But that doesn't mean they'll produce anything of quality that's actually maintainable. I've seen the quality that comes out of India, and it's atrocious. I'm not the only one, essentially everyone in the industry I've talked to that's experienced outsourced Indian coders has said the same thing. I see no reason it'd be any different from anywhere else where prices are cheap.

    This is a typical Forbes article written for Busi

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Sure, any kid from Cairo can "teach himself to code" by watching Youtube videos. But that doesn't mean they'll produce anything of quality that's actually maintainable. I've seen the quality that comes out of India, and it's atrocious.

      Oh, yes. I reviewed some Java code from Indian "quality outsourcing" a few years back for security. This was so bad it was absolutely incredible. A lot of layers, basically all they did was rename all parameters and exceptions and pass them downwards (upwards). They had parameter names longer than 80 chars, differing in 3 chars, for example and these were not the same renamed parameters, but different ones. But the best thing I found was this: While scrolling over the code, I saw a nested loop (immediate re

      • Ah. Yet another person dissing bubble-sort. The venerable bubble-sort is quite efficient O(N) when sorting already sorted lists and it does not use any additional memory whatsoever. Try that with quick-sort or merge-sort.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          In the scenario at hand, the input was basically randomized.

      • You want basically to use something which will likely use a heap and result in an O(n log n) solution when the problem to remove duplicates, if the keys are small, is like O(k n).

        • If the data is coming from a database, anyone mucking about with their own sorting algorithm after retrieving it should be fired on the spot for incompetence.

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            That is decidedly the biggest fail in there. Even of the duplicates-removal was implemented efficiently (using a hash-table, people, anything else is insane!) you may end up pushing a lot of extra data over a slow interface. And you use a lot of additional memory. This is the job of the DB and nobody else.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Fail. This is Java. You use one of the nice, language supplied hash-tables. Also, since you seem to not have really ready what I wrote, SQL has a "DISTINCT" keyword and the DB will nicely and efficiently remove duplicates for you.

          • Yes using the SQL command is the right approach. And no hash-tables are not the best solution. Please check your nearest book for the best case and WORST-CASE complexity of key insertion. kthx bye.

            • by gweihir ( 88907 )

              Hash tables are the best solution for this problem. Using modern hash functions will give you almost constant time for insertion and search, with very good constants. Sure, the theoretical worst case is extreme, but you are not going to hit it in the remaining lifetime in this universe and that makes it pretty irrelevant.

  • have built for themselves. part of me says why not! But then another part of me says I need to keep doing things the way I have been all along. The price is, I will always be closer to the edge than to comfort. But it is a personal choice that I am happy "I can make".

    Just my 2 cents ;)
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 24, 2018 @03:23PM (#57693742)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It works best with _sticky_ software -- systems which are very, very hard for customers to get rid of. Bend over your customers, fuck them hard on recurring license revenue, do a little "labour cost arbitrage".

      In other words, this is the end-game for Salesforce, after they have all your data? SAAS ftw.

  • Isn't nice how some people become filthy rich off the backs of others?
  • by melted ( 227442 ) on Saturday November 24, 2018 @05:02PM (#57694144) Homepage

    You pretend to pay us, we pretend to work. I can guarantee you he's not getting any good C++ for that $15/hr.

  • Crossover is looking for anyone who can commit to a 40- or 50-hour workweek, but it has no interest in full-time employees.

    This right here is one of the major issues facing US workers. Employers want to screw us over at every turn.

    And we've been so brainwashed by the 2009 Recession's "effects", ie higher unemployment, stagnant wages, etc.. workers leap at the chance to be ass-raped as a 'independent contractors.' This needs to stop.

    • Yeah no shit. I mean committed to a 40- 50- hour workweek but it isn't a full-time job? What would you know.

  • Or for that pay. At the very most you are getting mediocre people. If you sell their labor at a steep profit, that will still make you rich, but your customers are getting screwed.

  • "One of the most mysterious and innovative figures in technology..."

    Really? Who says and what new revolutionary break through in software did this guy or his company produce?

    I have a different view.

    How about you employee people in third world countries and use their labor to destroy the living standards of 1st world countries?

    That is one of the tenants of Globalism.

    It isn't innovative, and it certain isn't mysterious.

    If it seems immoral, it is. Capitalism requires even rules for everyone on both ends, both

  • And again the myth of the self-made man strikes again. To silence the critics that this is yet another plutocrat trying to keep them down, we must pretend that he did it all on his own, from humble beginnings.

    Well, if you do some googling, the truth soon comes out: so-called self-made man is just another rich boy. Liemandt's father was none other than the direct subordinate of GE's Jack Welch; another sociopath millionaire. So that's Liemandt: another spoiled rich boy sociopath.

  • credited to help put Austin on the tech map

    What kind of retard speak is this?

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