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Can China Pull An India?
ricst writes: "The New York Times has a story about how China is trying to leap ahead of India as the world's second-largest producer of software. Apparently the Chinese are trying to learn everything they can from the Indian software developers. It's not clear that if China becomes a strong competitor to India that 'jobs will be lost or simply not created' in the U.S. My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas."
Don't mundane jobs usually lead to more creative ones? Where's the talent pool come from?
My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas.
Large companies will do this, certainly. But one doesn't have to work for a large company. One
really shouldn't work for a large company, period.
Becomming downright nasty, bloodthirsty entities,
they are.
This may be the year I start my own business.
After watching Enron steal it's employees retirement
money, and other things, I don't think I ever want
to work for someone else again.
There's a lot to be said for self reliance folks. Makes
you strong. Screw the big companies, they don't give
a fuck about you. Don't work for them, do your own thing.
It's like this with most industries, why not software? Levi's designs jeans here and gets poor workers in taiwan to make them in sweatshops. I'm not saying it's right, it's not, but that's the way American companies do business and make a profit.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
I agree with the poster that, for now, creative development jobs are likely to stay state-side (or in the EU: Finland, anyone?). However, I'll throw out this bit of caution: from my own experience at one of the world's largest avionics company, where we routinely out-sourced tedious work to Chinese developers, the major stumbling block at the moment is language. As technology and intercultural exchange advances (say the next generation of developers), a common language will become less and less of a problem as many (if not all) will speak flawless English and be able to understand and convey complex engineering topics. When this day comes, I am afraid that developers in the US will feel the same fear as auto workers, factory assembly line workers and many other 'out-sourced' industry workers have felt in the past.
The developers in India, offering to develop, test, and deploy your software for pennies on the dollar (or Euro) are not dumb, not by any stretch of the imagination. They have excellent resources, many times (books, 'Net connections, hardware) and they almost always have degrees in CS from accredited (and damn good) institutions. I recall a professor I had in my undergraduate schooling (in the US) that went to undergrad school in India, and Georgia Tech for her graduate work. She was one of the most amazingly intelligent professors I have ever run across.
The point? Don't sit on your duff - get out there, get smarter, stay current, try to think of new things, evolve. Good hunting.
the 'brain drain' will cease to be necessary. the internet is allowing IT work to be done around the world, globalization allows corporations to find workers anywhere for any pay.
the US will be reduced to third world status as soon as it is convenient. 1% owns over 95% of the wealth. This is today. Tomorrow it will be worse, and most will simply live on the periphery (today's third world laborers, palistinians in israel, manual laborers in singapore)....
The United States are dominating the software market, thats true. But I doubt you can call them the more creative ones.
Its widely accepted that european software companies have the more complicated and more inovative and more difficult to sell applications.
One reason among others is internationalization. A US company usualy can drop that till they have a solid market position. European companies can't.
LINUX e.g. is mainly developed in Europe.
Microsoft Windows mainly in the US.
StarOffice/OpenOffice was developed in Europe.
Microsoft Office in the US.
KDE mainly in Europe.
Y2K services where regulary done in India.
Y2K Reengineering is not easy. A lot of companies tried to provide services and failed. A lot of companies field bancrupcy because they tried to fix their Y2K problems by their own.
Banglore, or Bangalore, has more IT jobs than a typical american city. And in relation to most self thought programmers in the western world most IT workers in India have a solid university education.
Of course its arguable how deep their education is and if it can compete with our western standards.
However I think that the argument is living costs and wages.
As well as their attempt to approach market segments where we have a strong competition in, especialy regarding the price. (Y2K was done in India because they did it for 10 cents a line of code while in the US 70 cents where common. They could do it for 10 cents because the living costs are aby small in relation to the US)
OTOH I doubt China is a competitor for Europe or the US on the gloabl market soon.
As hard as it is for us to tackle their market it is for them to approach our market. The language barrier and the mentality is simply to different.
Look at the silly results of the Microsoft Thesaurus for Word in Germany.
There are so many "new" words which have a wrong meaning. Like "Frauenhaus" which got linked to "Freudenhaus".
The first one is a refugee for women having problems with their friend/husband, the later is a bordell.
Regards, angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
In conclusion, I think there's a general misconception about outsourcing, caused by the false assumption that cheaper always means worse.
Actually I don't think that's true at all. There seems to be a belief among some US IT managers that overseas programmers are not only cheaper but better. I think it may be a result of either the rampant belief here that our educational system cannot produce first-rate technologists (wrong of course), or that foreign programmers are by necessity more single-minded and eager to put in those long hours (again, not necessarily true, it comes down to the individual).
A ecommerce dot.bomb that decided to out source all its work to a company in India got a nice surprise. 2 months of people not showing up for work because of protests and other political issues.
On a side note, 20% of our contract engineers are from India. Not sure why, we have lots of skilled people in our area, and the pay is the same.
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Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. - Rich Cook
India also has the second largest film industry in the world, and I'll bet you haven't heard of any Indian films, either.
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Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
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Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
The biggest problem I see with China trying to achieve this is the language barrier.
India has a huge number of english-speaking inhabitants, and universities in India primarily teach in english. This is not the case in China.
A good programmer really needs to understand the problem domain, and it is in english-speaking countries that the most valuable problem-domains will be.
Eastern-european houses are doing fine in Europe because they are all well-used to overcoming language barriers there, but in North America it will be much harder to find bilingual teams.
Of course you don't need a whole team to understand both languages - just your key architects and project managers. There should be some good jobs for bilingual analysts and managers if this does go ahead with any strength.
In November of 2000, as a young and brash 24 year old software engineer, I got laid off from the embedded systems startup I was working for. My roommate and I (who was also a comp sci major and laid off on the same day) decided to try independent contracting. We both had been working in the industry for a few years and had picked up some business savvy along the way. So we got outselves a lawyer, incorporated, and all that...
Then the fatefull day that we meet our first potention client. They were a investment group that needed number crunching software there field agents could use on site. I had spent some time at a large national insurance company writing insurance software, so this is right up my alley. So I sit down to talk business and the first thing out of this clients mouth is "why should we go with you, who is charging ten times what it would cost if we went with an Indian firm?" Keep in mind, we were only charging $45 an hour. And for those who don't keep score on software contracting rates, that is as low as it gets. I try to explain the value of being able to work with somebody who you can meet face to face, but they had made up there minds even before I got there.
Over 2001 this was repeated time and again. We were subcontracted some work from a consultant in Florida but were told that there wasn't going to be any follow up work because he normally goes with Russian or Indian programmers that he can pay 5 dollars an hour for!
So what's my point? I shake when I hear that China is trying to follow in Indians footsteps. The American market for small little independant consultants is harsh. And I fear soon will be non-existant. But that's the way the world is moving. Can't fight globalization.
I still believe the entrepunurial American programmer can be successfull as long as they come up with original and inovative services or products. But as far as being a gun for hire... that market might be gone.
Check out my podcast: DreamStation.cc Video Game Show
Which is exactly why we ought to be looking to raise the standard of living in other countries, and overturn US monetary policy that artifically keeps the dollar capable of buying so much more overseas than it does here.
Why won't it happen? Because the corporations like the cheap labor markets. The people in those foriegn markets typically like the job opportunities, even at what you consider a paltry salary. And, the US population would almost certainly have to accept certain losses in order for outside standard of living to reach a parity level.
Instead you'd rather make it harder for the rest of the world to do business with the US by assessing various tariffs and fees. So some day the other 90% of the world will wake and realize they don't need the US anymore.
(Very likely a troll but I've seen this opinion legitimately expressed often enough to bite just in case someone's agreeing with it)
Think about this one a little more. Think supply and demand here.
If we end up with the entire US knowledge worker class being made unemployed due to the outsourcing of their work to India / China etc. then, by very definition, two things will happen:
1) US cost of doing such work will drop, due to increased supply against demand. Some workers will therefore leave this industry and move elsewhere.
2) US economic value as a whole goes down. So, along with it, down come land prices (lower demand for a fixed resource) so down come prices (lower rents / mortgages) so down comes the cost of living.
Now, think about the situation with all those outsourced workers in India. You get the exact reverse - people start to train in an industry as they see that jobs are available, which increases the pool of knowledge workers and jobs as a whole which increases the total economic value. So, the total spending power avaiable for fixed resources goes up, at which point the price of those fixed resources follows it. Which sends the cost of living and the cost of doing business up, too.
In other words, it's not the nightmare that you think it is, simply as market forces mean that the more you do this, the less the advantage of doing it is.
The other side, of course, is that the US - or anywhere else in the world for that matter, sitting in the nearly-as-rich UK, most definitely does not have an automatic right to be massively richer than the rest of the world. Why should I have money and opportunities just because I was lucky enough to be born in the UK, when the many thousands born at the same moment in less privelidged (sp?) parts of the world don't? Also, shouldn't I remember that a major source of hatred and violence is poverty and so by enforcing a situation where my country is richer, I'm only making it more likely that the poor people will try and knock my country down?
Be realistic - but also be reasonable. Poverty isn't nice, but if they can use poverty to give them a competitive advantage and haul themselves out then more power to them.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Software development moving "offshore" to India and now China is repeating a pattern that has occured in several other US industries. One closest to software is microelectronics. In the 1970s into the mid 1980s, major US firms like Intel, Motorola, and National Semiconductor were making lots of memory chips. The Japanese, Taiwanese and eventually South Koreans essentially took that business away by being able to learn the technology and develop less expensive manufacturing processes (in part using lower paid staff). Now Intel, AMD, National Semi, and the rest manufacture only the most complex chips domestically, i.e., CPUs and other specialized designs. Even Japan has ceded some of the memory chip market to the Koreans and Chinese.
If there's a moral here, it's that the highest paying jobs are those that involve the most creativity, intelligence and freedom, and can only exist in a stable political and economic environment. Right now, recent events not withstanding, that's still by and large the US (and some European countries). [Still cosidering outsourcing that software development project to India when they are close to war with Pakistan?] So, if the US (and Europe) is to maintain its current position, we all need to get smart and keep smart and keep pushing for public and privately funded activities that foster and reward creativity and prevent established monopolies (won't mention any names here!) from dominating markets and stiffling innovation.
I think the current success of Indian programming companies and the future success of Chinese programmers is good for everyone in the long run. Why should Indians and Chinese have to give up their way of life and become virtual indentured servants in the U.S. just to get a programming job?
Right now, the difference in salaries may seem huge, but remember, in the U.S. a lot of a typical programmer's salary is eaten up by exhorbitant rent and mortgage payments. I imagine an Indian programmer lives comfortably, though the dollar amounts are much smaller. Also, I expect the salaries will rise over time as more employers enter the market.
I don't think this is a zero sum game, it's more of a rising tide lifting all boats. More people in the middle class in India and China means more consumers of US and European exports.
I live and work in the UK, and the company I work for contracts all our major development out to a company in India. As a result, we have a continual stream of Indian developers coming over and working with us, sometimes for a few months, sometimes longer. My experience with working with these people is that they are extremely smart. I've seen them implement web applications that go beyond anything I've seen elsewhere.
Perhaps it's a sign of the current climate in the US, but I don't hear people in the UK complaining about jobs being lost to foreign companies. While I may have concerns about the pay and conditions of my Indian colleagues (I would guess that they are payed less that UK-native developers), I certainly don't begrudge them competing and succeeding in the global IT industry.
China began a transition to a market (read: "unplanned") economy in the early 1990s. About ten seconds with google will tell you that it hasn't taken long to get there.
Outsourcing is real big. On the gig I'm at right now, there are very few U.S. programmers; most of them are from India, Israel and Russia.
This trend is not reversing, it's getting bigger. I do more and more work in these types of gigs; I haven't seen it getting less.
The quality of work from most of the foreign programmers is really crappy. No - that's not a troll; just an observation. Sorry if some take offense, but the amount of utterly rotten and clueless programming that I've seen from these folks just amazes me. If my clients spent a little more for a U.S. programmer of decent quality, they'd end up saving themselves money. I see this over and over again.
Also, the U.S. government is VERY much against U.S. software developers; so much so that it has created an environment which is actually hostile to independent software developers. It is getting harder to maintain one's own business as a contractor - not easier. For example, the I.R.S. actively targets "software consultants" to the point that agencies really dislike working with sole proprietors. Just talk to any medium to large agency, and you'll find that it is a big concern. Some will only take you on as an employee.
I also seem to be running into more businesses that are hesitant about working directly - due to the I.R.S. concerns.
But lets not forget about all the additional legal crap I have to worry about since 9/11, and the resulting legislation. I'm not a terrorist; but now previously innocent things might get me thrown in prison for 25 years!?
I submit that a hostile business environment in the U.S. is not a good one for maintaining a lead in talent on the rest of the world. And I submit that losing such a lead would be detrimental to the U.S.'s strategic interests.
I'm REAL pessimistic for U.S. keeping the lead in the long term. Most of the work WILL go overseas, due to economics and the laws. And it's just a matter of time until all the creative and innovative work goes too.
I'd move offshore in a flash if I didn't have a family. But I will be moving offshore once the kids are grown in a few more years.
Since the U.S. is creating such a hostile environment, I say "screw you" to the whole damn system - I'm outta here as soon as I can go. Less taxes, more freedom, and less worries. No, that's not patriotic. But I'm tried of all this crap, and would be delighted to support a country that actually does have more freedom.
Now could someone kindly explain why anyone would still want to do development in the U.S.? I'm all ears.
While China may want to get into the software industry they have a major impediment. In India, all of the educated Indians speak fluent english. In China, this is not the case. In my group where I work most of the team is Indian. The only non-Indian people are myself, a Chinese fellow, and my boss (who's Canadian). For the most part there are no problems working with the Indian people (once I got used to their accent). However, the Chinese guy is another story. It is often very painful to try and explain basic concepts to him such that he understands what I am saying. I spent half an hour just getting him to understand that a parameter to my API was limited to 20 bits and to place the upper bits elsewhere. I felt like that father in Monty Python's Holy Grail telling the guards not to let his son leave the room.
He is an extreme example. I have worked with other Chinese software developers who have better English skills, yet the language issue always ends up becomming a problem.
One of the problems is that English is completely different from Chinese with absolutely nothing in common. Europe doesn't suffer this problem since all of the languages have many similarities in sentence structure, pronunciation, spelling, tense, character sets, and so on. Also, in Europe the schools have been teaching English for some time and there is no problem getting fluent English speaking teachers.
I imagine that China has a lot of difficulty getting fluent English teachers over there, especially with all of the opportunities in the Western world without the corruption or restrictions.
I've worked on computers running the German version of Windows NT. By the text I can still figure out what things are and how they relate to the English equivelent. It was not too difficult for me to reconfigure the networking on the boxes, even though I am not a Windows NT andministration expert). Also, if I had any problems, I could ask anyone since all of the Germans spoke fluent English. When I sat in front of a Chinese version once, I was totally lost.
Another major problem is China's lack of respect for IP. India has a fairly good reputation and many large companies have offices over there (i.e. Cisco, Nortel, etc.). China, OTH, has a very bad reputation. You can go anywhere and buy expensive pieces of software for only $1. Or for that matter, you can get a DVD of the latest movie within days after it's released into theaters long before the official releases come out.
Most companies are scared to death of their IP getting out. On this front the Chinese have a well deserved *very* bad reputation.
No company in their right mind would farm anything out to China.
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You cunt.
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After living in other countries I can say that the people of the US when compared to other countries are very tolerant towards other cultures. I can't think of any other country that has as diverse of a population. Sure there is a race riot every now and then. But look at other parts of the world. In most parts of the world there is bloodshed over things like religion and politics. The majority of countries have had those problems for thousands of years. Look at the 2000 election. How many other countries would have erupted in Anarchy given a similar situation. I would estimate more than 98%. However, there was no bloodshed in the streets. There was no toppling of a government. One can also look at 9/11 most countries would have faltered and capitulated. The US handled the situation and moved forward. If you think the US is really all that bad. Then go live in another country. After all there are plenty of people I have met over seas that would love to have a chance to live in America.
I got into this issue YEARS ago, and whenever I mentioned it on forums like Slashdot, I was unanimously shouted down...
Now however, it look as if even some of the invincible young dumbasses are catching on to the problem.
The idea is that the USA is a business. And you are not an employee, BUT AN OWNER. YOU OWN, WITH 200+ million other owners, the USA.
The politicians are not your bosses, but YOUR employees.
You feel as if that is NAIVE....that the situation is the opposite.
If so, it can be changed....
MAKE IT SO!
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
I agree with Petru. I'm also a Romanian myself and project manager for a local company. We've worked for the past 5 years with companies from US, UK and Germany (big ones, including Oracle and IBM).
Outsourcing can work like a charm, but it takes a good manager. The starter of this thread mentioned a few things that caught my eye:
- "work ethic": like everywhere, there are honest and dedicated people who will work closely with you, respect deadlines, etc. and there are those looking only for a quick buck. It's your job to determine very early if your partners are to be trusted;
- "cultural differences": not that big are you might think. As long as there's a mutual respect, there's no problem. You can use that to your advantage (fresh ideas and perspective).
And we do deliver web based solutions (ColdFusion & Java) tailored for individual customers, so this can work too.
Finally, I don't want to strike anyone's ego, but the concept that "creativity = US", "implementation = overseas" is wrong.
My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas.
I can't remember that CERN, Nokia, Siemens, Fujitsu and thousands of other companies/universities ever asked US to 'transfer development efforts' to them. You think US is in the center of the Universe, don't you?
Otherwise our standard of living, which is probably the highest in the world, will get lower while the rest of the world's gets higher.
I presume you travel/work experience consists of holidays on some islands, and work in your city, right!? If you think you have the highest standard - you're dreaming. Have a holiday in Singapore or Sweden, for a change...
Sad reality is that many people simply 'ignore' Americans these days, for a very simple reason - they think they know everything about everything, and they think they have right to give 'lesssons' to other people about culture (Britney Spears, yeah), democracy (that's my favourite), communism (although 99% of Americans don't even know/understand concept behind communism), creativity (read European/Asian newspapers, and then judge - don't make judgements purely on reading US newspapers), etc.
Bottom line is - you insult people every day because you don't understand what you're talking about, and yet you think you're "doing them a favour", simply because you read something in the newspaper. Pretty sad...
The individuals are top of the pack because they are in the US ? Does that mean people can become good programmers only if they live in the US ?
:) ) can afford them.
I dont think so.
I am doing my B.E with C.S in India and while i agree we have our share of bad programmers I have met some of the best around here and their code is no worse then a lot of open source code that I see which is coded in US and often better.
And about furthering our skills, the premise that we cant even buy books is really faulty. Infact all popular programming books published in the US have an Indian edition which is often 1/10th the price and even poor students studying for their BE ( like me
Whether you want to outsource your work or not is ofcourse your decision but please dont say people are bad programmers just because they are not in the US.