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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."
Just like Dilberts company had their secret Albonians, our company had Romanians.
Our company did it for two years, and for a good reason we don't do it anymore. Not that there is no good work that comes out of it.. it was just a nightmare to manage. Our software is not one that can just be packaged and shipped, but was an ASP (Java) that requires constant work and modifications for new customers.
I suppose with something like Windows applications it might be easier to outsource, but web based applications it was a managment nightmare and ended up just not working.
I will not go into the differences of culture and work ethic or the irritations due to time zone differences.
I have to wonder exactly how this would influence the open-source community. It seems that most of our current open source software is a conglomeration of several different International efforts. Based on how much Linux has been growing recently, I wonder if we will see more Chinese software contributing to already existing platforms, or if there will be development on completely different platforms that run on the same business model as RedHat. Will we see more Linuxes and BSDs, or will this just result in more outsourcing for highly repetitive tasks in code and proprietary software?
"You think that's air you're breathing now?"
- A lot of interaction with the customer
- A good feel for what competitors in that market can offer
- A good feel for the corporate culture & existing systems in the company your selling too
These things are very hard to achieve if the design team is half a world away - the cycle times are just too long and to make a good product/system you need a lot of interaction with your customer.So what's could happen is that a lot of the commodity, stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap software may move elsewhere but custom design remains in the home markets.
Hence this has little to do with creativity of Chinese or India programmers - simply that they are further from the target markets. Once their domestic markets really take off then the US, Japan and Europe will be in for serious competition.
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And I dont mean that in a rhetorical sense. Very few people realise that while it is a 3rd world country and somewhat socialistic in its inclinations in the past, entrepreneurship is very active in day to day life. Companies like Infosys, Wipro and others were started by enterprising people in a political environment that sustained it.
China definitely has the talent and the schools to grow it. What china lacks is the personal and social freedom in day to day life. China could be a very prosperous nation if it became somewhat democratic.
Slashdot looks deep within my heart and assigns me a number based on the order in which I join
Ralph, that is globalization, and that is why italians die protesting on the streets, that is why everywhere the G8 meet there are protests...because german workers have to be dumped by cheap taiwanese labor, why do american programmers have to compete with cheap indian and asian labor, why do 90% of Nike shoes come from asia?
But globalization is here to stay, the little producer of oranges in Florida will have to compete with the little guy from Brazil. And so the cycle goes, in the end I believe everyone gets cheaper, higher quality end products!
Americans will lose territory just like everyone else will, but the global competition will lead to high quality products and lots of advances in science, tech and even peace!
Think about it, a future where everyone has a slice of the pie. Not only germans or americans or japanese. Everyone.
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
If you are contracting your business to an illegitimate firm (in any country), the results received are your just desserts.
It seems absurd to correlate the actions of individuals to state-sponsored jurisprudence. China is a member of WIPO, which corroborates the idea that widespread piracy is not condoned by the legal system. Considering recent raids by government agencies in China to shut down major manufacturers/distributors of illegitimate software, the Chinese government may beg to differ with your opinion that Chinese corporations are pirates as well.
The rather xenophobic nature and sweeping generalizations of your statement will not be addressed other than noting they are logical fallacies.
You are entitled to your view of zero-sum economics (in order for one state to "win", another state must "lose"). However, most of the free world started to abandon this as a fundamental tenet in the late 18th century. This has led to the disavowal of mercantilism, imperialism, and colonial exploitation witnessed in the modern era. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith is the both the initial and seminal explanation of this concept.
Please do not be confused: my point is not encourage or discourage outsourcing development to China--I would merely like to see cogent arguments tendered in the debate rather than mere FUD.
I won't try to generalize too much based on four individuals. Based on my limited experience, however, I would never underestimate the skills and talent of developers from Asia. Everyone on my team was at least good; several of them were great. These four were all in the top 25%.
In particular, the man from India was an absolute star. I've never met anyone who turned out such high-quality code, well designed and well structured, in so little time. As a plus, his work ethic was outstanding. He was a manager's dream.
Our woman from China was close behind, a solid #2. We handed her an extremely difficult system; she jumped in and devoured it. Similar work ethic, similar high-quality code, extremely valuable to us.
This is NOT a criticism of our American developers. Three or four of them were stars in their own right. As mentioned before, the entire team was good or better. It just happens that these two individuals were from China and India, and they happened to be the best of the best. When I did annual evaluations, those two always got the highest scores on the team.
Maybe I got the only two stars, but I doubt it. Both of them were already in the area, and the Midwest isn't exactly known for being the center of the software universe. I'll bet there are plenty more where they came from.
In short, those countries do have highly talented people. They can produce extremely skilled developers. We must not assume that they can't handle the "creative" work, or we may be asking "Do you want fries with that?" and wondering whatever happened to those good paychecks.
Most software is made for U.S. and European markets. The software industry began and is strongly entrenched in the United States and Europe. Therefore, most software development is done by or for U.S. and European companies. Most of the "creative work", then, necessarily happens in the U.S. or Europe because (A) that's where the decision-makers in the developing companies are, and (B) these are the people who know the market well.
Most programming work that happens in India is "non-creative" work that's farmed out by U.S. and European companies because the labor is cheaper in India, and the benefits of proximity to the market are much smaller with that sort of work.
And it's a cycle that feeds on itself, as the system/market/whatever optimizes each locale's role.
It won't go on forever, of course, but there's no reason to pretend that this isn't the state of the industry now or that it's likely to change soon.
Finally! I thought all the creative trolls left /. long ago. All we have is a bunch of loosers posting random links that fill pages now days. This is a cool post. I like it better than S.Taco's older ones.
Yeah, that statement annoyed me a lot too.
:o)
The poster seems to assume that all India and China has to offer in terms of software development is programming houses that provide services to US companies.
Although it's almost impossible to avoid any racist issues when discussing this matter, I do believe the use of these houses is a Good Thing.
First of all, it provides a way to distribute money from the US to countries that have a lower standard of living. Secondly, it promotes education. The combination of the two has proven to be very succesful in increasing the standard of living in places that need it.
In fact, much of the great free software we all use has non-US origins.
In fact, some of the not so great, not so free software was made in the US.
OK while everyone talks about how this is one facet of globalism and mention maybe we should be in italy protesting the g8 why has no-one, thusfar, mentioned this might be a wake up call for labor organization here? We in technology no longer own the golden goose, and it's going to continue to get worse (longer hours, less benefits, less than zero job security)
Personally I don't like modern labor unions at all - as far as I can tell they left their usefullness back in the industrial revolution, but we must find some model of labor organization that works for us or else pretty soon tech work will have all the status, pay, and benefits of other technical areas which compete w/ foreign labor (i.e. not plumming, which must happen at the site of the plumming, but rather think steel, autos, etc.).
just IMHO
closed minded is as closed minded does
i know there's a difference between producer and exporter, but i wonder how many people know that ireland is the number one exporter of software in the world?
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Maybe the writing is on the wall for US based software developers ?
I remember the hoax interview with Stroutstrup about why he invented C++.. it went something like this..
"IBM trained lots and lots of people to become C programmers.. and they got really good at it... and there was no money to be made in C development... so i came up with C++, something so hiddeously complex so as to once again put a premium on good developers"
Sounds like there are lots of cheap developers for real now. And with everyone pushing towards component software or distributed anonymous systems, eventually someone will figure otu to use the Indian Foo.c or bar.pl. Economically, no one is oging to pay some american to re-implement bubble sort in perl in an air conditioned bright office on prime real estate for much longer.
In 10 years, will we all sound like washed up UAW members, bitching about "those damn japs and their jap robots" ?
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
> It is a backwards, caste-burndened theocratic
kleptocracy with 20% literacy.
Eh? India has a much better educational system than the United States does for the people who use it. AFAIK, India has more than 60% literacy now in the lastest census (2001?). It's something like 80% for males and 40% of females. Of course, in urban areas, it's much higher for females.
> Local warlord goons control everything over there.
Huh? Last time I checked, India was the largest Democracy in the world.
> There are significant roadblocks to commerce there;
Much of India's protectionist attitutes are actually in things like Agriculture, where the majority of the population is. Basically, they want to keep 400 million farmers able to keep themselves alive by selling shit within the country.
All this really means is that there is a need to step up software development tools.
It may sound counter intutitive, but technology is not slowing down and in 100 years things are going to be extreamly different than as we know computer technology today.
Better to go with the flow on something like this than to oppose it.
Actually, Indians can probably work for less than Chinese because there is less standard of living costs in India.
It's really quite hilarious how the United States made the free market system popular, and now is getting screwed by it.
An effective way to fight this, and any other form of price pressure on hourly rates, is to deliver fixed deliverables for a fixed price, or other pricing methods that are not based on hours.
(Of course, there are also plenty of perils therein.)
Its an interesting proposition, and I thought I'd chime in with my viewpoint because I think I have a (semi) qualified opinion here.
I work at a university which has a significant number of graduate students who received their undergraduate education from institutions in mainland China. Moreover, we literally receive hundreds of applications from such students every year. I served on the admissions committee for the graduate program last year and had the opportunity to review transcripts and CVs for many of these individuals.
I am of the opinion that what constitutes a CS education in China is radically different from what constitutes a CS education in North America and Europe. I saw several applicants who received degrees in computer science, yet the only courses I could find on their transcripts that were even vaguely related were "Visual Basic Programming I, II and III" and "Microsoft Access".
No theory courses, no programming languages, no algorithms, no data structures, no design, no software engineering. There were, however, mandatory 'Physical Education' and 'Marxist Economic Theory' courses. (I really feel for these students... I'm not sure how thrilled I would've been to have mandatory "gym class" in University!)
Unfortunately this is not a just a few cases; this was the norm (at least for the few hundred applications I've personally seen).
My overall impression then, is that these applicants probably are qualified to hack out VB code. In fact, their education seems to be setting them for trade jobs as coders. Unfortunately, whats lacking is any sort of rigourous training in basic computer *science* and software engineering. In the long run, one of three things can come of this: these individuals will educate themselves and become productive coders; someone else (i.e. their employers) will have to pay to educate them on the missing material; or, sadly, they simply will never be very effective software engineers. Since the people who will choose path #1 are few and far between, I'm not sure India has anything to worry about yet.
I think China needs to take a serious look at how they are educating their 'Computer Scientists' if they are serious about becoming a world software power. Its certainly within their grasp, I'm just not convinced they have the system in place to achieve it yet.
(I must also point out that while the situation described above was very common, it certainly does not reflect *all* the applicants from Chinese universities. There are some institutions in China that give a first-rate CS education and I have had the priviledge of working with some excellent graduate students coming out of those programs. I'm just not yet convinced that this is representative of most cases.)
Hmm, do you have any concrete evidence of your claims?
:)) , and although I do not have numbers, and Indian and Chinese make up about 60% of the developers. Most of the managers are either American or Indian.
I work for Microsoft (no flames please
There are plenty of Chinese developers unlike what you claim. There are very few europeans, and when they do show up, they are usually from west europe and not russia. I think Microsoft is probably pretty representative of a typical software company (in terms of people represented).
Outsourcing is done in an increasing fashion, with most outsourcing done to Indian companies in Bangalore and Hydrebad(sp?).
What should US programmers do if they are laid off because of foreign outsourcing?
If they should learn new skills, which new skills? Moving from programmer to software architect? Would that necessarily provide any more security?
Should they move to areas that can't be outsourced, like government and military work, or work that depends on knowledge of US culture, etc?
Or should they just abandon programming altogether for some other field? If so, what field? What other form of work (not management) would provide any better insurance against being outsourced to foreign workers?
In general, how are US workers to compete, since they obviously can't compete on price?