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Giant Sucking Noise
bsharma writes "The next round of globalization is sending upscale jobs offshore. They include basic research, chip design, engineering--even financial analysis. Can America lose these jobs and still prosper? Who wins? Who loses?" News.com has a related story about outsourcing.
As you might expect, this worries me a lot. I'm fairly secure (I think), because they need at least one person here that knows English and Java and can understand the customers and do the face-to-face, but in the long run more and more places are going to look at the savings and ship the work overseas.
I've got two kids, 9 and 12, and I'm at a loss for what direction to steer them in career-wise. I used to think Engineering was the answer, since I've really enjoyed my, what, 20-odd years of slinging code. But by the time my kids are college-age, god knows what will be left in the US besides burger flippers, doctors, and lawyers.
-- ac at work
Is this somewhat painful? Yes. Does it help in the long term? Most definitely.
Do you really think that the mid east would be in the situation it is today if there was a wide diverse economy over there?
The article is pretty much spot on. By decree of some department head somehwere, 1/3 of the people in each gruop have to be GDC employees (GDC is the termed used for the 2 companies we outsource work to - InfoSys and Tata) - which means if you have 30 people in your group, 10 must be contractors, and 2/3 of those must be off shore.
What's really depressing is that these changes aren't being done to get BofA back in the black or because it's going down the drain. It's so that they can show 7% (or 4% or something, I can't remember) more profit than they did last year.
This is absolutely *killing* morale. People worry about jobs. A lot. Our group has actually lucked out a bit - due to the closing of remote offices and a couple people leaving for their own reasons, we've been spared - Our manager is fantastic, he's doing everything possible to keep from laying any of us off. But other groups aren't so lucky. Quite a few people were laid off today, so the rumor mill says.
It's tough. It's one thing to be laid off for poor performance - it's a whole other ballpark when you're simply getting replaced with somebody a little cheaper.
If there is someone out there who can do exactly what I do only cheaper, who am I to complain if a customer or employer chooses them?
My job is to insure that I can provide more value than the competition. This means that I have to do something that they cannot or I have to do something that they can do only better, meaning that I have to do it faster, cheaper, or with better quality.
That's just how it works folks. Deal with it and get cracking.
What? From what I've read, most of the outsourced jobs, however white collar they may be in the 'States, are passed so that they can lower costs buy exploiting the workers in cheaper markets. Trust me, this was never about economic stimulation in third-world countries. Corporations are certainly more interested in the bottom line, and do you really think for one minute that their motivation is actually triggered by some huminitarian spark in their hearts? Hardly.
Think about all of the jobs in the steel industry and raw goods refining that used to be housed in the US. I was born in a region that housed booming towns that thrived on the steel, zinc, coal and cement in Pennsylvania. I can tell you firsthand that when refining was able to be done for 87 cents in Asia, the companies left town, the towns dwindled, and the equipment sat under 30 feet of water at the bottom of the quarrys. Was this good for us? The people that live there are just simple folk scrounging as best they can in small, dilapidated houses. Yeah, I guess they're only a mile from the nearest McDonald's, maybe they are better off than Hong Kong.
Oh, and guess what? A major factory and headquarters of Lucent (now Agere) used to be housed there, they even built a state-of-the-art Optoelectronics factory a few years ago. What happened when the bottom dropped out of optoelectronics? It was cheaper to manufacture in Asian countries, so tens of thousands lost their jobs. The new plant was sold for $40 Million in a fire sale, the grounds and any one of the many buildings were easily worth that much.
It's happening all over again now. Tell me how that's good for my town, Waterton Man.
--- What
Maybe you'll then say that it's not the goverment but the wealthy fueling your conspiracy. Well, considering that of that 1% you're talking about, only 10% of their children will manage to do anything but piss that wealth away, I don't see a successful continuation there either. And what you're talking about implies generations of development.
Money flows downhill. It goes where things are cheap, and moves them where they are expensive. You'll never track it by looking for master manipulators, you'll find it by looking for people blatantly trying to make a buck.
Oh, what's that in your url? Subgenius? Aha, I see. Nevermind, you're a lost cause
The thing is, as more of those jobs move to overseas they bring the standard of living in those countries up. As the standard of living goes up, so does the salary those overseas workers start to command. After awhile they become almost as expensive as the native labor, and have other disadvantages that will make them unattractive to companies (don't speak the language, time zone issues, etc...). I don't see the doomsday scenerio you suggest, rather I see everybody competing on a more even basis and the worldwide standard of living improving.
I read the internet for the articles.
"From what I've read, most of the outsourced jobs, however white collar they may be in the 'States, are passed so that they can lower costs buy exploiting the workers in cheaper markets."
How is offering a good job at a high wage (relative to the local economy) exploitation? Perhaps you ought to talk to some of the programmers who work in India and ask them what their other career options were like.
"It's happening all over again now. Tell me how that's good for my town, Waterton Man."
It may not be good for your specific town. And if that's all you can look at then you have a very narrow world view.
-- this post written by someone who lost their job to cheap Indian labor
Is it a scary time for a techie like me? Yes. But overall this is a good thing.
Because Japan (and now Korea, etc.) started making cars many US employees were initially displaced. But we now enjoy cars (from all countries including the US) which are far better and lower priced than we would have had without competition. (My 18 year old Tercel just crossed 200,000 miles but when I was a kid they didn't even bother with the sixth digit on the odometer.)
We have also enjoyed all sorts of inexpensive goodies like toys, home electronics and clothing that would have cost far more if all made here.
So the Indian programmer makes "only" $10,000 - that's still 20 times the average. His standard of living is probably pretty good. Outsourcing hurts our income but helps keep our costs down.
But there are bigger gains:
Peace - countries with close business ties almost never go to war.
Population - the wealthier a country gets, in general, the lower its birthrate.
Environment - of course the "first world" has a far from perfect environmental record but it is WAY ahead of the third world where fishing by pouring poison or tossing dynamite in the ocean is an accepted method, where "recycling" involves open fires to burn the plastics off of wire and electronics, and where the air is many times worse than in the worst US city. Something about not having to worry about the next meal allows one to consider the environment more seriously.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
It's about making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Mod me troll if you wish, but the highest tax bracket before Reagan took office was almost 80%. That means the government taxed 80% of the income of the very richest people. Now it's down around 30%.
There are more rich and very rich people in the U.S. than in any time before in history, and they hold a much larger share of the wealth pie than the wealthiest few ever held before. NAFTA benefits the rich, and not the poor. The tax codes benefit the rich and not the poor. WIPO, Sales Taxes, "death" tax reductions -- it's all meant to guarantee that once the money is in the hands of the wealthy, it never leaves.
That giant sucking sound isn't the sound of jobs going overseas, it's the sound of money flyng out of your wallet.
Great! Your company now has an extra $105K to spend! Either you get a raise (not likely), or another team can be created, employing 8 programmers where four were employed before (and allowing your company to do more work). Of course, the real ratio is a little higher - you need slightly more support staff (management, office workers, etc) to support twice as many workers, on both sides of the ocean, so it's possible your company could jump from 4 workers to 10, for the same amount of money. Seems like a net good to me.
Wrong. The CEO gets a $105,000 raise.
Next.
no
Anyone with even the most basic understanding of economics should dismiss this article as totally unsurprising and move on. The idea I'm already reading in comments that "jobs should stay in America" is idiotic. I want stuff to cost less, and if producing it elsewhere can do that then that's what globalization is all about! It's the same argument when it comes to trying to get rid of ridiculous farm subsidies. I don't want to pay more for corn just so people can continue to be farmers. Familiar Slashdot argument: if the business model of __________ (like being a programmer or a farmer) is untenable, then get out of it! The Constitution doesn't recognize a right to make money doing the activity of your choice.
Maybe someday, when smart use of technology has finally allowed us a balance between needs/wants and resource scarcity, large numbers of people will be able to say, "I feel like being a farmer" or "I feel like managing servers" and do it. But for now, that's just not how it works. Suck it up!
And by the way, this argument goes both ways. People living in the US just happened to have been born (or have been lucky enough to move to) one of the most resource-rich nations on the planet. How dare we even consider enacting policies that would deny these benefits to the rest of humanity? It's that kind of thinking -- or, at least, the perception by other that that's what we're thinking -- that has all these misguided, ignorant, and extremely poor Muslims trying to blow up our civilization
On the other hand, as long as I can make a living, I'm not going to begrudge someone in India, Russia, or other place their ability to make a living. What I object to is when the savings from outsourcing do more than keep a corporation afloat, but actually continue paying obscene salaries for CEOs. Perhaps we need to outsource board-level jobs to India and Singapore and Bulgaria. It's only fair. Don't you think?
And I'm really sure that you always pay the extra for the brand name over the generic groceries, buy the triple cost pharmaceudicals instead of the generics, pay premiums above MSRP when buying cars, washing machines & other durables instead of taking advantage of sales...
Frankly, I have been expecting this for about a year or two: if you can/could telecommute, what prevented your employer to outsource your job?
The developed countries have been outsourcing blue-collar jobs to developing (really low-wage) countries, thanks to the development of international transportation for moving the goods all over the world. Those jobs go now wherever the workforce is the cheapest
Every single part of computer hardware you have in front of you, has been made in Anywhere But US/Europe/Japan(TM). I hope you enjoyed playing/working with your computer, because karma is a b*tch.
Today, the internet allows the transportation of knowledge, voice and data all around the world. Of course, your job will go elsewhere.
Heck, if you think about it, you can see that no one is really safe from this:
- lawyers (you just need some meat in the court house, everything else, including C&D
:), is outsourcable paperwork)
- doctors (the remote chirurgy we dreamed about with Internet2)
- teachers (online schooling anyone?)
- people in the movie/entertainment industry: Bollywood could cripple Hollywood (Selling low-priced non-crippled CD and non-DRM DVD should be straigthforward for the Indian majors)
Here is some food for thought:My predictions are:
So, what does it mean for me?