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U.S. Jobs Jumping Ship
An anonymous reader writes "As painful as February's big job cuts were, they're even more painful since many of those jobs are never coming back as U.S. employers in a wide range of industries move more and more jobs overseas. CNN has the story." Salon has a good piece detailing how job requirements are changing, asking more and more for less and less pay.
At our company we now have multiple college graduates working for under $10/hour. Of course we're in a small town. But yeesh!
Sure fire ways to make a living in the USA, providing the trend continues:
Farm. People have to eat. If americans can't afford the food, someone else can, there's always a buyer, if you can afford to set the right price. (Sound unethical? You're probably not a republican then)
Become an entertainer (something about americans dancing and singing on a stage works for extracting money from the pockets of everyone else in the world. As of yet americans still make what the world wants to buy in terms of image.)
Own an overseas company, employing locals for a pittance, and selling goods and services to anyone, anywhere who can still afford them. China looks like a good place to sell, it's got one of the few growing economies.
Go into politics. If americans can't afford your price for selling out your country, someone, somewhere will and hopefully you know how to keep your payments away from prying eyes, not that the public really cares anymore, but they might.
Cynical? Why not. You can't expect the current administration or house to insist upon a tariff on imported services, can you?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have no doubt that some have gone overseas, but without a doubt, the worst problem is the economy. No company is going to hire anyone until this mess with Iraq starts to straigten out. Once that happens though, look for mega job listings to start appearing. There has to be a lot of pent up demand out there considering that everyone has been stalled for a couple of years now.
That's pretty surprising. My company is raking in the money once again after a small but not deadly slow-down, and three more job descriptions for engineers just went out today.
Yup, it's a sad sad day when college graduates in America are losing jobs to those overseas (particularly India). I was doing Tech Support for Dell for awhile (I know, I know....it paid) and during that time they started outsourcing most of their tech support and customer service to call centers in India. I can't even count how many customers I talked to that were hung up on, or couldn't understand the person, etc etc etc. It might have saved them a few bucks, but it goes to show these companies don't really care about their customers.
This is hardly a revelation. When the supply of some good (labor) exceeds demand (jobs), the price of the good (labor) falls. Big shock. Having been a programmer in the 1980s, I well remember when you were lucky to get $25,000 for a programming job. When the number of jobs increases (when we stop insisting the world admire our mighty power and get back to real work), labor prices will rise again.
Is today just a dip that will go away? I think so.
All of this reminds me of Schumpeter's famous phrase "creative destruction". What has happened is that there was an enormous swell in the demand curve for IT workers in the late nineties with the tech boom. This drove wages up, as the supply curve lagged. As new people entered the field, the supply curve slid out to accomodate demand.
Here's where it always sucks for those workers. The demand curve contracted sharply after the tech bubble burst, so the wages dropped correspondingly. This of course is what every sector (except for the government sector, unfortunately) faces from time to time. A micro-example is the set of jobs created for building a house. Suddenly the house is finished and demand falls to zero.
So what's the long term prognosis? Unless some new wave emerges that causes another correspondingly large shift in demand for tech workers, wages will be where they are, and probably fall further with international competition.
The bright side of all of this, and it's hard for us tech workers to see, is that everyone else gets cheap software and information services. This is the way the system works. The alternative is to chase demand curve shifts and change careers every ten years or so, which is probably not such a bad idea from a spiritual point of view anyhow.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Actually the economy is very close to the late 1930's towards the end of the depression. The stock market has been down 3 years in a row and has not recovered. This only happened once during the 1930's in American history. Unemployement is rising near %10 and is alot higher for IT workers.
The situation I think is worse then anyone relizes. I am willing to code c++, java, or do webpage design for 8/hr with no medical benefits. I am that desperate yet, still viewed as overvalued. I have a friend who use to make $70k a year who now makes 12k designing webpages and is about to lose his job to an Indian outsourcing firm for less! ITs silly.
An Indian can work half that wage and miminal wage laws prohibit making under 6.50/hr. Indians have free health care and a very low cost of living so they can work cheaper then Americans can.
I am not an ego maniac and would love to work for under 20k ayear. The fact is even people with many years of experience also are willing to work for about that price while CIO's are getting woodies. Its very sad.
But you know what really gets me? Microsoft and Sun are lobbing for more h1b1 visa's and are outsourcing to India and Singapore at the same time. Go read any of the jobs being offered at Microsoft's website. Most of them are at Microsoft India.
May American IT work r.i.p.
http://saveie6.com/
We have a team in India doing basic database monitoring and support (mostly to back me up, as I'm a finite resource).
They are cheap - about $1000 US a month for their services.
From their resumes and other clients, you would think that they are well trained and efficient.
Unfort, I don't find their work that valuable.
First, while their English is good, it's not good enough. The communication barrier has caused several problems, resulting in database downtime that need not have occurred.
Second, while they advertise themselves as DBAs, there is only one that I marginally trust. We have had to create detailed instructions for doing simple things. They take days to do what I can do in hours, and often fail at what I consider simple, bread-and-butter DBA tasks.
Third, we don't have much of a stick over their head. Should they walk off with our data, our schema, our code, or just trash our site, there is little if anything we could actually do.
An article (recently posted on Slashdot) mentioned that the larger the company, the more likely they were to move IT jobs overseas. In the long run, this is a counter-productive move. Firing a bunch of people will lower the demand for your goods and services; the unemployed don't have the money to spend. And you create a group of seriously pissed off people with time on their hands.
The Salon story mentioned a website called a site where people post these ridiculous jobs. Perhaps someone will come with a site that will list companies that have fired local workers to ship the jobs overseas.
The whole thing makes me wonder if it's time to start thinking about a new career. It's kind of scarey to wonder if tech jobs will become as scarce as those well paying manufacturing jobs of the 50's and 60's (you know, the ones that are now in China, Taiwan, and Mexico).
"Yes I would, Kent."
Ahh yes... typical hystaria over short term problems.
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
We unionize... duh!
One of our biggest problems is that we are so 'stupid' to think that we can influence corporations as idividuals. You jus-canna-do-it!@!@@!!!!!
The only way to make things better is to organize into a group that can 'collectively' work towards our goals. Until we figure that out, we're screwed.
Airline pilots are unionized, so are teachers and any other number of highly skilled workers. Why are we different? Because we are stubborn. We work on problems and beat away at them patiently until we solve them... and that does not work for this type of problem.....
The difference between the 1930s and today, is that today if you tried to go live in a self-sufficient community you will be treated like a criminal. During the great depression, lots of people just headed for the hills, literally. You'd be surprised how well a person can get along without civilization. Today, you'll either be trespassing, poaching, or camping in the forest without a permit. I'd hate to think what they'd do to you for jumping on a train nowadays.
This should have been your response after the 2nd round
"Please pass me through to your supervisor. Whover is writing your support script has made an error"
1st level techs are highly scripted and you need to know how to break out quickly when the problem is something that isn't going to be in their scripts.
I wrote an article about this phenomenon a while back (when I was facing the same unrealistic job requirements).
My favorite anecdote was a job ad requiring 5 years experience writing technical manuals for military vehicles. People who write such job ads end up paying more than they should because of this "illusion of scarcity."
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
This really sounds like the business equivalent of a pyramid scam.
The motivation behind cutting costs in things like IT is so that the business as a whole (and particularly the execs) can have more money.
However, in order to *make* that money, customers need to be able to afford the product. If no one is making a decent salary (by which I mean at least $40k for a household), no one is going to be able to afford the products at their current prices. The only alternative will be to cut the selling price, which eliminates the original reason for the outsourcing. Either that or continue the pyramid and find an even cheaper country to do the work, and temporarily make money off of today's India and China.
I am also curious as to the long-term results of basically removing increasingly skilled jobs from western countries. It's not like we can *all* be fast food cooks.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
In the socio- and anthropological fields it is pretty much accepted that the United States is a Third World country that basically won the lottery. I won't provide statistics, but check out (a) Literacy rates (b) Infant mortality (c) Homicide rates (d) % of population below the poverty line, and (e) the gap between the rich and poor. A large middle class running in hamster wheels does not a First World country make. Also: Labor unions are a reaction against the insane exploitation of the 19th century. If the need wasn't there, they would not have been formed, 'cause Americans hate that shit. And in pure opinion, I believe it has less to do with Democratic myopism and more to do with some extremely rich people pulling the ladder up after themselves. Figuratively speaking.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
First a general rule, troll: When your neighbor loses a job, it's a recession. When you lose a job, it's a depresion. I don't have to lineraly extend my future more than a few months or so to know that I will soon lose my the rest of my savings, my house and hopes of a good education for my 15 month old daughter.
It's been idiotic for 30 years or so, or have you not been watching US manufacturing capacity go down the tubes? Those who do, know and those who know get hired. With all of that contraction, US industry has not done much hiring in the last 20 years. They are out of people, out of knowledge and out of luck as those who know retire. There ARE people elsewhere who HAVE been making things and they do know what they are doing. This trend will only accelerate as more and more big dumb companies decide to "outsource" their manufacturing and knowledge base. Bill Clinton's "Service Economy" was the dumbest thing ever. It depends on control of intelectual property that will increasingly be foreign. Even military dominance will fade with knowledge.
A good start to solving the problem would be to STOP TRADING WITH SLAVE ECONOMIES SUCH AS CHINA. We would have to convince our friends in Europe and elswhere that it's in their best interest to not train and fund their future masters. Otherwise, we all lose.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I can't believe that everyone didn't see this situation coming. It is the logical path of a world controlled by corporations in an emerging global economic system.
For the corporations the equation is always simple and, for the most part, always the same. The path that reaps the greatest profit is the path to follow. Period, end of story, no appeals allowed.
Out sourcing work to cheap labor increases profits so it will continue. There are three ways that jobs may start coming back to the US.
1. We lower our wages to compete. (Not a good option)
2. The legal system does something that impedes jobs from being outsourced. (Not a good option)
3. It becomes more expensive to outsource than to keep jobs in the US. (The best option)
Option number 3 will slowly occur as the living standard rises in the countries where the work is currently being outsourced. As the workers wages rise and come in line with the wages in the US costs of producing goods in those countries will rise.
This could take a long time, however, and one of the big questions is: When the cost of production comes to parity where will the factories that produce the goods be located? We may be loosing jobs for a lot longer if there is no incentive to move the jobs back to the US. The startup expense is one thing that is keeping some factories in the United States but once moved it will be the same startup expense that will keep them out.
It will be interesting to see how politicians deal with the effects of selling out the American people to the corporations.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
This is affecting a lot more than just "web designers" who had no skills beyond that covered in "MS Frontpage for Dummies."
My extended circle of friends and I all have solid educations and lots of experience covering pretty much every aspect of IT that you can name, but no potential employer will give us the time of day. It's not a matter of demanding unreasonable salaries either - if we call their bluff and say that we're willing to accept a low salary just to pay the mortgage, we're told that we're out of consideration since the boss is sure that within a month the economic fairies will come around and we'll bolt for a well-paying job at a new startup.
Finally, my connections on "the other side of the fence" have told me that the ridiculous requirements on these lists are there for a reason - the powers that be want to give the appearance of looking for an employee, but they have no intention of actually hiring anyone. The way they hid this is by creating lists that no single person could possibly satisfy, then offering a wage far below what such a mythical person would actually accept.
If somebody actually had all of that experience and was desperate enough to accept the salary, some overlooked requirement would be discovered. E.g., for a while a popular overlooked requirement was that you had to speak fluent Japanese - and have spent several years in that country.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
One of my coworkers had an interesting idea though. He was considering signing up with the California Highway Patrol. It seems like a good plan. Officers make over $50k a year for entry level, get tons of benefits (like $3000 a year for meals), extra perks/pay for specialized skills (such as piloting or even bilingual), and there is a real growth opportunity. Police officers are in high demand in California right now. Look in the classified in any paper and you will see several listings for several cities. Even my sleepy little hometown of Half Moon Bay, CA is always looking for new officers.
I actually considered, and am still considering, signing up too. I'll have to get in a little bit better shape before I do, but that's not a problem. It would be a rewarding job where I could make a difference, and make some cash too. Something to think about, anyway. You gotta give it up to the Uncle Sam. Best employer you could ever have.
I have firsthand experience using offshore labor (hiring programmers for small to medium jobs).
We found one AMAZING guy in Russia. $15/hour. He's not always consistent (he's 23, just got married and still setting his life up) but he understands and does what he's asked in a reasonable amount of time.
Two other programmers from Russia and two others from India were either incompetent, incommunicative, or both.
I'm not worried. It will take a LONG time for them to train to our standards, and when they do they simply RAISE the amount of useful labor produced and therefore raise the quality of life for us AND them.
Predicted long ago by the cantankerous Edward Yourdon. Ed was complaining about sloppy US software engineering as well as cheap, competent international labor. Ed wrote a sequel during the dot.com boom rebutting his earlier thesis, but the earlier ideas seem more accurate. Ed's numerous books start with some current social commentary, then repeat his personal brand of software engineering.
OK I can't resist. I used to work in the auto industry and our CEO once said what the customer wants is:
German Engineering
Japanese Quality
American Service
Mexican Price
I hate to say it, but he was right and that's what companies are trying to do when they outsource jobs. Consumers are so sensitive to slight differences in price, so if one company in their sector makes a change to save a very small amount of cash while putting American workers out of work, every other company that markets the same goods or services has to do something to cut costs by the same amount. We have to realize that the American consumer is driving this phenomenon. I don't know how to fix it, but we are creating our own problem.
I know I may get modded down for this, but I'll stand up for this particular point. If one looks back at all of the technological innovation in the past 50 years, the vast majority of it has come from within the United States. Telecom, semiconductors, software, you name it - if it was commercially viable, that commercial viability pretty much originated here. Now that the expertise is being outsourced, what will sustain further development of it here?
If you look at all the new grads coming out, they have been told time and again that technology is their ticket to success. They've been pushed through universities like cattle, but they never expected the slaughterhouse to be right at the exit. Now that there's a glut, economics is dictating huge competition driving down salaries. Tech suddenly isn't as sexy any more, and people are flocking to jobs at more traditional companies. Tech companies keep outsourcing more and more.
But let's move this one step further. People coming into university see this. They stop coming in. Innovation and research starts slowing down. Nanotech and biotech research vaporizes because the capital base that is partly cross-subsidizing it vaporizes slowly. There is no killer application driving the tech economy. We can do with what we already have.
What we may end up with is the majority of our technological manufacturing and knowledge base outside the United States. The United States (and, to a large extent, the rest of the Western world) could become dependent on foreign technology the same way it is dependent on foreign oil. Yes, many of these jobs being outsourced are staying within the foreign subsidiaries US companies, but the bulk of the knowledge is not on US soil. Those workers can walk away at any time without recourse for the US companies.
My point is that there are very serious implications for everyone's life in general. If the majority of the expertise and manufacturing ends up outsourced to what are effectively third world countries, we could be subjected to embargoes by cartels in the same way OPEC has power today. It could even impact national security, since overall research into technology could stagnate and the pool of available scientists and engineers dwindles.
If you think it can't happen, think again. It already has in large part. If not for cooperative trade agreements, many of the bulk goods coming into the United States would disappear overnight, from Tommy jeans to Sony TVs. This means that there may be greater reliance on the US military to protect us. Unfortunately, many of these countries possess big weapons that they didn't have 50 years ago. The US won't be able to push them around like they have already, and this will cause a loss of control.
So what can we do about this? We need to vigorously publicize the nightmare stories of outsourcing. We need to show homegrown successes. We need to get these people waking up before we end up hanging ourselves by our own rope. We need to prove that we are better than those working in third world countries. We need to show what made the United States a great country - hard work, perserverance, and a good brain.
OR
We had better give up now and accept a much lower standard of living, and all of the shock it will create. It will be either one scenario or the other. But not both.
Uh ok if salary is such a small portion of running a business then riddle me this: WHY DO THEY HAVE TO LAY ALL THESE PEOPLE OFF IF IT'S ONLY A "VERY SMALL PORTION"??
Manufacturing is THRIVING? I DARE YOU to find a pair of shoes, jeans, a motherboard, a dvd player made in America...I DARE YOU! I HAVE TRIED, they are EXTREMELY hard to find! You are probably some rich moron, listen if you come from a working class neighborhood where most families USED to work as manufacturing labor then you KNOW IT IS NOT THRIVING!
Maybe you took management 101 course in college, but if YOU HAD A CLUE ABOUT LABOR HISTORY, you would know that manufacturing in America is a tiny fraction of what it once was. Why would IT industry be any different? It's really HARD TO MOVE A FACTORY but it is EXTREMELY EASY TO MOVE CUBICLES. It's very expensive to SHIP TONS OF PHYSICAL GOODS around the world but it's very very cheap TO SEND SOURCE CODE AROUND.
Oh ya, maybe Bumfuck, Idaho doesn't have the same labor pool as say NEW YORK CITY? GEE, WHAT A FUCKING CONCEPT. But since universities in india, china and the philipines are churning out CS grads like crazy and Asian cities are GIGANTIC they will be quite juicy to businesses looking to slash costs.
Hmmm, and then how many startups ARE FUCKED right now because they signed leases in downtown SAN FRANSISCO because they wanted to be in the center of the action? Well all the employees are laid off and the fucking company is toast.
Don't take my word for it, just watch as the jobs disappear and never come back...
"Canada has much more open immigration policies and for the most part, is much stronger because of it"
The best reform of immigration policy is very simple: let any one who can work come to America, after rigorous security screening.
America, as you say, will be much stronger for it. Good workers can only help the country.
Things are never as bad as they seem during a recession, and never as good as they seem during a boom.
Certain programming jobs will go offshore, but not all. Embedded systems don't need GUI or Language skills, so those will go. Programming jobs that require human interaction skills will be less successful offshore because the cultural literacy of the U.S. isn't very good in India. That will drive up the costs of their production.
System integration will not go offshore at all, because many times you physically need to be on site to integrate the system.
During the past 10 years we (programmers) have been making an Economic Profit. Economic Profits only last until other competitors (local college grads, h1b folks) come in and compete for jobs, lowering the salaries to an equilibrium point. It isn't greed, it isn't mean-spiritedness, it isn't anti-patriotic, it is economics. Adam Smith defined the basic movement of the "Invisible Hand" over 200 years ago. As salaries go down, h1b folks leave the country, people change careers, and in general the supply of tech folks drop as people look for other ways of making money or acquiring skills.
When another boom starts, as it will, salaries will go up as demand outstrips supply, and then the big bucks will be rolling in again.
How can I be so certain? I am, because Tech is a boom & bust cycle with a period of roughly 4 ears. The headlines in the early 80's read "Silicon Valley is dead! The Japanese stole all our jobs!" In late 80's, PC's were the rage, the "Savior of the Economy". In the early 90's, George Bush (Senior) was blamed for wrecking "The Economy, Stupid!" In the late 90's, "The business cycle is dead, the New Economy is here!" Now they read "Silicon Valley is dead! The Indians stole all our jobs!"
Give it a couple of years, after the war costs have been absorbed and growth returns to the U.S. economy. That will spur demand at home for tech positions, and demand will ripple throughout the world for goods and services. The good times won't be far behind. Demand will outstrip supply, salaries will rise, and everyone will be yapping about the new "Economic Miracle".
We're going through a hiring phase where I work right now. We're searching for good programmers. You know what? We're still NOT finding any. In fact, if anything things are WORSE this time around.
Our theory is that it's because the market has been flooded with shitty wannabe programmers, and we're just having a hard time filtering the real programmers from the dreck. Or it could be that the real programmers are the ones who are still working?
Either way, there's a lot of people out there who CALL themselves programmers but aren't. Until they get a clue our industry will continue to be in the shitter.
So I guess now you can work at a 7-11 and make more money within 2 years than you can with a 4 year degree in computer science? Plus the payback of the student loans. Even if you make more in the long run the payback will take another 5-10 years. I am not sure that we will have any programming work in US by then...go into a trade while you are young and you still can.
Open source development is my way of competing with the low-cost programmers in India...
Actually the economy is very close to the late 1930's towards the end of the depression. The stock market has been down 3 years in a row and has not recovered.
The stock market was not the single root cause of the depression. There were several. There were a huge number of bank failures around that time. Back then, when a bank failed, depositors lost their money, so quite a bit of capital was destroyed, this led to deflation, you can't hire workers if the money no longer exists? Also the Fed at that time kept a tight money policy, when it should've loosened. This only made things worse. And you had Smoot-Hawley tariffs which killed overseas demand for your products. Today you only have stock market malaise. Fed policy is very loose, and banks are quite solvent, and FDIC would back them up if they weren't.
This only happened once during the 1930's in American history. Unemployement is rising near %10 and is alot higher for IT workers.
It's an extended bear market. The stock market was similarly crappy in the 70's. Maybe the loses weren't as big. And where is unemployment at 10%?
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
This very thing is happening at my current company. I worked at a small, profitable company in a niche industry. Nine months ago, our company was bought up by a corporation that, as far as I can tell, exists to buy companies to increase their revenues and profits. Most business people will tell you that this type of thing can only work if the purchasing company is able to make the purchased companies grow.
Well, now we are being told that the company is looking to outsource software jobs. In essence, we are being asked to train our own replacements. Not a huge surprise, but it will be interesting to see how well it is done. This is a very niche industry, with much communication and industry specific knowledge needed to do the work I'm not at all confident that outsourcing abroad is an appropriate solution for our needs right now.
When this happened in manufacturing, the pundits said that the America of the future was going to be an idea based, value added economy. It was argued that the high paying jobs created by our superior educational system would maintain our dominance in the future. Now the same thing is happening with these high requirement jobs. America is becoming a nation of investors, marketers, and sales people.
I'm not quite what, if anything, should be done about this.
I guess there were no American Web Applications Engineers left to fill the spot.
Michael Loves Me!
I'm getting tired of this whole "This is good because it will improve global economy, so adapt or die." crowd.
:)
This will NOT improve global economy, this will improve local economy of OTHER countries. Do you think India is going to stop taxing American imports just because a very, VERY small minority of the population is getting paid well by third world standards? Are they going to start outsourcing their jobs back into the US? I doubt it. So corporations make some money from cheap labor, because the country they outsourced to doesn't have labor laws, the outsourced country is only slightly better off, and we have Americans who can't find work to feed their own families. I fully admit I CAN'T compete with an 8 year old chinese boy in a sweatshop. I would never WANT to compete for that job, and no one should have to live with that kind of job, just to survive. If you want to rememdy the global economy, human rights MUST come first, as money is just a measurement of a human time.
Also, as an American, I have given my governemnt certain rights over me, so that they can work in good faith toward my best interest and the best interests of the American people, not so that they can make the world a better place. I could give less of a shit if my job supports an Indian Family who were previously impoverished, if now MY family is impoverished.
If employers are allowed to ship our jobs off to foreign countries with no penalty, rather than hire us to produce their product/service, then I should be able to ship in products and service from foreign nations without penalty or tarrif.
So explain to me how it is a fair playing field when corporations can undercut salary expenses by shipping jobs to foreign countries, while still being protected from Industry in those foreign countries underselling the same product/service over here?
It also undercuts traditional American values. We are beggining to no longer be the land of oppurtunity. If Americans can't get jobs, aliens can't either. So instead of a bright, well trained Indian worker coming over here to have a high standard of living, he has to stay in his home country, getting paid next to nothing and still living in third world conditions.
And to all the +5 Informatives spouting "Americans think just because they are American and have an education they have the right to a high standard of living and a decent job.", all I have to say is, You are god damn right we do. My father, grandfather, great grandfather, etc.. fought to give me that right, and I would fight to give my kids the same right. Why should I have to lower my standard of living so others can raise theirs? It's not like we've always been on top in the global economy, we made it there, and we made it there for ourselves, not for others, although we are gracious in letting others join in. Why should we sacrafice our high standard of living instead of foreigners sacraficing their nationality? If you want what we got, then you can come to America, but America should NEVER come to you.
I know, I know, I'm rambling in my digression. I do tend to get upset when I see non-Americans blaming the US for whatever is wrong with their countries. (ie. chinese bitching about US tax imports instead of 0 chinese labor laws).
I see a few -1 Flaimbaits coming, but oh well, this is how I feel
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
I have seen a lot of outsourcing going on, mostly to India, but to be honest, these typically aren't the most interesting jobs. Sure, they are the bread and butter for some of us but they are mostly jobs involving maintaining older code bases, debugging and testing code, doing phone support, internationalizing previously released software, and doing pure programming (not software design/engineering) of problems that have been completely spec'ed out.
IMHO, much of the really interesting work will stay in the US (and Europe) because it requires people to be close to their customers and do innovative problem solving and design. For instance, if your company/team is trying to create a new product to solve problem X for customer Y and the problem is poorly understood and poorly described, you are best off visiting the customer, spending time watching how the customer works, learning what the customer's tasks are like and how you can support them, and involving the customer in tight-loop interative design. This type of work is SO much easier when you are in the same or similar time zone as the customer. The power of being able to hop in the car to drive to their site or take a short flight to the next state (and be home in the evening) means a lot to the management of both the customer and provider.
Scheduling phone conference calls with India is a really pain in the backside. Everyone I know who has to do it gripes and bitches. Flying to India takes a long time, is very expensive and requires way more planning than driving or flying in the US/CA. Finally, if I want to be in regular communication with a customer, complete with multiple site visits, even the distance between the east and west coasts of the US can become a really pain in the rear. The distance between the US and India (the OTHER SIDE OF THE EARTH) is just too damn unbearable. I watched on company attempt to divide innovative design between India and the US and it was an unmitigated disaster, resulting in the company entering death throws.
I spent all of those years as Anonymous Coward and all I got was this lousy number (204976).
On the off chance that anyone might read this...
The median pre-tax U.S. income in 2001 was $42,228. About 60% of households earned less than the average.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p60-218.pdf
"In the socio- and anthropological fields it is pretty much accepted that the United States is a Third World country that basically won the lottery."
Um... what? Says who? Sources? Links to related journals? Those numbers you conveniently don't provide?
"I won't provide statistics, but check out (a) Literacy rates (b) Infant mortality (c) Homicide rates (d) % of population below the poverty line, and (e) the gap between the rich and poor."
And I suppose this has absolutely nothing to do with the way we accept more immigrants than any other country in the world hands down? I don't know about you, but I would tend to expect a few Third World tendancies when we're busily accepting people from said Third World.
Of course, I'm sure our numbers would be "better" if we simply took a "Not just no but Hell No!" approach to immigration, much like they seem to do in the EU. I suppose Third World problems are best dealt with at arm's length. Where's Joerg Haider when you need him?
Those "literacy rates..." Are they a count of literacy in general or just literacy in English?
"A large middle class running in hamster wheels does not a First World country make."
How about an economic environment that fosters self-entrepenuership, allowing just about anybody to hang their own shingle? How about a political environment that has virtually no distinctions between "citizenship by choice" and "citizenship by blood?" How about a social environment that prizes hard work and self determination above all else?
"And in pure opinion, I believe it has less to do with Democratic myopism and more to do with some extremely rich people pulling the ladder up after themselves."
You mean like "limiting the numbers and sources of immigrants that can come into the US?" You mean like "unions that both require membership to work and deny membership to non-citizens?"
The real answer is promote yourself and stop being a worker-bee. Join the management team and keep your job!
Seriously, if you recognize the simple rules of supply and demand and how they affect the labor market and, furthermore, you see that protesting in front of the IMF and the World Bank is not going to stop the tide of globalization, then take action! Don't sit on the sidelines as the world acts upon you. Find a service -- service is key -- that US businesses are willing to pay for and setup shop in India or Sri Lanka! You handle business development and front as the CxO here in the US, and get one reliable person in your third-world location to oversee your own worker-bees. Know how to use PowerPoint?! You've got the skills to do this. All of the Dell, AOL, HP, etc. call centers in the third world are run by small business people who started just like this.
If any of you have co-workers or friends with family in the third world, ask them about contacts back home that you could pursue. I promise you that no matter how many times you post on Slashdot about how furious these trends make you, you're not going to stop it. Best you can do is recognize the trend and make the best of it.
P.S. I'm was laid off last winter because my employer was hit with an FTC lawsuit for telemarketing fraud. If any of you have contacts in the third world, please e-mail me. I'm interested in creating jobs and providing rich opportunities for people you know!
Ok, this may be a stupid question, but has anybody thought of what happens to the whole "outsource to India" trend when India dukes it out with Pakistan again? Doesn't this scare companies away from making such a significant investment there?