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Offshore Outsourcing Threatens Offshore Outsourcing
theodp writes "India offshore tech support companies may soon face job losses as U.S. companies such as IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and PeopleSoft explore countries with even cheaper sources of technical labor, including Romania, Russia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Concerned that outsourcing might be outsourced from India in the near future, a Bangalore call center owner said 'It's hard to know where it will all end. Is there a country where people will work for free?'" There's a Newsforge story about the same subject.
Oh well. I can always fall back on that SCOX stock.....oh wait.....
It's really hard to come up with anything else to add to this story. I mean, did anyone _not_ see this coming? Global companies will do what's cheapest...and there will always be someone who'll be cheaper than you.
Now, when they start outsourcing management...that's when I'll be happy.
So stop competing on price and start offering a good, high quality, reliable service that people will pay a little more for.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Outsource *that*, you corporate nomarks!
Is there a country were people will work for free?
Yes, they are called open source developers and they are in every country around the world.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Is there a country where people will work for free? Yeah, the GNU.S.A.
The Republican party has a solution for these companies to stop job losses and profit loss.
1) Take away your rights with a new PATRIOT Act
2) Give tax cuts to the wealthy
3) PROFIT!!!
This reminds me of the story of Saudi Arabia and mideastern oil. Way back around the turn of the century, there was no great oil industry in the Arabian Peninsula. They were trying to find something to do with this deset wasteland. Then, the US comes in, offers to pay the countries (then Saudi Arabia was the focus) 1 penny per barrel exported, all drilled by the US, worked mostly by US oil workers. Now, we see what has come of this situation... Should we be as worried about tennis shoes and cheap nylon jumpsuits?
Speak for yourself.
Will they outsource tech support to a Venezuelan insane asylum next?
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Looks like Buddha is *not* smiling down upon the Hindu children. Pretty soon, techies in India will be doing what techies in America are doing:
Slaving for low wages or searching for a new job.
May "Bob" smile down upon them instead, may they quit their jobs and SLACK OFF!
I think there are multiple reasons here...
Most of the countries named have an actual infrastructure. EG I doubt Romania, Russia, Hungary, the Czech Republic have electricity problems.
Many of the Eastern European countries are not that far away from the Western markets, with some actually joining the European Union.
All in all it just makes for simpler business....
Funny though... (in an ironic sense)
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
What percentage of the contributions made to the OSS community are effectively made "for free"? While I approve wholeheartedly of the concept of open access to the source code, and the idea that once I've bought something, I can do what I like with it, the fact that the industry moves more towards no cost software makes me wonder what the job prospects are going to be in the future. Is there a better model of providing the freedom of source code while not devaluing the effort required to produce the software? I know support contracts work for some people, but is there a better way of rewarding all contributors directly for their input?
...and in other news, Unemployment hits 9 year high
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
Yes, its called OpenSourceania
__________
Love conquers all... except CANCER
India offshore tech support companies may soon face job losses as U.S. companies such as IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and PeopleSoft explore countries with even cheaper sources of technical labor, including Romania, Russia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. American employees hopefully won't lose any more jobs than they have already; but it kinda sucks for the Indian employees who are going to be out of work now.
The biggest problem with a global economy is that it caters to the lowest common denominator. The second biggest problem is, you more often than not get what you pay for. I have to wonder if American IT companies are even concerned with the quality of their technical support anymore?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Kill or be killed. Always has been and always will be.
You can't tell the RIAA to change its business model without by being prepared to do so yourself. Be flexible and keep with the times.
__
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Many of these awesome IT and software development jobs are turning more to be like mechanic jobs. Sure you need some training, but just about anyone can do a half-decent job. Half-decent enough for someone to hire you for pennies in a foreign country!
--------
Free your mind.
> explore countries with even cheaper sources of technical labor,
this kind of thing haunts most developers - and, every company out there who needs to get something done is always seeking for the smaller cost/quick solution for all their projects. its also become common that a lot of developers are lowering their rates just to get work - its not looking good at all..
meanwhile, i perform consulting services - and, i simply refuse to budge from my standard rate for employment. they pay a little more - but, they will get what they pay for. i have had many clients do development in india, then, come to me - and, for a little bit more they get the product faster, of higher quality - and, are very satisfied.
the sooner these companies realize cheap labour has its down-falls, the better of they will be.
A quote from the original Wired article...
Farhat Gupta, owner of several Bangalore call centers, said that little attention is paid to technical training, as "all the answers are always on the computer screen in front of the workers. We exist for people who do not want to use the Internet themselves to find their own answers."
The only time I ever call technical support is when checking the manual and web doesn't get me the answer. If the person on the other end of the line has no more information available to them, what's the point?
The almighty pound sterling too...especially for call centres. I'm not sure who really benefits from this trend long-term, apart from the people who get the jobs overseas (they're usually quite well paid compared to their fellow countrymen/women). The customers hate the thought of talking to someone thousands of miles away, so Indian call centre workers are taught British regional accents and given Anglicised names. You can fool some of the people some of the time but...
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Personally, I think the multinats are on to something. They're cycling through countries, creating artificial "boom-bust" cycles in employment.
Take for example, the automobile industry. In the early 1980's, the US auto industry had some of the highest wages/benefits for auto manufacturers in the world. Alot of those jobs went overseas to Japan/Korea who (at the time) had lower wages (and better quality). This depressed US wages. Now, the reverse is true. Both German and Japanese automakers see that US wages are lower and have located plants here.
So goes it with IT. US coders were first to the trough and wages went up. Then the multinats moved to India who trained their people well and had low wages. Indian coder's rates go up and now the multinats are headed for Eastern Europe. As tech wages get lower in the US and we refocus on quality, the multinats will move coding operations back here and the cycle with start anew.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
"Now I get paid to pretend I am American -- it's wonderful"
-Pretend to be out of work then.
I have a hard time believing that Hungarian and Czech Republic IT should be cheaper than Indian. But then, the original article did not dtate that either.
>Is there a country were people will work for free?
What about Irak? After all, these guys have been "liberated". They have the chance to share their useless oil ressources with the US ; they could work for free in exchange.
Warning: this message contains some flaming content
Does Russian Vodka count? Seriously though, this is interesting as it's always fun to see the current King Of The Hill get booted off by somebody who works harder or cheaper than the current "King". Honestly, I'm not going to feel too bad for anyone in India who loses their job because of some big company's management decision. All I can say is, "Welcome to my world, Assad."
On a side note, at least in the gray-to-blackhat community, the Russians and company have definitely made their presence felt from what I've hear/read/seen/dreamed.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
'It's hard to know where it will all end. Is there a country were people will work for free?'
It all ends when USA employees begin paying to work at companies based in India.
Now, the surprise on so many faces - "how can they do that to us", "how will our workers eat?", "We have so much labor, and they are moving operations to some backwater 3rd world country" ... will now be coming from New Delhi instead of New Jersey...
When your business consists of undercutting others, and providing services to willfully "outcompete" someone out of a job, don't expect pity.
As a piece of advice I once heard goes: "If you are stupid enough to date someone who dumped someone to be with you, don't be surprised when you get dumped, too."
meh
Elbonia, lovely Elbonia
Once one company gets their employees to go along with a heath care cost increase or a salary cut, the other companies will rush to offer just as low pay and benefits. They call this "competitive" compensation. So if the jobs can be outsourced for cheaper, then the majority of businesses will all race to find where that is. It happened with manufacturing jobs, it is happening with service jobs. I don't really know what (if any) jobs are "safe."
Also, don't think this automatically translates into lower prices. It doesn't make the products better or less expensive, just cheaper to make. How much in lower prices do you pay for your Nike tennis shoes made in Burma?
Face it, corporations are in the business of making money, if they can reduce their costs by taking jobs elsewhere, they will do it.
Not that this is a bad thing, inefficiencies are weeded out, and companies can continue to make money.
Plus, the outsourced country benefits more than the whiny liberals care to admit. These jobs pay more than the local average, treat their workers a hell of a lot better, and boosts their economy.
So as a whole, this is not really a bad thing, except for the people losing their jobs. This is the free market at work.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
"It's hard to know where it will all end. Is there a country were people will work for free?"
Hey, live by the lowball, die by the lowball. Why would tech be any different than shoes or clothes? I just hope they don't start using child labor. Could you imagine Mike Dell going over to the Phillipines and giving kids doing his tech support cash out of his pocket?
"Trainees typically watch dozens of American movies and TV shows for the first week to acclimatize themselves to U.S. slang and accents."
As employees gain exposure to the US' consumption-based society, this could ultimately work against the employers who count on keeping the salaries low. Heh, following that reasoning, all we have to do to start bringing the jobs back is open a Macy's or Niemann Marcus in Bangalore...
You're starting to think like Microsoft now.
Be afraid, very afraid.
__
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I have a friend who runs a small computer business. He wanted to outsource to India, but he found them too expensive. Almost as expensive as hiring locally (Canada) or the US. On top of that, they seemed to be playing games that made him feel like they'd try to screw him later on in the project with unexpected delays or costs. In the end he hired a team from St. Petersburg. They gave him a solid quote upfront, have demonstrated excellent abilities and communications skills, and delivered what they promised on time.
nevermind.
(Or: In Soviet Russia reflexive action goes undisturbed)
In Soviet Russia undisturbed goes reflexive action?
Whatever...
"Is there a country were people will work for free?"
Yes, such a country exists. However, to be part of this country you need to have a big needle stuck in the back of your head and your whole body gets submerged in Astrolube. Your then stored in this "pod" where this "dream" of your life is pumped into your brain by a big computer.
Now, in this dream your actually answering the phone and solving technical problems and you only "think" your getting paid for it. In real life, that money is getting collected so that more people can get plugged into the machine to make them more money...
There was this dude who realized it was a dream and managed to wake up. He now cleans the floors in the building that holds all the people and the big computer. We hear him wanding around go "Damn Red Buritto..."
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Don't you love corporations?
It's not pretty, but this is what globalization and capitalism is all about. As people get more prosperous and affluent, they're less willing to work for rock bottom prices any more. Others undercut them and take their place in the food chain.
Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes a bad thing. It brings economic development to poor parts of the world that can do things better and cheaper. It allocates resources very efficiently. But it also creates a lot of instability and waste of resources at the same time. Look how fast the jobs can be created -- and eliminated. And what happens to the people who used to have those jobs. And do you notice how the countries that take the shittiest jobs often end up with polluted environments as a result?
Someday, I hope we will come up with an understanding of how we can balance efficient economics and social good.
Let's look at a few trends:
- Automatization leads to fewer and fewer workers being needed to do the same amount of work, meaning higher profits for the producer.
- Outsourcing leads to those workers being paid less and less , meaning again higher profits.
- This, in turn leads to higher unemployment rates and a higher number of workers with low wages.
- While any individual company might profit from cost-cutting measures, wide-scaled implementation of these measures will lead to too few consumers with enough money to buy the products.
- Thus, to keep the system going, those profiting from it - the producers - must eventually give back enough of the profits to keep the whole thing going, otherwise the distribution of wealth will be too uneven to allow the system to work.
(If you happen to be immoral, other possible ways to boost the economy would be forceful destruction of goods and/or workers, which would a) create the need for rebuilding the destroyed goods and b) lower unemployment, because after the destruction there'd be not only more work but also less workers left. This process is commonly known as "war".)
Looks like Buddha is *not* smiling down upon the Hindu children.
Why don't you take "World Religions 101," then come back and post.
This
Mexico, Taiwan, and Korea now have "expensive" labor. So they outsource manufacturing to Malaysia and the Philipines.
This doesn't mean that work will stop being moved to India. Look at manufacturing. As late as the 1990s some European manufacturing companies (BMW was one) were shifting production to the US to save on labor costs. As long as a countries wages are lower than somewhere there will be companies willing to move production to that country.
The key elements are infrastructure and a skilled workforce. As long as a country can provide these at competitive wages, that country will be an attractive target for companies that want to save money.
As for where it will end, that much is rather obvious. It will end when wages have more or less equalized across all areas with equivalent infrastructure. My guess is that this process of reaching equilibrium won't take more than a couple hundred years.
The most interesting thing (to me) is that "third world" countries now have a tangible incentive to invest in quality educational systems. When the work being shifted across the globe requires technical knowledge, there must be a high quality system in place for producing skilled workers.
The other interesting question that arises is where the US will fit into this new situation fifty or seventy years down the road. It seems to me that the only US jobs that will be secure in the not so distant future are those that require a warm body on site and those that require security clearance.
that country exists w/o borders; immigrate today!
who'd you think stitched your sneakers?
Why do people think cheap outsourcing is bad, while the GPL is great?
Especially when GPL's goal is to take away programmers jobs(at least the high paying ones).
Yes, there is - Burma!
Then a few years later, along comes NAFTA and now Mexico offers lower taxes, lower wages, and fewer regulatory burdens. So the companies pick up and move south of the Rio Grande, and these Southern cities are shocked that these companies have no loyalty to their new Southern US homes.
In a race to the bottom, no one wins but the few at the top.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I'm very surprised that the United States continues to outsource. Especially after 9/11. it will be
pretty easy for anyone to bury a "back door" into
the code they are contracted to write.
Lot's of features get lost in the language translation and coded ends up getting rewritten.
If I was a CEO of one of the large companies mentioned I would rethink my outsourcing.
I'm all for open source, but when it comes time to develop applications for Government agencies.. we should employ American Citizens.
The posting says
"Is there a country were people will work for free?"
I think this is misleading. Other countries have lower salaries because the living cost are cheaper. In Argentina (at least in my town) you can dinner out in a fancy restaurant for 2 people, for 20 pesos, that's 6 US$ (in the US, you just get a Mc Combo for that money).
Most families in Argentina lives with less than 5000 US$/year.
The only problem is the imported goods, they are priced in dollars and tends to have higher price.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
Before people start complaining about more people overseas taking jobs, let's realize that this means more people in impoverished jobs having access at better jobs. They may not be getting the pay they deserve, but they will be getting paid a lot better than many of their fellow persons. That better pay in relativity means they will be able to give themselves and their families a better standard of living, which every human being on this planet deserves. This is the goal of free trade, isn't it?
If we've been smart (this is slashdot, right?), we've been saving money to help us through tougher times. More jobs will always be created.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Yeah, those Indians sure are living the high-life financially at the moment.
__
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Elbonia!
This is even better, now you can get even more developers for the same price, or the price for Indian developers will be cheaper. It's a win-win situation for you.
Yes. They're doing it now. But not for long.
Even slaves get food, shelter, clothing and medical care -- which is more than a lot of tech workers are getting these days.
Someone will figure out that slavery is a superior system to the current con-game and also figure out a way to use the military against their own populations to enforce it. I think its already started in privatized prisons and their prisoner-labor programs and the exploding rate of incarceration in the Unted States -- however they really do have to figure out what to do about the prisoner rape problem before they can be considered good massah's.
There are alternatives of course, but they require revolution.
Seastead this.
The history of the textile industry, I think, gives a pretty clear indication where the future of IT is headed, particularly due to the big trend of American corporations to outsource to India over the past few years.
The textile industry, at least what I consider the modern, industrialized version of it, began in and generated considerable wealth for England. Then, with the promise of cheaper labor, the bulk of textile manufacturing moved to the Americas, specifically the Carolinas, Georgia and a few New England states. The total generated wealth of the industry started to decline at this point, and another disturbing trend started as well. The distribution of the wealth began moving to a smaller percentage of people, namely the factory owners. Again, the prospect of cheaper labor induced the factory owners to move the bulk of textile manufacturing first to Mexico from the United States, then to the Far East from Mexico.
The important things to remember is that the total wealth generated by the textile industry declined with each geographic hop around the globe, and that fewer and fewer people got a larger and larger percentage of the total wealth of the textile industry.
How does this relate to IT? Well, considering that in the late 1990's we saw a mass movement of IT jobs for the US to India, and the associated wealth generated by the IT industry decline, I think the example of the textile industry is playing out again. Soon, the Indians who offered such low labor rates to win contracts and jobs away from American workers will be on the other side of the equation.
Russia, Eastern Europe and probably some African countries will do to India what they have done to America. The sad thing is that while India has been "carpet-bombing" the IT industry in the United States over the past few years with cheap labor and low costs, ultimately they've been laying the ground work for their own, future demise.
If all you offer is low costs and a cheaper price, then there is nothing to keep customers loyal. As soon as someone else comes along with a cheaper price, your customers will move to them. All because of the trend you started!
other than
1) Supporting the likes of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein by castrating the CIA
2) Raising taxes on successful productive people and giving the money to lazy welfare bums
3) Groveling to race hustlers and poverty pimps like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson
To some degree the former colonies of England and America will always have an advantage. These would be mainly India, the Philipines, and South Africa. These countries hve people who learned English at an early age and understand US/UK business habits. Jobs such as customer relations would work best there. Even software development involves a lot of communication. This is possibly why India seems to have beat China and Japan.
For support desks that offer a quality of service agreement (e.g. calls will be answered within a certain amount of time and questions will be answered correctly within another certain amount of time), calling the help desk could be faster than reading manuals and searching the web.
There's no country where people will work for free - which is why we'll all be better off in the end. India has already moved up in terms of salary, and now Eastern Europe will get the same boost. As jobs overseas become more expensive, they'll move back to the US and Europe.
End result? Everyone's richer. That's what gloablization is all about.
jason
Yes, it's called China: Forced prison labour.
though majority of articles points to the price advantage, these countries provide good people (*disclaimer* - i am living in one of the countries mentioned.) though people may not know, companies are starting to put their r&d in these countries (most do not even know where products have been developed and you'll be surprised where it started from.)
aside from the lower price good quality labor, there is also better manufacturing for products that need to.
good and bad? i don't know the short, medium, and long term effects. well find out soon.
my 2 c
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
Outsourcing is a threat to us all. I would suggest that we modify a Chicken-catching machine (talked about in this thread) to gather up all of these outsourcers into a cage.
They can then be driven around for awhile causing them to becoming disoriented, then be safely and humanely released into the wild.
Bock bock bockYeah, right here. The USA. I'm not kidding.
So many tech people get layed-off that there are people willing to work on projects for no compensation (or to secure a future position when the market turns around) just so they don't lose their edge.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
This is interesting. All I need to do is figure out how to work for free, and still make money.
I think the only way to do it is owning a business, and selling stuff. Fruit stand!
...
Singapore's GDP per capita is US $24,700. India's GDP per capita is US $2,540. If you want cheap labor, you don't go to Singapore!
people want high-quality products as cheaply as they can get them. Period. If a company can get a similar service for a cheaper price in another country, it makes them that much more competitive. If the company's new workers make cheap, substandard crap, people won't buy it, and the company loses... so you can't go too cheap.
Also, don't overlook the fact that these moves often benefit the workers in the host country. Their people need jobs, and the industry needs people to do those jobs. Now, I'm not polyanna... you do have to look out for sweatshop-like exploitation... although just defining exploitation can be tricky (particularly if we apply western standards to a third-world subsistence-living standard).
It's all about efficiency, and the market is driving this. Naturally, you non-capitalists may disagree...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
It's a nice theory but you forget that equilibrium may never be attainable. Skill and knowledge starts in a location just as it did with all these industries for autmobiles, programming, etc.
So the cycle we have today, will be the cycle we have tomorrow, or hundreds of years from now, just with different industries, different technologies and different products. You'll benefit from the countries establishing better infrastructures, but did you really expect some countries to continue their civilizations on candle-power? The employment cycles and people wallowing in corporate migration-mires will continue. People will always be subject to the fear that they will lose their jobs to outsourcing. Infact it will be easier and faster every time as corporations establish a base of operations in all the potential countries, and have accumulated experience from making these shifts.
One place will always be better than another, in the eyes of a profit-seeker. Making these evaluations and determining the best choice is what executive decision makers get paid big money for, isn't it?
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
Sorry. A google search for "programmer from afghanistan" turned out blank, so there is no hope.
and I do not think hugarian IT workers are cheaper than the Indian IT workers, to the contrary. One of the problems my coutry is facing currently is that the workforce is not as cheap as a few years ago. Many corporations plan to move towards east (Russia, China, etc) if the situation does not change. I think the same can be said on the neighbouring countries, too. Workforce in the eastern block is not as cheap as it used to be.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
I have had the experience of talking to Dell tech support recently...it was a nightmare because the guy was hard to understand and very short with me. It seemed very much like a cookie-cutter, move-em-in-move-em-out operation, and I was left very irritated. Oh did I mention the tech support was in India? Just a few days ago, I had an issue with a Quantum DLT tape drive. I e-mailed their tech support, and got a number to call. I instantly got a guy with a German accent, but who was nonetheless entirely understandable. He was extremely polite, and walked me through the procedure to re-attach a tape leader on the drive. He was patient and even gave me 5 minutes to go get some "known good" tapes. I cannot say I have ever experienced such wonderful tech support before. It's what it should be. I'm not sure if the guy was in Germany or was just German. Irrespective, that's what they should be concentrating on...customer satisfaction, not how cheap they can get some guy to thumb through a trouble tree.
This doesn't surprise me, though it's happened a bit faster than I expected. Then again, that is sort of the point I was going to make . . .
A global economy and global communication accelerate things. The ever-increasing need for IT accelerates people seeking new products, ways to support old products, and development of new projects. Throw these things together and you have a recepie for change and unpredictability - and a chance for uniformity at relatively quick speeds.
The Outsourcing Raget can't go on forever, and my guess is this is part of the last hurrah (or next-to-last) hurrah for Big Outsourcing Moves. At some point all potential markets will be explored, competition and increasing need will affect prices and skills, and you'll probably end up with the bizarre situation of a global market where IT resources seem relatively alike. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw it in ten years.
I work for a company that tried outsourcing and got burned horribly (last I saw, 50% of all outsourcing projects fail). Ironically, they found that good organization, hiring good people, and careful cost containment actually saved them money over outsourcing's total costs. They hired more people (at very good wages) and ended up coming out ahead.
Outsourcing has its place. But my guess is the enthusiasm for it will dip in time, because the speed of change will create homogenization.
Just my theories.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
I have commented on this before to the people on slashdot promoting free trade. I told them that this was not about helping the people of India, and as soon as they got too "uppity" the corporations would drop them on their face and move somewhere else. See, folks, this isn't about helping out poor countries, this is about making corporations rich. It's not about exporting capitalism, it's about importing a 3rd world standard of living, which is why so many people around the world are against this. It's about making a market place, a product out of entire countries, whose populations are shopped by corporations, much like individual slaves were shopped for in the early United States. The message in return being sent to Americans isn't,"Thanks for helping us get to where we are.", but instead was, "Other countries are out-competing us, you better start working more hours." Of course, what they don't state explicitly, is that you are simply competing with another branch of your employer in a different country.
Had to be said. I'd love to have Peter Sellers support me with my HP proprietary built in problems... if only!
I went to battle MC Escher but drew a blank
Funniest /.-referential post ever...
Which ones are they?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
What's the hubbub here? Outsourcing is outsourcing. If Company A needs workers, it's going to find them. Perhaps they want someone that can drive into work every day, or perhaps they're fine with someone overseas. Once you reach the "overseas level", does it really matter where overseas they came from?
Also, consider this. We (the US, other nations using a particular region for manpower, etc) are building up an infrastructure and a skilled workforce in a way by creating demand for workers in that area. The area becomes known as a hotspot, wages (and usually the standard of living) rise, all is well. Then it's on to the next area that provides "cheap" labor.
And it's not just overseas where this happens. How many US companies are based in DE or NV because of their tax laws (no, this doesn't relate to actual labor but it does have to do with business decisions and where something is based).
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Oh well, truth can indeed be funnier than satire.
that is funny, not offtopic, what is going on here?
Come, be fruitful and multiply.
Just don't quit your day job where you ask "Do you want fries with that?"
An increasing percentage of tech support/consulting work is just finding stuff online. With deja and mfg KB there just isn't any reason to do it the hard way anymore. Customers expect you to perform as efficiently as possbile and the online route is normally it. It isn't a substitute for actual expertise but it is a great adjunct.
In 2000 I was recruited by Sapient from another 'nt' consultancy. They got me by basically pouring money on my head till I said yes. (Those were the days, huh..) When I got there I found a confused company going in nine directions, none of them with any passion.
Except one: India. Sapient had opened an office in Delhi (even though it seemed like the bulk of tech work was in Bangalore) and sent a few US consultants there to set up shop.
Their strategy was to hire from the top 5% of Indian tech graduates, and as usual, pour money on their heads till they said yes (which came to about $12,000 per employee, far in excess of typical tech wages.)
Sapient looked at this offshore work as the way to save the company, and soon began focusing all their attention on "India."
I blatantly called it sweatshop coding and found the sales pitch offensive. "24 hour development cycles! We code while you sleep!" was the big pitch. Of course they had no answer for "But doesn't that mean you sleep while we are doing business?"
I wrote an email to the CEO(s) expressing my disgust for this Nike-like behavior, and predicted any benefit would be short lived as China and other countries became even cheaper. They then would be forced to again relocate to a cheaper country, or lose contracts to systems integrators who moved into these cheaper countries.
In return, Sapient closed the entire Media and Entertainment division stating "media has no digital future" and went whole hog into the tech sweatshop business. They also gave a few hundred US coders an awful choice: move to India with a pay cut, or leave the company. Most wisely chose to leave, as did I.
Usually I would be pleased to be vindicated by the even cheaper labor markets coming online and making Sapient's Indian enterprise too expensive to sell, but in this case, I know it will put more fellow US techs out of work and projects will be outsourced to countries where trying to speak to someone who wrote the fucked up code on your monitor is an exercise in Babelfishing.
What I'd like to know is, when do Neiman-Marcus consulting firms finally admit they have turned into WalMart?
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
The world economy has become global, but labor organizations haven't .... maybe we need world wide labor unions so that companies can't get labor cheaper anywhere because all the worlds programmers, etc, are in the same union.
'It's hard to know where it will all end. Is there a country were people will work for free?'
is there a country, errr..., planet where food is free and woman/girls/chicks can look
after themself?
p.s. is your PC running nuclear?
On an amusing sidenote, I don't buy $120 dollar nikes made in burma for $3. I travel to India about once a year so I buy good "export quality" leather shoes made in India for about $5, and pay $20 (aprox 4000 rupees)
Is there a country were people will spell right?
One of the horrible things about the global economy is that it makes labor essentially a worthless commodity, since the amount of supply far exceeds demand. Due to anti-competitive pressures, new businesses aren't forming to soak up excess demand for cheaper products. Therefore, a few select corporations profit immensely, while the population of the rest of the world gets treated like slaves. But, hey, I guess the word "free" is in "free trade", so therefore it must be a good thing.
How about this:
As globalization move from silison valley to India to eastern Europe to beyond, leaving a trail of broken dreams which is 90% of those people who were "enriched" and are now looking for jobs. The only 10% who are still getting rich are the execs, the investors, the, surprise, surprise, people who are rich to start with and can absorb any short term misfortune and will only get rich in the long run.
BTW, mod me up as well since my analysis is as good as the parent's.
Cheers,
e.
First, let me say, I'm not a racist - unless H1Bs count as a race. I've known my share of Indians in the past. I've got no problems with Indian doctors, lawyers, astronauts, ice cream salespeople, whatever job you wish to insert here - as long as they're citizens of the United States.
.50 Action Express rounds.
You might say I'm anti-globalization. Not quite - I simply think that a country should take care of its own first, then worry about how the rest of the world fares.
H1Bs? Line them up and shoot them. Although - even I might question, would I not consider it if I was in their situation?
Better idea - line up the managers and executives whining about the lack of skilled labor and have them shot. Repeatedly. With
Lack of skilled labor in the US? I think any reader of Slashdot can tell you otherwise. Sure, there's seas of MSCEs who don't know their ass from a bit bucket out there. They're usually the ones all starry eyed and dreaming of dotbomb salaries. The rest of us are sitting around, barely able to find jobs at *fair* wages. (IE, a wage which one can *live* on.)
Yet, CEOs of random companies are still getting million+ dollar bonuses. Go figure. Yeah, no wonder there's no money to hire programmers from the US.
Not so far away. call them "slaves" and you find the spirit of the moder capitalism at the root of the American heritage
but my call center name is Sanjay...
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
Finland?
This is one of the little problems of modern Capitalism, and one you normally won't hear in Econ 101 at ANY university.
To explain this, I will have to use a few examples that may appear to be offtopic, but please don't mod me down without reading the entire post... I swear there is a method to my madness.
The Classical theories of economics on which Capitalism is based were developed in the 19th Century, when capital was basically land and labor had much more freedom to move about. The theories therefore are based on models with immobile capital and highly mobile labor as basic premises.
Here's the part that might look off-topic, but I swear it's not...
There's a great physics joke where a physicist comes up with a way to increase the productivity of cows. When he goes to start his presentation to interested dairy farmers, he starts with "assume a spherical cow." The hilarity (for physics nerds like me, anyway) arises from the physicist's work being sound, but being based on a model that has little to do with the real world.
The theories you learn in Econ 101, unfortunately, suffer from the same problem. The derivation of conclusions like "mutual advantage" (capital and labor naturally find an equilibrium with mutual advantage for both) is perfectly valid, but based on premises that have nothing to do with today's reality.
Specifically, in today's world, capital moves at or near the speed of light through cables or even through the air and through space as transmitted signals. Labor, on the other hand, has been immobilized. In the 19th Century, it was easier to migrate to where the jobs were (in the same region at least-- I recognize that transport has advanced a lot) than it is now. Today, it is difficult to cross national borders, especially to work, unless somebody is intentionally turning a blind eye to SOME migration (an example is California, where agriculture depends on illegal immigrant labor-- if the farmers had to pay Americans or legal immigrants to do the work, most of the fruit and vegetables produced in California would be prohibitively expensive). Labor is therefore basically locked into cells from which it is difficult to move. Capital can therefore play the labor in different cells against each other.
So if the workers in the US start to get uppity and demand things like vacation and health insurance and decent wages, capital, basically free of the restrictions on labor and capable of traveling REALLY fast, can simply move to Mexico. If the Mexicans start to demand things like decent working hours and limitations on pollution, capital can simply jump to India or Vietnam. When wages start to rise there, capital may decide to move elsewhere, and that's what's starting to happen to India now.
The result is obvious: the conclusion of "mutual advantage" is based on a no-longer-valid premise (highly mobile labor and immobile capital). When we consider the correct premises, we quickly reach the conclusion that there is very little to prevent capital from taking TOTAL advantage of labor in today's world. And we see that happening.
A solution? I don't think you'll like it if you're American, but try to think as a member of the human race, not a citizen of a country that has certain advantages that it maintains by force when necessary (reference: "War is a Racket" by General Smedley D. Butler, one true and ignored hero from American history). The solution would be to try to return to a state more similar to the premises on which Capitalist theory is based. I don't like giving governments more power, so I won't suggest restricting the movement of capital. But if the world were to simply open all the borders and let people live wherever they want, we could move closer to the situation where "mutual advantage" really obtains. In the short term, yes, it would be relatively bad for some, and there would be some over-migration to places where there is currently work available (or just the perception that work is available). But eventually, I do believe Capitalism could work much, much better for the great majority of the people on Earth because of the restoration of balance between capital and labor, permitting "mutual advantage."
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
After talking to some of the foreign tech support folks, I really believe that there is some pointy-haired boss somewhere looking at the call time numbers and marvelling at how low they are, not realizing that people are hanging up because they cannot understand what the heck the tech support person is saying.
It's economic darwinism. Of course it exists. Of course it's our basic instinct -- it's how we are in our most basic form in all facets of our life. No one is saying it's an enlightened philosophy but it is truth. An inherent truth in any society that is going to get ahead in any terms. It's just that instead of it being a personal darwinism (I kill another human being because he threatens my superiority) it's in a more macro scale -- Company A undermines Company B so that they can stay ahead.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Just get High School kids or prisoners (kinda the same thing)... they will work for free. The High School kids / prisoners would work for free with the promise of being hired at some later date -- but there's nothing that says you have to pay them a lot when you in fact DO hire them, or for how long... it could work!
stuff |
I'm amazed at how many people think wealth is a finite sized pie that gets cut into thinner and thinner slices. Wealth can be created and value added to products and services...these poor countries which are taking U.S. jobs in the near term will become business partners and part of a growing world economy in the longer term. The situation is hard on the U.S. for now, but in the longer run we'll have more markets, and more suppliers. The countries which win in this process will be those that have great education, allow free thinking and innovation, and have a good infastructure to move information.
I've been unemployed since graduating last summer and I'm now working for free to gain some more experience and so I dont look like a lazy f**ker to any prospective employer.
The economy really sucks right now and the worst thing is seeing the guys you went to highschool with making decent money in there cushy union protected jobs, while all the time your working away for nothing with huge ass student loans.
Seriously, in the future prisoners will write code. As companies look for cheaper labor, this is the inevitable conclusion.
Just imagine, prisoners are paid little or nothing for their work and can be easily penalized for poor quality. Imagine getting say 3 months added to your sentence for every bug! Or how about extra conjugal visits for software that sells a million copies. I could go on and on!
I wish this was just a joke, but I see little that could keep this from happening in the US or anywhere else. And few companies or consumers would care.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
This should surprise no one, really. How is this different than any other technological revolution? The US invented the automobile, and made them better than anyone else in the world, because other countries didn't have the know-how or the resources. Once the other countries caught up, they could do it cheaper than we could because of cost of living, etc. Steel industry?same thing. Clothing manufacturing? Same thing. We may be trail blazers, but we suck at trail maintenance. Labor unions aren't the answer. They are, in many cases, the reason we can't compete in manufacturing. Maximum pay for minimum required work of minimum required quality. I'm not fishing for a flame bait mod. My point is only that this is, according to history, nothing new.
It's called the USA.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Don't get me wrong here, I love open source software - I have delivered several products using Apache/MySQL/PHP, have used gcc and emacs for 15 years. However, I was interested in how can the people that invest the incredible amount of work it takes to develop and maintain these products make a living and still find time to eat and sleep ? Surely not all of them write Nutshell books ... When I started working full-time (around 1989), many software developers got paid to develop the tools that are currently downloaded for free. Now, that of course is not the optimal way to be productive, but with no revenue being generated from this product, it is being developed on the backs of the companies paying the wages of the developers that are spending some of their company time to do "extra" work. I would appreciate if those of you who have considered these issues before clarify this for me, or perhaps point me at some information.
Are there any reports of people who move to different countries to follow their job?
It is just an odd idea.
If I sold my home, I'd be debt free and quite capable of adjusting the relative costs of living. I figure it is much harder when you move your debts to a location with a lower cost of living.
IMarv
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
This was always the case. Once you have a model perfected you could move it anywhere. Indian companies are quite aware of this situation and they are doing whatever it takes to stay in business including starting the companies in aforesaid Eastern European countries.
Also when you look for quality and aspects such as CMM level 5 - there are not too many countries that offer that advantage. So for the next five to 10 years Indian companies have an edge that they will have to sustain beyond those years - aka China and manufacturing since the 80s.
I run a company in Holland that just does this.. leverage eastern Europe to achieve similar cost levels but better control and quality. Budapest is a 1.5 hour flight from Amsterdam and is in the same timezone. Don't forget, these are the guys that during the communist era were reverse-engineering western technology. I have NO idea why companies continue to develop technology anywhere else.
First of all, Nike is a NAME BRAND. Its SUPPOSED to be expensive. Its a quasi-luxury product. If you want cheap sneakers you can surely find them. They just won't be called NIKE. Some people seem to think that Nike sneakers are a product needed to continue living.
Second, prices HAVE come down for a lot of goods. Cheap new cars, cheap computers (remember what computers used to cost just 5 years ago?), cheap DVD players...etc.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
It is fine if jobs get outsourced, but the SCRIPT readers should Speak English, and have technical knowledge besides the script reading ability. Sorry Habib, Anwar, Nazir... such is life.
A lot of R&D in the midwest and south is going to Mexico. There are a lot of well-qualified engineers and professionals in Mexico and the locality and timezone make for cheaper logistical support costs and responsiveness. Also, Spanish is relatively easy to learn for us gringos.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
after all .. they started out by taking our jobs !
I am getting sick and tired of /. crowd of crying babies - oh all the IT jobs go overseas, oh I cannot find job with nerf guns anymore, oh I actually have to _compete_ with someone else for this position.
Wake up and smell the reality -
Dotcom crash was just a correction
Now, just like always, business is about making maximum profit out of minimum investment.
Foreigners grab US IT jobs because they ARE for grabs - US edu system cannot produce capable talent fast enough
Keep yourself on the edge, learn new stuff: enterprise Java, dot Net, whatever and you will be allright no matter what.
I entered the market in 1994. I have never been fired or laid off. I always stayed ahead of the curve and quit the moment company was no longer satisfying my personal goals. I maintain very comfortable income and can live wherever and drive whatever.
To be able to do so, I spend roughly $2000 a year on computer books and code outside of workplace for at least 20 hours a week: open-source projects and my pet ideas. I use advanced technologies for those so when time comes and this particular technology is finally adopted by the mainstream I am ready to apply for those jobs and have experience with new stuff.
So watch, listen and learn and outsourcing will not be a problem not in your lifetime not ever.
Posting as AC because of the location I am at right now.
I fear I can't completely agree with this. There are too many cases where an organization, be it corporation or government, really does exhibit behavior that's different from its constituents. Look at an organization as a sort of life form built out of people, just like people are life forms built out of organs and cells, etc. Members will do things "for the organization" that they just wouldn't do on their own, or for themselves.
IMHO, there is a real difference here.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Sorry, had to get that off my chest.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
First, many blue collar jobs went...now IT jobs...what can be next?
...
There are millions of other jobs remaining that we can outsource overseas to help our companies cut costs and increase shareholder value.
Why not outsource other jobs such as legal research (searching for precedence, etc.), industry/market research and countless other jobs that don't have to be physically executed in the USA?
Executives and marketing/sales folks might be safe for a bit but after the bulk of the employees ship overseas and with other countries (i.e. China & India) having MANY more consumers--and eventually businesses--than us, won't it be best for their companies if these jobs ship out?
Obviously, it isn't feasable to ship all the jobs overseas but I wonder what percentage of existing jobs here in the USA can "safely" be outsourced to Canada, Mexico, UK, India, China, etc. 10%? 25%? 33%? more? And how much shareholder value can be extracted from this before they need to shift investments overseas?
What jobs are the best candidates to ship overseas next? Accountants? Analysts? Laywers (only small percentage go to trial--most draft/review contracts, etc.)? Middle management (if the people you manage are all overseas...)?
And how will this impact our economy (higher unemployment, etc.)? Our government (social security, etc.)? Our national security (brain drain, etc.)?
Why is Singapore included in the list? It's a tiny island-state: you can see the entire coastline from the air. I suppose IBM can buy the entire island to staff one of its minor divisions (I'm kidding!). It has first-world living standards, so that would be the last place I would look for cheap labor. Sure, they speak English, but so do most Americans. About the only advantage I can imagine is having a 12 hr timezone difference is handy for tech support call centers.
First of all, there is a country where software is free, it is called "Free Software" and "Open source". Good huh?
It doesn't make sense to outsource outside of your economical region. If you don't want to pay the working force, where are they going to get money to actually buy products? I am baffled that so few look at the economical aspects of this whole ordeal.
How much work can be outsourced offshore if offshore outsourcers often overtake the outsourcers offshore?
can they join techsunite.org now?
No Matter Where You Go, There You Are.
Indeed there is a country where people work for free! Not just one, but two!
Sourceforgeria and Freshmetialand.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
All those years learning Hindustani, so I could understand the tech support guy, down the drain. Who the hell speaks Czech? At least Hindustani is the third most commonly spoken language in the world.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Put your college hat back on for a moment, and remember the Signals and Systems course...
Think of an economic cycle as a simple oscillator. As long as we had loosely-coupled economic systems in various nations, they could go through their economic cycles somewhat independently. Even better, the loose coupling acted as damping to calm down the ranges of cycling. Things only get REALLY bad when the cycles coincide and/or badly influence each other, like in the 1930's.
Enter "Free Trade" and globalization. Instead of multiple independent systems with damping, we have one bigger, more complex system, and who knows where the damping is. How do you make this giant mess stable, or at least limit the swings?
IMHO the creation of a giant, undamped, unmodelable mess is the real downfall of globalization.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I sometimes mention that parts of India wouldn't
be so bad, if you had a reasonable wage for that part of the world. Move the target to Prague, and I start to wish I could go there with or without a tech job.
Yea, the big corporations move on, but what is left behind? A bunch of money, and a bunch of skilled workers. This isn't a sneaker factory we're talking about here; this is a skill that is still very much in demand.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
We have projects that simply cannot happen without using off shore labour - the business case just doesn't work. In fact we have found that while they are cheaper, they aren't that much cheaper, and there are sever problems (timezones, cultural, communication). Bottom line: we use outsourcing to make things happen.
I work for Accenture Technology Solutions. And one thing Accenture did to compete with outsourcing is to outsource their own work to their own subsidiary(Accenture Technology Solutions). This saves everybody money because ATS developers are cheaper than normal Accenture developers. So the clients happy because they save money, Accenture is happy because they keep the work local, and I am happy because I have a job ;-)
Your comment defeats itself. If a country can undersell India, it is likely that the income from GlobalCorp, Inc. will have a greater impact for good there than it had in India.
I *personally* saw a group of Romanian engineers designing car parts for an American company. They were getting paid $400-$500 per month. You might say it's deplorable to do that. What if I told you that the average Romanian income was $100-$150 per month at the time? All of a sudden it's not so bad.
The point is that they are not getting paid as well as an American, but they are better off than the alternative, namely leaving them to struggle out of their bad economy on their own. In fact, barriers on trade actually *cost* third-world countries $150 Billion/year.
Free trade proponents *don't* claim that GlobalCorp, Inc. is doing it out of the good of their heart, as you imply. The point, in fact, is that they are *not* doing it out of the good of their heart, i.e. they are being rationally motivated to produce more efficiently. I agree with the sister post here that said that moral considerations sometimes play a part (i.e. products of true slave labor). However, we will not get rid of poverty until we reduce scarcity. Encouraging efficient production is part of that process. Where would we be now if machines didn't replace many factory workers? We would probably be working in old factories, with much lower standards of living. (Efficiency has made life better for those who still work in factories today.) In the end, how else are these countries supposed to escape poverty?
Boom Shanka
Foreigners grab US IT jobs because they ARE for grabs - US edu system cannot produce capable talent fast enough.
Wrong, lots of capable talent in the US, the talent just wants more money than the foreign outsource shops cost. Do you understand free market economics? Price point is everything. You sell yourself cheap so you never get laid off. I cut out the middle-man and contract directly with the customer reducing my market price-point and have more offers for work than I can service. Foreign outsource shops have lower labor costs so the work gets bid to them.
How lousy does your software have to be for India to say, "wow, I dont want to waste my time on this, let's outsource it to some other third world country and just keep the $50 bucks difference"
Actually, they are. Remember that currency conversion works some magic for companies. One-third the dollars in India affords a comfortable middle-class existence.
I have a friend in Pune who works as a QA guy, as does his wife, and they own two cars, a house, and work in a brand new office building that sports an indoor pool and gym. in other words, he lives like any one of us might.
Poverty is down to about 25% in India, and what the West would consider a middle class is growing exponentially. This is still a *huge* amount of extremely poor people, but it's a *huge* improvement over the ~60% poverty that existed 30 years ago. Unfortunately, it's just an inevitable that a huge divide exists between the extremely poor and this new class of tech-type professional there. Don't think for a minute that the tech guys there are some sort of 3rd world sweatshop workers.
It'd be like if they exported tech jobs from San Francisco to Indianapolis, and then assumed the Indiana workers were living in squalor because they were making 25% less than their west-coast equivalents. It's just a whole lot cheaper to live there. (analogy might be bad, but you get the point ;-) )
I want more outsourcing! In fact, I want companies to start outsourcing managers, exects, QAs, designers, and accountants. I want those people to feel the results of unemployment and I can't wait to see guys in Armani suits bitch about it! Why? Because I want them to feel what thousdands of American IT workers feel right now. I want them to wonder about all the years they spent in college, all the loans, morgages, families, kids and their future. This is how I feel whenever I start cutting out coupons and wonder if I have enough money to pay my rent this month.
Until the issue of foreign labor hits the hightest steps of corporate ladder nothing is going to be done. The funny thing is that if outsourcing is going to continue at this pace, pretty soon we'll end up in a world where only a few people will have buying power. Both American and foreign workers will not have capital; just watch the world's economy go down the crapper.
has outsourced most of its heavy development to the indigenous people of some small Pacific islands who work in exchange for shiny glass beads. The sharp rocks, spears, and pelts haven't really helped our e-commerce site much though, but you can't beat the price.
Dumbass.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Is that anything like automation?
Sean
I was just wondering where you got that information about Romania's minimum wage. I would be suprised if it is really what you say. When I was there (admittedly four years ago), the average monthly income was below $200/month. I've heard from others that things have not improved much since I left. Just curious.
Boom Shanka
We have been turning potential clients away for the past two years, all of them American clients too. Of course we are a level 5 EM certified shop with all our algorithms promised to run at Olog(n) or better. We promise or your money back. We do better work than most American shops at a fraction of cost.
These shops are peoples who only have maybe high school education and no learning on the high level programming technigues so it makes sense for those people to lose works. And the same thing will happen in these other countries where peoples find out it really isn't that hard to program and then you get more competition and the price goes down and the work goes somewhere else. You have to be the best if you want to survue and make a buck in todays global market.
Funny how Frank Brooks book The Mythical Man Month talked about this 20 years ago and it's still true today.
All the best,
--Achmed
Swaribabu Consulting Inc. -- We code so you don't have to
Per capita GDP in Russia is something like 8x that of India (8k according to the CIA factbook). Not enough people in Vietnam speak English for this to ever happen on a mass scale etc...
Please donÂt.
Overall, I believe this has been characterized as a race to the bottom. Economics -- meet entropy!
One of the largest problems I know for a fact that IBM has is the time zone conversion. My company works with IBM and some of the work on our application is done right in India. It's really difficult to get answers to questions regarding interfaces when there's such a huge time difference.
Still, we are based in another country (Canada), but we're only an hour ahead of eastern standard, so it is nowhere near as bad.
This is from a really high up "bird's eye view".
What separates the low per capita income countries from the rich countries ?
Answer : Industrial goods. Rich countries have long had the advantage of selling industrial goods to other countries which don't have them.
Why do rich countries get richer and poor countries get poorer ?
Answer : The enabling capabilities of mass production and economies of scale severely limits the capabilities of poor countries to compete in selling industrial goods. In other words, third world countries can't sell and produce cars because the market is already full of American and Japanese cars (ok, and quite a few European ones).
And typically, poor countries have agriculture-based economies. In order to get vital foreign currency, they have to sell agricultural products and compete with a lot of other poor countries selling the same thing. There are no economies of scale in doing farming.
Except when mechanized farming is implemented which is beyond the reach of most poor countries.
Indeed, the rich countries also compete in selling agricultural products and win big because of mechanized farming. Factor in the rich countries' government's direct and indirect subsidies.
Add to this the conspiracy of "Development Aid" to poor countries by the rich countries which have "strings" attached that basically prevents the poor countries from investing in industrialization programs.
Getting back on topic, what is happening now ?
Answer : Migration of labor. The huge differences in standards of living has finally reached a point where corporations could gain competitive advantage by moving their operations to poorer countries (very obvious).
Why is this happening ?
Answer : a)Education. Poor countries have finally built their education infrastructures that enable them to be globally competitive. From my observation here in the US, people only take collegiate level education when the ROI is good. In other countries, collegiate level education is normal. Everybody who could afford it gets one. b)Stiff corporate competition.
What is the effect ?
Answer : There will be a leveling out. Think about the excesses of the 80's and the dotcom boom. Those will be no more. Poor countries that will be able to take advantage of this labor migration will obviously benefit.
However, for political and cultural reasons, the businesses and jobs that have higher value added will still remain in the rich countries. On the other hand it remains to be seen if the rich countries' labor sector could withstand the job losses. Their governments should find a way to soften the impact do avoid economic collapse.
All these seems obvious. It's the invisible hand !
It is just trimming the excesses of purchasing power that have existed during the 70's, 80's, and 90's.
Indians competing with each other and Chinese competing with each other will keep wages down for all but the most skilled and experienced Chinese and Indian, there is no pressing reason to go outside these huge developing buckets of cheap labour. I am trying to facilitate
offshore outsourcing to Belarus and Russia, from Ireland, but the Irish companies or divisions of American companies in Ireland are not interested enough - yet.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
I am having a hard time understanding what is bad about this cycle. The jobs move away? In America, they were replaced with higher-paying, higher-skilled jobs. The distribution of wealth became less even? Even if that is the case (and there is a lot of information disputing that), the *overall* standard of living became significantly higher. Just because a textile worker wasn't making as much as his boss doesn't mean he wasn't making more than before he got the job.
The example from America's history is proof that India did the *right* thing. Look where we are now in average standard of living compared to the rest of the world.
Boom Shanka
Low rate when converted to US$$ != FREE
Assuming an Indian IT worker gets paid 20k Rs a month, it may not sounds like much when you convert it to US $$s(400$). The value of the $$ relative to the rupee is tied to the value of good and services exported by India. As India exports more software, the value of the Rupee will go up relative to the $$. Whereas 1 $ gets you about 50Rs today, it will get you 30Rs in the near future. OTOH, American produced goods that cost 1$(50Rs) before will now cost 1$(30Rs) when sold in India. That means more American products sold in India. That means jobs for American workers.
...and the best example is Microsoft. In fact, I never understood why Microsoft doesn't open an R&D center in Romania.
Given the number of Romanians it employs in Redmond, it is not at all clear that it follows the lowest-cost argument. Someone can explain?
Russell A. Gerdin, the CEO of Heartland Express (HTLD), apparently believes - silly Gerdin - that the company shouldn't screw its shareholders as a matter of fundamental policy. Imagine that! Sorta bizarre seeing THIS in a proxy:
Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Gerdin receives a base salary only, with no bonus or long-term incentives. The Board of Directors recognizes Mr. Gerdin's substantial responsibility and contribution to the Company's operating performance, operating margin, revenue and net income growth rates, and attainment of Company goals, as well as his large stockholdings. At Mr. Gerdin's
request, his salary has remained the same since 1986, and he has never been paid a bonus. The Board believes that Mr. Gerdin's salary is reasonable compared to similarly situated executives, and that as a holder of approximately 40% of the Company's outstanding stock, Mr. Gerdin receives an incentive through appreciation in the value of the Company's stock. Because of Mr. Gerdin's request, the Board of Directors has not considered or approved an increase in
annual compensation or any incentive compensation for Mr. Gerdin. Thus, corporate performance directly affects Mr. Gerdin, but not through his compensation by the Company.
What did they say? A holder of 40% receives an incentive through appreciation of the stock? What an incredible idea!
But wait - several of the company insiders got stock awards last year. Just terrible, right? Well:
On March 7, 2002, Russell Gerdin transferred 90,750 shares of his Common Stock to key employees, including 40,000 shares to the named executive officers. Shares distributed under the award generally vest over a five year period or upon death or disability of a recipient. Unvested shares cannot be sold, assigned, or transferred and are to be forfeited to Mr. Gerdin in the event of a
recipient's termination of employment.
Dropped a nuke? Hardly.
You talk about reciprocity as if it has no downsides. From a game theory perspective, perhaps that's true. But it's ludicrous to treat a problem "solved in game theory" as something that's painless and easy for people in the real world. When jobs are lost, people's lives get destroyed. Families starve. Welfare rolls increase until they can be re-trained and brought back into the workforce, during which time workers have the pain of wasting months or years of their lives trying to re-establish a new life. Economic transition is never simple, and rarely in real life does everybody win.
Moreover, just because a country can grow and supply us with picked bananas better than we can pick them ourselves doesn't mean that everyone there wants to pick bananas. It doesn't equate to a higher standard of living for the banana pickers, because the country with the power to change its market - i.e., the United States - can purchase from another country that is willing to pay its workers less.
While the United States and Britain were struggling painfully through the Industrial Revolution, we eventually made a choice - as a society - that there had to exist certain minimum standards of quality of life. We implemented a minimum wage and safety standards for equipment because too many people were dying without them. It was a fantastic economic situation for the producers, because they could set their own wages, but we very quickly realized the toll that it takes on the average worker. Now, other countries are realizing this, but to raise the standard of living it lowers their attractiveness as a labor market, and... boom! All the money is gone. We, as a world, have to choose to raise standards of living. The market alone has no incentive to do so, as the Industrial Revolution proved - everything that happened, happenened because of protests, because of social activism, and ultimately, because of legislation.
I'm not a socialist. But I hardly think that unfettered free markets are the answer to all the world's problems. If you, as a consumer, are looking for a higher standard of living, corporations will never grant you one of their own free will. Perhaps there is a particular game theory which states that they should. Unfortunately, corporations are not always rational, and are rarely playing the game for the long term.
I don't know much about the whole situation, but consider:
Serious Sam is considered one of the most fun games of late. It cost $20 at the store. The developers are all in the former Yugoslavia. The cost of living in Yugoslavia (and living wages, etc) are *tiny* compared to the US. Not only do they not have to sell a lot of games to make an equivalent amount of money as they would if they were based here in the US, but it proves that there are LOTS of creative and talented programmers elsewhere who can produce QUALITY work and still make a good living for themselves. Personally, I love seeing other countries offer up their best and brightest, it ups the bar for the rest of us. I like the competition!
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
They cost Americans $50B/year and the third world $150B/year. See here.
Boom Shanka
You do know that Saddam did all of those awful things, like gasing his own people before the first war. Why wasn't that a good enough reason then?
/. more than once and haven't encountered some variation on this lame joke from south park. Sure, the episode was funny, but as a slashdot joke, it's played. seriously played. Even by slashdot standards.
Ask the UN. They preferred to give saddam another decade in power.
Local taxes support the infrastructure of the city that I live in. State taxes support my state. I don't believe that every cent that I give in taxes - as an American - goes to all "welfare bums". Obviously you have little respect for your fellow Americans who may be in a lower tax bracket than you. Do all of us a favor and please move to a different country. Right now. And take your friends, too.
Welfare recipients do not pay taxes. They do not pay property taxes, they do not pay state income taxes, they do not pay national taxes. Yet they receive a living from other people's taxes. I understand that sometimes people need a little help, however I fail to understand how 'a lifetime of subsistence living paid for by others' is *help*. My problem is not with *a* welfare system, it's with the *current* welfare system. I also believe that people *should* contribute to charity, but that doesn't mean I'm going to propose legislation that not only forces them to, but also specifies the amount they must give, and to whom it will be given.
Also something people need to realize: we only have about half the people in the country paying taxes. How low will that number get before the despised 'rich' who are now paying the vast majority of actual tax dollars decide to go somewhere where they don't have to subsidize the same ratio of people? We have an interesting phenomenon in this country: we all want to have more money, but anyone with more money than us is evil. Of course, I don't see *any* prominent politicians living in habitat for humanity housing and giving every last little bit of their money away. In fact, I was told that one of the senators from WA was 'a great man' because *once a month* he invited a homeless person to dinner. Wow man. Once a month you bring some poor homeless guy into your mansion, and let him have a taste of what you get the rest of the time, then send him back outside. That sure is a 'great man.' Think, people. Politicians don't care about you. They care about your vote, and spending your money. If wealth redistribution is such a good thing, why are the Kennedys still so freaking rich? Not that redistribution would work. If we took every bit of money and property in this country, and distributed it exactly equally to everyone, do you really think it would stay that way? Giving everyone in this country the same amount of money would not make them exactly the same.
Also, I see a lot of this 'aww the rich get a bigger tax cut! that isn't fair!' Well no, not if by fair you mean exactly the same for everyone. But if by fair you mean that the people who pay the most in taxes get the biggest benefit, well...shouldn't they? Here's an example for you.
Let's say I'm out to dinner with some of my friends, and when the bill comes, I can only pay 10% of it, bob can afford 30% of it, and bill gets stuck with the 60% remaining, plus tip. Now say we get a 30 dollar refund for bad service or food or something. Do we split it evenly, three ways? Of course not. Bill gets 18 bucks, bob gets 9, and I get 3. How would it be fair to split it evenly, when not everyone contributed equally?
I'd also like to point out that the tax cut we're getting isn't the one Mr. Bush proposed. It's substantially smaller. If it isn't helping enough people, perhaps you should look to the libbies who killed the larger tax cut.
3) Makes absolutely no sense.
I can't believe that you've read
Just one last question for you. How long did you actually serve in the public sector? You seem like such a giving individual that g
http://xkcd.com/386/
It should be illegal to do what these companies do.
If you are an US company, be a US company, or leave. Go away and do business in the cesspool of your choice.
These offshore support places can't be trusted with personal information, they will screw you.
They can't speak English well enough to be understood, and they are too stupid anyway to understand how anything more advanced than a cow or a mud hut operates, god forbid them consider understanding something like a computer..
GREED is why jobs are leaving the US at the speed of light. Only the big wigs at the very top of the food chain get rich by screwing everyone under them. Then when it begins to catch up with them they cash in their options and head for the border.
GREED... Nothing less than pure greed......
I wish I knew of a place it was available online, but if nobody knows of such a place I'd recommend that you buy the book. It's excellent.
Greed is the foundation of capitalism.
It is how supply balances demand. And how demand balances supply.
It is the invisible hand.
Perhaps Indians will now stop calling Americans who complain about the rampant outsourcing "racist". Sweet.
It's all about a bandwagoned race to the bottom. Every laborer on Earth is (or will be) affected, and it's _not_ good for anybody.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Of course the point isn't to help them -- the companies want to make money. But it does help them anyway, which is why all these people are tripping over themselves to get the jobs rather than saying "fuck you, keep your jobs." It results in quite a bit of money leaving the US and being paid to non-US workers, which results in them having more money than if US companies didn't hire anyone there.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Those two particular examples, saddam and osama- were supported first and foremost because they were and still are business partners with certain very high level politicians and their associated international corporations, and I'll include most nations central level "intelligence" and "police" organizations as way more corporate mercenaries than what they attempt to pass themselves off as. They are part of the muscle for these various crime cartels. It's a sweet deal for them because they get paid at BOTH ends. They get paid-usually by confiscated tax dollars once you follow the economics around-to create these problems. Then, after the problems *mysteriously* get out of control, they get paid to go in and "fix" them. Lather rinse repeat, they've been doing it a long time because it's a huge global scale sized political and economic scam that works, and it works fantastically well. Take it back an entire century and research it, see who the major funders were of the various sides in ww1 and 2 for more examples. You'll find out it was a lot of the same people-orgs/cartels/dynastys really-who funded all the sides in various ways. They've been laughing at the rubes (how they see most of us and how we are treated and conned) who keep falling for it, for generations now.
This is overly simplistic and simply untrue. The problem India has is that their value proposition is cost based "do same for less", or "do a little-bit less for a lot less".
There is nothing inherently competitive about their business model, their infrastructure nor their location, that would make them more or less suitable to run your IT business at.
It is this why they may very well loose out from where they are now.
However this doesn't mean it has always to be this way. Might I remind you of Japan for example (though other examples exist), Japan rebuilt itself from scratch. It used to be that, "Made in Japan" was a trademark for "crappy cheapo products", but Japan Improved - infact, Japan improved itself soo much, it was mimicked all over the world by the "expensive" countries (quality circles and Kaizen, anyone?)! By improving its quality, the value it offered increased, by extension, the productivity of its workers increased and therefore the wages and economy strongly improved. The disruptive nature whereby you take the market by storm from the bottom and move up is well documented in The Innovator's Dillemma, and applies here (Innovation != Technology only).
The big question, moving forward, for India is if they can create a sustainable competitive advantage -- one that is not soo easy to replicate? Perhaps local expertise, perhaps Indian development tools, perhaps elevate their education & know-how to and beyond Western-world levels (have an Indian institute be the frame of reference for top-notch technology, instead of today the MIT).
Right now I'm reading The Competitive Advantage of Nations, the original reason for reading it was so I could understand how the high-cost countries could still doodle in technology while countries like India undercut us so much, but it'd appear India may soon be needing the same type of thinking.
Exciting times ahead for observing bystanders.
- India: $2540
- Czech Republic: $15,300
- and desperately impoverished little poor Singapore: $24,700
If companies are relocating out of India to these, this is actually proving quite the opposite -- it's not enough to just look at the salary per employee, you also have to consider infrastructure, efficiency and quality. And even those American dinosaurs may be able to compete!Cheers,
-j. (who outsourced himself to Singapore and got a pay raise in the process)
The entire point of free trade is that it's supposed to equalize wealth between nations by destroying protectionist markets (including protectionist labor markets as well as physical good markets). India's workers have a much lower wealth than American workers, so free trade tends to equalize that by propping them up at the expense of Americans -- the Indians move up and the Americans move down, and eventually they meet somewhere in between.
I'd submit that the main problem with this is that the American workers like being richer than the Indians and don't want to be equalized. There's a lot of bitching about corporate greed, but what it really comes down to is that even if we redistributed wealth from the US to India perfectly so that the companies got none of it, it'd still piss off the American tech workers in the exact same way.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"Is there a country were[sic] people will work for free?"
Yeah, many of them. Haven't you heard of Open Source?
Don't work for the corporations for free. Support Open Standards, not Open Source.
Well that's the question, isn't it? Maybe some corporation should buy up a bunch of land someplace nice, put a commune on it, and start offering living space and internet access to people willing to work for free. You can keep the rights to anything you write on your own time... Well, obviously some details have to be penned in. But this seems like the ultimate living situation for coders who feel that being paid for software is immoral. :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Labor supply is indeed far in excess of demand. But your solution seems to be to corner off small portions of labor and exclude the rest so that these small portions of labor remain in demand in their protectionist markets. What this amounts to is making these people "in demand" by relegating some people to an "even less in demand than before" ghetto where they can't even be considered for employment. In short, if the average free-market wage would be $0.75/day (making up numbers here), your solution increases the wage in some countries to $100/day at the expense of decreasing it in others to $0.10/day. Which is pretty much how things are.
But you claim this is justified?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
We Trade for Imports
Yes, we do trade for imports,....
Unilateral Free Trade
This is a joke, the aim of our corporate government is not to get imports into the US, but to get our corporations into their markets, which is why they only trade with countries that trade with us.
Ok, it seems like the two quotes are contradicting each other. By "we" in the first statement, I mean the people of the US. In the second statement, I am referring to the corporate government, whose motives are different, IMO. There are also two kinds of imports, which I didn't necessarly make clear. There are intra-corporate imports, which is what corporations want, and their are imports that come from foreign companies which is what the rest of us Americans should desire. The reason we want the latter, is because foreign companies will typically return more of the profits to that country, which will mean higher wages for countries we trade with, which means more consumption by that country and more money flowing back into the American middle class. Intra-corporate imports means lower wages, and the profits get returned to that company and it's investors, who will simply hoard that money.
Most calls to call centers are from people who haven't bothered to read the manual, or didn't understand it. It's basically an enforced "RTFM," only they read it out loud to you over the phone.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Most people don't get rich just to have a big bank account -- they get rich so they can buy stuff. The money eventually gets back into the economy, though it may take some time. When you buy a yacht, go golfing, buy first-class plane tickets, build a beach house, buy three cars, and so on, that's supporting jobs all over the place.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Yeah, that's called "slavery" and it's now illegal. However, that doesn't stop the neocons in power now from helping their cronies seek it out. Ever wondered why unemployment is so high?
Irony: Conservatives bitch and whine about welfare, unemployment, and the like, but they create it by paying poor wages, sending jobs overseas, and wanting slavery to come back. IT'S THEIR FAULT!
I benefit from being able to buy German beer, Japanense video games, French cheese, Canadian video cards, Turkish tobacco... Shouldn't people produce and sell what they can do best? If Indians (or Romanians) are efficient at producting software, more power to them. The economist Thomas Sowell does a good job of explaining why different countries are good at different things.
I remember some years back when there was a local uproar about a Home Depot being built in Auburn, California. The big complaint was that Home Depot is a Georgia based company. Folks didn't want their California dollars going out of state to those Georgians all the way on the other side of the US. The cost of living is cheaper in Georgia. Buying things from Georgians is a "race to the bottom". Only buy things made in your own state... no, your own town... no, only things you make yourself!
---
"If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another." - Milton Friedman
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
Open source programmers and their viral GPL are slowly destroying the value of our high quality, patriotic, made in the USA software like Windows and SCO Unix. I think the only solution at this point is, through legislation, to restrict access to compilers, debuggers, emacs, vim and other software tools to God fearing American corporations. Home PC's must be registered with the government, and it should only be legal to run the IE web browser and that Army game on legacy PC's. This can be enforced with random spot checks. All new PC's must not include hard drives, (indeed hard drives will be classified as a munition and not available to the general public) and really can be nothing more than dumb terminals with a web browser hard wired into the firmware. God Bless America! Remember your motto citizen! "For AOL, Microsoft, God and Country!"
You need to check with the department of redundancy department.
Concerned that outsourcing might be outsourced from India in the near future, a Bangalore call center owner said 'It's hard to know where it will all end. Is there a country were people will work for free?'
Yeah, that's what you get for stealing our jobs bitch. Now you know what it feels like to lose your job to someone who will work for 0.35 cents an hour.
I hate to be a grammar freak, but the reference to "they" in the posted story could be Novell or SCO. Each interpretation means exactly the opposite. While it wouldn't make sense for SCO to disclose an amendment that gives Novell ownership, that requires reading and thinking about the story, which we all know won't happen here.
Representation is needed in both the source of the work and where the work is done, international contract enforcement between non multinationals is difficult, so once an arrangement has been established there is a large barrier to expanding into new legal and business practice terrirories, until the current resource has been over utilised.
Ireland may be an example of a tapped out resource as it is so small, and already has so many multinationals getting work done here. India and China are not overly utilised, tapped out resources.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Any company that states that it is a World Class company producing a World Class product at a World Class price is really saying that it is a cheap company making a cheap product at slave wages and reaping maximum profits.
"Offshore Outsourcing Threatens Offshore Outsourcing"
Just like "Saddam Hussein used his weapons of mass destruction to destroy his weapons of mass destruction."
When I was spending time in the Philippine's several years ago, I had an interesting talk with an elected official in one of the provinces. He was discussing why developing countries had so much trouble becoming richer. They attract companies because of their low wages but if the wages start to go up, the companies simply relocate to a poorer country. How to break the cycle, he didn't know and I sure don't. The third world being kept poor to support the West I suppose.
As long as you pay my mortgage, my water bill, my phone(s) bill, my cable bill, my car payment, my beer habit, and a reasonable per diem for the following (but not discounting futher additions)
1. Prostitutes
2. Vacations
3. methamphetimine
4. computer hardware upgrades.
A few facts:
:)
* If you lose your job in Romania, the goverment pays you around $150/month in unemployment, effectively setting a minimum wage.
* The average salary is about $200/month - but that is the average, skilled and non-skilled.
* The average skilled salary is about $50-$100 higher, depending on discipline. Example: an insurance actuary, a person who computes premiums, gets about $300/month. That same job in the US would get about $60k, minimum, and requires advanced mathematics degrees.
* Many Romanians have gone into business themselves to increase their earnings.
* As of last year, any kind of bandwidth aside from modem access was horribly expensive, with T1s costing over $10k/month, payable in US currency or Euros.
* Romanian women are just amazingly attractive as a group. Not totally on topic, but I can certainly understand why Western businessmen would want to prospect there
The bottom line: it isn't cheaper to hire a Romanian over an Indian, and their English is less likely to be acceptable.
So... it is likely that the corps are doing this as a way to avoid a spike in salary inflation in India - a negotiating tactic.
jonathan
Japan is hardly in the running for a low-wage callcentre or similar; it's one of the most expensive countries in the world, with higher wages than most of Western Europe!
They are more likely to be the customers of such services, and the owners of the multinationals doing the farming out.
-Chris
I hope you are not overlooking the fact that India has the most CMM level 5 software companies - perhaps thats *also* got to do something with attracting foreign companies apart from "cheap" ? hmm? Just wanted y'all to keep that in perspective when discussing this, thats all...
I totally agree about the attractive women. The whole time I was there (2.5 years total) I was amazed at how many of them were so beautiful. Also, I knew an American businessman who had married a Romanian he met while over there. Beutiful country, beautiful language, and beautiful people. Let's just hope the economy gets beautiful too!
Boom Shanka
It was only a matter of time before India got screwed too. All the free traders have it wrong. The race to the bottom simply creates new third world countries- the U.S. will be one soon. Only the French have it right- the businesses that had the opportunity to become successful in France keep their jobs there. Does Michael Dell think if he was born and raised in India he could have created the same company he has today? Unlikely. US businesses need to show some loyalty to the workers that made them so successful in the first place- AMERICANS !
I can't do all your homework for you. It's obvious from reading your post, that you really don't know much about the stance of the far left, and have heard alot of bad information. You really need to read and understand the viewpoints of others to refute them. My suggestion is that you go to these sites and do some more reading. If you have any suggested reading for me, I'll be happy to take a look at it.
. coms t.com/ChomskyArchive
www.zmag.org.
www.parecon.org
www.motherjones
www.thismodernworld.com
http://www.monkeyfi
http://www.motherjones.com/
There are many others, but you really need to see for yourself. Don't allow anyone to think for you, make up your own mind.
Where people write software adn give it away for free and bring down copanies that make money selling software... so they can lay off a lot of paid software developers and use the OSS with a few tweeks and make money out of the free software. So the software Engineers can become just like the Mussicians with MP3.
This is how the world will look for the next fifty years or so. Formerly, markets and labor pools were isolated from one another by transport and regulatory barriers, with the result that standards of living could vary wildly from one part of the planet to another. Now, the barriers are low or gone, which means that the places with lower-priced labor are pulling jobs from higher-priced areas. Of course, this decreases the econonmic level of the former and increases the latter, causing wages to fall in the source country and rise in the sink country. Let this process run long enough, and the whole world will have roughly comparable labor pools working for roughly comparable wages at a roughly comparable standard of living. If we're lucky, we'll get everyone at something close to the current "first world" standard; if not, we'll get a straight averaging of the current world situation.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
The logical next step is to make the move from coding to architecture. It takes nearly a decade to go from being able to code in a computer language to being able to fully understand and accurately model business processes in a computer language.
Modeling in an open way using tools like UML and ORM are important. Also, the choice between when to use a component and when to roll your own. When to loosely-couple, when to not.
As web services come together, new opportunities in choreography and workflow are going to be big. Messaging will continue to be important. Finally, keeping up with the 'buzz', reading up on AOP and SOA.
My point of all this is that outsourcing doesn't have to mean lost jobs. It means adapting to the new global market. Of course, if you're thinking that architecture is boring and what you really want to do is code, then that's fine too. Just know that you are going to be competing in a very price sensitive world.
I like my standard of living, and don't want to be equalized with the third world either. But I don't pretend it's all about corporate greed and whatnot -- it's just about me liking having a good standard of living.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
OK, maybe. I always dance a fine line between xenophobia and America first. But I have to admit, America first usually wins. I used to date a guy from Italy. He was born here, but not his parents. You want to know the biggest America first guy I ever met? Him. He was always asking questions about why America did not protect itâ(TM)s jobs, or citizens any better. He was the strongest protectionist I ever met (and I was a poli sci major!). It made me think that if this guy who dropped out of high school to become a successful Chicago businessman saw it, was I maybe missing the forest for the trees? I understand that globalization can ultimately benefit all (in theory), but you have to protect what is yours. The US was once the leader in this industry, no more. Why the outcry? â" Because this is NOT news⦠- because unlike the textile industry, this affects white-collar jobs. Which is what for the past 50 years we have been selling the youth of America as the penultimate. But we canâ(TM)t do that anymore. And my final question is, how many people go shopping with their conscience? DONâ(TM)T buy Nike, donâ(TM)t buy from sweatshops. Hey, I can shop at Velocity and be both cheap and picky. Put your money where your keyboard is. and btw, I am a coward. It's a pretty tough crowd here.
er, ValuCity. damn spell-checker!
Look at two scenarios:
Bush's "fascist" solution (nasty word with nasty connotation; I use the word merely to point out that it's something a government is doing by force, rather than a market) is to use the tax system to micromanage the economy. We're lowering the tax on dividends while keeping the tax on wages high. I guess the idea is to create an artificial market force, whose purpose is to make you want this: be a producer. (But the principles that you outlined, show there is already a similar force, from a different cause.) Put everything you can scrape up, into the stock market. Then quit your job, because government doesn't like people having income from non-dividend sources, so we penalize it (relatively more, I mean).
Of course, it totally sucks if you work for a living and don't have assets from your dad, Bush Sr, to invest. But if you can go with this flow, then maybe it's not too bad.
Anyway, my fellow Americans, here's the scoop: If you get W2s at the end of the year, you're fucked. If you get 1099s, you're not.
There are some external costs that aren't properly accounted for by free trade, particularly environmental and political issues. However, I think even if that were all taken into account, we'd end up with a very similar situation -- the fact is that most of the world has a far lower standard of living than we do, so without protectionism this will even out somewhat, which will result in evening them upwards and evening us downwards. Basically if you were to pick a sustainable minimum wage that's uniform for the entire world, it'd probably be in the range of $1/hour (if not less), which would represent quite a wage cut for western workers (but a significant wage increase for most of the world).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"Indian call center workers receive meticulous training before they are allowed to field tech support calls. Farhat Gupta, owner of several Bangalore call centers, said that little attention is paid to technical training, as "all the answers are always on the computer screen in front of the workers. We exist for people who do not want to use the Internet themselves to find their own answers."
Bullshit on many levels. These sript readers have little technical common sense. Anything that deviates from the script sends them into a tizzy!
1)
Tech Support "Sir , my name is Robert, thank you for calling HP, how may I help you today?"
User "There is smoke coming out of my Pavilion"
Tech Support "I need you to get into CMOS and tell me the settings sir"
2)
Tech Support "Sir , my name is Robert, thank you for calling HP, how may I help you today?"
User "This PC gets no power, it will not turn on"
Tech Support "I need you to get into CMOS and tell me the settings sir"
3)
Tech Support "Sir , my name is Robert, thank you for calling HP, how may I help you today?"
User "Windows tells me there is no modem installed"
Tech Support "I need you to get into CMOS and tell me the settings sir"
4)
Tech Support "Sir , my name is Patricia, thank you for calling HP, how may I help you today?"
User "There is smoke coming out of my Pavilion"
Tech Support "I need you to get into CMOS and tell me the settings sir"
This is NOT funny, but real calls I have placed to HP as a representative of a reseller. The names have been changed to protect the owners of the call centers. Remember Bhopal?
"We exist for people who do not want to use the Internet themselves to find their own answers."
Again bullshit, you call HP on your your dime, for the most part long distance to a North American area code and you get Bangalore India, you get put on hold for 20 minutes and often get no real help. Most of our returns lately have been generated by customers trying to connect to the Internet, but cannot. They call the 208 number, and get long hold times before they are answered, and most of my American customers simply return the PC to us. They will not deal with outsourced people at all. Hey they did call an American company at an American area code.
HP/Compaq need to wake up! IBM also. IBM is the best at tech support, but... when customers get someone with a thick accent on a tech line, they begin to question their purchase. There are many "Buy American Only" folks out there in the land.
Finally, when you call tech support and you get a speil about how most of the tech questions answers being able to be found on the Internet, it makes the customers shit bricks! Most of the customers are having boot, modem or internet connection problems. They really do not give a shit about the Internet UNTIL they can access it.
Words to the wise! Listen up HP !
Not only do you get cheap labor, but your "business trips" can be to beautiful and historic eastern europe.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I used to work telephone technical support, and I know from experience that it is EXTREMELY difficult to troubleshoot problems over the phone. It's both dificult and frustrating.
I've grown out of the telephone tech support many years ago and now I'm an occasional user of it. I tell you there is nothing that compounds the frustration and anger of having to troubleshoot over the phone than having a language barrier.
I can't tell you the number of times that I've gotten someone who speaks broken english, or whose english skills are barely adequate - and I wind up "talking too fast" for them to understand. This is not to mention the cultural differences.
Companies like IBM and the like will soon find that customers will start avoiding their products & their company in general because their tech support is considered "Rude" or just plain difficult to understand / talk to.
Getting cheaper labor does not mean that you'll ever be able to match the quality of work/support you can get from another Red Blooded [North] American.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I am Apu's screaming child who cannot eat because someone from a central-asian ex-soviet "republic" can do my job for 5 cents an hour cheaper.
A firm's goal is to maximize profit. This cannot be done at the most efficient levels if money is paid with regard to social justice. Yes, we all have different assumptions on what social justice is. Regardless, I don't think that anyone should have to work 12 hours a day building many items that are worth more than a year's wage only to come home to high infant morality rates, a mud hut and malaria. Mod me as troll if you wish, but fuck everyone who thinks that poor-ass countries should stay poor in order to continue our unsustainable lifestyles.
Your premise is misguided. Not all Corporations are out to screw everyone. Correct. "Corporations" are out to make money, whether they screw someone in the process is inconsequential to it, that is unless, again, it impacts them getting money.
Individuals in corporations who make decisions may or may not be out to screw everyone. That's up to the individual and his/her psychiatrist.
Remember, corporations aren't people. It's what our legal system leads you to believe. People still make decisions.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
I don't know about anyone else, but I would gladly pay more to have support for my product based out of the U.S., Canada, England, etc. - assuming they'd actually hire someone who could speak fluent (and understandable) English. Hell, I don't care where they base their support, as long as they give the reps a speech test!
More and more these days, I call a vendor and get connected to someone that I have to deal with through email in order to understand them - and I understand accents very well. That's not such a big problem if I don't have an urgent problem, but an extended conversation via email is not feasible for a complex/urgent problem.
Maybe when people get tired of dealing with unintelligible support personnel, they'll vote with their dollars and we'll start to see some jobs move back to the Western Hemisphere.
Five Dolla Moddy-Moddy?
I'm hungry and I want to eat! As much as I'm glad that people "over there" are getting jobs, I'm very unhappy that the employers in my country won't hire me, their own countryman.
It's easy to be idealistic when you are living off the graces of yor parents generosity. Wait until you have a mortgage to pay and children to feed. Your attitude might change a bit.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
There are 4 kinds of independent issues here...
1. Quality of technical support
Technical support depends on the training given/individuals. Don't rate it based on the accent(as long as its reasonably understandable).i.e don't fault support coz that guy/gal has a 'thick' accent.
There will be some bad support based in the US and some good support based in India.
Quality of service differs from company to company. I hv seen US companies whose call centers are not outsourced but they still suck bigtime.
2. Outsourcing of jobs
Don't blame/fault/curse/rant about Indians getting "your" jobs. Blame the corporate executives who decide to shift jobs overseas(for whatever reasons). Read next point for why Indians are not to be blamed for 'taking' your job.
3. Economy issues
US has been pursuing a strong dollar economic policy. That means, if someone is willing to do your job at half the salary *in* the US, they can be blamed for (undercutting you)/(selling themselves into slavery).
But for an Indian half your salary would pay off *very* *very* well, not because he/she is so desperate but because everything is so very cheap there. Why is this? Due to strong dollar policies and other issues.
My perspective:
Globalisation has 2 faces.
Stockholders in the US make merry as Coke/Pepsi/McDonalds etc etc reap in the profits from India.
So why rant now when the other face is playing against your interests?
Fight against corporate greed, not against other people like you, coz they too have to make a good living.
PS: most of the posters seem to get very confused and mingle all above issues into one and come up with strange conclusions.
...zips up asbestos suit...
;)
Offshore resources don't sit and read slashdot all day
Therefore, the fact that these jobs are spreading out is caused by the fact that A. The U.S and other countries currencies are overvalued and the same standard of living can be bought for less in a country with undervalued currency or B. The people living in these lower wage countries have big families to provide for and not so great living conditions and would really like to move one step up the standard of living ladder which means moving the person who lost their job in the high wage country a step down on the ladder. Of course with comparative advantage this is not always a zero sum game.
This is all a big process of equalization of living standards that takes place once people started embracing free market economies and free trade a bunch of years ago. The only thing that makes any difference now is immovable capital like infrastructure and the quality of the legal system.
How else do you support those executives at the top that produce nothing of substance
(and sorry folks, "business decisions" are not items of substance) yet pay these guys
a Mil a year and up? They sit on each others Boards, upping each other's compensation,
all enjoying the cash flow circle jerk.
There's (at least) three ways; theft, lawsuits, and slavery.
The theft happens in places like manipulating the stock markets and shuffling around
nonexistent commodities like Enron, or something as simple as lobbying the government
to allow usury rates of >30% on credit cards, or allowing state-run lotteries and casinos.
Or, if you're thinking big, invading another country on false pretenses to steal their resources.
The lawsuits we are seeing with SCO are a good example of the second method. Granted, it's
one corporation taking from another in this case, but the cost of that will be passed down to
consumers or compensated for with unemployment because of less working capital. That
expense rarely impacts executive compensation, which is preserved at all costs.
Money moves around, yet produces nothing of substance. Maybe this really belongs
under theft, because that's what it is.
And then there is slavery. Sure, these people don't work "for free". But even in the US's
past, the slaves were still fed, clothed and sheltered. You can't kill 'em off or there will be
no slaves left to produce those items of substance. But when the profit is made from those
items, only enough is put back to the slave population keep the system working. It's
happening in Mexico, in Indonesia, in India, and in the US migrant worker camps from
the Midwest to California. This is, of course, nothing new. The US was made possible
through the exploitation of others. We saw a bit of change here after the post-war boom
of the '50s and again in the '90s for a few years but when "money" sees this happening,
it moves to quickly remedy the situation, usually by installing a Republican run government.
Here in Indianapolis, there's an area north of the city where they are building these huge,
multi-million dollar houses. Hundreds of them. Where does this money come from?
Is it necessary? Steven Hilbert, who ran Conseco has this huge mansion. He was ran out
of the company for fraud and theft yet he's got his castle. And you've now got this army
of VP weasels that all think that they too deserve to take one to on hundred million a year
and bury in in the ground so they, the trophy wife, and the trust fund kids can live like kings.
Instead of taking the working capital and putting it back into the company, letting people make
a working wage, they instead believe that they should, indeed deserve, to surround themselves
with rewards of their greed and cunning.
That money has to come from someplace, and that's from the backs of those with no other option
but to be enslaved, or starve. This can't last forever, but it's end is not coming soon. At least not
until the lease on their new Hummer H2 runs out. At least that's what Rush told me: It's a good thing.
ROTFLMAO. Your perceptions are quite vivid, I must say. Did you make all that up yourself or did you get help? I especially liked
Cattle wander the streets while they starve
It's tru though, Check the tags on everything in your house and on your body and you'll see that nothing is made in the US anymore.
Worse yet, when something is made in the US, it's a big hoopla isn't it? There's a big pride thing about being "Made in the USA". I think we're the only ones that put a flag next to our label.
JAFO
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
india is a large country. bangalor is new york and patna is wichita. calcutta is very cheap to live in. and so on...there are so many places modernising in a hurry.
I have been getting solicitations recently at my now defunct contracting company asking if I want to outsource our nonexistent work to India. It has been very tempting to write back and ask why I should go with them rather than "this nice Vietnamese company I have been talking to."
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
I can name one country where a huge variety of normal tangible goods are still manufactured, and the workers work for "almost" free, and that is the US, where prison industries now use inmate labor in direct competition to "normal" free market workers. And I definetly don't mean license plates, I mean normal stuff you buy at the store like furniture and whatnot. And it's run by private, for-profit corporations. Hard to compete when you have a tax payer subsidised infrastructure,ie the prisons, and where the forced workers "make" like 10 cents an hour or something that they get to re spend back into the same private corporations prison stores. Add in the fact of the growing prison population due to more political-like crimes such as represented as the war on some drugs, and yes, there are places where the workers work for "free". I also just read an article last week or so, maybe here, I've forgotten, where prisoners in India are being used as forced programmers.
As to software, oh well. I think eventually (I have no exact time prediction, just some time in the somewhat near future) that software writing as a pure and extremly profitable business will eventually be very limited. That's primarily because right now we already have available most of the software that is required to do business, it exists already when you get down to it. Next is to take the automation concept to it's logical progression, the tools to write programs are getting easier, there are millions more very young people now who take it as a matter of course to learn these the same as "shop class' was when I was a kid and most guys my age can do a lot of normal car mechanics and carpentry, etc, and eventually those two lines on a graph of easy to do and millions doing it will cross and we'll have a full saturation point, where at that exact time the "worth" of software will be no more than todays throw away newspaper, so cheap as to be almost free. And the ones remaining still writing a lot will be doing it as at best an adjunct to their other and more primary job task, whatever that is, or doing it as a hobby, similar to learning to play a musical instrument is now, most people never make a cent from enjoying playing music. I'm not saying it-softweare writing to get back to it- will disappear,not in the least, just lose it's incredible profitable market share. Look back in that industry 40 or 50 years, see what people were paid for it and what the companies doing it were charging,and how many people by the numbers were doing it (take into consideration COL and inflation obviously), and now look at today-globally, you are forced to, now extrapolate it.
Ain't looking as rosy now is it? Especially with the amazing geometric progression.
I give it as a rough WAG to the commercial expensive software writing and selling bubble will burst within ten years or so (maybe less even), the high paid stuff anyway, and settle back down to a more normal type endeavor, not be quirte as sexy or in demand. I also think that people in that business and who are still paid well are (mostly and sure to be very much debated on this particular forum, but not on general forums) in just as much denial today of that prediction as various people were when they were buying stocks from companies that were trading at 200 times earnings and still sat on them, thinking this was going to just keep going on forever, even when on even a casual glance anyone could see these various companies had no net earnings whatsoever once you deducted VC. Millions of sane, intelligent adults fell for that, too, they were in complete denial of economic realities, because they (not all obviously, but most) were basking in temporary and theoretical future "wealth" they would receive magically,effortlessly, and forever. that gravy train was going to go on forever, that was the gross generic mindset then. Right now, it's the same mindset with various other aspects of industry, I'd say in particular besides software the professional managers in various industries, who think they are
You can expect law students in China to pass the American bar and start eating some lawyer lunch soon.
Very little lawyering is actually done *in court*. The vast majority can be done over the phone and internet. There is absolutely no reason the majority can't be done in Asia, Africa, etc.
It will be interesting to see the effect that has..
They tax steel. They tax cars.
They tax me. They can tax Bill Gates
when he does this stuff.
I told them that this was not about helping the people of India,
Of course corporations do not go to India with charity as a motive - but their motive is of no consequence. If you set up a new factory/ programing shop somwhere you have to give salaries that are locally competitive or you are not going to fill it with good people - clearly the IT investments have been very beneficial to India in terms of increased standard of living for the people there.
it's about importing a 3rd world standard of living, which is why so many people around the world are against this
As economists have long known, the market forces slowly push living conditions towards similar levels for people doing similar work and are equally productive. It works in both directions: improved salaries for the ones with lower salaries and lower salaries for the ones with higher salaries (or unemployment, if the labor market is very regulated).
which is why so many people around the world are against this
Special interest groups in the industrialized world (e.g., American IT workers) are against this. Poor workers in India and Russia are not against this - they have a lot to gain. You never hear them asking us to put up barriers of trade to protect them; this is purely an argument of the political left in developed nations.
It's about making a market place, a product out of entire countries, whose populations are shopped by corporations, much like individual slaves were shopped for in the early United States
This is exactly the argument I was talking about. It is quite pathetic. In trying to protect their own interest (there is nothing wrong witht that) the left is trying to present it as though regulation and trade barriers are in the interest of poor countries - which is ridicolous - because all these countries are asking for is for us to reduce the trade barriers we have.
If you don't buy this on a philosphical level, please take a look at empirical experiences - let's take a very high level view. Rich free-trading nations grow at 2-3% GDP per year. Poor free-trading nations typically grow more like 5% per year in terms of GDP - if they have working institutions. Long term (it varies with the economic cycle, of course) rich nations have unemployment of maybe 5% (or more like 10% when the labor market gets very regulated like in parts of Europe). Corporations are making profits around 5-10% - also this varies by cycle, but it is not in general getting bigger and bigger.
What in this picture do you find so horribly wrong? What would your perfect world look like where there are plenty of trade barriers. Well, why not take a look at some places that have tried: China, Vietnam and North Korea come to mind. These places have tried self-reliance and just accepted the occasional socialistic factory project from Sweden. The result: complete catastrophy! China and Vietnam eventually figured out that this is not the way to go; opened up their countries to trade and are now growing like crazy. North Koreans are not so fortunate - people are still starving. Millions have died because of their economic policy of self-reliance.
Tor
This is all correct and the theory is that people who worked in jobs that become defunct, move on to better jobs. The big assumption is that people moved on to biggger'n'better jobs. I can tell you without doubt that a large portion of people in IT did not. How do I know this? Because you hear it on the news, see it in the papers, experience your own frustration as you look at your paycheck from a dead-end consulting contract.
It might work if we had education and re-education for the people we displaced. Sounds like a thought. Make companies pay for the re-education and re-employment to other jobs as a cost of moving their operations. Severance is hardly a compensation for pulling the rug from beneath your feet.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
before they discover little purple methane-loving aliens who will program for poop. Stop them Mars probes while we are at it. Just because Mars microbes are tiny does not mean they don't have the ability to get PhD's and take our jobs.
Table-ized A.I.
What pencilneck modded this overrated? Probably some Sapient asshole who still is hoping his options rise. I got laid off from Sapient in 2001 because I was a senior tech who refused to move to New Delhi. The guy was right, they abandoned everything they had built and ran like sheep back to their SI roots, which were junior grade compared to IBM and EDS. I think most of the Americans who moved to India got fired anyway when they asked for a little more money.
I didn't say they aren't doing it for their own gain. I merely said people can act differently in an organization than they do personally. They will frequently do things that they wouldn't do on their own, and may refrain from other things that they would rather do. We've covered two quadrants. You're argument is just that one of the other quadrants exists, and I don't dispute that, at all.
Another way of looking at it... It's a tradeoff. "If I don't do this action that I find personally distasteful, my family and life will suffer." These tradeoffs merely happen more often in an organization. This doesn't even qualify as an insight, just an observation. Hermits don't have to compromise with other people. (simplistic, I know)
Lumping the net in with organizations... Are you this polite in the real world, where you resort to namecalling before even attempting to discuss?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The best outsourcing is to a computer running an approiate algorithm. That's how computer related industries have managed their growth for the last 50 years.
My guess is some of us in the SlashDot community can and will write those algorithms over the next few years - open source or proprietary. Let the lowest bidder compete with that.
There will still be a few loosers: we'll have more out of work / `underemployed' neighbors, investors will have to cope with several destabalized markets, goverment at all levels will have to rely more heavily on corporate taxes and probably `downsize'. and corporate executives and insiders may not be so highly valued.
Looks to me like `interesting times' Bring 'em on.
The corporation wants you to fuck your buddy over or you lose your job.
You fuck your buddy over to keep your job so you can buy more Big Macs.
Whether fucking your buddy over helps the company or not is irrelevant. You fuck him over to keep your wallet and your fat, MacDonald's-eating ass satisfied.
In conclusion, you are a dumbass.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
just like in 'Dilbert'.
Scott Adams was right!
Big greedy companies like Microsoft now think Indian developers are too expensive, I guess the jobs will move to Africa and China now.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The work people produce is a commodity that is traded openly on the world market. Get used to it. Your job is neither "yours" nor is it a "job." It is simply the current value of the manifestation of your labor, period, and can be exchanged (by your employer) for goods and services or even phased out completely with absolutely NO INPUT FROM YOU. I get so sick of hearing people bitch about "that God damned Mexican took MY job!" when the job was never yours in the first place.
It is really very simple, people: perform a service that people value highly => get paid well.
Perform a service that some 12 year old kid in a sweatshop in the Phillipines can also perform => lose "your" job.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
But alot of people on slashdot dont care because they are CEOs or upper level management, not level 1 programmers.
It's not about exporting capitalism, it's about importing a 3rd world standard of living, which is why so many people around the world are against this.
I'm American and I'm against it.
It's about making a market place, a product out of entire countries, whose populations are shopped by corporations, much like individual slaves were shopped for in the early United States.
Exactly, it is like slavery, our companies are making them depend on us, and preventing them from starting their own companies. Wasnt capitalism supposed to be about the individual? This seems almost more like communism.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Just like some people dont like big government, some dont like big corperations, and its for the same reasons. You dont want all the power to be in one persons hands.
If you want people to stop begging the USA for money perhaps we should help them start their own businesses in their own countries instead of forcing our businesses into their countries, I dont know any arabs who asked for Mc Donalds to expand there, in fact it pisses them off.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I've worked with too many big-headed Russian programmers over the years - and yes, a couple from St. Petersburg as well. My advice - avoid them at all costs. They look great on paper and have big mouths but in the end their code is bug-ridden. Russian programmers cut corners and only do the minimum amount of work that the spec requires. Also, get used to the phrase "it's not my job" - they say that a lot - I guess it's a remnant of the soviet mentality.
I'm a Sr. UNIX Admin with over 5 years of experience with Linux and some experience teaching this stuff.
I would work for free if we could all agree to do away with money (or that money has no value) so I could afford to grab food from the local supermarket and live in a small home or apartment close to my job. I don't require a lot to keep me happy. Mostly just musical equipment, computers and tools/books that help me do my job.
But I know hardly any of you would ever agree to give up your money so its a safe bet I'd never have to work for free. Too bad. I would have let you stay home and watch TV. I only care about getting the work done and automated once and forever. I find myself continually repeating the same tasks over and over again for money, in our current system, but I guess this is what makes more jobs.
India has had wage inflation to the point where Indian engineers may one day cost more than American engineers. Keep your dusty old social security card around.
A Norwegian company recently stated that the lower costs of management in Norway gave them a competitive advantage.
So yes, it does happen; just look closer.
Also douing real development where people focus on tech rather than splitting hairs on contractual issues sure also helps lowering costs and saving time. Not my opinion; it is my experience.
The machines are oiled with the blood of the workers.
But the machine owners have built up a thousand misdirections and excuses for why there is no other way, because they don't want to chance not being rich and/or powerful.
The checks and balances of the USA threatened to buck this trend, which is why big money and old power cheated to get Bush jr in the white house, to take up the slack and keep the "little people" -- ie everyone who isn't already making a living off his neighbor -- from continuing to make progress in the class war.
Yes, CEO's arguably deserve more salary than mail clerks. The problem is that enough is never enough and the Ken Lays and Dick Cheneys have the will and the ability to take what they want, legal or not, ethical or not.
As far as the topic goes, my first instinct is a rather unsympathetic "Ha ha, now you're out of a job for the same reason I am." My second instinct is to warn the people of third world countries being eyed by the outsourcers to be wary, but they're not in a position to hear that advice. The contract will go to the lowest bidder, who will eventually themselves be outbid.
In essence, we had a chance to address long standing issues that affect us all when the world economy was in a boom stage, specifically the US. But instead, americans bought big cars, sn0rted 1ines, and paid nothing on our deficit.
To the "little guy", it may have seemed that the good times were really here to stay; it's easy to pretend that every problem is someone elses when you've got yours. But the people at the top -- economic analysts, high level civil servants, etc -- knew that the bubble must burst eventually. And they knew exactly what to do: cement their own powerbase at the expense of the people who provide that power and to whom they purport to owe their ultimate loyalties. The course was stayed to keep consumers consuming. Now that the bubble has burst, the "little people" are afraid for their futures and willing to follow any damn-fool proposal that comes wrapped in a shiny promise of return to the boom.
If that's not a con5pir4cy nothing is.
I am a citizen. I am livid. I am dismissed out of hand. I will explain my case anyway. I will vote against Bush in '04 and I have no doubt that Bush will win anyway(the TV spews propaganda all day while the unread papers futiley report the undercutting of our nation- on top of Bush's undeserved ratings (based on lies) he stole the election once, you think he'll be less able to do it WITH the power of the oval office?).
What was it my scoutmaster used to say, ah yes.. "be prepared".
God Bless America and the Constitution.
1) Indian labour is cheaper than Eastern European / Russian.
2) Russian offshore-development industry is much smaller than Indian one (both in absolute terms and per capita).
3) There are no significant growth reserves (this also applies to Eastern Europe).
4) The existance of a few successful companies doesn't constitute an industry (or a threat to India).
5) Without initial investments you can't create a large IT industry. India did those investments.
6) There are no real figures that indicate this process of "outsourcing outsourcing" is actually happening.
7) etc.
Usual sensationalistic journalism. Bettet than Blair's inventions, but not much better.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
(SOL = Standard of Living)
It goes like this.
Being paid more to work less is something the first and second worlds are enjoying more than the third world.
If we allow free markets, IN THE SHORT TERM we in the "first world" would experience a decline in pay for the same work while the other economies play a sort of "catch up" to us. However IN THE LONG TERM, everyone would be up to speed (or nearly) and EVERYONE would gain MORE from everyone being up to speed, than in the current situation!
we would expect that:
1. Living standards in the industrialized world are falling ("importing a 3rd world standard of living")
2. Third world countires are trying to stop offshoring ("a product out of entire countries, whose populations are shopped by corporations, much like individual slaves were shopped for in the early United States")
3 Corporate profitability is constantly increasing ("this is about making corporations rich.")
But on the contrary!
1 Living standards are constantly increasing in industrial countries; by a few percent per year.
2 Developing countries are desperate for offshore opportunities and foreign investments, and they are pushing this agenda in international negotiations
3 Corporate profitability has been constant or decreasing over the past years and decades
Tor
I am having a hard time understanding what is bad about this cycle. Then you obviously didn't lose your job recently. Maybe you will understand when an out-of-work factory worker cleans out your house or mugs you. Or maybe when *you* lose your job, but not before?
the *overall* standard of living became significantly higher. Yeah, and the debt continues to climb. That number isn't just there for laughs. More debt means higher taxes, among other problems. Businesses are not the only piece of the problem, but they are a major problem for the society as a whole because they exert undue influence on policy for the benefit of the very, very few and because many businesses rake in the cash in profits and corporate welfare while firing workers and cutting salaries. How is this behavior justifiable? "Er, um, er..." ITS NOT. Why does it continue? "Well, er, uh..." Because greed and corruption have become acceptable... "business as usual".
Just because a textile worker wasn't making as much as his boss doesn't mean he wasn't making more than before he got the job. And that, of course, totally justifies closing the textile plant for X% more profits, all at the expense of the workers?
The high standard of living we enjoy is financed by mortgaging our future, in terms of foreign loans and in terms of pissing off the world by being imperialistic.
Capitalism = good. Problem - Super rich crushing the masses to get an extra buck. Solution = organized movement of the lower classes. Reason solution doesn't happen is rich & powerful are better organized and financed, resulting in rarer but much more drastic and bloody change.
Funny, america was so worried about the communist threat abroad we took our eyes off the ball at home, and now speeking freely is a "threat to national security".
Joke's over, sir, let me off the treadmill now please... sir... sir? *pant*
Is anyone else worried about the amount of Indian workers we have in this country. They have completely flooded the software job market. It really has gotten way out of hand. I'm working at a company right now where 11 out of 13 developers are Indian. My job before that there were 7 Indians on a team of 8. It was the same scenario with most of the companies I've interviewed at. This is not an Indian bashing. I think they are nice people. Maybe a little boring though. But anyway, I know of a few US citizens having a hard time finding work. I was in that group just a few months ago. How can we let so many into this country?
And the color of the skies in these so-called worlds is....?
Just joshin'. But really what there is would be better described as a race towards the lowest common denominator more than a levelling of the playing field. Because this playing field is like the Grand Tetons...
(heh, I said "Teton"!)
Kineska: Cinema, soapbox, music & musings
GM India rolls out first locally produced Chevrolet Optra in India
I know Ford sells cars there and I am sure many other non-Indian companies sell stuff there. It is all about trade and human greed to want more than what we currently have that drives us to do what we do...
When will ordinary consumers begin take advantage of offshore sources? When will it become practical for ordinary people to go offshore?
Banking? for financial privacy?
Insurance? to get around government restriction on exclusions on aids, alcoholism, mental health that are essentially a tax on low risk groups to support high risks groups?
Other examples?
However I think the move to cheap labor didn't result in loss of income for businesses but rather the loss of income signaled cheap labor. It is the other way around. (sense a soviet union joke)
The 1870's had the worst recession in history before the 1930's. This is what started the sweet shops.
Any economist will tell you economic health comes when the majority of citizens have it. If a strong divide exists the rich will get richer of course while the overall spending and economy goes down. This is what happened a century ago and is what is happening today.
I just read some newgroup postings and alot of rich claim that the economy is great and that they are making record profits. At the same time the value of the dollar is shrinking and more people have less money. Trickle down economics just do not work.
The India factor is a big problem because alot of the money being spent offshore was from tax breaks. It needs to flow into the pockets of people who spend it. Maybe a low income tax cut will boast the economy. Infact because I am poor my taxes went up!
http://saveie6.com/
Most of the outsourcing questions tend to hinge on obvious things like the direct wages paid to employees and "do they speak English" without focusing on the many hidden or hard to denominate costs on Western business doing business with non-Western countries, particularly outsourcing.
India has a number of advantages over many countries in direct labor costs and English proficiency, but a number of cultural liabilities as well. While the Czech Republic isn't Wisconsin, most Americans could easily go there or to any of the other east-bloc nations and conduct business far more easily than they could in India since there's a lot more cultural similarity.
The east bloc also has a stable political and military climate compared to India. The Czech Republic isn't on the edge of nuclear annihilation with Slovakia over some disputed border region. This is increasingly important in a world where fears of terrorism are on everyone's mind (even if the fears are entirely wrong).
Reeducation just shifts the area of competition.
;-) Death to All Fanatics!! ;-)
We need more jobs. The whole world needs to take a long hard look at the supply chain we call Earth and agree on some things.
First, some realistic understandings must be had. The Earth cannot feed an unbounded population. We need to manage our populations, and it's more humane (not to mention efficient) to do it with sex ed and condoms than starvation and bombs.
Second, the human race needs to accept that it has a duty to generations yet to come. We don't have to "save" the environment, we just have to stop trashing it. I think massive ecological damage is the only justification for state-imposed torture... did you dump 80,000 gallons of poison into the groundwater? That's 160,000 lashes, pal. And that's getting off easy, too.
The last major problem is that of governance. The US has a pretty d*mn good system, it just needs lots of public scrutiny. Since modern methods allow us to feed more people than it takes to actually sustain the production oriented elements of the system, we have a lot of "unused" people left over. IMHO those people should be the de-facto gaurantors of democratic sovereignty.
And of course, we have to kill, jail or exile everyone who dissents.
This is why so many intelligent Americans end up being lawyers.
At the height of the bubble, Paul Krugman wrote that software development and other high-tech jobs were so easy to outsource that their prestige pay scales were doomed. He also believes that much lawyering will be outsourced or automated (a la Nolo Press and write-your-own-will software).
Here is a paraphrase of his argument from Proceedings of the Sixth European Assembly on Telework and New Ways of Working - Telework '99 , Aarhuss, Denmark, 22-24 September 1999:
You are right -- but also hint at one practical problem with the neoclassical free trade story: it assumes zero adjustment costs, and tells us about the wealth of NATIONS, not individuals within those nations.
Let us say that in accordance with an efficient specialization, country A stops doing X and Y, and focusses entirely on X, leaving Y to country B. More of X and Y for everyone, welfare improves, Adam Smith smiles in his grave.
But, what about the people in country A who have their capital or their personal skills invested in Y, and can't easily change. It's not easy for fifty year old steel workers to become X-box game designers. It's not a quick and simple matter to totally retool an educational system to teach a different skill set (vs developing countries that are building theirs from scratch now -- to meet today's labor market).
In short, there are transition costs -- there WILL be losers in A, even if the nation is better off as a whole.
Second, there is no reason that country A can't end up worse off if it's prior position somehow allowed it to exact monopoly profits, either because of natural factors (until recently, telecom wasn't good enough to allow back-office functions to be done remotely), temporary first-mover advantages (e.g., the US is the first to have a technically educated workforce and massive govt/uni/corporate R&D) or trade restrictions. Neoclassical economics is all about *equilibrium* outcomes, but at the moment we're looking at a distorted market -- distorted to the US/European advantage.
Third, what we are seeing is the equivalent of removing minimum wage laws and other work rules. Any economist will tell you that on balance such restrictions are a welfare loss -- even to the poor, since it means fewer jobs. On the other hand, those who do manage to get one of those protected jobs are receiving artificially high wages relative to the free market outcome, and those individuals do stand to lose if the rules are lifted. As the labor market becomes global, that's exactly what we're facing.
The way to think of it is like rent control. Getting rid of it is a net plus for most people -- more housing, better housing, better returns to property owners, etc.
What about the few people lucky enough to live in those rent controlled apartments? Simple, they bend over, think about the greater good, and take it up the ass.
In general I'm for free trade -- why shouldn't the poor of the world get better standards of living? But the free traders don't like to admit that freeing trade will create losers in countries, even if a net win, and if the strict assumptions of neoclassical analysis are not met, even a nation as a whole can be a loser, at least in the short term.
America, welcome to global equilibrium.
Bingo! How do you compete with $1/day? Put up a lean-to in the woods, frequent the dumpsters behind grocery stores, and collect soda pop bottles. Learn to live like Eric Rudolph.
Oh, but wait! If enough people in this country are doing that, who's going to have the money for these company's products? The executives? But the executives are paid out of the company's profits-- what profits?
So the companies complain about the sluggish economy, lay off its employees in Bangladesh (or wherever), and go shopping for a country willing to work for 25 cents a day, or maybe just for food and shelter (hmm, slavery anyone? Perhaps not technically...)
And so on...
What am I missing here, or maybe I shouldn't have slept through Econ 101?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Acme corp actually can't fail to consider offshore outsourcing; if they do, then Evil-Acme corp down the road will outsource, and eat their lunch. In other words, if anybody can outsource, everyone has to, or the stragglers will be eaten. Messily.
Personally, I'm undecided on whether offshore outsourcing is Good or Evil. But if you are worried about the US economy as a whole, look to the federal gov't. That is their job. If they (with appropriate citizen input) decide that offshoring is bad for the US economy as a whole, they will outlaw it. That sort of thing is what governments are good at, and private enterprise (good for a variety of other things) is not.
Summary: Don't blame the corps, it's not their responsibility. Take this up with your elected representative.
Probably not but perhaps people would consider working for food and drink provided at the work site. Now that's getting down to basics. Of course - that would probably solve your absentism problem but seriously - all lot of companies consider outsourcing more than just a cost equation. The India model today is used by a lot of companies because the functions ( call centres, IT development, are just not core competencies the company wants to spend a lot of bandwith on). I think I see a little xenophobia showing here???
While the corporations are outsourcing everything to the lowest bidder, they're forgetting something important. SOMEBODY HAS TO BE ABLE TO BUY THEIR SHIT!!! If all the American workers are unemployed, and the Romanians are working for $100 per month, who's going to buy their shit? At best they'll have to lower their prices dramatically; at worst they're outta business!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Only if there is an inifinate amount of money in the world. Only if there is an infininate amount of natural resources which can be turned into goods and an infinate amount of natural resources which humans can comsume to provide services.
Or I suppose economy itself could be bullshit construct that does not obey the laws of physics.
War is necrophilia.
Sometimes the Randites go off the deep end, but if you can just get them to cut down on the coffee & cigs a little bit they're pretty reasonable.
I don't get their newsletters or anything, but I credit them with curing me of socialist leanings in college. Hats off to the Berkeley Objectivism Club!
Many people seem to have your typical ignorant 1950's Russian despot view of capitalism. The true purpose of capitalism is for the betterment of all. Without creating capital we'd all be in a quagmire of serf-like toiling. Even communist russia had more capital than capitalist countries by concentrating it all in the government.
You complain and whine about the current situation, but you should look at the alternatives first!
If you average those salaries with a billion non-programmer salaries, I doubt the resulting average salary is indicative of programmer salaries.
The difference is the hierarchies. Let me explain.
Imagine it's a HUGE multi-national. Let's say Marshall Islands Auto Company makes their UltraCoupe, and they find out that a major flaw causes the car to fully engage it's front brakes -- half of the time throwing the car on top of itself, where it explodes and kills all the passengers. No one knows why, so there's no single person to blame. Management doesn't want to lose any credit for the huge sales success, Accounting doesn't want to pay for a recall, and the rest of the peons are just "doing their job." So the cars will continue to flip over and explode because no person feels directly responsible.
That is why I personally feel the size of companies should be restricted.
At some point you have to realize that the distribution of wealth is just the same as it was in the 1600s, but now the peasants don't spend their lives farming and dying We're still driving Toyotas instead of Rolls Royces, and living in $100,000 starter homes instead of $10,000,000 mansions. I'm not complaining, but that is the way it is.
Comparing India to Japan is asinine and atrocious. Japan is a First world country while India is a cesspool, desperately poor even by third world standards. There should be a lesson there for Indians if they weren't so stupid and so slavish towards their erstwhile colonizers: speaking the language of foreigners does NOT a successful nation make. Africans speak english as well and they are almost as poor as indians. How has english helped indians and africans? Learn from Japan and try to stand on your own feet instead of slaving for foreigners.
BTW since all the countries mentioned have per capita incomes (in dollars) that are TEN to FIFTY times higher than India's, how on earth can they be considered cheaper?? There is more to this story than meets the eye.
If you close your textile plant is MA and move to Saipan, you are investing in Saipan. Your (perhaps) lower wages are giving you a return on investment by moving, possibly offset by the cost of transport (which happens to employ people), which perhaps you should have considered before moving.
Good lord, you obviously have never tried to run a business, or run your life like one, which you should. You ain't buzshwa until you've fought your way up and learned the key points.
I forget what 8 was for.
"I am the American government. I am the Democratic party and the Republican party. I am the CEO of AOL. I am the Nation of Islam. I am an Indian worker at a cheap plant in Bangladesh."
Seems like you are schizophrenic, thatÂs what it is.
Wow thats a shame. I really hope nobody loses my job. I mean, er, loses their job.
We need slaves, and when I say slaves, I don't mean whiny ass white people who can't find meaning in their own empty existance and thus call themselves slaves in the process totally trivializing the experiences of those who actually were enslaved. I mean actual slaves. Adam Smith argued that slavery was not economicly viable because of costs and wastage, but we need to determine this in the modern setting. Perhaps we could figure out a formula whereby our new slaves don't constantly break shit just to be difficult. How about a government funded pilot program? We could also run an alternative to test out a form of tech suport "share cropping", where we tie their level of work to their survival (or at least whether they're given food that day).
You're right and also consider this: by increasing the living standard in these 3rd world countries, we reduce the number of potential terrorists. Someone having a nice job, being able to afford a home and take care of his family is far less likely to be a threat to us. There will always be exceptions, of course, but poverty breeds hostility. Combine that with constant exposure to anti-American propaganda, and you have a serious threat to our security.
You're forgetting business competition. If costs drop, and profit margins increase, then this segment becomes an especially juicy morsel in the eyes of competitors. Another company comes along, offers more for the same price (reducing profit margins to previous levels as it hires more people) and kicks the crap out of the incumbant. This isn't the case with monopolies and hence the unpleasantness. However, monopoly tends to breed not only competitor lust, but customer loathing.
"I'm a loner Dottie, a rebel."
- Pee Wee Herman
That is the most common understanding of how free trade works. It is also quite wrong, but unfortunately the explanation of why is very hard to fit into a 10 second sound bite and will probably never be commonly accepted. Especially since a lot of very powerful lobby interests are aligned against it.
Milto Friedman explains it better than I can and in good detail in the excellent Free to Choose.
In short, since both parties benefit from trade, a country is always better off with no trade restrictions, even if other countries restrict some of your trade with them. "Retaliating" will hurt the other country, but also yourself, so you're better off doing nothing.
To show that this is not just some theoretical model, it is pretty easy to establish that the most prosperous countries in any era are those with the fewest trade restrictions, not those that "cheat" and impose more trade restrictions than the others, as you would expect if your 'prisoners dilemma' model was correct.
And Buffalo buffaloes buffalo Buffalo buffaloes.
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
How about finding a country who's employees speak English as a FIRST language.
Oh wait.. that'd be the USA...!!
I've had to speak to BEA support *twice* this week. And it's *obvious* they outsource their techsupport to India...
Q: What's that tiny squeaking sound? A: Those are the notes from the world's smallest violin. Seriously, with the thousands of jobs India has stolen from the US and the thousands of US workers thrown into unemployment by that country, sympathy is ... difficult.
Granted, its a small corporation, (2people) but for ever 1 company out there using underhanded tactics and cutting their own countrys people to the bone, theres 99 of us just trying to make an honest buck.
ANd how many of you own stock in companies htat do this? Youre just as guilty as they are. You get to vote twice as a stock holder, once with your dollar, and once with your shares. Do it. Show up at a shareholders meeting.
Let them know that youd be happy only making 3 dollars instead of ten if it kept busisness in america. Oh, you didnt realize this would cost YOU money?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Welcome to Capitalism folks, it sucks.
You know what? Give me some "blank space" on the map along with the right ot found a new society there and I will create a place where labour is free.
I know enough people both "thechnology enabled" and fed up with "capitalist" approach to tech usage to makethis at least imaginable.
my
I have/had an optimistic phrase/mantra:
"There is far more stupidity than evil in the world."
In recent year(s) I've added a less optimistic one.
"Sufficient stupidity combined with sufficient power may be indistinguishable from evil."
Kind of like Clarke's Third Law, only pessimistically applied to ethics.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
you comments make no sense. a chinese person should then have to buy no goods made in the us, because the apple might be produced by a hand which killed people for fun over Iraq, Bosnia, Vietnam, .......
Working for free is not as crazy as it sounds. Technically, the workers would get paid by the state, but this could function as a long term plan to bootstrap a developing tech economy. It is somewhat of a political analogy to "open source" software; but, in this case the I.T. is "open source" labor, whereby the dependence on a labor source becomes so important to a set of companies that they are willing to later phase in payment for services. Or, as an option, phase in payment for support services that would alone be worth the time (e.g. A T1 delivers the products to the company far faster than a 56K modem. How about an satellite upgrade for our free programers in Elbonia so you rich guys don't have to wait?)
Globalization is inevitable with the advances in networking and human communication. It is beyond laws to stop it. Shut down all H1B's and L1s? So, what? All you need is an excellent video conferencing link to get the work done. Having said that, the effect will be a gradual levelling of the standard of living around the world. Though it is a good thing for the lesser developed countries, it is NOT a good thing for the developed countries, who will be seeing their investments in social welfare over the past few decades strained by lack of money today. The solution, as any economist, will tell you is that people will develop newer skills and newer markets will develop. For the US specifically, I had thought that in the long run, with both manufacturing and services outsourced to other countries, the only hope would have been in Intellectual Property (entertainment, movies, music, real high tech) and tourism (the US has some great natural beauty) and maybe even agriculture given the size of farms here. For tourism to succeed, i.e., getting the newly rich from other countries to spend their money here, the tourist Visa scheme has to be a lot easier. After 9-11 that does not seem to be so. Anyways, do other people have ideas w.r.t., the newer industries developing in the Western countries with the offshoring of both manufacturing and services ?
What does an american say to an Indian H1B developer working here in the United States?
Would you like fries with that?
Simple... All you have to do is move to the countries where the corps. are outsourcing to. I've heard that the amount they are being paid is above average for their country. So... you could be pimpin it in India and then move to Russia where you could get some vodka and some cheap whores!
It's called progress. Doesn't just happen in the U.S. anymore. You can try to stop it, but only at to the detriment of later generations.
You know, so many companies are sending their sensitive data - like customer information, pricing, etc. to countries where there are no laws about identity theft, intellictual property, and pretty much no penalty for ripping off anything you can get your hands on. Personally, I am much in favor of them doing this. More and sooner would suit me fine.
Why, you ask, would, I - an American IT worker, want this? Let me tell you, when people starting going to India, Croatia, Uzbeckistan, or what ever place they settle in to steal their secrets while writing their code for $2 an hour - maybe just maybe the PHB's will wise up.
Most companies live and die by their data and information. They don't call them trade secrets for nothing. Farming this stuff out to some guy who's not getting a decent living wage and who hasn't lived their whole life place where you can do back ground checks and credit checks and security checks and who doesn't work in place where you can watch his every move to be sure that he's not ripping you off is the most ridiculous and idiotic thing the multinationals have dreamed up yet.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
"Even though there is a lot of yelling from the clients, I love this job." Goenka said. "I have been fascinated with America since I was a little girl. Now I get paid to pretend I am American -- it's wonderful."
Does it get anymore sick than this??
In the past the cultural differences, language, distance, etc separated economies.
When you open the gates, what will happen is our $50,000 jobs and indias $4000 jobs will reach a equilibrium in the middle. Yes that means all developed countries are going to go into a MAJOR depression lasting probably 20 years. Smoke em' if ya got em'.
As commoditty prices keep rising, us programmers, might make more money growing/selling veges/herbs and tobacco/coffee, than programming!!
Remember, 1 bag of $50 coffee from peru, ends up making 10000 coffee cups.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Now what we see is the trend for global companies to outsource their operation to wherever the cheapest place they can find.
So we have the outsourcing double-trouble.
But I bet this ain't gonna be the last one.
The final frontier for the outsourcing universe is that
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
What people often fail to consider is that American colleges are amoung the best in the world. In Japan, college is considered to be a couple years of fun. In the US, it's generally known that college will be a lot harder than high school. I'm tired of hearing that because our 8th graders don't understand calc that American engineers have lousy math skills. It's BS. American engineers learn it in college.
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
As internet tech gets better, putting more things offshore will make sense for more and more white collar jobs.
Would this mean the virtual end of the 'middle class' in America? Of course who will buying all these cheap projects made in china with customer service in vietnam? All computer companies could eventually make sense using only off-
shore labor for development and support --- only customer site-visits would need to be in America.
Movie production is moving offshore as well; soon with enough compute power, you could make any race look like any other race and film wherever's cheapest and, who knows, virtual thespians, ala Simone, might not be much farther off -- but at that point I guess most of their customers will be in China and the outsource countries since those are the folks that will have the money....or did I miss something here?
Sorry, mod me down, call me a troll, a dumb-ass or kick me out from slashdot or nuke me if you will, (I live in Madrid, Spain, for you B-52 owners). But I just had to insult all these fucking fascist and absolutely unconscious of human suffering capitalist bastards who talk about profits, profits, profits. "Labour market choice"!! blablabla.
Yeah, it *is* stupid to insult, specially when I possess a ridiculous knowledge of economics. But I know what labour outsourcing IS about(ok, maybe not IT related, I don't know): hilarious wages, people starving, 20 hours shifts, anihilation of human rights... crude smashing of people's souls. Oh, well, tell me it's about helping the poor with foreign investments, or please, tell me you don't care about that. Maybe it's God's will or something?? ha. You fucking cruel money makers.
This is the *first* time I feel I need to post something, in years of slashdot reading. Call me a dope, but I didn't want to drop the S/N ratio with clueless posts. Now I wish everyone reads this and shouts on me for being such a dope or something...
Unbelievable.
This is pretty much my stance. But does langauge explain the full picture? India also has two other factors that really allow them to great realise their ambitions - education and business nous. There is a great spirit of commercial endevour in the sub-continent. To get anywhere you have to compete within a competitive internal market. Also do not underestimate the recognition of education.
But similiar charactersitics (education, hard work and business ability) can be found within Eastern Europe, China, Japan. All except the linga franca of the global economy, English.
Thats why the above post is spot-on. The question I ask is will this Indian dominance change as more cultures adopt he English language and adapt their cultures?
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Shift in Competition.
:). One can not deny reproduction. That is a whole can of worms that have been opened before and the realistic understanding is the Earth can indeed feed unbounded population. Whether that is true or not depends on how we cultivate and recycle the resources. Currently with our strategy, this is false. However, with the right strategy, the evidence suggests it is true. I'll give you a hint. Every country has a strategy (and none that covers enough time), but there is no global one. If there is one (a covert organization? Well it certainly isn't the UN lol), it certainly doesn't look like its moving in the direction I'd like to go. I suggest Asimovs Foundation series for a concept.
Valid point. Re-education does shift the area of competition. I'm not sure if it would work as well in theory, but the theory goes that the job market for another industry or role that's in high demand would attract the attention of re-training, thereby "equalizing" that field. In any case, the least desired outcome is for the displaced worker to sit idle without a job after a move.
Supply Chain
IMHO it is a rather simplistic approach to consider that "We need more jobs". There are many variables that determine the number of jobs needed for a society or the earth, and the number of jobs required is one of the variables of those others. I would agree, the whole world needs to re-examine Earth's supply chain, but who would agree on what kind of things? Isn't that the attempt govments makes? (just a side note, I work in Supply Chain Management
Duty To The Future
Again, accountability is missing here. To say the human race needs to accept it has a duty to generations is misleading. It is in the best interest for individuals in the human race to plan for future offspring. Perhaps I may interpret it as "leaders have an obligation" for the future of a group of them. And leader of leaders for the future of the larger superset. etc.
Resources
It is unclear to me what you have written. My guess is that this [1] contradicts the supply chain theory you wrote before [2] how would you propose these people take de-facto guarantors responsibility?
The Others
This is a VERY BIG problem. Humanity makes clear arguements against mistreatment of humans, for whatever crimes they commit, against even humanity. Personally, a large source of the problem stems from the lack of natural selection terminating those unsuitable for society. We retain them, at our cost. Humanity's "prime directive" of compassion works at cross-purposes with the goals of furthering the species. Ironic, "compassion" is one of the attributes we consider to be a goal of "progress" for humanity.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp