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The IT Market: Cyclical Downturn or New World Order?
An anonymous reader wrote: "CNN.com is running an interesting story on the heels of a Forrester
Research report concerning the
shift of high tech jobs from the U.S. to places like China, India, and Russia for cheaper labor and got me thinking about the nature
of the current downtrend in programmer demand in the U.S (as opposed to the "morality" of such a shift). While I'm sure the causes for this downtrend are variable, the more important
question in my mind is this -- Is software guru Bruce Eckel correct in
saying that the current downturn represents a temporary blip in the business cycle as jobs are shifted from large and medium companies to smaller companies,
or are Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas correct in recognizing this as
a new reality. Personally I tend to agree with Hunt and Thomas's view (which is not completely opposed to Bruce's opinion, btw) and
I also agree with their viewpoint that protectionist policies like H1B quotas and tariffs won't work to change anything for the better. So what do you think? Is this
just another business cycle or is this a New World Order in IT?"
For all of the IT jobs that can be moved easily (read programming) it has come down to the lowest common denominator for most low quality projects . I say this from experience competing with people from third world countries for contracts , unless you can price your self down to there level you wont get the majority of contracts . That being said some of the better contracts (grand plus) are still staying relatively domestic (north american) because they want some one who they can phone up if something breaks . One majour thing preventing the shift is the lack of high quality english in those countries , right now (even with my english as you can no doubt tell is very 31337) allows me to win some contracts because I can accuractetly understand the proposal and people think I will do a better job. Once all of those countries with cheep labour get good english ... I dont know
I wonder if we are going the way of the retail clothing industry. Companies that import clothing using cheap labor and selling it for higher prices. I can't see that business model as NOT being attractive for a business person.
I wonder if Microsoft will eventually ditch all the "die hard" believers they have working for them.
This problem can be fixed by exporting the Labor Unions, so that they encourage everyone everywhere to demand the same high pay. Even without unions, this will happen, only more slowly. Remember when Japanese cars were lots cheaper than American? The obvious reason was the lower cost of labor in Japan. Well, these days Japanese auto workers make about the same or even more than American auto workers. Any difference in cost of autos these days can be traced to greater usage of robotics in Japan. So, I'm convinced that globalization will eventually even out the cost of labor. But it sure is going to hurt until it happens!
... why shouldn't it happen to software?
The grunt jobs will be shipped off to the cheapest place, whereas there will always be a place for higher-end jobs. The goal posts will constantly be moving though.
And what exactly do you propose, huge tariffs and unconstitutional regulations on outsourcing that not only hurt the industry but increase prices for the end consumer? Not to mention the deprivation of a salary to these foreign employees, while not comparable in US terms, that beats any possible salary they can earn in their country with NO external influence.
The idea of protecting employees in the US is just as selfish to me as the RIAA monopolizing the music industry and charging unreasonable prices. In my opinion, the government cannot look at this at a micro level, but rather must account for the public good. The industry, the end consumer, and the global economy as a whole benefits from products that can be made as cheap as possible. I have little to no sympathy for the IT employees laid off, they must adapt to survive the changes, as we cannot continually look at these issues on a microeconomic scale.
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
-Thomas Paine
By the way, while I was over there, I met a guy from Siemens who was doing some manufacturing plant stuff in the area. He was complaining that they paid huge taxes on outgoing shipments, although most of that was refunded by the government a few months later. They were thinking of relocating their plant to Singapore or somewhere because of that.
It's quite obvious where this trend stops. Once we figure out how to outsource the entire command chain all the way up to the CEO, our shares of stock should be worth that much more because the company's cut their costs by a couple of orders of magnitude. I bet I could find a guy in Romania who'd be willing to be the company's CEO for one one-hundredth of what the current guy makes, with the same or better credentials. It's only a matter of time before shareholders realize this...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The boom times may be over, but they're more 'over' for the folks that entered technology for the money. The kids that switched majors or took a couple courses at a tech school in order to get a lucrative programming job are in trouble. But the folks that can actually think for themselves & communicate ideas effectively are not going to have as much trouble staying employed.
In the late 90's, anybody that claimed to have passed a VB, HTML or Java class (ha!) could find work without having to proove anything. As the job market tightens, the incompetent folks are getting laid off. Go figure. But the folks that know what they're doing & actually add value to a business continue to work.
Where I work, now and for other employers over the past 10 years, we've been doing custom software devlopment in a fast paced, dynamic environment. I've worked on multi-national teams that have had minor communication issues when we're all in the same office. No way did we have the time to write detailed specs that we could send off to another part of the world & expect to get perfect code back that just 'plugs in'. Our developers have needed the ability to communicate with one another on an ad hoc basis. This at all phases of the project - design, unit test, integration, production support. Some folks call it XP, some bad planning / project management. But the fact is that this kind of development is going to continue & the people hiring for these positions are going to have their pick of the cream of the crop. For those of us working in the field we're going to have to get used to the fact that most folks' salaries don't jump 10 to 20% a year.
OK, that's an ambiguous answer.
.
First, it's obvious the market has changed. We had the dot-com-to-bomb experience, economic slowdowns, etc. New technology is coming out, old ones fade - then suddenly hang on. I'm not sure what's going on, but it definitely doesn't seem like it did a few years ago.
However my feeling is companies have overreacted to the changes going on, thus making the changes in the economy and jobs far more painful and pronounced than need be. So we have a "blip" on top of actual changes.
That being said, I think our ultimate problem now is that in a shifting and changing world, with changing technologies, it's hard to know what is going on, and may well only get harder. Things will change faster. Trends will shift quicker. Overall patterns will be harder to determine.
Our methods of predicting and reacting to economic trends are far behind the speed of the world.
Just 2 cents tossed in the wishing well of the future . .
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Yup, such is the inevitability of globalization.
The thing that really gets to me is that by outsourcing, these companies are no longer investing in the markets that purchase from them and this short sighted quarter-by-quater view will eventually come back to hurt them.
People higher up that make these decisions don't care, because they're in charge of the company and won't get out sourced. By the time that foreign entities have the purchasing power to buy and remove these people (and this WILL happend), all the higher up's are already gone anyway, what do they care.
It makes me sick sometimes how a company's entire future can be directed by one person with no regard to all the labour that makes the company possible. I have no respect for CEO's.
My econ prof taught us that north american white collar IT types will never be able to compete against India's and Russia on a salary level, so we must instead, compete on a productivity level. But I just can't help but to think management are too ignorant to compare productivity instead of price.
The plus side is that certain IT skills are difficult or impossible to move overseas. For instance, the ability to build a network, hardware and sofware, is something that must physically be done in the office. Sysadmins will always be needed in some capacity, since servers (or mainframes) for many businesses, especially large ones with secure data, are on-site and must be maintained there. Tech support by phone can often be outsourced, but tech support for a corporation's employees requires someone who can physically reach the machine.
It's mainly coders that are relocatable and are therefore at risk. The best thing one can do, then, is keep learning and move up to one of those non-outsourcable positions. I myself have given a lot of thought to taking university courses in database administration -- this story was just about the last piece of motivation I needed.
Tech is simply too volatile to base your whole life's career on. And those who don't adapt and change, will die a slow, horrible death.
People should focus on being able to do something that produces value for a company or society. Learn to make something. Software as a product has a value that is rapidly speeding towards zero. Other sectors, like the embedded market, industrial controls, specialized welding, manufacturing automation and more all have jobs available, but require more learning and experience than your average network installation does. These are also jobs that by their nature cannot be outsourced.
I think IT as it was is going to die hard. The future is in finding new applications of technology to improve the bottom line.
This isn't the end of the world. Everyone needs to eat, and the economy has a way of providing for that. If the economy crashes to the point where there are no jobs, then there's no market for those foriegn produced goods, is there?
..don't panic
The most insulting part of the slideshow was the assumption that a high CMM level for an organization meant good code was being written.
All the CMM level means is that things are being done in a defined manner. Crappy code can be written in a defined, repeatable manner.
There are two fundamental facts about computer programming that most engineers and programmers need to admit: 1) Learning most computer technologies is very easy and 2) Using most computer technologies is very easy. Once you learn these facts a third fact becomes readily apparent: 3) Shipping most jobs involving computer technology almost anywhere in the world is very easy.
Software Engineers tend to have a highly inflated view of their own intelligence and their supposed indispensibility. I am a Software Engineer, I know. All US workers in the IT industry need to come to a realization that most IT work consists of mundane tasks suchs as making cgi scripts, coding Java objects, and the like. Any decently educated and motivated person can do most of what we do.
Motivation is key. The jobs are getting shipped to countries where putting food on the table is a real concern. 99.9% of people in the United States don't have a problem with that. These people are exiting grinding, bitter povery which is a real motivator. Yes they should be payed more, but they are making more money than they would otherwise.
US IT workers need to acquire more specialized skills in IT to really become invaluable, work for less money, or move on to something else because their job is in danger
Fine in theory, but what happens when you handcuff American corporations to American labor? One of two things, either companies in other countries with cheaper labor markets rise to fill the product gap left by their less efficient (in terms of money) and more bloated American counterparts... OR those American companies move their operations to those cheaper locales.
It's the concept of a competitive advantage. It's time that workers in IT (and I am one) recognize that workers in China and India have a fairly pronounced competitive advantage over the workers herein the United States. We're expensive, difficult to manage, and only slightly better programmers than those in other countries (as a whole). You can legislate this all you want, the fact remains however that you burying our heads in our the sand won't make the problem go away. We must find a way to compete as a workforce.. or turn to another economic system. Tariffs and taxes on foreign goods do nothing but destroy OUR wealth.. after all we only make up ~5% of the worlds population.
It's a tough pill to swallow, and our auto workers and manufacturers have had to swallow it in the past. What's insanely funny to me is that Americans in general have this view that in order for our economy to be strong, everyone elses must be weak. You don't have to watch CNN long to hear "We can't have free trade, that will make the Chinese economy stronger!!" Yes, this is the result. Basically the economies in India, China, etc.. are so weak that the cost of living is almost neglible. So a programmer in India doesn't have to make a whole lot to be comfortable by the standards of his society. $5,000 goes a long ways in those countries.
At the end of the day, protectionism doesn't help us.. it doesn't fix any problems. It simply plugs a small hole in the damn and HURTS the overall American economy in a major way. Sure it may keep you in a job for 6 months or a year.. but the fundemental problem remains. We simply can't compete with our foreign counterparts at the salaries we expect.
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We never thought it could happen to us: globalization was just supposed to make stuff cheaper to buy. But the race to the bottom can happen at all levels of employment, for all tasks that don't need to be performed on site. This includes us, the white collar IT workers.
The thing that made the US a center for IT was the innovation. When that innovation became comoditized (in terms of current IT), the jobs went where business placed priorities. i.e. money. There is very little loyalty these days in business and it could be argued that perhaps there should not be from a true business perspective (however abhorrent that is). The trick for IT (if IT workers want to maintain their status) is to continue innovating.
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One area of software development that will never be outsourced is projects for the U.S. Government and military. Get a security clearance and you can write your own career ticket.
For every job market, there is a certain level that salaries and costs cannot go beyond or the jobs will be moved somewhere cheaper. This is what happened to the steel industry and many other industries. (Construction is an exception because it physically can not be moved. You need to build on a certain site. Other than that, though...)
That's what is happening here. Programming, call center work, research... that can all be done anywhere in the world and shipped (or communicated to) elsewhere. Unless you have a job that involves physically working with computers that cannot be moved, you can be replaced.
The plus side is that certain IT skills are difficult or impossible to move overseas. For instance, the ability to build a network, hardware and sofware, is something that must physically be done in the office...The best thing one can do, then, is keep learning and move up to one of those non-outsourcable positions.
Going from programming to routing wires around an office is a move up?
I myself have given a lot of thought to taking university courses in database administration -- this story was just about the last piece of motivation I needed.
And why can't a database admin postion be outsourced? Actually seems like a good candidate for outsourcing.
Face it. What the USA do, you do because it benefits you. You're not shining white knights. You are cutthroat egomaniacs, willing to go to any length just to keep your average 3.5 SUVs per household.
Yeah, we do what we do because it benefits us. The same as every other country, only we get flack for doing the same things everyone else does.
You think I could get a job in India? Hell, do you think I could even get a work visa?
If you think the trade barriers in the US are anything compared to those of say, Japan, you're delusional. But we're expected to be selfless.
You think we spread "venom" over the world? Look how other world powers have acted over the centuries--what we do is pretty damn tame.
RE: It's the concept of a competitive advantage. It's time that workers in IT (and I am one) recognize that workers in China and India have a fairly pronounced competitive advantage over the workers herein the United States. We're expensive, difficult to manage, and only slightly better programmers than those in other countries (as a whole).
Well, let me ask you this. How many of us are replaceable in the sense that I could take the day off, and someone else could just walk in and carry on where I left off? You can do that in a tool-and-die or assembly-line position, where a screw is a screw and a nut is a nut. Not so in I.T.
Plus, we have another advantage. We tend to think outside the box, propose better solutions, and have a certain inventiveness, creativity and business savvy that other cultures lack. Many of the cultures mentioned, unless you wish to micromanage these folks to the back teeth nothing will get done. Yes yes yes, they're VERY good at math, but unless you say "do problem 1-4 on page 9" nothing gets done.
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IT workers never had any right to prevent their customers from seeking cheaper alternatives. The customers aren't anyone's property; we have to compete for them, and that's as it should be.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm afraid we're looking at a buyer's market, as far as IT people are concerned. At all levels. There are more programmers these days than there are jobs. There are WAY more web developers than there are jobs. Things will settle over the next few years, but one things is certain; The days of easy money are no more.
No longer will we be able to command an average pay $60,000-$80,000 a year with stock options (who would want them anyway), and the other perks programmers are accustomed to. Programmers are going to become like accountants, at best, in terms of their work environment, and probably salaries and other things as well.
Gone are the wonderful days when we held all the cards. Gone are the days when we got foosball tables and video games in the office.
I'm not bitter. Really, I'm not. I've been without steady work for over 6 months (though I do have several contracting things going on that are keeping me just barely afloat). It's a hard reality, but I think that is the reality. I had never expected it, but it's sinking in.
I've got a lot of experience. I've been programming for 24 years. I'm pretty damn good at it, if I do say so myself. I'm not a prodigy, but I've coded assembly for 3 CPUs, I've programmed in Algol, Cobol, Pascal (even wrote a Pascal compiler years ago), Perl, Modula-2, C, C++, and C# (these days). I've architected and written some really impressive stuff. I'm sure if I'd be willing to relocate to other locations, finding work would be a bit easier.
I've written a book in this field and about 20 articles. And I have trouble finding work. That's not a good sign.
I'm currently looking into other things that interest me a bit more than programming does these days, though. We'll see what pans out. There are some good opportunities for programmers down in Mexico too, and I like living there, so maybe I'll head back there. Who would think people would be going to Mexico for work?
Actually, tariffs and regulations are exactly what people want. This is no longer about East vs. West, or Communism vs. Capitalism. This is about preservation of human rights. Jobs don't move to countries like France or Sweden, that treat their workers well. They move to Indonesia or China - countries that kill their citizens who step out of line.
The USA supports freedom, and should not be doing business with anti-democratic nations like that. Nations that abuse their people, or the world in general, have not right to any American money. This should be implemented at a UN level - the egalitarian, democratic nations of the world should not be allowing the world's economy to fall into the hands of dictatorships and abusive nations.
If we do not act, we will have two options: let our jobs go to countries where the workers barely make enough to feed their families and live in fear of their lives; or institute similar policies on labour here in order to remain competative. You can't have it both ways.
The solution becomes simple: tax evil.
I'll have to disagree with you one this one.
The cost of living in these countries (India, China) is ridiculously low compared to the Western World. They can therefore live off a lot less $, and therefore ask less for every contract.
It has nothing to do with skills... pure economics.
And unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about that, except move on to the next big hi-tech domain (since the core of R&D will undoubtedly stay here in the US).
I'm kinda pissed about this, but maybe some of us should have had more management aspirations. I know a lot of programmers are totally anti-management positions for themselves, but I think this comes back to bite you in the ass ... for example if you're a 40 year old coder with no management experience, out of work, looking for a job, competing with others charging half what you are asking ... etc.
Secondly, there are plenty of jobs that require you to be onsite other than management and "service" type jobs. Owning your own business, government work, medicine, lawyer, etc.
Right now might be a great time to start your own business. Low office rent, lots of people out of work for you to hire for cheap locally.
That's the new reality. It's half. Whatever you were getting before or thought you deserved before, it's now half. And it's not ever getting any better than that.
Guys making $100k? Try $50k. Making $60k? It's $30k. It's half.
Had a 2 BR apartment? Enjoy 1BR. Had a 1BR? It's studio time for you. It's half.
Had a BMW? Enjoy your Civic. Had a Civic? I've got a use Kia or a bus pass. It's half.
I don't like it anymore than you do, but I'm afraid it IS the new economic reality.
As a contract "application architect" (I architect/design/develop/mentor IT projects in Java/C/C++/perl), I'm seeing rates drop in half. Rates are still pretty good compared to digging ditches, but not where they were and I'm having to compete more directly with Indians here in the states. The quality coming out of India is improving. Right now, one of my competitive edges is that I am perceived to relate to and understand the midwestern American office worker better than an Indian consultant, but that is changing. I don't know what I'm going to do in 5 years. I've already taken a 35% pay cut over the last two years. I think protectionist policies are not the answer. I need to learn a new skill or accept the same compensation as my world wide counterparts. May be this is only effecting the incompetent and the contractors now, but I think you'll start seeing changes soon enough. A manager and three DBAs in India are cheaper than one Chicago based DBA. Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
This isn't happening because our markets are free and it's what just happens naturally.
It's happening because of the interactions between national economies; which most certainly are NOT subject to the normal rules of capitalism.
H1B was big companies trying to use the government to change the law of supply and demand for labor. The intercompany transfer visas were more of the same.
Offshoring, on the other hand, is a different case; but still not "normal capitalism". Companies overseas are simply not treated the same way as companies in the local nation (whichever one you're in). They work under different labor laws; different environmental laws; they enjoy or suffer different taxation burdens. This competition is not fair and not particularly helpful in the long-run for EITHER country in the equation. The first-world country loses money and jobs; the third-world country gains better-paying but still sweatshop employment but never develops a middle-class and the concomittent protections against the unchecked abuses of the free market.
One could argue that C++ is C++ no matter where in the world you are sitting.
But to lead a company takes a skillset that is fairly abstract in the making.
From the point of view of the employees, they see a bunch of guys in suits wandering around, making what seem like bad decisions, and worse yet, lyaing people off for the good of the company value.
They seem fairly worthless, and out of my own (limited) experience, it really does seem that a lot of them are just bloat - but that is more middle management IMO.
In terms of the top people, there is a cultrual background that is at play that will likely keep American/European people at the tops of American/European companies, and Asian people at the tops of theirs.
I'm sure 80 people will respond with singular references to an anomoly - but for the most part, you can't outsource your leading braintrust and be successful, if due to nothing else but cultrural issues.
Whereas programming is a means to an end. The people at the top want something does XYZ, and whether it is an American, and Indian, or a smart robot on the moon, the end result is going to be something that does XYZ.
Logic, Math, manpower, etc - all basic skills can be outsourced - but the executives at the top do more than that and are much harder to outsource.
That is a very unpopular opinion here on slashdot, so I suppose this will get modded way down. The fact that it might have truth to it... well, overlook it if you must.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
This is too important an issue to just point to a link; here's the body of the text for the link above, written by Sanford Forte for the Merc News in San Jose a month ago; his article says it all:
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/59188 24.htm
"Foreign engineers will change our economic world; prepare yourself
By Sanford Forte
WE'RE hearing a lot these days about economic distress. What we're not hearing enough about are global economic and business changes that hit our manufacturing, technology and financial sectors -- and lead to job displacement. These changes will not abate; if anything, they will accelerate.
It's more complex than just ``globalization.'' It's a series of technology and capital transfers that have fundamentally changed our industrial and technological playing field. The rest of the world is close to fielding robust post-industrial infrastructure, and learning to outplay the best of us.
The National Science Foundation reports that China graduated nearly 200,000 engineers in 1999 from good universities that get better by the year. By comparison, American Universities graduate a mere 60,000 undergraduate engineers annually.
Combined, India and China produced nearly 26 percent of the world's newly minted engineers in 1999. Excluding Japan (where engineering wages are higher), Asian economies graduated 320,000 engineers in 1999 alone.
Wages for Chinese engineers range from roughly $4 to $8 per hour. Engineers from many other Asian nations (excepting Japan) command little more than that. These well-trained engineers are all perfectly capable of working ``on the wire'' for engineering firms all over the world -- and they are doing just that.
China has some 18 million people migrating from the interior to the coastal manufacturing provinces every year. This represents a virtually limitless source of low-cost labor for the next 10 or 20 years. It will feed China's surging consumer demand. Don't believe for a minute that China's (or the Pacific Rim's) economic development will be mostly fueled by American-made products and technology. It won't.
China is already the largest manufacturer of consumer electronics products in the world, and within three years will be the world's largest automotive manufacturer.
Manufacturing is migrating from Pacific Rim economies (Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India) to China, leaving large workforces and technology infrastructures behind. Those displaced workers are migrating to the technology service sector, and already posing a competitive threat to high-tech service sectors in the developed West.
India already has Six Sigma (a universal measure of quality that strives for near perfection) technology and consulting firms equal to our very best, offering superb technology solutions at cut-rate prices.
Roughly 47 percent of Americans are directly or indirectly dependent on technology for their livelihood; keep this number in mind when considering how the ``Law of Lowest Wages and Costs'' has already -- and will increasingly -- impact our economy and lifestyle.
Bottom line: We in Silicon Valley -- and America -- are in for a long, somewhat painful ride. We will be challenged like never before. Americans will, after a time of readjustment and pain, finally have to ask what ``enough'' is . . . and that's a good thing.
It's a good thing because the seemingly never-ending upward spiral of promised prosperity that Americans have recently taken as their birthright has come at real cost: disintegration of families, environmental degradation, unhealthy xenophobia borne of the fear of ``losing advantages'' that we so dearly enjoy.
After the looming crisis fully takes hold, after the scapegoating of politicians, foreign nations and immigrants has run its course, Americans will search inward for values and ways of life that don't depend on maintaining material hegemony that is in excess of ``enough.''
We can be prosperous without obsessing ab
it makes perfect sense to me.
being a programmer in the future will be like being a writer.
writers are very talented, but they are a dime a dozen.
programmers and writers both operate on intellectual capital. and that, as far as economic rules of supply and demand are concerned, is very cheap.
what do you need to express your writing abilities? just pen and paper.
since these tools are cheap, writers are cheap.
previously, a decade or 2 ago, computer hardware was very expensive and rare, and so those who could manipulate it were very much in demand.
as computers become ubiquitous, those who manipulate them, like those who manipulate pen and paper to express their intellectual capital, will become equally just as cheap.
and so any one smart enough and interested enough can get in to a game. just like writing. equally devalued on the basis of supply and demand.
you want to make money in the future? become a plumber. become a nurse. supply and demand. these people demand more and more $ every day as less people in the west want to get into these fields.
look, IT work is a meritocracy. it amazes me that rich western geeks, who value and uphold the principle of how many mad skillz you got as the judge of your value in their technological world, in a perfect expression of pure meritocracy, should suddenly turn around and be so provincial when it comes to questions such as the globalization of IT.
c'mon, lose the hypocrisy. welcome to the real world. welcome to the globalization. no amount of sour grapes is going to change any of this process. give up your elitism and snobbery and realize that your skillsets are rapidly becoming a dime and dozen.
the golden age of super geek rarity is rapidly becoming a thing of a past. a smart teenager with some extra time on his or her hands can do exactly what you are doing right now. why do you suddenly think you deserve better monetary treatment than them? the economic value of your skillset is shrinking in the world as computers become more ubiquitous. get used to it. it's not going away.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In many sences your correct but I disagree. In many third world coutries the cost of living is a fraction of that of the US. Here we have $30,000 cars, we pay $1,800 a month for rent. In the Sudan
Thinking that problems are limited to IT is a bit myopic. Semiconductors are not exactly the place to be these days either.
The problem goes back to the Reagan era policy of putting all the US's eggs in the service sector and then building up this straw man called intellectual property that is essentially hollow. It was never intended to be more than a scam like ponzi or a pyramid game which is what it has turned out to be.
Tighten up patent law back to where it was before the depression, make deregulation a mantra and the monopolies will grow like cockroaches in a backed up sewer.
Well, it worked. Now we're talking about deflation. Hmm, is this really so mysterious.
Developed countries SELL!
Developed countries BUY!
Developing countries make.
There's many examples given by people like Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein. From No Logo:
The tech sector fell into this trap in the 1990s.
The economic mumbo jumbo you hear and see everywhere in the US media is in stark contrast to reality. We have relaxed our environmental laws, beaten up on labor unions, sent jobs off shore to make consumer products cheaper, and still corporations are not satisfied. Why? Because constant growth in consumer spending is no longer possible.
The so called consumer is not getting wise to the Credit Card trap, essentially the cause of October 1929.
The engine of our economic growth has become the credit card, and the unrealistic expectations of the business world. The chickens are coming home to roost, first in the tech sector, then in all sectors if consumer credit continues to increase to unsustainable levels.
Raising interest rates will only precipitate the crash, so as the fed knows, it is caught in a terrible trap. The only solution perhaps is huge consumer credit default and mayhem.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Prove that protecting yourself against slave labor in countries that pay no fricking taxes over hear hurt the U.S. economy? Show me an example how putting a SMALL tax on car imports hurts the U.S. economy. The core difference between cars and code is that it doesn't cost ANYTHING to ship code in to the U.S., and cars take time and effort.
What needs to happen is a tax on ALL code done outside the country.
I could somewhat buy your argument if most of the CXO's around here didn't make decisions soly based off getting themselves rich(er). Most of these idiots just do this crap knowing that it will fail, but it will raise the stock up slightly; then they cash in, with their HUGE severence package, and leave the mess for the next sap to take care of.
Ask yourself this. Why don't U.S. companies use prisoners to code. They could be put on a early release program for quality... That would of course lower the end all product cost for the company... In your view that would be good. In my view India, China and Russia are no different than this.
I predict that within a year or two some laid off I.T. worker is going to come back to his former employment and kill a bunch of people.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
Along the same lines, now that most of the dot-com era is over, it would be possible to see if there was an inverse correlation between the numebr of MBAs at a firm and its survival.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Here's what I've seen...
I've been fortunate enough that even in the downturn and the current economy, I was only unemployed for 3 months. I feel for those who are out of work now because I know that there are many many excellent programmers who can't find anything.
The problem?
Let's face it, a lot of people went to programming without experience and talent durring the dot-com years when they could get 60K without a college degree and a little experience in visual basic.
Those people along with the legitimate programmers lost their jobs and now they are all mixed together out there in the hiring pool.
To make matters worse, there is a corporate reality now that one programmer is as good as any other (and in my experience, the people doing the hiring have no facilities to tell if an applicant is qualified), so they hire the cheap guy or the fancy talker our outsouce to another country. I know a lot of really excellent unemployed programmers that have been passed up for inexperienced and untalented programmers.
So they continue to hire the cheapest workers and outsource to countries with an abundance of low wage workers and then they complain about the quality of software these days. It's ironic, but they can't seem to get that stigma out of their eyes...
T
I agree that there is some measure of cultural advantage the we enjoy. Our culture promotes that kind of thinking, but it does not mean that other cultures are incapable of it. To beleive that is simply... ignorant.
There are a lot of new products coming out of India, some of which are quite innovative. Much of the software in the emerging verticals, such as the handheld space, comes from places like Russia, China, Isreal, and India. These efforts clearly show the ability to be free thinkers.
I've had the privilige of working with several foreign programmers. I work with two right now, and they are quite inventive and both very good general problem solvers. As they've become comfortable and learned to speak thier minds more and more, they have become more and more effective. So yes, their is something to the culture argument.. but you've taken it to an illogical and damaging extreme.
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The above statement cannot be supported economically. The problem is the qualifier "free markets". Globalization is, in theory, an agent of leveling, but only if it's viewed in a near-zero-sum manner. What is occurring today is not free market globalization, but rather short-term greed exploitation. This introduces more inefficiency, not less.
Specifically, US skilled technology jobs moving to India, if a free market is assumed, should proportionally increase the standard of living in India, along with the relative competitiveness of Indian OEM product. However, when this occurs, pseudo-globalization will simply relocate again to lower cost of production regions. The net effect is that the actual value of the product/service is not reflected in the price of the product/service until either (a) true equality is reached or (b) external factors halt the trend. Further, a cynic, of which there is not shortage on Slashdot, will extrapolate the obvious notorious effect of global politics. That is, the pseudo-globalization effort creates a dependence upon low-wage exploitation. This creates a vested interest in slowing development of developing countries.
Someone evoked the European free market approach earlier. Although certainly not a flawless approach, the European philosophy is more disposed to pricing products/services at their true value. My interpretation of the European model, as applies to Indian off-shoring of high skill jobs, is that enough reasonable protectionism is necessary to both protect the value-price parity of European OEM product, while still encouraging Indian OEM competition. This model benefits both parties and is arguably the true intent of positive globalization.
Actually what you describe is the difference between democracy and capitalism. The USA does not support freedom, democracy, or republics - it supports capitalism. Unfortunately greed, like everything else in life, without moderation is very, very destructive.
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
Since most companies see no "Real Value" in IT, it is no wonder that IT jobs are moving to where labour is cheapest. When the major computer manufacturers and the major software companies are already outsource thier own support and programming. How long do you really think it will before your job goes "away'?
Sadly this is a little idealalistic. "Worth" has varying definitions as you travel around the globe. An Indian programmer making USD 20,000/yr is far better off in his society than an American making USD 40,000/yr. Thus, an Indian programmer has a fundamentally higher capacity to do more for less. Over a great amount of time, as this money settles out in his economy from his spending it within that economy, that same money becomes worth less in comparison to the American-economy value of it, which is rising as the standard of living decreases in America (deflation, or inflation under 3%).
Also, making yourself worth more doesn't mean you're going to get a job. To make yourself worth more, and be able to prove it, you need additional degrees/certifications, which cost money. If you don't have the money for them, despite being as talented as the next guy who DOES have them, the job market will be a cold cold place to you.
However, Americans *will* have to accept lower salaries for the same jobs as before (already happening to huge extents), and this will shave off the outliers who were making salaries that were simply absurd. Unfortunately this shaving process too often takes off the top of the entire Bell Curve (too often in layoffs, those making the decision on who stays and who goes don't pay that much attention to who was worth their salt), and so more people who were making the correct value of their job will be fired than those who are fired because they make too much.
Once laid off (no matter how appropriately or not), it's extremely difficult to make your resume stand out from the resume of a pseudo programmer who knows enough about technology to banter jargon around, and fill their resume with acronyms because they heard them in an advertisement once. In order to make a competetive resume, one must either be over qualified, or a liar, because you're competing against other liars. And thus you end up having to take a job that is worth less than YOU are, and doesn't take advantage of all of your skills, nor help you to advance your own skills by pushing you at all. Thus you as an employee stagnate unless you have the time or drive to push yourself ahead on your own spare time. In that stagnation process (if you fall victim to it), you become worth less compared to those around you.
In the end I believe it will come around again full circle. What's going on in India, etc, is analogous to what happened in the U.S. in the 90's. An economy can only grow so fast in a healthy fashion. There's a lot of excess money from the 90's boom and subsequent crunch, which is looking for a new home which promises similar returns to the 90's boom. This money will flood economies that are not ready for it, these economies will artificially inflate, just like the U.S. one did, and eventually they're destined for collapse, just like the U.S. economy. This collapse will happen as a result of the U.S. companies having realized that "cheaper" doesn't mean "better," when they see that the quality of their product is reduced (if nothing else, through communication and time zone issues, let alone the "pseudo programmer" phenomenon from the U.S. 90's), and withdraw their money for the now not-significantly-more-expensive American worker alternative.
The next 10 years looks *very* bad for the U.S. IT industry, this is a pendulum, and it is still on its downward swing, away from the U.S. Things are going to get worse from here folks. Be *willing* to take a pay cut if it saves your job. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and thus a $40,000 job is worth an $80,000 job which you were laid off from. Certainly don't expect a raise any time soon.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Human rights my ass, unless you are talking about fat rich Western kids rights to have an overpaid job. You propose to let the Indonesians for whom a US$ 5 a day wage buys a living, die jobless, moneyless and foodless, in order to pay ten or a hundred times more to someone in San Francisco, Berlin or London for exactly the same job.
The two countries you name, China and Indonesia, have indeed lots of human right issues. The jobs offered by Western companies make this situation better, by creating a new technological middle class capable of seeing the benefits of free information flow and educated enough to fight for it.
I won't even try to take away your dreams as in "The USA supports freedom", but try finding out why China is one of US largest commercial partners and also which foreign countries support the Indonisian regime.
Yeah, right. The secret is marketing half-truths, old-boy networks, graft, etc., the same bag of tricks as always. When I see something like the scene depicted in this David Horsey cartoon then I'll believe in your meritocracy.
Successful programming projects save companies lots of money. One successful project will only whet their appetite for more. I expect there will always be work for me, no matter how many overseas programmers compete.
You'll note that globalism only seems to work one way. Why can't I buy shoes directly from Indonesia for $5? Why can't I get a PC from China for $100? If American companies really want to compete globally then let's open the door both ways and see how they fare when I can buy a DVD player online for a fiver + shipping.
At first glance, protectionism seems "old school" and unrestricted free trade looks like the logical way to keep a free-trade economy growing. This would be true if all countries were on a level playing field and the entire world was the market place. The reality is that the U.S. consumer is the one doing most of the purchasing from U.S. companies and if you ship U.S. jobs overseas and drive wages down then the very person you're trying to sell to won't be able to afford your product.
The end result will be a decreased standard of living for all but the richest Americans because once you start outsourcing whitecollar work to other countries, you lower the wage-base for the majority of Americans. This creates a nice big insurmountable gap between rich and poor, and great dichotomies of wealth are the stuff of revolutions.
Many of the discussions taking place on this mailing list seem to be focusing on one part of this argument while ignoring a number other significant issues.
Case in point: Let us consider a production process in which output is a function of two factors of production. K = Capital and L = Labor. Globalization is creating new opportunities to outsource labor, which, in turn is causing the price of labor to fall. Simply put, wages are falling while returns to capital owners are increasing. In turn, everyone on Slashdot is obsessing where it is good or bad that jobs are being outsourced.
What is being neglected is that the government can (and some would argue) should intervene in the economy to smooth out the dislocations. The higher returns that are being generated by the capital owners can be taxed and used to provide income supplements and educational training to displaced workers. If the outsources is "pareto improving" income to capital owners can be increased without decreasing returns to labor, then go ahead and outsource away. If, however, outsourcing results in a net drain on the economy, things get a bit more dicey.
Where the current systems in the US are breaking down is the combination of massive outsourcing with increasingly regressive social policies. We are increasing the share allocated to capital at the same time that we are slashing taxes. In turn, this is dramatically skewing income distributions. Not a good combination.
Simple..
,but he has to pay $22,000. He also pays cash, and has $28,000 left to spend.
Lets say that Japan has a competitive advantage in auto manufacturing. They can make BETTER cars, cheaper.
The goal of tariffs is to raise the price of a Japanese car to the level of one made in the U.S., the idea being that it negates the Japanese competitive advantage in car manufacturing.
So lets examine two consumers, one in the U.S. and one in Japan. For the purposes of this discussion we'll say they both make the same salary of $50,000 after tax dollars.
The consumer in Japan can buy a high quality car for $18,000. The car is a very good car, just as good (if not better) than it's American counterpart. This is because the Japanese are very good at making cars. Since the consumer pays cash, he has $32,000 left to spend after buying the car.
The consumer in the U.S. can buy a similiar car
In overall economic terms the Japenese consumer is now wealthier than the American consumer.. he received the same value in his car purchase, and has an additional $4000 to reinvest in the rest of the economy.
Sure the American buyer may have bought an American car.. but instead of growing the economy by $32,000 he can only contribute $28,000 because he is now less wealthy than his Japanese counterpart.
This is the idea behind globalism in general. By letting the most efficient people build the products, it creates wealth for everyone as they can spend less and get more. They can then grow the economy buy reinvesting that wealth in it. This is the same idea as a tax cut for economic stimulus, but with the bonus of not lowering the spending power of the government.
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Read "The Economics of Empire" in the May Harper's. Excellent piece.
How about instead reading some mainstream books on basic ecomomy as understood by our foremost economists and as taught by universities all over the world.
Then you would learn the extreme benefits that trade have brought to everyone. You would learn how the nations that have pursued trade are prosperous, and those who have not impoverished.
can be reversed with rational policies that foster local investment at the expense of unchecked corporate profits
If it really were true that all free trade lead to was extreme profits for the few and lower wages for the many then I would totally agree with your conclusion. But if you look around you will find that wages all over the world are steadingly increasing, and corporate proifts are constant or falling. The reason that profits are not generally increasing is that international business is extremely competitive; savings are passed on to the consumer.
It happened to textile workers long ago. It's happening to us now.
Yes, and this development has been good. It has not caused mass unemployment. It has not caused extreme profits or uneven distribution of wealth. If you read economic history you will see that current unemployment is historically typical, that profits are typical or low - the only thing that is changing is ever increasing living standards. I am very glad that people like you were not successful in destroying all the Spinning Jenny's and stop economic development.
Hey I realize that this is a tough sell among American IT workers. My message is this: if you want to keep coding and make twice as much as the guy in India, you better learn the latest tools and techniques and be twice as productive. Americans have done this many times before. That is why our standards of living is higher than almost anywhere else.
Trying to prevent the guy in India from coding for half the price is futile. We know from history what happens if you try - it just leads to economic misery for everyone.
Tor
Let me distill your post down to its essence:
"The good ole' boys network will keep the fat cats from suffering the same fate as the rest of us"
Thats my take on it anyways. And I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I don't have to like it either.
You've got a programming team of say 100 developers. You decide to outsource. You take 90 of those jobs and send them overseas. 10 of them you transition to do integration and analysis. So, what do those 90 people do?
Sure we can try to move up the food chain, but the nature of this is that there are inherently less jobs the further you move up the chain.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
What we're seeing is change, which one can either fear or take advantage of. It's your choice.
Well put!
It seems strange that a communty like /., who almost to a man supports concept of the freedom of information (as expressed by OSS, FSF, etc.) can be so reactionary when it comes to dark skinned people from places other than US, Canada, and Europe getting jobs using the skills related to that information.
In the long run, globalization leads to open interdependant economies. Those economies lead to more wealth for all, as well as a more stable peace.
I offer as evidence the most recent rounds of serious saber rattling between India and Pakistan. It has been widely reported that it was the leaders of India's growing high tech sector that pressured the Indian government to step back from the brink of war. That pressure came because they felt that war would damage their ability to get new contracts with western businesses.
As another example, China's growing economic contacts with the US, Japan, etc. have a stabilizing effect on the Taiwan situation. China's entrepreneurs would find the disruption of trade too great a blow to stomach a forced re-unification.
It is also instructive to observe the actual progression of globalization. First, unskilled jobs like simple textile work move overseas. After a while, the standard of living in that place improves and so those un-skilled jobs move to somewhere else and semi-skilled jobs like auto assembly take their place. Then those jobs move on and highly skilled jobs - chip fabrication for one - move in. At the same time the standards of living keep improving. In 30 or 40 years people in a once third world country are living comparably to those in the first world. Many of the factories along the Mexico/Texas border provide their workers with a middle class lifestyle. Those Mexicans, in turn, have the wealth to purchase goods and services from the US, re-employing the people whose jobs were lost when the factory moved to Mexico.
While there will be many bumps in the road, globalization will be a long term net positive for every nation. Nations go to war when their leaders have less to lose by war than by peace. Globalized economies have a great deal to lose, while isolated economies have little at stake. World peace will come when men of every nation have the opportunity to better themselves through commerce, rather than violence.
Although, since I'm employed as a programmer, I have to cringe at stories like that one on CNN.com, there is a silver lining to news like this. The more headlines about how bleak the outlook is for the tech sector, the fewer students will go for computer science and similar degrees. Aside from less competition in the future for those of us already in the field, it'll mean the people doing computer-related work will be doing it because they like or and/or are actually good at it, not because they thought it was an easy ticket to riches. Having entered college during the dot-com days and graduated after the bubble burst, I think this is a good thing.
everyone gets paid what they're actually worth as opposed to what they think they're worth.
Yeah those CEO's man, they're worth so much. Especially when they kill the business. They get even more money.
Are you a CEO? You get to decide what someone is worth? Cause I'd like to see you argue that you're worth X while another person is worth Y and that's how it should be.
-- taking over the world, we are.
>>Reality is that if you didn't study comp sci in college, you probably shouldn't expect to get another job in IT.
Hmm. So my company taught me COBOL and JCL in 1985. While I worked as a junior programmer maintaining 15 year old batches I taught myself C and C++. I worked up my level of responsibility at my job and was trusted with new development for a major mainframe implementation. So I learned DB2 and CICS along the way.
After that, my boss at the time started to talk to me about webifying some of the mainframe systems. He knew that I was learning C*. So I wrote a couple of big C++ based CGI systems that talk to DB2 on the 390.
I have fantastic relationships with my users. They call me when they have trouble, because they know that I'll listen to them and help them.
I have good relationships with developers all over my firm. I believe in sharing knowledge, and working together to brainstorm and solve problems. This I learned over the years is important towards getting projects done.
These days I'm a j2ee guy and an architect for a $10 million dollar system.
I took only 1 computer class in college before dropping out in 1987.
The parent's comment indicate that because I don't have schooling, I don't deserve my job. Is this true even though this is what I've always wanted to do, and I love it?
BTW, I'm working to get out of straight coding, and into project technical leadership.
Huh?
There are many places in IT where someone from a distant country might try compete with local talent, but they'll get their butts kicked every time because business sees an advantage to hiring more expensive, local, knowledgeable workers.
But if everyone hires out to a distant country, its not an issue. Anyone who doesn't outsource will be facing a larger short-term investment, and will be crushed before they can reap the advantages of those local, knowledgeable, and expensive workers. They'll be crushed in the stock market too, because the other companies will have better next-quarter financials, and everyone knows that's all that matters.Who wants to trust their business to someone they've never met, 3,000 miles away, who barely shares their language?
And the answer is... Management! Sure, he's 3,000 miles away, but he's their kind of people - the sort that manages people and cash flow, and doesn't think too hard (or really care) about what exactly his company's making. He owns people that take care of all that confusing tech stuff for a miniscule sum. And to top it off, they don't actually have to get too close to any techies - who are not their kind of people, and think about things like "justice" and "rights" far too much for their own good.
"The USA supports freedom"
That is why its most trusted alley in fight against terror is Pakistan and their military dictator! Who toppled democratic government. And now goes around world making decision and deals with freedom supporting USA while as the democratic leaders are stuggling against the powerful jehadic army.
Yaa, right, I believe you support freedom!
are you saying that Indians just aren't cut out for programming?
I worked at a job where I had many coworkers that were Indian, and we outsourced a lot of our stuff to our Indian office.
The code from those guys SUCKED.
I too figured, hell, them fellas must all be retarded.
But no, then I went and worked at a different company and worked with some of the brightest people I know - they were from India as well.
It turns out, just like the States - people can be total idiots, and people can be really bright.
If anyone is going to present a good arguement here - it should be that India has suffered a serious brain drain throughout the economic boom here in the states. Their best and brightest have come over here on the H1B, leaving behind the ones that would like to also become IT and cash in on that field.
That argument makes a bit more sense than "they are different than me, therefore, they must be retarded"
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Oh, there might be a few more cycles, but the trend is going to be inevitably downward -- and not just in IT.
Why? Because, simply, the status quo is an unmaintainable imbalance. The problem isn't greedy American corporations, the problem is greedy Americans, who think its Good and Right that our tiny country controls such a vast portion of the world's wealth. Whether it's Good and Right or Evil and Wrong, the fact is that a free market abhors this sort of imbalance, and absent draconian controls, the imbalance will be corrected. If an Indian can do the same job, and only needs to be paid a small apartment and a nice bicyle, where an American wants a huge house, two SUVs and annual vacations in Fiji, the Indian will get the job. And should!
I'm an American, and I very much enjoy my comfortable lifestyle, my nearly 4000 ft^2 house, my cars, my expensive hobbies, etc., but I've lived outside of the US and I have no illusions that the status quo can be maintained for long. There are too many people in the world who are just as deserving, just as smart and, frankly, probably willing to work harder. My comfort is as much an accident of my birth as anything I've done, and I don't think I have any God-given right to it.
Further, I think Americans need to realize that much of our current material wealth actually comes from the very places we complain are taking our jobs. Walk into nearly any store, look at the prices on the goods, then think about how much material and labor was required to make them. The stuff we buy is *amazingly* cheap; our own incomes are stretched to nearly ridiculous lengths by the abundance of cheap labor overseas. Quite simply, our lifestyle is all out of proportion to our productivity, and the market is going to correct that. IT is just one of the current victims/opportunities (depending on your point of view).
Protectionism, isolationism and schemes to keep ourselves on top by keeping everyone else down won't work forever, because they just don't make economic sense. We're going down, because that's the way it should be. All of the crying about evil corporations looking for a quick buck is just self pitying noise. The imbalance means that over the next few generations, we'll have to learn to cut back our lifestyles somewhat as people in other parts of the world improve theirs.
And if you spend a little time in the 3rd world, and see how many smart, hard-working, deserving people there are, you'll understand that that's a Good Thing, even if it's personally painful.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Blaming the lazy American worker is false and disingeneous at best.
I'm not afraid to compete at my level with the best Indian or Chinese worker. On a basis of taking cost of living into account. If I could live as cheaply where my family is, as Apu does in Pune, then I'd happily compete with him. But Apu does not pay taxes to pave their roads, provide safe drinking water, inspect food, or even defend their country at the same level I do. Apu does not have regulations protecting him. All of these things contribute to a lower cost. Then, the point of competition isn't about skill or work ethic or productivity or time-efficiency. It's all about cost. Human beings can be thought of as commodities, to your average bean-counter. But they are not commodities.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Thereis nothing natural about this trend. Its based on an entirely fucked up econimic model where there is free movement of products and services without free movement of labour. Outsourcing only exists because a guy in Romania is stuck there and has no other choice but work for $300/month. Btw, I'm saying this as a Russian developer making most of my income thru offshore development. IMHO US should grant green card citizenship to any skilled developer so they could come and compete on qeual terms with US guys it will still drive the salaries down but not nearly as much. (simply because you cant sutvive on $300/m in the States)
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
In some areas, the US doesn't have the technology any more. CD and DVD drives require licensed technology from Asian companies.
In my years in the commercial software development world--admittedly 2 companies, both startups--we've never considered outsourcing any work overseas. We did outsource I18N work--to an American company--because not one of us programmers wanted to touch I18N. The universal experience of all the programmers I know in the USA is that outsourcing _significant_ software development overseas results in universally disastrous code. It's may sound harsh but the US still has 90% of the really good coders, and any US company that wants to succeed is best advised to stick with US operations. Of course of the really good coders in the US a significant fraction are not originally American. But, I don't see the balance of talent changing any time soon.
I actually read the article, and it's not talking really about I.T. jobs. I'm in I.T., and what this article is talking about is strictly programming jobs (not really even I.T. programming jobs) and tech "creation" jobs. In fact pretty much all of the article focuses on out-of-work programmers -- these are not I.T. people.
I.T. is more a service industry while programming is a creation industry -- two very different beasts if you want to outsource to foreign workers.
When a guy in our California office has a problem creating a document in a database on our Notes server is he going to call/wait for an I.T. guy in the UK? No way.
When we need to make a programming change to our back-end server in California, do we care whether the guy making the change is in California, Nevada, or the U.K.? No, of course not.
There are two fundamentally different situations here -- the tech industry is simply going through a shift from a creation-oriented focus to a service-oriented focus. This is not very different from the change a lot of other industries have gone through, but it seems scary because it's now hitting our beloved tech industry.
The fact is I'm essentially a programmer with a computer science degree, and I have a good, solid, well-paying job in the I.T. sector where I'm programming only a small percentage of the time. I'm a director, so I hire I.T. people pretty often. The applicants I see are either I.T.-oriented, or they're programming-oriented.
The bottom line is that if you aren't able to adapt to a more service-oriented role in the U.S. tech industry, you will have more and more of a problem getting a job because you'll be competing for an ever-shrinking pool of jobs...
the U.S. has yet to outsource (expensive!) jobs like doctors, lawyers, architects, executives, etc.
That's because these people must be licensed to practice in the US. Why? Because they all maintain professional organizations, the AMA for example, to protect them from foreign competition.
Try practicing medicine with a degree from a foreign medical school. Very difficult.
You must be referring to my MCSE...
You joke but you would be amazed how many people I have interviewed that say are MCSEs and really aren't. When I see a MS certification on a resume, I ask the interviewee for their MCP certification number. (The one you get when you really DO certify) Many times the answer was "Uh, I don't know where I put it.". Sometimes the interviewee would come clean and admit they weren't certified but knew the "Windows 2000 Unleashed" book from front to back.
What it all comes down to are asshats who lie on their resumes and claim false credentials that make it difficult for hiring companies to quickly and accurately weed through the mountains of resumes.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
1) $33/hr is about 3 times more expensive than $9.50/hr. Therefor, $5B in America does not equal $5B in India. Try $5B in India and $15B here or $1.67B in India and $5B here.
2) Money does not grow on trees. Someone is paying their (your) salary. Their (your) company just slashed their labor costs by 66%, thus saving money. If they had not, they might have:
(a) gone bankrupt, putting everying out of a job
or
(b) laid off 66% of the workforce to cut costs, in which case they (you) would still be out of a job
3) Remember that your $0.99 fries from McDonald's is possible mostly because the dude/dudette frying them up is getting paid minimum wage, not $33/hr. At $33/hr, those fries would probably cost about $4 or $5. The point is that cheap labor benefits the consumer of the product of that labor. You are a consumer. You do benefit from cheap labor.
4) They (you) are not entitled to $33/hr. They (you) have to _earn_ their (your) pay.
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
I agree. Cutting out your customer's purchasing power is never a good step. I don't think there's many people in India working for $3 an hour that will be willing to spend $600 on a word processor. Pesky things like food and luxuires like medicine and clean water and reasonable housing will be on the list.
"We can be prosperous without obsessing about prosperity, that is, sacrificing our very lives and identities to some abstract definition of ``success.'' "
Ok, I'll believe it when this guy takes a pay cut to $4000 a year, or less, and doesn't complain.
Working in San Jose, I'll bet he ends up living in a nice refrigerator box, over there by the overpass.
No, we cannot be prosperous by outsourcing ourselves headlong into third world status.
There's always someone willing to work for less...where's the bottom? $4 an hour? $2? 50 cents?
We may be able to rationalize our poverty by clinging to religion, but we will be in poverty nonetheless; moreover we will know it acutely, because our parents, and their parents all had a much higher standard of living, and we were sold into poverty for their handful of silver.
Not only that, but when they are well enough off (thanks to all this foreign investment) to spend the equivalent of $600 on a word processor, you can bet that they're not going to buy Word. They're going to buy something from a domestic startup (probably owned by an old co-worker or manager) that does what they need, not what some American design expert thought was useful.
Of course, that's assuming that "globalization" doesn't keep outsourcing jobs to low-cost areas, reducing the entire planet to a giant slum.
So to put it simply, everyone can get all hot and sweaty about "globalization", but what we currently have is not globalization. It is instead, simply a mechanism which detrimental to one group of people to the benefit of another. Is the slashdot crowd opposed to that sort of thing? In general, yes. So, it would seem obvious that why the slashdot crowd is opposed to the current state of affairs.
Run! There's a lobster loose!
This is one of the many contradictions of the western capitalist system.
...
Everyone claims that we should let 'market forces' take care of who produces item X and who can afford to buy item Y. The problem is that 'market forces' includes bribes, extreme political pressure and military intervention.
About a year ago, I decided to practise what I preach and tried to buy some clothes that were made in Australia. Anyone who has made a similar decision will know what I found: there are NO clothes made in Australia. There are plenty made in Chinese & Indonesian sweat shops. There is no consumer choice. If there were, those companies who offered it would discover what it meant to be bankrupt rather quickly, as people would avoid their higher prices like the plague. The point is that the so-called empowered consumers have NO choice in the matter - it is all decided by multi-national corporations, and rubber-stamped by corrupt politicians all around the world.
Back to the article
You think companies will employ programmers at a premium of 5 times what they can get elsewhere? Some will. Very few. Good old 'market forces' will send most people to sweat shop programmers. And do you think your government will step in and fight for the rights of foreign citizens and demand they get decent working conditions? I didn't think so. Probably it would be impossible anyway, as the foreign citizens' government is too busy paying off loans for weapons of mass destructions to the World Bank, or too busy trying to deal with the social problems caused by the IMF's 'recommendations' that the backbone of the country is privatised.
Thinking of responding with some mindless name-calling? I'll get you started. I'm a left-wing radical. I'm a stupid mindless hippie. I'm a fucking communist. Whatever. At least I've made some observations about why our world is so fucked up. Try to address these issues. That's the point here. To discuss the problem, not call each other names.
COST != PAY
The programmer costs his salary, benefits, software licensing, network fees, PC lease or purchase, security clearance, etc., etc. Training, materials, connectivity, travel, facilities (rent, desk, chair).
Talk to any manager about what's really in his budget. Just having you in a chair in an office and with the lights on costs thousands a year.
- Sig this!
It seems to me that doing this whole outsourcing bit is really solving the wrong problem.
Technology is not in and of itself useful. I mean, yes, your compiler writers are useful, and the software itself provides some service, but the net worth of IT is what it can do for a person, company, etc.
The value in the internet is not selling servers, but implementing an e-commerce site that allows people to buy plane tickets more easily.
The value in the office is not 10 boxes of Office, three quarters of the features of which never get used, but in setting up an office system in which documents can be edited, tracked, archived and shared.
IT kind of strayed from its initial premise and attempted to model itself after other, box moving enterprises. But code isn't like raw oats or widgets. The endgame of it is, how much time or money will the use of it save me?
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
...reducing the entire planet to a giant slum.
h e-peasants-here%
hey, thats not true -- their wont be a giant slum -- I'll bet Africa could grow into a lovely fortress for the rich... Just that the middle class, which formerly acted as a barrier between the haves and have-nots will be sufficiently squeezed to start to identify with the have-nots... THEN things start to get interesting.
See the American Revolution, French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Cuban Revolution, %your-favorite-monarch/ruling-class-disposed-by-t
*OR* the planet can start to get serious about the business of fair and equitable society. Equal Opportunity for all. Help for those who need it. Peace. Prosperity for all -- not just a few rich SOB CEOs who will run away with a bag-o-cash in a heartbeat, these people are 'world-citizens', they are rich, they can pick up and scoot off to where-ever the hell's not burning... and their newly minted middle class will be happy for the prosperity that trickles down -- and will send their civilized sons and daughters to fight our evil great-grandchildren
Not to mention the deprivation of a salary to these foreign employees, while not comparable in US terms, that beats any possible salary they can earn in their country with NO external influence.
/. seem to just sit back and discuss people being laid off and not finding more work as if it were a cold statistic reported on the news. It isn't. It's a hungry desperate man in the street trying to feed his kids, let alone himself. He doesn't care about macroeconomic policy. He doesn't care what the color of the skin is of the worker around the globe who stole his job. He wants food, now... and the only ones within reach will be the wealthy Americans who sent all those jobs overseas in the first place.
The people losing their jobs in the U.S. don't care about the "foreign employees". Just like the foreign employees don't care about the people in the U.S. losing their jobs. Fair? Who cares about fair -- this is about survival.
I have little to no sympathy for the IT employees laid off, they must adapt to survive the changes, as we cannot continually look at these issues on a microeconomic scale.
I'll have no sympathy at all for you when those laid-off IT employees finally give up on finding a job and simply become highway men, and put several bullets through your head for the change in your pocket. You'll simply have to adapt to survive the change of having lead slugs in your skull and all your blood leaking out of your body.
Yes, that was sarcasm. But so many on
And this is the most heavily armed place, per capita, on the planet. It'll be a bloodbath.
Oh, wait, someone did. And decided that it's more important to not call a child a failure than to teach them how to read and write correctly.
I mean, what the fuck is up with the whole apostrophe saga? It's not like they're difficult to use. Don't get me started on their/there/they're either.
If accepting mediocrity is the price of retaining a child's self esteem, then fuck their self esteem and shred it GOOD!
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
The problem with trying to learn English is the language structure - Or lack thereof. I'm not an English student, so I don't know all the proper terms, but I do know that English is a prick of a language to learn because of its unstructured nature.
When you're learning by rote from a teacher who barely speaks the language themselves, of course you're going to have difficulty. There's a reason why native English speakers are in huge demand in Asia as teachers of the English language.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
As the jobs of educated, middle class people go, the unemployment rate will skyrocket. What you describe as an imbalance has nothing to do with these people, or people with low-paying jobs. It has everything to do with the WEALTHY. The 1% who own 99% of the wealth. These peoples' jobs are not getting shipped overseas, and even if they were, you can make plenty of money if you ALREADY HAVE plenty of money. So we will still maintain 99% of our wealth, but it will just be less evenly distributed. As long as the wealthy are in this country (and why would they leave?), it keeps the cost of living high for the rest of us. This combined with the fact that the rich executives and stockholders are making money from the exporting of jobs, while the average Joe is losing his job. We simply cannot compete with the lower salaries the rest of the world are willing to accept because they do not have to compete with as many wealthy citizens for a place to live, etc.
Although I don't know if there are any feasible ways of isolation that don't hurt certain countries, I do think that it is better for every country to have a plentiful suppply of jobs than for every person to have a dirt cheap VCR. What good does a cheap VCR do my if I don't have a job? Maybe this exporting of jobs is good for third world countries now, but in the long run, it makes more sense to have local economies that can supply products for themselves, and by themselvs.
First neo-liberal economics supporter in the crowd... Here I go...
:) ):
I'm just going to pull the standard leftist arguments (me being a leftist and all
1. Modern free trade agreements (which cause the out-sourcing) result in harm to workers and the environment. NEarly every country that you out-source to, treats their workers muchworse, and harms the environment far more greatly. You can go and look up the facts. In particular, go and check how the environmental regulations in poor countries are severely weakened by free trade agreements. Similarly, the new workers often have to work longer hours, have less rights and so on. To people on the left, like me, it is almost as if someone who loves prostitution goes to a poor country because the cost is lower and the regulations are almost non-existent (try to figure out whether you can dump waste into rivers in these countries).
2. Wealth discrepancy between the rich and the poor increases. When you out-source, what really happens is that an owner's costs go down, while his profits go up (that's why they do it after all). The workers get poorer overall (since a high salary from a developed country just become a low sarly in an undeveloped country) while the owners get richer (the owners would manage to lower their costs and increase profits). The OVERALL end result is that the gap between the rich and hte poor increases (it does NOT decrease).
3. This is a personal thing... Power shifts to the capitalists and therefore I don't like it. Workers become weaker.
That should be enough for now... if you need more reasons, just e-mail me. I'm sure I can find leftist articles shredding the neo-liberal economist arguments...
KoalaBear33
......The worst thing in my life happened when the stock market started mattering more than the economy
Of course, that's assuming that "globalization" doesn't keep outsourcing jobs to low-cost areas, reducing the entire planet to a giant slum.
You mean, as opposed to the current situation where the place where you live is nice, but all the rest of it is an even worse slum? There is absolutely no moral principle for which you could claim that that's a good thing. Yes, the world will all be a "slum" if you consider $9/hr for coding 'impoverished'. but on average most people will be better off then they were before.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
My apologies, it is just a subject that brings great anger .
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to me and clouds my reason
I do not think clearly when I am that pissed off
I look forward ot the day they take the corporate royalty
to task for their sharecropping of america
Their ultimate goal seems to be little better than that
Taxes so high, only the rich can afford real property,
either your part of the rich or part of the poor , it
is like a vanishing middle class
Continuing to raise the tax amounts, but the rich have
loopholes to avoid them
If anyone makes a decent wage that is not a "suit" find
a way to replace them with someone from another country
It is a mantra I think should have them deported, and the
politicians that are bought off by them should be sent
to the overseas sweatshops as well
In the US we make what we do so we can afford the OVER-priced
homes on the East and West coast, so we can just have a place
to live and have a roof over our heads
I am not talking palatial mansions here, I am talking a
little house on the prairie place going for $250,000 in
the valley in cali
( deep sigh )
let me calm myself
There are intelligent businessman, alot of them were college
drop outs , ie. Mike Dell , Bill Gates and others
The Visa cards is what got most of the 9-11 hi jackers in here
The Visa cards is what got them into the flight schools
The Visa cards is what has brought millions of foreign workers
here, when we have millions of unemployed
For the "truly" brilliant foreign ppl that apply for jobs and
truly beat out americans on ability, sure , come on down
But the sweatshops Tatia consulting and others that were
mentioned by Norman mattloff of UC Davis before the Senate
of the United States, it is all just a damn scam
They voted 96-1 to dbl the number of Visa workers coming into
this country AFTER the DOT BOMB went off
I say they all need to rot in hell
Just my 2 cents
I am not mad at you or saying your wrong about anything,
I am just bent out of shape about this particular subject
peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"