Slashdot Mirror
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
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?
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.
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.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
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.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
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.
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).
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
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.
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
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:
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
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.
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.
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.
In some areas, the US doesn't have the technology any more. CD and DVD drives require licensed technology from Asian companies.
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...
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.
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.
...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
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
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.