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The Unstoppable Shift of IT Jobs Overseas
514x0r writes "The spectre in the back of many of our minds is that in a few years we may be replaced by an underpaid programmer in India. Newsforge.com is currently running an article about why this is unstoppable, that actually ends on a positive note...sort of." Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
"corporate biggies outside of software companies tend to consider their IT people as somewhat ... strange ... more often than not. This is not a new phenomenon. I remember a guy who worked as a mainframe tech for a bank back in the late '60s who went by the name "Paul the Prophet," and had a dyed-green mustache."
Ok, that's just hilarious.
If, instead, you see this as an opportunity to start your own company, become proactive, and actively be more creative, then this isn't a bad thing. It provides labor for small businesses that they could otherwise not afford. (We were able to hire excellent programmers for half the cost) Further, if you are an excellent programmer in a specialized field, then you aren't going to have much trouble anyway. People will seek you out. We do.
So contribute to Opensource software. Get your name out there.
But if you think that you can just "punch the card" then in my opinion you deserve what you get. And if you think you can stay in California, well, good luck unless you figure a way to build the better mousetrap that everyone wants.
And you're a bloody hypocrite if you do.
All you accomplish through getting the government involved to prevent outsourcing is hurting a hundred people through higher prices for the sake of one person.
You don't have a right to an IT job. If you have one, great. Make sure you have skills that are so valuable that you won't be outsourced. If you can't do that, then find another line of work, you lazy bastard. Should the government have done something to protect operators of horse drawn buggies that were put out of business when cars came to the market?
I was thinking about going into IT. The recent fad of outsourcing makes me rethink my priorities. I don't want to benefit by causing prices to rise beyond free market levels and screwing my fellow citizens who have little to do with this.
When Microsoft pleaded that the GPL would destroy their ability to make money, someone responded, "Tough. Adapt or die."
So, to those IT workers who feel they're being cheated by having something taken from them, when in fact they did not have an inherent right to what they have:
Tough. Adapt or die. Offer something in America in IT that foreigners cannot offer or find some other line of business. I refuse to support people who want to screw me.
Economic illiteracy like this is the reason why we get screwed by the Republicans and the Democrats so often. Quoting John "Candy" Keynes. Sheesh.
Bush is on fire and its not good for my lungs.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Seems to me that the title of the post contradicts the end of the article itself!
Your next "IT job" may be in an industry you didn't even think about a few years ago. It may be in a place you never thought of as an "IT mecca." But if you have solid skills, whether as an entry level programmer or sysadmin or as a top-level IT manager or CIO, some company out there almost certainly needs someone just like you. The trick is finding that company -- but that's another article for another day.
Although in the end, I hate to say it, but this looks like its still based on speculation and hope rather than any empirical evidence.
Ever noticed /. NEVER has a positive article about the IT industry?
I guess bad news always sells more copies.
But most buisnesses and certainly no government would outsource penitration testing and other security jobs. I bet there is tech job security in well...the field of security.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
So the American corporations (of doom) are sending jobs to foreign companies to save some cash. Considering Indian IT workers have a wage of $10,000 compared to the $60,000 of fresh out of college Americans, that adds up. The pay raises usually end up in the pockets of the business owners.
But weren't the same American business owners, albeit in other industries, complaining about other countries making money by importing goods to the US and competing with the traditional businesses? Isn't that what the entire anti-dumping, WTO policies are about?
There was a mainstream article on Time magazine entitled Where the Good Jobs Are Going. (Premium, pay article) which you might want to take a look at if you have access to it.
This just means that I could get a low paying job as a programmer, and hire an indian coder on half my salary to do all of my work for me. Sounds great! :)
Yeah well they are gonna pay once they realize that nobody in the USA has any jobs because they've all been moved overseas. Once nobody has any jobs, they won't be able to afford to buy anybodys products. Then when nobody buys the products, the companies begin to fold. Don't they see how this works. Its simple logic that says when jobs go away, people can't afford stuff, when they can't afford stuff, they don't buy stuff, then the companies fold. SIMPLE ECONOMICS. All of these companies need to start to realize that they are only hurting themselves in the long run.
So, not only am I competing with hundreds of other unemployed IT workers for every job from sysadmin to help desk, I have to factor in companies saying "Well, we can just outsource this position. Much cheaper". This is doing nothing for my positivity.
14 weeks of unemployment left. *sigh*
El riesgo vive siempre!
First of all, I want to point out that American programmers and other IT people were outstandingly unsympathetic when factory workers' jobs started going overseas 30 or 40 years ago
Yeah those 7 guys were real assholes.
Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said someone may steal from it at night; so they created a night watchman, GS-4 position and hired a person for the job. Then Congress said, How does the watchman do his job without instruction?" So they created a planning position and hired two (2) people, one person to write the instructions, GS-12 and one person to do time studies, GS-11. Then Congress said, "How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?" So they created a Q. C. position and hired two (2) people, one GS-9 to do the studies and one GS-11 to write the reports. Then Congress said, "How are these people going to get paid?" so they created the following positions, a time keeper, GS-09, and a payroll officer, GS-11, and hired two (2) people. Then Congress said, "Who will be accountable for all of these people?" So they created an administrative position and hired three (3) people, an Admin. Officer GM-13, Assistant Admin. Officer GS-12, and a Legal Secretary GS-08. Then Congress said, "We have had this command in operation for one year and we are $18,000 over budget, we must cutback overall cost," So they laid off the night watchman.
You are confusing me with someone who cares.
From the article: :-)
In the end, like it or not, we here in the U.S. are going to have to learn how to deal with a truly worldwide IT economy.
The only way to deal with any kind of worldwide economy, not only IT, is international unions and solidarity. This is big corporations using one country's workforce again the other. As pointed out near the beginning of the article, this is a lot similar to German workers losing jobs to Americans who lost jobs to Mexicans. This would be prevented if there was an international labor standard. Well, there is, but it is not enforcable unfortunately.
Until international unions can be formed, we need to work to pass laws to prevent this abuse of workers, IT or any other field. However in US it is a far dream since there is no labor party. I believe US is the only industrialized society without a labor party.
Happy Labor Day!
ato
I'm not sure why anyone would want to hire Americans, since our cost of living has shot way beyond anything like a reasonable level. You give someone a $100k salary, and in California he can pretty much just make ends meet and maybe buy a few gadgets.
I'm actually thinking it might be a good idea to move offshore myself. I'd earn less, but I might earn more when adjusted to the cost of living in, say, the Philippines or Brazil.
I'd still earn a lot more than the typical offshore worker due to excellent English skills. All I would need to do is learn how to communicate with them and I'd be in demand in the same way the Los Angeles auto mechanic head is. He typically gives instructions to the hispanics who do the real work. No different from my scenerio.
True, the infrastructure isn't there, but if enough of us go, it's going to improve over time. The first mover keeps the low cost of living, and in fact benefits from inevitable increases in costs. For instance, if I buy a house today, it will go up in value if more come.
SF guru Robert Heinlein always said that we have a choice of staying fat and happy in our own spaces, or going to explore the unknown. He said the fat and happy places would decline, and eventually get swallowed up by more competitive ones. I think we're seeing that happen right now, in our own lifetimes. There's no space travel, true, but international travel is every bit as mysterious to the average guy.
Maybe it's about time to realize that unfortunately, America isn't what it's cracked up to be anymore. We've gotten too flabby and expensive for our own good. That spells problems, yes, but it also spells opportunity for those who dare to take it.
D
I have some experience with this. My last company laid most of their programmers off and outsourced the work overseas. In their case it worked since they were essentially an ad agency and all of the websites we did were pretty much "done" by time it came to code them (graphics and manuscripts just handed over).
Now I'm doing j2ee programming (I wasn't always a web monkey) for a different company, mostly financial applications. There is a lot of interaction with the business people, and requirements are quite often fluid. I doubt the business and sales people are going to want to come into work at 1am to conference call over to India to hash out the latest requirements.
Point is, some jobs are more likely to be shipped overseas than others. The pay scales of these jobs are going to fall in line with other white collar jobs (except the criminally underpaid teachers). It's just something we need to accept and move on with.
So let me get this straight: American IT workers are being replaced by Indians. At the same time, they are being replaced by humanoid robots.
I'm sure glad I decided to become an Indian robot designer instead of a fireman!
---
Hello, Slashdot user. My name is Dr. Sbaitso. I am here to help you.
I know I am going to get flamed by the "Keep jobs in America" folks, but the argument shown is very one sided.
There is the outcry about the Indian programmers being underpaid. What is left out of the equation is how the pay fits in with the standard of living where the employee lives.
Isn't it only good business and responsible to shareholders that companies look for the best return on the dollar spent?
The company that I work for has employees all over the world. I work in Australia. I know that I am paid less than my counterparts in the US. However, I also know that my cost of living is an awful lot lower than, say, California.
That said, going to cheaper countries must be balanced with getting the appropriate skill sets. There is nothing worse than dealing with someone who does not have the skill sets that you require them to have as a basic part of their job.
Tp.
I have a friend who is a mangager at IBM and he was recently required to change his team makeup to be 70% from IBM India. He is bummed but there is nothing he can do to prevent the shift in manpower. I think this is a different world from the past and these jobs are not coming back. Unless you move into management, work for a small local firm, or try to go out on your own like my self 23 Pools there is a good chance that your job may not be there in the future.
What I don't understand is why the pricing of housing hasn't come down more and expect that to be the next bubble to burst.
...we may be replaced by an underpaid programmer in India
Are programmers in India truly underpaid? Or are they simply paid less than programmers in North America and Europe?
What would you have the programmers in India do? Raise their rates? Unless someone over there is twisting their arm into underselling themselves, I'm just going to label this as fair competition by a less expensive supplier. This concept made America great. So swallow your lesson. No wait. That will make you fatter.
I have nothing to fear from overseas labor. Why? Someone in India can't fix the printer. They can't install antivirus software on someone's system. They can't set up the phone+new PC for a new employee. They can't head over to the hosting center and install that new rackmount server. They don't form a working relationship with their coworkers that makes assisting them and understanding their problems easier.
Further, they're not going to speak English very well(or they'll have such a thick accent, they might as well be speaking Martian), and it's going to be very expensive to communicate with them(and most upper management people don't consider "only via email" to be an acceptable communications medium, rightly so- it's damn tedious sometimes). Not to mention the time difference is a royal PITA. Companies are drastically slashing policies on telecommuting employees- remote just doesn't work. You've gotta be there for the over-the-cube-wall conversations, the overheard tidbits of information that contribute to overall 'corporate knowledge', the meetings...
You know what? While developers were making 2x, 3x my salary during the internet boom(and didn't have to deal with emergencies, late night pages, etc), I didn't hear any complaints from 'em. Now, they'll all finding they're replaceable and their salaries are dropping- while sysadmins, network engineers and internal support staff are doing a far better job of holding onto employment because their jobs require physical presence. I have zero sympathy for the programmers- maybe those engineers should have actually saved their money instead of spending it on Porsche Boxsters, the latest PDAs/phones, and expensive clothes. In my experience, the only people who were worse about spending habits were the execs, but the difference is, the execs are still getting paid insane salaries.
Hey, maybe we should outsource executives :-)
Please help metamoderate.
It's good see that there is a better future for the young people in India. There are a lot of really bright young people there. They are paid well in terms of their own economy.
It somebody else's turn to have an economic growth period. An american is no more important than an Indian.
The software industry we know in this country will soon go the way of the dodo bird. Just like Textile, Steel, any sort of plastic manufacturing.... As more companies move their development offshore, there will be less jobs for entry level developers. Well, no entry level jobs means that in about 5 years, there will be no senior level developers in this country. Heck, all the main players thinks 5 years experiences makes a senior engineer, right? Since there aren't sufficient senior engineers here, it's time to rely on all foreign talent for the devleopment. Besides, the architect really needs to communicate with his team anyway, and in the same timezone. Soon, all development jobs are offshore. There will still be IT or admin jobs here, as those requires some warm bodies in the building. But true development will be all gone. Oh, the small consulting companies, the few experts with highly technical domain knowledges, they will have a paycheck. But the developer that can jump in anywhere and help out would not have a place. There will be no big software companies that has a big building with whiteboard walls. This is already becoming true, as more and more jobs openings expect exact fit in terms of domain knowledge. It's a matter of time before a big chunk of development for CA, Oracle, and Microsoft and others like them will be off shore. I suspect Microsoft won't shrink much, but the growth wouldn't be here anymore. I have a 40 year old, very senior engineering fried working on his Law degree. Most of us will need to think like him soon. If you read this Mike T., keep going!
Once more, I find myself educating those who should not need it... IT is more than just programming, people! Yes, programming jobs are going overseas. Phone support is going overseas. But in-your-office-today support? That's not going anywhere.
This is why the callcentre staff all have pretend European names, and are given classes in the vernacular of whichever locale they deal with (at least in the best call centres).
So long as Joe six-pack gets a fix, is he really going to give a monkeys?
I can't see a technically well educated Indian being any worse than your average first line support guy anyway, and from my experience of Indian colleagues, they tend to be more tolerant of user-obnoxiousness, and better able to handle dickheads.
Personally, I think it's a positive move - rather than shaving costs to the bone trying to supply minimum-wage phone support locally (which is difficult foir the company and unrewarding for the employee), it's better to pay a good market wage in a low wage, English-literate economy, and add value with operator training.
Just my two pennworth.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Are they really underpaid? By whose standards? By Indian standards they may be paid quite well. I do software development here in New Zealand, and think I'm probably underpaid compared to my American counterparts, but by New Zealand standards I'm paid well.
[This is primarily directed at those who claim to be libertarians and then bitch about H1B's or offshore IT work.]
Quit your whining. This is a good thing people and it's an example of what makes capitalism great.
Read up on Joseph Schumpeter, arguably the most brilliant economist to come out of Austria. One's inability to see that the move of IT labor offshore is a good thing is largely due to a failure of most people to understand Schumpeter.
Schumpeter's primary focus was on capitalism as a dynamic system. It continually evolves through creative destruction. There are countless examples of this phenomenon.
A 120 years ago, most Americans were living on farms. With little mechanization, hard manual labor was the order of the day. As mechanization began to become more prevalent, thousands upon thousands of farm workers were surplus to requirements. Doom and gloom predictions that the move from an agricultural economy to a non-agricultural economy would lead to the collapse of America were common. Politicians ran on platforms aiming to keep the family farms solvent and prevent greater mechanization (for instance by taxing production of goods that could be used for farm mechanization).
However, mechanization and consolidation took place in the agricultural business. Today, less than 3% of Americans are farmers, and there are far fewer farmers today than there were then. If static economic analysis, from the perspective of the past, was used to look at the economy today (or during the boom years of the late 1990's), the only conclusion would be that the US was in a total depression, because the vast majority of the old farm jobs were gone.
So why wasn't it the case that the US went on to enjoy even better economic times than in the late-19th century? Why isn't there 90% unemployment (since from the 19th century perspective, 90% of the jobs that existed then are gone today)?
What no one saw was that freeing up the most important capital, human labor, from inefficient application to the task of growing food for other purposes. What those who looked at the farms failing and saw disaster were missing was that now the farmer was able to go to the city and be basically as well off working in a factory, and that the farmer's children would go on to become doctors or lawyers or engineers or skilled laborers. Indeed, the industrialization could not have happened without the farm failures.
For a more recent example, look at the state of heavy industry over the last 30 years. In the 1950's, 50% of Americans worked in industrial occupations, creating physical products. Nowadays, it's less than 20% (IIRC). You would expect there to be massive (>30%) unemployment, wouldn't you?
But there's not 30% unemployment. The children of factory workers went to college and became clerks or salesmen or scientists. Think about what your grandparents did for a living. With few exceptions (I'm one of them; my grandmother was one of the early programmers of ENIAC-type machines), they weren't computer scientists, sysadmins, or electrical engineers. They were probably factory workers, or day laborers, or housewives, or maybe a clerk at some large industrial concern.
By freeing up human capital from making cars and clothing and other labor intensive tasks, financial services, creative services, IT itself could be spawned.
IT arose out of the collapse of an old economic model; it will collapse as a major player. It is inevitable. In 20 years, the jobs held by the readers of this site will have demand levels at a fraction of what they were before. In a century, we'll be looked at as the farmers; while there will still be demand for the tasks we perform, it will be nowhere near what it is today (and nowhere near what it was a few years ago).
The core of what I'm saying is that we don't know what will come next (though it is most likely happening below our noses). T
If you're going to try and start a new thread please link to something which everyone can read. :)
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
You don't have to move outside the US to vastly improve your cost of living.
Try getting out of Cali for starters. There are many states with thriving IT markets that are below the average cost of living for the US.
Using California as an example is really a mistake. Cali is not the norm.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Be an entrepreneur. Take some risks, try to fill that niche market, etc.
Working for big companies usually sucks anyway, since big companies are full of useless middle and upper management who thwart your every attempt to do something useful.
I have a friend who works for a large US software company. He spends perhaps 10% of his time working. The rest of his time is spent asking for work or trying to communicate with his manager or anyone upward who might be able to give him something to do.
Most management is poor. So heck, they might as well outsource all the worker jobs, since that's just going to be wasted money anyway. Those who are bright will just go on and do something useful again.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Even if Indian companies are willing to work US Hours, which they may well be, it still doesn't matter. I have seen over the years that nothing beats the productivity of a handful of people in a room with a mixture of technical and managerial folk. You don't need teams of hundreds or even ten developers to produce some amazing software that has huge impact on a business.
2nd tier support and the like can be moved off, but companies that move core business development to any but a handful of the most trusted employees are going to run into a 10x delay in development/communication time and be eaten alive by more nimble competitors.
Now a company operating out of India should be able to take some advantage of lower labor and good communication.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People in North America are really losing jobs to the same people to whom they sold all those products from the 60s onwards. All the computers that students in India and China own have Intel chips, are mostly made in western countries by western-owned companies and designed by insanely paid fat and happy engineers. Natural law dictates that you cannot expect them all to send you a steady stream of income buying American copies of Windows(r), processors, washing machines, cars, airplanes, routers and telecommunication equipment, Levi Jeans and a connection to the Internet Backbone (and IP address space). After a while of selling North Americans raw products in exchange of these goods, they will start manufacturing and designing it themselves.
During the tech boom and export years, noone complained. Funny how everyone refers to 2000-2003 as the 'economic downturn' years while the 1990-1999 years were 'normal'. How about 1998 being a 'boom' year while 2001 is 'normal'? Add the IT market of Asian, Europe, Africa etc to average it out and you'll see 1998 was no normal year for the industry at all. Just as water tends to flow to the lowest potential level, so will the economy of the well-to-do countries.
IT is far from over in North America and not every position can be outsourced. Can an average-sized manufacturing company have its Network Admin located in Indonesia? Software development will be hit hard, but newer markets and applications of software will also open up all over the globe, and specialized software developers here will get the boost.
To be an optimist about the issue, just imagine the number of Linux and BSD developers multiplied by 20.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
The value of something is a function of how much the seller needs the money and how much the buyer needs the something. There is no such thing as a fixed value independent of the buyer and seller. Someone in India may sell their labor for a lot less than someone in the US and still feel well recompensed.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
So, basically the article says that regular folks/workers/blue-collars don't like IT people (geeks, wierdos, whatever), and neither do management. We're hated from both sides. And after years of setting up corporate systems where every worker is a replaceable cog, they now have the commodity hardware and a monopoly OS which (in their eyes) makes IT workers also replaceable cogs. The gist: Indian cogs work just as well as American ones, and cheaper too.
I'm not really surprised. I recall with both admiration and disdain reading many stories in the mid- to late 90's about IT job hopping, and watching many of my counterparts jump from one job to the next higher paying gig every year or so, with no semblence of loyalty. It was a crazy time, and now it is time to pay the piper.
/addendum: I'm still not sure where they keep getting these $60,000 just- out- of- college figures, since here in the midwest we worked our asses off and still never got close to that much.
{ - Generic Guy - }
For many years I've heard repeated statements that IT workers are too valued and Unions are only for unskilled laborers. Now that the writing is on the wall, is anyone changing their minds?
Offshoring/outsourcing is a key battle between workers and management and Unions are the only way you'll get a voice.
I'm a Union member (for scientists and engineers) and I'd be happy to organize any IT shop in the Silicon Valley. All it takes is a vote of current company employees (non-managers) at one location. Check out ifpte.org for an appropriate Union organization and/or drop me an e-mail.
If you don't organize, your job may be next!
It is called Free Trade . Your government and mine signe the NAFTA agreement because they felt more loyalty to big corporations than they did to their own citizens.
Bullcrap. The shift of jobs overseas is hardly a good thing, whether you call it "free trade" or some pseudo-Darwinistic economic evolution. You want good examples of what these corps do overseas?
Look at Nike. Indonesian factory workers - mostly girls - work under conditions and hours typical of late 19th century American garment factories. Environmental destruction runs rampant.
Take a look at Coca Cola's operations in South America - their hiring of death squads for "security" and assassination of labor organizers.
Remember Union Carbide?
This "free trade" business has led to US corporations moving offshore to the Caymans and elsewhere so they can avoid paying corporate income taxes. Taxes that you, me, and Joe Sixpack get burdened with - even as we move down the economic ladder.
Fortunately I still have my job - and yes, for a while it looked like my work was going to be outsourced to India. But the folks working in New Delhi don't understand the ins and outs of our operations or the systems we integrate with: I do. As a "knowledge transfer" - forget it, won't happen.
Folks seem to have this silly notion that what's good for the corporate economy is good for the citizens. That ain't necessarily so, nor do I think that "cheaper is better" is necessarily good for the corporations either, not in the long run. If the middle class continues to shrink who the crap is going to buy the stuff produced by cheap labor?
You make good points about cost effectiveness but one of your paragraphs made me laugh:
I'd still earn a lot more than the typical offshore worker due to excellent English skills. All I would need to do is learn how to communicate with them and I'd be in demand in the same way the Los Angeles auto mechanic head is. He typically gives instructions to the hispanics who do the real work. No different from my scenerio.
English is easy. If excellent "English skills" bought you anything, Indian English majors would be making the big bucks. What they value is programming quality. Your image of being the American who is eagerly made chief by the illeterate natives is delusion. You would be as welcome in India as detroit autoworkers in Japan.
Lies about crimes
Business 2.0 magazine is running an interesting article called The Coming Job Boom. Basically, because the baby boomers are getting ready to start retiring, and there just aren't enough workers to replace them, there is impending skills shortage similar that what occured in 1999/2000 just around the corner. According to the article, the article states that this will occur even if the US GDP growth rate is only 3% annually. (Latest reading is 3.1% BTW). Overseas outsourcing, importing workers, and people delaying retirement will not be enough to prevent this crunch. It claims the biggest shortages will be in tech, and has all kinds of data to back up these claims. We should start seeing this around 2005.
This is not the first article I've seen that makes this claim. Its just that this kind of article is not in vogue in the current environment. You have to dig through all kinds of doom and gloom about jobs lost overseas to find them.
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction that exporting jobs will somehow hurt US productivity in the long run, while in fact it's a reflection of our high productivity. When I'm not a codec nerd, I'm an economics nerd, so let me spread the Ricardian gospel a bit.
Our GDP is hugely higher per capita than India. This is because we are hugely more productive per capita than India overall. Because we are so productive we have a much higher standard of living, and much higher wages. As our economy grows, and our GDP per capita goes up, so do our wages.
Eventually, wages get so high, that it doesn't pay to hire folks in the US to do them. So they get exported. This won't cause a lack of productivity - the only reason we can afford the outsourcing is because of our aggregate productivity in the first place.
Let's imagine the long-term scenario folks here are implying. First, all the high-paying jobs get sent to India, since Indians will work for less. Second, US workers will go broke. Why would it work that way? Obviously, as jobs go to India, wages will go up in the sectors we're looking at. And there is a limited population in India who has the secondary education good enough to go to any kind of engineering school - clearly it's a much smaller pool to draw on than the US has, even though our population is much less. This is because we're very productive, and can afford lots of really school schools, especially at the college level. Over time Indian wages will rise and US wages for those who do thing that could be outsourced to India will fall so that the total cost of each will be roughly equal. The US wages will likely be quite a bit higher still in that case, since having someone local has definite advantages, plus the reduced cultural barrier, etcetera. And the US economy is doing great, since we're able to get our software cheaper, and we've freed up a lot of smart people from having to do something that we can outsource. It's not like all those replaced IT folks go straight into retirement or anything. Lots of them will start new business, get new jobs, and so on. And the folks who keep their jobs are going to be trying like crazy to stay productive in order to justify why they're worth as much as six guys in India. That's great - their productivity is going up, and everyone is happy. These transitions can be painful, but it's not like the US has huge sustained underemployment (although we're in a cyclical slump right now, largely due to an economically incompetent administration).
Now, let's say that India makes so much money on outsourcing (which they won't) that they can really upgrade their schools, and approach the US in productivity. If so, great! We've got a big, rich, friendly democracy in a part of the world where we can use all the help we can get. And as Indian productivity rises, so will their wages, so that's less downward pressure on US wages.
Anyway, the thing to remember is that we're rich because we're productive, which means that those parts of the economy with lower relative productivity compared to the rest of the world are going to get outsourced. This won't make us poor, since the outsourcing is only a reflection of our wealth and productivity in the first place. It's a self-balancing system. So, if the problem in the long term is places like China and India grow productivity faster than we do (which is likely for the next few decades), than the relative gap between their our our wealth will decrease. No problem - I just want to be rich, I don't want India to be poor!
Also, if you look at the history of South Korea, Japan, and other nations that industrialized rapidly on US lines, we're still more productive per capital than they are. They get close, but the US always seems to pull ahead in the end, for a variety of reasons (lots of bright, motivated immigrants, low barriers to start new companies are big ones).
So, folks, don't define what you do so narrowly that the only career you can imagine is something that's outsourced. Programming to a spec? Not a good long term move. Being able to right good, business-driven specs? Good move.
My video compression blog
How amusing it is that an article about jobs moving overseas is posted by a guy named "514x0r?" It seems that the reason is given before the actual problem is stated...
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
I'm in the business of to going to homes and busineses to fix computer problems. Many of the machines I work on are still within warranty Dells and Gateways. So why do people call me for help? Because they're frustrated with the first-level tech support, usually overseas. They're reading from troubleshooting scripts and not really diagnosing the problem. And when the user actually knows what the problem is, the tech will not listen, but instead will force them to go through every last step of troubleshooting. As the quality of vendor support declines, third-party techs such as myself will increasingly be called upon to fill the gap.
Workers willing to work a given job is a non-decreasing function of the pay rate. For example, the number of people willing to work at recycling computers for $20 per computer is greater than or equal to the number of people willing to do the same for $10 per computer.
The number of jobs that potential employers offer is a non-increasing function of the pay rate. For example, the number of people who would consider it the very most profitable investment of their money to create a computer recycling business if they have to pay their workers $20 per computer is less than or equal to the number of people would make make similar investments if the labor cost were $10 per computer.
As an introductory textbook in economics will show you (at least mine did), these curves can be graphed as a big "X". The number of people actually working when the prevailing wage is at a certain point, is the minimum of the two curves, the lower legs of the "X".
Unless there is something like a minimum wage law, competition among workers and competition among employers causes wages to move toward where the lines cross. On this graph, this is also where the number of people employed is maximized. This does not necessarily mean that total wages are maximized at this wage rate, but it does mean that total production is, and money is basically a way to distribute what is produced. So, it seems to me that transfer payments would create a lot less unemployment than the minimum wage, as long as the transfer payments are structured so that people still make substantially more money if they take a higher paying job.
IT people typically do not work at wages near the US minimum wage, but we pay for it when we pay triple the cost of food, clothing, and housing that people pay for the same quality goods in China.
I believe that the people in our ghettos also pay for the minimum wage. I think their unemployment is largely because it is illegal to locate a business that would profit from the fact that some people are willing to work for less than the current US minimum wage in the US. A lot of "working class" Americans also miss out on the opportuntity to create little businesses, which is so much easier than in the United States when there is no minimum wage. I am talking about businesses such as virtually all forms of recycling, food delivery, food kiosks, taxi service, and even small factories.
If the US eliminated its minimium wage, I would not expect unskilled labor prices to fall to quite the level of third world countries, because our workforce is more skilled, so perhaps we'd see a drop of only a factor of two for completely unskilled labor. Also, currently employed minimum wage people might be effected less than those applying for new jobs because our current minimum wage employers at least have had the luxury of picking the best employees available.
What I would expect is that a lot of currently unemployed people would gradually become employed in newly created jobs doing things that would increase the buying power of our dollars. So, I think that if we were to eliminate the minimum wage, it would allow US IT people to achieve a higher standard of living and compete more effectively in the global market.
Hi!
Want to scare a lot of people? Or want to get a zillion page views to boost your website advertising sales? Post a red-meat story on SlashDot about IT jobs getting outsourced to India, and watch the fur fly. Toss in a statistic or two (in this article there were no statistics at all) about how EDS has thousands of jobs in India, and let's not forget about that tape recording of IBM's HR guy saying that they should be moving jobs offshore, too. By golly, we'll all be sitting on the curb selling pencils by Christmas!
Or maybe not...
Believe it or not, those offshore code factories aren't much of a job threat to American programmers. Companies have been trying to move programming work offshore for a good ten years--and yes, some programming work has moved offshore. But most of the offshore outsourcing that's been done is either code maintenance (hiring the cheapest person possible to maintain legacy COBOL applications that refuse to die) or help desk support jobs. Neither of those categories poses a big threat to an experienced C++ programmer with good communication skills and a good resume.
What is a threat to American programmers' jobs is a simple economic reality: a lot of us had high-paying jobs in the 1990s because of two different bubbles. The dot-com bubble and the Year 2000 "crisis" had the delightful effect of creating an unbelievable demand for programmers--with or without experience. When Congress passed "emergency" legislation to permit corporations to expense Y2K related expenditures (instead of depreciating them as usual) I joked to a friend that the bill should be called the "Full Employment for Programmers Act."
Those were terrific times. But they're gone.
The hard and simple reality:
The bubbles have burst. All of the Y2K coding has been done. Every Fortune 500 corporation that simply HAD TO HAVE A WEB PRESENCE BY THE NEXT STOCKHOLDERS MEETING is now hoping that the auditors won't compare the money spent on that Enterprise Web Portal with the amount of business generated by it. The insane levels of demand for programmers--and the insane pay rates that went with it--are gone.
That doesn't mean we're all going to lose our jobs to people in the Indian subcontinent. But it does mean that we have to adjust our expectations of the labor market to something a bit closer to reality. If we were newspaper reporters or insurance claims analysts or high school teachers or mechanical engineers we'd face certain realities: you have to look for a job; employers want experience before they'll hire you; sometimes you can't find a job in your area--so you may have to consider moving; and sometimes, well--sometimes you have to consider the possibility that you should look for another career. As information technology becomes a more mature business, a lot of those realities apply to us as well.
Programming doesn't move offshore well
It doesn't. Sure--if you're a SlashDot regular or devoted to a particular Open Source project, you can name talented programmers who live and work outside of the United States. Miguel de Icaza of Ximian, for instance, is an extremely capable programmer who lives in Mexico. Do I consider him a job threat? Not in the least--because programming is not as portable (at least not to India) as you might think.
It's about communication
Simply put, the essence of programming is communication. The vast bulk of programming jobs involve translating user requirements into functional computer code. And if you've been in the business more than, say, three weeks, you've no doubt learned that the customer's written requirements generally have little relationship to what the customer actually needs. Central to what we do is figuring out those little nuances of a customer's business that let us write an effective application--which inevitably involves asking questions the customer never even considered we'd ask.
For example: I'm presently wor
Globalization is going to be painful occasionally because of the disparate incomes in various parts of the world. It isn't just IT and manufacturing, it's all jobs - Intel has a marketing division in India, Boeing has a design center in Japan, and so on. If you aren't delivering some value that can't be offshored, you are vulnerable.
In the IT industry that means you need to learn to be close to your customer - so they can't replace you with a coder in China.
What is happening is simple - we used to talk about automation replacing manufacturing workers, and code writers being replaced by RAD tools. Maybe someday. But first we have to elevate the worth of human being worldwide so that their pay makes the cost of this automation economically valuable.
Some people question the wisdom of globalization because of the painful changes it forces in an economy. That is not tenable long-term. The planet is shrinking and if we are going to avoid devastating wars and dislocations we must make the nations of the world so interdependent that there is no potential for gain in anything but full participation on a global society.
Firstly this is just yet another doom-and-gloom BS article of the sort that appears during every single downturn: Each time it's pronouncement of prophecies, and then a few years later when we have a market where web slugs are making $150K/annum these people are silently biding their time waiting for the next downturn to spout their negativity.
Having said that, firstly Indian workers aren't working for "less" : Many of them have large homes, servents, etc. The issue is one of currency conversion: The US dollar is grossly overvalued, and while it allows US companies to buy foreign firms cheap, it also makes the same US operations uncompetitive on the global market (which is why the US has had a trade deficit for many years). Already as the US $ has declined the hypothetical cost competitiveness of Indian firms has greatly diminished.
In the end, though, India isn't the "problem" with the IT market: The problem is that IT hasn't delivered on its promise. In many organizations the redundant and overlapping IT processes take a large share of the budget, earning a lot of attention for cost savings. The software development process is an absolute FARCE, with the majority of software projects being absolute failures, often coupled with extremely heavyweight processes that ensure that the actual developer is a tiny portion of the process (with a massive business paper trail). Tell me that you can get a 30% savings by outsourcing to India, and I'd say that you could probably yield a 80%+ savings by culling the deadweight and switching to an Agile process: Something that actually yields results.
One place to start would be the CIA World Fact Book. Scroll down to Economy. Some of the relevant stats are the GDP-Composition by Sector and Labor Force by Occupation.
Just for example here's three countries:
United States:
GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 2%
industry: 18%
services: 80% (2002)
Labor force - by occupation:
managerial and professional 31%, technical, sales and administrative support 28.9%, services 13.6%, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and crafts 24.1%, farming, forestry, and fishing 2.4%
note: figures exclude the unemployed (2001)
Japan:
GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 1.4%
industry: 30.9%
services: 67.7% (2001 est.)
Labor force - by occupation:
services 70%, industry 25%, agriculture 5% (2002 est.)
Malaysia:
GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 12%
industry: 40%
services: 48% (2001)
Labor force - by occupation:
local trade and tourism 28%, manufacturing 27%, agriculture, forestry, and fisheries 16%, services 10%, government 10%, construction 9% (2000 est.)
So basically, you have faith that some unknown new industry will come along, and everyone will get jobs in that, once all the current jobs are gone? And you have this faith in spite of no evidence, based purely on the fact that in the past it's happened a few times?
Well, you've certainly adopted capitalism as religion.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
> don't expect a great deal of
> political support for laws to help keep
> programming jobs in the U.S.
I should damn well hope not. That is the solution of the coward and a thug -- "thug" because it involves using the threat of violence (all laws are ultimately enforced by men with guns) to take out the competition, and "coward" because those proposing such thuggish methods hide behind their proxies in the legislature and law enforcement.
I have a wife and four kids and have been out of work for 2-1/2 months, but I'll clean toilets for a living before I'll stoop to threatening someone with violence to get a job.
It's not any more difficult for an Indian to "sound American" then it is for an American to sound British. I know of one Indian chick that spoke with no discernable accent when I talked with her, but spoke with a very acute Indian accent when talking to other Indians.
Lots of Indians grow up using English anyway, but speak with the same accent everyone else does. But they can drop or change theirs as well as any other native speaker.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"This could be because most American programmers are lazy and somewhat stupid. Most of them think they are 'l33t because they know how to use ASP and Access. So few people know anything about Computer Science, it really is a waste what we are paying them. They are terribly slow, have almost no initiative, and have trouble communicating with customers." http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/08/27/132243.sht ml?tid=3
This far in, this post will probably not get read but...I just landed a 4-month contract that will yield a considerable amount of cash. When I was going through the sale, the client told me that they saw similar applications for less than 1000. They wanted to know why I was asking for 30,000.
The old line "you get what you pay for" is still very valid. You will find that companies are still very much willing to pay for good work. Granted, they're not paying $200/hr, but there is still money to be made. The bottom line is that you have to convince your potential client that you are offering them quality. Quality, support, and personalization in the development of the software. If you can show them why the job cost as much as it does (through a detailed Statement of Work), it'll be much easier for them to accept it.
But this is not the true purpose of my post. To be sure, this is a very scary time for many people and I am very sympathetic. Finding new jobs is very difficult, but there are a couple of things that you can do.
First, let me just say that I hate sales. I don't know anyone that enjoys selling, but you have to do it. Now, I have an edge as I have been an independent contractor for over 10 years. But anyone can do it on their own.
The key to being successful is networking. Quick tip for those with a bit of free time. Pick up a networking book such as Masters of Networking. Figure out who you know and who you can sell to. Put yourself in situations where you are forced to meet new people - preferably 10 a day. This is not selling in the pure sense. It's not cold calling. Just go and get involved in activities that involve other business people.
A couple of thing that I have done recently:
1) Join a business network group, such as BNI.
2) Join a social group that attracts business people. I recommend Toast Masters. As an added bonus, you will learn to present yourself better.
3) Every one is freaking out over the SoBig virus right now. Similarly, a lot of people want to go wireless in their homes but, with always-on broadband connections, are afraid of getting "0wn3d". Print up some flyers, walk around your neighborhood, *personally* meet with every neighbor, and offer, for *free* to help check their PCs for viruses (virii if you're so inclined), configure their firewalls, recommend a router. This will get you in front of people, generate goodwill, and let your neighbors know of your availability.
One of the most powerful ways to find new work is through referrals. I haven't made a cold call in my life. All of my new clients come to me through referrals. Word-of-mouth and a personal recommendation can do a lot more for you than any marketing brochure or telemarketing script could ever do. Go over a list of people that you have worked for and with in the past 5 years. Call them up, catch up on lost time, work in that you're available, meet for lunch. Don't turn it into a sales pitch, just keep it friendly. They'll get the idea. And you'll get out of the house.
Find ways to get yourself in front of people and let them know that you are here. It's not easy, that's true. I was extremely shy when I started. Now, I speak at tech conferences in front of more than 7,000 people. I carry a stack of business cards with me at all times. I find opportunities to start conversations with people.
I didn't start out knowing how to "work a room" and I still have a long way to go. But, I am making a living. Not as much as a couple of years ago, but my bills are getting paid and I am sleeping at night.
Consider this. When you see a job posting, there are over 1000 applicants that you are competing with. As you might guess, most HR/recruiters do not have the time to read through all of them. They'll go through the first
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
I've been saying this for a while and people look at me like I have a green mustache.
..... etc will take us there. They can never pay little guys to little and they can never pay the CEO's to much.
The jobs get outsourced to Indian Consulants, but the end result in products or whatever is still sold here for the same amount, only with a much higher profit. BUT, here's the rub, we have Americans making less so they can't afford to buy a bunch of overpriced american goods any more. A bunch of Indian programers and accountants making $6000 a year aren't going to be lining up to $1500 Amana Fridges, $30000+ ford SUVs or $20 brittany spears cds. Except the CEO's still want to make thier 20 million a year salaries. There will be massive defaltion, something has to give. The CEO's want to make all the money, only problem if they have all the money and they aren't paying US and they aren't paying the Indians a whole lot, no one has the money to buy thier stuff.
If things get bad enough Congress WILL enact those tarrifs, they will do all the things the author said they should'nt, because thats thier job. Eventually we will have socailst style gov't where everything is regulated ( all those regs require gov't employees to do the watching).
I don't like it but the every greedy CEOs, CFOs, CIOs
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Presently, the outsourcing rush is correcting an obvious market inefficiency; namely that for whatever reason, highly educated Indian labor is cheaper. A properly functioning economy redresses such imbalances rapidly: India's skilled workforce is finite and its value will increase with average quality of life, reaching parity with ours.
Parity, however, is grossly distorted in this situation. Indian employees and firms do not pay the ~45% tax (spread over income, miscellaneous regulation, property, ad naseum) that their counterparts here and in Europe must. In effect, this aggregate taxation is an enormous tariff sponsoring foreign labor, and the otherwise natural equilibrium in compensation found at parity ought to rest in the vicinity of... 20% ->below- foreign levels.
I do not mean to imply first world taxes are wasted by govt, but some combination of reducing the largely unconstitutional federal bloat and introducing tariff on outsourced production (correcting for minuscule Indian cost of living) raises job market parity to a bearable level.
However, overriding protectionism (such as that Japan *still* favors) will certainly ruin this nation. After all, how will all our exported capital ever return as investment if the US and Europe appear content to maintain the status quo (0% GDP growth, in more obvious terms)? Long decades of trade deficit and wholesale hollowing out of domestic industry afford developed countries little flexibility defending what little real productivity they retain. Socialist policy and GDP shrinkage or free market and some painful hard work are the plausible remaining options.
Suggestions that companies outsourcing their labor are self-interested offer no insight. Individual and corporate motivation to profit are the only reliable constants in a democratic, capitalist society.
My thoughts seem grossly out of place as I read recent comments, but what the hey.
All right, reality check time - let's go back to macro economics.
I'm in technology, and it's been quite a while since I really studied macro/micro (no, economics, you dolt!!! NOT design!!! :-))) Anyone
who can put a fine point on this perspective -- please do.
Like John Houseman (to misquote), "I seek clarity."
Having read much in the genre of political treatise (I admire Machiavelli, he was right so damn often!), some philosophy, and "modern day polemic" [everything is polemic, today :-/ ] I understand the argument as far as I have taken it, and I can understand how big business can manipulate events to cause this to happen - but I wonder about:
I say significant events, as the baby boomer generation (I missed it by about 8 years :-) retiring is going to put such a load on us as a
society that I don't think there will be that much benefit in the
(believed/perceived) sudden influx of available positions - if
anything, I worry that this will be the springboard needed by those
who'd ship our entire economy to someplace where more money could be
made.
So, yes, I'm a bit worried. I'm preparing, and you're here reading this, so you're far ahead of the rest of the U.S. population, but that should be small comfort to you (and to the rest of us...).
Live long and prosper.
Redundancy is good; triple redundancy is twice as good! - Me.
So let me see if I understand this correctly...protectionism will make the problem worse? But it is a shame we're losing all of these jobs? Hahahaha.
/. just started shaving). The argument is complete bullshit (excuse my language). I mean, what has happened with industries like the textile industry? Sure, we've lost lots of minimum wage jobs to Indonesia. But we've gained tons of jobs in sales, marketing, design, and distribution for textiles. And these aren't minimum wage jobs. The people employed in these industries consume further goods, leading to markets for Wal Mart cashiers making minimum wage (the same workers that used to work in the textile industry). Are we better off as a result? Well, it sure hurt during the transition. But the US as a whole is wealthier as a result. So are the workers in India. This is a classic "win-win" situation, so long as the people caught in the transition are not left to whither.
I remember hearing this same argument back in the 80s regarding the computer chip manufaturing industry (yes, not everyone that reads
Getting back to the computer hardware industry, it is quite true that much of the computer manufacturing industry has fled to the Far East. But guess who designed the latest Pentium M chip? My guess is that it was a team of American engineers. And I bet each one of those engineers made 10x as much as a computer hardware manufaturer would have made had those manufaturing jobs stayed here in the US. And I bet the goods consumed by these folks now employ the very people that would have been employed at the manufacturing facilities had they remained in the US. Does is suck for those displaced by the changing economy? Yes. Is the US economy better off as a result? I would claim so. [note: the downside to all of this is a greater separation of wealth between the folks that would have worked at the manufacturing facilities and those that design the chips...how we deal with the separation of wealth is a far greater problem than the flight of these manufacturing jobs to countries with lower wages]
How many of you have worked with Indian computer software programming firms? I've worked with dozens during my tenure as a programmer. Care to guess the general quality of software design and engineering coming from these firms? Let's just say that I wouldn't mind having these firms implement something designed by my fellow lazy Americans, but my experience leads me to avoid having the design work being exported. [note2: I have had the best luck with the design coming from Russian firms...but have had other issues with their work that still leads me to chose American design over low-wage design any day of the week] What is the result? The low-wage jobs do and will flee to countries such as India. But the high-wage jobs, generally in design and engineering, will remain in the US. Fewer jobs, perhaps. But higher-wage jobs.
Do I want my Nikes and underwear to be manufacturing in the US? I couldn't give a damn. Do I want the materials design for the space-age foam used in my Nikes to be developed in the US? Yes. These materials design jobs are high paying. The people working in a shoe manufacturing facility likely would be making minimum wage. The end result? Our economy continues its flight from manufacturing towards service-sector jobs such as design. And the low-wage workers in the US end up working in "trickle-down" jobs, such as McDonalds and Wal-Mart.
Are there social issues regarding this separation of wealth? Yes. Very large ones. This is why I believe in social programs
--Be human.
First NAFTA moved the jobs from the US to Mexico. Now the jobs are moving from Mexico to China. The Mexicans were "overpaid" at $4,000 a year while the Chinese make $1,000 a year. CEO pay is, of course, higher than ever.
For starters, what's with this statement they inserted in the middle of the whole thing:
"Libertarian IT workers who watch their jobs go overseas should derive joy from geographic shifts in employment. Their "dog eat dog" creed requires them to be happy whenever the marketplace finds a way to pay workers less and increase business owners' profits."
Did the author of the story suddenly feel a need to attack Libertarians or what?? That's, at best, a very inaccurate statement.
Libertarians have no "dog eat dog" creed! If anything, it's more of a "live and let live" creed. Do whatever you wish, as long as you don't infringe on other's rights to do the same.
As a self-proclaimed "Libertarian I.T. worker" myself, I can assure you, I'm not taking great joy in the marketplace constantly finding ways to pay workers less for their work. On the contrary, I'd simply like to see workers able to keep more of the money they're entitled to for their labor, rather than be forced to turn about 1/3rd. of it over in taxes.
But I digress....
On this I.T. outsourcing issue, I'm not sure if any of us really know yet how it will all pan out. I have a strong suspicion it will be a short-term "bad thing" that turns out to be a "good thing" in the long run. Why? Well, many 3rd. world countries are far behind the technology curve right now, but are trying hard to catch up. When enough of them earn some money doing I.T. (even if it is for the U.S. companies), it will help spur interest and growth of I.T. in their own countries. Eventually, that means they'll be needed locally, instead of only when they take U.S. jobs. (That also means new jobs might become available for U.S. workers willing to accept work overseas.)
Part of the problem with this whole "global economy" thing is that U.S. citizens are still going into it with "tunnel vision". We're all about the "What's in it for me, today?" -- and tend to forget it may take some pain and suffering now, to "jump start" the economies of other countries, so we'll all be operating on a larger, more level playing field down the road.
In the short term though, yeah - I don't think you can avoid some of the I.T. outsourcing. Much depends on how much human interaction is required from your job. Programmers generally don't need high levels of interaction. They're paid to bang out a product (code), and if foreigners code cheaper - that's the new "going rate" for the work.
Including me, and I like it.
When I buy stuff, I buy the cheapest stuff. I don't care where it's made, it's all the same planet to me. And you know what? 99% of IT workers are the same way.
It doesn't freaking matter. As long as we keep outsourcing jobs to foreign countries, we can keep making less money and maintain the same standard of living, because things keep getting cheaper.
I know its comforting and easy to blame "greedy corporate executives", but if you think the money that's saved from hiring foreign workers goes into executive pockets, you're an idiot. It goes to lowering prices so that that company doesn't get put out of business by their competition who DOES outsource their labor to India and gives the American people what they *REALLY* want...
Cheaper shit.
paintball
Ok, call me stupid, and I've floated this idea before...so let me say it again (and I'll say it again later too).
Why can't a person setup a company in the middle of USA, say Oklahoma or West Virginia, where living is cheap, and where people are content to enjoy nature and being paid less, say 30-40k a year. Sure, it's not as low as India, but if the quality of software products and services were high, English skills are a given (and will be head and shoulder above those of native Indians), time zone is better, it's more "patriotic", etc... there are many benefits to outsourcing to such a company.
What I'm saying is, I think USA can compete with India on Indians terms. Sure, say goodbye to Silicon Valley (and good riddens, what a horrid, trashy place it has become, yuck, yuck). Say goodbye to high salaries. But all is not lost and there is plenty of room, we, USA citizens, can go down in price and still be happy. There will always be some fat schmucks who are arrogant and think they deserve 100k a year to write 2 lines of code a day, screw em. But there is plenty of opportunity in the middle of USA.
The middle of USA is like India right here inside USA. And people living in there could sure use all the economic stimulus they can get. So, it would be both cheap, and good for the people, and competitive.
So why not? If you are thinking of starting a new company, why not start it on a virgin land in some obscure state? Indians have proven that all you need is a phone line and the network connection (and sometimes even a modem connection is fine) and you get the job!
I just can't understand why seemingly every fool insists on setting up their company in San Fran or NYC and then complains that they can't find cheap labor there.
Unfortunately, I've fallen so far that yes I know how hard it is.. and yes I've done it. Housing assistance is even harder. I've yet to manage to get that even when unemployed and homeless. Somehow I didn't qualify. I'm really not sure why.
Being evicted is probably one of the worse things I've been through. Having to move when you are unemployed and really have no other place to go. That and having the utiltiies shut off constantly as I strugled to stay above water. Every time they'd shut off the utilities my food would spoil.. so I'd have to buy more food.. which made it harder to pay the bills to begin with. It was these two bills (rent and utils) that totally trashed my credit while unemployed. I'd never used credit cards and the only loan I ever had was for school. Nobody really cared that a 20-something might be starving or homeless. Call various places for assistance and 'Do you have kids?' was the first and last thing they'd ask. No kids.. then well fuck off. I can see why a lot of people in this situation might choose to have a baby.
Almost as bad is when you're looking for work. The only way to get a job is to lie. You wrote software? Sorry, Taco Bell (Walmart, QuikTrip, etc) isn't interested in hiring you.. never mind that you could do the work as well or better than the teenagers working there. Or for a good job you have to lie and suddenly claim that you have a PhD in astrophysics from Big Ralph's University so that you can get a job doing the same thing you've done for years.. despite it having nothing whatsoever to do with astrophysics.
Why anybody would want to live in welfare I don't know. It's a hellish life. I'd much rather work a decent job even at less than great wages. $10/hr * 40 hours a week would be a start.. if I could get such a job that lasted longer than 6 months. I hate finishing projects and being thrown back out into this job market.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The US population goes up while the number of jobs go down, does it matter if toys are cheaper when I cant pay my expensive rent or buy food due to no job?
That only benefits rich people.
"so the country benefits from our old job being done and us working at a new job. Why should we expect people who are not affected to be sympathetic?"
What new jobs have been created?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I've seen several articles in various places on the woes of the current job market and ways to deal with them, and I noticed that they are primarily written with a "hearing" audience in mind (a reasonable target audience, after all). Their advice on coping in today's job market often does not address the unique difficulties of being a Deaf IT professional who has been laid off.
For several years, even as a Deaf person, I rarely had to look very hard to find a job, simply because my skills were in demand. Now that the tables have been turned around on all of us, an already bad job market is worse for me because I am Deaf. Many job postings state that excellent communication skills are required--which is fine and reasonable, except I feel that I am at a disadvantage and won't be considered a good prospect once they know that they can't just talk to me as easily as they can talk to most people.
I do communicate quite well in one-on-one settings with minimal background noise. However, even if I get the interview and land the job, there is another concern: fast-paced, cutting-edge job environments do not encourage ideal communication settings. The norm is to get together in group meetings, which I find very difficult. Yes, I could get an interpreter, but these meetings are often called at the last minute (fast-paced environment, remember) and many interpreting agencies want a week's notice. Also, the lag time in the interpreting process prevents me from smoothly contributing to the discussion. In a previous job, I tried setting up an IRC server to allow people to talk online, but the other workers just didn't want to have online meetings. The isolation had very deep, harmful effects on me. This was a corporate setting, and I don't see how a Deaf person could survive there.
I seem to remember that employers were more willing to work around these issues when the economy was better. When that changed, there was less and less tolerance for my needs (however substantial they were) as time went on. Now that I have been laid off, this is on my mind as I search for job opportunities. If I'm not someone who can communicate in a "typical" way, there are hundreds of other candidates with no communication issues who will appear more attractive for that reason. Furthermore, for the sake of my sanity, I do not want to get into another impossible corporate situation like my previous job.
So, I am faced with couple of possibilities. One is to seek out a work environment where we can work out ways to communicate effectively and get fairly settled for pretty much the long term. I do feel that I would do well in a small-company environment, where I could easily get to know everyone. In the past, I have worked in such settings and they indeed proved to be better experiences. That kind of environment is hard to find nowadays, and the ones that I have come across don't seem to be hiring. Even so, this would be my preference, because my experience is that corporate settings just do not work for me. The same goes for consulting firms such as RHI (just to pick one example out of many) which would entail working out communication at the start of every new contract.
The other possibility is to change my career. I'm not sure what kind to consider yet. Once upon a time, Computer Science (my degree major) and IT were considered very promising fields. Now, it is all a completely different ball game.
Actually, my career is not completely uncertain. I became a Deaf preacher in the last few years, and this is becoming my primary focus. However, Deaf churches are usually not able to support a full-time pastor, so I expect to be bivocational when the Lord calls me to pastor a church. Thus, I still need to think and pray about what kind of work to pursue on the side.
I also have a few Deaf friends in the IT field who are either laid off or see the ax falling anytime soon. I wonder what advice I could give them and other Deaf IT professionals (and myself, for that matter) on how to cope in today's job market?
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Happy Fun Ball got first post...because I taunted it.
During the dot-com boom, I was being paid $100,000 a year by a San Francisco dot-com. Of that, $50,000 went to Federal and California taxes, leaving me with $50K.
Due to SF real estate being so grotesquely overpriced, rent for my modest apartment cost $2,700. Add in utilities and you're smack at $3K/mo.
That left me with $14K/yr. to buy groceries, to make my car payments, to occasionally go out on a date, to... etc. It was a very unpleasant experience.
During the dot-com boom, $100K in San Francisco was enough for someone to pay their bills and have a decent place to live. That was it. There was no money leftover for 401Ks, to throw in a savings account, to finance a wedding or a honeymoon, etc. While it's certainly a better standard of living than most of the world has, a $100K salary was not enough for someone to engage in the great American pasttime of "upward mobility".
Channel your anger and volunteer for any democratic candidate who supports your views. Many many are in the same boat as yourself.
I read a post here already as a reply towards someone who wants to immigrate to India. The response was "Try telling Indian officials you there to work and steal away Indian jobs...".
You know what? THey have been f*cking doing that and still are through the H1B1 visa program. AND THE INDUSTRY STILL IS LOBBYING FOR MORE!
We need a government that like uh, represents us. India has one why can't we elect that does.
Our current government favors the screwers over the average American and that is sad.
http://saveie6.com/
IT workers just get paid too much. We have become fat and lazy and awfully impressed with ourselves. I personally know people in other professions that have what I consider to be much more skill than I, yet command a fraction of what I was making. I have a friend that graduated with a 4.0 GPA in some sort of art degree, went on to get a masters and makes next to nothing. I did not graduate from college 10 years ago, but was making almost 6 figures. Was I smarter? No, I was just positioned better at the right time.
Add in the great
I did get laid off from a U.S. company, but not due to Outsourcing - the company was just falling apart from poor management and was selling itself off piecemeal. It was not due to Outsourcing overseas, but I can see the concern with that.
Since then I have done a few things. One, I drastically reduced my standard of living. I got rid of the $2k / mo mortgage and got it down to $800 in rent. I did not get a new car, but kept my old 96. I stopped buying every new toy and tried to get back in touch with life.
In the past year, my life has gotten so much better with so much less. I do freelance consulting for anyone who needs it, I take a college course every semester so I can get cheap insurance through the school, not to mention have use of the gym, pool, library, etc. Now I work between 15-20 hours a week. The rest of the time is spent with my daughter, reading, excersizing, etc.
We need to accept that the days of high paying IT jobs are gone. Programming has become so easy that most anyone can be trained to do it. Granted really good programming is still a skill, but how many companies really want a well designed program? Not at the technical level, but at the management level. 9 out of 10 will take the fast, cheap way and forgo quality. Since programs are useful for less and less time now is it really important.
I think as the jobs go overseas, then eventually it will level out. It may take a long time, but it is already happening. I have heard that the better programmers in india are making up to $65k a year. For where I live, and what I require to live that would be fine for here. As the people over there make more, the cost of living will rise as other people realize that they can charge these people more. Eventually it will even all over.
Quality? I have heard both good and bad about overseas. It seems like the executives are under the belief that the quality is better, but the technical people think it is worse. This could be the technical people protecting thier jobs and executives just buying the latest Gartner hype. I do not know first hand - I do directly know people who have been tasked with running people overseas that have complaints.
Remember that all things are transient. What is now will be gone tomorrow. Our happiness and our suffering is all temporary. In a universe level view of everything, I am not even a dust mote. If I have a roof over my head, and enough food to not be hungry then life is good, even great. In this country we have been trained by the media and our peers that if we are not happy all the time, then we are lacking. If we are not death-camp-thin then we are not attractive. If we do not have a giant house then we are substandard.
Did you ever notice that when your income changes your expenses do also? In two years I went from making $30k to $60k with only one job change. You know what? After a year I had exactly the same amount of extra money left over each month. Why is that? Because all the sudden I could acquire more and more. When I look around at my posessions, I find that sometimes it was the smallest things that give me the most joy.
Hah, I think I will post this into an essay somewhere.
This is all my opinion, and subject to change as events develop. Be well.
It's just market economics doing what they do best - balancing out supply and demand.
Oh, that must be why the gap between the rich and the poor is shrinking across the capitalistic world.
I think you have your wires crossed. Market economics ultimately makes a few people very wealthy and most people extremely poor.
I am not an American, but I have been to New York, and I can tell you, in the heart of capitalism, I have never seen such poverty living alongside such obscene wealth.
The irony is that despite your flawed assumptions, your basic tenet is correct. What is happening in the IT field is market economics doing what it does best.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
It's been my experience that the only people who would suggest not having a minimum wage are people who have never lived at the bottom. You can't support yourself today making minimum wage, let alone a family. If you eliminated the minimum wage and allowed wages to get lower, yes it would reduce the cost of certain things. But they would lose more by making less money than they would save by having reduced costs. Cost of living would not go down proportionately. You argue that the flood of low paying jobs would cause companies to raise wages to compete for workers. Do you honestly think that it would even approach the minimum? They would do the same thing they do now - ship jobs overseas where people will work for even less. I will give you the fact that there would be more jobs - at the bottom. I don't think theres a problem finding jobs at the bottom right now, McDonalds seems to be perpetually hiring. There is a lack of jobs that pay a living wage. All this would do is increase the gap between rich and poor.
It's all a question of lifestyle. Cars factor into it; live without a car, and you salvage anywhere from $200-400 a month even at the low end.
I know single men that get by on $500 month, but they live a lifestyle that few people would tolerate; buying 5 lbs hamburger at the wholesale club on sale and then eating hamburgers 2 of 3 nights for two weeks. Repeat cycle for pasta, etc.
Never buy anything but the dingiest used furniture. Buy your clothes at the used clothing store. Don't update your house (paint, modernize/fix bathroom or kitchen). Drive the junkiest car you can.
But they also largely live alone, no girlfriend or wife and they have few social activities. Add any of those in and you can't live like that.
It is the same effect as those overseas factory jobs, but it isn't the same thing. Factory workers were not college-educated.
A friend of mine has left engineering for embedded systems because he can't find work. He is getting his nursing credentials now. This guy used to write code embedded into networking equipment, and now, because of the labor market, he's taking people's temperature, doing throat swabs, and doing eye chart tests. Is this what those in IT are supposed to do? Leave the industry?
Like some of the others here I've started moving towards running my own business, a non-tech business. My technical knowledge got me a plum contract in that non-technical field. Strange how it worked out. I've been telling people for years how technology can make them more effecient. Now I'm using technology to make me more efficient. Because I'm good at applying technology I can out-compete my peers in the same business. And the barrier to entrance, the cost of implementing new technology, is a non-factor. I don't need to pay someone to set up a network for me, hook up a DSL connection, install and configure a firewall, set up a web site, improve rankings in a search engine or use a new piece of software. It's a huge advantage. People in complementary services are recommending me to their customers because I use technology to make working with me easy for them.
What I'm getting at in a round-about way is that I was surprised how much technical skill was an advantage in a non-technical field. That can work for you, too. So the $60,000 a year programmer jobs might be disappearing, but you can still take what you know and put it to practical use for yourself in a different area.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
A piece of evidence to this fact is a "special" city .
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that has been setup in California called the city of industry
It has special tax laws, and special inventory exclusion laws
to provide corporations shipping entire cargo container
ship loads of materials through that port
Other places like the "city of industry" in california are
being setup in other states as well
So tax dollars corporations used to pay are now bypassed
by some greased palms, and some sleazy government approved
accounting
Meanwhile in the fallout of the DOT BOMB days the common
man is going to be stuck holding the bill and we get to
pay for what the Corps "used to pay"
You will see more and more of this as time goes on
Keep in mind in Norman Mattloff's speech to the house and
senate, that he knows they were paid off to the tune of
$22 million to up the H1-b visa limit after the economy
was already seen going south
The Senate in one of the most lopsided votes in history
voted like 97 or 98 to 1 in favor of doubling the h1-b
visa cap
If you think that is bad, there are NO LIMITS on L1 visa
workers, and ppl like Tancredo in colorado and a cpl of
Reps out of Connecticut are about the only ppl raising
hell over their voters losing their jobs, their homes,
and their cars
It is one thing to tell ppl they need to change their lifestyle
and sell off all their over priced garbage, but to spring
it on them with no notice and bankrupt them is another
This bankruptcy burden has a ripple effect that will move
thru the entire economy
You think it is bad now, just wait a few years if they keep
flooding in millions of legal and illegal workers
In Texas construction workers are about 80% illegals and the
government even knows it, and some of bushes staff even had
some employed working for them
Tancredo from colorado is trying to fix it, but to be honest
apathy is king in america these days
Nobody gives a damn anymore, because everyone feels no one
gives a damn about them , maybe they are right
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"