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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
Ever noticed /. NEVER has a positive article about the IT industry?
I guess bad news always sells more copies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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."
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.
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.
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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
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
> 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.
I don't doubt the ability of the Indian programmers, and nothing in what I wrote was meant to question that.
However, I happened to have a problem with a Netgear router, and I was transferred to a bunch of thick-accented tech support people who were fairly obviously in India. What was clear after talking to them is that it was very hard to be understood, and I think it would be even worse if I had to communicate to them about a difficult software project.
So a firm of Indians with expat Americans capable of bridging the gap between the two cultures seems like a pretty good idea.
You would pay me - or someone like me - in India (or whatever other country this was done in) for doing the communication, which is much easier face to face.
It's not the Indian programmers who would need me (although they'd welcome getting the business). It would be the American side of things that would find my services useful.
D
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.
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
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.
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.