Andy Grove Speaks out on Offshore Outsourcing

molarmass192 writes "Andy Grove, of Intel fame, "spoke out" at a recent technology summit in Washington about the current trend towards offshore outsourcing and how it's causing the US to slowly but surely lose its edge in the tech sector. He states plainly that the US government must step in to restore balance between the need for profits and the lure of offshore outsourcing. There are also pokes at the patent system and slow adoption of broadband internet access. An interesting insight into what's going on inside the heads of the US's tech leaders."

Comments

Ironic...

[MisanthropicProggram]

that the places that big US corps are outsourcing software development are also the biggest software pirates - according to the "The Economist's Book of Figures for 2004"

China #2

India #22

As the IT mgt books say, "Don't outsource your strategic intellectual capital!". Unfortunately, most corps don't seem to think of this and they're outsourcing everything they can just to save a few bucks.

I saw an article a few months ago, I think CIO.com, that mentioned how United Technologies saved a whole $7 million (US) on their IT budget by sending some work over to India. I thought, "Wow! Seven million dollars US!". Then I looked. Their IT budget is over a billion dollars. So they saved a whole 0.7% by going overseas. In the meantime, their employees are demoralized for having seen their buddies lose their jobs and some poor bastard(s) have to stay in the middle of night to deal with people on the other side of the world, because if they don't - it's their ass too!

There I go again, ranting!

Natural selection doesn't apply to humans.

[rsilvergun]

Humans have social structures which circumvent it. Things like inheritance, family ties, friendship, traditions, religion, etc., etc. Emotions and the ability to reason routinely prevent the best from suceeding while allowing the worst to prosper. That's one of the many failures of capitalism. A small group of people monopolizes wealth and power to the detriment of the rest; and they use social structures to hold onto that wealth and power inspite of anything Natural selection has to say on the subject.

Oh, and the people with power in the U.S. don't care about keeping America in power. They're global, meaning they operate on a global scale sans petty concerns like patriotism. Nationalism is just something to keep the rubes in line. That's the major failure of capitalism. Adam Smith assumed small shop owners who had a stake in their community, and who themselves suffered if the community went to hell. Now global capitalists just move away from their rotting comminities. The slums are exported to poor countries, and the rich live where they don't have to worry about the crime, violence and polution they're creating.

Re:Global worker rights

[kfg]

With global worker rights then workers all over the world will have rights.

That would include those to whom the offshore work is going, who have right to. . .work.

You will also need monocultural global economy for it to work. You are perhaps thinking that that the reason jobs are going overseas is because workers are being exploited by being underpaid, i.e. being payed less than you are ( and thus being able to outbid you on your own job).

This is falacious reaoning. Most of these workers are taking the jobs because they are the best paying jobs available in their local economy where prices on life's necessities are quite divergent from our own. As are their ideas on just what constitutes a necessity.

Poor countries are not, I repeat not analogous to poor sections of rich countries and cannot be treated as such.

Paying someone $40/hr in a $1/hr local economy isn't treating those workers "fairly." It's totally destroying the local economny with runaway inflation, bringing misery to those that can't get those jobs, must pay $40/hr prices, but still make $1/hr. Revolutions have been fomented over much less.

The fact of the matter is that the rest of the world loves being thus "taken advantage of." You earn your $40/hr in a rich local economy that has become rich, at least in part, by taking advantage of poorer nations who now find themselves in a place to compete to get some of that back.

Your job will come back when all nations are equally rich, or all nations are equally poor, and thus share a common economy.

And you can't mandate that. It has to evolve. Or hundreds of millions will suffer. Even die.

You'll also find that most people who wish to protect American jobs think they can do it by opposing a global economy. I can't but feel that most of these people are fairly well off, always have been, have never lived extensively in a third world nation as a local would and thus generally being somewhat clueless as to how things really work, here or there.

Do you want to preserve American jobs and promote global worker's rights?

Go to Mexico. Build houses for the poor while earning a local wage for it.

You might learn something.

KFG