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Tale of Two Tech Hubs: Silicon Glen & Chandiga
securitas writes "A pair of stories about two technology hubs in different parts of the world contrast and document their efforts to flourish as regional technological centers: Scotland's Silicon Glen and India's Chandigarh. The BBC explains that Silicon Glen is still struggling to recover from the technology bust with 15,000 jobs lost in the last year alone. 'Scotland's electronics sector contributes one-seventh of its gross domestic product, directly employs 45,000 workers, and accounts for more than half the country's exports,' which are down 50%. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports on northern India and the birth of a technology boom, as a group of government officials, consultants and high technology entrepreneurs is trying to transform the city of Chandigarh from a 'sleepy farm state capital into the "technology hub of northern India."' The city is competing with other Indian cities by offering 'lower labor costs than India's "first tier" technology hubs, places like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Bombay and Gurgaon, outside New Delhi.' As Chandigarh competes with its rivals for call centers and software development parks, some of those cities are experiencing a labor shortage of skilled workers. These aren't the only two places with such reversals of fortune - how does your region fare?"
is that the city with the sag peneer, or is that the one with the curried rice?
That with all the complaints people make about young people working in the garment industry for low to poverty-level wages in third-world nations, no one has yet figured out that basically, by letting technology companies take jobs overseas, we're encouraging the same thing on a different level. Just because it's more white-collar doesn't make it less of a sweatshop.
Luckily we have so many unemployed computer geeks here in the U.S. we should see lots of replies. Oh did I mention that things are really awful here job-wise?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I always thought a fair bit of the high tech investment in Scotland was more as a result of aggressive Government back inducements to companies to set up in Scotland. I seem to remember at one point a lot of the "high tech" jobs were in fact just in final assembly - bolting the real guts of the equipment together after the hard stuff was done in the far east. A policy like that is always vulnerable to some other government making more attractive offers to companies.
An NY Times link on Slashdot that actually goes to the story without registration. OMG a pig just flew by my window. CNN just reported that hell has frozen over. Cats and dogs are living together. It's mass histeria!!
> These aren't the only two places with such
> reversals of fortune - how does your region fare?
Not well. Milk prices remain low.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I know it's not technically ironic, but man, wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall, or see the look on a lead programmer's face in Banglore when he's told his job is being "outsourced?"
Seems they've found someone who will do the job for even less scratch. I suddenly find my sympathy gauge tapped out...
-dameron
Every country, state, municipality, town, city, and village wants to create some sort of high-tech industry. They can't do it, and the optimism some of these people would be funny if it wasn't so depressing. It's the same thing that happened with the dot com crash--people couldn't get it through their thick heads that there were way too many sellers and not nearly enough buyers.
Just when you thought that technical support couldn't get any worse, they are all being moved to the third world. Now they are not only clueless, they also don't speak English. Though in fairness, many Silicon Valley companies have a history of staffing their help desks with orientals who couldn't speak English either but, at least they were in the United States.
Lets get the city name right - its 'Chandigarh' not 'Chandiga'. Its right in the writeup but the headline is trunc'ed
... directly employs 45,000 workers, and accounts for more than half the country's exports,
Did Mel Gibson lead them to independence while I wasn't looking?
(Yes, I know Scotland was an independent country in the past, but it hasn't been in quite some time.)
I've noticed that in every article having to do with outsourcing, there are more than a few posts calling for the government to do something about it (i.e., instigate tarrifs). Yet in every article having to do with file sharing, the overwhelming sentiment is: their business model is obsolete, we don't owe them a living, deal with it. Well guess what -- this is the world you've created! The high-paid tech worker business model is becoming obsolete. It's hypocricy that obsolescence should apply to everyone except yourself.
I grant you that not everyone who wants tarriffs also wants the RIAA to FOAD. However, I have yet to hear a single techie say, "Well, I guess I'm obsolete -- better go find a new, profitable skill set." It's all fun and games when the victims are anonymous, isn't it?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
This should exemplify that IT resources and programmers are finite. Jobs dry up in one area only to resurface where costs are lower.
Any industry that becomes a commodity will undergo a similar transformation. This is exactly what made the whole silicon valley experiment so wildly successful in that an entirely new paradigm was created that existed in few other places. When the "resource" became common and the concepts became commodities that could be moved around, traded and bargained for, the result was job movement to where those who had the skills would work for less. So, the trick is to innovate and again create for the world markets and ourselves skill-sets that are unique and in demand for the products or services they provide.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
What I find amazing that it's the same people who think nothing of paying $20 dollars for a t-shirt or $150 dollars for pair of sports shoes that they know are made by workers earning next to nothing in sweatshops in South East Asia that are the first to complain when jobs in their own industries start being lost to overseas firms.
If you're happy to reap the benefits of a global economy when you go to Gap or Footlocker then you should be ready to accept the consequences when the same global economy dictates that you're easily replaced by someone who lives half way around the world. Otherwise, you're just a hypocrite.
Evolve and adapt. It's what workers in other industries have had to do for decades if not centuries. Now it's our turn. The sooner we accept that the better off we'll be.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
What wud u call a job that makes u stay up all nite and assume a false persona and answer mind numbing questions again and again and again and ...
I am sure u techies in the us are complaining about no jobs, But i do not think that these call center jobs took away any jobs away from u guys. NO half decent Person here would look at it as a serious job. Just good forthe pocket money.A dream
especially since you get an above average salary and above average perks
Many of my friends who did work in a call center felt that the job was not that bad, but don't even think about staying for more than 4 months, A view endorsed in the story
Did the Indian government 'target' the U.S. I.T. industry ? Is their government pushing people into I.T. seeing that we just allow job flow to their country while we get no equal access to their market ? If this is not the case then this is just ONE WAY trade. We lose all our capital with nothing in return. Think about all those jobs that created a synergy in our economy and the goods people bought. Don't get me wrong. I am all for open 'fair' free trade but India and China are not the most 'open and free' markets. These two countries ban most of our exports. I do know of the trade conflict right now with Chinese textiles the Bush administration is using as 'leverage' to open their markets and because because of terrible publicity of all the IT and textile job losses(elections).
So to sum up. These two countries ban our exports and China manipulates their currency(google,recent news) to gain marketshare and we sit here talking about how great this is. We need to open Indias and Chinas markets up more if we want to create more jobs here. Lets hope this is an issue in the next presidential elections.
Please don't retaliate and call me with cliched term 'protectionist'.
I worked for a software company in the US that was moving most of its operations to Chandigarh. Their R&D staff turnover rate was ~2x/yr!
Punjabies didn't mind the place, but a lot of other Indians didn't want to move there.
One of my colleagues takes a flight down here to London every week (city-hops are quite cheap, often the airport tax is more than the fare) and works here 2 or 3 days a week, then commutes back to Scotland for the rest of the week. Online via ADSL and Bob's your Auntie's live-in lover....
The scots do have something of a history of technical excellence, so it's a shame that Silicon Glen is running into trouble, imho.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Where can good value Indian developers be hired if you are only looking for 1 or 2? What are the kind of prices that are paid?
I know it's of topic but still.
But then, they got laid off becuase their tech support got outsourced to India. Now they HAVE to buy the 5 dollar shirt.
What I want to know is: How do all these business owners think they will sell their expensive wares when everyone is back to making 7 dollars a hour?
I'm sure your post is particularly interesting to former steel workers in Wales and elsewhere around the world that have lost their jobs because of the hefty import tarriffs on foreign steel introduced by the Bush administration.
Seriously, if you're going to talk about free markets, then feel free to do so. But first have the decency to acknowledge that the US definition of free trade isn't 100 percent free.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
There was a recent article from CNN.COM about india outsourcing and the number I recall was 4.5$ per hour. I do not know what the US minimum wage is.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"Educate and train your populace, and give creative people the opportunity to do their thing. "
First there were the buggy-whip makers, and then their jobs went away. They retrained and became auto makers, but then that was devestated by the foreign makers. Go high-tech was the new cry, and many did educate and train, but soon that when offshore. So now many sit home with their three-figure debt from the previous rounds of "education and training", wondering were else the next opportunity to play the "Let's educate and train 'em" lottery is coming from. Shovel in hand, willing to dig a bigger hole than the last one. Hoping the rest of the world will not rain on them.
Ummm, India's market is quite 'free' and open. Most of the consumer products are manufactured by multi-nationals. India also has much larger imports than exports.
As a developing country, some products do have import tariffs, but this is pretty much the same as any country I guess. Most multi-nationals are now competing in India, and how many complaints have you seen that India is a closed market??
Futher, India is a member of the Wto, and is therefore bound by al its statutes. Many countries have initiated action against some tariffs imposed by India, and these tariffs have been removed/reduced. Pretty much the same as the Bush position on Steel Imports.
The India of the 80's is not the India of the 90's, 00's...
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
do not convert rupees to dollars - use the PPP(Purchasing Power Parity) according to which 1$ ~=Rs 8 instead of Rs 50 according to the conversion rate. Going by the current cost of living in india, an entry level engineer who is paid Rs. 25,000 ($500) is a comfortable sum), comparable to being paid $50k p.a. in the U.S. And if you are smart enough, you can rise up to P.L. or higher in a couple of years, and your salary goes up tremendously.
There is one difference though - no one keeps to 40hr weeks - your work schedule depends on the project. I've known my friends back home to work even on weekends when a project deadline is near. It may sound bad, but for young 21-25 year olds, it's not a big pain. It also creates the kind of productivity that took Japan to the top - societies can afford to have comfortable 40 hr. weeks after they have advanced enough (and then see their jobs being taken away by other places where THEY are willing to work 60 hr. weeks)
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Is it some sort of trade equilibrium? or will any sort of "thinking" job move offshore and we all have to do physical work as the only sort of work?
"So, the trick is to innovate and again create for the world markets and ourselves skill-sets that are unique and in demand for the products or services they provide."
Sorry! All the inventors are living in homeless shelters, and are on the breadlines.
You've got SOME nerve calling India and china protectionists! US and EU are the largest farm
subsidisers in the world and directly responsible for destroying the livelihoods of millions of poor farmers around the world. Do you have no shame at all? Here's just one small fact for you: In 2001, the 25,000 US cotton growers received roughly $3.9 billion in subsidy payments, for producing a cotton crop that was worth only US$ 3 billion at world market prices (One Arkansas cotton grower received US $ 6 million, equal to the combined annual earnings of 25,000 cotton farmers in Mali). Such are the glaring inequalities, that an American cotton farmer on an average receives US $ 10.7 million a day as subsidies. More for pacifying the public sympathies than for correcting the dirty economics, the WTO did consider the contentious issue of cotton subsidies, as if it was an isolated case of exploitation of developing country farmers.
Throw this statistic at your Congressman and ask him why US is waging an economic war against the most vulnerable sections of humanity and driving them into poverty, death and destruction.
Wake the f**k up and stop this war!!
http://www.dsharma.org/trade/america.htm
For instance, if my job were outsource to India for 1/3 of the salary they pay me, but that turns out to be a decent living wage in India, I can't say "fine, I'll take the pay cut and move to India!", even if I want to. If all the jobs in my area of expertise move out of the country, I can't follow them, I have to find a new field of employment, because of artificial barriers to my mobility.
If there are going to be artificial barriers to my mobility, I want artificial barriers to my job's mobility as well.
Call it what you like but a free market economy even in the new world order will still cater to a product delivered at the lowest price. Outsourcing is a fact of economic life, innovation is the answer. If more "third world" programmers and designers rise above cookie cutter programming watch out.
I don't know anyone who works (or worked) in the North American technology industry that works a 40-hour week. Officially those may be the working hours stated in the job description but, in practice, 50-75 hours per week is the norm for anyone I ever met. That doesn't count travel time for those who travel as part of their jobs (sales engineers, etc).
Most salaried tech workers are implicitly (often explicitly) expected to work more hours than they are officially paid for.
It's part of the reason that technology salaries are/were so 'high' compared to other professions.
This is a problem for our chosen skill set. A Dr or lawyer practises close to home and can command a decent wage that cannot be reasonably outsourced. I mention these professions because of the length of training is close to a computer professional. There is one area of our profession of course that cannot reasonably be outsourced and that is defense. Beyond that, most other work in our field can and is being done overseas. This trend is going to continue. I do see long term problems with science education here. In the limit the country that trains the most students will take the lions share of this business. Here in the US where I live, a profitable career in computers probably is a thing of the past. Even at subsistance level, there is no economic incentive for a company to hire here. Minimum wage here is ~6$/hr giving ~12k$ per year. That salary is 2k$ above what a very good salary for a computer professional is in China. (or Bangalore for that matter).
With perfect business conduits, work could be farmed out smoothly and easily leaving the work here in the US mainly work that has locality. Dr, lawyer, undertaker etc.
I know there are arguments that the quality of these outsourcing units is not great but I seem to remember that is what people said about Japanese cars when they first hit the scene. Do people say that now?
Hedley
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/investing/articles/ 0,15114,538786,00.html
...There's a lot of hostility." Sudhir waxes conflicted about this for a few moments. Then she slips into
Every weekday, as the tropical sun begins its swift descent over the Deccan plain, fleets of what the Indians call "multi-utility vehicles" fan out across Bangalore. The Tata Sumos and Toyota Qualises bump along the potholed, muddy residential streets of India's fifth-largest city, stopping to pick up young men and women and carry them to work. Then, as business hours begin in the Eastern U.S., thousands of these young Indians don telephone headsets and do their enthusiastic best to help the American people get their Internet service working, figure out their credit card bills, and order tacky limited-edition collectibles.
After years of wondering what all those fiber-optic cables laid around the earth at massive expense in the late 1990s would ever be good for, we finally have an answer: They're good for enabling call-center workers in Bangalore or Delhi to sound as if they're next door to everyone. Broadband's killer app, it turns out, is India.
It's not just about call centers. In Bangalore some 110,000 people are employed writing software, designing chips, running computer systems, reading MRIs, processing mortgages, preparing tax forms, and doing other essential work for U.S., European, Japanese, and even Chinese companies. Intel, Cisco, Oracle, Philips, and GE are among the multinationals with significant R&D facilities there. AOL, Accenture, and Ernst & Young have big operations in town too. Scores more Western corporations outsource work to Indian companies like Bangalore-based IT services firms Infosys and Wipro.
Meanwhile, GE Capital employs more than 15,000 people in Delhi and other Indian cities who answer calls from credit card customers, do accounting work, manage computer networks, and the like. In Chennai (formerly Madras), a staff of 350 design the PowerPoint presentations that McKinsey consultants around the world show their clients. In Mumbai (Bombay), Morgan Stanley has been hiring equity analysts to help cover U.S. companies from 102 time zones away. There are more than 350,000 people working in IT services and outsourcing in India now; the number is expected to pass one million before 2008.
The attraction of the Indian knowledge workers who get those jobs is that they're paid 10% to 20% of what Americans would expect for similar work--and in many cases they do it better. That has stoked understandable alarm in the U.S. Together with China's rise in manufacturing, it is bringing protectionists out of the woodwork. It is also causing even those of a less reactionary bent to wonder just what it is that Americans will do for a living now that even knowledge work can easily be sent overseas.
And what do those young Indian knowledge workers (they are, overwhelmingly, young) think about this turn of events? Sitting on the terrace one pleasant October evening at a swank Bangalore bar called the 13th Floor (which is in fact on the 13th floor of an office building on M.G.--short for Mahatma Gandhi--Road, the city's main drag), I pose the question to a group of young managers and engineers from Wipro: "Do you feel bad about taking jobs from Americans?"
Several of them respond with a torrent of economic reasoning that would have made David Ricardo, the 19th-century English apostle of free trade, proud. Trade enriches all, they say. The American economy will take the money it's saving by outsourcing and invest it in the growth industries of the future. Besides, the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan will all face labor shortages in a few years as their populations age.
"Try explaining that to the customers I'm talking to," retorts Sapna Sudhir, a 28-year-old with a razor wit who manages IT projects for retailers, mostly in the U.S. "'Let's talk about the transition process,' I tell them. 'I'm going to transition your job to India.'
There are scarcely 550,000 people in the US whose incomes exceed $500k. That's equivalent to half the population of Rhode Island and would yield 50k people in California--a state home to 27 million. These are the people who are making judgements about offshore outsourcing. I hardly think the opinions of 0.44% of the population represents 'the American Way.' Does it wholly escape people how close, yet how few, 'the superrich' are? Their lives and their interests are by definition NOT 'the American Way' any more than any other group of 0.44% can catagorically represent an entire population unless 'the American Way' is some begging Dickensian euphemism for willingly being walked on and thrown out with the trash.
1998
Q: What did the high school grad say to the Computer Science Major?
A: Would you like fries with that?
2003
Q: What did the high school grad say to the Computer Science Major?
A: You're supposed to ask them if they want fries with that!
[Insert pithy quote here]
"Lower labor costs than India's first tier technology hubs"? What, do they pay in rice?
Actually, the U.S. is very protectionist. From a Canadian perspective, our soft-wood lumber exports to the U.S. were recently slapped with a massive tarrif for no other reason than that they were substantially cheaper than american soft-wood. Despite a WTO ruling in Canada's favour, (i.e. that the tarrifs are illegal) those tarrifs are still in place.
Another good example was the recent BSE scare in Alberta. It was discovered that one cow had the disease, and after a massive investigation that was double and triple checked by officials from the U.S. and other countries, no other infected animals were found. However, the U.S. was very quick to slap a ban on all Canadian imports, effectively crippling the export-reliant Alberta beef industry. The export bans stayed in effect a lot longer than necessary because american beef producers were having a field-day!
Might I also point out the recent deliberate manipulation of the American dollar by the Bush administration. Bush wanted greenback lower in order to drive up foreign investment. Remember, dollars invested in America to produce goods could have gone elsewhere. There is nothing wrong with this however. It's the same sort of cut-throat economic warfare that all nations engage in to some extent or another. If America is really serious about bringing jobs home from foreign job centers then that is going to mean an even lower dollar. You can't expect a buisness to create American jobs out of the goodness of their hearts. Would you invest in a company that was making huge profits or one that was creating local jobs and losing money because of it? Think about your bank account before you answer that. If Americans want jobs, they have to perform services at competitive rates. It's that simple. Don't whine when someone else out-competes you. This is free-market enterprise.
You've got SOME nerve calling India and china protectionists!
Yeah? Try to get a job in Bangalore (assuming that you aren't a citizen)
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It is CHANDIGARH as in story, The "City Beautiful"
American corn subsidies were actually one of the root causes of the Zapatista revolt. A large portion of the population in Chiapas, one of the more impoverished Mexican states, subsided on corn sales. They are completely unsubsidized of course. With their marginal land (the best was swallowed up by Haciendas long ago) and primitive machinery they would have a tough time competing with Iowa corn farmers. With the massive goverment subsidies that U.S. farmers receive it's not even a contest. The Zapatista revolt happened very shortly after the Mexico-U.S. free trade pact came into effect, not suprisingly. Govermnent subsidized corn from the U.S. effectively destroyed the livelihoods of a whole section of the Mexican population.
The Zapatista revolt is one of the root causes of the anti-globalization movement, even if many protesters seem to be pretty clueless about what they're protesting.
Better double-check the facts to make sure the New York Times isn't lying again.
Try whining about that to Welsh steel workers, Canadian softwood lumber makers, Canadian cattle ranchers, Chinese textile workers and Indian farmers. If you *really* wanted a job in Bangalore, get an Indian equivalent of H1B, the employment visa:_ guide.h tm
http://www.indianembassy.org/consular/visa
I just returned from China and zymano's post is spot-on.
1. The Chinese cannot import without government permission which is hard to obtain.
2. US companies cannot have more than information offices in China without large deposits of US currency and special approval. Small businesses can FOAD.
3. In China and India its near impossible to do business without a local partner who can and will compete with you after a year or two of what they call "close cooperation".
4. We cannot compete with their wages and labor availability.
5. We cannot compete with their laws and regulations.
6. Their quality is vastly improved (I saw it with my eyes).
7. They can afford the latest technology (Again I saw it) and there is little advantage to be had there.
8. Their access to capital is quite good with their banks and foreign investors pumping liquidity into their businesses.
In the words of one of the folks traveling with me, "they are going to bury us". Skeptical before my trip, I now believe him. We're years away from extinction of domestic capacity in a varity of industrial and light industrial sectors. The threat to our future economic prosperity and national security is real.
Our government must take a stand now. They must demand free and fair access to Chinese, Indian and Eastern European markets. They must move to provide protection for our domestic industries in ways that do not directly violate the WTO (i.e. bar exports or impose export tariffs on steel scrap exports, maintain pressure for a low dollar, and expand NAFTA with an eye toward common currency among NAFTA members in time).
We cannot maintain a negative balance of trade, defecit spending and ensure our own security and prosperity without action.
... And end the farm subsidies!
It is incrediby hypocritical of Bush to talk free trade, then pass HUGE subsidies to US agri-businesses to effectively close US markets to farmers in the poorer countries.
This is a quote:
"I won't get into near term specifics but a comment that my brother made is apt. "Most of the problems of the third world will be solved when you can get three types of raspberry vinagrette in a small town in the middle of Cambodia...""
--John Ringo
http://www.baen.com
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
The minimum wage is the US varies from state to state and by industry/job, but it is ~$5.50 US. Average rent on a mediocre/poor studio apartment in most US cities is ~$500 US. After taxes, a person making minimum wage in the US takes home ~$600 US per month. However, the average person making minimum wage will get most of the money they pay in income taxes back in a refund, if they can do their taxes properly, which in that income bracket is quite easy - no investments, assets"> etc. to comlicate things.
You will notice there is no moderation choice for "I disagree with this post." Someone obviously feeling a great weight of duty for moderation has forgotten this in regards to my post, that is the parent of this one.
The issue that I have is with the advertisements Slashdot is carrying that promote outsourcing programming overseas. I do not need to argue the point that outsourcing is very adverse to the interests of many Slashdot readers, and so it is my position that Slashdot ought not to carry such advertisement.
This is not directly contained in the content of the article, but the issue is related. Since Slashdot is hardly likely to host a referendum on the issue, a thread concerning the varying fortunes of tech industries in different countries is the most appropriate venue available to air these concerns. I invite anyone who disagrees to argue their case other than through the moderation function.
For great justice.
Try to get a job in New York, assuming you aren't a citizen. India is one of the beter countries in this regard - the rules for you are the same as the rules for one of their people going to work in your country.
So, since I'm a citizen of the UK, if I wanted to work in india I would have to go through the same proccess as an indian wanting to work in the UK. If you (I'll assume you're from the US) wanted to work in india, you would have to go through the same proccess as an indian wanting to work in the US. Which seems very fair to me, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
I've had to work more than a few times over the weekend for artificial reasons, not even because an end of the project was near! More because the project planners felt nervous abour the project status...
So it sounds like things might even be a little more reasonable there!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"In the late '40s, a single blue-collar job could support a whole family."
Follow this link. Bill Moyers covered some of this in "A question of fairness". When present day income is adusted. The modern day worker makes less than he did in '74. The main problem with the original poster's post is that he basically does this "Past cause and effect==future cause and effect" without even attempting to learn what's different between the past and what's happening now, and how important those differences are to the outcome.
"Firstly, the unemployment figures have been cooked to exclude everybody who was so screwed that they gave up and dropped out of civil society."
PBS covered this last month. Don't forget the people in prison as well. Also a LOT of people are underemployed. Way below what benifit they could bring to our society.
"We have to stash our little kids in warehouses so their mothers can work to keep the family solvent."
Notice how many couples are un(der)employed? The numbers have risen. The composition has changed as well. I've never seen so many suits at the unemployment office.
Forget the employees...these high tech companies do care about their machines...which is why they pay top $ to keep them cool.
I am assuming you tried. Which Indian language did you learn to be able to communicate?
Seriously though, don't forget the steel tarrifs and agriculture subsidies US uses to protect its own industries. Farmers in Africa starve because they cannot sell their crop at a regular price. The farmers in the US are able to undercut their competitors all over the world becuase of the subsidies.
And yes, India and China have their own protectionist policies...lets see who cracks first. I would not bet on China.
These aren't the only two places with such reversals of fortune - how does your region fare? Pretty badly, since most of my country's jobs are getting shipped out to Bangalore... Let's hear a hooray for American capitalism!!
The probability that someone is watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your actions.
Which Indian language did you learn to be able to communicate?
English, just like the natives.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Yes and this is why some believe Bush is spending like crazy. Deficit = debt = printing money to pay off debt = lower currenty.
The fall of the dollar has the effect of driving out foreign investment, not the other way around. What a low dollar would do is lower a trade deficit, all other things being equal. However, most of the US's trading partners have kept lowering their currency, thus the US isn't seeing much of a fall in the trade deficit.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Then use a different news site. It is *Your* page impressions that are helping the advertisers. You are as much to blame as slashdot.
US & India are entwined in an intimate embrace
Hmm, no wonder I smell curry very close to me.
I am an Israeli. and have been working in the local Hi-tech industry for the last 10.5 years. when I started working here in 1993, a common monthly wage for an senior software engineer was around 2000$. it peaked in y2000 at about 6000$ and now it's somewhere in a range of 3.5K-5K$ a month. ( if you can get a job, that is. and that's not bad at all in terms of average wage here at around 1700$ month. And the reason for it is because the quality of the local hi-tech product is very high. and a lot of companies are willing to pay this money + benefits in order to get it. Just ask the likes of Intel, Motorola, TI, HP etc which have major R&D centers here. ( sometimes the only ones abroad). However it's very different when it comes to India. I worked with lot's of code produced by major Indian outsourcing companies (Like Wipro, for example) and I can say tht those guys are not really ready for prime-time. (No offence, I hope) So it all comes down to quality vs. price. Nowdays there are a lot of companies that are willing to pay far less money to get the job done and they don't mind quick and dirty approach. and that's where India comes in. But if you want to do something serious, you'll never outsource there, at least for now. and I am sure that when those guys will get quality and experience, their price WILL go up and become comparabale to the prices in the developed countries. BTW there are also trends to import cheap workforce to some country close but outside US or EU. for example Cyprus. I personaly know companies that moved development centers there and employ hundreds of Indian guys for fraction of a price. but as I say in the long run you always get what you payed for.
http://www.careerjournaleurope.com/hrcenter/articl es/20031104-delaney.html
New Outsourcing Twist: Sending Employees, Too By Kevin J. Delaney From The Wall Street Journal Online
A London-based travel agency has taken outsourcing to a new level, shipping both call-center jobs and the workers who perform them to India.
Begun with five young Finns who moved to New Dehli in July 2002, ebookers PLC is sending Europeans to answer phones and e-mails at a call center in India for wages that are roughly one-fourth what similar jobs fetch at home. Now ebookers' Indian subsidiary plans to expand and sell the idea as a service to other businesses.
The company is pitching the jobs as a way to see the world, the information-age equivalent of joining the Peace Corps or the Foreign Legion. So far, it has drawn more than 50 adventure-seeking recruits from Finland, Norway, Sweden, France, Switzerland, Ireland and Germany.
The program is the latest twist on the migration of work to the developing world, a phenomenon reshaping the service sector in the U.S. and prompting hand-wringing about job losses in corporate and political circles. In India, exports of software and services grew 26%, to $9.5 billion, in the year through the end of March, according to the National Association of Software & Service Companies, an Indian technology-trade lobby.
Ebookers' program is also a possible road map for how multinational companies with operations in Continental Europe could move more jobs offshore, where language barriers have been an obstacle. English is widely spoken in India, the Philippines and other outsourcing centers. But the languages of small European countries aren't spoken in those lands, posing a built-in brake to moving work such as call centers abroad.
The online travel agency's Scandinavia manager, Tera Komulainen, a 52-year-old Finn, came up with the idea during an April 2002 visit to New Delhi. On that trip, she was looking for a way to cut costs by shifting customer-service work to ebookers' Indian subsidiary, Tecnovate eSolutions, as her U.K. counterparts had done.
The hitch: Virtually no one in India speaks Finnish -- or Danish or Norwegian or Swedish.
One month later, a flier went up in Helsinki travel-trade schools promising "the experience of your lifetime." The first five Finns -- and other Europeans who signed up later -- have put up with discomforts like diarrhea and frequent power outages, but they seem to be taking the experience in stride.
The call-center workers -- both Indians and Europeans -- make about $6,000 a year to start. The Europeans also get company-paid housing. "I actually didn't even care about the salary that much," says Sanna Nevalainen, 27, from Finland, who stayed for eight months.
Ebookers markets the jobs as a way to see the world. But for these employees, the trek to India -- once associated in the West with discovering one's inner self -- means spending much of their time staring at a computer screen. Would-be flower children needn't apply. "You got some replies from hippie types," says Ms. Komulainen. "We didn't want those."
The work itself is standard customer-service fare, including answering e-mails and phone calls from Europeans back home about travel arrangements and flight times. The Europeans in New Delhi, whose work day is shifted by a few hours to be in sync with their home market, say that apart from flickering lights and non-Nordic colleagues, there are few clues in the office that they are abroad.
On weekends, though, they travel around India or dance to Hindi pop in New Delhi discos. "In Finland, life can sometimes be boring. But not here," says Anne-Maarit Laitinen, 26, the Finnish team leader in New Delhi.
The workers say their lower wages stretch fairly far because the cost of living is so low in India. Lasse Rantala, 25, among the first Finns to sign up, stayed for a year and now works f
New Outsourcing Twist: Sending Employees, Too By Kevin J. Delaney From The Wall Street Journal Online
BTW, the US steel industry is not a good comparison to US IT. The US steel industry kind of got itself into the mess it's in by doing no capital reinvestment, so it deserves to go out of business. The exception is the US specialty steel (high tech) industry which has modern production equipement and is doing quite well AFAIK. For the US IT and computer industry, overinvestment was part of the problem.
High paying jobs in NY would migrate out to the suburbs, then regions, then backwaters. But there is a freeze on new capital spending, and shedding or downsizing is all the rage. Your pain is felt, because the building boom has also missed you by, too.
Europe stagnated, while America made 'Service' jobs. Now USA is busy exporting such service jobs, to bring its economy more in line with Europe.
The BBC article is fairly accurate in that during 80s and early 90s there was a lot of foreign investment into Scotland by companies, mainly from the U.S. and Japanese economies. A good portion of this went into building electronic manufacturing and assembly plants.
The general idea was rather simple in that Scotland had about the right balance between providing highly skilled workers and the average level of pay. Thus, making it an attractive place for stable investment.
Off course we all know the tale now. Both the U.S. and Japanese economies went south. So closures were made along with the job loses.
Now that things are improving new markets have opened up offering better value for money. Scotland can't really compete with the Indians on this because in short India can provide the same skill set at a lower wage.
The other problem here is that Scottish politicians spend so much of their time breathing hot air and interfering in the business process that it scares investors away. In other words they are not the solution but in themselves form part of the problem. However that is my personal view and so somewhat subjective.
But it would not be like me to be such a pessimist. I think one of Scotland's greatest strengths comes from the engineering intellect and experience that this country has had from the early industrial revolution through to the modern day.
Now this strength doesn't manifest itself in large corporations now-a-days but more in R&D centres or small companies with good financial backing that take the cream of this brain power and focus it in on proper product development. And certainly I have witnessed a good growth in the number of these companies embracing the open source development model.
There is a federal minimum wage, it doesn't vary from state to state. It is set at $5.15 an hour. Family businesses don't have to pay it to family who work for the business, and waiters/waitresses have to make at least $5.15 with their tips, if they don't, the company they work for has to pay them that.
Chandigarh was developed as a planned city to showcase modern India. Le Corbusier along with Indian architechts (e.g., Balkrishna Doshi) brought this wonder into being. It is not a slum-shanty town, but it is a modern city. Chandigarh already had a great tech infrastructure. SCI (Semiconductor Corporation of India) had a huge silicon wafer fabrication facility that got burnt due to a possible sabotage. So having tech jobs in a place that has had a silicon foundry since a decade is not at all surprising.
Come on. WTO has the highest number of free trade violations against the US of A, the mecca of free-trade. Earlier US just used threats to control trade, now due to WTO US hypocracy is exposed. I hate the rich countries who subsidize their argiculture want developing countries to cut their argi subsidies. What a fair world order and fair-trade regime is this. If the US is so smart why does it not compete with India and China is lower cost production? When west brought machines to east they wiped out a huge community of artisans, but that was supported as as the economic principle of production cost.
Hello, little racist.
where is the WTO concerning these asian nations ?
Why are their trade barriers allowed ?
Does China get a free ride ? I guess they do in this country since so many fortune 500 companies have set up shop there.
News for you my friend.
The U.S. has the most open markets in the world.
Quit nagging me about farm subsidies. Every nation does it.
If you want to see trade barriers go to China,japan or some other asian nation.
They try to block all of our exports at expense to their own economy.
India has the most trade barriers of any nation including the protectionist ASIAN nations
Quit you bullshit Mr Indian ambassador.
Please mod the parents comments down because of his bullshit propaganda.
India is creating a big risk by making their economy depend on outsourcing from the US. An international crisis or huge trade war could disrupt their source of income, leaving them with a nasty popped bubble.
India should use all that talent to develop their OWN economy, not be a US parasite. India is a big country with a huge population who need food and services just like anybody else. And, they should diversify, not just depending on IT and call centers.
Table-ized A.I.
Yes, there is a federal minimum wage, but the grandparent was correct - it does vary from state to state and city to city. The highest rate is applicable. For example, California's is 6.75, and (because you mentioned tips) that excludes tips for waitresses/waiters.
I believe San Francisco just voted in a city-wide minimum wage of 8.50.. "The vote makes San Francisco the third city in the nation to set its own higher-wage threshold"
-- CyberTech
I guess the big question is - with all the good jobs moving to oversea like India, and all the good paying job in US disapear, who is going to buy the gadget?
What I'm surprise is there isnt much labor union for hightech work force. Would you believe a cashier at Safeway has better health care benefits than a programmer? Or a shipyard worker makes over 110K a year?
The fact that current 1st world governments charge exorbant rates student loans regarding higher education versus someone who can live in a village, ride a bike to class and only cost them $25 USD for a whole year! //Troll Wave Ahead
Brag, Brag, Brag, "we Indians are so smart..." Yeah? Good for you, that I have to pay $45k per year, have to pay for 5-8+ years my student loans and get raped by my landlord at over 1k a month in rent. While you can find a relative and 10 of your brothers to take up a 2 room apartment space... Yeah "Smart"... Regular genius there...
The British must be kicking themselves in groins after building so many Universities there with a culture that didn't have any to begin with...
(blupid bloropope)
Farming is a labor intensive activity. Seventy percent of Indian population lives in rural areas and depends on farming and related activities for livelihood. Remember by 70% of India's population we are talking about 700 million people. The obvious things that India can export to west (in return for PCs/McDonald/Coke as imports) are agricultural items. So when you say that - forget farm subsides - it means that we will support our industry but you cannot do yours. The east had to put-up tariff barriers to protect their many nascent industries just like the West protects its farm products. Hence, the tarrifs which are the evil "trade-barriers" for West are just the measures that West applies to its vulnerable industries. US Steel tariff's are but one example; and the the Control of textitle imports from China. I think the whole "free-trade = freedom" is just hocus-pocus born out of mating Montesque's Horse with Adam Smith's donkey. Double standard of western trade policy can be clear if you take a look at the multi-fiber regime and over 100 disputes that US has lost in WTO against Eurpope and Asia.