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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?"
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.
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.
> 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.
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'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
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)
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.
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 $500k. That's equivalent to half the population of Rhode Island and would yield 50k people in California--a state home to 27 million. These are the people who are making judgements about offshore outsourcing. I hardly think the opinions of 0.44% of the population represents 'the American Way.' Does it wholly escape people how close, yet how few, 'the superrich' are? Their lives and their interests are by definition NOT 'the American Way' any more than any other group of 0.44% can catagorically represent an entire population unless 'the American Way' is some begging Dickensian euphemism for willingly being walked on and thrown out with the trash.
1998
Q: What did the high school grad say to the Computer Science Major?
A: Would you like fries with that?
2003
Q: What did the high school grad say to the Computer Science Major?
A: You're supposed to ask them if they want fries with that!
[Insert pithy quote here]
sag peneer (North India)
I am an Israeli. and have been working in the local Hi-tech industry for the last 10.5 years. when I started working here in 1993, a common monthly wage for an senior software engineer was around 2000$. 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.
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.