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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 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
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 Yet in every article having to do with file sharing, the overwhelming sentiment is: their business model is obsolete, we don't owe them a living, deal with it.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?
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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.
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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
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.