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MIT Students Get an Education in Software Development
John Valenti writes "Philip Greenspun's Blog had an interesting entry for December 1: 'It turns out that most of the content editing and all of the programming work for OpenCourseware was done in India...'"
when Indian developers are even cheaper than grad students!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The interesting thing is that it's not that it was crap, but rather that it was done in India. Had they had some firm in the US do it, it wouldn't make the headlines...
There are equally good and equally bad firms all over the word that do development... India is no exception.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
I guess that it's hard for the school administrators to soak money off a project unless it's got a big budget. Perhaps a conversation to a close friend goes like this: "Yea, we're outsourcing the project to an Indian company which is paying me to consult"
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
...is right here.
Lots of familiar points are made - timezone differences impede voice communications, geography impedes physical communications, "fire and forget" projects are not very common, etc. Seems like it can be made to work, though, if folks on the project take the time to keep the communication lines open.
The Army reading list
Yeah, the first thing i did when i looked at this great effort of MIT was, where is the software!
So i poked arround and its on the faq (and i seem to remember i got email from them when i asked). They made it with a microsoft CMS piece of shit software and some other stuff.
The good part about it is that teachers just do their stuff in HTML and most of the infrastructure is basicaly static with some MSCMS stuff arround it.
I guess there are many good things about it, but tech infrastructure is not one of them.
NO SIG
However, this (in addition to a weakening dollar) will eventually lead to equilibrium and a return of jobs as manufacturing is able to afford more workers locally. Additionally, it's somewhat symbolic that India has worked on a project that will ultimately allow other disadvantaged countries to develop their own technology resources off of information, hopefully returning to the pool of public knowledge rather then proprietary.
And MIT students get a lesson in economics as well.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Here I was, unemployed, using all my contacts to try to get in on the programming for OpenCourseware, and they outsourced it to India while I struggled to pay the rent.
I think it's time for me to contact my state elected representatives and let them know how MIT is harming the local economy by sending work out of the country when there are top notch people unemployed here, and suggest that I'd be unhappy if the state were to give MIT any particular financial breaks or other incentives.
"MIT Graduates Can't Find Jobs to Pay Back Student Loans"
---anactofgod---
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
I appreciate the point you are making, but I don't think it was posted with ill intent. I think the point that is being made is that MIT should have a large pool of talented, cheap programmers to draw on. So why outsource?
Where abouts in India did you find these programmers?
Yours Truly,
Lumberg
Manager,
Intertech
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
because it looks like MIT chose a) the vendor and technology and b) the contractor to do with work with little investigation.
a) Speaks to their inability to even attempt to investigate various options WRT technology. Not encouraging from a place of learning.
b) Speaks to their inability to even attempt to use a neccessary IT project as something that could benefit their students and serve as a learning experience for the school and it's customers (the students).
I expect brainless, off-the-cuff, short-sighted decisions like this from PHB's, not from a center of learning.
Yeah, that sounds pretty consistent with most companies. Take a silly task, have a outside company take care of it, and it just so happens that they do everything in India. A friend of mine works for Sapient, and he says all he does is have conference calls with the other side of world! I guess if he got hired tho, the MIT grads have a good chance too!
Another interesting spin was what a fella Rahul was saying about the demon of capitalism. Those that can do it cheaper and better will always get the money. Whether it is trully better or not is up for debate, but for those that are in industry know that most of the time, it is in the very least a very viable option. The thing that i want to put up to the flame is what people think of the "capitalistic" approach to the forum posting. I have heard all kinds of politicians speak on this: encouraging companies to stay here, global diversity increases the welfare for everyone, and i was curious what kind of experience or sources people might have to support either idea.
Riiiiiight. That would explain why 90% of the world's steel production is overseas. Because weakening dollar prompted manufacturers to bring it back to the U.S. since we already had existing infrastructure.
That would also explain why it took actual Federal legislation to keep 50% of the semiconductor founderies in the U.S. when we started with 90% of them.
This isn't about hating Indians because they're a different culture. This is about watching high tech U.S. jobs vanish overseas to some $2 a day worker so some corporate boardroom bozo can buy his 5th Rolls. My question is this: When all the people in the U.S. are unemployed or under employed because all the formerly high paying - high tech jobs are overseas, who's going to buy the $50 widgits (that cost $1 to make overseas)?
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
This is not "some company outsourced a project to India." This is "MIT outsourced a project to India." MIT is different from "" both because of their presumed easy access to relatively inexpensive but highly technically-competent labor and because for many of the people in the core audience of Slashdot (geeks), MIT stands as something of the Shining City On the Hill. It's an overstatement to compare MIT->geeks to Mecca->Muslims, but there's definitely an element of reverence and respect we have for the institution and its students.
So having MIT decide to outsource a project like this to India (ignoring for the moment the Microsoft component) is significant and newsworthy to many of us.
I've been following this "outsourcing to India" thing for a while. I have come to several conclusions. The bigger picture here is NOT the fact that developers in North America are losing development contracts, this is just the continuation of a ball that is already rolling.... [read on for more drivel!]
Conclusion 1) US companies (among others, I'm canadian, it is no exception up here) are going to have to start doing a better job of giving customers and clients value for their budget. Call me a chump, I wanna make a ton of cash just as much as the next guy, but billing someone $100-$200 US/Hour and milking them for all they're worth is not (in my opinion) a good way to do business.
Conclusion 2) Lots of Indian guys are really smart. I hope this doesn't come as a surprise, but so are a lot of people from a lot of other ethnicities. I myself am white trash, but I know a lot of stupid canadian people too, as well as a ton of programmers in Canada who really otta be flipping burgers.
Conclusion 3) Corporations (in general) don't care about their employees, economics, or anything else, but rather, their bottom dollar. They don't care who they have to screw out of money, so long as it ends up in their own account.
Software development just seems to be the latest trend in an already downward spiral. It is the continuation of that which has already started as some slave child has made my Nike runners, and all the people that I try to talk to about why my phone bill is not being directly put onto my Visa bill have been fired in replacement of a computerizes lady who really can't tell me jack-all.
Perhaps unrelated, perhaps not. This is going to get worse, not beter, while capitalists run the world. What's going to be next? Perhaps more importantly, what can we do to change it?
java guy, tech blog...
The second I'm allowed to work in India under an equivelent H1-B program will be when I stop preaching about Free Markets. The fact of the matter is the free market to India is a one way street.
Which is training Americans to be software developers...
A bastion of American software development is acting in a way that furthers neither America nor software development. No further criticism or comment is needed. In the immortal words of Hunter S. Thompson, res ipsa loquitur.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
...
A PowerPoint slide contained the magic word "Delhi". It turns out that most of the content editing and all of the programming work for OpenCourseware was done in India"
If we pay exhorbitant license fees for second-rate crapware with first-rate marketing, we don't have any money left to pay American programmers. Or apparently, even to hire American grad students.
Closed source == money migrates to the vendors
Open Source == money can be used to pay programmers.
Which way do you want it?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Actually, you too missed the point.
The point was that the approach that MIT took would not have put food on the table of any CS grad in the US. So MIT is turning out these wonderful CS grads and then simultaneously demonstrating in a very visible, successful project that they have very little use for them - that they can rely on Gartner to tell them what software to buy and India to implement it.
What exactly are the prospects for the MIT grad when even MIT themselves employ this decision making process.
MIT students might have been able to do this more inexpensively/efficiently/quickly, but that wasn't really even considered. If the organization that has their best educational interests in mind doesn't consider them to be effective resources, how will they be received by an industry that doesn't give a damn about their best interests?
That must have been one hell of a depressing lecture to attend.
considerign that RMS is very close by and several OpenSource Content Managment system proejct leaders within 75 miles of MIT ..I find that it shard to believe that MIT did not even look in its own freaking backyard!
so how big was the MS payoff?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
that people all over the world can learn from it, not just MIT students. So it seems resonable to have it be in part developed by people from another location. Perhaps it is time to examine the government policies in states like California that have cause the cost of living to get out of hand and thus the need for unreasonable salaries for any worker. The US itself may need to look at radical reform of the tax code and radical limits of government spending to compete one day, but for today just a handful of states reforming themselves will turn the tide...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
is the fact that instead of using cheap grad student labor, they outsourced to India. I can only imagine how many talented grad students MIT has at their disposal.
Plus, I'd assume that most grad students (at least all the ones I know) would apreciate the flexability of open source software, thus saving even more money.
I am more shocked at the waste of money!
However, if you want to talk about India, the fact that a US univeristy outsourced it's code does not bode well for it's graduating student. CS jobs are getting harder and harder to find here in the US. Why? Well that would be because it's cheaper to outsource it to places like India. The only drawback is that you tend to get what you pay for.
The reason this is on slashdot is because slashdot has a large population of tech readers of whom this outsourcing effects.
MIT == McProgrammer
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
MIT undergraduates are notoriously flakey about completing any kind of project that is not class-related, since their course work takes up 200% of any free time they might have.
And having a class whose goal would be to complete this programming task would probably not be a good idea: classes at MIT usually concentrate on the fundamentals -- not the specifics of particular hairy development tools that will be here today and gone tomorrow.
As an economy (such as that of the US) grows, the quality of life and jobs of the population increases/improves.
The quality of jobs necessarily means the type of work that the population is willing to do. Jobs which were considered white-collar, and high quality slowly sink, and are no longer considered so as people get wealthier (I am talking about the entire population here--the average).
The country then looks to exporting those jobs, so that it's population can work on something better...maybe higher level jobs.
That is what happened to manufacturing...it was considered a menial process, and shipped out to China, while the higher quality jobs (management, etc) were retained in the US of A.
That is what is happening to software/IT now. I thought it was an interesting take on the issue, in which case, it is just one of the pitfalls in the process of economic evolution of the industry.
And yes, I am not an economist.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The university I attended hired me right after graduation, however I've heard our new management frowns upon that and would prefer that recent graduates go get a job elsewhere. Then after they have outside experience, it's ok for them to bring their new expertise back.
I've seen at least one case where a student employee was involved in training his replacement instead of just being hired on full time for the job after graduation.
They complain about outsourcing when OUR economy is slumping and computer programmers are bagging groceries... yeah, if you try hard enough, you can always relate something to problems with race...
Just like our school just got sued because they didn't hire a woman for the football coach... she said it was sexual discrimination, the school said that regardless of her qualifications, a team of testosterone pumped college guys would have an extremely hard time adjusting to a female coach. Add onto that that she had never coached football, and it seems pretty clear cut...
I'm sick and tired of EVERYBODY blaming racism and discrimination for why they aren't doing well in this world, when I'd choose to believe its because they spend too much time bitching
I'll buy 'em. Are they pretty widgets?
Do companies like Sapient give discounts when they're going to use programmers in India? Somehow, I doubt it.
The comments about Indian talent being cheaper would only apply here if MIT paid less than they would have had they used a company that employed American programmers. If they didn't get a discount, then Sapient simply improved their profit margin by using offshore programmers and MIT gained nothing from it, while indirectly hurting the US economy.
Not all students who attend MIT are Americans; many are from India.
Many Indians might think this outsourcing is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Some MIT graduates return to India to work for Sapient and Microsoft.
Sapient and Microsoft are global organizations. MIT is an American institution which educates global students and works with global corporations.
Phil Greenspun might be outraged (and then again he might not be, his blog doesn't lean either way). I am not.
Can you give me a reasonable explanation beyond "they've got dark skins"?
Sure! Because there were a lot fewer unemployed in the IT (and other) industry in the 80's and early 90's. And who has heard of any outsourcing to Russia or Israel? I haven't . . .
See, when we have plenty of work, we don't mind sharing some of it. On the other hand, when work is scarce, people get upset when it is sent out of the country without really good reasons.
How's that? Or would you just prefer to think everything is racially motivated? It is all the rage these days . . .
everything in moderation
Outsourcing is okay, people. It just drives up the quality of living in India, which will eventually drive up prices, which will eventually make it more cost-effective to do the work here.
So, we help other countries increase their standard of living with just a bit of headache on our side.
Anyway, the U.S. can't survive by being stagnant in technology. Our purpose is to innovate and create new technologies. Once something becomes standard and "script" it can be sent off to other countries with cheaper labor (Creating web pages is not innovative anymore, people!).
Because of this fact, as U.S. citizens, we have to be prepared to switch careers throughout our lifetime, depending on how new technologies are evolving. For instance, the movie, computer gaming and biotech industries here are light years ahead of most other countries and good places to find tech jobs. These things are on the cutting edge of technology and not something that can be easily exported to other countries (yet). Also, small businesses (established and entrepreneurial) also need local talent as they don't have the time or money to deal with managing offshore development. Another reason why small businesses and innovation are the lifebloods of our economy.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
I believe you meant to say "nationalist." I'm not saying that's any better or worse, but by using the word "racist" you are furthering the stereotype that India is some small town where everyone is the same race. India is one of the most diverse nations on Earth.
;)
We should be joining with our Indian brothers and sisters and pooling our bigoty against Microsoft.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
I think people forget in this whole argument how communities, neighborhoods, cities, and states are affected when jobs are moved overseas. There is a demoralizing effect that we've seen in this country for the last 30 years. American companies have an obligation to be socially conscious about their country and to keep jobs here. Its all the circle of life and by going overseas just to say to Wall Street that earnings are up 50% is criminal. The bottom line is killing us.
some years ago MIT needed an enterprise authentication system, and developed Kerberos. today would it read some reports, and implement MS passport?
If you play by the rules of capitalists and capitalism, the way to make it better is to make a corporation that makes good money with a good business model by not outsourcing and raping their customers; if you can do that, according to theory, there will be competitors who will spring up to steal your market and money by being more effective (at making money and satisfying customers), more efficient, or by offering a slightly better product/service/good.
If you frame the problem as capitalism as the problem, then your only solution is to endorse cooperation instead of competition for resources. Economics tells us there are limited resources, and capitalism is the common popular method in which those resources are allocated; you compete for them. The alternative is you share the resources willingly, but no one has figured out an efficient and effective way of doing it. Invariably people in power will manage to distribute the resources inequitably, in their favor... But even capitalism does that, with the side benefit that in the process, the person with the most power happens to do something good while simultaneously becoming the biggest target for other capitalists to take down!
GPL Deconstructed
I don't see what the big deal is. It would be foolish to get IT students to write business critical software, since they do not have the experience.
Let them graduate, and work under an experienced team lead, and then, IF they can make it cheaper than I can buy it, they can have the job.
Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use - Mark Twain
Of course the story does have merit if "India" eq "Bad", and if that's the racist slant the Slashdot is pushing on its front page then the editors should reconsider.
Why is being opposed to shipping jobs off to India automatically the equivilent of being racist? That's really an unfair way to attempt to color the debate about where this work should be done and by whom.
In fact it can be argued that shipping jobs overseas is *more* racist than keeping them here. By increasing the demand for IT work in the US, you draw more workers to the field, either from the pool of the unemployed or from other fields. Since more are likely to be drawn from other fields, you actually create openings for jobs, and these new openings could actually be filled by minorities and others who have a longer history of underemployment.
By shipping formerly high-paying jobs to India, you increase pressure on "good" jobs here in the US and decrease the opportunity for minorities here in the US.
I was actually hopeful in the late 90s that perhaps we were at the point where employment demand would reach a point where we could get the unemployment levels down for minorities to levels consistant with whites now. I guess not, I guess we care more about Indians than Americans of all colors.
What's happening in India is great, and I'm happy to see such a poor country starting to pick itself up. However, I'm amazed that American companies are getting in line to setup shop there. Sure, the savings is a huge incentive, but at the same time you are allowing them to soak up all your IP, all your American business methods, essentially training them how to run a successful company.
That's great until the day that Indians realize that there's nothing stopping them from setting up their own companies to compete direct against the American ones. I'm actually surprised it hasn't started happening already.
Reminds me of that old saying "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for life." That system works great -- unless you too are a fisherman.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
The only thing I can say is that humans migrated for years and years either following their food or finding another. Your food is moving, either follow it, or find another. Pick up a language (read: not computer language) and move to another country. You'd be surprised what value a native english programmer has in another country. No you won't make the same amount of money as in the US, based on currency exchanges, but you'll never wonder where your next meal is going to come from and you'll probably even be happy. If you really mess it up, you may even pick up some culture because we are not all that is to be in the world. Those of you that don't want to move, you are doomed to an inevitable fate. Start taking those management courses because your job is on its way out the door. If you want to code for a living you'll do what it takes to do so but whining about it will get you nothing.
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
If it really is a static content system with a very basic CMS framework....
Where did $11 million go to?
That's a $400 project you just described... assuming students would voulenteer to help set it up (which they would and probably do it well)
Sad example of spending money "because we have it" if you ask me.
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
well, that's pretty silly. the h1-b program is designed to fulfill a shortfall of jobs in the US. which is why from a quota of several hundred thousand annually, during the boom years, it has been cut back all the way to 60,000 or so today. not to mention that coming INTO the US has become a major pain with all sorts of biometric tracking and other scary 1984-style gimmickery.
there is no such shortfall of programming talent in the sub continent, so why would they have an h1-b visa program? there are the more usual ways of immigrating to india (just as for most other countries, including the US). the H1-B was not designed as a pro-india thing, but rather, a "increase the supply of skilled labourers to keep salaries down in the US" thing.
anyway, if you are willing to move to india and live on a regular salary, you don't need an h1-b equivalent program. just find a job and get your employer to write a business visa sponsorship letter to the indian (or pakistani, or other embassy of your choice) and you will be allowed to stay there for a finite amount of time, linked with your job. that is exactly the same as h1-b. and you wont be fingerprinted on your way in, like many h1-b workers are, in the US.
have you tried migrating to the subcontinent or was this more of a rhetorical point? people from other countries who really really want to, move to the US illegally. so if you are really that much in need of a job in india, that's one option that's open to you, besides all the legal visa routes. and your odds of never getting caught are pretty much 100%. nothing against the indian immigration service, but frankly, they really don't care much about catching you. for now, americans moving to india looking for employment is not that big a trend (kind of like the irish moving to the US in the early years). you can expect more "attention" and orwellian schemes to track you as an "alien" in India when more americans start moving there.
good luck!
p.s> i am not from india, but i am told that people in the south of the country are more pleasant, better educated and less "aggressive". you may want to consider hyderabad, rather than delhi, for instance.
Heh, the University I attended wouldn't hire any of their graduates either ... but it shows the faith the Uni had in its own undergrads.
Perhaps they had faith in their undergrads, but were trying to prevent a university monoculture from forming. A lot of times Universities prefer people from the "outside world" simply because a more diverse work environment is often a more dynamic work environment.
It may work out that people of the same education, from the same University can get the job done, but they might also overlook alternate/better methodologies.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
You never see a company outsourcing its senior management functions to save money. I wonder how much a company like Disney would save if it laid off Eisner and gave his job to an MBA in India.
why dont we hear bout all the far-eastern electronics and hardware that come into this country?
wasn't buying a japanese car sometime in the 60's and 70's also frowned upon? maybe it is not explicitly said that it is, but just by reporting it, you knowwww what is implied by the speaker.
maybe everytime someone buys a sony discman or a toshiba laptop, we should write it in our blogs, and raise our eyebrows and smirk a bit.
Forget outsourcing - I'm more surprised that MIT actually had to look and spend outside its own doors for setting up a CMS. any decent grad student woulda done it - not really a big deal. Ironic that a programming job for the EE/CE/CS department had to be given to an outside firm.
Being a student, who's always lookin for jobs related in my field to put in my resume, I would be pissed to learn my department spends money on any firm while I apply for a loan, and look around for a job.
NCompass was bought by Microsoft awhile ago. In fact, NCompass Resolution is basically Microsoft Content Mangement System.
Go to ncompass.com yourself...
That's even though Microsoft has been trying to get into MIT.
actually, U.S. corporations are starting to have second thoughts about all the outsourced jobs:
1. Much greater overhead to manage an oversees project, such that the savings is really 2. Huge assumed risks - confidentiality of data, true abilities and qualifications of remote people questionable, political instability & nearness & greater accessibility by terrorists in region, lack of legal venue when things go wrong
3. faking of true status/costs/issues of projects by those who strongly reccommended outsourcing, to save face
4. Communication problems, lack of cultural context & "common sense [by whatever definition]" knowledge
...that they would outsource my job to someone that wouldn't be reading slashdot right now and would actually be working.
Darn! Gotta go, the boss is walking this way!
... I have a couple observations:
#1. Odds are the reason that the development work got outsourced was simple comparative advantage. I'd rather have an undergrad or grad student working on something original and interesting rather than grunt level coding. As many people have noted, low-level jobs are being outsourced rather rapidly. I consider it a very GOOD thing the MIT isn't wasting its student's time with what would appear to be a dead end skill set.
#2. If you want to bitch about MIT and ties to Microsoft there are much better areas to criticize. For example, the business school is a lock-down Microsoft shop. If you don't have a Microsoft OS, you can't get a digital certificate. If you can't get a digital certificate, you can't get access to anything from your home PC. I've heard a wide number of speculations about why this is so [the rest of the University has a much more liberal policies]. I've heard lots of talk that Sloan needs to maintain its own IT department to roll out like 802.11b quicker than the rest of the University. Of course those who like conspiracy theories do note that the Dean made a fair amount of money as a hired witness for MS during the anti-trust trials.
Having spent nearly 10 years working on my Comp Sci degree (while working at a 8-5 job, house, etc) I've realized something.
Universities are a bit like ancient japan.
All departments are like little islands in a sea. Each has a ruler that does their own thing with no consideration to the other islands.
Firstly, nobody talks to anybody. If a process can be duplicated and screwed up at the same time, it will be.
Secondly, All processes will be documented in such a way that people from other departments will have no idea how to interpret or use them.
Thirdly, when purchasing software licenses and/or hardware, instead of pooling all the resources to drive down costs, each department will just do their own thing.
So, it doesn't suprise me that MIT pissed all over their own shoes.
MIT's got students who put together a grant and bought 3000 CD's, then setup a system where students could listen to any of them over the cable network for free.
Somehow I don't think the courseware stuff would have been that over their head.
I took a class in management of software engineering projects and we had to build a web interface that would allow students to access their grades, add/drop for classes, give them billing information, etc. We managed to crank out that system in one 15 week semester. We all got A's and the system worked great for over 5 years and it cost them zero. Even the server it ran on was a retired desktop (350mhz pentium 2)
It didn't get retired until the university moved away from their aging db system.( Digital unix based collegate DB system)
Tragically, the expensive commerical system they replaced it is horrible and disliked by everybody.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
rest in peace, american software development.
long live global software development.
i can give you for a $1.00 what you pay someone else $10.00 for.
what would you do?
fighting globalization is like fighting the tides or the rising and setting of the sun, it is inevitable.
i see the regular stream of stories like this one here on slashdot and i see the fear and horror implicit in them.
yes, my friend, you will make less, you will be fired, it really, really is the end of the golden age of american software development- and that is good! for now it is a global thing, you will sacrifice so that the world may benefit. only if you are stridently inward and protectionist and reactionary do you not see how this is a good thing overall.
you can't do anything about it, nor should you try: don't waste your energy fighting inevitable change.
"God give me the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed;
Give me courage to change things which must be changed;
And the wisdom to distinguish one from the other. "
so what would you do if you weren't working in software?
ask yourself that seriously now, american software developer.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It sounds like they just went with what Gartner spoonfed them. If I ran MIT's IT department I would sack the planning department and hire a work study student to make decisions by reading gartner reports. Instant $2 million savings...
Derek
Don't Panic...
Please note that I am not inferring that students feel that way, but rather that management may have considered this possibility in their decision making.
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that ones work is terribly important." -BRussell
One of the things that we try to teach in the class (textbook is online at http://philip.greenspun.com/internet-application-w orkbook/ if you're curious to see what the students suffer through) is that being a good code monkey/CS nerd isn't sufficient to function well as an engineer. We try to give the students some experience with taking vague client specs and turning them into precise requirements, with presenting their work clearly, with constructively criticizing others' work in meetings, with conducting and learning from user testing, etc. The rationale for this is laid out in http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/one-term-web
So it was actually very gratifying that our guest speakers came in and demonstrated that state-of-the-art American IT development projects no longer involve plain-old-programmers in America. Our students need to learn this early so that they can plan their careers and further education accordingly.
You can blame India for all this, but have you ever thought why the CEO gets multi million dollars in "incentives" to make decisions to fatten the corporate greed? In times of belt tightning, why dont they cut the CEOs benefits instead of laying off hundreds of others that dosent even add up to the cost of the CEO. All this blame should be directed at the corporate greed, and we should really question if paying millions of $ for a CEO is woth it in the first place... fter all, they only play golf and go suck ass with other CEOs that try keep the bisness running in the "old boys club." This is as a good time as any to really question the compensation of CEOs and the value they add to a company.
The outsourcing always seemed pretty simple to me. In the US market there wasn't that much real differentiation between code monkeys and software engineers. Basic programming isn't that hard, yet in the US market people demanded a fair amount of money for it. Then along came India. They have a lot of very competent basic programmers who are willing to work for a rate that's quite resonable given the fairly low/basic level of work they're doing, so naturally all those overcharging US code monkeys suddenly find their jobs being outsourced.
The catch is that outsourcing became fairly trendy, and the whole thing is still in flux. That is to say, management still doesn't really understand the difference between code monkeys and engineers. That means engineering jobs are getting shipped to code monekys at present. That's somewhat problematic, but it won't last, because the results won't stack up - eventually (this is management we're talking about, so it'll take a few years) this will dawn on the management and things will swing back closer to balance.
The fact remains that this outsourcing began because there are a lot of US code monkeys charging far too much for their shoddy work - just think of all those VBA "I'll make you a frontend app for your database for $10,000" 'hackers', and their ilk.
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It's hard to imagine that happening. There are things worth doing, and there are lots of Americans, so somebody will pay them something to do those things. People are still the best, most valuable, resource. Unless they're idiots sitting stupefied in front of TVs.
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Cost of living in India is vastly lower than it is in the U.S. There is no possible way that I can compete with an Indian programmer on the basis of pay, unless I emigrate.
Being forced to compete with others on a completely unequal scale is a downside. That's why the U.S. is being threatened with sanctions over its steel tariffs. It makes it really hard for foreign nations to compete. Ya dig?
That's the fundamental problem. We have an unequal playing field, and in an environment where cost is valued over all else it isn't a competition, it's a blowout.
I really, really hope that globalization can help India and other countries boost their economies and develop themselves into the "1st World" nations they can be*. I just wonder what damage it will do to our economy in the meantime.
* Since outsourcing is only one half of the coin, the other half being U.S. companies sucking money out of developing nations, I don't think this is certain at all.
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In MIT's words: For the "proof of concept" pilot...the Web pages of the MIT OCW site were built by..."brute-force HTML." Utilizing Web content editors such as DreamWeaver, a team of programmers from MIT and Sapient...designed and built the first 32 subjects. However, that model was not scalable for 500 courses, so MIT OCW has implemented a Content Management System (CMS) in order to achieve MIT OCW's long-term publishing goals. The CMS we have been using since the beginning of 2003 is a customized implementation of Microsoft Content Management System 2002...there wasn't a viable open source solution...Microsoft made a serious commitment to the MIT OCW project...The hope is that utilization of open-source model CMS products could lead to less expensive implementations...
The people who hired Sapient were without a clue. Instead of consulting their own faculty or students, the idiots read a Gatner report and bought Microsoft snake oil. It was a typical big dog decision, breathtakingly ignorant and a hopless waste. The whole thing will have to be redone in two years when M$ decides to move the upgrade train along and another $2,000,000 will go to the big dogs while $10,000,000 is shoved into a company that will doll out a few hundred thousand bucks in India where slaves will bang out Microsoft shit. The platorm and contractor were chosen based on a single report that said this was the "easy" way to go. There was no real study, no real consideration of quality or cost.
Our unemployed friend and the people who made the $12,000,000 grant are right to expect more. The project is a great idea, it deserves to be implemented well.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'm not even American and I shudder with rage reading this bullshit. So basically what he is saying that he and his crew were simply too fucking lazy and stupid to do anything else than use Microsoft's software because Gartner, which is known to be the biggest bunch of brainless thieving fucks in the so called consulting industry, said to do so, and then to go and outsource the whole fucking thing to save the extra money that was spent on buying Microsoft software.
Con-fucken-gratulations
But the best and most violently disgusting bit is when he says that this state of the art course at MIt is basically telling those MIT CS students who pay around $29k a year, that they will have no fuckin jobs when they leave.
This must give the word "student" a whole new meaning: Future MacJob applicant!
If it was me I would organise a lynch mob on campus for pricks like this. Then I would leave school at take a course on plumbing.
The answer is easy.
supply and demand. Anyway can flip burgers so McDonalds pay less. However not everyone can be a programmer or I should say a good programmer so wages were up in the 90's.
Microsoft is clever at this when they oversupplied the market with Office and then IE to bring its value down.
After competitors went under they brought the price back up. Wallmart does this illegally as well when they move into a new area to compete agaisnt local small and mom pop shops.
What happened was the H1B1 boom upped the supply and brought down demand. Then corporate america threw in Indians, Russians, and Chinesse to super oversaturate the market!
Now as an IT worker you are competing with so many people, that the specialized skill becomes generic and so does the salary just like the kids who apply at McDonalds. Loads and loads of developers for each position. So why should you pay more?
My answer to this is simple and goes agaisnt the current policies of free trade. CUT SUPPLY.
Put in tarrifs that make Indians almost as much as Americans. After this you will now be able to pitch to a boss easier with less applicants competition which in return raises the salary.
I think this may happen only when CEO's aka campaign contributers begin to look as expensive commidities. After all Indians have MBA's as well as CS degree's right? They only lack experience. As soon as management gets outsourced then cheaper CEO's will be born and bite the greedy bastards in the ass.
Of course that is a few decades away but I think it will ultimately happen unless things change in the current business climate.
Last, what is to not stop American businesses from totally moving to India? Think about? You would make many times over your current salary as a CEO in billions from shareholders!
If that happens you can bet their competitors will do the same to remain in business. Then you will have no jobs left here and tarrifs and protectionism will return.
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Just that, this is not what's happening with regards to software outsourcing to India.
Remember, most of the software/call-center outsourcing is actually handled by Indian companies; American companies (such as Accenture, IBM Global Services etc) have setup shop in India only recently. That is to say, Indian companies have already reached world standards (or have tried to) in order to compete with international (outsourcing) companies. A fine distinction, but crucial, especially given the rise of China as an IT (as opposed to manufacturing/FDI) challenger; it would mean Indian companies have the skills and resources to compete on their own terms.
That said, you're right; there is a lot of technology leverage in other growth spheres as well. Low cost drug research, for instance, is one market that's looking exceedingly big if you are an Indian policy analyst, and for sure, it will infuse "true" R&D skills into India's generic drugs industry. But for outsourcing per se, I don't think there's any technology leverage here.
More than mere navel gazing.