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Outsourcing Winners and Losers
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times has an article on the winners and losers of the outsourcing trend. It's a Q and A session with a distinguished panel of experts on the topic, including Professor M. Eric Johnson, who says that, 'Low-skill jobs like coding are moving offshore and what's left in their place are more advanced project management jobs.' Now I know coders aren't rocket scientists, but less advanced than project managers? Ouch."
Those that do... do...
Those that can't... teach?
Who is he calling low-level?
Davak
Half the talent from universities is terrible anyway, no wonder coding is being shot off shore.
I have programmed. I am VERY bad at it. Sure I CAN code but I can't do it well. To find a quality programmer is not easy - I've tried. I wonder if this is why most software sucks ... because people think ANYBODY can do it.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
We had a company meeting about outsourcing last week and I managed to get minutes ahead of time.
I quickly formed a new company and aged it.
Ahh you all should be so lucky to read as much Dilbert as me.
I have plenty of them in-house already.
New York Times reporters have been outsourced by 100 chimps with 100 laptops.
but less advanced than project managers? Ouch.
Truth hurts huh!
I strongly feel that programming is a creative process, and anyone that describes it as a low-end job, does noet knows what programming is. It's like out-sourcing art-painters to an other country and letting the important managers of the painting-creating process say inside, to send e-mails like: "Don't forget to use a lot of blue in the right corner, art-buyers like red."
-- (:> jms cs.vu.nl (_) --"---
who, since the coder jobs are overseas, probably don't know how to code themselves. Furthermore, because the developers are now overseas, the project managers have to coordinate with the language, distance, and cultrual gap, despite probably not knowing how to program. It's no wonder software development has become ridiculous. By the way, project manager with programming experience for hire right here.
Plus I have a fine art degree... try finding that overseas!
stuff |
My hospital uses Russian programmers. The entire job of OUR coders is to learn and debug the Russian code...
Talking to them it seems that the majority of their time is really spent rewriting the code in a more readable, more secure format. However, they don't have the time or manpower to do it all.
Therefore, more bugs get in the final product...
What an odd system... especially in a hospital were errors can mean lives.
davak
Outsourcing managers is a big no-no. Suddenly, the company is not American anymore.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
From his webpage: "Current research topics = Impact of information on supply chain integration; web-centric product design collaboration; managing logistics for products with short life cycles"
Sounds like an ideal CEO of a FSCKed company. Wanker.
I don't know about project managers being more advanced than coders, but I am sure architects are more advanced than coders. SO, if the project manager is an architect, yes he is more advanced than the coder.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
Most software doesn't suck. Most users, however...
Low skill coders write programs that work sometimes, are more or less good enough, and fail in surprising unpredictable ways.
High skill coders write the code that governs thrust vectoring on the F-22, radar imaging for various systems, and things the either never fail, or fail so elegantly and even beautifully that calling the events failures seems a gross misnomer.
Guess which ones work where? Unfortunately, beautiful butterflies often emerge from nasty or even poisonous catipillers. No catipillers no butterflies.
When the article mentions "low-skill" jobs, they're talking about the kinds of people that simply write code -- and can't do much else. This may come as a surprise to many of you but project management is the glue that holds together many of these distributed projects. These are the people that companies which outsource need. They don't need coders. They can't get them from India or Pakistan or China. What they need are people to pull the sh*t together.
Ever called american express's card line if your an aussie customer? you get to know exactly what outsourcing so called low level work means to you the CUSTOMER.... If that experience was anything to go buy, i sudder to think what it would be like getting something as complex as a major IT project completed would be like, just getting them to take my name correctly was a task!
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/business/yourmon ey/07out.html?ex=1071378000&en=9b0b3f301239bb62&ei =5062&partner=GOOGLE
Slashdot Editors: Is it so fucking hard to get a Google partner link? What do you guys do all day?
While not all coders are rocket scientists, I think the ones who use Assembly everyday are the ones that have six brains. I can barely understand all this converting binary to this, hex to that, etc...
advance is proportional to hierarchical level. be ready to have homeland company with just ceo, and everybody else outsourced abroad.
The whole interview is a way to blow smoke up the ass of the managerial class that is shipping these jobs offshore, by somehow letting them think that it really is a matter of merit that their job is intact.
It's about legitimation: "my" skill is a high-level, professional skill, and I "deserve" my salary because of it (because the companies are run by people I went to college with, etc.) "Your" skills are replaceable and commodifiable, because I dress more like the people who run the mutual funds that own the company.
The cultural perception element of this sort of thing is difficult to quantify in economic terms, so economists - especially ones busy telling the managerial crowd exactly what they want to hear - tend to ignore it. But it's a reality.
Not that I'm a protectionist for these sorts of jobs, mind you - at the end of the day, I think that the creation of middle-class professionals in the developing world is a good thing. But I can still recognize self-serving disingenuous rhetoric when I see it.
Interesting article, but... The missing point is that a lot of companies see outsourcing (especially overseas) as a solution but a lot of firms end up dumping projects or spending a lot of cash cleaning up mistakes and errors. I have a couple of close friends that are mid-level coders and project managers in for big-name retail firms that are constantly complaining that their jobs have been reduced to recoding poorly coded outsource projects. THE QUESTION IS: Can you really export intellectual work?
Some may think this is the best way to do things at their company, but it's essentially turning their coding process into a factory job.
Look at it this way: would you rather have the wristwatch that is hand crafted to perfection, works better, and will last forever, or would you rather buy the watch that came off of the assembly line, always loses time, and will break on you in a year or two?
By leaving the coding process to people outside of the company and its interests, and thereby making the whole process more mechanical than creative, they are essentially assuring themselves the lowest-quality product. It's unfortunate if they think that's the best way to go, but in my opinion they will eventually get what they paid for, so to speak.
Am I the only one who read the Headline (this is Slashdot, after all) and wondered why?
If you've identified the losers, why would you then go on to outsource them? Why not just fire them and be done with it?
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
...that we've seen over and over. More interesting is the mistaken impression that it's only coding jobs going to India. Look at Business Week for another take.
A little more sophisticated version is: It's being pocketed by companies in the form of profits. One step further and you say those profits are either going to go as returns to the investors in those companies, or they're going to go into new investment by those companies. Those savings enable me, if I am an investor, to consume more and therefore contribute to job recreation, and if I am a company, to re-invest and create jobs.
But what happens when people stop purchasing goods and services from companys who outsource?
Eventually (pretty soon it seems) people are going to stand up and revolt against companies who lay off thousands and move operations where they can pay workers $18000 for doing what a worker here would demand $30000.
A simple "Hey, just play along and eventually, if we make alot of money, we'll give you your job back" doesn't cut it.
In the future there are two roads. One is to look backward and hang on to what we think we're entitled to. The other is to recognize what has made America. Our virtues lie in a flexible and open, technology friendly, risk-taking, entrepreneurial, market-driven system. This is exactly the same type of challenge farmers went through in the late 1800's, sweatshop workers went through in the early 1900's, and manufacturing workers did in the first half of the 80's. We've got to focus on setting in motion a debate that pushes us into new sources of job creation rather than bemoaning the loss. There are Republicans and Democrats alike who are involved in this protectionist backlash. They're very vocal right now, and they need to be challenged.
Bioinformatics, wireless technologies, AI, robotics, there are so many fields which are budding. So many opportunites. Why do we have to look back at the financial software jobs that went away? We have much more interesting projects to be done.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
You (the American software industry) gave away the tools to the Third World for free. Now, you wonder why outsourcing is starting to happen and jobs are starting to disappear. Frankly, you deserve what you get.
I can't believe theyre saying coding is low-skill.. its not like just anyone can code.. ive been in and around computers for 12 years and although I'm an absoloute hardware freak I still find programming rather difficult (I guess part of that is because i just can't remember alot of it and I have problems with some math, if anyone has any suggestions that would be nice ^_^) saying that ok yeah maybe it is something that can be more easily outsourced but it is definitely not easy..
'Low-skill jobs like coding are moving offshore and what's left in their place are more advanced project management jobs.'
These statements naturally assume that Norht American and European coders are smarter, but for those coming out of college now, this is not the case.
Example, I remember at one CS program, the OS class was 9 weeks of learning how to _use_ Microsoft Windows.
Poor souls...
-B
I can only assume that by fp the poster means functional programming.
Offtopic, you may cry!
I would argue that it is not.
As long as the business world continues to hold the position that coding is a low skill job: 'Low-skill jobs like coding...' software will continue to suck (be unusable, buggy, insecure, incorrect). Now I don't argue that american software developers are any more qualified to write good software, in fact, I would argue that in the most important aspect [Mathematics education] they are some of the most under qualified. This is just to say that the business world seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what goes into writing good (correct) software and doesn't particularly care to put forth the time and effort to do so.
--Isaac
(It's slashdot, afterall - I wouldn't want to be thrown out for actually _reading_ the article).
All of the participants come from a business administration perspective. It's not really a wonder they think moving elements around in a gantt chart is "higher level work" than writing lines of code.
It would be a much easier world for the Business Administration guys if software development actually _was_ a low skill job. If it can be specified well enough to be automated by human drones, it will be automated by machines - and then we'll need a higher skilled developer to supervise these machines.
They should discuss outsourcing management - it's the next logical step.
Means customers have to buy new ones continuously.
Profit, profit, profit.
Programmers take a logical series of instructions and then type the correct order and software comes out and most of the time works well.
Project managers take a logical series of instructions and then managed to screw the order up so beyond beliefand have to wait for other people to sort it out. As such everyone has to work harder
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
There is an assumption by protectionists that these jobs are going somewhere else, and all this money has been pocketed by C.E.O.'s who take it home. A little more sophisticated version is: It's being pocketed by companies in the form of profits. One step further and you say those profits are either going to go as returns to the investors in those companies,
A even more sophisticated version is: the vast majority of those increased profits is being pocketed by the upper 5% income bracket.
or they're going to go into new investment by those companies.
Or maybe going to increased CEO salary, or more advertising and spin.....
Those savings enable me, if I am an investor, to consume more and therefore contribute to job recreation, Or maybe job creation in India?
and if I am a company, to re-invest and create jobs. That's important because I agree that we are migrating jobs away, some of which will never return, nor should they. Nor should we continue to subsidize these multinationals with corporate welfare, tax breaks, or military protection..... Also....
It's a race to the bottom if we spend all our energy trying to protect existing sources of job creation, as the politicians in the U.S. Congress are inclined to do. The problem is that globalization is growing asymmetrically, so initially it creates more supply than demand. We're living through that asymmetry right now, and that has caused a potentially dangerous political backlash. The Chinese, for example, are reluctant to transform their habits from savers to consumers because they're losing jobs through the reform of their own economy, and they don't have social security or retirement. Over time there is a rising tide. But the political process is not that patient.
Translation: "Just trust us CEO/globalists/investors, and everything will be fine....
Dennis Kucinich, the Open Source Presidental C
As a coder turned project manager I fell that my current position is harder then my old coding job. The demands are higher the blame falls entirely on me and the worst part of all, I have to deal directly with the customers. As a coder I could work on things in small pieces and just meet the requirments, as the manager/designer I have to know how those pieces will go together and recognize the obstacles before hand. Really for the little extra pay I get for the new job I'd go back to being a coder if it wasn't for the lack of job security.
I know I could outsource my coders, but that's mostly due to the design being complete enough that anyone can just sit back and code up exactly to spec. It's not hard to code when given "you need a box that takes in X out puts Y and here's how you convert X to Y". I would guess that you couldn't outsource a design of " We need something that does Z. I suppose my job could be outsourced but I already find dealing with the customers over the phone in the specification gathering stage quite difficult. I happen to know their markets quite well and that tends to be how I get through. If I didn't understand the market then I'd be screwed. So yeah someone that knows the market including all of the little local issues(taxes, strange holidays, legal issues...) could do my job from just about anywhere in the world, It's over the phone anyways. Someone that doesn't know of the little things couldn't do it.
When I looked into outsourcing our coding I decided not to.
Reasons include
- my programmers are already paid slightly below national average and the cost savings wouldn't be huge.
- My programmers are proven known pieces in the puzzle. I know which guy does what best and I can pretty accurately estimate delivery schedules based on that.
- I like working with my guys, they help out a lot when I do design or come up with ideas on things we may want to try.
- shipping jobs away from here doesn't help me or anyone else enough to be worth pissing the locals off.
- If I screw over my workers by shipping their jobs away, who will be their to back me when the owner decides someone else can do mine.
Great. Another group of pinheads whose livelihoods are unaffected by the changes telling us about the wonderful advantages of outsourcing. Anyone who disagrees is a "protectionist" which just a substitute for the not-so-PC term "commie". And, they fail to mention that most of the countries that the jobs are outsourced to have a very strong "protectionist" bent.
If they are going to have a round table discussion of this issue, they should at least have representation from someone who is affected by the outsourcing rather than just a handful of ivory tower elitist phonies.
I think what they were trying to say is one-dimensional coders are fast becoming dinosaurs. These days in the corporate world, programmers have to demonstrate added-valued.
They can't just sit in their cubes and complete isolated tasks that no one outside of their direct managers know about. The solution providers that get noticed by the people who make the decisions to outsource are the ones who understand that technology in and of itself isn't a reason to keep someone employed, not when that same technology can be mastered by someone at 1/10th the cost.
What is needed (and is sorely lacking) are people who can connect the pieces, be it technology or corporate understanding and provide global solutions, particularly in situations where the questions aren't even known yet.
Where I work, many of the programmers if not checked on every 30 minutes just sit around and waste valuable time. They don't try to learn about the business. They don't try to integrate their current knowledge with future technologies. They don't try to position themselves for the changing corporate environment. And then they get shocked when they get laid off or rumors of outsourcing prop up.
I don't particularly like Microft technology but most of our products are built on top of it and can be extended by things like VBA/VBS. I'm trying to learn it so that I can give the upper management the things that they want. To that end, I've bought books, gone to Kinkos to blow up object models, etc. On more than one occassion I've been asked why I'm doing such things by the other programmers. I try to explain it to them but they just act like I'm stupid.
Maybe I am, but I think I'm being pragmatic.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Do we know what definition of "coding" Mr. Johnson was using? Maybe he doesn't realize what programming is, and was equating it with data entry, which is also called coding (you look at what people filled out on the survey and then enter it into the computer, e.g. reducing free-form answers to multiple choice).
you should submit this as a kuro5hin story. It might make front page.
...of people who assume they can manage any situation/group of people because they have a business degree.....how can you manage something without understanding even the basics of what it is you are supposed to manage? I've met way too many people with business degrees who assume they are always going to be my boss because that's what they've been told by dumbasses like Dr. Johnsohn here....like I would trust someone without an engineering background to produce a "Design of an Automated Shop Floor Material Handling System with Inventory Considerations".....and people wonder where this six sigma and lean manufacturing crap comes from - how about just calling it common sense, instead of wasting millions of dollars on bullshit training sessions?
'Low-skill jobs like coding are moving offshore and what's left in their place are more advanced project management jobs.'
So North American's are the only ones with any skills? The coding jobs aren't low skill, they're pure skill, which is precisely the reason they're being outsourced. They don't require presonal connections, expensive hardware (relative to other professions), locality, even communication is significantly less than in many other professions. The reason that in the past low skill = offshore, is because high skill = expensive equipment, which is easier to produce and maintain in western nations. But now the skills in IT jobs are much closer to theory than labour and they don't require a lot of expensive hardwar. All they need is the skills, a computer, and the specs and they're set.
I stole this Sig
-If your software project is pushes the boundaries then programming is more difficult.
-If your project is underfunded, underspecified, and open to change, then managing it is more difficult.
Now, where on this spectrum do you believe most software development efforts fall?
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
coherent standards. I used to be quite a good programmer. Then I took a break for a few years. When I came back, Java had moved past version 1.0, Visual Basic had replaced BASIC, Object Oriented Programming was all the rage, and the old--style procedural programming methods I had learned were regarded as archaic crap. Javascript was cool, and I had never even hard of it.
Every year it seems somebody comes out with something new, usually Microsoft. In their efforts to dominate all markets, they have changed everything they could, and if you want to be "in" you have to do it their way. Other people refuse to change and so continue to code in the old styles. So now, with all these new things, I find myself left in the dust. All the methods of writing a good program I was taught have been thrown out. Not nearly enough emphasis is put on documentation anymore.
By now you're probably thinking I'm some kind of geezer or something...heh. I'm 22, and once again, Microsoft is at the root of all my problems. Well, them and the W3C. And Sun. Bastards!! All of them! Now if you'll excuse me, I have some catching up to do.
"I like you, but I wouldn't want to see you working with subatomic particles."
Sorry to break your dream. Not all work being outsourced is "low-level".
GE has a very large R&D center in India. Intel has one and there are countless others like Oracle,Nortel,SGI,Cisco, Ericsson,IBM. Isn't R&D *way* different from low level menial coding?.Are these low skill jobs in any sense?
Please don't project the employees of outsourced projects as sweatshop worker zombies doing repetitive tasks like making Nike shoes.
http://www.businessworldindia.com/archive/20100
http://archive.infoworld.com/articles/h
If we could outsource at the C-level there would be significantly more money available to companies to hire IT staff and skilled workers. C-Level = CEO, CFO, CIO, CPO, and of course C3P0.
:) Also, smarter companies that want to hold or gain market share my begin to realize that not outsourcing gives them a competitive advantage and keeps customers happy.
Outsourcing is an extremely short-sighted solution to increased quarterly profitability. It simply boils down to the fact that C level people and their cronies COST TOO MUCH and in order for them to keep receiving the same level of compensation (while keeping shareholders happy) they need to squeeze out every last bit of cash out of every other expense.
I plan to start a new company soon which deals with outsourcing, except you will pay large premiums for me to come in and fix the disaster created by the offshore developers. Mark may words boy, and mark them well, offshore outsourcing is going to be one of the biggest largescale disasters in the history of US business. However as I read the ever increasing reports of outsourcing disasters, I am beginning to realize that there is money to be made here!
Also, I wonder if C-Level types forget about the geopolitical instability of the world. Isn't the US at war right now? What if Pakistan decided to go cut all the fiber optic cable connecting India to the US? Oh the mess this is going to create. I laugh at the nearsighted fools!
This is the common mistake many big companies make. Offshoring IP development in the form of engineering is bad on so many levels - I have yet to see effective software engineering done by an Asian "offshore" outfit.
I believe this has something to do with Western Culture.
At any rate, the best success I've seen is to turn over detailed designs for offshore coders to implement, but even that can be of questionable quality, unless strict supervision is applied.
Do I seem cynical? I've seen some great IP development flushed down the drain in the rush to "cheap" Indian companies who've bait-and-switched personnel and taken 3-to-4 times the resources and ultimately, MORE MONEY to complete a project, and the results were very poor.
At any rate, there is a big difference between a software engineer and a programmer, and it's more than simply a case of following a software development process. Creativity has been a hallmark of American and European engineering, going back centuries - and it's an integral part of a successful program that develops IP.
What a bunch of crap.
I had a (guest) professor at university once, who was working for a outsourcing company. Obviously he was management material; he said he did not use computers outside office. Anyways, I had a good laugh when he said that coding skills would become of a thing of the past within a decade, everything would be done by automated tasks and tools, because he saw a trend in tool usage.
Well, we are now 10 years later, and I am still laughing. Some kind of uses can indeed be replaced by tools, but most applications are still made by man. I am currently using the java programming language a lot, and sometimes even that is too high up.
Anybody who says coding is easy is either doing a bad job at it, or does not program at all, like a fore mentioned said professor.
Management people have always sought to devalue programmers. It makes them uncomfortable to think that some of their subordinates can do things that they can't. The current situation is no doubt making those people very happy indeed. Because now a programmer is, it seems, just a low-value job - like telesales - that can be cheaply and easily farmed out to some third-world sweatshop. The manager is once again demonstrably superior to all his subordinates.
This professor is not really qualified to speak on what level coding is done.
In his mind a PHD doing cutting edge AI work is a low level coder.
In his mind only managers with MBA's are high level.
This professor has no real technical qualifications, and most likely has to call Tech Support after his system locks up.
In Short he is a good example of the problems in Tech Sector management issues.
Or to be blunt about it, he is part of the problem, and not the solution.
Tetalon
Is it just me or did this guy miss the point of the article?
The guy is an CIS type person. He almost certainly does not know what is really involved to write quality software. So from his POV, his job is safe while the tech jobs are going bye-bye. The reality is that all jobs shift and almost certainly as Tech jobs are off-shored, the managment jobs will go away as well. We will still have very high-end ppl here. Almost certainly, the standard will be high for those hired and hiring will occur throughout the world.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And half of those programmers graduating from a university aren't only below average, they're totally inexperienced too.
I don't know how many times I've come across newbies to multithreaded coding who can't figure out why their "cout" calls are all intermingled, or other knuckleheads trying to call "sleep()" in a signal handler.
Recent graduates also have very little experience in writing maintainable and robust code.
Remember a guy named Jayson Blair?
'nuff said...
Here's the big news for any project managers listening in: quality coding is HARD, writing buggy software is a low-level skill.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
A lot of IT jobs are the equivalent of the guy changing your oil at Grease Monkey. A lot of coding jobs are nothing more than providing a gui to a database. These jobs do not take a degree in Computer Science. Everybody that I know that found jobs after being laid off were very good engineers that remembered there calc/diff eq/linear alg/physics. The people that had no distinguishing characteristics and pretty much had boilerplate jobs are still searching.
ARE low level, and they should move to hell (im not even american, but its the same trend everywhere).
I mean, you dont need good level programming for 80% of the programming tasks of corporate enterprises (sap anyone?)
People that actually get to manage this kind of project should also move to their nearest cronic boredom self management help-group.
Now, if the 'interesting' projects are also moving there, its because 'there' has better educated IT professionals for a lesser price. I do think this is the case for some of this projects, and good riddance to them.
But other projects (granted, only 10% of the it workforce gets to work on this) simply cannot be done anywhere else than in the states. Your job is to struggle for those, or open your own shop.
Fuck corporations.
NO SIG
There will always be market for high-quality programmers.
Higher quality means higher prices, which means higher wages are acceptable.
It's basically a refinement of the market, not a disappearance.
I live in Sweden, which has some of the highest labor costs in Europe. Yet, Sweden has a strong steel industry, despite steel manufacturing being quite a 'low-tech' industry, with cutthroat international competition.
(Coming from Japan, and increasingly China)
How do they compete? Simple: They don't. Sweden switched its industry to high-quality and specialty steel production requireing more skill.
The USA really needs to move their steel industry in this direction, but instead they leveled tariffs on imported steel. (now dropped after trade-war threats)
(Also, note that swedish steel was exempt from these tariffs, for the reason that they don't compete with american steel manufacturers, who aren't in the specialty market)
So, for the software market, I think we'll see something similar. And a choice will have to be made whenether to face reality, at a cost of the lesser-skilled jobs, or give the industry artificial resuscitation through tariffs.
I'm sure this won't make me more popular around here, but 'geek's don't give enough respect to the ability to communicate with others. Project managers get this respect b/c they have both (some) technicaly knowledge, _and_ the ability to jive with others.
From the low-coder-on-the-totem-pole stand point, one only sees that limited technical knowledge getting the PM into more trouble, but it's the execs who make company decisions, and if you can give them a good presentation, with enough technical facts to sound RightTM, then you've got the job, and the promotion, etc.
The view of PMs being 'above' 'low-skilled' coders is due to coders having only the one skill. Differentiation is your friend. After studying both Aerospace Engineering and Business (Marketing and Operations), and also having many engineering friends (computer, industrial, mechanical), I have a suggestion for engeineering schools: Make 1-2 business courses mandatory for all engineers. Things like Business Communication, or (dare I say it) marketing. Having that insight into how business reaslly gets done would put any given engineering student head-and-shoulders above any other 'low level coder', just by being able to speak the language of business. It'd also give insight into why the best ideas don't always get the green light, and knowing how management makes decision will help the guy at the bottom of the food chain move up, by sweet-talking his superiors.
I know this seems a little shifty, but business is almost by definition shifty. If you don't play the game, you get tossed (or rather, your job gets tossed to someone overseas, who can't speak the language of business, nor English). I know it's hard for introverts to make strong moves, but knowing how the system works gives you an edge that will lessen any anxiety about sucking up to your PM to eventually move right past him on that ladder of success.
My (quickly typed, non-proofed) pennies,
-bZj
.sig
If you hire and pay on the assumption that coding is low-skill, you'll end up with crap programmers generating crap software. Projects will usually go over budget, rarely meet customer expectations, and generally have a miserable experience.
Hmmm, now that I think about it, that matches the behavior of many large companies. They hire chimpanzees, then are shocked when all they get is chimp crap out of them.
Aaaah, the free market and short sighted capitalism, leading the world to the lowest common denominator...
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Given your use of standard left-wing pap I'd bet you do.
So explain why you support handouts for folks with non-white skin in the USA, but are vehemently against allowing folks with non-white skin from Asia from even competing with you on a pretty level playing field for a job?
To be blunt and truthfull outsourcing has started to occur since the dawn of the Industrial revolution in late 1700s..
geeks and IT workers are not unique to experiencing outsourcing..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Shhh, don't tell anyone but most people could program if they wanted to. Most people can master any task if they had the time and inclination. People are like that. It's really cool.
The problem is, however, that many of these project managers who offshore their work never cared to begin with. The code they produced here sucked and the code they pull back from India, Russia or China might suck too. This IS why comercial software is of such low quality most of the time. That these companies decide to first cut the people who actually do the work is a good indicator of their priorities. They had people who knew what they were doing but fired them. The very least this would do is diminish the product quality while they trasitioned to new people. The worst it can do mostly happens if they never cared to start with which is to stay the same.
The closed source world compounds this quality problem. Because there is much less work sharing , everyone has to reinvent the wheel everytime. This is why comercial software, regardless of the care exercised, has trouble keeping up with new features and ways of doing things. Comercial software also wastes resources on advertising, marketing and other stupid stuff.
Free software, on the other hand, solves cost and quality problems. Anyone, with the time and inclination, can get things done with it. Where they need to fix things, everyone benefits. The codebase grows, work gets done and everyone who should be is a winner. The project manager is going to change or die.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I am a technical project leader and have paid my dues. I am so tired of this type of nonsense. If companies would cleanup their layers of management and beaurocracies we would not have to be farming our work overseas. I work for a very large corporation who constantly allow people with cool degrees and no vision attempt to lead the show. I see this in most every company. Managers/Directors should have a clue about technology and architectures. It is more than creating powerpoint slides and playing politics. There comes a time when you have to do the right thing and clean house. I am little tired managers/directors/VP's doing whatever it takes to protect their bonuses and careers at other peoples expense. Sometimes I wonder if we need a programmers union.
We see thousands of our jobs shifting to their country; but why are we still seeing these peoples getting here? That's human pollution man! they won't stop till everything is theirs.
Computer programming isn't a low-skill job, its just that the third-worlders, who get outsourced to, have no skills. All that ever comes from them is - cruft, more cruft, stupid statements like "John - my code doesn't seem to compile", stupid questions like "Whats a pointer?" or "How do I handle Signal 0" or the classic "Whats this BUS ERROR? WTF is alignment?"
And if you do help these imbeciles, that is you write their code yourself, you can be sure that they will slap their copyright on the file (and remove yours) and email EVERYONE about THEY DID THEIR JOB AND HOW SMART THEY ARE faster than you can say "Fuck!"
Of course, these imbeciles hate their job and the real reason why they write spaghetti code is so they can become managers. They all want to. Why? because being a managers means you don't have to know jack shit about whats really going on - at least in giant corporations that is the case.
Give a manager a buzz word and he will wear it like a badge. Give him enough and he will invest all his money into it... ever hear of the dot com era. Management was to blame for the collapse of that not coders. Managers make the decisions and spend the budgets not coders. If you want to see what coders are capable of without managers the just have a good long look at Linux!!!! (P.S I am a long time windows develoer but not I am beginning to wonder if I made the right choice)
To use an analogy, how many individuals have you known become team leaders or shop bosses in a manufacturing plant without actually at least working near or around a plant floor. I'm going to say not too many. Thus, this sort of thinking will end any sort of software project management as well.
I like this choice quote too We will require different services, medical devices, all kinds of things to support an aging population.
Of course, instead of actually producing things that will make our lives better and move us ahead in the world we can focuses all our energies on something that none of the world seems to want to pay for prescription drugs, life-saving procedures, and incredible medicial devices. The whole entire world looks to us to subsidize this stuff so they can get it on the cheap. I don't see a lot of Indians or Chinese companies coming out with these products, but I see whole lot knock-offs and piracy coming from them. We cannot export those products.
As much as I like to say free trade, free trade is only free when everybody plays by the rules. No one plays by the rules, we slap a tarriff on products, but other countries subsidize their industries because they worry about their own workers unrest (Steel comes to mind). I think their is a very large difference between the manufacturing movement of the 80s and now. In that time, you could go back to school (government subsidized) retrain for a new position and get another job. What happens when you have already gone to school, your now sitting on $50,000 worth of college debt, and somebody tells you sorry...you shouldn't have done that, but your more then qualified to take a $30,000 a year job. What happens when your paying $283 on month on a student loan which is 20% of your entire salary after taxes. I'm thinking you wouldn't be buying a whole lot of stuff. (Not me thankfully at the moment, that's why I am paying down my college debt as fast as possible.)
Used to be education could get you ahead, now you just have to live in another country and work for an obscenely low wage in comparison to the US.
enough said.
All i know is that if project managers went on strike for a week, they would come back to find the entire project had been completely redesigned from scratch, it would be amazingly efficient and well structured and it would work perfectly and within budget, whats more it would have 100 new useful features. If programmers went on strike for a week they would come back and find a list of 100 random, totally flawed and un-thought-out things to do on thier desks.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Augh! Don't give me this crap. I cannot believe that you're making some pointless distinction between "coder" and "programmer". Not to mention "engineer".
The fact is that there is a certain (small) percentage of people working in the software industry who are highly talented, and capable of understanding both high-level architecture and the low-level details of what they're working on at any given moment.
There are also some incompetent people - who should not have been hired in the first place. There are people who are capable of simple tasks, and those who are geniuses, capable of anything.
I'm already fed up of pompous pricks making an artificial difference between "engineer" and "programmer". Let's not tar "coder" with the same brush. I've been working in the software industry for many years, and consider myself a "coder", a "programmer", an "engineer" and even a "hacker". So what? The quality of the finished work is what counts. If we had less idiots saying "my role is an architect, not a coder" - or vice versa - then the software industry would be vastly improved.
The problem with that reasoning is that the good project managers once were code monkeys. It was while doing the grunt work that they developed the insight which led them to be good project managers. You know, inside understanding of modern technology and practices...
How much longer can we be a land of managers-only? And how good will our managers be if they never did the work in the trenches, because that stuff was outsourced? It seems to me that we can't avoid outsourcing management jobs if we are outsourcing the lower-level jobs.
Where was that?
A lack of resources overseas is a significant impediment. I know people who came to the US for CS graduate courses who's only experience to computers was one or two basic electronics courses. They were bright, they learned, but any US CS undergrad was MUCH better. Their degrees were full of holes and they represented the top 1% of their whole country. This condition won't last forever, but it's a significant fact right now.
This offshoring should be seen as a huge scandal. With comercial, closed source junk you never know what you are getting. Free software eliminates this problem and assures a good quality product. Good quality people here in the US are being shitcanned by greedy companies that will do anything to get their earnings up to justify their bloated stock prices. Rather than fire overpaid executives, marketing drones or idiots that prevent work they tossed their code quality to God knows what.
The big winner here is free software because it's quality is known regardless of where the writer is from. Everyone is welcome to write and use it and everyone can review it. What more can you ask for?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Now I know coders aren't rocket scientists, but less advanced than project managers?
Just goes to show that MS Project is more challenging to a manager than an IDE is to a programmer.
I for one do not worry about my area of coding being shipped offshore anytime soon. Not sure the best way to describe it, but I guess "small-business custom integration web application development" works.
You take the business knowledge you should have been absorbing along your career path, and do contract work for existing small businesses which require your business knowledge. These companies usually have a unique business model or idea they are trying to leverage the Internet for expanding their revenue.
There will always be small businesses that don't have the luxury of their business model fitting into one of the software packages that was pieced together my a megolithic company that outsources all of their "coding" offshore.
Believe me, there is an extreme shortage of programmers with real business knowledge in ANY area of business. I know because I have been trying to find one to hire for over a year. Not one candidate has shown more than a shred of ability to take a raw idea, and make it a real application that will integrate with the existing business.
If you can take a business idea and apply to an existing business, without having to be taught that business, you are a value added programmer, and you will always have a job. Although maybe as a project manager =)
Having a bookmark to Google does not make you an expert on everything.
Software creation is a mixture of art and engineering.
"Coders" as they are called are 95% of the work and talent involved. The project manager can only provide a direction and control.
The Devil is in the Details. A single coding mistake can represent hundreds or thousands of wasted hours in testing and tech support.
The entire "object revolution" is about making software flexible by modelling the domain and not the problem. This means design up front is out the window because by the time you get halfway through the project things have changed. Design is an ongoing thing to meet the current demands of the environment. You cannot just hand a spec to a bunch of programmers and expect anything except mediocre code that needs to be rewritten every 2 years, costing much more than was ever saved by attempting cheaper development.
I'm not even going to argue why the above is true. I'd rather let the idiots who manage software projects (without exception) cause the collapse of project after project (including outsourced) until it is realized that only programmers can manage programmers. I'm not kidding you I have seen MILLIONS dropped into failed software. By failed I mean absolutely failed. The code was thrown away. In two cases this also caused the collapse of the entire company. I have seen more software projects fail than succeed. And for sure the problem was always management. There is a problem in American business that cannot let control rest in the person with his hands on the materials. Software isn't rivetting. Every programmer involved has the potential to make or severely cripple the entire project. No company is willing to hire two people for every programming job and have one Quality Control the other, hence, the programmers are left alone to make or break the project.
It is hard enough for other programmers to understand what another programmer is doing. A manager is basically clueless and if he attempts to exert control contrary to where the team is going, he is almost always wrong.
I manage two teams, one in Russia and one in the U.S. and while there are very skilled members on both sides, the Russians, who are only doing the work as a 9 to 5 grind job, do the bare minimum of work. They demonstrate the reverse of all the good programming practices we have learned over the years. Variables named X, y and z, C++ code with gotos all over the place, no concept of member functions and that's just the least of it. I am not kidding when I say it is essentially code that looks like someone just graduated from learning BASIC. It is completely unmanageable code and will have to be rewritten eventually. But after all, what do they care? They are being paid by the hour and by doing a good job, they simply do themselves out of a job.
I believe now that no one can organizationally predict good software. The best thing you can do is find some code out there that works well, and buy it. This way you know what you are getting. Investing in a programming project is a quagmire that will take down most project managers and companies. If I were a corporate CEO I would never write my own software. I would find something that already exists and attempt to modify it to fit my needs.
Bores: correct spelling errors.
What if we were to pay C-Level's half their current salary to stay at home? The deal would be that they stay at home and have no input into the company and in return they get half wages. It would solve all management problems instantly (by removing them).
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Are almost the most useless lot of the post dot-bomb 'new Economy' workplace. People who have no real technical background other than (potentially) an MBA, migrate from one fucked up project to the next, never taking blame, always progressing higher in the ladder.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Incredibly stupid people who have "credentials" like this "professor" only serve to further reinforce my beliefs against our current defunct system of organized education. This person apparently has never worked in the software development business, yet his opinion is respected just because he's got some "valued" piece of paper proving he's not a total loser, and can usually show up and remain for lectures on barely challenging topics, and then regurgitate recently the acquired information. No wonder today's kids are opting to be terrorists instead...
That reminds me of the Dilbert strip that had the pointy hair boss outsource everything to Elbonia, a small mud-covered fourth-world country that both Dilbert and Dogbert have visited for various reasons.
Perhaps it is not so far fetched...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
You also need to read the snippet of the article posted on the /. page, not just the linked article. If you had, you would realize you quoted the same thing as the original poster.
(Note: I didn't read the entire article, so this post may not hold up to my usual standard of fairness. In particular, I might understand Ms. Farrell better in context of other parts of the article.)
By attaching the label "protectionist" to anyone who decries offshore outsourcing, Ms. Farrell seems willing to draw a thick line between sides of the debate. Why? Intellectual laziness, I suppose.
"Protectionism" means using taxing power to favor domestic industry over foreign competition. Her use of the word is analogous to the frequent abuse of the word "censorship": it's not censorship to disagree.
Why would a company outsource jobs in order to create other jobs? They don't have job creation as their motive, and it's disingenous to say they do. Neither do investors consume more than others. The hole in her argument is that money paid out to investors doesn't necessarily end up in consumption, and money the company saves doesn't necessarily end up being reinvested. It may end up as bonuses paid to the managers who decided to offsource (tm), or to make payoffs to analysts.
The real question is this: is it proper to allow loyalty to a particular country to interfere with business decisions? Internationalists would say no, that nations are an artifact of a less enlightened time. Nationalists argue that there must be independent governments in the world, or the world government will have nothing to check it, and so we should be loyal to ours.
What I'm about is quality. Offsourcing is a short-sighted tactic, and I find it difficult to believe that companies trust offshore developers more than domestic ones. I'm missing something. Oh well, they must know what they're doing.
sigs, as if you care.
If your average coder has a college diploma and your average manager has a Master's degree then I'd sure as hell hope that coding is a low-level skill and managing is a high-level skill -- otherwise all these people are not being educated properly! Anyone getting a college diploma should know that its usefulness will eventually expire; it is a shorter-term investment than a university degree.
People with an undergrad degree are somewhat caught between the two worlds: if they have people skills and work hard then they can be a small fish in a big pond; otherwise they can be a big fish in a small pond. The bubble burst caused the water level of all ponds to lower: the small ones evaporate (read: get outsourced) while the larger ones don't have as much room for the less competitive fish. These fish forced to become amphibious between worlds are the underemployed, angry ones who we hear from a lot on Slashdot. The small fish in the small ponds are dead.
MR. FARRELL:"I think the bigger deal is the fact that we are going to have very serious curtailment of the working age population."
Well what is the working age population Mr. Farrell. Since Mr. Farrell is such a great believer in capitalism and the market, then Mr. Farrell surely realizes that who works and who doesn't is only constrained by age at it's very edges- those too young to work, which is apparently under 2 now, and those literally to old and infirm to stand behind a counter at McDonalds.
Aside from these cases, you work ifd you need money and you don't if you are rich, irrespective of your age. There is no "working age population", there is a "need money population" , and that is all fo us and our mother's fathers and grandparents.
This is just more shortage shouting, this time based on demographic projections. Yes we're getting older as a nation. But since nations are not entities whose age is transferred through some magical process to their populations, this is just a temporary situation. And in no way does it mean that we're going to be short of the type of help that is required for the mindless jobs that are going to be left here, ie. working at Walmart.
> So, I guess 'those that can' are on the bottom rung, huh?
Have you looked at teachers' salaries lately?
I Agree with the writer of this article. *GASP* yes i said it! Now, listen as to why before you troll me.
Coders have a skill that is valuable. But, a lot of people can do it. Too many actually, creating a glut in the market. And, Indians, Pakistanis, and others in Asia work for so much cheaper than Americans, that outsourcing saves money.
As for Project Managers, it is a VERY different job than programming. Not only must a Project Manager know how to program at a reasonable level, they must know how to communicate exactly what is needed for a project to those who are coding. Especially if that programmer does not speak the Project Manager's native language. Plus, there are change orders, budgets to meet, and other crap that gets handed down from Upper Management. Also, paperwork, timelines, and all kinds of requirements fall on the shoulders of the Project Manager. If something doesn't work, he gets the blame. If it works, Upper Management gets the credit.
I'd rather hire a good Project Manager and o.k. Programmers than an o.k. Project Manager and good Programmers. But maybe that's just me, thinking too business-like for the /. community.
...unlike in the USA and most of (western) Europe, coding is still a skill. Something you should learn, instead of something anybody that has VB can do.
:
...And people bitch about the quality of commercially available software.
[Aside : I've always thought "coding in VB" was more like writing love letters to a spreadsheet than actually knowing what you're doing.]
I can hear it now
"But hey, why sweat the small stuff like tight, clean, code ? There's always more memory or a faster mobo to buy. So sure, slop up the SW. F*ck it. We'll just fix it on the backend with a big advertising push to our customers to buy fatter hard drives they don't need and a hyperthreading processor they can't use because there's almost no SW anywhere that can actually use it that our typical schmo customer will ever actually see.
Thank god for those towel heads. They're saving us millions we can pump into advertising."
This from the people who have the august privilege of working at something below "low-level".
Analogy writing to be outsourced, due to the lack of high-quality domestic analogies.
dot bomb explosion, coders were difficult to find and very expensive. My employer decided to give coding apptitude test to any employees willing to take it, to see if any had the apptitude to learn how to code. Three out of 80 or so who applied did well enough to train. None were college grads. The tool was VFP6. After training two of the three worked out, and are actually very good at what they are asked to do. A college degree might just get you in the door, but so will experience. What you do after you get in depends on how smart and agressive you are. The bottom line is $$$. If you can make or save your employer money, they don't care about your educational pedigree.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Now I know coders aren't rocket scientists, but less advanced than project managers? Ouch.
A lot of programming work is basically unskilled labor these days: people with a few years of experience in one language and one platform only. People who use "visual development tools", "wizards", and all that. With those kinds of programmers, it is, of course, the project managers and architects that do all the thinking. You get similar organizational structures in construction (architect does the thinking, increasingly unskilled laborers put together the structure) and other areas. And, of course, that can be outsourced.
This is an unfortunate misconception propagated by C/C++. A character today is a 16-bit unsigned integer.
First of all, private industry was never a particularly good place to work. Add up the noncompetes, the nondisclosures, and the IP agreements, and you have a pretty fair approximation of slavery. Think I'm wrong? If you're fired or laid off, you've basically been discarded without the ability to move to a new company thanks to the noncompete. If you try to flee the plantation and start your own company, you'll get hit with the nondisclosures and IP agreements. Even if your product isn't directly related to your old company's, they'll figure out SOME way of making it look related. They might just try and claim that you've built your new company based on things you were working on at theirs -- even if they don't have a leg to stand on, they can afford to throw legal talent at you and they'll crush you in the courts (remember, they have lawyers on staff). Ever try to hire a lawyer while unemployed?
Then, there are the project managers. I'll admit, there are occasionally good ones. But, all too often, you end up with a PHB: Always leaning on you, looking over your shoulder, trying to force technical decisions on you despite the fact they don't know what they're talking about, trying to set insane schedules and unreasonable deadlines. Because a programmer is generally on salary, PHB's try to force him to work unpaid overtime, often sixty-plus hours a week, because that makes the budget stretch. Or SEEM to stretch, but with suits, that's good enough.
Finally, there's the clear difference in status between management and staff. Programmers are treated like peons in private industry, make no mistake. We're serfs, no more and no less. I used to work in a place where programmers were hired in a wobbly-chair, lamp-in-the-face process. Salesmen would get a fraternity style "rush" complete with sushi and beer. If that doesn't say it all, I don't know what does.
Add it all up. Private industry = dilbert-inspired hell.
This whole outsourcing thing is just the final icing on the cake. It proves once and for all what management thinks of us: that we're replaceable, nearly-worthless, recipe followers. Fine, I say. Fine with me. I'm GLAD to have their feelings clearly delineated for me. It spares me from having to even briefly consider working with or for them, and it prevents me from ever thinking about building any sort of third-party tool that they might find useful.
I'll stick to other sectors of the economy where my contribution is appreciated, like the public sector or maybe the non-profit sector. And, I'll push my state representiatives to require citizenship for all public-sector programming, including that which is produced by third parties. After all, there IS a security issue here: public sector, government work should NOT be done outside of this country. Public-sector programmers should be bonded, insured, and thoroughly checked out. It might be a good idea to set up regs for banks to do the same -- and any other entity that has to handle private data.
This isn't "protectionism". It's simple common sense.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
The problem is that most people don't realise that some items should be crafted and some should be produced.
If it's needed in mass quantities, doesn't require intricate design, and price is important, then it should be produced. If it's one-of-a-kind, complex and difficult, and price is not an object, then it should be crafted.
The paradoxical thing about software, is that since it can be duplicated for free, the commodity items are the ones that should be crafted. So every in-house database front-end should be made in a production-line environment by technician-class workers (these can be outsourced). But operating systems and major applications should be designed with care.
For example: the reason Linux is better than Windows is that Microsoft develops software on a production line while open source uses the craft approach. When a big consulting company like IBM outsources their coding they won't have a similar quality drop because they're producing a bunch of simple products.
OK, there was an item on /. yesterday about sysadmins and programmers, and the sysadmins were looking the worse by comparison (at least according to that article).
Now you're saying that coders are unskilled labor.
So please tell us once and for all, who is the absolute bottom of the barrel: coders or admins?
Management await this decision so they can have the cover to negate some technical person's effort. This will allow them to negotiate a price concession on the project, show a bigger profit and save the free world for bottom of the barrel market capitalism as usual. Your help in this matter will be appreciated.
After finding yet again a story in the NY-Times that requires me to log-in (which I point blank refuse), I did want to comment, so after finding a link to the article in Google News, I actually read it before I comment:
After reading page one, I got bored - and you are entitled to the same feeling - but you may alternatively choose to hear me out...
Is it just me, or does this sound like Telegram Delivery Boys crying out for loss of work when Telephones were used, or Gas Lighters when Electric lights came in, or closer to home, Printers when DTP arrived, or Secretaries when Word Processors were invented?
All I'm saying is that while some - if not many jobs will be "outsourced", other jobs will replace them - this in my view is the nature of things.
If someone can code better and cheaper than I, and can offer the same quality of service to the client, who am I to tell the client not to go down that path - it just means I can get on with doing something else.
It's no-one's given right to be the primary choice as an employee, it's your own responsibility to aim for that.
Will I loose work? Perhaps. C'est La Vie.
|>>?
...is also an engineer, and an architect of the product that he makes. If he is not, his work shouldn't be outsourced -- it should be eliminated because in a well-designed project it would be merely an function of yet another piece of software. In fact, every decent project already went through that, and is handled by people who are both coders and engineers.
On the other hand, "project management" is not even a technical position in most of the places, it's a middle management position, that exists mostly to distribute the blame from the upper management and the engineers/programmers/... because otherwise people would not be able to take it. The decisions like "we should write a driver in Java" and "we should login using a password wrapped in XML" that are made by those managers are usually meaningless and often counterproductive while real decisions ("we represent the map as a graph, mapped to another graph that would be a tree") are made by those "low-level" engineers, and are never even known by "high-level" project managers.
Eloi and Morlocks all over again.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
From the article..."Low-skill jobs like coding are moving offshore and what's left in their place are more advanced project management jobs."
Oh yes, we always know that the project manager positions 1, dont follow their workforces - much more efficient to manage from overseas..lol, and 2 they are always the real talent on software RnD projects... what planet is this guy living on..
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Interesting views, but you can see that many people don't understand what a manager SHOULD do.
Basically a manager should allocate resources, direct the team and communicate with the outside world.
This doesn't sound like much, but it is valuable, and really not a common skill set.
Thank god I work for a Defense contractor, they can't move my job overseas!
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
I suspect that the median age of most scientific software code is at least 10 years, and a substantial fraction is 20+ years old. Bioinformatics programs that I wrote 20 years ago are still being used, as are curve fitting programs (very infrequently). The large linear algebra and differential equation packages are OLD. While computers are being used for many new applications (e.g. watching movies), they still do the things they did 20 years ago, faster, and cheaper, but using old code.
Lets consider a world population of 10 billion with average life expectancy of 70. If the average person spends 6 years in university (things are getting more complex), then we're looking at 850 million post-secondary students worldwide at any given time. Google suggests that 1 academic staff for every 10 students is not an unreasonable number, so that's 85 million jobs -- that's almost the entire US workforce right now! Add all the support staff to provide services to the academic staff and run the surrounding infrastructure and you've got yourself an economy!
The full article over at The International Herald Tribune.
The question is: where do we get the project managers of the future?
As someone just about to leave university with a Master's in CS, I think I can say with some confidence that very few companies won't make their PMs start out as developers. Problem is, if there are no coders there's nowhere for PMs to cut their teeth. Clearly if the outsourcing of programming is the future, we need a radically different culture and probably a different education system for software professionals -- maybe in a few decades time the universities will figure that out?
Isn't that really supposed to be C-3PO?
No, I really don't have anything better to do.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Sounds like Intel.
I once had the distinct *cough* privilege *cough* of having no less that 4 people over the "management" my work. Basically, a manager would whine long and loud enough about how overworked he was until they'd get the go ahead to turn someone below them into a mini-manager who would take up the management of their people. Then that manager, conceivably, suddenly has only one person to manage.
Needless to say we were all a little unclear as to what the first manager now did besides check that the mini-manager was doing his job and maybe make some pretty Powerpoint presentation to show what a great manager he now was.
- I am made of meat.
Wow. Eloquent, intelligent satire. On /. The community sure is ... diverse.
;)?
Perchance an *insightful* moderation of the parent, eventhough it's only a lowly AC motherfucker
668.5
Let the perl regex marathon begin!
Seriously, I work for an insanely large international telecommunications company and our project managers don't even understand the basic technologies involved in the projects they're managing. I don't envy their job, but I have a hard time believing that their (basically administrative) skills are any more important than the skills of those of us who actually make the stuff work. If PM skills supercede mine, I wonder why I'm always on (endless) conference calls explaining things to them.
*shrug* Their cluelessness is pretty good job security so I don't complain until they hit utter braindeadlessness.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
You may be right, and the outsourcing to India certainly suggests that they have the concrete skills covered. However before I'd be willing to accept that the universities are all-round as good I'd want to see some demonstration of abstract skills, such as by winning a programming contest.
Since when is more college education the same as higher level skill?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I don't think that the reason coding is outsourced, whereas project management is not is because of the skill required. It is more because of the nature of the businesses involved, and the nature of the coding to be done. In many situations, you can't really get away with outsourcing project management, because that essentially means you don't really have control over the project, and so you don't really have control over your own business ( assuming the project is central to the business, peripheral projects can be entirely outsourced ).
The nature of the coding to be done is also important. One of the facts that I've come to realize in studying computer science is that, to a large extent, the majority of coding work is routine and does not require in-depth knowledge or familiarity with computer science techniques. Most real-world coding consists of pretty mind-numbing tasks of gluing different APIs together in a reasonable hodge-podge. Many of these tasks require only a familiarity with the syntax of a language, some familiarity with a few common APIs, and access to a machine. None of which is very skill-intensive.
During the dot-com boom many people were employed doing coding work at incredibly over-inflated salaries who had read one or two 'for-dummies' type books. This was possible because there was a shortage of coders who could do even the most routine tasks. The high salaries attainable with very little training meant that there was naturally a rush on such teach-yourself-coding books, and suddenly there was a glut of people who could do routine coding. Now, because of that glut, there is an excess of able code-monkeys to do routine programming tasks, which means that much of this work goes to the lowest bidders ( ie Asian sweat shop coders ). Supply & demand is all it is.
But the future is hopeful, I think, for those who are willing to tough it out and obtain Comp.Sci. degrees. Right now we're stuck in a kind of computational limbo where the market is not sophisticated enough to demand really sophisticated software, so there is little demand for people who can design highly sophisticated applications. There are some jobs which require knowledge of high-performance computing, knowledge of efficient algorithm design, AI, etc. but not very many. Right now basic code-monkey work is what satisfies the majority of the market demand. This is changing rapidly, I think. The more consumers get a taste for sophisticated technology, the more the demand for truly intensive software will rise, and the need for more people with real skills ( ie University level training ) will increase.
There is a big difference between a carpenter and an architect. One is a trade, the other is a profession. The confusion that is happening right now in the labour market for programmers is because this type of distinction is just now starting to emerge. It used to be that there were only professionals in the programming world. With the dot-com boom & bust this has changed, and there is now a new class of worker, who programs as a tradesman, not as a professional. The mind-set of the market has not yet come to fully realize this distinction, and so we have these problems. Eventually this will settle out and there will be two classes of programmers - those equivalent to architects with high levels of training, and those equivalent to carpenters with much practical knowledge, but little or no theoretical or 'design' skill. I expect this will occur more and more as the demand for sophisticated software increases, and we'll see the re-establishment of 'programmer' as a profession.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
In the future, the only high skill job will be corporate manager. Everyone else will be stuffed into a 2 x 3 foot cubicle making $4 an hour after earning their second Master's Degree.
Computer Programmer is a low-skill job. Uh huh. If you can't smell the fragrant horseshit by now, you better borrow a canoe or some boots.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
IT people are being outsourced first because HR does not know how to hire them, and managers don't know how to manage them. Eventually everyone except the VPs, marketers, and salespeople will go. When garment industry jobs that Americans will not do get outsourced that doesn't hurt many people. When manufacturing jobs go, it's painful. When jobs requiring college degrees get outsourced it means a return to the middle ages, with a rich, talentless aristocracy, and a sea of poverty.
The only people you can't outsource are the ones who have to talk to the client directly and the ones who make the decsions as to who to outsource.
If I were starting up a new software company I would go to India or China or Eastern Europe and hire people away from the big outsourcers. Get experienced people pre-trained. Eventually with competition wages may get to 50% of American levels, which is what some people I know (good people, too) are currently accepting.
It's easy to be cavalier about jobs when you are a venture capitalist, a VP, or a journalist; only the journalist can be outsourced, and not easily. It's not so easy once you think that literally everything else can go, leaving American workers working at Wal-Mart.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
I find it almost amusing, and a bit intimidating, that so many Slashdot readers seem to believe in the inherent superiority of "Western" engineers, architects and managers.
There seems to be a wide-spread belief that people in India and China are somehow less creative, less able to come up with revolutionary technology, that they're most likely only suitable for production or manufacturing, but not higher level jobs, e.g. architectural work.
I hope this is just a misconception on my behalf. I mean - seriously, do you think a couple of billion Chinese and Indians aren't up to the task of leapfrogging the economies of the West? Do you think they are less apt to come up with excellent algorithms, solve mathematical problems, engineer new software?
Don't kid yourselves... Technological changes in Asia will increase growth and output at rates the US, the EU and Japan will only be able to look at in envy over the coming decades.
For them, this will mean higher incomes, which equals better education, and more capital to invest in new ideas... And before you know it, roles have changed, and you're the low-wage US software engineer, getting harsh orders from your parent company's Beijing managers to speed up the monkey-coding and to leave the thinking to them.
There's only one way out of this, and that is to let go of the nostalgia, and, in a very Dilbertesque way, to work smarter; to educate, educate, educate and let creativity flow, to invent, invent, invent.
Stop whining, order a triple caffe macchiato, smell it, and wake up. Roll up your sleeves, and get to it.
The IIT's immense quality is confirmed by BBC here.
If you consider it evidence depends on if you focus on the reliability of BBC news or the silliness of a cartoon.
I recall the biggest benefit to America was provided by a European by the name of Linus. Ok, he did not work in India, or China, but wasn't America obligated to counter Micro$oft from its own shores!!!
The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
668.5
at least for airplanes. Was every added pound of wieght increased the opperating costs of the aircraft by $20,000/yr. That's also why you only get one soda, no meal on short flights, and a bag of nuts that has exactly 1/2 an almond and a few cc's of air.
It's also a good reason to have a 'no-fat chicks' rule for flight attendants.
It was the driving force for Boeing to not just build the 777 but go with a composite tail. Technology partially paid for by the B-2 (the unjustifiably expensive bomber that replaces a whole aircraft package that costs more than the first YB-2.)
This type of emotional plea is what Nader is famous for. Think about the children, and make changes based on that which will ultimately get more people, including children, killed. I mean if people weren't paying with their lives, it would really be funny.
And thus we have the code-monkey exactly making my point. He doesn't understand the system, or failure, and would make a change that influences a now dominant secondary (or perhaps tertiary) effect.
Hell, one could probably make a case for allowing smoking on flights because the risks from second hand smoke, even repeatedly recirculated, might be out weighted by the increased ease of crack detection in the fuselage by the ground crews.
...management.
Well then the developed Commonwealth universities had better start working on their PR!
I think the University of California model is a good one. UC* adds name-recognition to places like University of California at Riverside. It wouldn't be a far stretch for the (world-class) University of Toronto to take over administration of all the universities in Ontario -- I'm sure the rest of the regions could be similarly amalgamated.
The project manager can suck and the project can still suceed. Plus project managers need communication skills to interact with management. And lets be honest, outsource coders in another country don't have those skills *YET*
-ZiN-
+1 Insightful
At a lot of big companies You get a program design and the programmers fill in the pieces. (Programmer are Overpaid for what they do (as a programmer now and civil engineer before, I work less at easier things and get piad more.).
However out-sourcing has one major cost that I think is lost on management. Code maintenence. Once the code had been delivered, if it coded badly it wil be very difficult to maintain. A nightmare infact.
Working primarily as a Project Manager/Analyst, my skills focus on the big picture stuff: deadlines, requirements gathering, task integration and problem solving on the human side. Coders, though, work with a different view: algorithms, flow, architecture, interoperability and problem solving on the technological side.
The tone here seems to focus on "who's expendable?" whereas I can't see that either is. Companies may see some logic in sending coding overseas to save money, and in some cases they might be right. In my opinion, though, overseas coding is rife with issues some of these businesspeople haven't yet discovered or factored in (language/interpretation, differing standards, differing cultural concepts of time, telecommunication issues, post-project maintenance costs/difficulties being but a few).
It reminds me of the discussion between Brian and Bender in The Breakfast Club:
- Jack
Most of you seem to have an awfully large estimation of the worth of the American programmer.
We're a lazy bunch, and your average CS graduate today sucks shit. Sorry. They got into the field because it seemed like it had good money -- not because they enjoy it. To them it is a job, not a passion. They scrape by on minimums in their courses and aren't pushed by their professors nearly hard enough. They haven't had any math and can't analyze problems well, they have very poor english skills even as native speakers, and in the end they're no better than their counterparts in other countries.
There's no reason to hire Americans when Indians are just as good. If you don't think any Indian can do a job as well as you, then you're just deluding yourself. Graduate students from India are often just as good as the best and brightest from America.
I work in this industry in Tech Support. I work for a very large and prosperous company that has a completely disfunctional IT department, so my sample space may not be representative of the norm. But from where I sit, from what I've seen, ALL offshore work is crap. Software and Support, complete unmitigated crap.
EDS tried to grow lowbuck coders in the 80's. They got lowbuck code. Business today is trying to import low buck code. And that's what they're getting.
I'm not too prejudiced about very much, but I really beleive the best software is written in a backyard hotrod, garage tinkering society.
Oh, and before I foget to add, most of our "project managers" have the tech savy of my grandmother. Our end customers are 4 out of 5 times more knowledgable than the people we get to manage our projects. I was once part of a twenty man team that built an IBM mainframe computer center from scratch, and consolidated 3 centers down to it, in a 4 month period, start to finish. And in that 4 months we changed all of our 2000 user's ids (for performance reasons). We brought the datacenters down Friday PM and brought online the new datacenter Monday AM. Zero problems. That was without project managers; just a kickass director of IT and twenty "empowered" guys accountable for their work. Today? Well I'm currently working on a team that is taking 4 months to install a network diagnostic system to fix a problem that has been plaguing us for 14 months! But I guarantee you we are project managed up the ass.
Sorry..... I feel better now. Thank you for listening...
How much longer can we be a land of managers-only?
Well, if textiles and other manufacturing industries are any indictation, we can leave the low-level grunt jobs to other nations quite successfully for quite a long time.
The answer seems pretty clear to me. Is coding lower-skilled than management? NO. Are coders lower *class* than managament? YES.
The NYT, the people they polled, and the managers are upper or upper-middle class. Most coders are middle or working class. It is thus not surprising that the NYT would say that programmers are less skilled...that's how they convince themselves it's okay. But it's a move by the managerial class against the programmer class nonetheless.
The poster talking about a union speaks sense, though I fear it may already be too late...
Coders of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.
(Myself, I'm just sorry one of the few outlets for people who aren't corporate-standard to make a living is dying out. What will they all do now?)
Well maybe all the jobs are getting outsourced because our education system is totally unrealistic, then?
/. seems to have an irrational bias against post-graduate education (and management in general), so I hope you were at least half joking.
I was kind of hoping that people would pretend that diploma->technologist, Master's->manager long enough to see my point, but you're right that treating things somewhat idealistically. On the other hand,
Im not sure if I agree with the 'those who can not, teach' bit. Maybe I'm partial because I am an educator >:|. eh.
Wow, that's awesome evidence. You're right: we're fucked.
Before we all start patting ourselves on the back because Hackers Make the World Go Round, stop and think about how successful a project would be if you threw a bunch of new-collge-grad "hackers" into a room with no management.
Despite YEARS of brainwashing (by Scott Adams) that Management is useless and evil, which you all seem to be blinded by, the reality is: Management is far more critical than grunt biomass. A good manager is worth a hundred half-skilled underlings. And good managers are worht their pay because they are rare, but the there are millions of squids who can type "gcc main.c..." and hack with an open book.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Hey, want to save a bundle, outsource the upper management jobs as well as the board of directors. After all, any dip-shit can collect loads of money while screwing over share-holders and consumers (as well as employees).. Perhaps we can make the pain of their sodomizing a little more bearable if we pay them 2.5%-5% of what they get here in US..
Those "pathetic little companies" are called Small Businesses. Does your idea of Entrepreneurship allow for a (typical) 2-engineer shop, where they wear multiple hats, including sales, project management, QA, and implementation?
Easy... just don't waste so much time reading slashdot.
-1, Flamebait
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Low-skill jobs like coding Apparently the man has never written a kernel.
Excellent commentary with biting wit.
For those who ignore AC posts, here's a repost. And turn on AC comments, please.
===
MS. FARRELL Those savings enable me, if I am an investor, to consume more and therefore contribute to job recreation.
She is stating a fact to support a deception.
The number of people who have enough money to put into the market so that its ups and downs make any material difference to their immediate economic situation is vanishingly small.
She is talking about the "investor class", which is not he same as the class of people who are invested, in some form, usually IRAs or 401ks, in the market. It's hard for me to believe that she is not perfectly well aware of this.
The investor class actually has so much money, that the market can make them hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Those are apparently the people she is used to hanging out with.
The vast majority of poeple in the market are hoping that their investments will accrue enough so that they can retire at 75 or 80 now that Congress has given the money they paid into Social Security to the people in Mr Farrell's circle of friends in the form of tax cuts.
It's hard to get your mind around how far away they are from us. To them, we're something like unfortunate insects whose place in life is to accept our fate at the hands of forces they control.
We're that vast bobbing mob that history "happens" to that and who they read about in books.
They, on the other hand, have been intelligent enough not to get caught in our situation.
The differences in our fates is clearly due to their superiority and it is wrong for us to begrudge them their deserved success or in any way attempt to curtail the implementation of their globalist vision, which will make them richer yet and us poorer. What's the moral basis of all this? Well, in the long run (after you're dead), it'll all work out for everyone.
Understand this- by worrying about what happens to you in your lifetime, you're being petty and shortsighted. Thank god for the chiseled jaw CEOs with the long range vision and the fortitude to keep a firm hand on the wheel and steer us through these trying times into safety.
===
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
The article talks about innovation. You have an idea that leads to a product. That will never change. The people who nurture ideas and manage the transformation of those ideas into consumables will become the only people with jobs as productivity increases. Coders will find new jobs just like computers(the people) did before computers became mechanical.
I'm so sick of people who assume that there is no difference between high IQ and structured intelligence. There seem to be a lot here.
How in the hell did the parent post get a score of +5, Insightful? Is Slashdot somehow scripting moderator point distribution to skew to complete idiots?
I've SEEN what happens when a project is done without a project manager... and you end up with the programmers being just as pissed off as the client. No project manager = no enforced schedule + no well defined scope + no detailed development guides + no moderator of disputes. A good project manager knows the limits of their team and the technology they work with, and will protect the team against unreasonable demands. They take twice as much crap from the level of management above the team as the team takes from them.
Easy to outsource, and then they sales/marketing folks don't get their feelings hurt by 'the computer guy'. Good IT people don't reflect the saturday night live skit, but still suffer fools with agony.
Both upper management and sales/marketing really like it when they get called 'sir' every sentence like the current Dell Indian phone weenies do.
Even better yet, almost every other problem resolution is 'I'm sorry sir, that didn't work, you must put in your system restore CD's and reload the operating system!"
Sales/marketing/management types believe that the OS needs to be reloaded every time an application unexpectedly quits..
Oh good lord, yet another post quibbling with my engineer/PM quantification. Doesn't anybody around here know what a figure of speech is? Do you think that the difference between Dr. Seuss and Leo Tolstoy is summarized by "a picture is worth a thousand words"? If I had said, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," would everybody be posting price quotes on tanin?
AMEN BROTHER!
Boy, I'll bet you're a joy to manage.
but your more then qualified => but you're more than qualified.
I remember that a lot of my friends believed that in 1999, but who really buys that now? Sure, I've seen a few instances of remote managment. Some of the project managers at my company (who are Chinese immigrants) manage groups in China. But in the long run (and by long run I mean ~2 years), how can anyone truly believe that China can't produce enough capable product managers who are up to the task and willing to work for a fraction of an American wage? This quote is pure, unadultered (dare I say racist?) arrogance.
-a
Forget Pakistan, what happens if a bunch of geeks get together and figure this as a way to get their jobs back?
oh, wait. Geeks. In Pakistan. Never mind.
I see a lot of concern and handwringing, but not a lot of action. If we are not to be the "deer in the headlights" of professional and personal disaster, we American Programmers need to speak out. This needs to be on both a personal and professional level.
- We need to get involved in our professional societies (IEEE-USA, ACM), and push them to lobby for us (instead of letting the Corporations "speak" for us. we know where they stand!).
- We need to write our congresspeople on this issue (BTW, that DID work on H-1B!). We need to get involved in politics, both at the state level (does your state have "anti-overseas outsourcing" legislation pending? Are you writing your state legislator to support it?), and at the national level.
-Will you vote this issue when voting for president in 2004? Have you let the candidates know this?
In short, we programmers need to develop a voice, and speak loudly in our own interest.
It's true, there are a lot of unskilled programmers out there. And there are a lot of skilled programmers out there that aren't very good at commercial development.
When I first started contracting I worked at a company that heaped praise upon me for my ability when I wasn't very happy about the quality of my own work. Apparently the people they hired before me were very very bad at what they did.
I've seen a few people like that since. Mostly they're people who taught themselves to program or did a quick programming course. Their code may be technically excellent, but it can also be very buggy and unnecessarily complex. It's not just a case of knowing how to get something to work, but it's also a case of keeping it as simple as possible.
It was mentioned in another thread that programming is just a case of copying code around and knowing what functions to use. This is partially true. And that's the way it should be. A program should be as consistant and structured as possible. However, this is where the 80/20 rule comes in. 20% of the code is going to be significantly different from the rest of the application and requires some actual thought and skill to implement and will take 80% of the time to develop.
And as for outsourcing, I know a company that some years ago outsourced an application to an outsourcing company in India. At the end of the outsourcing contract, the company was left with an application that was a shell and didn't actually do anything and the company had to write it themselves in the end. Of course, the project was obviously not managed properly by the company, but it raises questions in my mind about the work ethic of outsourcing companies. I don't want to come of as racist here, but India is well known for being a very corrupt country.
A few years ago they started popping up in malls across the country selling reasonably priced, reasonable quality, semi-original paintings. Of course, all the paintings were made in near-assembly line conditions in third-world countries. For a canvas of a given size, there would need to be a certain number of different elements (house, waterfall, big-leafy tree, etc). Each major element would be done by a person who could do it well and fast, so there would one guy to paint in a pretty waterfall, and then another to paint a quaint cottage next to it. Since lowly paid humans are still more adaptable than machines, US management could constantly adjust production to match what was selling (red cottage doors, not blue, and more leafy trees!!!). Similar operations exist to crank out still-life and other assorted painting types.
And don't forget, music is a creative process as well, but the US has had to go overseas for 40 years now to find some decent acts.
So "low skill" means not having a lot of power . First time I've encountered that usage.
Most of the advanced skills I've seen in managers is having greater access to the levers of power. I'll grant you that they have *different* skill than programmers. That's a very different statement. (And if by coder's, he meant something differnt from programmer, I'll need to see a quote to prove it. But the article is behind armoring. [OK, so it's easily permeable. I prefer to respect the publishers wishes that I not visit his page. And that's the way I read the compulsory login.])
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Seriously, what if somebody wants to be in charge of a software development team some day? What should that person do? Do you get a B.A. in English, work as a school teacher for several years and then become a VP of Development? I think not. I think that every decent development manager started to work as a software coding grunt. Without low-level jobs there will be no high level positions. Period.
I have not seen any recent Comp. Sci. graduates who can become managers right out of school. Most of them were hoping to get these 'low-level' coding jobs (not to be confused with positions related to assembly programming) and work their way up. Today we ship all these position abroad because somebody wants to make extra profit and get yet another personal jet. Tomorrow we will have to import (or outsource) project managers because nobody will be able to replace them.
I am one of the graduates who is struggling to find a job now and let me tell you one thing: it sucks to work at a liquor store while paying off $345 per month for the next fifteen years. Unlike the majority of dot-com born programmers, I knew that the salaries of the late nineties were inflated. I did not expect to earn $80K after college and something told me that VB and Access programmers did not deserve six digit pay checks. Most of these people were in IT because of the money, not because of their own passion. Now most of them have several years of experience and they compete with college grads like myself. The battle is hard, but I think that as long as I meet software engineers who do not know what threads are, I am going to win. (Yeah, you heard me right: I met a couple of mid-level "software engineers" who had zero knowledge about concepts like threads.)Finally, the trend to move software development to other countries does not mean that our projects end up in the hands of highly trained professionals as many manages like to say. People of different trades and backgrounds will notice that software development is profitable because "you get to work for American corporations." Mark my words, in several years the rest of the world will experience what we have gone through during the late nineties. Many countries will face a surplus of barely skilled developers who ended up in IT because of the money.
it to the highest bidder. And they will also outsource your stuff to even cheaper places off their shores and you'll get back crap that has to be re-written anyway. I think I'll learn to be a plumber, they make good money.
http://tinyurl.com/3t236
We do outsource at the C-Level - it is called foreign ownership. Look at Nissan, Toyota, etc... all of which have plants in the US, and create better and cheaper cars than US-owned companies, with more of the parts made in the US than are made by US companies. As for the impact - I would guess that American Auto Workers contribute more in taxes and stability of the local economy than the management does. It is true that foreign companies will close US plants before they close foreign plants - but that is no different than our own companies. However, I would be nervous if I was using military hardware made by a foreign company with no ties to assuring that I win the war.
4 such posts in 8 minutes?! You going for some record? Why not go *on* record, though?
Still, excellent. Thanks
668.5
...until India and Pakistan decide to pull out their nukes and destabilize each other.
Then we'll learn the disadvantages of sending crucial jobs to other countries.
Of course, like the Enron-type accounting scandals, it won't be the guilty parties that feel the pain, but rather the little guys were are out of work and trying to pick up the pieces. All the executives will be riding down on their golden parachutes.
Oh, and I also really like the way this fuckwad economist tries to divert blame away from the execs. How does she explain the 1000% rise in their average saleries over the last 10 years??? Cost of living...???
When the revolution comes, may the Ken Lays of the world and their voodoo-economic apologies will be the first against the wall.
Look at my karma - I'm bad, just like Michael Jackson!
Outsourcing is just like Object Oriented Programming. You're not suppoesd to care how you get the result, just that you get it. So you give a problem to you workers(who now happen to be in India) and get a result back. Just like an object in your programming code. So yes, project managers would be considered higher level just as the code that uses the objects is higher level code than the object's code.
~Ian
And so history marches onward to its natural end!
.
Brothers, bear out these death throes of the old order, for know that the final end can not rise but out of the ashes of these arrogant corporate pigs!
We do not know when the time will come, but these are surely the signs of its approaching!
Join arms now as we sing the Interationale
Arise ye starvelings [or workers] from your slumbers
Arise ye criminals of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
and at last ends the age of cant.
Now away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise!
We'll change forthwith [or henceforth] the old conditions
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
CHORUS
Then come comrades rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale
Unites the human race. (repeat).
We peasants, artisans and others,
Enrolled amongst the sons of toil
Let's claim the earth henceforth for brothers
Drive the indolent from the soil.
On our flesh for too long has fed the raven
We've too long been the vultures prey.
But now farewell to spirit craven
The dawn brings in a brighter day.
CHORUS
No saviour from on high delivers
No trust we have in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear.
Ere the thieves will out with their booty
And to all give a happier lot.
Each at his forge must do his duty
And strike the iron while its hot.
CHORUS
Coding: People here are complaining that coding is classified as a "low-level" job. A lot of companies have been treating coding as a low-grade skill for quite some time. A team of high-level people design the thing, and they hand it off to the lowest-paid workers that can actually implement it. These low-level American jobs purposefully don't leave much room for creativity, and the pay is not really that great. Outsourcing those jobs to India is merely a continuation of this trend and follows the manufacturing sector where the jobs of feeding the machines and putting stuff in boxes have mostly gone to China.
Management: A lot of /.-ers are complaining about how management sucks and how its so much easier than programming. This is false. Management is really hard and takes a lot of skill. Most mangers suck, of course, but most programmers suck, too. You never notice the rare good manager who takes mediocre programmers and makes a successful project, but a bad can have great programmers and get nothing done (of course, of you have genuinely bad programmers, you're screwed no matter what). The Indian industry will mature, and a lot of management and design jobs will eventually be outsourced there, too.
Quality: Think about any physical thing you buy. It probably has "acceptable" quality and doesn't cost very much. After a while, you get a different one, which probably has newer and better technology that you wanted anyway. (If everything you bought was a minor masterpiece, you'd pay for it by having out-of-date technology; it's the price of our fast-changing world.) If you want better quality, you have to pay a lot more, and the product, or large portions of it, are much more likely to be made in the US/Canada or Europe. Sure software quality sucks, but mostly it does what people want and is cheap. A lot of people are willing to put up with problems to pay less. In the end, the top software jobs will stay, just like the top manufacturing jobs are still here.
One problem really is that we don't know how to design software in a predictable way. Attempts to design inexpensive software are often more expensive in the end, and trying to do a great job can lead to bloated projects that are never done. Many expensive American projects really suck, and probably some cheap Indian projects are great. The field currently just doesn't have the maturity for us to say with any predictability "if we spend X dollars we will get Y quality." When/if the field reaches the predictability of manufacturing cheap software will be made in developing countries, and great software will be made in mature countries.
Protectionism: While short-term measures can allow an industry to restructure itself and become more efficient, long-term protectionism never works. Consider the recent steel tariffs. I'm not qualified to say if they were the right thing, but the idea was to allow some short-term period for the steel industry to get it together because we all benefit from a competitive industry. A long-term tariff, however, makes American products made from steel products more expensive. American consumers could then buy less, and American products can not be sold overseas.
The same is true for software. India currently specializes in grunt-work coding. Protectionist measures will save some American grunt-coding jobs in the short-term. However, what will happen in 10 years? A fraction of those Indians will get mad skillz. Indian software companies, now with competitive-quality coders, and benefiting from cheaper labor than their American counterparts, will clean up. The American industry will ultimately suffer. Its better for the bad American coders to find a different field or get better skills now than later. Think about it, it may suck to lose your job now, but its worse to lose your job from a dying industry when you're 10 years from retirement and have no recent skills or training.
That's all this comes back to IMO.
Management trends attempt to drive the craftsmanship out of any effort; the knowledge goes into the system and the workers are just commodity fleshbots. Make the widget easy to make and send it to some place that pays two grains of rice a day.
This attitude is rife in American corporate culture. I'm forty, I cut code and am good at it. However, some people think I lack ambition because I don't wish to become a manager. I'd make a fair to middling manager, but I'm far more valuable in a technical role.
An alternative to this is to take the view that the best people are craftsmen/artisans. It is my (relatively uneducated) understanding that in European countries, the artisan is appreciated more than in the USA. The guy who has spent his life lovingly working with a lathe can tell you all its good and bad points, make the thing sing and dance. Similarly, I think there should be codesmiths: people that really know how to cut code and are valued.
A few years ago programmers were in short supply and you could get a good job (ie big bucks)if you could find the power switch on a PC. Probably a lot of people became programmers yet were not up to the task. The craft of coding became devalued because so many arbitrary skills were thrown into the "coding" bucket though they require different skill sets and levels of understanding (eg. someone building a web page is an HTML coder, vs say someone writing complex OS stuff in assembler). Times have got tighter and, perhaps for the better in the long run, there is a squeeze. Probably mostly bad programmers will get cut, but of course some good ones will be too.
While you're seen as an expense rather than a value adder, you're in a dangerous situation. Perception is important, not the reality. The manager likes to think that good stuff happens because of him, not because some programmer did a brilliant job. Unless the management can see, and are prepared to acknowledge, your added value they just see you as being a cost item and the way to manage cost is to reduce it. If you're perceived to be generic then don't be suprised if the manager picks their programmers from the "two for a buck" bargain bin.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Professor M. Eric Johnson, who says that, 'Low-skill jobs like coding are moving offshore and what's left in their place are more advanced project management jobs.' Now I know coders aren't rocket scientists, but less advanced than project managers?
Do I laugh at the absurdity of this? Coding is not a "low-skill" job. Far from it. Programming in C is a high-skill job. Programming in C++ is a high-skill job. Heck, even programming in C# is a high-skill job. Ditto for PHP, Perl, Python, etc. He must be thinking of the one-off Visual Basic script he wrote last week...
But I want to cry at the same time, because the PHB's believe this crap. Offshore development to India? My company did this because they thought coding was a low-skill job suitable to outsourcing to low-skill workers. Not only is this insulting to developers here in the US, it's equally insulting to the developers in India. It's the new Anglo Imperialism!
I've been told flat out that my only future in the company is to be a project manager. I've done that and it sucks. I would rather be developing and coding. I don't want to have to schedule time on Outlook just so I have a block of time available to schedule all my myriad meetings on Outlook.
Hmmm, maybe this attitude that development is "low-skill" works explains that shoddy quality of commercial software these days.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
The solution is to outsource the whole company. No cultural or time difference issues. Considering the quality of American managers outsourced ones can't do too much damage. Why do all these people think they can outsource the people who do the work, but they will be exempt from the process?
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
All you guys complaining -- those t-shirts, those shoes you're wearing, they were all manufactured in the continental USA... right?
Didn't think so.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Winner: short term thinking, loser: long term planning.
Winner: idiots with money, loser: people who actually do work.
Winner: people in Europe whose governments tend to protect voters from loss of standard of living, loser: people in the US whose government is leading the race to the bottom.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
This whole outsourcing thing is about power. Lets face it, the people working for management are more intelligent than management itself. What a fear factor...
But there is an inverse component here. Managers get paid more but know less. Less face facts, if management had to get certifications just to keep their jobs they couldn't. (Unless it was a cert in kissing ass).
But they get paid more! Why? Because they spend far more time looking out after number one and less time working about becoming intelligent about it.
The best part, is these companies are all dead companies... they just haven't been shot yet.
Craftsmanship
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
because they need work 100% of the time. Most software is not performing high-stakes or high-value tasks, and the costs of engineering a "correct" software solution is more that the problem that is supposedly being solved.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
There are Autos still built by craftsmen. One that comes to mind are Rolls Royces.
Profile of the "Winners": Outgoing. Knows people. Comes from money.
Profile of the "Losers": Everybody else.
My company actually does that! Unfortunately, we still keep our "domestic" C-Workers where they are :-(
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Tons and tons of in-house code is a nightmare to maintain as well. Especially if it was written by surly old-timers who know how to establish 'job security' and keep management paying their salary.
A Good Intro to NetBS
I am a desperate loner so spam me!
commandertuckernx01@yahoo.com.au
- Aircraft are statistically much safer than cars.
- Aircraft travel much faster than cars.
- Air crashes, though rare, almost always kill everyone onboard.
- Aircraft have redundant drivers, and multiple checks against
either pilot being intoxicated before boarding, let alone both.
- Automobile drivers don't have to pass through any checkpoints
before getting behind the wheel, so are much more likely to be impaired.
- A car crash at 90MPH might be survivable and might involve decelerations up to 9Gs. A plane crash at 600MPH would not be, would
involve decelerations much greater than 9Gs, and very few people can
survive that sort of deceleration anyway.
- Weight is much more important in aircraft economics than automotive.
An airplane with 9G chairs would probably have to charge something like Space Shuttle rates of $2000/lb to fly, if it could even get off the ground.
The analysis is probably not so callous as you suppose. Stronger seats on airplanes probably would not increase survivability.--
I don't want to rule the world... I just want to be in charge of mayonnaise.
I think the slashdot perspective may not be the perfect perspective to look at the whole 'engineer vs. manager' thing, or for that matter, the outsourcing phenomena.
Most slashdotters are 'engineers'...not 'managers'...even if they are, not in the general perspective, i.e. non-skilled 'Line' managers...
When it comes to management, the ladder is reverse of skillset. To the top-rung management, a regular manager who can translate the work of 12 engineers into a product which they want to see is more 'Advanced' than the coders / engineers themselves..If he can accomplish the same job with coders seven seas away, who get paid 1/4th of the salary of the engineers here, and produce the same result in 1.5 times the time, considering getting the quality up to the same level as on-site workers takes some extra effort, it is still a 50% + saving on people cost for that product.
To management, in times where depression is like a looming sword, cutting costs seems the most obvious solution to survive, unlike some puritans who believe that 'Contributing Back to the US Economy' by hiring US workers is the only way out of this depression.
So..point is...perspective at slashdot is highly skewed towards one side...this is just one effort to try and balance it..
I work in the internal audit department for a large technology company, so I get to talk to everyone from programmers to EVPs. I think the "unskilled labor" statement simply shows a lack of understanding. It implies that all those workers in China and India are unskilled. Actually, the programmers there are educated and quite skilled, but cheaper (hince the problem). The difference between the jobs being moved overseas and those staying here is not a matter of skill, but a mater of navigating the complex power structures of organization. The project manager, even though often clueless about technology, is the channel of communication to upper management, and therefor cannot be geographically or socially distant. So the truly skilled workers who make the world go round are at the bottom while those that play the game rise to the top.
The companies that handle the outsourcing soon reach the point where they don't need the US company any more. That happened in consumer electronics and appliances years ago, and it's happening in apparel. If it can be sold through Wal-Mart, there's no need for a US company to be involved in manufacturing or distribution. Branding problems can be fixed with advertising, acquisition, or pressure. Some well-known US brands are already just fronts for offshore operations.
In service areas, if the service can be delivered over the Internet or by phone, it can be moved offshore. Right now, most of the companies doing this are fronted by US companies. But those companies become hollowed out, until they're just brands.
Next, the intellectual property moves offshore. This has already happened in consumer electronics and is happening in semiconductors. No US company can make a CD-ROM drive without licensing technology from Asian companies.
Finally, the money moves offshore.
The US could end up with Third World income levels as a result of this race to the bottom. Don't think it can happen? Twenty years ago, nobody though there would be armies of permanently homeless people in US cities. Or that Argentina would become a poor country. Or that Britain would become poorer than Italy.
In the US, average real weekly earnings peaked in 1973. That's why your parents are better off than you are.
Smart people are distributed throughout the world. If theoretical math and physics were business necessities in the US, they'd have been exported long ago, but noone claims they are low-skill jobs. Extraordinary thinking ability exists throughout the world.
Purely information based jobs will move offshore whenever well informed and well educated people exist in low pay countries. This is inevitable. It says nothing about the skill-level required for those jobs. If and when it becomes efficient to export project-management, it'll happen. Ironically, software engineers (coders) will be the ones making the enabling technologies.
Posting NYTimes links is beating a dead horse too.
What if Pakistan decided to go cut all the fiber optic cable connecting India to the US?
I guess the packets would just have to take another route.
It's not always a case of developers who constantly churn either. Sometimes problems develop from something as simple as communication breakdown. Now, who communicates better... a random low-paid developer from a country where English is not the first language, or a developer from an English-speaking language... even if they're slightly less skilled?
And a good underling is worth a hundred half-skilled managers.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Flamebait, this stuff happens and is happening. I think people don't really know what flamebait is anymore. Sad but I think slashdot is getting dumbed down. Maybe too many project managers are reading this stuff now.
http://tinyurl.com/3t236
There is a saying, "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." Funny maybe, but also quite offensive and false, at least in this case. Fact is, those offshore are hard working humans, just like us.
:
:
I read the article (I know, not always required here) IMHO it is fairly clueless and light-weight, typical of the NY Times lately. Whats interesting is the depth of feeling about it on Slashdot.
I grew up in the UK with many freinds of Indian background, a fine people with a rich culture.
I have worked alongside them, in the UK and in the USA on projects that are multi-shored. Fact is, the results do vary enormously, but thats normal in IT. However, offshoring seems to be improving faster than we are, offshore staff are usually highly educated, and very serious about improving quality and process. These are crucial capabilities, mired in apathy and management hostility in the USA.
Offshoring is kicking American Software Project performance butt, because our Management has a set of dumb mantras that will guarantee we ultimately lose this industry. To list a few
Fear is the best motivator.
Screw process. Quality? Yeah Right!
Design? huh just build it?.
Training Courses - hah!.
Next quarters results rule.
Arbitrary deadlines drive release dates.
The dumb belief in staff fungibility as a method of imposing fear.
A nasty, secretive, hostility to actual smart engineers and software developers.
Offshore, the countries and companies have a long term strategic view. In almost any game, a pragmatic strategy vs no strategy, will win. Our CEO/CIO/CXO are clearly incapable of such a strategic view, so offshore companies will win the future IT business and jobs. This is in no way a development problem, its simply an outcome of incompetent management direction and intent.
As part of the general frustration, its quite apalling how many people on Slashdot appear to hate most Project Managers, like myself.
Bear with me here, I would like to use an analogy; Project managers perform a similar role as the Director of a movie, but, without the award ceremonies or casting couches.
We are integrators, glue, we filter out much crap, communicators, wipers away of tears and fears, counsellors of the oppressed, buyers of beer, experts in the air-speed of african swallows. Generalist in a world of specialists (an oxymoron in itself really).
We do viewgraphs for the Lord High Poobahs, we faithfully deliver facts and opinions to those skilled in killing messengers. Many of us get killed in the process, I have been killed many times. Its not fun, and its going to get worse, IMHO there are long term problems for project managers, and thats ultimately pain for Business as well.
Software project managers (at least those with any kind of clue) have usually been developers and usually attempt to maintain some reasonable level of technical understanding. Fallen from the true hacker faith of 100% coding, we live on in the twilight world of software project integration.
We are tolerated by "Real Programmers" because we translate Technobabble into Poobah, and vice versa. We are a specialized form of babelfish. I have been entertained many times by folks with no translation experience trying to run software projects. Its pathetic and its dumb, but they continue to try.
Now the bit that really worries me
I think that decent translators and software PM's will become a rapidly vanishing breed. The development work and quality and process understanding etc, will not happen here (for most given values of here). In next ten to fifteen years, few in the USA will be able to run a software project, based on actual personal development knowledge and experience. At that point there will be a real loss in translation and then of control. Companies will not be able to manage projects efficiently from within the USA. This is already happening, its just not on the radar yet, at least not the weak-ass
There is no god; get over it already! Never exchange a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage.
I read an interview with you on the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/business/yourmo ney/07out.html) about outsourcing of jobs to India and China. In the interview, you said:
"Low-skill jobs like coding are moving offshore and what's left in their place are more advanced project management jobs."
Could you please explain to me why you consider coding jobs to be "low-skill"?
In order to be a software developer, one typically needs to have a Bachelor's degree in computer science, which is not an easy field of study. Not only that, but you typically need years of experience to become a decent developer. I work with several recent computer science college graduates, and their abilities are significantly inferior to mine.
Based on your biography on the Dartmouth web site, I seriously doubt you have ever written a piece of software. May I suggest that you pick up a book on beginning programming, and give it a shot. I have a feeling that you would find this "low skill" task extremely difficult to learn.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
The US economy has been so good over the last 20 years (even with the current troubles) that it's full of waste and inefficiency. Sooner or later it will collapse in a serious way and it will have to painfully cut away the fat.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
A few figures, crude steel production in million tons (2002):
Sweden: 5,8
USA: 92,2
Total world-wide: 900,5
Now, there might be room for Sweden, being less than 1% of the total market, to find some special niches they can concentrate on. But it's simply not enough niche products for a country with over 10% of the total steel production - if they made up that much taken together, they'd be mainstream products. Even if the US industry did adapt, there wouldn't be room for all and most of it would die out. Maybe it's better than losing it all, but it's certainly not a positive prospect.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Keep me updated, I'll buy stock in your company!
grisha.org
Those that cannot manage: sue.
Those that cannot sue: get screwed.
Those that cannot get screwed: are Slashdot geeks.
The Indians wouldnt dare outsource their jobs. Their economists and politicians know that would be stupid.
This currently makes them wealthier, but for how long?
The "elite" are currently doing the new work. There will be much more work coming in, and more "3rd world university" coders supplied to the dozen Indian provinces trying to under cut each other (tax shelters). Their methods will be documented and automated too. And quicker than it happened in the West, so market forces say their wages will drop, not increase, and standards will get worse.
ps: Ireland is now fucked after helping build the worst windows versions every conceived and getting no taxes for it.
pps: that project manager who posted before, it certainly sound like its faster to have your local coders making the program while you type out the specification and manual, than writing it all first, sending it off and waiting to see how much you have to fix when it returns.
Why is it going to get worse? Because the dollar is softening (some say it's being softened intentionally). This increases the appeal of a US export. Alas, with services, when you "export" them, this sends the job itself overseas. Which, as one may have noticed, isn't that great an idea in which the fastest growing segment of jobs in the US has been service jobs over the last decade.
C//
Hey, it's in the article:
"Low-skill jobs like coding"
I don't code for a living, but my degree is in computer science...and to get that degree I had to learn crazy amounts of math (calculus III, diferential equations..etc), algorithms, complexity theory, compiler theory, as well as a whole slew of languages (C, C++, Pascal, Fortran, Java).
How could a profession that requires that much knowledge possibly be considered "low-skill"? Christ! If that's true, doctors will be considered blue-collar workers in the next 5 years! I can see it now: Become a doctor at your local vo-tech school while attending classes at night or on weekends!
Lots of fraternity guys at my college had file cabinets full of business papers availible for "recycled use" by their brothers. They never had any Math, Chemistry, Pre-Med, Computer Science, or Engineering papers though....I wonder why?
We are in this mess now because we've become a nation of managers...we don't actually do anything in this country...but we sure as hell manage a lot. Good management is important in any company, but it can not replace intellectual capital. That's what drives long-term innovation and productivity.
It is easier for a scientist to learn business than it is for a businessman to learn science.
-ted
What a waste! We could have as good a conversation between pundits in Bangalore for a tenth the cost!
Nothing like a little economic reality to get a bunch of Slashdotters up in arms, and to prove once again why "geek culture" has become the elitist shithole that I've tried so hard to avoid dealing with for the past few years. So many posts decrying the audacity of the author to suggest that a programmer's skills are less important than those of a project manager.
Look, I've done some coding. I started with VB, continued on to Java, tinkered with some C++, and hacked on Perl. I wouldn't call myself a "programmer," per se, but I have done a fair bit of coding, sometimes as part of my job as a systems administrator for a small company. And you know what? My degree is in English. I never took a single computer science course in school -- I'm entirely self-taught. The simple fact of the matter is that coding is NOT the difficult nonrepeatable skill that so many programmers think it is. Once you understand logical structure, it's little more than a matter of memorization.
You want proof? Think about it: How many competent programmers do you know vs. how many competent managers? Anyone who's read the rest of the drivel in response to this article can plainly see that the programmers aren't the ones in short supply. And yet so many programmers assume that managers are unskilled, talentless boobs whose value is inflated. It's no different from a construction worker who thinks that the architect is overvalued because he can't drive a forklift.
The Geek Elite has been given a hard wake-up call and they still refuse to admit to themselves that all the hype five years ago surrounding their skills was just that -- hype. Programmers aren't being outsourced because management is grasping at straws to find a way to prove its superiority. They're being outsourced because they are easily replaced by cheaper labor with similar skills.
Believe me, I understand. As a systems and network admin, I once overestimated my own value as well, thinking that my skills were important enough to warrant respect from my superiors -- until I realized that my job was still to do what I was told, like anyone else, and that I was little more than a plumber or appliance repairman. The sooner everyone finds a little humility and admits to themselves that their computer science degrees and taste for cheap sci-fi don't make them better than their peers, the sooner they can get on with improving their skill sets and finding a way to combat the economic difficulties we are currently facing.
If you consider a thousdand cats shoved in a rusty blender "soothing"
People here are complaining that coding is classified as a "low-level" job. A lot of companies have been treating coding as a low-grade skill for quite some time.
in business-speak exchange low-level with commoditised. Now think about commodities and supply and demand.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
What makes you think it'll stop there? If a US-based Fortune 500 company becomes a hollow shell with all its sales, service, and manufacturing going overseas and only orders coming from an administration increasingly clueless about what the end users and major customers want because nobody within several time zones has to deal with them, sooner or later, the outsourcers are going to wonder what the hell value US corporate management adds to their company products.
Whether this means unfriendly takeover ("We'll buy your stockholders out at 5 cents on the dollar and give you a golden parachute") or the top management at the outsourcers taking data farm hard drives by the truckload to the new facility conveniently placed by coincidence right down the block and locking up the old building with large signs saying "Report to this address!" depends on circumstances.
What happens to the people who made the decisions? They'll have cashed out and retired by then, or maybe left the US to find a place they can take through the cycle again.
Who gets hammered? US based employees, stockholders, and the most hapless CEOs... the least lucky of which will get to turn off the lights as he walks out the door.
Who won't notice? By and large, the service will be just as miserable under Indian management as under American.
What happens if the US management tries suing? If you want to sue Indian business peoples in India who know who to pay off and how much, go ahead, I want to watch. Or all the former outsourcers have to do is go limp and refer anyone who has problems to the former US managers... if it's a bank or a major service provider, the end users will do whatever they have to do to get their services back...
Tech Public Policy stuff
If I understand it correctly, Micro$oft outsource most (if not all) their programming to foriegn countries (commonly Inda, I believe). If we look at the amount of patches that regularly come out for all their products, is outsourcing such a good idea? If programming was such a Low-skill job, why the need for constant patches/upgrades?
;)).
Or, are the MS project managers (Software Engineers) not capible of supplying a good design!? (Which wouldn't surprise me).
I believe that a lot of these wise men are forgetting that, there are many roads to Rome, but not all programmer are skilled enough to know the shortest and safest way!!! Getting there is one thing, getting there without trouble or hassles is another!
ps. About my above reference to Indian programmers, I am not saying that they are not skilled programmers!!! I am simply trying to say/suggest that programming should not be considered a low-skill job! I hope I haven't offended anyone (expect for those wise men, I don't mind offending them
developers who need a project manager are less "valuable" than those who manage themselves(less people, less expense) 'nuff said
It's not just the jobs going abroad, it's the whole outsourcing model that's a problem. While it's obvious that alot of companies have too many employees in IT since the Y2K blitz, many seem to think that somehow companies like IBM, EDS, BT, etc. etc. can save them money. My friend works for one of these companies, and they have been given the task of designing/running systems for a global bank. Now, the bank uses a different outsourcing company to run its networks. That company is annoyed because it didn't win the systems contract, so they are un-cooperative which leads to inefficiencies. His company managers have read the contract with rose-tinted specs...they don't realise that an outage in one system impacts more systems and so the amount of money they have to pay back in outage time is higher than they first thought.... Basically, they have now decided that they have to do things 'on the cheap', and hope that their systems are reliable... I'm not even going into the flaws in the design made by their 'architects'..... Never mind....the bank may loose out with less reliable systems and staff who are not loyal to them. No doubt the outsourcers will continue to persuade gullible companies that theirs is the way forward...
Do you see M$ or Apple outosurcing to India/China? Hmm...
And, now, we are considered a burden that must be outsourced. It's ironic, isn't it? Corporations who owe us their very ability to do business worldwide have no gratitude or loyalty for us, and are brushing us aside as though we don't exist. We're just line items to them.
well... what did you expect from Capitalism?
There is a thought provoking article here.
The game here really isn't about saving costs but to speed innovation and generate growth for the company
also
If India can turn into a fast-growth economy, it will be the first developing nation that used its brainpower, not natural resources or the raw muscle of factory labor, as the catalyst.
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
So 8 bits, 9 bits, 16 bits etc. is fine.
On my current C compiler a char happens to be 16 bit :-) It does not support octets in any way (I have to use shifts or bitfields to pack stuff in).
And of course ISO 10646/Unicode supports about a million code points (IIRC Java can only be bothered with the first 65536).
There seems to be a wide-spread belief that people in India and China are somehow less creative, less able to come up with revolutionary technology, that they're most likely only suitable for production or manufacturing, but not higher level jobs, e.g. architectural work.
True enough. But think about how many people from India and China come to the US for advanced degrees. THAT makes me think that the level of education there maybe ain't so hot? Unlike, say, welding, or sewing a shirt, programming isn't something you pick up in a week.
Great post!
The other disaster, besides the short-term business disasters due to project failure which I believe you're referring to here, is that by outsourcing our own American companies are paying to create a competitive workforce overseas. Guess what, India and other such countries will soon have more local ISVs to compete with U.S. ISVs. Combined with all the well-educated H1B visa holders heading home, there will be a strong trend away from U.S. created software. These companies should be especially effective at stealing (so to speak) the Asian markets, which should have been a giant growth market for American software companies.
Long term vision is not a strong point for most American management - as the whole outsourcing debacle makes blindingly clear.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
no coments
The really outrageous aspect of this remark is that, clearly, if there is one area of organized human activity Americans seem to have been getting worse at at a faster rate than any other, it's managing. If Dilber didn't exist, he would have to be invented.
My favorite is Ken Lay's "I didn't know".
"You don't understand. I have an MBA."
"You have an MBA?!? In that case I'll have to show you how to do it!"
FEDEX: So simple, even an MBA can do it! :)
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that ones work is terribly important." -BRussell
That gives me a twitch. Makes it sound like writing good code is on the same level as making good french fries at McDonalds. Besides, where are these wonderous work places that have project managers and architects? Here the programmer frequently is the project manager,architect, head chef and dishwasher. I don't think there's anything particularly high-skill about talking to the customer and translating their business process into a flow diagram and database schema. You mean people get paid just to do that?! And that's considered a high skill job? HAHAHAHAHA!
If there are people making good money doing that then I'm definitely on the wrong end of the business.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Professor Johnson's ideas are harsh but true. Sorry to all the geeks nostalgic of the 80s, but the children of the 90s have also grown up. The 14 year old coders of today are most likely better than you at doing what they do. You are obsolete!
Manual labor used to be blue-collar work, but that started getting massively outsourced a few decades ago. Give coding a few decades and it'll be exactly the same situation.
Right now you can get an online degree or a vocational 2-year degree from a place like DeVry - or not get a degree at all, and do Microsoft's or Oracle's, et al's cert tests - and get an entry-level coding job with no hassle.
This is the evolution of society. Everyone must become a specialist, and those not good enough to become elite specialists, regardless of the relative present complexity of their work, will exist on the next rung down.
This won't be a problem to any real hacker, whose motivation is always the acquisition of new knowledge. But to those thinking their elite C++ skills will keep them in a six figure income for the rest of their lives without any further progression, I'm sure this is disillusioning.
Microsoft China Technology Center
I can't find good links about Apple, but they have been developing both software and hardware in India and other Asian countries for quite some time. Asia, after all, has some of the best technical minds in the world.
As the Chairman of the American Republican Socialist Party and Chief of Staff of the American Socialist Republican People's Army, I'll end CAPITALISM!!!!! Where are my votes?
It does not take much skill to do most programming. There are some exceptions to this. Some programming problems are hard, but these are the exceptions and not the rule.
Software design, however, is hard for any non-trivial project.
Mr. Bivens - "Government's big roles in the future are to make sure global demand matches supply, and to provide social insurance schemes to make sure the living standards of the workers being left behind aren't sacrificed on the altar of global progress."
That sound suspiciously like sociallism to me.
Guess what? Marx was right. Capitalism does beget socialism, esp. in a Democratic Society, and the ruling class and rich want to assure their place in the world, and stave it off.
Sociallism can be brought about peacefully through Democracy, but the rich won't allow it.
Basically, how will the brainwashed masses vote when unemployment reaches 33%?
Which is why the Bushies and Diebold are in bed together. With globalization occuring, the extreme right(read, the rich) can expect to be out of elected positions for a long time.
To stay in power they need to hijack Democracy, or else lose to the people.
My children will inherit some extremely dark times.
cat sig >
If supply and demand price theory is true and a sizeable portion of non-defense IT work is moved offshore, what happens to the supply of IT workers in the US and what is its net effect on wages of said workers?
Winner: people in Europe whose governments tend to protect voters from loss of standard of living, loser: people in the US whose government is leading the race to the bottom.
It's not that simple.
As an American that's been in Europe, I'll say that the protectionism that Europe uses makes them pay a lot more money for goods that Americans buy for less money.
Look at food, housing, gasoline, taxes that Europeans pay compared with what Americans pay and you'll get the idea pretty quickly that protectionism is not a solution. High quality low cost (well, they used to be low cost) Japanese cars that are common in the U.S. and have spurred domestic automakers to improve their quality are not nearly as common in Europe, where, frankly, car quality suffers.
ATM machines over there dispense 50 Euro notes (about 50 dollars) for a good reason - you'll need them to pay for ordinary goods and services.
I recognize that the marketplace for labor is becoming globalized and that there is benefit to the efficiencies gained.
Make no mistake, it's been hard slogging in the good ole USA. Over the past few decades, there's been substantial erosion of the standard of living. Blue-collar unionized jobs in the 1950 s and 1960's that easily produced middle-class lifestyles are all but gone. In their place are lower paying jobs without as many benefits. And a consumer culture of debt, both parents working, the TV raising the kids to live on the same consumer treadmill and to feel and emote rather than to think.
There's been some impressive gains in U.S. worker productivity, especially through the 1990's, but these have not translated into correspondingly higher wages, but rather into improved returns on shareholder equity.
If left to continue, current trends will result in a small number of people owning lots of equity and most people working for subsistence wages.
While I don't believe that simply robbing the rich and giving to the poor is a viable model, there needs to be some checks and balances to prevent situations like what prevailed in the 19th century in the US and the UK. Capitalism provides no inherent floor to wages except when people get really fed up and unionize or change government policy either democratically or violently. But it's not at all certain that the new system they'll institute will create the greatest good.
Here's some ideas that might help.
1. There's no reason whatsoever to guarantee the heirs of stockholders as many economic benefits as they currently receive.
2. Workers should receive equity stakes in companies as well as wages. Intended for retirement, these stakes could only be sold early at a substantial loss.
3. Management should definitely receive the majority of their compensation in long-term equity stakes to inhibit actions which only serve the short-term interests of shareholders.
4. Remove the farm subsidies in the U.S., Europe, Japan that not only cost taxpayers and consumers, but also prevent 3rd world nations from competing on a level playing field and providing an opportunity for them to raise their standard of living out of the subbasement.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Yes a skilled housepainter costs X. Most people dont need a skilled housepainter they need a reasonably competent one. They dont need a perfect job, they need a painter that can give them what they need at a price they can afford.
...does anyone honestly blame them?
Coding that is neither innovative nor complicated does not need to be done by someone in the US making 65-80k a year. If someone in India making 1/5-1/10 the salary can do a job that is "good enough" and on schedule for the person paying them then they will get that job....and they should
The problem is many people posting on this board see in black or white. Either its skilled or its crap...it doesnt happen that way in the real world.
The problem programmers in the US have is not the outsourcing or the visas, its the pre-2001 assumption that anyone is irreplacible, it bred complacency. When costs got tight employers said "I can cut costs 80% and produce an acceptable product" (note I said acceptable not execellent)
My father was laid of over a year ago. He told me recently he talked to his old manager who told him that he (the manager) basically manages an empty office with all the employees outsourced to India.
Recently the manager has been having problems with not getting back from India what he requested do to misunderstandings in communication. This is causing a lot of problems and ends up costing more money than it would have if the company hadn't outsourced.
Winner: Someone who accepts that the rules have now changed, and adjusts to play under the new rules
Loser: Someone who continues trying to compete under the old rules, who bitches and moans about "the good old days" and "the way things used to be"
Working for a large, notionally-faceless employer has only been common for about the last 100 years; prior to that, the vast majority of income-earners worked in their own small business producing products or services that they would sell directly. You were a baker, a bar owner or whatever, and you sold your goods and services to the other people in your town. Only in the 20th century did it become common for masses of people to work for a single employer and expect job security, so maybe what's happening now is an evolutionary step rather than the end of the world.
What's happening in IT now, with outsourcing of jobs to cheaper markets, is exactly what's happened to many other industries (primarily manufacturing) in Western countries over the last few decades. I'm sure there's ex-factory workers who've been out of work for years who are still convinced that "things will get better", but the majority of those people reskilled and moved on.
I suspect a sizeable chunk of these displaced workers thought their world was ending at the time as well, but it didn't.
There's now many indicators that the days of a majority of people in prosperous Western nations working for large employers may be coming to an end. It's not necessarily a doom-and-gloom period coming up, but sitting back waiting for things to change isn't likely to be the best preparation for what lies ahead.
Fact: Although 40% of "coders" (an insulting term when used to described an employed software engineer) don't have even a bachelor's, you can see the result when you run some of the software out there. Windows is probably a good example.
If they're going to move my job to India, then it is time for me to begin writing open source software again, since doing so could prevent them from making a profit.
I find your comment curioius because I've seen coder/programmer positions at all four of the IT companies that I've worked for over the past 9 years. These positions differ qualitatively from analyst type positions that require designing software alongside writing code.
Mix these two... Economics and Biology.
A country is an organism, the money is its bloodflow.
In order to survive the bloodflow between itself and others in the comunity must be in equilibrium.
the US is already in a deficit situation, outsourcing any work is just going to make the bloodloss worse.
Is an outsourced programmer in india buying more american products than a non outsourced worker in the States?
its nice lowering your costs of production, but who are you producing for?
I understand the importance of free trade and improving economies world-wide.
But I can't understand this paragraph:
It's all about innovation and productivity. As long as we maintain those two engines, we'll continue to have a very high standard of living. Out in the Bay Area there are plenty of folks who would love to create a little bit of protectionism around their I.T. jobs, but we are far better off letting a lot of those jobs go. Low-skill jobs like coding are moving offshore and what's left in their place are more advanced project management jobs.
Is he really claiming project management is the key to innovation and productivity?
Besides, I'd imagine the typical project management job would be the next to go anyways. Most companies would want their project manager on -site.
Those that cannot teach: manage projects
Those that cannot manage projects: audit projects
Those that cannot audit projects: develop ambiguous corporate guidelines...
etc. etc..
Remember-whores can be your friends.
Being a rocket scientist myself, I have found that the ability to program is essential to my job. There is a lot of data gathering and processing in building a rocket or missile. I use VBA with Excel and Access all the time for wire harnesses. The mass property guys use it too. The thing is management does not seem to know that computers are important in design work so they won't hire a programming engineer to keep everything organized. A lot of us have had to learn in a haphazard way and it is reflected in the programming structure. Also most design work is done on paper with, get this, a pencil. Management is slowly coming around now to the idea that the computer might be useful. It might be because all the new government contracts are starting to add up and we can't build fast enough due to human error in design.
Money = Work/Knowledge
Segmentation fault (Division by zero). Core dumped.
(Geez, why isn't there a "-1, Obvious joke" moderation option ?)
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
if you'd ever spent any time around the building trades, you'd understand that many of these lowly 'tradesmen' carpenters actually know more about building than the architects--a large percentage of architects have only theoretical knowledge, and often design incomplete buildings with substandard, or even defective designs (of course, the building looks good in the CAD fly-through)--carpenters often have to apply some serious 'real world' problem-solving to fix some architect's fancy plan...
i doubt it will change your mind, but your flawed analogy makes ME look at outsourcing as more than just the loss of a few insignificant 'tradesmen'...
when can we begin outsourcing teachers, K-12? I live in a school district with high tax rate and absolutely zero performance. We could begin re-structuring the district immediately if we could cut costs like this.
A hand up and a foot on every chest...
I never expected to see this in a post modded to +4,
You must be new here.
Sure, the analogy is not apt in all respects, but the distinction is still important in many ways. I'm sure that there are, and will be, programmers who code as 'tradesmen' who have a great deal of practical coding knowledge, far over and above the theoretical design knowledge of those with advanced training. I know from experience that there is much about good coding design which I learned as an 'apprentice' to a very experienced programmer which I have never seen taught in computer science courses. You're never going to hire an architect to do a carpenter's job, but the same is true vice-versa.
The other important difference is the entry requirements into the market. Carpentry is something you can learn entirely by doing it - either on your own or as an apprentice to a more senior carpenter. However you can't be an architect without spending a lot of time in school, and earn a degree, and then usually you also would serve as a junior member of a larger firm for a long time to gain experience.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Except that a reasonably competant house painter is a skilled one. An unskilled housepainter is not reasonably competant, ie they are incompetant and equivilent to a non-skilled housepainter, like me.
Having painted a room and then paid a painter to paint the rest of the rooms in my house, I can assure you that an amatuer paint job in any house is immediate and obvious to me. The ceiling/wall line is cut badly, the woodwork isn't smooth and even, the gap between woodwork and the walls isn't even, and even wall coverage and texture are uneven. Bad priming jobs can be seen as well (shine or uneven coverage can be caused by this).
Some people may be satisfied with this or they may just not notice the difference or not have the experience to know (ie, always lived in poorly painted houses).
continuing your analogy, would you be happy if all of the carpenters in our society were outsourced? we'd still have the 'big picture' architects, but the guys who do the real work would be elsewhere, leaving a knowledge gap between theory and reality...
i don't think we're really that far apart--obviously, you've come up through the ranks, and had a good amount of real world programming experience to augment your schooling--the question you should be asking is, where is the next generation of up-and-comers going to get this experience, if all the 'hammer and nails' work is being done elsewhere?
source
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
When viewed from a manufacturing perspective, IT is emerging into the assembly line model all over again. In the early days of manufacturing someone wanetd somtething built they went to a master craftsman. The craftsman had all the knowledge of how to build and all the tools. They knew how to get and use raw materials.
When the revolution started, materials were easy to get and they had a standard degree of quality. That is where the OS and programming languages are today. That's where database systems and intefaces are. Anyone can get to those resoruces and everyone can know how they will behave.
The industrial revolution brought about standards for design, and engineers could be taught the rules to design without them ever having to have the skills to build anything. Those designs were very complete, very precise, and delivered in standard forms that could be impelmented by anyone with the proper tools.
Along with the advanced designs, machine tools evolved that had the precision to replicate a design and to produce quality items from any proper design. Machining and assembly became commodity items.
With these two advancements, the master craftsman no longer had a place in the manufacturing cycle. He was supplanted by engineering and more advanced tools that brought manufacturing to the masses.
This is the model with software, but we're not there with software yet. And that is why outsourcing is a struggle today. Outsourcing assums that coding is a commodity skill that can produce a quality product from a proper design. For htat to be so, the designs of software must be as rigorous and systematic, complete and accurate and precise, as for any manufactured item. It simply isn't so.
Personally, I think we're there with the resources, but not hte tools and the design. Computers and the OS and the databse are adequate. It's the design and the tooling that have FAR too much variance. And until the industry has evolved to that point, in say another 50 years or so, it'll never be an assembly line, no matter how much sense it may make to the business world to try to make it so.
- Sig this!
You just can't generalize like that. Some European countries are more expensive, others are definately cheaper. I have lived in several European countries and have lived in Silicon Valley for about 3 years.
The cost of living is definately higher here than any other place I have ever lived. I make 2x the money that I made living in Europe, but the money here is only good for a) saving and then b) leaving the country. Money don't buy you anything in California. A good dinner here is about $60-$70. A phenomenal dinner in France is $20. A nice apartment here is at least $1700. I crappy house in East Palo Alto, where you probably will get shot while moving in, is $400k.
I am somewhat worried that the high cost of living is going to cause serious problems for the valley. It is very very expensive to start a business here, since your burnrate is going to be incredible high. Why? Because the employees need to pay the completely outragous prices here.
Good project management doesn't pretend to know everything (who can?) or try to tell everybody what to do (they'd just get ignored). It earns the respect and cooperation of the rest of the team, and makes sure people understand the consequences of breaking the rules (like fiddling with new features when you're supposed to be stomping showstopper bugs). If you don't understand that kind of coordination, either you've never had the good luck to work with a good PM (very likely) or you're just to full of yourself to be capable of real teamwork.
Advancement always has winners and losers. We have become a two-tiered ecomomy. At one end there are service jobs - which are low-paying, have similar skill sets and pay little. People in this set are interchangeable, even if they are good at their jobs, because the cost of training and the benefit of ability to the bottom line is small. For lots of technical jobs, the skills to learn them take a long time. They are not as exchangeable over time, because the knowledge is harder to attain and can only be gotten through experience. These jobs make a lot of money, so they are targets for downsizing if possible.
The problem is that the technical class is expected to specialize - the specialized knowledge is how they keep their jobs in the first place. Of course, when you spend time specializing, it's hard to get a broad skill set, and when your line of work goes under, the time it takes to retrain into another specialized field is long. When a specialty goes under, you have a large amount of instant un(der)employment which takes a long time to remedy and even then usually ends with the people making less than before (which was the point, I guess). The kind of in-depth knowledge that is need to keep a technical job is inconsistent with the kind of broad knowledge required to have a hedge against job loss. At the other end, people in service jobs don't have much incentive to be good - being good doesn't necessarily result in higher pay, but takes time away from generating broad based skills that will be needed because of the transient nature of the labor market. Where we encourage people to be good at what they do, we hold them responsible for not having broad skills, and where we view people as replaceable, we're unhappy that they don't take the time to do them well. I've left out the managerial set, which is small but seems the only potential class to benefit from this structure - the transience of service labor makes them necessary there, while at technical jobs coordination between specialties is necessary. Money generated by cutting jobs or outsourcing goes disproportionately to this class.
Things change, and that is good - we don't make buggy whips because there are better and more useful things to be done. The system that we are building is one where neither particular knowledge nor satisfaction in work quality is valued. There may be lots of interesting things to do, but if they're done badly or slowly by a population constantly looking over its shoulder, I'm not certain that we've improved ourselves. People focus on the old fields because their loss highlights the risks of specialization - when outsourcing of jobs in a technical field happens, lots of people are likely to be jobless for a long time. The risk weighs on anyone in a similar field, and the way to mitigate that risk makes it more likely that one will lose one's job. Hence the wailing and gnashing of teeth - we're in a Catch-22 and don't see a way out that isn't counterproductive to us,.
I was going to be a mathematician, but went into software instead. And I wouldn't say they're at all alike. A mathematician is a scientist, attempting to do something unique that has never been done before. They don't spend their days solving differential equations; that's more of an engineering task.
I've also done woodworking as a hobby, and developing software does have many similarities. A woodworker may create unique items, but the methods are well known, and are often very algorithmic (such as producing dovetail joints).
The one activity that struck me as most like writing software was writing a novel. Each novel is unique, yet there are common structures that they all share. The style must be consistent, and there are lots of small pieces that have to work together.
This quote is pure, unadultered (dare I say racist?) arrogance.
I have to say, bringing up the race card in each and every Slashdot story about outsourcing is really, really funny.
I don't know about the US, but in Canada I'd venture at least 25% if not 50% of people working in IT are of Asian/Indian descent. Lower echelons, project managers, you name it. Hardly anyone here questions the abilities of someone from an Asian/Indian race to do the job.
What is in doubt is the ability of people who may or may not possess the skill set/education that we receive here.
It has fuck all to do with race, and I really wish Slashdot mods would stop moderating every post up just because someone tries to supplement their arguments with "you're being racist!"
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Yes, you end up with something like Linux, or Apache, Samba, Emacs, KDE, Gnome, MAME, SDL, Mplayer, Xine...
(Yes, I know that those projects all have leaders, but they act more as lead programmers than as managers.)
- Surgeon: chief programmer
- Co-pilot: able to do what surgeon does but is less experienced
- Administrator: handles money, people, space, machines, etc...)
- Editor: surgeon must do doc, but editor must clean it up
- Two secretaris
- Program clerk: maintaining technical records
- Toolsmith: serves surgeon's need for tools, utilities
- Tester: Devise system component tests, does debugging
The crux of Brook's theory is that you can only grow a development team so large before you loose site of the goal. Adding more people simply increases the amount of communication that must go on."Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
They talk about how programming will be outsourced and then these programmers will magically become trained in the medical sciences in order to build these wonderful devices for an aging population. This is pure fiction. The programmers who lose their jobs, will find others at McDonalds not at some R&D shop developing medical devices. How are they supposed to pay for this new training when they can barely afford to eat?
Let's face it folks. The current administration has been a miserable failure They have traded away America's future prosperity, in order to give big businesses more profit so that they can be re-elected. This is more of the same like the biggest tax-cut that they have given to the wealthiest 5% of Americans, at the expense of everyone else.
These guys talk about moving up the food-chain in order to keep jobs in the US, but do you really believe that even project management will not be outsourced? Within 5-10 years, there will not be any kind of high-tech companies based in the US. That's where this is leading to.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Day job: Years of development, professional management, no product
Night job: Years of development, managed by programmers, thousands of users
Software is not what the US is going to be doing if the programmers are eliminated. Most of the successful software in my experience comes from programmers who manage themselves, not recruited managers. Japan, India, and China have this mentality but not the U.S. Marc Andreesen had in interesting quote,
"For me, you are much better off having a founding technologist run things if you want a long-term strategy."
Too bad all the founding technologists are being eliminated.
I see three things coming: 1) Mid level managers will have to move or be outsourced (since the people they are managing will be distant, and someone will figure out that managing by email doesn't work as well). 2) Major corporations will start to feel a major hit to their wallets, as the source of consumers dries up. 3) If (1) or (2) does not create a significant correction, the environment will slow it's downward spiral, since consumption will drop dramtically. So ... while I see this as a very painful thing (I've seen jobs I've been working on moved over seas), I'm not completely sure it's a bad thing.
Unfair, yes. Bad, maybe not.
Doug
Any company so dense as to have a category of employees called "coders" who supposedly "simply" code what the analysts and designers came up with deserves an IT death that it is already well on its way to. Coding is not "low level" for any meaningful value of "coding". If a project is designed so it has some low level "coding" of sufficient volume as to benefit from cheaper labor it is already a loser.
It's a lot easier when you can take all the ex-customer's business information along as well.
I don't feel like looking it up, but one outsourcing CEO said that he expected problems with outsources becoming competitors, but the problem was 5 years away and not of current interest to him.
He'll have cashed out and his successor and whoever the stockholders are going to be by then holding the bag.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Why not follow things to their logical conclusion. Outsource the Project "Managers", executives and other corperate officers to India or China. They already speak the language of our new "workforce" and we could save bundle on "Golden Parachutes". "Build a man a fire and he's warm for the day, Set a man on fire and he's warm for life." -unknown
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
... and for in spite of your blabering, it is still telling you that these guys (the managers, the architects) are more valuable than technicians or even Engineers. Choose whatever reasons you like, markets are not necessarily fair but they set the prices on our skills, no matter how much we may dislike it.
Keep dreaming and blabering and ignoring reality.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The global economy is telling you that programming is becoming a low level skill, not because it is easy (have you ever tried doing janitorial work? It is horribly heavy) but because the demand for those skills is shrinking and the offer of those skills has skyrocketed.
Low demand, high offer, prices go down. Expensive offerers go bust.
And is only going to get worse (China is set to join the fest, and after them places like the Philippines and Vienam, with loads of bright people, will follow).
You have two options: keep your head buried in the sand and feeling bad about managers and other people that have not been touched (yet) by these trends, or prepare yourself to compete in this kinf of environment.
I will not pretend I have the answers, but certainly I am not a fan of the ostrich solution, my eyes are too sensitive and I dont want sand on them.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Were is that mythical company that produces perfect software beating deadlines and that requires no support?
We await eagelry yout bat-answer.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... as in this post, those PMs of yours are worth their price in gold.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... is dreadfuly difficult and taxing.
But there are millions willing to do it for peanuts.
Markets speak and dictate, ignore them at your peril.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
with being a cum-guzzling whore. Keep yo judgments to yo self okay...!
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
Thank you. Two shows a night folks, tip your waitress. Happy Goat sake on special tonight.
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
I think you're taking my words too far, or further than I intend. I am not saying that ALL carpenters are less able to do design than ALL architects. I am saying that this is about what is typical. I am making a generalization, not a categorical argument. Certainly there are carpenters who have extensive design / theoretical knowledge and can perform as an architect in many circumstances. These people are generally hired as the senior tradesman in large projects, and act as intermediary between the designers and the builders. My grandfather worked in exactly this capacity for years, and was very good at it. In fact he was one of the most senior builders in all of Canada, and would travel the country to work in just such a capacity on such projects, so I do know a little bit about this.
However, I still think that there is quite a difference to be drawn between the types of occupations - perhaps it has more to do with mindset than with actual knowledge, but, on the whole, carpenters would not do as well in designing buildings as architects. Certainly I think a certain amount of this has to do with the type of training they're given, although it is of course a complex mix of social factors.
No, I would not advocate outsourcing all carpenters. As I said in my original post, it all depends on the nature of the project. Returning to the analogy, if you're constructing a building in which there are a great number of identical doors, you might easily send the specifications for the doors to some other firm, perhaps overseas, and have all the doors built there. However you obviously can't outsource everything, it's just not practical, you can't have an entire apartment building constructed in Sumatra and shipped to Long Island. There has to be a certain amount of construction taking place on location, under the supervision of those in charge of the project. That was, I think, my original point - it all depends on the nature of the business you're dealing with and how central the work is to the nature of that business. Peripheral projects are easily outsourced, integral ones are not.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
My illusion with brands disappeared once and for good. There is a story behind this.
I worked a summer job at a factory which made a generic product (it was paper, but might as well have been cola, candy, or whatever).
Once we were running a roll of paper into the end product for a big, known brand. Then the order became full, so we just changed the cover sheets of the packages, the cardboard box designs etc. and continued to run the same damn paper into those obscure unknown brand boxes.
The product was 100% THE SAME, although the other expensive brand sells at maybe 3x the price of the other.
And that's when I realized it: why should I pay extra just to get a certain kind of package, when the quality of the actual product is the same as the expensive one!
Likewise, cola is just cola. Cheap cola is cola. It tastes like Coca Cola. It tastes like Pepsi Cola. Who gives a hell about having the red or blue picture in the bottle.
All the criteria you presented are fine engineering criteria.
Had only my ex-gf's dad's colleague mentioned just one of them, I might consider him to be more good than evil. As an engineer, the first criteria to cross his mind was "how much will it cost my customer when my product kills one of their customers". If that's what it means to be an engineer, I'll happily remain a programmer, where making things "better" acutally means "better".
cat
i'm sorry, but that post sounds like someone without a degree hoping, or someone with a degree being bitter.
primarily, in my experience the coders i've worked with that have certs and no degrees get -shiat- on by corporate america. they get paid half as much or less, they have a piece of paper that -expires- and becomes obsolete, and they have very little leverage in the open-market - because their qualification is locked to a vendor.
then they either have to pay out-of-pocket to update their certs regularly, or they enter into a neo-bondage wage-slavery to their employer in exchange for having the tests (and classes if they need them) paid for.
and just how many job postings say 'MCSA/MCSD required' vs 'BA/BS required'? a quick trip through monster disproves this supposedly 'informative' rant.
personally, I have -never- seen a coding job that required an MS cert. and i've switched jobs -alot-. even now that the job market is tight, i've never seen a job posting that says MCSD/MCSA required. I'm sure that they don't hurt, and i'm sure that the same isn't true for hardware/network guys -- but we're talking about coding here.
whereas any hands-on you get in school will be obsoleted, you will -still- be writing the same algorithms. for as long as people have been, and will be writing code, the core skills haven't and won't change and are entirely platform and language neutral.
good coders need to be able to write good -algorithms-. MS doesn't test you on that.
good coders need to write good designs. MS only tests you on your ability to use their tools to leverage -their- design.
good coders need to be able to write clean code, that's documented and easy to maintain. MS doesn't even pretend to test you on that.
a MS cert means you know how to use their tools, plain and simple. it in no way means you can even use their tools -well-. the main thing that the cert proves (and the degree proves to a lesser extent) is that you're willing to play the corporate game. certs, like MBAs, are primarily tools to jockey for promotions in the giant games of chutes and ladders that occur in mega-corporate america. quite simply, if you frown on the idea of getting a cert, you'd be miserable at any company that gives weight to one.
true, a man with a degree and a cert will likely get a job over a man with only a degree - all else being equal. but a man with only a degree will do -vastly- better than a man with only a cert.
the only one thing truly matters is experience.
which is why i would sooner recommend a coder in school to put every piece of code he ever wrote for fun or profit in an online portfolio. app and source.
Because if it ever comes down to a handful of equally qualified candidates, the employer will always go with the guy whose work he can -see-. (unless your work is crap, but in that case it isn't a toss up between equally qualified candidates is it?)
you can wax nostalgic about how coding had more integrity before the short dev cycles of today, and you've got a damn good point there.
but you can't say that employers give preference to certs over degrees. that's absurdly false.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"