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Long Term Effects of Outsourcing
simulate writes "There have been several postings about outsourcing and offshoring in the past
few weeks. Is outsourcing just a fad? In Outsourcing
Programmers is Bad Strategy for Software Companies
author Michael Bean compares offshoring to the enthusiasm for Internet startups
in the Nineties.
He claims
that
outsourcing programmers is bad for companies not because
of the programmer layoffs, but because technology companies lose their
capacity
to innovate.
Offshoring is a mistake
when technology companies confuse operational
effectiveness and strategy." I don't think the comparasion to Dot Bombs is entirely accurate - the trend to globalization overall has been going on for decades. Still interesting piece.
f you're building an innovative software company, you need to retain your best and brightest programmers internally. Software companies entirely based in India can successfully innovate over the long-term, as can US companies or companies based anywhere else. It's this recent trend of US software companies outsourcing all their development that's bad strategy.
Long Term Effect? I don't have a job.
oh, gee, is outsourcing just a fad? .. i dunno .. is money grubbing on the part of corporations just a fad?
:p
idiot
As long as the companies keep their creative, winning, trend-making management teams, they'll manage to stay innovative! Won't they?
Those guys have MBAs. They must be smart.
While I don't think it's what you're referring to precisely, there has been a considerable move to outsourcing customer service call-centres in recent years. I think that in some cases this has led to a much higher level of customer service from the companies concerned. That's outsourcing taken care of. Offshoring, or moving the business outside of the UK (in these cases) has been considered lately as well. This seems to be having the opposite effect, as the new centres in foreign parts are staffed with inexperience workers without the requisite communication skills. It's going to continue as a trend though. Because it makes money. Cost rules all these days. No one cares about the service level, just about the profit margin. Right?
If I seem a little hostile about this particular trend, it may be because the jobs of a few people I know are under threat as a result of it.
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit
Has this guy ever worked for Accenture or PWC Tech Consulting? Those guys essentially have a few people do the design, write some high level code documents, and then hand it off to some code monkeys for assembly (oftentimes recent college graduates who didn't know squat about programming until their corporate training kicked in). So his argument isn't good - companies can still keep the design close to home and then outsource the assembly to India or China.
:) .
FYI - I worked for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) so I know how those guys do business. I left after two months
smd4985
This would be similar to the people on eBay who just sell drop-shipped items.
If you ask me, India is on the way to the Shoe Event Horizon, and it will only take one piece of protectionist legislation in the US to tumble the whole house of cards.
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
Are we saying programmers in the US are more innovative than Indian, Russian or other off shore programmers?
Evolution or ID?
Business Week had a good article on this a while back. Problem solved. The water will seek its own level.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Jobs move where there is cheap labour. Even within the US, Call centers are found in cheaper places in Tennessee, Oklahoma, etc. This is the system the US has been forcing on the world for decades. When it bites them back, they whine and whine and whine.
The bottom line looks great, when you start digging around your new app, or code you find that the quality is generally missing.
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
The comparison of design/assembly splits between manufacturing and software development provided some useful insight, but it's not like companies don't realize this.
The hard part about realizing the gains from outsourcing is that most firms aren't up to managing such a long-term, strategic relationship in the manner that's required. When the work is done in-house, you can trust that the developers have your company's best interest in mind - when dealing with an outsourcer, their ultimate goal is to extract as much money from you as possible. If done right, it can be worth it, but as we've seen, many firms haven't been up to that challenge.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
What is the difference of outsourcing overseas or using contract labor for your home country? You are using outside labor to reduce your budget for the software release. So, if you are going to outsource then why does it matter where the work goes?
"Farming out development to legions of programmers overseas will not create a differentiation advantage. When a technology company outsources software development, that company loses its capacity to innovate and its competitive advantage."
the author seems to be under the impression that the success and innovation of a product is purely in the hands of a bunch of software developers. this is rubbish. innovation in the software industry is also about building a product to solve a particular problem - and well. if the functionality is well designed (say with some good interaction design) by a US-based company, the specifications can be written up in the US and sent to the Indian shop for authoring. in a well designed component-based framework, the "glue" can be built in the US whereas the components or specific objects can be farmed out at a lower cost.
The largest problem with outsourcing/off-shoring software development is SECURITY. Remember Y2K? Many major corporations outsourced their Y2K work to foreign countries because they didn't want to hire the extra programmers locally to do it. What several companies found when they got the code back was that trojan horses, backdoors, logic bombs, and other nasties in the code in addition to the Y2K fixes.
NOTE: I am *NOT* saying *ALL* people from other countries are dishonest. You can find dishonest people anywhere in the world.
What I am saying is that if you turn control of your software code over to someone else, you run the risk of them altering it to their advantage. This also applies to local hires as well, but it's MUCH easier to keep track of what your people are doing locally than half a world away.
Why do you think that the US Government/Military doesn't outsource? The same with most financial institutions: SECURITY. (Microsoft not included.)
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
He writes about the chocolatier specifying the box design, then 'outsourcing' manufacture of the box elsewhere. Well, most software-producing companies do not have that software as their 'real' business either. They want to do whatever it is they do (retail operations, selling hardware, whatever), and the software is a sideline - important, but not what they are _doing_, just like those boxes the article mentions. In fact, the overwhelming majority of all software produced is of this kind, rather than the high-profile stuff we tend to think of first, where the software itself _is_ the product.
So, just like with that chocolate box, there really is nothing at all wrong with doing the design and specifications, and working with an external producer to do the actual manufacture.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Actually I liked Michael's article. It is my experience that while programmers from India and other countries are every bit as technically capable as American programmers they seem to fall down in the design area. Specifically, other cultures produce programmers who aren't quite as confrontational as Americans. What determines a good design for an American product is it's developers initiative at voicing their opinions of what the product should do.
Design in America is confrontational. It has to be. That's what makes American software products good. When a company takes it's core software and ships it overseas it looses that drive from employees to make the software better.
This is not to say that software developed elsewhere cannot be good but it does mean that software developed in India must use an Indian model for design and development if it is to be successful. For an American product competing on a slight technological advantage this is bad.
HP, as a sidebar, tends to outsource end of life stuff to India.
Beware the wood elf!!!
Why not outsource the CEO as well? Why not outsource the customers to countries with _higher_ wages? I think it's time these companies started thinking outside the box.
One good ancillary point made by this article is that writing software is inexpensive ...it's the -design- of software that costs so much.
We all generally take it as a given that software is expensive to develop, but that's really not true. Only the design/requirements phase is expensive. If you know exactly what it is that you need to write, in great detail, then the actual generation of documented, working code isn't that time consuming.
This is why open source software has been successful in recent years. The feature sets of operating systems, office suites, web servers, and database management systems have all stabilized to the point where we all now know exactly what each of these applications ought to look like. As a result, teams of enthusiasts and hobbyists can write credible, enterprise-applications at negligible expense. Open Source works well in precisely the same situations that offshoring works well. That's not to say that Open Source developers can't also be innovative, but I do claim that anything you can offshore successfully you'll probably be able to Open Source successfully as well, for exactly the same reason -- the expensive up-front design work has already been done.
Add to that the fact that the cost of reproducing software is nearly zero, then Open Source becomes an economic inevitability. Kudos to Stallman for starting the movement, but it would have happened eventually anyway I think, because eventually society gets wise to the fact that corporations are re-selling the same zero-cost product over and over again, and somebody somewhere will get the idea into their head that there is an obviously better way: write it once and for all and then just give it away.
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
Having just come from a company that was rabildly outsourcing, we saw a different backlash of the outsourcing problem. The execs were outsourcing everything they possibly could, even when it made no sense. However, the company was still not going to be positively improved financially by this happening. What everyone remaining on staff could see is that it would boost short-term profits just long enough for the execs to rape the company with fat bonuses just before bailing out. That's apparently another popular trend.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
What we've found during the six month trial of hiring outside programming help this is what we've found:
o While Indian programmers (we used 8 different ones for 6 different projects) may be perfectly competent to produce software to spec, they usually ALWAYS built it to spec and NEVER brought up any issues they might have found in the process. Either they didn't see a flaw in the design or just figured it would be job security if they changed or fixed the ap later.
o We had no luck with Russian programmers (We had went thru 4 of them and none could complete the project they say they could have)
o American (We used 10 of them for 8 projects) outsourced programmers communicated MUCH better with their project managers and usually offered suggestions to how we might want to change the app to make it better or more efficient. The applications developed stateside required less QA and went to market faster.
Is this a good enough sized sample to make judgements? Maybe not. But good enough for us.
After the six months, it just didn't make sense to outsource, howerver if we do again, it will be domestic. The shortterm costs may look good but a 33% savings per hour usually gets lost in the longer development cycle.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
everything will come to a natural balance, and the benefits. With some countries making software, and others holding the world as military hostages to stubbornly hold onto an economic position
... in the normal sense of the term. Outsourcing implies farming out the job to some other company. On the other hand the examples that the article gives about Hewlett-Packard and Oracle employing the programmers in India as in-house employees. So, the capacity to innovate still remains within the company, though it moves outside the US. So, I don't see how the argument works for most of the bigger companies like HP, Oracle, IBM, GE, TI etc. etc. who run their own operations in India, and do not outsource to other companies as much.
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For example of innovations in subsidarys outside US see
http://www.iht.com/articles/121488.htm
and the slashdot story
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/2
This article qualifies as "content"---stuff that at first glance seems informative but isn't. It fails to site even one reason why offshore workers are worse at innovating than domestic workers.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
The sooner IT "professionals" realize it, the better. 10 years ago, it was a luxury. 5 years ago, it was still somewhat a luxury. Now? Sorry guys - it's a commodity. The supply of IT workers is much higher than the demand, and that leads to dropping prices and an empahsis on cost and output. If you want to look at the king of commodity production, look at what the auto companies of Japan have done. Standardization, minimization of cost, outsourcing of all possible components to low cost suppliers. If you think the Information Technology industry is somehow special, or that it requires some exceptional level of expertise, try again. Thirty years ago, engineering was a luxury as well. Not any more.
Well the problem as I see it is that business have used outsourcing in the past to deal with non vital activities, but now tech companies are outsourcing their core businesses. Personally I trust this will not work out, the big surprise is to see one company after the other jump off the bridge.
Another fun consideration is that India as far as I know it doesn't seem to be concerned with copyright laws all that much. (Which is why in the past most companies outsourced manual labour.) Not only are these comapnies asking other people to do their core business (and not help em on the side) but they are also giving their code to a bunch of pirates using cut and paste to emulate creativity.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Where does Linus Torvalds come from? Do all major contributions to Linux come from the U.S.?? Remember Gupta, Magic and other good software that made it big some time ago before M$.
The percentage of development work that is truly innovative is relatively small, but the article is correct. Out sourcing the "innovative" parts of a company is very dangerous and will lead to more problems. From first hand experience, innovation comes from interaction between the developers. Very few individuals can cook up innovation in box all by him/herself. Can innovation happen in an outsourced model? Sure it's possible, but it's going to be considerably harder. This is why companies like Oracle, MS, Intel and others are expanding their divisions in India and china. They maintain tight control because it's not out sourced to another company. Companies can offshore their R&D, they just have to open a division in a foriegn country. For better or worse, that's reality.
Based on my trip, I don't think good programmers should worry. More importantly, if you have the skills, you are way ahead of your Indian counterparts right now (emphasis on right now). Keep improving your skills and becoming more and more expert and you will continue to be employed. Focus on fad languages and "me too" web designs and you're putting yourself in front of a train. I can't tell you how many people in India listed C# and Java as their primary languages...C'mon now, we all know that those are good for small things and prototyping, but they aren't languages you write OSs or such in.
Offshoring and outsourcing are not bad in their own right, but managers who think it is a panacea will be bitten for their lack of vision. The world is going to be global. Get used to it. Recognize that we AREN'T worth more than Doctors and other professionals.
Every profession, when it is in its infancy, has the potential to create very wealthy people relative to the norm. After a time, those new professions become common and the lucre standardizes lower than originally expected. Our incomes in the West will decrease somewhat. I think it sucks, too. That said, the cost-basis for India is growing geometrically now (from 4k to 7k to 18k in five years). Guess what? Those programmers in India who are good are unwilling to be without the amenities that you are I take for granted...good phones...broadband...etc. The infrastructure must grow and that costs money...so you have to pay them more...and costs grow.
Get over it, grow in your profession, become an expert and highly sought-after. It doesn't matter where you live...it matters what you know and can demonstrate.
Dave
"... but you can love completely without complete understanding." - Norman Maclean, "A River Runs Through It"
Besides, what was there to protest? Clinton was the best president this country has had since the Kennedy. Great economy, sane foreign policy (unlike the let's-make-everyone-gang-up-on-us GWB) and an eye on the welfare of the poor. He even got a blowjob from a (then) pretty intern in the oval office. How many presidents can boast on something like that?
Here is also an interesting article about Wal-Mart and its influence on its suppliers... Globalization seems to be pushed forward by a few, for the benefits of a few....
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
[Reposted due to technical issues with moderation]
1. Stop fucking whining about your incompetent, overpaid fat-asses being pushed out of your cushy web monkey jobs in favour of 5 harder (much harder) working, more ethical, and more deserving Indians doing 10 times the work.
2. Tell Lou Dobbs to SHUT THE EVER-LIVING FUCK UP!
3. Find replacement work more suitable for your talents. Might I suggest retail, or retail food services?
4. Stop pissing off the rest of the world and maybe the rest of us will actually WANT to hire or invest in America.
5. Fingerprint me for wanting to visit your crime ridden shithole? No thanks, guess I will NEVER visit there and bring my much needed tourist and investment dollars there. I am not a criminal, so don't treat me like one. Instead, why not clean up your fucking stupid gun loving culture and rid the streets of your OWN criminals?
6. Fuck off and see suggestion #1.
Follow this train of logic: If more and more software jobs move overseas, then there will be less drive to join an industry where you are paid a mediocre wage for complex work. Thus there will be fewer students enrolling university programs in the industry, and thus universities will cut back on software departments. Ultimately the very infrastructure of the nation's software industry will be severly reduced. No follow similar logic in the country that was offshored too, and the reverse happens.
They call it "Anonymous Coward" for a reason, don't they....
You know exactly where you can insert your "much needed tourist and investment dollars".
Thank you and have a nice day!
Fingerprint me for wanting to visit your crime ridden shithole?
Despite the obviousness of his well-desserved "flamebait", the above AC got a point : since today, any foreigner visting the US must be photographed and fingerprinted like a criminal (BTW, Brazilians do the same... to US citizens).
Now, if you outsource your company, are you sure your overseas employees will agree to visit the headquarters ?
Outsourcing is more an US-centric puroblem than a serious worldwide issue, IMHO.
There are problems around but mostly because of the lack of sales.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I don't think the comparasion to Dot Bombs is entirely accurate - the trend to globalization overall has been going on for decades.
That's not what he's talking about; it doesn't matter where the programmers are. The point is that if the programmers aren't really part of the company, the company is less likely to have the capacity for long-term innovation.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
1. Is this really so bad idea?
We have American programmers, Indian (or Chinese, etc.) programmers, consumers and shareholders of software companies. Out of these 4 groups, only one loses, the rest benefits. I see it as a net gain. So this is rather a social problem (for unemployed), not economical.
2. Is there anything we can do about it?
If the same work can be done cheaper abroad, there is no way to stop it in the long run. Even if you do, the programmers abroad will not disapper and will still be competing. They may start to work on their own and sell you the final product.
3. "technology companies lose their capacity to innovate".
There is no vacuum in economy. If someone loses, someone can take advantage of it. Even if American companies stops to be innovative, the innovations can be done in other countries. Chineese are quite poor now. Isn't it fair to give them a chance to develop?
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
If done right, it can be worth it, but as we've seen, many firms haven't been up to that challenge.
That is exactly right. Indian companies themselves have this figured out pat down with their experience in the ofshore-model as they call it. For this very reason they are now directly bidding for US contract, competing and winnig against companies like IBM, who are still trying to really figure out the model, and so have higher costs. In fact IBM lists Indian company Wipro as one of its most formidable compititer in its core service business in future.
So, either US companies need to figure out the ousource/offshore model in a hurry, or they will start loosing the IT contracts in US and especially internationally to Indian companies.
With a little luck, outsorcing will eventually improve the overall economy -- that is, of the poorer countries that are getting the orders. The fact that they have found a niche in the market doesn't disturb me at all: finally, here's the Fair Trade that America and Europe deny to others.
There are limits to the possibilities of outsourcing; these generally guarantee that outsourcing is only valid when the economical differences between two countries are too large.
So IMHO, this whole outsourcing stuff is only stabilizing global economy, for the better of the poorer countries.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Sometimes "IT Management 101" comes in handy when it is rewritten nicely....but doesn't harm if repeated regularly....(or it may even help?)
We as American's need to get a grip. There is always someone else in this world that will do your job better and for less money.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
So today it is IT. Previous to that, was the outsourcing of textiles to Asia. Previous to that was (looking from the UK perspective) was the 'outsourcing' of car manufacturing to Japan and the US. Before that, out went the Coal to that of cheaper imports...and steel before that...Salt, tin, most industries you care to mention.
That is the way of things. New industries are born with new ideas...everyone joins in..they become commodity..the outsource...new industries are born to replace them. Why anyone thinks IT is somehow different should think again.
So, The Japanese companies and other eastern compaines outsource to China and many of these companies have well produced hi-tech products. They have products that won't show up on the US market for a couple years. Yet they outsource to China. There innovation is working. And with Japan they are nuts about Reliability and Quality. So, what they are buying must be good software. And they are still innovating new things all the time. Just to use that as a comparison to the US.
Evolution or ID?
The root of all evil is management. Amongst their other problems, they often can't tell a good developer from a mediocre or bad one.
Many developers suck. Most management can't tell which ones to keep. Thus, they toss them all out and try their luck at the foreign labor.
I'm no statistician, but maybe if you hire 3X as many foreign workers and let chaos do its thing, you'll come out ahead. Or maybe that's their hope.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
No, no you can't. The in-house developers -- like everyone -- has thier own interests in mind. A company (read upper managers) doesn't even have the company's interests in mind.
There are folks who attempt to do the 'right thing', though in the current environment the companies aren't financially strong enough to support them. If you get screwed enough -- and there's always plenty of screwing going on -- CYA is the rule and superceeds anything that would pass for company loyalty.
The only exceptions are for folks who have never been abused -- usually fresh graduates.
the more local people you have the more people you need to hire to do your books. the more to keep track of (taxes 401ks etc). if you outsource you see one accounting line.
payment to company xyz for work $MONEY
so these "outsourcing" will eventually hurt the accounting firms which will be paid less to balance books. also tons of other companies too. like payroll dept. (don't need them) HR (what personnel?) etc.
bottom line is convince upstart business majors that they wont have a job unless you have a job and then over time maybe they'll be less outsourcing.
I think your half right here. The real long term solution is that most american software companies will have Indian/Other offices overseas with movement of the managerial and tech leads between offices as needed to ensure product quality and experience transfer. This is going to effect entry level programmers in the US a lot but they will just have to join the ranks of the rest of professionals where a masters and eventally a PhD is required to get a job in the US. So the end effect in the US is people that want to be programmers stay in school a bit longer. BFD.
"So, what does an out of work programmer to do after his job got sent to india?">
Start your own company and create your own job.
--Slashdot: News for Turds. Stuff that Splatters.
I recently figured out that there is a major indicator for companies that tend to be successful in the long run.
... -- they all have core technology managers come from the trenches).
Successful companies have (most of) their top managers for the core bussines come from the trenches. Unsuccessful companies tend to hire "executives" (overpaid MBAs who don't have any loyalty to the company).
In the long run "executives", not knowing anyting about the core bussines, tend to solve problems by appointing people/blame, while from-the-trenches-managers tend to solve the problems in the manner that suits the core bussines (since they understand it).
"executive" driven companies will tend to do Outsourcing (as an ultimate tool in "people/blame appointment"). Other companies will maybe offshore (but do it in an Insource and not Outsource manner).
"executive" driven companies (not only hi-tech) will in my opinion fail in the long run.
NONE of the big long-term successful companies is executive driven (e.g. Intel, M$, Cisco,
I work for a large corporation that imports most of its IT staff directly from India. I'm not sure if it outsources any, but in all likelihood it does. At any rate, I work with lots of indians. In fact, I'm a vast minority.
My experience so far has been that it would be impossible for Indians to produce a quality product on their own. Sure they are well "Trained" but from the hundreds of conversations I've had with dozens of Indians, I can tell you that they did not grow up with computers. Half of them didn't even know what Linux was till I told them. They had very little knowledge of DOS systems or window systems prior to Windows 2000. In fact, most of them had experience with one, and only one, program: VB.
It seems they are trained only for what they are told to do. There is no innovation in them. I've yet to see one Indian make a decent suggestion (aside from the Indians that grew up here, or grew up with computers, of course). The just-off-the-boat indians do what they are told and that is it. You have to hold their hand through the entire process. They have very little conception of object modeling or GUI design standards. And I would be willing to bet that training costs almost outweigh any cost advantage, as they need training in any and all programs you ask them to use.
In addition I have found their code to be generally sub-standard. They forget to take things out of memory and often don't understand fundamental programming concepts. This is an example javascript code I've experienced several times from Indian workers:
variable = "Something " + "" + " something else";
When asked about this it takes me a while to explain the difference between client side and server side code. Having not grown up with computers, they had a huge problem understanding why concatenating server-side variables with client-side script is unnecessary.
I've also found them to be pretty rude, especially as managers. It is a cultural difference. Here, managers are expected to be friendly to their employees. In India, apparently, maybe its a sign of weakness to be nice to someone "under" you. Could be a throwback to the caste system, who knows.
I saw the proverbial crap hitting the fan and started looking for a job that is "impossible" to outsource. For example, I am an on-site Network Administrator/Engineer/Hardware Tech/Telephone Tech/Help Desk/All Around Nice Guy. No way in hell someone from India can do that job. Sure, they can tweak scripts or change passwords, but can they replace a CPU fan or install RAM? I do all that stuff, and I bring in candy. What more can a company ask for? Well, unless you are a Diabetic that is.
I hate sigs.
IMHO this "law" is as powerful, if not more so, than "Moore's law".
The company I work for is in the process of outsourcing support and QA for older codelines, and those developers are being moved into new development. That way the company saves millions, and they have also protected the area of their core competency ... creating software.
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
How long until the pseudo companies in India decide to simple become full fledged name brands in themselves? Not only are we training them how to do our customer service, programming, back office, and research, but were also teaching them how to run fortune 500 class companies. They already have the expertise, how long can it be before we start seeing Indian versions of our established corporations.
They can skip the normal growing stages of setting up the megacorp, because they already have it. Offices, research, staff, software, it, they lack everything but the name - right now. Once some of these companies lose a contract with our corps, theirs nothing to keep them from setting up their own shop under their own name. This is the next trend in outsourcing - megacorps themselves.
There is NO compelling reason for these companies not to do this. They are making large profit from back of the house, it's inevitable they'll want the profit from the front of the house as well. The irony is that these large corporations are training the competition and replacements and most dont even see it coming. Is it arrogance that causes people to overlook this inevitability?
So, it really does depend on the situation -- generalizing to all "software companies" is a dangerous practice, for one approach (either outsourcing/offshoring or not) doesn't work for everyone.
Small businesses in North America (those turning less than $25 million/yr), are the next wave of companies that will find a need for outsourcing. This includes everything from clerical/backoffice support to injection molded components and on.
Here's a business model for you...help these firms outsource to India/Asia while they can still get loans. Help them change and compete while the doors are still open. The big boys have already learned, and now is time for the small fish to move on in kind.
We're doing this now. Get in while the getting is good.
Most slashdotters do not really understand what they are up against when it comes to outsourcing.
Yes, right now, Indian programmers are not so great at design. However, nobody is really handing "design" jobs over.
What the programming model is evolving to is this: companies will employ a handful of highly experienced, expert individuals in the US to do the design part. When a new project is scoped, these individuals will design the software down to the last detail, such that each individual component is simple enough to be handled by a reasonably bright, inexperienced "outsource".
The in-house designers will also design comprehensive and sophisticated test suites to test the compliance of whatever the outsources deliver.
To aid their efforts, the in-house designers will use sophisticated code design/development packages that are currently being developed by all the major software design houses. I understand that Microsoft and IBM, among others, are working on such tools. Think of tools that can turn very high-level UML diagrams into code, drag and drop algorithms into the right places etc, and generate testsuites to test the compliance of each module and subcomponent. The outsources will test the code that they generate against the same tools before delivering it to the parent corp.
There is too much financial incentive to do this. Even if companies experience initial hassles, they will keep plugging away until all the holes are plugged, just like how they moved manufacturing abroad.
So don't expect the complexity of our jobs to save us. Migrate up the ladder or prepare to be laid off.
Magnus.
Indian IT exports(total) = 10 billion$. That's just a small percentage of the US IT industry. Even with all this doom and gloom, the majority of software is still written in the US. There isn't a finite amount of programming work to go around. If some work is done in India, it doesn't mean the amount of work being done in the US goes down.
When we no longer produce anything of value here, what do we have to trade? One thing we can do is educate people, foriegn students continue to come to the US in greater numbers to learn. Another is tourism. How many Indian's want to vacation in Detroit? Our college costs keep rising to the point that it is becoming more and more difficult for the middle and lower middle class to get an education here. The middle and lower middle classes make up almost 70 percent of our population.
Another thing we have is money lots of it. Not you or I, but the ones really pushing for globalization. The 1 percent of are population that controls most of the worlds wealth and now wants more. These people find a service economy great for them, the lower classes have and always will bow to their every need. In fact, if the cost of service employees gets to high, then they can always push for more immigration, it is especially easy to get haitian or mexican labor to replace those high priced citizenry. It helps to give them a california drivers license. Most of these individuals were born into their position. Do not think for a minute Bill Gates was born into a low or middle class family in the suburbs.
By moving to a service economy where most of everything is imported, the middle class is left to struggle to maintain their status. More and more that is done with debt, easy credit for a good life now. Pay the rich forever.
Globalization is great for up and coming economies, it was great for Japan, but they are now losing to Korea, Indonesia, India etc.
The rich 1 percent would have you believe that this is all for the benefit of poor countries, ignoring the fact that when the labor costs and living standards rise in those countries, they'll be in the same boat. It will be a long time till we see programmers whose native language is Tutsi. But eventually they'll be a source of cheap labor too.
So what we have in effect is the very rich deciding the middle class is not dependant enough so they have decided to take from the middle and give to the poor.
Not exactly what Robin Hood advocated.
This whole issue IMHO stems really from communications issues as well as service inhouse as well as perceived by the customer. Being able to understand the person you are working with cannot be emphasized enough when you are having a project coded out that will obviously have an impact on your business as it was worthy of an investment. In conjunction with this is being able to get timely reports and updates as well as modifications that usually get inserted from a deskside visit to ensure it can be done and the time factors involved given the employees knowledge of internal workings being onsite. Tag onto these problems the shot in the foot this all brings along with issues mentioned on previous posts and you are looking at an issue of taking whole operations overseas which is begging for government involvemnt possibly leading to tariffs etc.
Sure this could be great for those living in mudhuts who have fancy pieces of papers saying they know how to memorize books but are ignorant to the foreign business model and expectations. But before this can become any sort of real shuffling of work, communications issues need to be addressed and businesses doing this need to exercise their checkbooks and purchase the government officials needed to make it safe from fiscal penalties. In countries who can vote, the power of the constituent will eventually outweigh the foolish MBA if things are not protected and ironed out.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
The problem is, in the 1990s there was still a pool of people for these orgs to use in re-insourcing. If large quantities of work move from the US to India, both current and future IT experts will move to other jobs and not be willing to return. Which could prevent a continuation of the IT insource/outsource cycle which realisitically has existed since the 50s.
sPh
See here
Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!
The countries being outsourced to (India, Pakistan and China) are nuclear powers, have Intercontinental Balistic Missiles and one recently sent a man into space (which no European country except Russia has done recently). Yet they are being flayed for not being talented or innovative. What do they have to do to prove they are talented? They have done far more recently than the Dutch or Germans or Finns but you would not consider Kazaa, SuSE or Linus as not innovative or talented. The article's author should take a less xenophobic global view.
...for reduced ability in India that many westerners don't realize.
India is a caste-based society. In recent times, the lower castes have been throwing their weight around in their legislature.
Of particular concern is that they have implemented a "graduated" admissions policy in their universities. An upper caste member might not be able to get into a school with a 90% score on the entrance exams, but a lower caste member may be assured admission with a 70% score.
Because of this type of (reverse)discrimination, many upper caste individuals of means leave the country to obtain education and work elsewhere. While India is a big country, the trend is concerning, and western outsourcers should be aware of it.
Thanks. I love that series, but had completely forgotten about the Shoe Event Horion. Good stuff.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Does all of /. collectively take leave of its senses when the outsourcing debate starts?
Outsourcing and offshoring are very different things.
Outsourcing is when Joe pays Moe to do a task 'A' that is currently being done by Joe. Moe could learn the skills and become better at task 'A' than Joe, thereby pushing Joe out of business.
The article says nothing new, this has always been a fact of life for time immemorial. Kings that let their Generals do all the work have found themselves without an army in short order.
Offshoring OTOH is when Joe realizes that location X is cheaper than location Z to carry out task A, and moves to location X. It is still Joe that's doing the work.
HP, M$, Cisco et al have started operations in India, they have not asked an Indian company to do their work. Any IP that is generated still belongs to HP/Cisco/foo - they've merely opened a branch in India.
--RANT--
The story poster was all confused about outsourcing and offshoring, and clearly Hemos didn't know better or didn't care.
--RANT--
For instance, the chocolate example. First, how much of the chocolate is made at the shop. Is the milk from a cow, or it is a homogenized, pasteurized, milk like product. Is the butter made at the shop, or is it likewise mangled by a factory. Is the chocolate and oils processed from the cocoa bean at the shop? Of course not. All the commodities are outsourced. How much more of the chocolate making process is outsourced we cannot say. Does the owner do anything more than buy cases of goop and pour them onto a plate, and them sell them. Is the owner like the so called baker that pull out frozen loaves of preformed bread and put them in the oven? Who knows.
The box is also a good example. One danger of outsourcing, especially to market that are not in line to consume your product, is that you won't have a market to buy your product. The chocolatier, instead of purchasing the boxes more locally, and helping to create an environment in which people can afford his product, is instead expected others to create the economy in which the luxury goods can be consumed.
The reference back to the 80's is of no consequence. Most software development today bears little resemblance to most of what was going on back them. We are continuously building and standardizing additional tools. We are continuously automated the process of programing though visual tools, more advanced debuggers, and completely prepackaged components. The reference to design and assembly is apt. Most cars are designed in first world countries. The design process has been greatly simplified because we know pretty much put together prefab parts. Some components are still designed from scratch, and the body is still crafted. If the car is assembled in a first world country, it is, like the chocolate, assembled from performed commodity parts.
Software outsourcing is with us to stay. The demand for labor is such that companies are demanding M.S. CS people at low wages. The U.S. cannot provide these people. Likewise, CS people have always been treated like a plumper or a electrician. Someone who you have to pay, but resent the high wage. Software development is an international process, and there is no reason to make the development otherwise. My only hope is that managers who have yet to suffer the effects of their planned obselesce, are forced to do so sooner than later.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I think there is a step before "writing" software that is easily overlooked. And that is figuring out the Requirements of the system to be designed. This is where I believe the innovation lies. A lot of good code has already been wasted chasing bad problems - unless you believe that those "objects" have found reuse elsewhere in large quantities.
The people who identify the need and then figure out the "requirements" are better off in the US as they are close to the problems there. Many offshore programmers who have never seen a scanner at a checkout of a grocery store are ill-equipped to understand all that might be required of the checkout counter in the real world. But once someone identifies what is required, then it is possible to put together a solution. The solution can be academic and the solutions depend on who has framed the problem - but the solution then is not as hard. What is hard is understanding what the problem is. Understanding what the requirements are.
Coke and Pepsi do just that. They have bottlers all over the world - and they still have been able to maintain the "secrecy" of the recipe. The point in operational excellence is that you have to not only look at the process of improving the manufacture of the product, but also its delivery and logistics. At a certain stage of his business, it is conceivable that Jean-Marc's might be like Coke/Pepsi. Outsource the chocolate production to supply worldwide.
Wrong. Most of the cost of clothing is in the inventory and predicting the fashions. Have you seen how many shirts go unsold for every shirt that you buy ? I can bet that keeping the inventory, getting rid of old fashions, and other marketing battles cost much much more than the shirt itself. The cost is mainly in the movement of information about the shirt - what is required, where is it required, when is it required, how much is required, etc. All this outweighs the cost of manufacturing at the assembly line in influencing the margins eeked out from the clothing business.
Again, I believe the first step is understanding the Requirements. Then is the design. nhen is the coding. Then is the debugging. Then is the testing. Then is the recoding. Then is the etc. etc. A lot of these steps don't need "innovation" - they require competence.
The game is about requirements. One who can understand the requirements are, and can understand that the business benefits of implementing the solutions are more than the technical costs of implementing them - is going to win. That is the real innovation.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
I just modded before I saw this. Damn.
--Residential Interior Design
I was going to say "Mod him up," but you're already flirting with +5. Can't agree enough: The pioneers take the arrows, the settlers make the profits. Here we might part ways: Stallman is a marxist whose goal is the abolition of private property rights; the abolition of intellectual property rights is just a first step towards that goal. And Stallman doesn't "give it away"; the GPL is infinitely more tyrannical than any file [or file system] format [.DOC,
because technology companies lose their capacity to innovate.
How des one measure this capacity to innovate ? If one goes by the number of patents - the above arguement may not be valid at all. See this article about patents from India
In fact the increased number of patents from some research labs located in India may be one of the reasons for the trend of several US/EU companies setting up research labs in India.
I guess the people in india have less buzzwords to fake success.
Athough I dont agree with the sentiments of the OP, this fingerprinting of foreigners means that I'll not be visiting the US again. Pity, it used to be a nice place.
Efficiency means a direct tradeoff to robustness. Inefficient systems CAN be robust, extremely efficient systems cannot.
Inefficiency could be a part redundancy, creating robustness or just plain waste. Knowing which inefficiency to reduce is the real art of entrepreneurship and I seriously doubt that the companies on the outsourcing bandwagon understood what they were doing.
Relying on efficiency is very comparable and in fact prerequisite to a strategy of being the lowest bidder. Being the cheapest was, until ten or twenty years ago, usually regarded as the worst strategy a company could choose and that view has some truth to it, as some other company will beat your price, every time. And as long as research and development cannot be reduced to monetary values with a clear return on investment, i.e. the future cannot be predicted, you will have to gamble on future prospects in your R&D department.
As a super-efficient company, you can just compete within an existing market, not create new ones. You may be able to make a living, but you are always a follower of bigger players and sooner or later you will meet the law of diminishing returns, as another cheaper-than-thou-player attacks your market share.
Colorful illustration of said subject: you cannot produce horse carriages cheap enough to beat car prices, however ineffient the car makers may be. (Withing a given frame of resource and worker prices and time of course.)
With no robustness, you cannot emerge on new growing markets, much less create them. With no robustness, you cannot stand changes in the economical or polical climate, local or international. At least as long as your business needs humans and humans cannot adapt to new situations with a Matrix-like download.
The question on how much operational vs. cash reserves you need and what inefficiencies may help you by creating a reputation, loyal employees, luxury customers and new markets through successful R&D cannot be answered by simple "cheaper is better"-thoughts.
And now the companies start feeling the backlash. I have to say, it's at least a small bit satisfying...
You could certainly find a few exceptions, but in general, conservative institutions like banks are consumers of the IT innovations created by others; they are not the creators of such innovation. Their role as consumers can certainly create the demand for innovation. Those that make the decision sooner could lead their market with that, but they get it by partnering with their IT provider, rather than trying to create it in-house. Larger banks have the capacity to innovate, but they also tend to be the first ones to call up the big companies like IBM Global Services or other outsourcers to do it all for them. Smaller banks just don't have the capacity to even hope to try.
If you work on such a project, you most likely are working third party (e.g. a non-career oriented short-term job, which used to pay a lot until the job got exported to India where someone gets paid to do it for less than your rent) for some faceless company that doesn't care about your, and most certainly doesn't give you an opportunity to become a part of the innovative aspect of the project. It is "commodity innovation", which means it's not innovation in any technical sense, but it probably makes some CEO say "gee whiz".
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The Europeans used to think Americans were all dirty farmers. This myopic thinking was as harmful to them as this thinking is to us. If there is a motivation to innovate, Indians and Chinese will step up to the plate just as North Americans would. You are not special.
It is not because of the lack of good developers in India or Russia or other places outside the US. The reduced innovation is due to the nature of the business relationship between the US companies, the outsourcing vendors, and the people the outsourcers hire.
1. The innovative individuals and companies overseas generally set themselves up doing thier own thing, creating and selling products driven by their own ideas and intiatives; not to provide bodies to do the work dictated by first-world firms. Either that, or they'll find a high-paying job in a first-world country.
2. The outsourcing vendors are merely looking to hire enough bodies who will do the work at bargain basement rates. Hiring for innovation is not high on their priorities. Remember their main selling point is being cheap.
3. Innovation generally involves risk, and the outsourcing firms have little incentive to take those risks. They get paid as long as they do X when asked to do X, not for being creative and doing X^2. If they do something innovative it's the client firm that will see the vast majority of the upside benefits. So their risk/reward ratios don't encourage innovation.
4. The first-world corporations aren't choosing outsourcing firms based on innovative ability; the motivation is to cut costs.
5. Offshoring is happening so fast and furiously, that most of it is indeed just fad-chasing. Other industries like manufacturing took a much longer time to be offshored in significant numbers. The speed at which this is happening is creating a demand for offshore programmers which is causing high turnover among them, along with a lowering of hiring standards.
However, much of the above doesn't really apply with offshore in-sourcing. But most companies aren't doing that because they don't have the know-how to set up a software subsidiary in a country thousands of miles away, given that they struggle so much to run an IT department in the same building. And the time and money involved to set up their own offshore subsidiary means the benefits won't show up in next quarter's profits.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
This is an ongoing fallacy of the outsourcing argument - higher wages mean higher performance. As you have pointed out, higher wages often simply indicate higher costs, not higher output.
The cost to automate code generation must be more than hiring a bunch of indians at $.10/hr. Otherwise, someone would have developed an efficient symbol input system, or maybe the technology to develop such a thing has not yet appeared. In any event, technology should reduce the cost of capital, and the efficiency of designing and manufacturing, and reducing the theoretical min time-to-market (TTM) (time from idea to first deliverable). But, automation allows for greatly reduced flaws (since computers do exactly what they're told to do) and increased harmonization and flexibility. Also, having more people working on a project increases complexity and possibilities for confusion and errors by increasing the number of communication paths (N! paths if their are N people that can talk to each other).
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
The point here is that people still think IT is a strategic asset when in fact many (including Harvard biz school faculty) have begun to discount this notion entirely.
I recently started working as tech support for a company (college dropout, needed money). Within three months, I started programming for them. Within 8 months, they were discussing having me doing *ALL* their programming.
/ex
The current programmer is a complete and utter idiot. All the passwords in the program? Plain text. Her idea of security? a simple character replacement string... "But she does it twice, so it's twice as secure".
I brought this up to the owners (very small company) and explained to them that the whole program, which they sell for $20,000 was currently being secured by secret decoder ring-type encryption.
And I got in trouble for breaking the "encrption"... Leaving alone the fact that it took a total of 35 minutes to do, and there weren't any technical support calls coming in, so I had a lot of time on my hands.
The programmer has made some other dumb decisions. She is a bad programmer that doesn't realize as much.
It seems part of the reason that this place is as it is, is the guy that has veto rights on anything that goes into the system no longer works in the company at all-- He's the original guy the program was written for, but th reason he had for using it has gone away, so he just kinda does a "No, because the program shouldn't work like that" whenever he doesn't like something... Meaning that just about all "innovation" gets shoved out.
Speaking of which, I gotta get to work.
I'm not concerned with software companies offshoring, I'm concerned with the bulk of the software related jobs being outsourced. The amount of IT support jobs vastly outweighs the number of job working for software companies. There's a million companies in other industries (government, bank, insurance) that need IT to run their operations. These companies don't do IT for a living, and don't need the same competative edge. For a bank, it makes more sense to outsource to a campany that handles other bank software because of the experience the 3rd party company has.
It is this large bulk of jobs going overseas as people become more and more effective at managing international projects that has me diversifying my income this year.
-no broken link
Saying IT is strategic is like saying electricity is strategic - well of course, if you don't have it you are hosed, but it rarely provides the impetus to squash competitors on its own anymore.
Buh-bull
"Im a anti-mac"
"/Dread"
Clinton was the best president this country has had since the Kennedy.
Kennedy was a good president because?
Great economy
Bill helped that how?
sane foreign policy
Flinging missiles at third world countries to distract the american people from scandal is very sane policy. Very very sane. Almost as sane as "Hey, let's give health care to all the poor welfare crackhead non-stop-breeding stinky lazy bums, and make the people that actually do work pay for it." Winner there, too.
(unlike the let's-make-everyone-gang-up-on-us GWB)
As if the world doesn't just look to america as the target anyway.
and an eye on the welfare of the poor.
So what? What exactly do the poor do aside from consume resources needlessly and make life harder for the rest of us?
He even got a blowjob from a (then) pretty intern in the oval office. How many presidents can boast on something like that?
Probably all of them could say something like that. And for the record, if you think Monica Lewinsky is(was) pretty, you have some serious standards deficiencies. Bill Clinton's taste in women runs the the shitty, in most male's opinions. Including mine. Although that Gennifer Flowers was not bad.
Also for the record, I have no problem with Bill Clinton's sexual life. That isn't why I thought he was a bad president. I took issue with the way he ran the place, not who he fucked in the mouth while he ran it.
Post AC to avoid ravenous liberal slashbots.
You are using the same Oracle or MySQL you competitor is.
You are using the same gcc as your competitor.
You are using the same OS as your competitor.
You are using the same hardware as your competitor.
With very few exceptions, there are extremely insiginificant differences in how major corporations make long-term IT decisions and investments. Maybe in 1984 someone could say "we automate that!!" for an advantage, but those days are gone.
If we combine what you say with a functional or logical declarative language, then the person who writes the specification can also be the one who writes the code, since in such systems the specification is the code.
So what U.S. developers need is a good logical declarative language. Oh, my goodness, we already have one - Prolog!
Now if only Prolog weren't so difficult to write~-))
Outsourcing and off-shoring are two distinct concepts. Outsourcing your core competence is definitely not a great idea. For example, Coke should not outsource brand management, Intel shouldnt outsource chip design etc. But offshoring to a country with a larger skilled labour pool is not a bad idea. In a global economy, state and national boundaries are conceptually similar but are different only in magnitude. So the processes/systems needed to scale national boundaries have to be more robust and efficient than what are needed to scale state or provincial boundaries. There is, though, one problem with Offshoring core-competency that needs to addressed. The fact that demand or market drives innovation means that moving core areas to India/China may impact ability of companies to innovate to meet the demand in the western markets. Now this can possibly be addressed by two factors viz., demand growing in these markets (which is happening already) and setting up processes and systems that ensure complete communication of the market needs to product design or service design teams sitting in these remote places. Note that the latter, as mentioned earlier, while a challenge, is an extension of existing mechanisms to feeding back market inputs to existing local design teams. So what am I saying? I think over a period of time, companies will continue to out-source non-core aspects of their businesses and the companies that would get this business would be the ones with a lower cost base. Companies would also continue to off-shore (not outsource) their core areas to tap into larger skilled labour pool in some of these markets (india/china) and also to take innovation creation groups closer to these markets that are growing at a greater rate than the western economies. Western economies also would have to make structural changes to make larger pool of skilled labour available locally. This would also drive the cost of hiring skilled labour to more competitive levels. For this the cost of college education needs to come down especially in areas of engineering and technology. my two cents
Perhaps I'll be considered a troll, but one has to remember, quality doesn't matter, innovation doesn't matter, long term doesn't matter, all the phb's and mba's care about is cost for this fiscal year at best, quarter at worst. Pump up the stock so it can be sold and the big guys move on.
A while back there was a story of a Pakistani (or Indian, I can't remember) woman holding information for ransom for a salary increase. Doubltful that anything could be done personally to her, other than fire her. If she were in the US, in addition to being fired, she would most likely be facing some jail time.
That isn't going to work except under one scenario*. There is no way you can pay Americans what you can in some other countries. Apart from the lack of worker rights in those other countries, the COST OF LIVING is FAR HIGHER in USA (in this example). Someone in India or China is basically making a 1/3 or a 1/4 of an American. There is no way an American can live for a quarter of the wage (say $10,000 instead of $40,000). At $10,000, you would be below the poverty line in USA. Rent in USA alone will amount to $10,000 per year (assuming $1000/month as is the case in Toronto--for 2 bedroom in a decent area (I"m mixing up CAN$ and US$ and this is just rough)). The cost differences are just too large.
* The other other scenario is if USA devalues their currency. Let's put it this way: Americans (and for that matters others like Canadians, etc) are overconsume. USA just cannot compete with others. USA may have to do this with another few rounds of free trade agreeements. I think if GAPS(??) is signed, USA will be under enormous pressure and might have to devalue (GAPS, if I remember it correctly, is the trade agreement that covers education. Under it, governments cannot subsidize public education (like universities). They have to treat all educational institutions, including private ones, as the same. I suspect this will have the biggest impact on USA. Having said that, this agreement will take 10+ years to sign. Right now, countries can't even agree on trade, investment and agriculture. Agreeinging on education is even more problematic given that schools, almost by definition, are socialist institutions.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
At least since 1492, but more likely long beforehand. The cheif difference between 1492 and today is the speed at which globalization is occuring and how it is the primary tool of neoliberal economic activity. Globalization isn't all bad. You wouldn't have Mario Batali on FoodTV without the tomato, or, at least, it would be a wholly different show...
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
You don't have to leave the country.
? lo cIndex=5667
Our median house value is $67,000.
http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/housOverview.php
Joe Batt
Joe Batt Solid Design
Outsourcing has worked very well for us in the past and we continue to do it, but there are two major headaches we encounter on a regular basis.
1: Turnaround time. Bug fixes or changes that need to be addressed NOW, have to wait because of the time differences. Sometimes 8+ hours will pass before the programmer even hears about it. Then you add in the time to do the actual work.
So I would recommend in-house staff for projects/issues which need extremely fast response time.
2: Inexperienced programmers. While all of the countries we have used for outsourcing have many talented and experienced programmers, we have always had to sort through a lot of garbage to find quality staff.
The reason for this is the same reason we had to sort through the same sort of garbage in the US during the tech boom. The high demand for (relativly) high paying jobs produces a ton of people who are brand new and just got into the field to cash in.
So... if you decide to outsource you need patience.
If you can't wait a reasonable amount of time for a response on a project (At least a day)... keep it in house.
And, if you're not willing to spend the time and effort needed to sort through the applicants and find the talent, keep the work at home (Of course you'll have to do the same thing in the US... we have just as many inept and inexperienced applicants as anyone)
If that's the way they work and you left after two months (that's pretty telling, in and of itself, no?) then what you're talking about just plain flat doesn't work.
.
And as other posters have pointed out Accenture, Cap Gemini, EDS, Perot Systems, and others are synonymous with disaster
We spent more money fixing a clearinghouse system that Perot Systems "helped" develop for us at one of my previous employers.
His argument is 100% right. If it's part of your innovation, whether or not you're selling it, you have NO business outsourcing it to anyone let alone to a company in India or China. It really IS like worrying about the box and outsourcing the chocolates in his example.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
...outsourcing now equals undercutting later. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/402 253.cms
The latter is what worries me. I am all for free-markets... with limitations. A laisse-faire form turns into a system of economic darwinism that focuses too much on short-term gain. To cut costs now companies are "selling their foundations from under themselves." Although, many would argue that they do have a longer term goal of trying to access larger markets, what good is having a larger market if you are undercut by local competitors who you essentially gave your business knowledge?
Hopefully, wages in India will raise to levels where wages in developed countries are competitive and this outsourcing will stablize or even regress.
However, what about countries like China, where the government can essentially dictate what a worker's wages are? They could keep costs artifically low indefinitely (or at least until everyone else is out of business).
Things will get interesting...
The whole theory behind globalization was so that companies could create their own self supporting companies around the world. So for example, if Sun wanted to sell systems in oh say Korea. They could set up a Korean factory operated by Koreans, their coders would be Korean, etc. That way a company doesnt need to expend so many resources operating an overseas branch because "in theory" that branch would be self sufficient. But of course the lobotimized MBA's in this country had to bastardize it and took it to mean "cheap, slave labor for everyone".
No, in most cases it is not the same person who can do both - writing the spec & coding well.
Writing the Spec is done on the language of $$c$$CCC$ while that of code is done in the 101010111. Two different systems altogether. I once took a fanciful approach to explain how different these two worlds are. They are very very different.
But, all this is really tangential to my emphasis that the "innovation" does not only lie in the coding but in the requirements determination too - and increasingly more so. That is why people in the US are important so that they understand what the problem and its requirements are. And this point is very essential to consider when offshoring.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
It's nice to have an article discussing the theoretical reasons why outsourcing code is bad long-term - complete with quotes from Michael Porter (Competetive Strategy). However, what I really want to see are some case-studies demonstrating how outsourcing software development actually hurt a specific company (i.e. took them into a slump or resulted in lost marketshare).
Instead, the author can only present the statistics about HP and Oracle doubling their outsourcing legions. Not very encouraging...
Outsourcing is more an US-centric puroblem than a serious worldwide issue, IMHO.
I don't think so--although you are right in some respect. The reason outsourcing isn't a big deal in Europe, for example, is because they are more protectionist (socialist). Since capitalism is winning and capitalists rule the earth, I expect Europe to have problems with its protectionist policies very soon.
So-called outsourcing is a world issue because it is a key requirement for capitalism. Any capitalist could have predicted this 30 years ago (in fact, many sort of did). Outsourcing is nothing more than the creation of more free markets on the supply side.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
It seems not a week goes by without seeing an article regarding offshore outsourcing on Slashdot.
Yeah, I suppose the concept is an important one to a lot of readers here, and probably a real fear. And yes, while I will see the occasional luicid argument, the lot of them here are ill-conceived, and the same old protectionist BS rehashed over and over again. Strangely enough, it smacks very much of the same protectionist Pat Buchanan rhetoric, a figure I don't generally see as particularly savoury to most of the Slashdot crowd.
In the end, however, I am most tired of seeing these articles on Slashdot, because, quite simply, you're not going to get an unbiased view -- the OSDN itself outsources jobs offshore. Realistically, how are you going to expect Slashdot to deliver an opinion that strays much from corporate mindset?
Look, whether you think outsourcing is good or bad, there are better places to beat the dying horse; it's not worth submitting such stories here. A slashdot query for 'outsourcing' returns plenty of results, and while, for the most part, such posts have been made pretty objectively without much commentary by the editors, it's evident that these ideas nonetheless go against the OSDN's corporate outlook.
This brings us to today's posting. I think today's editorial comment of "I don't think the comparasion [sic] to Dot Bombs is entirely accurate - the trend to globalization overall has been going on for decades. Still interesting piece." is fairly representative of the baby steps that could occur in a website teetering towards corporate influence.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to start a firestorm here, and I don't think Hemos meant anything inflammatory either -- if anything, maybe this is an attempt by Hemos to indicate full-disclosure of OSDN's view. I'm just saying, seeing as the OSDN already outsources, I don't think Slashdot is the most level playing field to make such arguments, anymore. Argue Linux vs BSD, vi vs emacs, AMD vs Intel, etc.. but it's hard to be objective when the corp. parent of the website has already show its hand on the newswires.
How many exceptional students leave?
What is the level of preparation the students (irrespective of their origins) acquire?
In all honestly I could not care less about the problems a social system like that brings. That is up to Indians to sort out.
The only thing relevant is if and Indian company has the expertise to provide for the services contracted. If the company can I could not care less about how those people obtained their education.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Get your projected finished today with the Java Jihad Consultants from India! The same team that brought you infidel iTunes! (yesiknowindiaismostlyhinduandnotmuslimscrewyouits stillfunnyyoudirtypushstart/sandcockroach)
Quite a lot longer than that. Actually, the level of global economic integration is not much higher today than in 1913.
I used to ask questions like that on the mailing list (I am no longer subscribed since I realized I have become more experienced than the norm) and in place of somebody complaining about me the n00b, I would receeive an answer with a wuick explanation of the basics and suggestions of where to learn more.
Where is the spirit of the old Internet gone?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I work for the US government in a position that requires US citizenship. Try shipping that overseas.
Read a bit of history, honest.
India can protect itself perfectly well.
Heck, it is actually a nuclear nation now, something the US seems to have in high regard nowadays.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
I'll readily admit it. I'm old. I've been in this business for nearly thirty years. I've seen a lot of changes, but I don't want to concentrate on IT history. Instead, I want to talk televisions.
Back in the day before most slashdotters were alive, there were American companies that designed and manufactured televisions. First, manufacturing went overseas, and it was managed from the US. Next, middle management was moved because it made more sense to manage the plants using local talent than trying to do it from the US. After all, time differences, cultural difference and just plain cost was enough to justify it. What this did was educate new competitors, and mentor them so that they didn't have to suffer the pain of starting low on the learning curve. Guess what, companies like Admiral and Motorola, who were leaders in home televisions are either gone, as in the case of Admiral, or dropped the product entirely, as is the case with Motorola.
This was not necessarily a bad thing, as it ended up benefiting the consumer, and helped spread wealth overseas. However, there is no one capable of designing a TV that could compete with the imports in the US today, except for those individuals working on HDTV, which was mandated by law.
My point is that the US lost not only its ability to compete in these areas, but companies themselves. If history does repeat itself, companies like Oracle will disappear altogether, similar to Admiral, and companies like HP and Dell will change their product concentration in order to survive, similar to Motorola. The consumer will probably benefit, as computers manufactured in India or China will be cheaper, thanks to cheaper local software available for these systems. But is this technology that propelled one of the greatest economic growths ever, something we want to loose?
So.. what school of economics do you subscribe to? I'm guessing some form of nihilist ecnonomics :)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
I think that the U.S. shipping jobs overseas will reach a state of equilibrium. Maybe the us companies will see their profits start to lag because they are sending all the jobs overseas.
After all, U.S. companies are laying off their own customers in a roundabout way.
One could argue that these countries will develop economies which will help U.S. companies with new customers... there will be a lot less money they are spending...
Innovation isn't key anymore, it's pure market dominance that's the business goal any more. First you lock in your customers to make it difficult to switch vendors, and then you eliminate your competitors so that switching isn't even an option any more. Lock-in and market dominance make it impossible for any new competition to enter the market. Once you've established dominance, just start increasing prices, lowering quality and limiting chocies. Pretty soon you make the smallest number of products at the highest possible price and they HAVE to buy from you.
This is the new goal of business. It used to be "how can I come up with better new products and get them to market", now it's all about manipulating the market itself. I wouldn't be at all surprised it there was an MBA course entry somplace like this:
"Submissive Competition: Maintaining the impression of a competitive market by allowing small competitors. In today's intensely Government regulated business environment, market dominance is often seen as an illegal monopoly. This course will teach you how to control small competitors to keep them from threatening your dominance yet convincing regulators your market space has healthy competition and freeing your business from potentially damaging litigation and regulation."
If you think that software development involves first coming up with a design that will remain absolutely static once things move into the programming stage, then you need to find a time machine and transport yourself back to the 1970's.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Friend or foe? Call me neutral.
Most of the readers and contributers see Offshore Outsourcing to much lower waged coutries a threat.
The Indian programmers in India are too busy working to read and write to this thread.
I am almost neutral as my job in Ireland relies on globalisation from the United States, but is at risk from the globalisation to India and China.
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I don't think the comparasion to Dot Bombs is entirely accurate
Then post a comment stating such, like the rest of us do. Your opinion doesn't belong attached to the story submission, even if you are Hemos.
And in the last article you put up, you saw fit to append your own insight too -- you said that Okokrim is the equivalent to the RIAA. This is simply factually untrue. The commenters who immediately corrected you got modded up -- but how come we couldn't mod your comment down?
If measuring the cost is more important than measuring the result, then offshoring looks better on paper. Many companies use brute-force hack-it-til-it-works because it does eventually get you what you want after several iterations.
Offshoring makes it easier for organically-grown hack-til-works companies to keep doing it the same way. Good planning and understanding the customer is harder to recognize, harder to meausre, etc. Accountants can't track that and companies tend to ignore what they can't track. In the end it seems such companies just end up paying the user more to keep them because they are the only ones who know how to work the resulting hackware.
It looks like a mess, but it seems to be the primary development model because way too many companies do it and survive somehow. The market seems to favor swamp guides over true engineers.
Table-ized A.I.
Since capitalism is winning and capitalists rule the earth
IMHO there are far more illiterate and poor starving people than there are multinational consortia, so I guess the majority is the same as the one that once overrid the almighty Russian Empire.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
While the contents are old, and mostly FUD, looking at the upside, Indian cricket team is set to thrash Australia... you can get the scores here.
Jeetegi bhai jeetegi... India jeetegi.
Executives often get paid 100 times more than their low level workers.
I'm sure that offshore management talent in foreign companies can do the job for much less money.
In an effort to save on costs, why not "offshore" management tasks.
This would result in the biggest labor cost savings of any job task.
Go fuck a cow!!! asshole!!!!
I help create specs for our offshore programmers to use. When we first started using them they kept trying to innovate and severely impacted our deadlines & budget. They kept trying to make our complex financial formulas/requirements simple (bad idea!). In fact after they completed we had a local consulting team come by and review their code. It was so sloppy/inefficeient we got a free 2 months of work out of them and 50% off for 2 months after that (included sending 2 programmers to USA to work in house to clean it up). The thing I noticed once the coders got here is that the quality level went way up when they were in house. I think a lot of the problems were communication and not understanding what we needed. When they were in house they could talk to us during normal daylight hours and not at 2 AM when their brains were dull over a conference call. Take from this what you will, had to put my 2 cents in.
Life is everything but nothing.
Either you don't believe what you are saying, or you have fallen for the elitist dogma. You don't need to be a majority to rule a country, or earth for that matter. Monarchy showed that. I mean a few select members of one family easily managed to brainwash and control millions of people. Similar thing with capitalism. There might only be a few large corporations. Only a few percent of the population may be rich. But that isn't going to stop anything.
Humans can be easily manipulated... Totalitarians are masters of that. Nazi Germany and USSR should have taught you something...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Working at a distance is always a disadvantage because we still have monkey brains, we are social animals.
I don't think the comparasion to Dot Bombs is entirely accurate
Hemos would know about Dot Bombs.
In the early 1970s American car makers outsourced the car parts production and manufactoring to Japan .....
I wonder if they made a profit then.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
What happens when an outsourcing deals falls apart, the company is screwed, not skilled employees to carry on. Having in-house IT staff always means greater stability.
.....leaving old customers high and dry!
Jamal can take all the code he's been working on in India and find someone to pay him $1.50 per day instead of $1.00 per day and quit
Depending on the complexity of a system a company could suffer huge losses during the transition to find a new outsourcing vendor.
While it's true that your run of the mill ERP or systems management deployment is creative a great deal of it is not. And piecing together these kits makes up a very large part of software 'development' nowadays.
If we look at pure development though we see much of the same. For programming tied to devices - a la driver code most of that is specifically NOT creative and it makes a great deal of sense to put that work alongside where, most likely, the device is being built.
If we look at what's left over - tools and applications it's hard to quibble with the idea that applications are more tied to requirements gathering than elegant applications development. After all a life cycle is a life cycle and most of the heavy lifting, apart from requirements, is in the version control management.
Leaving tools. Ok tools, compilers and other sophisticated objects need to go where the brains and managment talent are. - But does that translate to White Anglo America? I don't think so.
In ancient times, my employer paid vast amounts of money to Digital Equipment Corporation for OS and software support. Back in the 80's, DEC had world class experts who could provide all kinds of insightful solutions, 24x7. It cost a fortune, but the quality of support was awesome by modern standards. Back when I was a newbie, they patiently explained all kinds of things in response to my questions. For what I was being paid at the time, my employer was lucky to have someone who knew enough to ask the questions and implement the answers. We did not have a properly qualified sysadmin and there were not enough systems people to go around. Therefore, people like me were pressed into service back in 1985.
This culture of helping the new people has been around for a long time. An expanding IT industry needs new people, so there was (until recently) nothing to lose by helping your colleagues. In fact, there are certain people who thrive on the prestige they get for displaying their knowledge and mentoring the newbies. Without them, I would be nothing. Now that the people asking the questions are replacements for those providing the answers, I wonder how long it will take for the experienced people to either shut up or move on to another profession after losing their jobs.
Today, nobody has support that goes beyond what you can browse online in an FAQ database. If you call for support, the best you will get is an offshore outsourced phone clerk who searches the FAQ list for you. If you can't find it online, rest assured that the phone clerk can't find it either. After 19 years in the IT industry, I don't ask newbie questions, so the support people have few opportunties to amaze me with instant solutions. Maybe its just me getting old, but I notice that my staff members are sometimes hobbled by problems that should be resolved through vendor support. We have Oracle. They sometimes have world class support, but there are also times when we post an issue on Metalink and I can tell from the clueless responses that we are dealing with people who fail to understand the question, much less provide an answer.
I believe one of two things will happen. (1)The offshore outsourcers gain knowledge and commoditize most of the IT industry, or (2) the outsourced model proves effective only to those who can tolerate a low skill level and simply can't tell the difference. I say there is a 50% chance of a market re-emerging for high skill people to clean up the trainwrecks caused by low-skill outsourcers (see prosecution exhibit A in the parent to this message). At this point, it could go either way.
tha belive the coke recipe is secret is just a myth. the ingredients were published already multiple times in journals as analyzed by chemists. ;-)
would be a shame if chemists wouldn't be able to analyze the ingredients of a substance
There is a good interview with Peter Drucker in the current issue of Fortune magazine http://www.fortune.com/fortune/subs/article/0,1511 4,565912,00.html which answers some of the important questions raised in this discussion.
If we are all aware of which companies are outsourcing to cut costs and thus as a whole, we're losing our IT jobs, then boycott. Boycott the companies who are laying us off. Boycott their products. If the demand goes down, so does the price, thus in the long run, the company will be right back where it started (or worse). Most IT companies who outsource are producing IT services/products, thus we, as IT professionals, should avoid using their services. Need Oracle, use MySQL; want a Dell, buy another brand; need MS Office, get StarOffice....
Maybe a website is needed that list all of the companies that outsource and the products they sell, listed right next to how many American jobs they have eliminated due to outsourcing...hmmm.
One of the solutions is for IT to start developing ISO 9000 type protocols for installing, managing, staffing IT in small and medium companies. The biggest liability right now is the "wild west" factor...which management loves when it's bull, but runs from when it's bear.
This would be a great opportunity for some open source efforts!!!! What's needed is a 3 prong approach: IT staff, executives, and users. For executives, there's no common standard for why then need IT, and what to expect...written so THEY CAN UNDERSTAND IT. They understand that they need to have computers, and to connect them, but not even the basics of how or why....and what their IT guy should be doing FOR them! Same to a lesser extent with users. There needs to be more and better online education aimed squarely at users. As simple as "this is what a user's job is" type stuff. A reasonable, well indexed and documented list of what a user should be able to do...and who they should turn to for help.
ISO type systems are what created the Japenese auto monster in the 80's. not just working harder, but smarter, with more attention to the end results. Now's the time to get the same push going for IT.
This is what we should be striving for now: Onboard Shuttle Group! because nobody without decades of experience and ingenuity in management and quality control of information can pull such stuff off...yet. That is our US advantage!
But seriously, I do strategic IT consulting and I agree with you: the most communication-intensive part of the process is getting the requirements right. Worse (for the outsourcing cheerleaders), it's a continuing process for any but the most trivial of projects. And this means that those boring but essential disciplines of configuration management and change control have to operate seamlessly, regardless of where the code gets written and checked in, and that you need some hard-assed testers who know the whole system in its operational context. Typically that'll have to be close to where the software's deployed.
Now get analytical for a few minutes and make a connected-node diagram to show communication within your distributed-development organization, and consider how each communication channel can be disrupted. Noise in a channel translates into cost and risk.
My conclusion is that, if your requirements are not entirely standard (as they might be for, say, a payroll system), you'd better keep it in-house. And I agree with the author of the article that you need to understand what part of your internal IT effort is aimed at creating competitive advantage. That part can never be commoditized effectively. Why? Because the rate of requirements change will be significant, and those changes can't be managed effectively without the active participation of the end users and senior business people. And the change process has to be closed-loop due to the need for meaningful testing.
This is not a slam against Indian programmers. My experience is that they're every bit as good as the people I work with in the US. But I think it shows the limits of how much you can outsource, whether the outsourced resource is on- or offshore. It's really a logistical, not a cultural, issue. It's the same reason that corporate headquarters are in one, not several, locations. Another way of putting it is that IT is now so deeply embedded in the business that its control has to be a centralized function of the organization.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
is not innovation. It is fiddling with ever more obscure tweaking of fundamentally flawed, or at least incomplete, designs.
It addresses the ever growing list of symptom but not the disease.
Searches on sites like http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/ quickly reveals that software design is currently stuck in cycles of ever diminishing incremental improvement and that the learning curve is growing out of proportion to the improvements that a shift in perspective would yield.
Object orientation (and as a long time Smalltalker I have a better view of this than most,) is currently spinning its wheels without achieving any new break-throughs.
Part of the problem is that, as the education system "improves" perspective is getting lost. The off-shore "Johnnie-come-latelies" are extremely well-educated but the very educational system that produces them damages them by blinding them to the real the cause of the problems that they are hired to resolve.
American education is so mediocre and fails so badly at teaching students WHAT to think that some of these students, the ones who knew HOW to think before they ever got "processed" stand a better chance at perceiving the causes of problems and therefore their proper solutions.
That's what caused paradigm shifts, the "thinking out side the box," in almost every field that Americans have excelled in, over and over again, since the end of the first World War to the present time.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Actually, don't some credit Bangalore back office companies with defusing Kargill? I was under the impression that a number of US companies got nervous about outsourcing to India and Indian industry put enormous pressure on the govt to find a peaceful resolution. Anybody confirm?
Obviously, India can defend itself but who needs that kind of crisis?
You don't need to be a majority to rule a country, or earth for that matter.
You can't rule a majority forever, you'll always be overriden by a new handful of skilled people because the majority is so malleable it is too easy to drive against its former ruling-class.
Now, I am somehow reluctant about corporations because we are not dealing about a handful of insidious people, here, but with some artificial meta-creatures (close to the viruses) which morph into something new and impregnate groups even deeper.
This infection might be even harder to cure.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The problem here is one of market perception. Due to the high degree of stock compensation for executives and board members, the focus is mainly on stock performance.
In the late 1990's the market perception was:
If Company A is a high-tech company, like Netscape, in a new and innovative internet-related field, and if Company A was ramping their headcount, and if Company A agressively compensates it's employees - then they MUST be doing well, or perhaps, will be doing well a few quarters down the road, and in fact, could very well become the next Microsoft.
Now, the market perception is:
Companies like Company A were all overhyped, and the agressive compensation was bleeding them dry because they were hiring bonehead "web-designers". Company A will do better in a few quarters if they outsource instead. They'll still get bonehead "web-designers" but they won't be quite so expensive. In fact, they could very well become the next Microsoft.
Companies gear to take advantage of this market perception. They want to inflate the stock price, and whether or not the decision to hire boneheads is good does not matter. The only thing that matters is if the company is following the latest trend that market watchers watch.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
...the American programmer will be selling Super Slurpies in some 711 somewhere. How the mighty have fallen. Oh well, at least I can have all the microwaveable burritos I want.
Transition is a pretty permanent mode of operation, if work is being sucked in one direction, and more work being created as more jobs become viable, maybe one can live on the plughole enabling work to be moved in either direction and having a solidarity between Indian, American and Irish programmers and not see individuals as a threat, and so be able to economically appraise what can, and should, be done in different places, and facilitate this flow.
Globalisation is fascilitated by: English, Chinese, windows, linux and broadband. These things are all world wide forces for commoditisation of information and software.
Maybe I have just married someone from Eastern Europe, so I can sell my expensive house and live comfortably off the proceeds elsewhere.
Saying there is one choice or another, can you not do both? Modify your skills wherever you go.
Another Mr. T who works 5 feet away and so could hammer out some more details before feeding/commiting to the on line machine. Though I ended up giving a seemingly off the cuff bunch of unstructured dialog.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
If foreign programmers were so great, they would have invented the World Wide Web!
Don tell me - you mean they did? A recently knighted Brit invented it in Switzerland?
I agree. The majority cannot be ruled forever.
As far as corporations are concerned, it's not as if humans haven't faced similar creatures in the past. As Noam Chomsky once remarked, the corporate world is like slavery. The people running corporations aren't evil or anything. They are just like you and me. However, within the institution called a corporation, they perform activities that do not benefit humanity. It's just like how many of the slaveowners were the nicest people on earth. They weren't evil. They didn't differ from the rest of society. However, within the institution of slavery, they were terrible people. Same thing with corporations. The CEOs are not bad people. They eat the same food you do, watch the same tv programs, and play the same computer games. But within the corporate entity, they behave differently...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
First let me say that yes I am biased, I am an american .
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I can be considered further biased because me and ALOT of
ppl I know have lost their jobs to it
So in the best objectivity I can muster here are some reasons
I think it is bad
1) Money sent outside the US for third world labor stays there,
thus money that used to pay ppl here, to pay taxes, to buy
food, to further employ americans in a trickle down effect is gone
2) If we were to pay US workers third world wages, and have
third world labor laws, we would be breaking US law
*** So are we gonna lower minimum wage to 50 cents/hour ???
3) If you did pay lower than minimum wage to workers, would
they all have to be sponsored by the government and go on welfare
and increase the already burgeoning working poor caste
4) The value of the dollar has been steadily falling, what are
the implications on real estate, US investments, trade ???
5) Huge layoffs create bankruptcies, repossesions, forfeitures,
and broken homes, and broken marriages . Money being one of
the top 3 reasons for divorce
6) Even with a increase recently in GDP not seen in 20 years,
little to no hiring is occuring
7) Companies that reveal their internal secrets overseas may
just find new foreign companies making their products for even
less, after the plans were just copied by former cheap labor
With no recourse thru US patent law, etc etc, they experience a
TOTAL loss of market share as the foreign government chooses to
support their own ppl
8) Unemployment figures do not count those that are no longer
eligible for checks , they are no longer considered unemployed
9) The US cannot compete equally on unequal ground, we have a
huge tax overhead, and cost of living here is too high to
compete with countries that have poor humanitarian labor laws
10) US companies are going overseas and thru negligence are
creating disasters like Bhopal in India . They act above the
law and thousands die from it
http://www.bhopal.org/
The so called race to the bottom has negative aspects that
I feel will create even more hate for the US, within and
without and there is already a sense of a Elitist class in
this country
The funny thing is they expect to be protected by some of the
poor they pay to serve in the military, but in recent polls
soldiers were ask if they would defend the rich against
an uprising of the poor, you can guess the answer
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
This isn't a flame,
but Indian graduates are hardly of western caliber. now that has -*zero*- effect on programmers because you don't need a college degree to be a good programmer.
But lets get a little real here about the state of the Indian university system; at best, it's grade 13.
Unless you plan to have perfect specs for a given project, expect outsourcing to be more trouble than its worth. You need inhouse developers in any software project where any moderate level of flexibility is required, which basically encompasses 99.99% of projects I have ever come across.
Considering the daemons of globalisation: English, microsoft windows, linux, broadband and Chinese, my niche in Eastern Europe would be Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), as my programming skills become impaired with age, current technology trends will reach me sooner or later. DMCA may not. Ironic almost that English was forced on the Irish, that I may see fit to force it on some other johney foreigner.
In Belarus one must work or one gets reported to the authorities!
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
"had some really racist remarks thrown my way"
"Indian" is not a race, its a nationality. If you're going to play the race card at least do it correctly.
I'm a professional developer and at first I was pretty hostile towards the idea of jobs like mine being outsourced. I've come to some conclusions though about outsourcing in general:
-If you have a rock solid spec, outsourcing is fine. You get the best price for labor, everyone is happy. Sadly a rock solid spec is a mythical creature in my experience.
-"Real" programmers over time will do just fine. During the IT boom, remember all those ads by IT training companies saying "switch careers to a lucrative IT job!". Well, alot of people went and were trained to be programmers and got positions in the industry who really aren't good programmers.
Those of us who are good at what we do and like what we're doing are well aware that a certain "type" of person makes a good programmer. Anyone who got into the business because of salaries or the promise of a cushy job really doesn't belong here. Programming is a mixture of art and science, it takes creativity, a desire to explore and expand your boundries, and a logical mind. It's definately not a 9-5 job, you need to have a passion for it!
Outsourcing is the latest thing, there's going to be some casualties of good programming talent until the market stabalizes and companies figure out what does and doesn't work. In the meantime, we will see less people entering the field who shouldn't be here, and also many less experienced (and less "suitable") people changing careers out of IT. Toss in the demographic loss of the baby boomers starting to hit retirement age and you have the formula for solid demand for good programmers.
Misconception 1 - American programmers are better.
I don't think that this is what folks are really thinking.
Right now, the Indian IT and software development industry has been growing at an insane rate. Demand has been doubling and doubling and doubling. This isn't a criticism of Indians per se. It's just a fact that when you have a market like that, you're going to wind up employing bad along with the good, because it's easy for anyone to get a job. The same thing happened in the US during the dot-com boom. There was a huge amount of overdemand for web designers, so there were a huge number of incompetent web designers running around. In ten years, everything will probably be fine -- graduates will increase to meet demand, poor employees will develop a poor reputation, and so on. However, at the moment, I'd say that it's a reasonable assumption to say that you're likely to get worse work out of a typical Indian software house than a typical American software house at the moment. That doesn't mean that you can't get a good Indian developer, just that it's easier to get a worse one.
Second of all, the Indian software development industry is younger than the American one, and shooting up to meet demand. It's already hard to avoid godawful consultants in the US. When you go to an environment where reputations may not have been established for as long, things just get more difficult.
Misconception 2 - Indians are not innovative.
Sure.
The problem is the reasons most US companies are moving overseas. This isn't Wolfram running out and looking for a new brilliant lead computer scientist (well, they might well hire an Indian, but that's irrelevant -- this sort of behavior isn't forming the bulk of the recent surge). A lot of jobs going overseas are for ordinary drudge work -- web dev, basic system administration. These companies are looking for folks that don't cost $80K/year to write ordinary code. They're tired of paying obscene prices for work that's pretty straightforward. My guess is that this is where the "uninteresting jobs going overseas" idea comes from.
Finally, one person's anecdotal evidence doesn't count for much, but I've had only awful experiences with both India-based IT and India-based software development. There are clearly currently at least some really awful people out there. My guess is that in a few years, as demand and supply equalize, the situation will improve. However, please understand that not all American dislike of outsourcing simply stems from a sense of job threat.
The final issue, which is simply a problem for any international company, is that it can be terribly difficult to understand a thickly accented voice, especially once it's been crammed through the lossy compression that cell phones apply to voices. I'm sure the reverse applies (and hence a US-based programmer might be less desireable to an operation which is primarily India-based). However, it really can be frusterating to have to ask someone to repeat what they've said three or four times. They may show admirable patience in being willing to repeat what they're saying, but it's still a frusterating communications problem. This is especially so during meetings, where it's embarrassing for everyone involved if someone has to be asked to repeat themselves multiple times. Note that I don't see this as much of a problem with email. Even with poor English (and I've seen awfully good written English from many Indians with strong accents), I can usually make out what's being said without trouble.
On the other hand, I'm also sensitive to the fact that the US is edging uncomfortably closer to the old UK anti-Indianism due to labor issues, and I try not to be unfair.
As an aside, I'm also a bit saddened by the fact that there seem to be awfully few India-based open source projects. Perhaps open source springs simply from affluence, and hasn't been as available to many Indians as it has been western European and US-based developers (particularly Scandinavian -- it seems like there's a hell of a lot of Norwegian and Swedish OSS developers). I do wish that more open source projects came from India, though.
May we never see th
Realistically, "outsourcing" just is the situation when software development is cheaper in India but their US-based management doesn't want to move there. The long term resolution to that is obviously not that software development comes back to the US, the long term resolution is that management also moves to India (or wherever).
It's really not that different from what happened in the electronics industry after all: initially, parts came from Japan, then whole devices, and now the companies themselves are Japanese. And it was the same with cars and computer hardware.
What should the US do? There is really only one choice: if it wants to retain its strong economic position, the US needs to start the next revolution in a different field. Maybe that's biotech, nanotechnology (whatever that is) or the commercialization of space. But anybody who wants to claim a leadership position can't lean back and say "we'd just like to lean back for a while and relax on the strength of the jobs we already created".
How often have you been able to get the requirements correct before you started designing, or coding, or debugging?
If your answer is "not often", do you think the biggest reason for that is because of a failure in requirements gathering or a failure in the development process that attempts to separate the process of requirements gathering from design and coding?
I think the answer is tremendously important to the question of whether outsourcing can work effectively.
how to invest, a novice's guide
Q: Why can't Indians start their own software companies, write their own software and compete the heck out of us?
A: Most software and IT jobs involve running a PARTICULAR business. Overseas programmers can't do this well because of lack of proximity.
What remains is off-the-shelf products for general use.
Competing in this area against Open-source, Sun, Microsoft, Apple, shareware, seems like a real tough way to make money unless you are super-smart.
The coke recipe has been published. It's not the secrecy of the recipe that matters. It's firstly Coke's marketing muscle -- it's not that nobody else can mimic the taste, it's the label.
Secondly, in the case of Coke, it's very hard for anyone else to get that coca-leaf importing license required. Yes, there still is coca extract in Coke. They just process it to destroy the active cocaine ingredient these days, but the flavor is still there.
There's nothing in the water in India or the US that makes programmers/analysts in one country better or worse. Pull ten Indian developers off the street; pull ten American developers off the street. Set them to work on a software project under the same working conditions (IT infrastructure, level of interaction with the customer, familiarity with the problem space). The results will be comparable in quality. The author of the article doesn't seem to get this - he seems to take the opposite as an article of faith, offering scant proof to the contrary. (Same with many posters here - many of whose comments I find somewhere between cluelessly racist and blatantly racist.)
The main problems with offshoring to India - besides cost becoming less competitive, as salaries spiral upward - is the communication barrier. Not due to the difference in accent, but because India is literally halfway around the world from the US. If you're working in the same building as your customer, there are a whole range of interactions you can have with them during the development process - having meetings, walking through the app, bouncing ideas/questions off each other, having a beer after work - that simply don't take place when you can only talk to the customer over the phone the few hours of the day your sleep schedules coincide. The result is that you can build more closely to the customer's wishes. Most of the big Indian outsourcers try to get around this by writing thick specifications up front, then throwing them over the wall to the offshore development team. This is how the Big 5 consultancies (Accenture et al.) tend to do things in the US (write piles of incoherent documentation, then shove it in front of the developers); as their many spectacularly failed projects show, this isn't a viable way to do software.
For major corporations, back-office systems like accounting and inventory are seldom one-size-fits-all solutions; there's often a lot of customization involved around the specifics of the business. Contrary to the author's beliefs, these custom systems are the software projects that would benefit least from outsourcing - the communication barrier makes getting intricate requirements across to the development team more difficult. I tend to think shrink-wrapped type software outsources best. When Microsoft develops a new release of Office, their "customers" (i.e. people who set the fine-grained requirements) are program managers who are embedded with the development team. In a situation like this, there's no communication barrier to wipe out the cost efficiency gained by going offshore. We've been seeing something like this in the games industry for many years - lots of game titles are written "near-shore" in Canada, where the same amount of money will hire at least twice as many comparable developers.
Disclaimer: American coder here, working for a software company with offices in US and India (not MS, not Big 5). Will probably be out of a job in a few years, but hey, the software biz was getting boring anyway.
Take two people, one of whom got a 90% on some standardized test, the other who got a 70%. The first person was given every advantage growing up, the second person had to struggle every step of the way. The logical assumption is that person A is near the top of their game at 90%, while person B, at 70%, may in fact be capable of 99% given the same advantages as person A had. Which person deserves the chance more? Which one will do more with the opportunity?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
[he would never consider outsourcing chocolate production ] ... Coke and Pepsi do just that. They have bottlers all over the world - and they still have been able to maintain the "secrecy" of the recipe.
Well, maybe it's just that I am a good amateur of chocolate! The article does not talk about the 50 pound chocolate bars sold to Hershey by the tone every day!
Comparing Coke and Pepsi to high quality pieces of chocolate, is like saying some specialty goat cheese from Holland, a French "Chateauneuf du pape" or Portugal "Fonseca 20 year" Port could all be created in some factory in China, Taiwan, or Uganda.
I would agree that no part of creating software really compares to creating specialty chocolate, cheese or wine, but your analogy just does not apply well in this case.
No, this would be quote from John Maynard Keynes. And any talk done in this forum will be using his form of economic theory -- Keynesian Ecomonics. So, no it is not a nillist quote as you say, but a comment on long-term economic cirumstances. Do us a favor and don't get swept-up in the technology outsourcing fever -- in the long run it will not matter. And that is the point of the original statement. That tech outsourcing will piss some off, but to be protectionist about technology will make the IT market worse off. Just think of it as an open source job market. You do like open source don't you?
You can't fix latency. There is a hard limit on it; the speed of electrical signals in a cable or light in fiber. There is always going to be more delay in accessing a server on the other side of the world, and as the networking technology improves, the share of the delay that's due to wire length only increases. Plus, as protocols get more and more complex, it matters more and more.
Programmers are the company's "geek to gear" translators. They are the human/computer interface during the essential development phase of the software lifecycle, increasingly the defining cycle of the business cycle. Sending the programming jobs is just the closest that the suits can get to getting the computers to program themselves.
;) can fit the two together. Once the leak across the divide is patched, the business pipeline flows well. Meanwhile, the operation is planned by the same people who went gaga in the 1990s over highschool cut & pasters, paying them IPO income to "program" HTML. The same false short-term economy is at work with the outsourcing, but any recovery will be much harder, even impossible, as the productivity gets stretched too thin to sustain itself.
When the suits know what they're doing at their jobs, they realize that the problem is at the "suit to geek" interface. Neither geeks nor suits, typically marketdroids, are socialized enough with each other, or anyone else for that matter, to communicate with each other. Moving the geeks to India is just going to make that worse, outweighing of the productivity:dollar gain. More importantly, the productivity:hour loss is so abyssmal that it's largely self-defeating. Programmers are so incredibly productive, when their time or salary is measured against net profit from affected business activity, that there's not much gross dollars left to recover by cheaping out. In fact, sending the marketdroid jobs to India would be a much bigger productivity:dollar gain, but that's obviously foolish, destroying the organization's internal model of its market. The same logic also applies to the programmers.
The way to increase productivity is to get better suit to geek translators. Either side of the divide can learn the other's culture, preferably both. If not, another layer (in NYC, bartenders are popular in the role
Of course, the suits will never get this by themselves, so it's up to us geeks to make it happen. Try getting a marketdroid on the other floor hooked on netgaming, and impress them into your team. As the male:female ratio is also better across the divide, it might even get geeks dates, preferably with their friends (once you learn their socialized habits, the reasons will be abundantly clear). We already fix everything else - this is a way to fix the biz from inside, so it can survive long enough to keep paying us to frag each other across the LANs.
--
make install -not war
In order to bolster the argument of the above writer and try to end the claim that Indian programmers are somehow inferior to their American counterparts, consider the following:
e re are 7 research papers in the december issue. 5 of the 7 have atleast one Indian author. That ought to give some credibility to the Indian education system and credence to the existence of atleast a few good Indians in Computing (and technology in general).
See the latest issue of the IEEE's "Computer" magazine. http://www.computer.org/computer/articles.htm
Th
Masters degree isn't enough to get you a job in the IT industry. I have one, and I can't even get a rejection letter, let alone an interview.
I'm a developer in the Washington DC area. Ive been on 5 projects. The four that have not required US citizenship has been dominated by non-Citzens, the plurality of which are Indians. My take is that most people are slightly better than worthless regardless of where they come from. I'd also like to point out that on the Oracle database end of development there are typical 50-100 applicants for each job and 80-90% are non-citizens. Its at the point where non-Citizens do not want anymore immigrations. They want it totally cut off, because their wages are going down. Now about offshoring. Larger companies are not outsourcing, they are firing Americans and opening shops in India. The bulk of the cost is upfront. Once these shops are set up and processes are in place, it gets alot cheaper to move people over. I think the real goal is to do as much 'core development' as possible offshore and keep a skeleton crew of Americans to handle customer relations and maintenance. This and the massive amount of immigration, plus the slow down in IT has radically lowered salaries. Its at the point now where a small but growing number of companies are offering entry level wages to senior level people. Its at the point, where if that is all I Could get, I would switch careers. It's not worth it. We have H1-Bs in my department and they are average. They had to sign a contract where if they quit their job before getting a greencard(and hardly any of them get this) they have to pay the company $18,000. They have been here for 4 years, are payed the minimum in the pay bracket and have never gotten a raise. Both of them have pulled all-nighters for weeks at a time. None of the Americans will do that. Not worth it. How do you compete with these wages? Your flooding the supply. There are more people in India than the US, Canada, Japan, Western Europe, and Australia combined. The problem with this is that its an under the cover trade deficit. Think about. The costs to develop get spent outside the US and the money spent on the project is payed inside the US. Its an un-tracked trade deficit. Plus, these are very high paying jobs. So when we career switch its back to entry level and to lower paying jobs. I'm relatively young, but people in their 40s really can't get true entry level jobs where you can move up. So we have less money to spend. What really annoys me about this are the lies that companies tell. Companies will lie to customers and employees about outsourcing. They are not honest. I'll ride out IT for a few more years, but I'm also investigating a career switch. I will not give someone my senior level skills for lousy pay. What is in it for me? I'm just putting money in your pocket. I expect wages to continue to go down for a while. They might go down to the point where US citizens wont do the work. Similiar to the argument for illegal immigrants. Companies offer wages so low, its not worth it to do the job, but they argue its 'fair market value', so they want more outsourcing and immigration. Same argument people use for hiring illegals. Note: not one biggoted or racist argument here.
A dollar is worth as much as anyone thinks it's worth. It has no set value in and of itself. At one time, every dollar was backed by precious metals in the US Federal Reserve. Some dollars were actually issued as silver certificates. You could go to the Federal Reserve Bank and demand to have the paper dollar converted to the equivalent amount of silver. This became too restrictive to economic growth and inhibited the use of debt financing in US budgets. What's more, as more and more of the precious metal is mined, the value of the metal decreases, and therefore the value of the currency backed by the metal also decreases. Today, most developed economies are no longer backed by precious metals for all of these reasons.
A dollar's worth of rice in India is a much much greater quantity than a dollar's worth of rice in the States, and the same dollar buys an even smaller quantity of rice in Japan. This is mostly because (as you point out) the cost of labor (the principal input in agricultural production) in India is cheap. It's getting more expensive for Indian labor, though, as more people move to cities (where the cost of living and therefore labor is greater) from rural areas, as the middle class grows (which increases the expected standard of living), and as more Indians travel and live abroad (where the value of goods and services in a worldwide context can be more tangibly demonstrated). What I'm saying here is that it is India that will become less competitive against nations and regions that are less than developed than she is. Someday, many Indian jobs will be outsourced to Bangladesh, and some already are going there.
The notion that the US should or is going to devalue its own currency is ridiculous. It's actually quite impossible for America to do this, anyway. What's more, everybody loves American money. I've travelled to more than thirty nations, and you can always find someone who has American dollars -- they're the one with a big crowd around them. Saddam hoarded the dollar for its stability and convertibility. Hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Indians flock to America every day, looking for education, entertainment, relaxation, work or opportunity. In any nation with an American embassy, you don't need to ask where the consulate is, you only need look -- it's the one with the line that stretches around the block. The only people storming the Indian embassy are the ones who made their cash in the developed world and want to bring it home where they can stretch it for all it's worth. Every time they do that, the cost of labor in India goes up. More power to 'em, and more power to India, I say. If it keeps up, maybe you will get the same wages, and you'll get the same costs, too. Good on ye!
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
[Yes, I posted this on the Forio site too.]
This article confuses terms. (BTW, I use the term "good" to mean anything that can be bought, usually referred to as "goods and services". Programming is a "good" when you only care about the final product.)
Outsourcing: Paying another company (to do a task that could be done internally.)
Offshoring: Hiring people from another country (to do a task that could be done by people in the same country as the company.)
You can combine the two by hiring a company in another country to do a task, but it is important to distinguish between them.
Offshoring takes advantages of differences in the markets in different countries for certain goods. If the logistics allow the product to be transported for less than the difference in cost of the goods, then it is economical to buy there and sell here. Traders have been doing this since before the invention of money. With the extremely low cost of moving electronic goods today, production can be done anywhere in the world. (As far as the quality of the software development, I believe there are very few great programmers, so find them wherever you can. If you are hiring code-monkeys, it may not matter except that the cost of logistics must include language translation and extra management.)
Outsourcing has very limited scope of usefulness. It is useful to buy goods from other companies when the cost of doing it in-house is greater than available funds. There are also issues where accountability is necessary, even when the work could be done in-house (such as accounting audits. You need someone who does not have a stake in the company.) Third, there are a few issues where the required expertise cannot be bought, or the cost of entry is so high that everybody buys the goods from others.
The article's example is wrong. Jean-Marc is buying boxes because he needs too few to make it worth the cost of building his own boxes. When he sells enough chocolate that the cost of buying boxes is more than the savings from owning his own box making factory, he will enter the box-making business. This is called vertical integration, and is one of the prime savings from economies of scale.
I have a (currently) small business. I "outsource" my legal needs because I do not need enough to hire a lawyer full-time. IBM requires more lawyers, and so has its own legal team. It does this because it is more economical to hire them than to pay the overhead of maintaining a separate business. Every customer is paying the overhead of any business from which they buy. I am willing to pay that overhead because it is less than the cost of maintaining my own legal team.
The third reason to "outsource" is evident with Operating Systems. The cost of writing your own, and making it compatible with existing systems, is much too high for any company. So everybody "buys" Operating Systems from the few "companies" that have built their own. I use quotes because companies could collaborate on services they need that they cannot afford alone. Linux is an example of companies investing in a good that is needed by many of them. Collaborative lobbying organizations also fit this role, although they also fit the (reverse) accountability reason (such as "Microsoft did not say it; it was the SBA!")
The confusion between "outsourcing" and "offshoring" is designed to make offshoring seem like an extension of the recent (and awful) trend for outsourcing. "You were already considering outsourcing. Offshoring will save you even more!" This will probably do more to kill offshoring than anything else. Outsourcing is always bad when you have the ability to avoid it; every company that outsources a major business function regrets it within a decade. Offshoring is fine if it is economical for your situation, but hire the people; do not add the overhead of maintaining another company.
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I am a consultant. I am paid to provide expertise that cannot be gained from anybody else. I am
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
You've hit one of my hot buttons. Maybe I've misinterpreted you remark.
I've seen good people do poorly in a "sink or swim" environment. I've seen good programmming talent wasted on clueless supervisors. I've been fired for cleaning up wretched code, only to go back 3 months later as a customer, and hear them brag about their new QA staff.
There are perhaps, those who will never "get it", and those who have never had the seemingly obvious pointed out to them. Common sense is not always common and sensible. Good training can make a world of difference.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
I have a solution to this outsourcing problem (unless someone else already suggested this): Why don't we buy products from Region 3-6 instead of the US/European markets? They're cheaper! This solves our problems, no? I mean, if we lose our high paying jobs that we use to support US/Euro economies, we surely can't afford the prices of products in the US/European markets. And where can we find cheaper products? Region 3-6, of course. Books for example, are 80% cheaper. Granted the paper quality isn't that good, but the knowledge in it still persists from continent to continent. The whole world will be one happy freaggin' family again, and our animosity for each other will vanish! (perhaps not)
Last I heard, they sacked all of their IT, and outsourced it. They expect to save 5 percent. Desktop computer doesn't work, call India. Hardware problem, ...uh, send it to India.
Hey, it's a rumor. On the Internet. It must be true.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
a diabetic would love you for life if he/she goes into HYPOglycemia
Actually, as an "american" (meaning, spesifically a citizen of the U.S. of A., and one of the few who understand that America is way bigger than "America", if you get my drift 8-) the problem is rather two sided.
Side 1: The United States is leading the world for the position of "the Premere Third World Country of the Next Mellinium." Some tiny fraction of people are starting to catch on to this fact. Popularisim plus Corporatisim means no concept of "doing the hard thing is often doing the right thing" in any of our policies and procedures. We (try to) legislate morality and we legislate pigopoly at the same time and don't see a conflict. We pay our teachers and cops the way we pay our buss-boys and then act all surprised that the rising wave of uneducated hoodlums are getting away with murder.
Side 2: The US of A is the only "modern western country" that *didn't* lose anything significant in World War II. We "exported" our losses as a controlled activity. We may have felt "a little threatened" but our buildings didn't burn and our civilians were not trodden under foot. Consequently, we were never forced to face up to our own (artificial) sense of superiority. As a nation we never visited the fact that our own minority population wasn't "somehow inferrior" because we never were really required to *depend* on "them". There were a few shining examples held up (the Tusgeegie(sp?) Airmen and such) as "exceptions".
Consequently, this country is that spoilt little rich kid that has never been challenged except for one poke-in-the-nose in gradeschool.
All you *really* have to do to silence a social class in this country is to call it a minority. In our collective subconcious minority status implies inferior status. The reasoning, if I may use that word without laughing, is that if it was so great to be (whatever) then everybody would be. So since everybody isn't (whatever) there must be no value to it.
While the rest of the western world was facing up to the idea that Might does not make Right, the US of A was still engaged in "Manifest Destiny". It is sad really.
We are punk adolecents and as all such do eventually, we are doomed to suffer our comeuppance.
Meanwhile, in our "maturity" we have never internalized as a culture that, as the investment bankers say, past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.
Our only real hope is to export our stupidity while we still have the leverage, which is why our state department is doing things like forcing DMCA analogs onto the E.U. (suckers... 8-)
How stupid are we? We loan countries money and then use "economic sanctions" against them. We go our of our way to be rude to and try to bully our international creditors. Our political definition of a "job" is nine months of consecutive employment so that each year our polititions can "create" the same jobs with the same packages year after year. We deliberately hire experts to prove our bad idea is a good one instead of just asking them which ideas are which. We strike down "right to work" laws to "protect workers" by letting unions force them to join and pay dues on penalty of losing not just their jobs but their carriers, which is extortion.
and then, to quote the song, we "Blame Canada!"
By this enlightened point of reason of course India is incapable of innovation. They aren't good white Americans. (I am white BTW, but it is still true). It couldn't be that the bad economy in India could in any way be related to their very-recient colonial (rape victim) status. Nor the general self-perpetuating "don't invest there, nobody invests there, so its a bad investment" logic.
All that having been said.
It is dumb as all f### to send your money and jobs overseas. The U.S. companies should not be offshoring thier programmers. Then again the rest of the world shouldn't be sending their Microsoft Tax to Redmond, WA, USA.
Economics is a contact sport, and nobody has ever won a Football (whatever that sport is in your country) Game/Match by always giving the ball to the opposing players.
God people are dumb.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I've heard the same rumors. I wouldn't be surprised if they were true, but I want names, dates, and places before I cite this as fact in the future.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I see what you're saying, but the problem with your assertion is that the US does not set the value of its currency.
:) ). What happens in India (or Bangladesh or South Africa, or whatever) is irrelevant (sort of). The situation will be the same in USA. People, software developers in this case, just can't compete. Instead of India or China, now it will be Bangladesh, or South Africa, or Ghana, or whatever.
:) All I can say is that everything seemed ridiculous at one time.
USA has HUGE influence over its currency. Yes, it is free-floating but it can still be controlled. For example, the interest rates set by the Federal Reserve impacts the value of the currency.
Also, as you mention how how the currency is not backed by anything these days, it is based on TRUST. The value of the currency can swing all over the place based on the PERCEPTIONS of the currency traders. I'm sure that if the US president comes out and says that the US currency needs to decline or if the Chairman of the Federal Reserve says that the currency is going to decline in the future, it will fall.
As far as why currencies are not backed by something tangible, my conspiracy theory is that the government (it wast he Nixon govt) couldn't afford to do it. All this bogus reasoning about more minerals being mined is just that: bogus. Capitalists just wanted to leverage it more and that's what ended up happening. Everything is leveraged, including the money you have in your bank. If everyone went and withdrew their money from the banks, the banks would collapse. There isn't enough money to give back.
What I'm saying here is that it is India that will become less competitive against nations and regions that are less than developed than she is. Someday, many Indian jobs will be outsourced to Bangladesh, and some already are going there.
I agree. But my point is from that of USA or Canada (I'm Canadaian BTW
The original author (I can't remember if it was you) made the argument that Americans can decrease their wages. My main argument is regarding that. My view is that it is very difficult (as I pointed out with the cost of living differences). Sure, the jobs may move from India to Bangladesh but the situation is the same for the American worker.
The notion that the US should or is going to devalue its own currency is ridiculous.
Yes, it IS ridiculous. But then again, a lot of stuff I say is ridiculous. I also predict the collapse of capitalism within our lifetimes
What's more, everybody loves American money. I've travelled to more than thirty nations, and you can always find someone who has American dollars
That's true but at one time everyone used British Pound. If someone said the Pound was going to lose its world currency "status" 70 years ago, you would have been laughed off. But look what happened. Same thing can happen to USA. According some conspirarcy theorists, US foreign intervention in the Middle East (and other places) is to stop those countries from switching to the Euros (before you dismiss the theory, at least read the first article on that page). Iraq, for example, switched from the dollar to the euro. Whether you give credance to that theory or not, you can't deny that the dollar is worth what it is mainly due to petrodollar.
On top of all this, don't forget that as US imperialism and unilateralism increases, countries will be tempted to dump the dollar. Not just for economic reasons, but also POLITICAL ones.
The important point out of all this is that the US dollar is worth what it is primarily due to foreign demand for it (as you pointed out). But if the demand subsides, the dollar will plummet IMO. BUT there are even more complicated factors at all. For instance most of the world economy depends on USA and also many countries
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
I've been marginalized by three things. 1) The economy. 2) H1B's, and 3) Microsoft. I say fuck Microsoft. I say fuck the H1B program. And I say fuck the Greenspan and Clinton for fucking the economy and fuck Bush for not doing enough and doing the wrong things.
Yes, I am bitter. I will never get another job in my field because I've been out of it so long. I admit I'm not a hot top notch programmer, but I'm not some mediocre moron who read C++ for Dummies and called myself a programmmer.
Oh yeah and fuck the companies and their shithead HR departments who play buzzword bingo with resumes.
Yes, you are using the same database, same compiler, and same OS, but if you look upon this as a pure commodity, you are very very shortsighted.
The company that uses IT as a strategic advantage will do much better than the company that does not. Right now we just made the basic components: we have a database, OS, and compiler. Now we have much bigger issues to deal with: what do we do with these things?
We can make decision support software. Custom applications to data mine a company's data so that they can make better decisions. An example of this is Harrah's who used a data mining program to determine the best place to place things in its casinos. The possibilities are endless because people will continue to innovate, and future innovation will require more custom applications.
One more difference between electricity and IT: a device that I bought 5 years ago does work today. A program was written 5 years ago for windows 98 might not work on Windows XP. Things do become obsolete and require reworking in IT. Yes, you can hold on to your IBM AS/400s forever, but you will also have to pay a staff a LOT more money on upkeep in the long run than if you can upgrade to better and more open systems.
China is soon going to be the biggest market for everyone's services.
Most of the expansion in the global economy is going to come from China and India. That is where the big companies are, or soon will be.
Western code shops that outsource, or relocate, are going to have a competitive edge over those that keep everything in-house. Here (in China) guangxi (connections) are going to count a lot more than having your coders in the west.
Predicting fashions is part of the cost of the design. I mean, who do you think does the fashion predicting? Essentially, whether or not next year's clothing lines will have red or blue tassels is a design decision, no matter how many marketing surveys you've done telling you this or that..
I have been learning new stuff that can't be outsourced: music appreciation, plumbing, gardening, German, French, carpentry and for good measure I am getting a MSc in Software Development.
I know my current job will be outsourced to a cheaper place. It is not if, it is when.
If it does not happen, well, it is a big bonus to my daily worries, otherwise, I am ready. I am not going to ignore reality just because I don't like it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The answer as you well know is - "not often."
But I think your follow-up question does not capture the situation fully. It is not a choice between
First is a problem of the requirements gathering and creating a Requirements Specification out of it which I discussed in my thesis. As another comment by tom's a-cold has pointed out the process of requirements gathering and converting them into a solution is a continuous and iterative process - and core competence can be looked at as the ability to do this process faster and faster - and better than anyone else. In addition, I have described this requirements process in more detail in my thesis. Here is a link to the Abstract & Chapter 1 of my thesis - MS Word (sorry) 76 KB
Secondly, the worlds of requirements gathering and deciding upon the tradeoffs is seeped in the business opportunities. While the world of the developers is steeped in the technical limitations. These are two very different worlds and I doubt that most people can effectively transition between the two. I know in Agile Modeling & Extreme Programming the idea is pretty much to bridge these two worlds by the same people but I believe that it is best done by separating these functions - and then allowing communication between these two worlds.
Economic activity is generated when a business problem meets a technical solution. The business problem by itself isn't much, and the technical solution by itself is not much. It is when these two meet and fit-in with each other then there is success in the marketplace. And they meet not along a single point or line, but have a pretty messy interface between them. The curx of the problem is to successfully tranfer "material" between these two worlds.
And the "material" that needs to tranfer across these two worlds can be data, information, knowledge and action. The nature of how these takes place, and why the process has to be continuous and iterative, and where is it that tradeoff's have to be made, is most important. I have tried to capture the nature of these transfers in a section of my thesis - the relevant section is excerpted here. MS Word (sorry) 36 KB
So, coming back to your original questions, I think they have to be expanded to cover a larger situation, rather than be answered in a single yes or no. If you do have any references or case studies in mind, do send me the links and I would love to discuss this issue further.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
I can't believe there is still people out there that believe these stereotypes.
I have worked with load of USians and the confrontational style just makes for bad design. A sizeable amount of US developpers confront every design decision, that is great when they are correct, it is a terrible PITA when they are incorrect. Normally this balances out and in reality a confrontational work ethic brings absolutely nothing to the table.
In the other hand a less confrontational, more collaborative approach, tends to wipe out very quickly bad options since with more eyeballs basic errors and misconceptions during design are more readily spotted.
The outstanding development teams I have met during the years (US teams included) normally had a highly integrated team in which confrontation is seen as an obstacle not a bonus.
Of course when you evaluate a solution as a team you have to defend your ideas, but to represent some position in a coherent way you don't have to scenify a Mexican stand off in which one person guns down another.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Ooops
Here are the correct links:
Here is a link to the Abstract & Chapter 1 of my thesis - MS Word (sorry) 339 KB
I have tried to capture the nature of these transfers in a section of my thesis - the relevant section is excerpted here. MS Word (sorry) 22 KB http://www.bubbleui.com/thesis/DATA%20INFO%20KNOWL EGE%20summary%20from%20thesis.doc
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
The same happens when you are employed by a serious company: they will train you because it is useful for them, but this carries the double edged sword of you being able to move easily elsewhere.
If what you are suggesting is that US based companies wrap themselves in the US flag and become staunch defenders of an inefficient econonmy, then, well, you would deserve the recession you would get while other countries take advantage of the obvious benefits of saving money by means of outsourcing.
There is no business in which you don't transfer some kind of expertise to your partners, this in some situations may enable them to compete against you in the future. Well, big deal, that is the nature of the game so I don't see exactly what the problem is.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But if the company in question is in a completely different line of business and software is just an infrastructure resource, then they could not care less about software innovation, they care about getting a tailored product ready to solve a particular internal need.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Your datacentre can be easily relocated elsewhere.
Be grateful that power supply in India is not that reliable yet.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I administer machines located in 3 different continents, remotely of course.
I can do this sitting on my living room while watching TV using my domestic broadband connection.
What latency are you dreaming about???
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Very basically... I have a problem that people are brought to this country and not given the right to quit (they can quit but then they have to go back to their country). This situation results in exploitation and then it artificially reduces the salaries/benefits of American workers.
Workers from other countries have affordable universities, health care, etc. compared to America. Therefore when they go back, their wealth and experience they got from working in America will allow them to live the good life while an American worker watches their salary/quality of life simply dissolve.
We live in a free market society. Guess what?!!?! People are getting out of the computer science field. Actually all engineer/scientists realize they are treated like garbage and paid miserably. Without us, the country would be nothing. We designed the networks, the bridges, buildings, etc. So many of us are leaving forever our love and going into other fields that are more lucrative like law. We are obviously way smarter than average lawyers, MBA, etc. and we will make what we deserve (I have 4 years of calc,3+ years of physics, etc. nothing in law school is that difficult).
Why should I recommend to anyone to study science? One's funding for college is determined by one's grades. Music appreciation for liberal arts will likely result in an easier 'A' than Multivariable Calc. Plus, when they get out they will have to work as contractors without health insurance, little money, crazy hours, etc. They are going to have school loans for $100,000 (most engineers take at least 5 years to graduate) but with wages as they are, they are going to be in hock for the next 20 years.
What will happen? Let us look at what happened during the Vietnam War. People migrated to liberal arts to maintain their GPA so to prevent from failing and getting drafted. Many engineer schools closed or had to rely heavily on foreign students who pay full tuition. Eventually this country will no longer have any science people.
End note: Watching a special on PBS I remember how much attention was paid to West Point graduating so many top engineers during the late 18th century who gave this country the technology to be exponentially grow and develop.
Now we are going to face a crisis where we will face an exponential decline as we will not have any science people in this country. It is called a brain drain. When standards of living start to seriously drop, many foreign born scientists will decide that going back to their home country is not such a bad idea. This is happening with some of my Chinese friends who are going back to be treated like Kings in Shanghai. They have developed experience working at America's best companies and now going to give that technological advantage to a place where they have friends and family.
America called to me 20 years ago to go into the science field saying that is was a national priority to have scientists of our own. I have been sadly misled. I am soon going to face not just descrimination because I am not an L-1 or H1-b but also age descrimination.
Scientists are smart. We are not going to complain and make a stink because we realize it is a loosing battle. We are just going to leave the industry forever. When American companies need us later to help them develop more efficient or advanced software to compete in the international marketplace, they wont find anyone in this country to do it and foreigners will not want to come and visited a country that is rotting at its core.
How is your perception of being slighted different than minorities' and women's perception? Trust me, you have far more opportunities as a white guy, even if you choose not to see it that way. Even with affirmative action you still have an advantage. Affirmative action simply tries to make hiring proportional to population.
There are plenty of minorities and women who are qualified to be CEOs who will never be CEOs because of their race or sex. I read about a recent study in Scientific American where they sent out a bunch of resumes to different companies. One group was highly qualified, but the names sounded 'ethnic,' like 'Tomika' and 'Latoya.' The other group was much less qualified but had 'white' names like 'Fred' and 'Dan.' The less qualified white guys got invited to interviews twice as often as the qualified minorities. Still think racism is a dead issue?
As far as profiling by police, it is far more egregious than you make out. In some areas of California, where I live, blacks make up 80% of traffic stops even though they make up only 20% of the population.
Racism is still a big issue in America, and until that changes, affirmative action is a good idea. Even die-hard minority conservatives like Condaleeza Rice and Colin Powell support it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
read about a recent study in Scientific American where they sent out a bunch of resumes to different companies. One group was highly qualified, but the names sounded 'ethnic,' like 'Tomika' and 'Latoya.' The other group was much less qualified but had 'white' names like 'Fred' and 'Dan.' The less qualified white guys got invited to interviews twice as often as the qualified minorities.
names of companies and the layout of the resume's as well as the information ON the resume's. You overlook many possible scenarios in this case esp. since some companies might view people as being "over qualified" especially if its a small or young company. I can assure you that these werent major companies since they dont "post" a CEO job, and usually try to promote from within for VP and Cxx level jobs.
How is your perception of being slighted different than minorities' and women's perception?
did i ever say it was any different ? perhaps the fact thats its not that different should tell you something.
rust me, you have far more opportunities as a white guy, even if you choose not to see it that way. Even with affirmative action you still have an advantage.
No i dont. I hate to break you the news but I dont work in a sector where the good ol' boys dominate like corporate management. I work down in the trench's. and since a large portion (not sure actual numbers but i would guess ~50%) of people at my outsourcing company are indian and black, i can prove your wrong. I have been denied on promotion because of race, i have been told this under the table by several HR people. This is not an uncommon practice with companies, the only problem is that when a white guy complains about this stuff he is viewed as a racist. And will ALWAYS have that stigma, true or not.
Affirmative action simply tries to make hiring proportional to population.
if that was true a company would be required to employ X amount of white guys. but they are not. They also wouldnt get higher tax breaks for hiring more minorities. which they do.
In some areas of California
California is not the whole country. It is as a matter of fact one of the more skewed sections of this country and might even be worse than the deep south. And that doesnt mean we shouldn't all look at california and say "PROBLEM", because their is one. But thats not true everywhere, the area where i live more than 50% of the cops are minorities, and if they are pulling minorities over perhaps their might actually be a reason for it. petty shit or not.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
Well, I give up. We obviously have very different perceptions of the world, and we both seem (I was going to say 'you seem' but that's not fair) pretty set in our basic assumptions. If your basic assumptions are true and mine are false, then you are right. Neither of our arguments are incorrect, they are just starting from different assumptions. That's why I tried to bring science into the discussion, to show that my assumptions are based on research and the scientific method, but if you won't accept the validity of widely published, peer reviewed science, then we have no basis for discussion. Reply if you like, but I'm done here.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton