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Bangalore Beats Silicon Valley
An anonymous reader writes "The inevitable has happened. Bangalore, which grew under the shadow of America 's Silicon Valley over the last two decades, has finally overtaken its parent. Today, Bangalore stands ahead of Bay Area, San Francisco and California, with a lead of 20,000 techies, while employing a total number of 1.5 lakh engineers."
It's amazing that during an election year that I've yet to hear one thing from Dean or Bush about this. Is everyone bought and paid for?
I honestly think that a lot of the current commentators are dead on when they say that this is a "fad" and this will eventually balance itself out. Wait until some corporations get a gut full of having their code halfway across the globe. Most companies aren't willing to let you work at home and yet they're willing to hire hoards of people they'll never meet to write their code? Heh. This will right itself eventually.
Is this an New Year's/April's Fool article?
I don't see the folks on Sand Hill Road moving to India very soon.
Also, the article is from India Times, so expect some bias.
A couple of years ago on a train journey to Mumbai I had a long conversation with an Indian software engineer. Once he'd got his University degree he got a job in Silicon Valley, but only stayed a couple of years because he realised that although salaries are lower in India he would actually be a lot better off in India because your dollar goes a lot further there. In India he could actually afford servants - a maid, cook etc. as well as a big house with a swimming pool and car. So if you read this type of story and think of hundreds of poorly paid Indians in sweatshops hacking out code, think again.
I'm sorry, but so what?
I'm not an American (Norwegian if you must know), but I have worked in Silicon Valley. Like the saying goes, it's not the size, but the quality. Yes, the best engineers in India is probably comparable to the best in the US and the rest of the world, but I find that the average engineer in India is worse than the average in the US.
Je ne parle pas francais.
Those jobs aren't ever coming back and neither will these.
Can I bum a sig?
Now would be a good time to put together a petition and send it to the various candidates and demand that there be some restrictions to all the tech jobs going overseas.
Good luck. Unless you accompany your petition with big sacks full of money, don't expect any results (other than a polite letter -- maybe). Those same candidates/elected officals didn't act when manufacturing jobs went offshore, why would they act now?
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
As long as the wages are low and the quality of code is at least acceptable (and, these people DO do good work), India will continue to get the jobs. Remember: The PRIME responsibility of the board of directors for a publicly traded company is to MAKE MONEY for it's stock holders.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
There are 250 Million people living in the US. There are a limited number of IT people. Hence, higher wages and the extensive use of H1B Visas.
There are over 1 Billion people living in India. And, according to my Indian-born Co-workers, they have more college educated IT workers than any other Country in the world. Hence, the supply of skilled workers is much higher. Although the salaries will increase, I don't think they will explode to our level any time soon.
In other words, if you are waiting for an Indian version of the Dot-Bomb, don't hold your breath.
I've always wanted to post this in an "offshoring" /. article, but have always arrived late to the game.
Firstly, a disclaimer: good on India. I hold nothing against them for accepting, with open arms, North American tech jobs as fast as CEOs rush to send them over.
That being said, I believe we (ie. North Americans) are being fucking morons about this. We are willingly shipping them high skilled jobs so Mr. CEO can report a quick profit the next quarter. In the mean time, we are losing an entire generation of "junior" positions. I believe that will spell the end of software development in North America.
My current job is that of a software architect. It is a high-skill job requiring very specialised knowledge in the area where we make software. I got to my current job by starting as a junior programmer at this company. After 3 years I was bumped up to "intermediate" developer. After 3 more it was a bump to "senior" developer. Now they think I know enough to design the systems I build.
Two years ago my company opened an office in Bangalore (we have offices across the globe). All new hiring has been through that office, and they ship the programmers from India to various other offices for training on projects. In another years time, programmers in that India office will have performed enough implimentations to be considered "intermediate" developers. In a few more years they'll be senior, and in a few more they'll be in my position.
As this is going on in India, all our own new grads will be working at Starbucks serving lattes, and will be left out of the loop.
All for the sake of a quick stock boost. Good on India, shame on us!
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
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.
hotmail.com
At least it was an indian guy who created it. Sold it to microsoft for $400 million..
Bash it all you want, hotmail was pretty revolutionary and is probably used by hundreds of millions of people..
Will code a sig generator for food
This hemoraging of jobs overseas has to become a prime election issue.
There was a good article on this topic in the Sunday L.A. Times pointing out it isn't only the Tech industry losing jobs overseas. All job levels and industries are sending services jobs overseas.
The Corporate CEO's and politicians they have in their back pockets only see improved operating costs, what they aren't seeing is they U.S. customers losing their jobs and won't be able to afford their products as time goes on.
Back when Alvin Tofler wrote _The Third Wave_ and said losing our manufactuing industry overseas isn't a problem, because America will become a Services based economy. Now we are losing our Services economy, but their isn't anything to replace it. The CEOs and politicians that cater to them need to open there eyes.
Outsourcing jobs overseas NEEDS to become a major issue in the upcoming elections. Every canidate needs to be informed of the issues and asked how they stand on it.
Think about it. An Indian or a Pak executive will work for a lot less...and they certainly won't screw up^h^h^h^h^h^h^hmanage the company any better or worse than their overpaid American counterparts. Anyone interested in starting an executive outsourcing company with me? :)
Do you have any idea of the HISTORY behind such laws? It's because employers would pay below subsistence wages to unskilled workers (as in not even really enough to live off of...) so that they'd have to work 12 or more hours in a day just to make enough money to barely live.
Not a pretty sight, really.
Now they're exporting that misery to the third world countries because they can and it nets a profit short-term for the businesses.
It amazes me how many "get a job" people are so clueless- because they're NOT IN THE SITUATION AND NEVER HAVE BEEN IN THE FIRST PLACE. They don't understand that many of these people that are "too good to work a real job" (By the way, define "real job" for me... If it's manual labor, then you don't understand what many actually did in the Tech fields- not all of them were "web developers" that got laid off, etc. Many of the people that got laid off had "real" jobs that were worth what they were getting paid for them until the Great Downsizing...) actually have obligations like houses and the such that many of what you'd consider "real" jobs won't even pay for an efficiency, let alone the obligations like car payments, insurance, etc.
If you've not been there, PLEASE do everyone a favor and shut the fuck up.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
A lot of people make comparisions between engineering and computer programming. I happen to work in an engineering firm, but have a degree in CS, so I am very aware of both sides of the analogy.
The analogy sucks.
The reason the analogy doesn't work is mainly because engineering deals with real-life physical problems. Also, engineering takes place in a realm of (generally) fixed possibilities.
You don't have to design a building to withstand 1,000 mi/h of wind because you know that will never happen. However, your program, to be anywhere near 'bug-free' (which can rarely be proven, of course) must be hardened against every combination of inputs. The effects of wind, and the behaviors of steel, etc. are very well known. You simply don't have this kind of data in programming, because you are almost always designing one-of-a-kind logic.
You make the implication that engineers don't make mistakes. That is far from the truth. The main reason why you don't hear about engineering mistakes is because of the massive QC effort that goes on. Most projects have at least 3 milestone levels, where plans are reviewed by the engineer's internal QC process, and then reviewed by the client's QC process. When you submit for jobs, part of your submission must document your QC process. No QC, no job.
If software companies put in anywhere near the same amount of effort on QC, you would see a definite improvement in software quality. However, it would be very difficult for software companies to achieve this. This is because the use of standards in engineering saves QC time by minimizing the amount of work that the reviewer must actually check. While many software companies do have internal standards and practices, the lack of industry-wide standards hinders the QC process. Libraries can assist here, but there is still a lot of unique logic being written for programs that simply isn't checked well enough.
People bitch about the costs of engineering (like the Big Dig), but fail to realize that more than 50% of the time is spent checking the work. A lot of money is spent to ensure that these things are safe. If you want a Mozilla or a Real Player that doesn't crash, I hope you're prepared to pay for it.
I don't know where your bitterness against programmers comes from, but you need to chill out (and it sounds like you could stand to learn a lot from a software engineering course).
Note: Many of my comments are in the context of public engineering projects. For private projects, plans are reviewed (in New Jersey) by the local Planning Board, as well as the Department of Community Affairs, a state agency.
Corporations do not get tax incentives for outsourcing
Wrong.
Corporations are not required to pay labor/payroll tax on workers who are nationals of other countries.
Corporations are allowed to deduct the cost of outsourcing off of their reported earned income, thereby reducing their tax liability.
These are very strong, cost-saving incentives for a company to outsource to another country. The loss in tax revenue is made up by the rest of the citizenry.
No bullshit with unions
There are no IT unions in the US.
no messy healthcare
While the healthcare system in the US might need some work, an employers relationship is limited to paying the premiums.
no worries about ADA, OSHA, EEOC, Afirmitave action
Yes, protecting the rights of an indivudual from discrimination and harrassment is just plain wrong. Until you become that individual. Perhaps you're too young to remember such agencies as TaTa and others and the disgusting manner in which they treated their employees, sent to the US and elsewhere as endentured servants. If you think that regulatory agencies are the primary motivating factors for outsourcing, you really are not understanding how corporations work.
And OSHA?? What does the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have to do with IT?
Why just stop Corporate Welfare, when you can stop ALL Welfare!
This is an asinine statement, to be sure. But just in case you truly don't understand the reason for welfare, just know that there are still some people in this world that feel they have a responsibility to help their fellow man. Beyond that, there are very compelling reasons for providing public assistance in any society.
Without "Corporate Welfare" of reasonable taxation, the Corps will go overseas.
Again, nonsense. Companies have been operating in the US for over 300 years. While there have always been deals, favors, and preferential treatment afforded to corporations, I cannot think of a single instance where a major corporation packed up their operations and moved overseas. I'm sure there has to have been a couple, but they obviously did not have much of an impact. Ford might be making cars in Mexico, but the bulk of their operations is in the US.
The "working class" and the poor will finaly have to start paying thier fair share of taxes to support their way of life
Let me assure you, they already do. They may not pay the same dollar amount but, percentage-wise, they pay the same, if not more. In fact, most poor people do not have the financial means to obtain the majority of tax deductions that higher income families do. But if you insist on sticking with your ill-conceived opinion that they are not "paying their fair share", consider the fact that its the poorer people who are doing the jobs that you don't want to.
There will be no more greedy capitalists left to subsidize your welfare way of life.
Wow, you really do have a lot of disdain for lower-income people, don't you?
What makes YOUR work worth more than the same quality work from India? The fact that you are an American?
Historically? American corporate history is rife with examples of the failures of outsourcing. Many industry watchers regard outsourcing as a bad idea. Not just for the displaced workers but for the companyies themselves. Maybe someday people will learn that cheaper does not equal better.
No one owes you a living. No one owes you a living wage. The accident of your birth does not grant you a right to the fruits of my labor. Nor does the fact that you are my neighbor require me to buy your products.
No one is "owed" anything and no one is claiming that here. While American IT workers are affected by outsourcing, it is a short-term problem. Some salary adjustments have to be made, it's more difficult to find work, might have to move, but it can be done.
The bigger concern is the shortsidedness of cor
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
India is a cheap country to live in and I know it because I lived there. Yes you can say that you get very less pay than what you get in US but then you should also look at expenses. You spend more than half of your salary into taxes, rents, and payments of other kinds which is not the case in India. The saving there are tremendous. And you can end up saving more than here. The reason jobs keep on moving to India are significantly many some of which are: 1) 1 US Dollar = 50 Indian Rupees (approx) 2) You have to pay there much less than here in US. As for e.g. If I get paid here in US 5000 bucks a month, this translates to nearly 250,000 Indian Rupees. A salary of more than 25,000 Indian Rupees a month is considered more than excellent. 3) Excellent cheap labor. There are many educated people there whose primary language is English and can effectively deliver the goods. The economic condition is improving drastically and it does not surprise me why companies want to move jobs to countries like India and China with the very reason why we are seeing such a jump into Jobs @ Bangalore.