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Tech Firms Defend Moving Jobs Overseas
bobcows writes "Yahoo is reporting about leading technology companies urging Congress and the Bush administration Wednesday not to impose new trade restrictions aimed at keeping U.S. jobs from moving overseas, where labor costs are lower. 'There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore,' Carly Fiorina, chief executive for Hewlett-Packard Co., said Wednesday. 'The problem is not a lack of highly educated workers,' said Scott Kirwin, founder of the Information Technology Professionals Association of America. 'The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S. Costs are driving outsourcing, not the quality of American schools.'"
Or above. Any problems with that? Same goes for Nike and their "sweatshops". No difference as far as I'm concerned.
"We've found a way to line our pockets with more money, so why shouldn't we use cheap, hard to understand overseas techs? We're greedy, plain and simple."
Your job too, babe. Can't wait until we are ordering the latest HP Presario Tandoori Edition on Anandtech or FatWallet.com
Personally I think it's great that they're moving my job, hopefully to somewhere warm. Uh, I'm going with it, right?
Trade restrictions..
is this the American today ?
'The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S. Why should people settle for less? Of course people are going to want more, basic human instinct. Do they think that people are just going to want to work for HP just because its HP? Sounds like Fiorina is very much in favour of a form of slave labour.
TheHustler
http://www.elmarko.org/ - Useless bilge
http://www.asylum-games.co.uk/ - Co-Founder
Well I'm a CS student about to graduate with my bachelors degree. I've found that the pay for the jobs out there hasn't decreased it's simply the number of jobs available has gone down the toilet. I used to think I would have a job straight out of college but now I'm a bit worried. There are more people applying for less and less jobs now. I've had several interviews but lost them due to a more experienced guy needing the job that before I might have had a good chance of landing. And realistically how can they expect people in America to work for less money when our cost of living is so high here?
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
Carly's totally right -- what makes a job yours by birthright? Compete like everyone else.
Neoprotectionist policies help a few people out in the short run, but hurt everyone in the long run by imposing unnecessary costs on products.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
I'm not american, so I can't comment on what the loss of jobs in my field their is going to do to me, but I think this kind of thing should be expected if anybody wants the global economy thing to really happen.
This could still be beneficial to the american economy, it just means that many of these out of work programmers should look into some of their own ideas and start companies around them, hiring out to the cheap labour overseas. That would probably benefit more people anyways.
Given how well HP has performed since the merger with Compaq, perhaps it would be in that company's best interest to outsource the CEO. I'm sure they could save a considerable sum vs. Carly's paycheck.
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If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
How long before shareholders demand that their companies outsource their CEO and other executives? It would be only fitting afterall, the problem isn't bad CEOs in America but finding bad CEOs that will work for minimum wage in the US.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S....
Well, isn't that kind of a fundamentally flawed problem? As a person pursuing a degree in higher education (dropping $100,000+ on said education) I don't feel like it would be worth it to work for minimum wage or less. I mean, isn't that really one of the points of college, so you don't have to work minimum wage?
In her comment, Carla Fiorina fails to understand basic economics. You can't talk about labor costs and only talk about wages. The cost of labor is the wages divided by the productivity. It is only true that lower wages reduce labor costs if productivity is constant. But productivity is much lower in developing countries because of poor infrastructure, corruption, market inefficiencies, and weaker educational systems. It is meaningless to talk about wages without talking about productivity.
So it is now, "It's not that you are stupid, it's just that you asked for the right to have some bread and water for your family."
Sucks to be a working (wo)man, I guess.
Not that I like it, especially as an IT worker, but, hell, that's the nature of the beast. Our dirt cheap goods are possible because we "allowed" loads of manufacturing jobs to go to China. In the end all it really means is that we can't rest on our laurels. And that's probably a good thing.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
I don't like to see the US Govt. legislating corporate policies...but, I don't mind them giving them incentive to shape said policy towards thing beneficial to US citzens.
But, c'mon....minimum wage for an educated person? I can't believe any US business would expect that.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
'There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore,' Carly Fiorina, chief executive for Hewlett-Packard Co., said Wednesday.
There were never any jobs that were America's God-given right, but the sentiment does make a nice dodge from the real issue at hand.
What these corporations seem to have forgot is that privelege goes hand in hand with responsiblity. They fight hard to continue to be treated by the government (and thus the nation, by extension) as a citizen with all the rights thereof. However, they forget that those rights come with responsiblity. They move jobs overseas, they keep their funds in offshore tax havens so they don't have to pay taxes, and then they want they want to be treated like legitimate tax-payers. Globalisation is a nice idea, but not when it only serves as a tool to cheat.
404 Error:
"The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S."
Did she actually say that? Being highly skilled and not being willing to work for below minimum wage is a *problem*? I'm speechless. I don't know what to say. My mouth is currently agape.
This is certainly not a company I would want to work for at any price, if this is how they think of their employees. She probably thinks her employees owe *her* money for hiring them!
why should they support a bloated, overpriced labor market?
But they aren't outsourcing the bloated overpriced jobs. They are outsourcing the barely over minimum wage jobs.
Then why am I in college? The reason people obtain higher education is so they won't have to work for minimum wage or less. What other impetus is there?
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illegitimii non ingravare
It works like this. There is basically no job (other than service, like working at a store) that can't be done cheaper by people outside this country.
It is the governments job to make sure that jobs stay here. I don't think any job is an americans god given right but why does this lady expect an educated engineer to work for min wage? I can get a McJob for min wage. She is essentially saying that HPs workers don't matter to the company. They find no value in their skills.
I'm not trying to be paranoid here but eventually won't most jobs be shipped over seas to countries who with lower cost of living and governments who don't care. This doesn't sound good for our country.
Definition of Minumim Wage:
If they paid you anything less, it would be illegal.
Whether or not these jobs are "America's God-given right" is besides the point, Carly, you miserable bitch. Of course they aren't a "God-given right". Nothing is. The real question here is whether the U.S. will act in its own self-interest, or continue to throw its labor force into a low wage bidding war with the Third World.
Lets face it. If you're a multi-billion dollar corporation and you can get labor dirt cheap in another country wouldn't you do it? Yes there are plenty of qualified, educated American workers. So what? They work for $3/hour in India instead of $20/hour in America.
We need some kind of regulation to discourage these practices or our entire economy will go to shit. George Bush wants to help ILLEGAL immigrants out by letting them work? Because he is so compassionate?? Give me a fucking break. It is about exploiting people and getting cheap labor so the rich get richer.
People in the US always like it when they get the positive effects of globalization: cheaper products, good and cheap holiday locations and more revenue for US companies.
But when you get the "negative" side effects you always start to whine and scream around, e.g. when a German company buys a second rate car maker or some IT jobs are outsourced to India.
But, sorry, this is basically imperialistic egoism. People in other countries have - believe or not - the right to be happy and succesful, too. Especially if they are more competitive and innovative. You cannot always suck all reasources and revenues out of third world countries. Especially if these countries cease to be 3rd world countries and become first world countries. It is indeed not required that Gunjaraa the Indian with eight kids and 2 wives has to be jobless and live in a slum just that you can afford you second hummer.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Take a look at the money being paid to Carly, then tell me again why any American should even consider buying HP ever again when she makes comments like that. An American company is paying her vast ammounts of American dollars, but when the economy's in the shitter, she ships jobs overseas. Good job. And no, I'm not American.
do not read this line twice.
Were going to start seeing new megacorps out of India soon. We've even setup their back offices for them. We trained their accountants, their technologist, and we even set up their R&D for them. They have their call centers taken care of, everything except the front office. Some of these companies are going to start refusing to renew contracts with our megacorps and are just going to start their own with their fully trained staffs. Their getting the back office profit, how much is left for a front office? Perhaps they'll turn around and outsource that to the originating corp?
On top of this, can someone please explain how sending good paying jobs out of this company is good for the economy? Competitive advantage doesn't mean anything if all the competition is doing it. The jobs that are replacing these are the low wage jobs in fields like retail that don't have things like health insurance.
No problem, just lower the cost of college to a few thousand a year, free health care, cut my rent, utilities, and food by more than half then provide me with public transportation that takes me from where I can afford to live to where I end up having to work. Do all of that THEN we can talk about dirt poor wages.
Funny how the executives never have a problem justifying their massive pay and perks.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
What value to the country does an 'industry' have if they send all the jobs away? Some tax bucks, sure, but a company with jobs is much more valuable to the country.
Why does an education entitle you to anything?, let alone a good paying job. Wake up, once education became accesable to all, a degree isn't a golden ticket to success anymore. Now you need a degree to compete for the opportunity.
to graduate after the dot bomb. A large contraction in the number of companies in the tech sector 3 years ago means more people chasing fewer jobs. Especially in the areas that were the centers of tech. Silicon Valley and Northern Virginia, where I live. I was unemployed for nine months, and I have 10 years experience. Bank account gone, credit card maxed, was a week from starting a job in construction when I got the job I have now. Doing Python on Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux.
Best Slashdot Co
From the article:
A Commerce Department (news - web sites) report last month said increasing numbers of technology jobs are moving from the United States to Canada, India, Ireland, Israel, the Philippines and China..."
Half of the countries in that list are not going to give much of a saving in labor costs. But at least you don't have to demean yourself by peeing in a bottle to get the job...
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
Nor are highly educated workers willing to work for the (local) minimum wage or lower in places other than the U.S. It's just that the U.S. minimum wage provides a pretty good living in some parts of the world.
You know, painful as it is to those who pay the price, one can make the argument that this trend will, in the long run, help to minimize the economic disparities between the "developed" countries and the "third world." And that can't be bad for international security.
This post is symptomatic of a larger problem.
Go on any job board or discussion about outsourcing and you'll see the trolls and out-of-work complaining about how Indians are "stealing" American jobs, either through H-1B visas or overseas outsourcing. This is a case of blaming the wrong people.
The Indians aren't "stealing" anything. American CEOs, with the willing complacence of their bought-and-paid for politicians, are giving them the jobs. Until last year, the H-1B visa caps were permitted to increase despite convincing evidence of a slowdown in the tech market. Outsourcing advocates have convinced American companies that lower hourly pay rates are the savior of their bottom lines.
Some jobs, especially call center work and manufacturing are gone and aren't coming back. Others may drift back and forth as industry discovers a balance.
It's a supply and demand thing. One thing that you might also want to to worry about is those "schools" churning out paper MCSEs month after month, advertising big $$$ and life on Easy Street by passing a few tests and getting a few certificates. In an already overcrowded tech market, these places are turning out tons of folks with overblown expectations. Once their dreams are crushed, who knows how cheap they'll be willing to work?
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
There are ten million unemployed right now. The average job (in my experience) lasts less than two years. People are unsatisfied with their jobs in massive numbers. Wages are stagnant if not falling rapidly.
I know zero people who are gainfully employed in a full time job paying a living wage. Zero.
Management absolutely forbids telecommuting, unless the employee works for another company.
Hiring is a subjective popularity contest with no accountability. Qualified people are passed over reguarly and often as a matter of policy.
Education is meaningless. Absolutely meaningless.
Once hired, most people find their jobs are gray, dispassionate drudgery where they are not allowed to open their mouths to say anything or to offer even a single new idea. This after being required to have decades of senior level experience and years upon years of advanced education (where, one assumes, they were also expected to keep their mouths shut).
Why not just sell it all, Mr. and Mrs. CEO? Just ship the whole fucking thing FedEx to elsewhere Inc.? It's not like you'll notice the total collapse of the economy from inside your Navigator or your half-million dollar townhouse. Just fuck over all your neighbors and cash those options. Everything will be just fine in time for the next backyard block party.
24/7 advertising. No job. No career. No credit. Basket full of crap at 28% interest. Get back on that fucking couch and keep your fucking mouth shut, consumer. This is the "corporate dream."
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
As a stockholder, you're the reason companies need to show growth and increased profits every single quarter after quarter.
Look what happens when a tech company like Intel misses their "expected" earnings by a single penny a share. If you're a CEO, what do you do? When the stock price is a second derivative of the company's income, there is no other choice but to minimize costs at every turn.
Stockholders and daytrading crowd are what makes everyone look short-term instead of long term, and now we're all going to pay for it. Good job.
If you reduce her salary to $500,000 (ten times what a sacrificing $50K engineer might make), you can save 2290 well paying (50K) jobs.
For the life of me, can you imagine any CEO contributing as much to a company as 2290 rank and file workers? Unless they can literally print money, I have trouble imaging how an executive can make that kind of contribution compared to the employees they lead.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Many so-called US firms actually do most of their business in other countries. Why shouldn't most of their jobs be in other countries as well?
In fact, from the point of the rest of the world, this looks like a long overdue change of direction. For decades, companies like IBM, Ford, Apple, MacDonalds, WalMart, etc., have displaced domestic manufacturers and service industries in those other nations and only created low-end jobs in those nations. Skilled jobs, administration, and management have largely remained in the US and the US has received a disproportionate share of the benefits from those overseas business activities. It's about time that high-skilled and high-paying jobs associated with US-based multinationals also move out of the US.
The quote about what workers in the US cost reminds me of this article from Fast Company:
...
:)
http://fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html
The article makes a believable case that WalMart is singlehandedly, drastically, speeding up the move of manufacturing jobs overseas. Towards the end, they have this quote:
'Ever-cheaper prices have consequences. Says Steve Dobbins, president of thread maker Carolina Mills: "We want clean air, clear water, good living conditions, the best health care in the world--yet we aren't willing to pay for anything manufactured under those restrictions."'
That's exactly what's going on here. 'Middle class' in the US costs a hell of a lot more than 'middle class' elsewhere, and if consumers here have a choice, they will buy the things that were not made under those expensive conditions. Of course, by making that choice, we push our own jobs overseas
I can't predict how this will end up, but it's going to be a trip finding out. What do you all think? I want to see I Am An Economist in the replies.
Agreed. A lot of people go to school for long periods of time, get doctorates, master's degrees, etc. for the purpose of raising their earnings potential.
I've got a friend who's got a master's degree in biochemistry, and he's squeaking by (but not by much right now) but he's aiming to get a Ph.D. and end up in the upper middle class later in life. Would he do that if highly-educated people would get the same amount as a high-school dropout flipping burgers at McDonalds'? Hell no.
By HP's logic, we should all go to grad school (or equivalent) for ten years after getting our BS/BA, and then live in debt for the rest of our lives because our McJobs won't pay enough to pay off the horrid student loan debt.
And this is okay? I can't believe that anyone would make a statement like that, even a corporate flunkie, and be able to keep a straight face.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Even if they all suddenly would work for half the salary overnight, HP would have to reduce the price of their products too in order to ensure that people can afford to purchase them.
In other words, their percentage profit on an item would stay the same. The fact that educated workers can demand a higher salary in the US means that corporations can get away with providing more expensive goods. In many other countries, you'd never be able to sell something at US prices.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
It's precisely the selfish profit-driven nature of our economy that allows this to happen. Few "educated" people gave a crap when factory jobs started leaving the country in droves. Now that it's happening to us (knowledge workers), it's suddenly a big deal.
I,
Love this one:
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Barrett complained about federal agriculture subsidies he said were worth tens of billions of dollars while government investment in physical sciences was a relatively low $5 billion. "I can't understand why we continue to pour resources into the industries of the 19th century," Barrett said.
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I suppose Mr. Barrett would have us eating all those food surpluses that India and China are producing now-a-days.
He might get a rude awakening though if the US were suddenly dependent on India, etc. for food and they said, we're not shipping you any more food because we don't like your stand on XYZ issue.
If there is one thing that I'll certainly support is help for farmers. Hey, they put food on my table.
The last thing I'll be supporting in the future is govt. investment in high tech. Why should the US support high-tech when high-tech eggheads like Craig Barrett will just take those advances and give them to the Chinese.
I can do without a computer for a long time. I'd probably starve to death in about a month.
Talking about losing points with me, it's not even close....
Caution: Contents under pressure
Ok, I'll admit that the mini iPod was overpriced... but isnt deporting the man a little much?!
oh... wait....
To whom do these people pay there taxes? For example say the US imposes restrictions on these companies what's stopping them from shutting up and re-incorporating in over countries over time? The net result being a loss of tax revenue too.
I dont think you can really block outsourcing without restricting trade. I personally am for free trade (true free trade, not what we have now) but I think some countries that benefit from it and therefore pushed it are now stepping back now that job competition is starting to come into affect.
The US and others are just going to have to learn to better compete. For example whenever I look at an Asian electronics contract manufacturing facilities most boast how there raw materials and automated equipment come from Japan. Of course eventually the chinese and others will have there own manufacturing equipment but alsong as you keep innovating you will stay one step ahead of the game.
Of course I'm just talking about IT here and at the momentthis does n't apply to anything labour intensive, but having said that I can envisage Japan in 50 years time competing against China with robot automation instead of throwing people at the job.
This is particularly noticeable if you make the conscious choice NOT to buy things made in countries where workers have no rights.
In my personal experience of shopping this Christmas, I mostly bought things made in the U.S. and I payed a lot of money, sometimes 3 times the price for what that same item would have cost if made by a slave in China.
Also, it would be nice to have a true label that says where manufactuering occured. All too often we hear "made in USA" when in reality it was made in china, but boxed here. But I agree. I do not like the idea of laws to keep jobs here. I would suggest incentives to start up companies based here as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
My loans would cost me my entire take-home pay at minimum wage in the US. Why the hell would anyone want to learn a field, spend thousands of dollars to do so, and then no be able to make enough to pay the costs of the education? Meanwhile, Carly, et al get paid millions of dollars to risk other people's money while they have the opportunity/skill to drive their companies into the ground. (Good CEO's are worth the money, but lots aren't and they get paid anyway.) Do they think that we should be willing to work for nothing but that they should not? The rules of economics work for everyone, yet the people who run these businesses think that people should be willing to make sacrifices for their extravagant incomes (extravagant because of the amount of money/unit of competence). Why do I want DRM when it costs more and gives control of my computer to others while giving me no benefits in terms of costs or features? Why do I want to work in a field when I can make more money by not learning anything and being a garbageman^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsanitation engineer? The same motives apply to everyone, yet some of the people who run companies seem to think that only they have the right (and desire) to behave in their self-interest.
The initial comments are correct - we don't have inherent rights to jobs - if someone can do it better and cheaper than us, they will get the job and we'll have to do something else. I simply have a problem with the PHB logic that the stated CEOs seem to labor under - that others should sacrifice their well-being for their benefit while they have no duty to do the same. I'm certain that if their logic were applied to their jobs (I'm pretty sure someone as competent as these CEO's could be hired from overseas at 10% of their pay), they would not be so quick to advocate sacrifice for the benefit of others.
Costs are driving outsourcing? How about wanting to make sure that ALL the money stays on the top? This is what completely amazes me in the world we live in, Joe Millionaire really believes that paying family providers a salary 1/100000th of his own is a COST.
Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not some hippie banging my Commie Drum here, but I wouldn't mind some honesty. When saying why you're outsourcing, simply tell what you are doing ...
1.) You are not outsourcing, you are laying off americans in a hope that every other company won't follow your lead (you still need people in america to buy your stuff right?)
2.) You are personally making the statement that you believe that it means more to have 3 yachts instead of 2, and the best way to get there is cheap labor.
3.) You believe that you are above 'regular' people in America, and would love to just keep screwing us all.
Well what's the problem with all of this? Think back into the history books for me a little bit here. At what point in America's history did we see an ever pressing economic turmoil because of extremely low cost labor? Was it, ohhh yes the bloodiest battle costing more American lives than any other war in our history?
Lets face it the Civil war was fought not to free the slaves, but in fact because the South was so rich because it legally could force people to work with no pay. This pissed off everyone else who HAD to pay their workers. Believe it or not some of the anger in the "Free North" was because they themselves weren't allowed to have slaves.
Getting a little bit off topic here, the point being is that this country was built on the backs of "Joe Average", who is in the lower to middle class. There's just one big problem with everything here, there are whole lot more "Joe Averages" than there are "Joe Millionaires" and you can only piss "Joe Average" off for so long before he and his buddies organize together.
So Mr Corperate Joe Millionaire, I implore you to please consider your actions and possibly not bite the true hand that feeds you, over and over and over and over again. "Joe Average" is collecting welare/unemployment because you believe he is not worthy. Lastly you can fight the government all you want, but remember there are more "Joe Averages" and if you keep pissing "Joe Average" o you may actually see democracy in action in which you as an American company will be spanked, because "Joe Average" also can vote.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Carly Fiorina never said workers should work for minimum wage. Quote from the article no one read: "The problem is not a lack of highly educated workers," said Scott Kirwin, founder of the Information Technology Professionals Association of America. "The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S. Costs are driving outsourcing, not the quality of American schools."
This argument would be valid if decreased production costs actually translated into lower priced goods.
If Dell can have all their operations moved to India where their costs will be 1/10 of that it is now do you think that that shmancy new Laptop will sell for 1/10th the price?
How about 1/4? Or even half-off?
No, it is going into the CEO's pockets, and those of their lobbyists who they pay to fight daily in the Capital for their right to ever-increasing salaries and bonuses while their workers get laid off.
And they have won again...
When they attain final victory and all the domestic well paying US jobs are gone who will buy their goods?
We always hear how the US is the world's greatest consumer. Well, how will the consumer fare when his pockets are empty because the best job available is that of a greeter at WalMart?
It's precisely the selfish profit-driven nature of our economy that allows this to happen.
I think you mean every economy.
Not the only place where India is not playing by the same rules we are. See my sig.
It's no damn wonder India can pay minimum wage for tech jobs, half the freakin' country is slaves and most of the other half is 'untouchables' forced to work for next to nothing.
Carly really needs to explain how she personally and HP feel about supporting slavery.
Not everyone can do the same things, some are blessed from birth with inherit capabilities, some work harder for them, some don't. So yes...your hard work (education) to attain skills that everyone else does not have DOES entitle you to better pay for your job...because is not something any 'joe' can do.
I'm not happy to see the blue collar jobs moved either....I think by putting our manufacturing outside our borders along with much of our intellectual work out there, will at some point become a national security danger. If other countries at some point get pissed at us...and cut off steel supplies (add whatever other industry here) to us...what will happen? WE don't have the manufacturing capabilities dues to shipping them overseas and across borders. Right now, we're worried about oil embargos? Well, wait till it is MUCH more than that that the world can threaten us with...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
sometimes i like to think about how companies and ceos and money are kind of like back in the day, when you had a king, and a few lords, and a bunch of serfs or what have you. kingdoms are like companies. ceos are the kings, and then you have like the c[f,t,i]o who are like princes, or earls, or dukes or whatever, I never played D&D so i'm trying to remember history class. And then you have your serfs, the little dudes at the bottom doing all the work. i guess those are like employees.
so then you have all the serfs all together, and they all have to buy junk like... food and deers and arrows. so, they are the source of all the money dumplings, like gold nuggets, which are like a C-note. And then the CEO-kings go "ha ha ha thanks for the money dumpling, laddy".
K, but, what if those kings sent money dumplings to The Oriental Land of Panda-la. They pay King Chow for his serfs to make wicker baskets and... wheels, and other high tech. And then send it back with Magellan. And, the CEO-King fired all his serfs by telling some dragon to go eat em, and they're not in the picture. Cept, they are, and now they're eating tree bark cause they arent making wheels for his majesty.
So the wheels and baskets are coming back from panda-la and the CEO-King is like "dude.. this is sweeteth" and he has more gold dumplings than ever before, cause he doesnt have to pay his localites, and.. ugh, see, this is where my example falls apart, as it lacks both a cunning mix of logic, and sense. Actually, it might just be that it's veilded under a shroud of retardedness, but that's left to you, dear reader.
Maybe someone should correct my giant metaphor so that I can understand it for me...
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
In other words, you have to make a big investment in your education so you can have a piece of paper that no longer guarantees you that you will recoup the costs of that education, let alone bring a return on investment you can live on. Welcome to the new world.
Amreica has been getting good wages compared to the rest of the world for some time now. If this was truely a problem American companies would have trouble competing for some time now. As industries mature there is a natural tendancy for them to move to cheaper markets overseas, in the meantime we (the U.S.) will go on to create new oppurtunities and markets, this is nothing new. What interesting about the moving of tech jobs is that how quickly it's happening, but I believe that it is a favor of the week. Most of the "cost savings" will never materilize or will be negated by falling sales, and higher corporate management costs. Some of the more technical jobs will return. However most will be lost (esp. the call centers), but then again how many televisions are made in the U.S. (none, BTW)
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Parent should be marked insightful, not funny.
Executive compensation is way out of whack, and it's because the executive club takes care of itself. Boards of one company are filled with executives of other companies, and vice versa. It's a circle of people writing each other checks out of corporate accounts.
There's always the line of defense which is, "but we're critically important, and we're doing very difficult jobs." The same could be true of the IT personnel who have been outsourced. So therefore, the executives should be outsourced as well.
Imagine the millions each company could save if their executives were paid an Indian's King's Ransom, instead of an American's King's Ransom?
If the American execs want to keep their jobs, well heck, they can take a pay cut to be on par with their Indian counterparts, right?
The whole executive compensation issue wouldn't be so aggravating if all execs did a good job. But many suck. Many run their companies into the ground, resign when things get bad, get a parting gift of a few million, and then go become CxO at another company. Rinse repeat. Once an exec, always an exec, unless of course you're tied up in a federal country club.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
I'm not sure what the secret to success is, but the secret to failure lies in trying to please everyone -Bill Cosby
I don't think most people give the tech workers the credibility that other highly educated workers get. They wouldn't dare apply the same thing to a doctor or a architect. Would you want walk into a building made by an architect earning the minimum wage? Why would anyone want to put their credit card and identity in something made by a software engineer making the minimum wage?
Yeah, that's right, capitalism is great and protectionism is bad. Unless its bad for business, in which case, we'll call it something else like "protecting intellectual property" or "national security" or even give it a *good* economic/management buzzword like "differential pricing" and conclude thats how markets most efficiently operate, and only terrorists and zealots and pirates and other people that aren't willing to go along with capitalism would disagree.
Well, I disagree. I think some protectionism IS worth it. I like my way of life, and I'm not willing to sacrifice it so the capitalist elite can get bigger bonuses or the pedantic economists can proclaim "more efficient markets".
"More efficient markets" sound great, but that perfect efficiency risks turning us all into faceless cogs of some huge machine, having to justify our every move and every need on the basis of its economic efficiency and benefit to the markets. Yuck.
Well there is a bit of a difference. A factory worker doesn't have an education investment that helped him get to that career. He just showed up one day, they took a few minutes showing him how to do some repetitive job, and that was that. It also didn't help them get any sympathy when they were getting paid very large wages for a manual labor job that a monkey could do, and other people in other parts of the country were doing jobs that had the same skill level but only paid minimum wage.
When the overpaid factory jobs went elsewhere, it wasn't that hard (in theory) to retrain those workers for something else. In many cases I believe, those workers had other skills, but stayed with the factory jobs because they paid very well and were very stable. When they lost the jobs, they used their other skills to find other employment. If you're already skilled in assembling cars, how hard is it to learn how to do oil changes, and go to work at Jiffy Lube? Construction also is a manual labor job that doesn't require any education, and it pays very well too.
Tech jobs are different: they require years of education to become qualified for. Sure, help-desk operators don't have Master's degrees, but companies are also moving engineering jobs overseas. If you have a Master's degree in engineering, which probably took 5-6 years to achieve, along with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, you can't just retrain on a whim and get a different job.
Worse yet, just a few years ago all these same companies were whining about how there weren't enough engineers for them to hire. They yelled at the government to improve science and math education and encourage more kids to go to engineering school. Now that a bunch of people have gotten engineering degrees, they're being kicked out the door because these same companies found out they could outsource the work to 3rd-world countries for much less. Now these engineers are stuck with too much education to easily change jobs, and high student loans they still have to repay.
What I don't understand is why these stupid execs are still calling for better education in this country. What's the point if there's no jobs for the kids to go into because they've all been outsourced?
Nice that the woman is honest, at least. And I really can't put more blaim on her than anyother large American companies upper eschelons. The blue collar folks have been putting up with this sort of crap since the 70's, though, so it is hardly a new trend.
When you buy an American made car, it is made in Mexico, most of the time. I think that Nissan is one of the few cars assembled in America, nice irony. American Express, has even asked a freind of mine, who does billing, if she wanted a "free" trip to india, to train nice young Indians to work on the phones. The poised this as a bonus for her productivity, but actually is them trying to con her into training her replacement.
Such is the way America goes. I'm all for trade restrictions, no matter how unPC that is to say in our ubercapitalist/globalist society. If some random developing country offers a good education, and cheaper service, let them develop their own companies, then let them compete in the global market.
BUT... Same as with GM leaving Michigan, it is partly the employees fault. If you keep on demanding more and more, wages benefits, whatnot, then you might as well excpect that they eventually will give up, and give the job to someone more humble in needs. If you expect, after leaving college, to receive a huge wage, huge benefits, options, and all the other perks, then then you are truly deluded as to our economy. You should be happier, in the long-run, to accept a job of modest wage and benefit, knowing that the market sucks, and their is a cheap pool of more grateful employees elsewhere.
Now here lies a real problem for these companies, as well. Right now they are alienating their consumers, and American support people, but more than make up for it in increased profitability. BUT... What happens when these new foreign, and cheap, employees also realize their worth? In a foreign studies class I took, we studied Malaysia. In said country, Intel is a LARGE employer, dependant on the cheap labor pool there. But as the Economy grows, the people start to expect more. They unionize, they demand benefits, they demand more rights, wages, a higher standard of living. They become more American, for the purposes of the company.
So either the companies leave, and crush the local economy they built, further alienating more people, or they are forced to bend to the will of their employees, making the whole point of moving pointless. But in the short term it is a great idea for making a shitload of money.
No answer here, except a no-brainer, 'greed sucks'. Sorry for the rant, I'm of rather harsh opinions on out-sourcing.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
No, it entitles you to nothing. An education simply makes you a more desireable and more valuble asset. But this is capitalism, and no matter how valuble you may be, in theory, it's the real money availible (or the lack of it) that will decide whether or not you get the pay you want. Let's face it, a lot of net admin and similar work could be learned via on the job training for someone with no college degree. The reason someone with a college degree get's more pay is because you are then expected to not need the on the job training and you are expected to produce a higher quality of work in less time. But in the end, if it's cheaper for the comapny to do OTJ training and give more time to solve a problem than it is to hire you, then you don't get the job. That's life, and no college degree will change that.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
2. CEOs are hiring people who can do the work for the least money. In some cases they get burned by that because it turns out that the outsourced workers are inferior. However, in those cases where somebody can do your job just as good as you for a fraction of the wage... Guess what? You were getting paid more than you were actually worth. C'est la vie.
3. The "paper MCSEs" are not going to be willing to work cheap. Most of them went chasing after the advertising of "big $$$" because they wanted to make a lot of cash, not because they love to work in IT. When it they discover that they more as a plummer than as a PC help desk worker, they will change jobs, and we will be right back to needing H1Bs to fill some of our jobs when the market picks up again.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've found that the pay for the jobs out there hasn't decreased it's simply the number of jobs available has gone down the toilet.
This is interesting, because it seems to be in stark contrast to the comments in the story about U.S. workers being unwilling to work for less money. That suggests to me that there are still the same number of jobs in this country, only now they pay smaller salaries, and after some period of time the executives decided that U.S. workers were unwilling to accept those smaller salaries.
The thing is, as you pointed out, this is not what's happening. There are in fact fewer jobs available, and the salaries are the same (ie, not lower).
Perhaps a good summary of the article might be: "Well, we're doing the usual blind executive thing, making lots of decisions that we can't really justify to the public because our reasoning is shaky and unfounded. So please just leave us alone and give us the freedom to wreck the U.S. high-tech job market as we see fit. Thank you."
look for small to mid sized companys in health care (hospitals have lots of IT), finance, engineering and manufacturing. Very few jobs exist per se in software companies to start with. Small to mid-sized companies are the vast majority of jobs in the US as well (something like 2/3rds!). If you are in any way competent you can become the company guru and outsourcing is usually not an option for smaller companys (too expensive). Just be prepared to wear many hats.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Ummm, except that drastically decrease the number of scheduled meetings, and a like decrease is coffee and donut consumption. Pastry and specialty coffee shops would be in ruins.
Not everyone has the LUXURY of taking 4 years off of life to pursue education. Those *non-traditional* students that aren't racking up loans and are working themselves through school are heros, but they are not the students to use as the average example.
Todays univerisites are pumping out too many liberal arts degrees, which is fine if your degree in Psychology leads to your a profession in psychology, but does that same degree demand you get more money working a help desk with someone who didn't go to university? But you feel *entitled* to more money, that's fine, I invite your DEMAND it during the hiring process, I know plenty of guys that'll be there to pick up your scraps and will work damn hard once in the door.
I say all this being a college grad and having gone back twice for additional degrees. Although none of them are in the area I work in, I barely mention them on my resume and don't feel they entitle me to anything.
What I love about this sort of 'unenlightened self-interest' from corporate types like this is that they don't appreciate the irony that if everyone starts outsourcing jobs, no one in the US will be able to afford the goods they produce!
Think about it. If no one in the US can afford their products, then they'll have to either drastically reduce prices, or they'll have to sell many more of them to people in countries like India, who they are paying many times less than they are paying US workers. Can they afford to keep 'US' prices in those countries? Not if they want to sell a lot of machines they can't. They totally miss the fact that well-paid American workers are their best customers and 'profit generators'!
That's what happens when you don't think about the economy as an ecosystem (which it is). And when you lack fundamental ethical thinking skills (i.e. what if everyone did what we did, and what responsibilities do we have to society). Being a responsible corporate citizen pays off, but it simply can't be seen in some corporate 'bottom line' spreadsheet, so most companies sadly ignore it. Make no mistake though, if most things in the US become automated and/or outsourced (which is the current trend), there will be a major crisis in this country.
Seems like ever time this issue comes up on Slashdot, people reply one of three ways.
1) "Screw you, you lazy bastards. It's Capitalism, compete or shut up. Just like I'm going to do as soon as I graduate from college with my CS degree. I can't wait!"
2) "Let's outsource the CEOs! nyuk nyuk" [about five or six times per thread, always ranked 5:Funny]
3) "Dammit, if they want to work for US tech companies, let 'em come here!"
None of these responses is an effective means of addressing the problem. The Western system of democratic capitalism has worked so far specifically because it harnesses capitalism to acheive wealth and social stability. Notice that I said "harness". Capitalism is a great tool, but left to its own devices it destroys the middle class.
Banning job exportation completely is stupid. The US will quickly lose its competitive edge in IT. Already we're seeing Indian companies churning out quality, high-margin software (such as Flexcube) that's making significant inroads into US markets. When the Chinese start getting warmed up, watch out.
Allowing the exporters free rein is also stupid. It will destroy the US IT industry, put millions out of work, and we'll lose critical mindshare (as all the bright kids who would've become engineers wind up as lawyers). And people with families and other responsibilities DON'T HAVE the resources or time to retrain, you knuckleheaded Objectivist brats. They'll drop out of the middle class and screw the rest of the economy, destroying jobs they might have otherwise tried to retrain for.
Really, what we need are measures to soften the blow of global capitalism. That's what governments are there for. We need controls (but not a ban) on job exports, perhaps a tax-credits-per-domestic-employee plan. We need federal retraining incentive program, giving out vouchers to unemployed people who can redeem them for tuition to get new job skills. And we can take a big chunk of the cash to do these things out of agribusiness subsidies. Fuck Monsanto, the US stopped being an agricultural economy about a hundred years ago. Let's keep our leadership role role where it really matters: in science and technology.
Why hasn't anybody mentioned unions as an answer to all this? Seems we could really use them right now.
We could use them here, and they could use them in India. Unions with some kind of international perspective (instead of the nationalism of the AFL-CIO and others) are the only kinds of unions that can be effective in a globalized economy.
This is why we have to be concerned about the economic conditions of the third world, and need to support their right to organize. Our decent jobs are going to be much less likely to cross overseas and become sweatshop jobs if we give support to people in the third world who are trying to form unions.
You all ran your salaries up way to far, lived outside your means, and suddenly, but bubble burst.
Look at history, the unions did the same thing. They started raising their salaries to a 'livable wage', then when companies went elsewhere to get the labor cheaper, they all started to whine to.
I knew far too many programmers that wanted to command +60K salaries that weren't worth crap. But because companies needed them, and didn't have a cheaper source, they had to pay it. Now, they have an alternative and are using it. Well boo hoo, don't cry in your lite beer too much.
It may surprise you, but Bill Gates and all the other CEOs didn't go into business to give you jobs. They went into business to make money. Get over yourselves, and if you want to be rich, do the same thing. Otherwise, settle for what other people are willing to pay, not what you think you are worth.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I'm not trolling, but consider what Open Source does for a country like India or China.
It gives them a legal OS, a legal compiler, documentation, and support, all for free.
If Linux and Gnu (or some equivilent) didn't exist they'd be paying for licences, or pirating the software. Ok - quite a few would pirate the software, as most of Asia has been for the last 10 years.
But without competition from Linux, Microsoft might have put the licence-checker into their software alot sooner than they did with XP. Schools would have had to pay for licences (and paid for the more powerful hardware required to run a Microsoft OS).
This doesn't mean I think Linux is bad; I am in no way stating that we should keep India barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen, so to speak. I just wanted to make the point that Gnu/Linux has played a huge role in training software developers in 3rd world countries.
Or am I wrong? Do they run Solaris, XP, 2000, or Mac OS X?
You must be a Libertarian or quasi-Libertarian who has the wrong definition of greed. Greed is associated with excessiveness. Capatalism is based on want or desire for something better (i.e car, lifestyle) but not to the degree of excessiveness. Some people do excell and gain a great deal. This is still not greed. Unfortunately greed is a term that is based in ethical and moral philosophy. Most Libertarians eschew ethics and morals in business believing essentially in economic anarchy.
I find it best to define greed as having to lie, cheat or steal in a small way or a big way to gain your ends.
BTW, *weasel is a good name for you. You would probably take the coins off of a dead man's eyes for own ends.
2. CEOs are hiring people who can do the work for the least money. In some cases they get burned by that because it turns out that the outsourced workers are inferior. However, in those cases where somebody can do your job just as good as you for a fraction of the wage... Guess what? You were getting paid more than you were actually worth. C'est la vie.
If the cost of living in the US were the same as India, I'd be willing to be paid the same as an Indian software engineer. Guess what, it's significantly more expensive to live in the US.
I realize protectionism is not a viable long-term strategy. I don't want to steal the potential for economic development from nations transitioning to an advanced economy.
But here's the problem: we are growing production capacity without growing the markets to support them. Everyone would be getting rich and improving their quality of life in this equation if there was a demand from within India for IT work. There isn't one to speak of.
Without such markets to support the expanded production capacity, the benefits of globalization are realized only for corporations -- and they are short-lived. The net money going to workers drops as companies utilize cheaper labor. By shipping capital out of the country to foreign workers who will not inject it back into the corporations' native economy, that economy will suffer, people won't be able to afford services and the corporations will collapse.
The corporations are not really to blame. This is irresistable poison fruit. If they don't take it, they will starve long before their competitors die from the toxicity of the practice.
Protectionist measures are not a permanent solution, but they MUST be put back into place to slow the bleeding. They can slowly be relaxed as foreign markets expand and produce consumers to support their industries.
The hard truth is that there is no shortcut to developing a nation's economy. To do it right takes a slow process. Otherwise all you get is short term corporate enrichment, the establishment of unsustainable foreign labor markets, and the destruction of local economies and cultures.
The investors choose a management team to take care of their capital and run the company with a profit. If the management team is payed a flat salary, they have no incentive to make, say, 15% instead of 8% profit. Their incentive is to keep their jobs, theoretically by doing the minimum necessary. If, however, their compensation is tied to the performance of the company (through growth targets, stock options, etc), the executives have a personal financial interest in maximizing the value of the company, and thus (in theory) the share price.
I guess the big flaw in this is that no other member of the company is compensated the same way, while arguably an engineer has the same influence over the success or failure of the company, at least on a small scale. If it works for the executive, why not the front-line worker? The only answer I can think of is that there is no "procedure" for being a CEO. Everything that the company does is a calculated risk, and management requires a high degree of customization. Maybe without this compensation there'd be less incentive to take risks, while the last thing you want to tell your front-liners is to take risks. I'm not saying it's a good answer, but it is all I can think of. I'm open to other ideas. Thoughts?
My dad was (for a time) a home improvement salesperson in the coalfields of rural WV. He said "I knew when I saw the driveways filled with Toyotas and Mazdas instead of more expensive Fords and Chevys that the WV coalminers were doomed to be out of work."
His point was that they were taking wages earned in the American economy and pumping the profits to another country where labor costs were lower.
Today American workers expect high pay (certainly even minimum wage is VERY high pay from a worldwide perspective) and great benefits, but we all want CD players made in China. We can't have it both ways.
If we want to keep our standard of living, we need to choose to pay more for American-made goods. I make a practice of looking for American made goods when I buy, but I know that I'm totally in the minority when I do so. I'll pay more to help sustain my standard of living. I'm hoping that someday soon others will figure that out and start doing the same.
I'm not really expecting that.
The good thing is that overseas manufacturing can be difficult because of lack of infrastructure, and overall productivity is pretty low, making our products more competetive in spite of different labor costs. This is changing and it will be interesting to see the landscape in 20 years....
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
[Remember records... they were vinyl (in earlier days, wax) discs approximately 2 to 2.5 times the diameter of CDs or DVDs in which data was stored as a physical groove on the edge of a track spiraling towards the center.]
Offshoring is a good thing. The "lost jobs" in IT are creating a pool of capital (in the form of labor) that will allow the next great step forward to be taken.
Industrialization could only occur on the scale it did if, thanks to increased efficiency in agriculture, millions of family farms went under, sending their labor capital to the cities to work in the factories.
The "information industries" (IT, law, medicine, finance, media, etc.) could only occur on the scale they have over the past 50 years if industrial employment declined (largely because of greater mechanization and also because of offshoring of production). The evidence can be seen by looking at Europe, where those nations that vigorously tried to protect their existing industrial wage bases (through guaranteed employment laws, massive subsidies, etc.) found themselves years behind the US in terms of the state of the "information industries".
Much like the slashdotters complaining about offshoring, the RIAA and MPAA complain about technological changes that, quite frankly, doom their current models, if not their existence themselves. And much like the RIAA/MPAA, these slashdotters are calling for the government to come in and preserve their business models that have brought them prosperity.
Yet these slashdotters, in general, decry the RIAA and MPAA, while failing to realize that they are doing exactly the same thing for exactly the same reasons.
As far as I can tell, this indicates that these slashdotters are either:
What'll it be.
P.S.
Wake up, dude. Not only can you not live on minimum wage (even with two jobs), there is the added concern for college costs. Education cost money. It isn't like a blue collar job where you can get along on a high school diploma that's free to get. In order to get those white collar jobs, you need a diploma that will cost you on average some $80,000 from a decent school to get. That isn't free, you have to pay back loans. You can't do that on minimum wage. Now, I'm not saying it entitles you to a good paying job, but you shoudl get payed what your worth - and having a college education (notice I didn't say diploma - just because you have a diploma doesn't mean your educated) and working a job that requires such an eduication entitles you to a higher wage then someone just out of high school (which is probably the minimum wage standard). How many good doctors work for minimum wage?
You can't get by on minimum wage (that's single - forget having a family), you certianly can't pay school loans back on minimum wage, and you definitely can't send your kids to college on minimum wage. Someone with a college education that works for minimum wage insures that their children probably won't even make it to college. As it stands the system cannot support itself. The avergae us worker cannot compete against a guy who only makes $10,000 a year. And foregt this baloney about balancing out lifestyles and setting us eqaul to the rest of the world. You want to know how the rest of the world lives? Read "Nectar in a Sieve". That's where life styles are going to balance out. The way things are going, BladeRunner would end up looking like paradise. The reality would be more like the slums of south america or africa.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
But as a morale matter, I have to say I don't see anything wrong with what these execs are doing. They are paying as little as possible for what they want to buy, just as I do when I buy stuff and services. I don't see how it is morally better to hire an American for 80k rather than and Indian for 8K. Does the American deserve a job more than the Indian?
I lose if my job goes overseas, but the programmers who get my job win. Should my employeer care more about me than those programmers. It doesn't care about either of us, of course, only money. But assuming it SHOULD care, why should workers in the same country be first in line?
Barrett complained about federal agriculture subsidies he said were worth tens of billions of dollars while government investment in physical sciences was a relatively low $5 billion. "I can't understand why we continue to pour resources into the industries of the 19th century," Barrett said.
Yeah, that whole eating thing is sooo 19th century.
-- Mojo Tooth : exploring our world as only an idiot can.
Someone should remind Carly that American corporations don't have a God-given right to tax incentives (aka corporate welfare). The tech lobby should also stop demanding government protection for its "intellectual property" overseas.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
The following is an opinion commonly expressed on Slashdot, sometimes with more and sometimes less vitriol. Note that I am not accusing you of making this same statement, or anything like it.
However, when the shoe is on the other foot, geeks who've got those beautifully framed CIS degrees on their wall, are entitled to make money, and have a job, and it's very important for businesses to take a hit on the bottom line for their sake, or for the government to legislate some kind of program or incentive to keep their precious jobs safe.
You may work for somebody else, but you're still a "business." Your business model works something like this:
1. Get CIS degree
2. Market skills to a company for cash
3. Profit!!!
Well, sorry, your business model doesn't work anymore. Businesses have found they can get the same work or a reasonable facsimile thereof overseas for much, much less. Either your price is too high, or your services are insufficient. Now, some will come back and argue that programmers in India or wherever suck, and their code stinks, and it winds up taking more time and and and... So? Obviously it's making sense for the company, or else they wouldn't be doing it. Sounds like you need to change your business model.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Since I haven't seen this written elsewhere, I'm sure that it's probably impossible - but here's my idea:
A US corporation can only remain a US country if a majority of its employees are US citizens. So if HP, etc. start employing Indians or Chinese, they should be forced to become either an Indian or Chinese company (and listed on their stock exchanges as well...)
I just think that if HP is using mostly non-US labor, then they shouldn't be listed as an American company.
This is part of the global fascism movement that is turning the whole world into a corporate slave state. The liberal/progressive way to approach the problem of world poverty and wealth creation is to lift up weaker states with workers' rights and environmental protections so that we can all grow on an equal playing field.
The fascist approach is to destroy or prevent any kind of human rights or environmental protections from being applied in poverty-stricken areas and then use those areas and their nearly slave labor to force down rights, wages, and protections in the US and other free nations so that we go on a race to the bottom.
Don't believe me? Look at the example we just set in Central America:
- Kill a million peasants who try to establish justice
- Sign free trade agreement
- PROFIT! Big time - by sending your jobs south.
Keep fighting for corporate power and watch yourself and fellow citizens become slaves. Your stock market gains won't protect you. Corporate profits are through the roof right now. Is your life any better for it?- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
/Me safely goes back to sleep, knowing that no "leader" will ever agree to the above clause for themselves.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Waaaaaay cheaper!
I work on the edge between IT and corporate/executive sphere and while I'm generally pro open markets,when they're fair. However it seems the upper executive class holds itself immune from market trends.
They don't recognize that they're eroding the middle class and thereby the market for their products...like those small town people across America that lost their manufacturing jobs because they started to shop Wal-Mart and eroded the market for the products their factories were making...
There's also that little picadillo of history that when people are out of work, they have a tendency to take a more critical look at their 'leaders'
Can we start the revolution yet?
STOP. You're being farmed.
Now, I'm not saying it entitles you to a good paying job, but you shoudl get payed what your worth - and having a college education (notice I didn't say diploma - just because you have a diploma doesn't mean your educated) and working a job that requires such an eduication entitles you to a higher wage then someone just out of high school
I fully agree with you. People should be paid what they're worth. The problem is, what you ARE worth, and what you THINK you're worth, seem to be two completely different things. People with CIS degrees seem to think they're worth $50,000/year, when, in fact, according to the companies outsourcing their tech jobs to India, they're in fact worth something like $10,000/year. Either you need to lower your price, or increase your services.
Your education has nothing to do with how much your services are worth. Your services are worth whatever somebody is willing to pay you to perform them.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
If you have a Master's degree in engineering, which probably took 5-6 years to achieve, along with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, you can't just retrain on a whim and get a different job.
I have a Master's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, which took about 5-6 years to get. I decided I didn't like where the tech sector was heading nor the general volitility involved with working for somebody else. I retrained myself to be a photographer instead and now own a photo studio. The problem is not that you can't retrain, but that you won't retrain.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
There's a bias in many comments on this issue. There is the idea that ALL factory jobs are mindless and can be done by monkeys. This simply isn't true. While there obviously are assembly-line type jobs which are very simple, there are many factory jobs which do not require a college degree, but still require technical knowledge that comes largely from experience, and is not taught in a few minutes.
While my experience is not going to represent every factory, I have worked in a factory, on the floor. It really opened my eyes to a world which I had previously known only through stereotypes and the media.
They are being earned by these Indians due to the fact that the Indians can do the jobs better.
Doing a better a job? I don't think that's it. They might be doing just as good a job (and sometimes an inferior job -- so says my brother-in-law who had to fix their programming mistakes), but the working wage of $12,000 a year is why high tech jobs are being outsourced to Indian companies.
> American CEOs, with the willing complacence of their
> bought-and-paid for politicians, are giving them the
> jobs.
Exactly. Fiorina, for example is a Bush supporter, having given thousands of dollars to his campaign according to opensecrets.org. Then she's rewarded by the Bush Administration by raising H-1B caps and reducing restrictions of corporations to move more work offshore. So it doesn't surprise anyone when she flippantly suggests that Americans lose jobs to cheaper workers overseas.
Eventually, middle class jobs will be sent to countries like India, leaving America as the land of the millionaire heir (thanks to the Bush administration for getting rid of the estate tax), the millionaire CEOs, and millions of minimum-wage Walmart greeters.
Well, that's not fair; we'll also have illegal immigrants who get a 3-year work visas but are denied U.S. citizenship.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
One of Adam Smith's beliefs was it is in a business's best interest to promote the betterment of the locale in which it resides. This was true at one time. If you had a symbiotic relationship with a small town, it was not a good idea "lay waste" to the financial well-being of the inhabitants if you desired to stay in business for long.
These days, however, large corporations have absolutely zero connection to any town or city. If a city can no longer afford their product or service because no one has jobs, so what? There are thousands of other towns and cities they can deal with.
Take IBM, for example (because their ad is currently at the top of this page). In some locations, they are a major employer. They recently announced they are closing some offices and shipping the jobs over-seas. If they are that town's major employer, the local economy will be devistated. It has a rippling effect. At first the luxury businesses will feel the pinch (movies, restaurants, etc). Later, staple businesses such as supermarkets will be hurting. This does not concern IBM in any way since they only answer to the stockholders - most of whom don't look at the long term effects of these decisions, just at today's stock price.
The knee-jerk reaction is to implement protectionist laws. This typically results in a trade war and everyone ends up just as bad off as before - if not worse.
Workers can accept lower salaries, but when you are competing against a cost-of-living measured in pennies a day, you simply can't drop your salary that far and still be able to pay rent and buy food.
Personally, I think the world is in a transitional period between local and global economies. As places like India gain more jobs, the competition will heat up, raising the salaries. Eventually it will reach some kind of equilibrium. How long this will take is way beyond my amateurish guesses. It could be a few years or it could be decades. Or I could be completely clueless since economics is not a field I know anything about.
And yes, I'm looking for work.
-- Will program for bandwidth
I'm not a market fundamentalist (i.e. one who believes that market forces always magically coincide with the public interest) but if someone works hard all the way through college and gets a degree in something not very useful, like thermionic valve design, that does not automatically entitle him to a higher wage than the guy who left school at 16 and invested in the qualifications necessary to drive a truck carrying hazzardous goods.
If the market dictates that workers in a call centre earn more than a software engineer with a degree, why shouldn't they earn more? Supply and demand.
Interesting point you make about steel supplies. Only recently George Bush had to back down on his illegal steel tarriffs under threat from the European Union who were preparing to retaliate with tarriffs on goods produced in politically-sensitive American states. The USA's vulnerability is already here, and it's no bad thing. Bush was forced to behave himself, which was good for Europe, and good for America. Only a few special interests (the steel producers) got hurt.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Just make it federal law that you must pay your employees the minimum wage, or higher, regardless of their citizenship, place of work, or whatever.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
The same was said of manufacturing jobs. "It's more than just jobs! That's the real products of America! Steel and automobiles and textiles and and and... If you export that, what will be left for us?" The problem is, for the most part, tech jobs these days are the same thing. There's not much "innovation." Tell me, when you're designing a database system for a company, how much are you really "innovating?"
"Well, I came up with the schema!" -- sure, but the "innovation" was the relational database model, innovated some twenty years ago.
"Well, I coded it!" -- sure, but did you write mySQL? Did you "innovate" that? No, you're just using it.
Fact of the matter is, your high-tech "skill" of database design is not much different that the skill of an autoworker installing the drivetrain on a Buick. These days, it's easy to learn, and repetative. That's not innovation.
Thankfully, most of the real innovation is still right here. New standards, protocols, specifications, fabrication techniques, etc, are still being developed right here in the U.S. We still make the tools. You just can't get paid near so much for merely using the tools anymore.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Exactly. Companies realize they can get the same work for $10,000. So, that's what the tech job you want $50,000 for is worth. Obviously, you need to find another job.
It's kind of like natural selection. Those that survive adapt to suit the world. Those that insist the world adapt to suit them do not survive.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The people who are driving the move to a global economy are large public corporations. The people who believe they will see the biggest short-term gain by using global labor are corporate executives. Their goal is cut costs, increasing their profits and raking in more money for themselves. It's as simple as that.
Part of the problem is these same executives also have the most influence over American politics, which is why trade organizations like the WTO help US corporations, help some foreign governments, and hurt the average citizen (lack of adjusted minimum wage per country, no requirement to respect civil rights in China, etc.). The reason WTO meetings about public policy are held in private is because if the public heard what our politicians were setting up there would be much larger riots and some of these officials would not get re-elected.
So it's not about what you or I want. The global economy is about what the upper class in America wants.
Developers: We can use your help.
as near as I can tell, the IT sector CEOs are wanting to sell their products to developing countries. After all, that is where the growth is going forward. But as you might expect, those countries have their own internal economic realities and do NOT have Java programmers making $80K/yr (or truck drivers making $50k/yr) to buy those US goods. So what Intel, HP, etc want to do is manufacture at a cost this is *exactly* in line with the purchasing power of developing nations. They really do want to sell computers for $99 in Pakistan and they'll even take a small loss to do it, but they cannot make such a box using US labor or know-how at any phase of the process. So it is not exactly greed that motives them...it is growth potential in the third world.
:) . So enjoy the knowledge that we've lifted the bell of the world and given it a hard smack, and it will ring for years to come. With luck and quick reactions most everyone in the dumps today will be riding high on yet another tsunami of innovation in a few years, with the rest of the world shaking their heads at those "crazy damned Americans". Don't forget that "H|P" used to be the initials of the names of a couple of guys working on a dream in their spare time in a garage (and yes I've even seen it). Maybe a few of us will be the Hewletts and Packards of the future.
My advice is this; get OUT of any part of the IT business that involves retail, including component design, software programming, product marketing, and support. All that is lost, and will never come back. Services and consulting remain good but limited, and there is always the Next Big Thing (tm) whatever that turns out to be.
Think of it this way. America innovates (we invented most of this technology, or developed it) then America profits richly for a few decades (yes we have) while the rest of the world tries to understand what the foosh we're so excited about (but they get over that quickly) then things become commoditized (as they must) and we lose monopoly control (which is probably a good thing). Then there is a certain suffering and retrospection, then we innovate again. Repeat as needed until the world is a better place to live. What is critical to our leadership role is that Americans NOT become either complacent, or discouraged, or bitter. This is our part, we've played our part well, and in generally the world thinks Americans are brilliant (if egotistical
As the East Indians always say; "do the needful."
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
OK, so let me get this straight. To guard against "ultimately higher unemployment" we should be firing the local employees and moving the jobs overseas... :-/
I don't still get it. Well anyway, I'm sure that all the people who just lost thier jobs will sleep much better now that knowing that by being unemployed they are doing thier part to combat unemployment.
--
Simon
Now, admittedly, in US currency that's ca. $6500-$7500. But consider: Rent around Bangalore is 6,000 Rupees per month. That's $131 dollars a month. A good computer in India costs 30,000 Rupees or $656.31.
These are not people at the poverty level. They are self-respecting middle-class IT workers. America's cost of living (which drives the computation of minimum wage) doesn't apply.
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
Ideas don't generally come from the clear blue sky...they usually are built upon something else a person is familiar with. If no IT jobs are here for a person to live off of and stay in the environment where he can see a need to invent something...it will be lost.
That's the basic argument I'm making...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
OK Carly, I don't have a problem competing for a job. I thought I already did that, that's why I got hired.... I'll use call centers as an example since they are so commonly outsourced. Thousands of call center people are not "competing" for jobs, they're being turned out because someone is willing to do it CHEAPER. The call centers in India and the Phillipines aren't being held to the same levels of quality that the US call centers were 10 years ago, and part of that is that US call centers aren't being held to that either. Performance is based on how many calls are taken, not cases solved. Who cares if no customer gets an answer, we talked to more of them this month than ever before! I don't mind competing for a job, I think I'm competent enough in the job I do to stay employed. But when you want to pick the low bidder, and find they are performing at a ratio equivalent to the pay difference, don't say I didn't tell you so. How many stories have been posted about companies pulling back operations because of customer complaints? I'm NOT saying that all the Indian call center employees are idiots either. It's very difficult to replace a knowledgable person who understands a product and can support it, with someone who's just learned about it and uses online tools to troubleshoot. It's also difficult for a frustrated consumer to deal with language barriers on top of their problem. My experience with outsourced software projects has been dismal as well. It's hard enough to take code and comments from someone who understands english and our culture, going offshore just amplifies the problem. Like I said: I don't mind competing for a job, but lets compete based on something I can control, and the cost of living in the US is a little bit beyond my control at this point.
I was consulting for a GE product factory in 1999 while working for one of the now mutated interactice consulting companies. The engagement lasted three months on site, and while there I PERSONALLY watched this process take place.
The first step was to bring in H1-B mainframe workers from India, estensibly for training purposes. These people were flown in from overseas, lodged by the product factory in question, and shuttled back and forth from their hotel.
Shortly after they had been "trained" enough to suit managements needs the existing American mainframe workers were laid off in progressive batches. I sat next to one of them who told me personally what was happening and how he didn't know how he was going pay the bills after his job was terminated later that week.
In the end I left with the Indian mainframe team in full control. They had been there longer than me (3+ months) and were slated to stay the full period of the visas before taking the work they had back overseas with them. I later learned that many of these companies actually shuffle foreign workers who are ALREADY TRAINED in and out of country to get skilled labor cheap locally.
And your telling me that foreign nationals with training and ZERO overhead or living expenses aren't stealing US jobs?!? I mean really, you ARE saying that in the face of OVERWHELMING DIRECT EVIDENCE to the contrary?
Dude you need to wake up and smell the home brewed coffee you'll be drinking after your job goes bye bye. But of course all the management types say "that'll never happen to me," right? Sadly none of them stop to think what will happen when these subcontractors and contractors in poor nations decide to forego the US middle-man and take their products and companies direct to the first world market (read a recent story in the times about the company that makes Ryobi's tools in China buying the name and business rights everywhere outside of Japan).
I am constantly amazed at both the naivete and idiocy of my fellow men. You cannot have fully open markets in a world with disparate income levels, costs, and social development. Even Keynes would have recognized this if he could see the world we live in now.
-rt
you can't live well here on 10k/year.
This problem is not my fault,
You know, there are less expensive places to live, hell, most of the continental US has to be cheaper than Silicon Valley. You claim, and rightly so, that you can't live there on 10k or even 50k per year, did you ever think that maybe it's time to pack it in and move somewhere cheaper? The not my fault line is a crock. Unless you're indentured to the land, and slavery was abolished many years ago, you're free to leave for greener pastures.
I'm looking at the same situation next june, I'd love to stay in Boulder but if it comes down to it, I may pack up and head back to NE Ohio, where the cost of living is feasable.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
The government protects individuals more than businesses, I'd say. If you're an individual, and you're completely screwed, there's welfare, government housing, food stamps, etc. I'm self-employed, and my business is a corporation with one employee (myself). If my corporation fails, the government won't bail it out.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I've nothing constructive to add, but I had to say "Amen brother". The whining here reminds me of growing up in the rust belt seeing "Hungry? Eat your import" bumper stickers holding together rotted old ford trucks.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
It's amazing to me that in all these discussions and news articles about the offshore outsourcing trend, no one's raised concerns about the very serious problems that arise when trying to develop products with an offshore team. I think that these problems are so severe the model is destined to fail.
Has anyone else run into serious issues trying to effectively communicate product specification and work collaboratively across half the planet? I have. I don't think there will ever be a replacement for the efficiency with which a focused, communicative, and geographically coherent development team can execute.
Has anyone seen the Dilbert cartoon about outsourcing to Elbonia?
The biggest challenge faced when outsourcing any project is that of communication, and especially specification. Offshore outsourcing has two major strikes against it: 1) language barrier, and 2) time zones. You can't deny either of these.
When the hell is the tech biz community going to realize that it jest don't wurk?
This has happened, over and over, in the U.S., and around the world. I think of my father, who (still) manages to manufacture embroidery in the U.S., but the entire industry has gone to Asia. Did we say that the US competitiveness in the world marketplace was going to go down the tubes because the textile industry went overseas? No.... We might have 75 years earlier, but innovation occured, and new technologies and industries arose.
Now, I know IT is different. But, we do have a tendency to pay very careful attention to what's in the rear view mirror, rather than focusing on what's ahead. Would a steel worker, or steel industry baron, for that matter, have ever predicted information technologies as being a driving force of the U.S. economy?
So, I agree with the poster who said that government's role is to soften the blow of global capitalism, not prevent it. If we had banned exportation, we might still be the world leader in lace, dress making, and steel, but would we have necessarily been the world leader in any other industry, and would that be better?
One caveat: I agree that the U.S. shoudl at least remain self-sufficient in certain areas, liek agriculture, so I have no problem with farm subsidies (in general, not for specific products like corn vs. another crop), especially when so much farm land is being developed into housing.
On a similar note....agribusiness might actually be the future. Without getting in to the whole GM crop issue, I still feel that there will come a time when pharmaceuticals will be grown, rather than manufactured. Whether or not you agree with this isn't the point, as much as we don't know what will be the industry of the future.
How did the U.S. survive after cotton/steel/textiles/etc etc etc went overseas? I hope you don't consider it too much of a cliche to point to a culture that (usually) fosters innovation, that (usually) values education (needs to put alot more money there at the moment, though), and, ultimately, lets those who can make money, make money. By the time an industry is at the huge corporate level, it has already played out, and it is only a matter of time when it goes overseas.
Be worried when education is cut, to save money for defense or for tax cuts (read: California). That is far far more shortsighted....the industries that allowed for uneducated entrepreneurs were exhausted al long time ago....
I wasn't speaking solely about threats to the US.
But even there, it's problematic to predict what countries will be future security threats. Local problems elsewhere in the world tend to become problems for the US.
And some of the anti-US sentiment around the world is fueled by envy. We've got ours and they don't have theirs. That's not the whole story by any means, but it's certainly part of it.
Finally, it will be a lot easier to combat the present and future threats if we have the wholehearted support of other countries. That will come more easily the better our economic ties -- meaning trade in goods and services.
If I pay someone $12K/y to flip burgers, paying another peon $1K/y looks pretty attractive. So I fire my $12K/y person and put up a "Help Wanted - Burgerflipper - Paying $0.50 an hour, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day" sign.
But if I earn $0/y, earning $1000/y for 8 hours a day ain't gonna help me enough. I can sit on a street corner and provide momentary flashes of emotional comfort to altruists who feel guilty about having jobs. This form of self-employment (commonly referred to as "begging") earns more than $0.50 per hour, so why would I flip burgers when there are better opportunities available to me?
And if I offered $24000/y, I'd probably have prospective burgerflippers lined up outside my door.
But somewhere between $0.50 ($1000/y) and $12.00 ($24000/y), there'll be a price where someone will decide that my burgers are worth flipping. That price is the price at which someone thinks they're getting a fair shake for flipping my burgers - or they wouldn't have signed up with me, preferring another employer, or going into some form of self-employment - be it begging or opening up their own damn burger stand. It's also the price that leaves me the most money left over after paying my flippers to open another burger shop down the street.
Markets aren't Gods. Markets are merely a means of determining a price at which commodities can be exchanged to the benefit of both buyer and seller. To be buzzword-compliant, markets are massively parallel, decentralized, P2P-based mechanisms for real-time price determination. A glance at the activity on the trading floor of the CBOE or any other open-outcry commodities market should provide more than adequate proof.
Why arent these mgmt types outsourcing *their* jobs?
They are.
They're creating large pools of trained, experienced people in foreign countries who, once they've obtained a bit of capital, are well-positioned to form their own companies and compete with their former employers.
Look at how much of the PC industry has outsourced itself to Asia, for example. A few years ago, it was just US companies building component factories in the far east to cut production costs. Next the US companies started buying components from Asian companies. Next the US companies started outsourcing entire products to Asian companies, from design through manufacturing. Now the US companies are increasingly finding themselves trying to compete with foreign products that are going head-to-head with their own.
The next step is what happened to Zenith.
Of course, this process will take a while, so the people doing it will retire with their millions before it becomes a serious problem.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
But the world is not a neatly packaged economically efficient engine.
For example, our trade deficit with China more than funds their defense budget. We effectively pay them to produce missles that they point at us, and to create governmental structures that imprison and torture their citizens without the benefit of due process.
If we look at countries with more open policies toward business and profits, the challenge is that the profits go to the companies not the workers directly.
I concur that people worldwide need our help. I choose to give to organizations that I know provide help and have relatively low overhead costs so that the maximum benefit goes to the people who need it.
I mean you no disrespect, but it seems a bit selfish to say that you buy the cheapest thing available (so that you get what you want) and view that as a charitable contribution to others. Perhaps this is more a reflection on our cultural viewpoint overall than it is a reflection on you personally.
So are you willing to:
a) try to live in the US on the median worldwide income, or
b) relocate so that your egalitarian view of wealth redistribution can allow you to live on what you could make in the developing world?
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
'There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore,' Carly Fiorina, chief executive for Hewlett-Packard Co., said Wednesday.
It's true, there isn't, and that includes Carly's job. I guess she'll have made enough money to retire once HP looses enough grounds to foreign competition to cause HP to drastically cut back or go out of business. Reality is it is. When enough R&D, management and manufacturing are sitting overseas, there'll be no need for the US company. Bye bye, HP.
This is an election year. Organize and threaten to vote Bush out unless he does something real to improve the situation here at home. For example, the US allows Indians to come into the US and work with H1B and L1 visas, but a US citizen can't go to India to get a job. Here's an idea, don't give visas to countries that do not reciprocate. Part of what we're seeing is a natural globalization that will continue throughout the 21st century, but let's make sure that US labor is competing on equal grounds. I'm not looking for a free meal, just an equal opportunity.
By the way, eventually, prices will rise overseas and labor will get expensive there as well. Human nature is what it is, and people will charge more for goods and housing, workers will want more amenities and conveniences, etc. Labor costs will go up overseas as well. This is a temporary situation, although I'm sure that the used car salesman who used to be a senior analyst doesn't find this comforting.
In terms of cost My Roommate's Brother(tm) who does a lot of obscure and classified work for, well, I don't think I can even say that, has done some interesting research.
According to the latest numbers *he* has access too, last year 4 out of 6 Offshored IT projects which reached maturity (were supposed to be "done") failed to produce a usable product despite being "finished" (and paid for) by the parties involved. Why he phrased it as 4 out of 6 instead of 2 out of 3 is a statistical mistery... 8-)
The one thing that offshoring *does* do is get the horse so far away from the driver that the necessary whiping cannot take place.
And so it was a "very expensive cost saving measure".
I could not, howerver, get him to give me a good X out of Y for unusable but finished domestically produced IT projects, so...
In short, nobody knows what *any* of these numbers mean nor what the costs or benefits really are in absolute numbers or dollar values.
So all things being equal, further away is worse. Sending money into another country is bad for the local economy. (Hence all of the rest of the world not wanting to send money to Redmond WA.)
The particularly vile intangables are, well, particularly vile. The cultural differences and their effects on the results can be legion. For instance the very-smart chineese woman who is writing our app in-house used this sickly and nausiating yellow-on-yellow color scheme "nobody likes." I know, however, that these are "prosperity colors" in her socalization.
A lot of making people happy is making a product that meets the local sensibilities.
You can't Offshore "local sensibilities" in any useful manner.
Costs will be paid, people will mess up. "Enron Happens" largely because it must. And the U.S. of A. is positioning itself to be The Premere Third World Country of the Next Millennium, Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, Amen...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
The more you tax corporations, the more you hide how much you are actually taxing the American people. A tax on truck fuel will raise the price of your salad, because it will cost more to ship the lettuce. You won't see it as a tax, but it will be you paying it.
Personally, I favor abolishing all taxes other than income tax. Everybody pays once for all the services government has to offer. Then, when the masses see that our government actually slurps up about 40% of our entire economy, we can have some long-overdue tax revolt. We rose up violently against King George for taxing us far less than our current government does.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
However, the problem will take care of itself.
When a company outsources everything to India except management and profit-taking, how long will an outsourcer doing 95% of the work, who knows the end user the company no longer has to deal with, who does the R&D and makes the product... be content with just taking the money the outsourcing company is paying?
And how are outsourcers going to enforce non-compete contracts in courts with judges they can't buy because they don't know the territory?
However, while it'll be nice to see justice done, losing a good chunk of the Fortune 500 overseas won't help us a whole lot, we won't even get their tax money.
Just the bills from our insurance companies, banks, etc.
Tech Public Policy stuff