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A Thoughtful Look at Indian Outsourcing
thefinite writes "This article needs to be read by anyone interested in the outsourcing of IT jobs to India, no matter your opinion of it. It dispels some rumors (for example, if Indian IT companies do such bad work, why are over half of Carnegie Mellon's highest-rated programming companies Indian?). It addresses all of the arguments. Perhaps most importantly, it adds faces to the problem. It not only tells us about the American programmers who are out of jobs, but also about the Indians who are getting them. In the end of it, this is what Free Trade is about: people. This article makes that clear."
I have nothing again'st people making a living, but lets see how your tune changes when they start outsourcing journalist jobs...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Companies are free to outsource as they see fit. And workers who are out of work because of outsourcing are free to apply political pressure to stop the outsourcing. If you want to keep your job, get organised. Maybe free trade does not come in favour of the American middle class but rather the very rich. So fight it. It is not in your interests. Fight it. You have a weapon. Your vote.
and the one thing that I wanted to ask the author was about how the heck is every American supposed to be an innovator? He seems to go over this idea several times, but never really lays down an arguement for it. This article constantly talks about how Americans need to become innovators for the world, as this seems to be his idea of the evolution of a knowledge worker. This is you typical sensational type reporting that Wired likes to do, and only seems to share half the situation.
In the end, I do think it'll be a while before the "highest level" of IT (such as research labs) find comparable counterparts at that deep a discount. People who are worried about their job moving offshore should think about how they can do things that can't move as easily, perhaps by increasing their education (MS/PhD)...
Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
Honestly, how many American programmers would want to move to India?
"Don't you think we're helping the US economy by doing the work here?" asks an exasperated Lalit Suryawanshi. It frees up Americans to do other things so the economy can grow, adds Jairam.
:)
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Maniar uncorks an aphorism that he doesn't realize I've heard 8,000 times before (in part because American white-collar workers have long said it to their blue-collar compadres) - and that I don't realize I'll hear several times again during my stay: "There's nothing permanent except change."
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The experience did more than capsize his work life. It battered his belief system. He's long espoused the virtues of free trade. He says that he supported Nafta and that for 12 years he's subscribed to The Economist, a hymnal in the free trade church. But now he's questioning core beliefs. "These are theories that have really not been tested and proven," he says. "We're using people's lives to do this experiment - to find out what happens."
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"Someday," Janish says, "another nation will take business from India." Perhaps China or the Philippines, which are already competing for IT work.
"When that happens, how will you respond?" I ask.
"I think you must have read Who Moved My Cheese?" Aparna says to my surprise.
amazing, they read American motivational books. btw, I recommend the book to you. very short book, you can read it in barnes and noble..
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For US workers, the path beyond services seems uncertain. But again, history provides a guide. Thirty years ago, another form of outsourcing hit the US service sector: the computer. That led to a swarm of soulless processing machines, promoted by management consultants and embraced by profit-obsessed executives gobbling jobs in a push for efficiency. If today's cry of the displaced is "They sent my job to India!" yesterday's was "I was replaced by a computer!"
Then, as now, the potential for disruption seemed infinite. Data crunching was just the start. Soon electronic brains would replace most of the accounting department, the typing pool, and the switchboard. After that, the thinking went, the modern corporation would apply the same technology to middle management, business analysis, and, ultimately, decisionmaking. If your job was emptying an inbox and filling an outbox, you were begging for someone to draw the I/O analogy - and act on it. Indeed, computer terminology is littered with traces of what were formerly jobs: printers, monitors, file managers; even computers themselves used to be people, not machines.
Computers have, of course, reshaped the workplace. But they have also proved remarkably effective at creating jobs. Bookkeepers of old, adding columns in ledgers, are today's financial analysts, wielding Excel and PowerPoint in boardroom strategy sessions. Secretaries have morphed into executive assistants, more aides-de-camp than stenographers. Typesetters have become designers. True, in many cases different people filled the new jobs, leaving millions painfully displaced, but over time the net effect was positive - for workers and employers alike.
If you've read this much, check out the article. I liked it...just remember to question everything you hear
Outsourcing isn't the magic arrow CEOs want it to be. This article doesn't really address anything important at all. Ratings are pretty meaningless. I know parts of companies that are rated at SEI Level 5, but produce some of the worst crap I've seen. They're rated well though, so they much be good.
Why doesn't someone write an article about all the times outsourcing has been tried before? How about what happened with Malaysia? How about the fact that the overhead involved in trying to manage people half-way around the world is higher than the amount they save by outsourcing? This isn't a new fad people. Sure, the people and the places change but the problems don't.
Things are different now than they were in the 80's I'll grant you, but no one seems to be drawing the comparisons. Health Care costs are rising in the US, thus possibly providing better savings when outsourcing now. However, it's not like this is a new concept and that the problems aren't well known. Let's see some hard questions asked and analysis done based on past experience!
KhyronThis article makes interesting advertising for outsourcing firms and raises some very valid points but hardly can be considered either objective or entirely factual. The article talks about the quality of Indian IT firms (and they do have some high quality professional firms). However, they fail to mention the many negative experiences U.S. firms have had with botched projects, poor service and support compounded by language issues despite claims that Indian English skills are adequate (albeit this is not true in every instance). One of the main issues offsetting these facts is that they work for a tenth of what their US counterparts do. Companies find it cost effective to allow them to make these mistakes and learn from them (which they seem to be doing). Outsourcing is a minefield that can lead to extraordinary success or disastrous failure. From an economic perspective the cost savings you reap from outsourcing you pay for in the long term (as a nation) by the erosion of your markets buying power. 3 Million consumers in your home market (making $70,000 dollars a year) are replaced by consumers in a market hostile to foreign competition making $8000 dollars a year (for the top tier anyway). Sooner or later America will realize this and legislation will be put into place to stop it. But in the meantime hang onto your seats
I guess things have quieted down now or perhaps we in the US have just lost interest. But there was a time where I am sure a few CEO's and CIO's had to be worried how long it would be before their big software project went up in a giant Pakistani mushroom cloud.
Do political situations, like the border skirmishes near Kashmir, ever get discussed when it comes to making these outsourcing decisions? If India was thrown into a state of turmoil due to an attack from Pakistan what would happen to outsourced projects? Or if India attacked Pakistan in a way that the US felt was too severe and sanctions were put into place against India, what would happen to these contracts?
'Same speed C but faster'
So after years of school and experiance we should just go work at a fast food joint? Please explain why. Also, keep in mind that this is NOT free trade. It is a one way deal. They get our jobs, but we get nothing and cant go over there to work.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Somebody goes to an Indian outsourcing firm and asks them what they think about Indian outsourcing?
And then its supposed to be interesting and insightful when they say "Hey, this is really good for you guys, no really!"?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
That's not the point. This point is that Indian workers have the option of coming here and working. By law, it is illegal for Americans to get work visas related to IT in India.
So, here we are in the year 2004. America doesn't have enough IT jobs to support our own programmers. India's IT sector is booming. But guess what? American's are NOT allowed to travel to India to get a job.
This is not free trade. It's the raping of our nation.
That's all this Indian Outsourcing thing is.
Are there really really good, really smart Indian programmers? Of course there are! But overall, on the average, outsourcing will end up biting most companies in the ass, in the long run. There are hidden costs to it, like the 11 hour time difference, language barriers, cultural differences (anecdotally, from many accounts, Indians tend not to raise questions, or think independently when a design sucks, etc.)
Worse yet, this will bite the US Software industry in the ass when we suffer from brain drain - when software engineering is no longer a sought after degree. Then the Indians will start their own companies, and eat our lunches.
Worse still - with the decimation of these high-paying jobs, comes an overall lowering of the standard of living here in the US. These companies got rich by selling to the richest market in the world - American consumers. By gutting their own customers, these companies are shooting themselves in the foot.
- - -
That said - the writing, in big letters, in crayon, is:
Investors should believe that a wise company outsources, because it's a move towards efficiency. It will eliminate those overpaid "web designers" that are sapping corporate profits. Companies are "cutting fat". It's perceived as a gutsy move.
Actually, it's the herd mentality. "Oh my god! IBM's outsourcing, they're going to KILL us unless we outsource too."
But mainly - it's a movement designed to lure investment dollars back to the Tech Industry. It's basically hype. Companies who outsource are selling stock. Not products and services. This is their motivation, their drive. And it's very much a herd mentality. Among investors, AND corporations. They may be heading off a cliff. They may be heading to the slaughterhouse. Or perhaps greener pastures. But make no mistake. The Outsourcing Movement is NOT a drive to offer better service, or find better talent, or even save real money. It's a drive to LOOK like they are.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I've been out of work and interviewing. Every company I interviewed with has opening because they're bringing their outsorced projects back.
Granted, it's not 6 figures like 5 years ago, but it's still nice.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Outsourcing is a good thing...
Remember that outsourcing is a good thing from the perspective of Finance. Because business is the slave of financial markets, preaching outsourcing to business is really like preaching to the choir.
On the other hand, the social aspect. Forget posessions, forget per capita income. People like the idea of being respected and being safe in their IT jobs. They're being torn apart by outsourcing.
Which party is right? Neither, probably. Just remember that when you join a typical company, its objective is to make money. Don't like that? Start your own...I plan to.
There will be a revolution once the riches are sufficiently concentrated.
Don't tell me American coders are willing to go and work in India now. It's pure bullshit and if you were in a logical debate, it would probably matter and show that the Indian government is protectionist, but in reality, it plain simply doesnt matter.
The real debate is within America. Do we live in a global society or do we stay within? Especially coz we were the ones who made it so popular in the first place? That's the question America needs to ask itself.
This sig is empty.
The Flight to India
The jobs Britain stole from the Asian subcontinent 300 years ago are now returning. Is this a good thing or a bad one?
If you live in a rich nation in the English-speaking world, and most of your work involves a computer or a telephone, don't expect to have a job in five years' time. Almost every large company which relies upon remote transactions is starting to dump its workers and hire a cheaper labour force overseas. All those concerned about economic justice and the distribution of wealth at home should despair. All those concerned about global justice and the distribution of wealth around the world should rejoice. As we are, by and large, the same people, we have a problem.
Britain's industrialisation was secured by destroying the manufacturing capacity of India. In 1699, the British government banned the import of woollen cloth from Ireland, and in 1700 the import of cotton cloth (or calico) from India.1 Both products were forbidden because they were superior to our own. As the industrial revolution was built on the textiles industry, we could not have achieved our global economic dominance if we had let them in. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, India was forced to supply raw materials to Britain's manufacturers, but forbidden to produce competing finished products.2 We are rich because the Indians are poor.
Now the jobs we stole 300 years ago are returning to India. Last week the Guardian revealed that the National Rail Enquiries service is likely to move to Bangalore, in south-west India. Two days later, the HSBC bank announced that it is cutting 4000 customer service jobs in Britain, and shifting them to Asia. BT, British Airways, Lloyds TSB, Prudential, Standard Chartered, Norwich Union, BUPA, Reuters, Abbey National and Powergen have already begun to move their call centres to India. The British workers at the end of the line are approaching the end of the line.
There is a profound historical irony here. Indian workers can outcompete British workers today because Britain smashed their ability to compete in the past. Having destroyed India's own industries, the East India Company and the colonial authorities obliged its people to speak our language, adopt our working practices and surrender their labour to multinational corporations. Workers in call centres in Germany and Holland are less vulnerable than ours, as Germany and Holland were less successful colonists, with the result that fewer people in the poor world now speak their languages.
The impact on British workers will be devastating. Service jobs of the kind now being exported were supposed to make up for the loss of employment in the manufacturing industries which disappeared overseas in the 1980s and 1990s. The government handed out grants for cybersweatshops in places whose industrial workforce had been crushed by the closure of mines, shipyards and steelworks. But the companies running the call centres appear to have been testing their systems at government expense before exporting them somewhere cheaper.
It is not hard to see why almost all of them have chosen India. The wages of workers in the service and technology industries there are roughly one tenth of those of workers in the same sectors over here. Standards of education are high, and almost all educated Indians speak English. While British workers will take call centre jobs only when they have no choice, Indian workers see them as glamorous.3 One technical support company in Bangalore recently advertised 800 jobs. It received 87,000 applications.4 British call centres moving to India can choose the most charming, patient, biddable, intelligent workers the labour market has to offer.
There is nothing new about multinational corporations forcing workers in distant parts of the world to undercut each o
Very clever, but ultimately a ridiculous response. My point is that if the answer to all of us who don't have a job is to retool and learn a marketable trade, my answer is that this costs money. At one point does one reach a point of diminishing returns on this? I know I have already. I have $28,000 in student loans and no job to show for it. That's not my fault. I did the best I could to get out of poverty, given the information I had at the time. I can't keep retooling forever, otherwise by the time I'm done I'll never be able to retire. But you probably wouldn't understand this as you weren't forced to make this choice.
So let me get this straight, the low end of the American job market should do to the Mexicans since they are taking "jobs no American's will do", according to the President.
On the high end of the pay scale, Manufacturing and Skilled Labor, we should let all those jobs go to India, China, Singapore and anywhere else labor is cheap.
So that leaves the middle, where companies are currently not hiring and slashing middle management by the thousands.
Now, toss in skyrocketing energy prices. Natural Gas (up 25% from 2003), Gasoline ($1.60/gal). Follow that up with increased health insurance costs which have gone up another 50% or more in 2004 because employers have no incentive to absorb costs in a tight labor market.
What's the result? DEFLATION! Yes, that's right, that means prices will stagnate as the number of people with disposable income become fewer and fewer. If you kill off the USA economy (#1 economy on the planet) who will buy all products and services from out of the country. No Jobs = No Spending Power.
Until workers in other countries can afford to buy SUV's, computers, cars, homes, digital cameras, health care, Disney vacations, and daily food the lifestlye and quality of life of the American worker will continue to erode. We need to ditch Free-Trade before the world economy ends up in a ditch.
I read a recent article on slashdot about how American companies (GE was one large one named) were building large research centers in India. Filled with PhDs (engineers, chemists, biologists, et al.).
Shall we say... "When they offshored the programmers, I did not speak out because I was not a programmer."
However, I am a MS/PhD student in (non-computer) engineering. And reading that on slashdot scared the hell out of me. So I have a few more years and several $k left in my education.... and by then it will be in India? What's the motivation for U.S. students to go for the higher education (which used to be equated with higher pay) when that in the very near future may not be the case? I think we *all* should be very very concerned. Not just the programmers/IT's.
I work for an Indian call center which does all sorts of processing and telemarketing for clients like Chase,Citi..ec.
I work as a systems admin at night(USA time), studying for my GMAT in the day along with catching a little sleep.The job gets me about $7000 annually.Yes I am going to study in the USA probably steal another job there, temp or not if I can get it.Does that make me bad?Does that make the whole outsourcing industry bad?Its not the minimum wage factor that I'd like to argue.
Everyday we get about 5 tasks that were done wrong by some desk jockey in the USA and have to be streamlined and corrected here.(not talking about the actually processing, just simple reports n stuff)
Ok maybe not everything is that bad but what is a guy like me supposed to do? I earn more than most of my friends..live an ok lifestyle and struggle to save up for future education.This is the typical scenario you find in a IT outsourcing company in India.
Should I just quit and work as something else? Why would Citi stop Outsourcing when they earn more by outsourcing and get better value for money? Isnt it right that we lobby for Outsourcing in USA?
Lord of the Binges.
Yes, as an independent contractor and an American, I am troubled by the disappearance of American jobs. When I saw it starting my Freshman year in college, I picked up an extra major and started doing lots of extracurricular activities. Fortunately, I still get lots of work at my normal, exorbitant rate, even from companies who also oursorce, because of all of the positive word-of-mouth: customers know they can count on me for a quality product and they can get it fast.
An awful lot of people I see graduating from the college I go to have truly pitiful skills, even after four years. I worked on a yearlong group project with people who couldn't write coherent or working code to save their lives. I tried to tutor a guy who was 1 semester away from his B.S. but couldn't write a "Hello World" program. Horrifyingly, there is even someone in my 400-level Physics class that can't do derivatives. I have no idea how she survived 100-level Physics. At a local software company that I once worked at, my desk was next to a woman freshly graduated from college as a computer scientist, and she never did any actual programming - she sat there and watched TechTV, pausing to stare at the screen when the supervisor walked in, for about a month until it was discovered that she couldn't really program at all and was fired. Two English majors e-mailed me recently with questions about my upcoming participation in the ACM World Finals. Their e-mails had approximately the coherence, spelling, and grammar I'd expect from a middle-school student. These people aren't unusual. They are, I'd say, the 30-40th percentile of a typical American college. People became so complacent during the economic boom that they thought that they could expect a 50K-plus salary without doing the mental analog of breaking a sweat and by doing the bare minimum amount of work when it came to maintaining or advancing their skill. These people, I think, ruined the market for those who actually worked in their training. I imagine that it tends to be easier to keep all of your department staff in the same place, and for the drastically reduced price (assuming you're going to get a large quantity of workers who just can't produce and a few that can anyway), you may as well just go all outsourced.
Anyway, yes. I blame the slackers (and the companies who practically sell certification) who devalued degrees in their complacence.
~Ben
First of all, I understand that there are two types of outsourcing:
1) Outsourcing jobs that otherwise would not have been created because they weren't cost-effective if filled by North Americans
2) Firing somebody who was doing a perfectly good job EXCLUSIVELY to save money.
I can accept 1), because it would be wrong to deprive an Indian work simply out of envy.
2) is absolutely, unmistakably morally unacceptable.
It's bad enough for somebody to find out they've been laid off, whether it be because the company's losing money or simply wants to increase its profits. It's even worse for that laid off person to find out his job has been replaced, despite his VERY BEST EFFORTS, simply because he was too expensive, due to his cost of living in North America being higher.
That person was not fired due to any inefficiency, laziness, or lack of competence. He was fired because factors OUTSIDE HIS CONTROL made him uncompetitive with an Indian developer. This fired employee was implicitly promised by the corporate community that if he invested four years of his life and tens of thousands of dollars (and the debt that goes along with it), that he would have a good job along with the salary and benefits that go with it. Suddenly, after incurring this debt and investing the time in his education, the corporation changes its mind and says "Oooops, you know what? We changed our minds. You're no longer any good to us. Sorry to make you waste your time and money like that."
Corporations, for all their talk of assuming risk for the sake of capitalism and entrepreneurship do no such thing and instead pass the risk along to individuals, who they lay off at will. Corporations are scared of risk. They don't want to assume the risk, but want all the benefits of assuming it.
For the last century, corporations have been given the political clout to influence our policy makers to pass laws favourable to that company's ongoing profits, the supply of skilled labour, "free trade" agreements, the DMCA and other repressive laws. Corporations were given these advantages because of an implicit agreement that was made with society: "We'll dole out these favours for you if you invest money and create jobs in the area in which you base your operations.". Now corporations want the best of both worlds by maintaining their political clout, but renegging on their implicit promise to create jobs in the area where they base their business.
This is absolutely morally unacceptable. Shame on them!
My dev group was recently approached by some gentlemen from an Indian outsourcing company. They wanted to do our new product and made a very convincing case.
When asked for a ballpark figure about cost, they stated 20-30 an hour: probably not less than 21 and probably not more than 35.
After they left, the QA manager, the Project Manager, and me, the programming manager, ran through the numbers by using our estimation of project man hours times the Indian's lowest quoted price (21/hr) vs. the costs of tech labor in Utah.
Local workers actually beat Indians in overall costs because Utahns are willing to do a great job even when paid relatively little. The margins were close, but the Americans still won by about $20,000 for the project. So with these figures in hand, our CEO will probably decide to go with local help. Not only will the locals be a bit cheaper, but we'll have the workers in the office for consulations, oversight, and better QA and none of us will have to make frequent and costly trips to Bangalore to oversee the project.
This scenario probably won't work in much (most?) of the country, but this does show that there is still room for Americans once the figures are carefully analyzed and once wages cycle downwards for a bit.
The cost of living in FL is much lower than in CA. It is cheaper to hire programmers in FL. Some programming jobs moved to FL. I followed them- I took a pay cut but do very well thanks to the decreased cost of living. I can even afford a house now.
The cost of living in india is much lower than in FL. It is cheaper to hire programmers in india. I love indian food, I speak the language and wouldnt mind living there. Yet I cannot move there and work because I am not an indian citizen.
Thats the problem. There is an artificial barrier between countries that keeps their populations from mixing. There should be a corresponding barrier which keeps the jobs from wandering to where we cant follow them. Otherwise we are screwing ourselves.
I predict this will be a good year for outrage over outsourcing with the election and the "jobless recovery" underway.
I have previously mentioned my theory that USA (and other countries) might have to devalue their currency. I'm not a capitalist so a lot of capitalism is totally bogus, but how can a country like USA stay competitive if the wages in, say, China are 10x lower? Devaluing the currency is the only capitalist measure (protectionism/tariffs/etc are anti-capitalist) to remain competitive. Devaluing the currency will significantly increase the cost of imports while enhancing exports.
Apart from the controversy of devaluing (Americans would lose the value of their assets), it might bring down capitalism with it. The US dollar is tied into so many things that devluation will impact nearly everything. Starting with a mess in the oil markets (look into something call petroldollar), it will impact US debt, world trade, and so forth. If US dollar devalues, USA will probably default on its debt. I claim that if USA defaults on its debt, capitalism will collapse.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Just a quick comment here...
The Carnegie Mellon CMM Level 5 rating that a lot of these firms receive is not always related to overall quality. Like the ISO 9000 standard, you can have a poor product come out of a CMM Level 5 shop.
The CMM is supposed to improve overall software development process but, for example, there is nothing in the CMM that says "Don't use unprotected globals" or "Avoid goto's and labels".
Code written in CMM Level 5 shops can be good or it can be utter crap. The CMM states that you have a process which meets all of these different criteria.
That's not to say it's bad to pursue a CMM rating. In some cases it helps. A lot of it can be common sense. Though what is one person's common sense is another's undiscovered fronteer.
Do not let a CMM rating wow you just as an ISO rating should wow you. It can be a factor in deciding a contract but there should _never_ be a single factor to decided a contract!
It's the companies that should pay. Find out who is outsourcing and tax the hell out of them. They're making quick bucks off of the American government and domestic/foreign workers.
and on top of all that I was forced to give myself the pink slip and outsource my personal website becuase free was too damn spendy!
The movement of jobs to India is simply the result of currency exchange rates .
Take a look - starting around 1991, the Rupee dropped from around 17/dollar to today's 45/dollar.
So that chick making $11,000/year? Using the 1991 exchange rate, her Ruppe-based salary would have cost her U.S.-based employer $29,100/year. 29K is s still cheap compared to a U.S. salary, but its a lot easier to compete against than 11k.
I suspect that a lot of companies would not be offshoring to India if the exchange rate hadn't gotten out of hand back in 1991. We've been bring the dollar down for a year or two now, but it's too little, too late. The exchange rate has been too "attractive" for too long, and companies are now finding the risks worth the potential reward.
Unfortunately, once this transition is complete, it will be nearly impossible to get the jobs back. Even if the exchange rate drops - the investment will have already have been made, and the risk of change will all be going the other way.
most of the jobs that are moving out of the country are the type of jobs that are high profile.... projects that require teams of 20 or 30 people (maybe) and that lasts for a year or longer....But many programmers are employed where proximity is important....Maybe it is a small... institution....which needs a few programmers to build in house systems.
I agree with that assessment, however, the loss of the "big projects" will flood the market with programmers for many years. It is like musical chairs with 3 chairs and 10 players. Your point focuses on the 3 chairs, but not the 7 players without a chair. Nobody is suggesting that *all* programming jobs are disappearing.
Table-ized A.I.
You are right!
Here is an article of interest: The Myth of the Race to the Bottom.
It is easy to be fearful due to the short term pain due to economic dislocations, but growth will continue. We haven't come close yet to exhausting all the new areas. Note two emerging revolutions: nano-tech and bio-tech. Also, we still have a long way to go in the whole knowledge revolution area. My own belief is that total programming jobs in the US will grow over time, not shrink. Expect a new expansion in a few years time. Look for jobs in small business and nich industries.
From the third page in the article: "Turner's bill passed the state senate by a 40-to-0 vote. But it got bottled up in the assembly, thanks to the efforts of Indian IT firms and their powerhouse Washington, DC, lobbying firm, Hill & Knowlton."
Why the hell do we allow Hill & Knowlton to greatly influcence our governmental decisions regarding outsourcing U.S. jobs? They have offices in 37 countries around the globe and firmly believe in outsourcing jobs outside the U.S. Our government really needs to stand up to companies like Hill & Knowlton and fight for U.S. jobs.
http://tomgould.com/
YESSSSSS PRECIOUS this is the truth!
CMM is a huge fucking joke. Back when I worked at that shithole Keane, I got to work on a lot of CMM stuff. Ive since learned that the higher the CMM level of a company, the more likely it is that they produce nothing of value. You end up with 80 percent of the work effort spent generating meaningless paperwork instead of working (which is why consulting shops LOVE to have a high CMM level).
The billable hours are astronomical- it once took me two weeks of design approval and estimation paperwork to alter a single line of code to plug a security hole. That is two weeks actually doing the paperwork followed by another 3 weeks waiting to get it approved. The change took 30 seconds and 3 weeks later was approved for placement in a test environment. Meanwhile, in a different room, independent consultants were rewriting mission critical billing modules with no supervision at all. Fun stuff. This is what Accenture is outsourcing to india. Professional mediocrity.
What is the reason for this nonsense? Surely it exists for some reason? Of course! Billable time is the same regardless of how much you pay the warm bodies producing that time. Time can be consumed by generating body heat, or it can be consumed by producing high quality code that never needs to be fixed.
If you were a consulting firm, what would you do? (if you were a consultant you would leave for a non dead-end job of course) You hire the people who are willing to work for the absolute cheapest and fill rows of cubicles with them- these people will then do nothing but produce paperwork which justifies their billable time. You then have about 2 or 3 people per contract who actually do real work and get paid decent salaries. These are the guys that the seat warmers are "assisting on projects"- its a very lucrative scam.
What IT people have been failing to understand for years now is that technology expertise is not as valuable a skill as it was once perceived. In fact, a lot of technology work is drudgery on the order of rivetting and lever-pulling.
What exactly *is* a "high-level" job then? Managers sitting in meetings all day because they don't know how or don't want to use a wiki or discussion software instead? Making decisions about stuff they barely have a clue about? It is a political schmoozfest.
Table-ized A.I.
Face it: American IT workers are no longer competitive. Partially, it is because the third world is catching up in education and infrastructure; partially, it is because too many talentless and overpaid people entered the American IT industry in the 90's. The causes really don't matter, as long as American labor costs too much. Most American IT jobs will go; those that remain will have much lower salaries, and the only American programmers remaining will be those that have a second job, and love programming more than money.
Why do I know this? Because I saw it, 10-15 years ago. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russian scientists, engineers, skilled blue-collar workers, etc. found that their skills were suddenly no longer needed. The Russian industry was not competitive with the West, and the government was too poor to pay gov't contracts. So what happened? Some people emigrated to the West, where many of them had to take blue-collar jobs (because racist Westerners didn't care about their job experience or education). Some stayed for the love of their job despite not getting paid, and accepted a massive fall in their quality of life. Many broke down psychologically, started drinking, and are by now basically unemployed and unemployable. The rest went with the flow, and followed the money. They worked three jobs, sold vegetables, fixed cars, imported Western goods, went back to school, opened stores, created a banking system from scratch, etc. Some failed. Some were incredibly successful. The richest Russian businessmen today were knowledge workers in the 1980's.
The ones that were too stubborn or too shocked to adapt are living below the poverty line.
This makes it sound like the western countries got wealthy by plundering everyone else. In fact, countries become wealthy (increase per-capita income) almost exclusively by growing their own economy. Why economies grow has been one of THE questions in macroeconomics for a long time. In the early 1900s, Argentina was as wealthy as either the US or the western European countries. They have fallen behind, rather than being plundered. Several factors important to growth have been identified; consider how India or China (or Argentina) has stacked up until recently in these different areas.
That is a very interesting post. I only wish I hadn't graduated from high school in 1993 and took a 3 year leave of absence from college. I wish I had finished with college in 1997 instead of 2000. I wish there weren't so many incompetent people (who only do IT because of the money) filling the positions I would love the opportunity to hold.
The problem here is that while both of us really enjoy the type of work we do, you have an advantage over me that I cannot hope to compete with....you were most likely born before me.
I am a data warehouse specialist that because of a down economy has to live with a job title of "programmer/analyst" and I should (according to my boss) be "damn glad I have a job" [that underpays me by $20,000 according to regionalized salary surveys]. I've been looking for work casually for over a year and seriously for 4 months, problem is that either nobody is hiring for the type of work I do and enjoy, or they get people with 10+ years of experience because they were born before me.
Marketing yourself well will only take you so far, I have 3+ years of experience and have more theoretical knowledge (due to schooling and voracious reading) to back up my experience than many others I've met with much more experience than myself. Unfortunately employers see 2 candidates, one with 3 years and one with 10 and guess who gets the job every time.
So these are the prime Indian students who are designing our bridges and writing our software today. I would hope the American overseers can distinguish the 1-in-10 engineer who did his own homework from the other 9, but I don't believe that is possible.
In a similar vein, I doubt that any Indian company is truly at SEI CMM level 5. In a nation where bribery is a way of life, certification is too easily bought.
no one seems to have a good idea just how to afford that lateral move and the training it entails, especially for the poor schmucks that are just now graduating
Well, actually, the idea is pretty obvious, and has been used repeatedly for the previous wave of outsourcing in manufacturing jobs.
The basic notion of free trade is it that it makes people richer. (If not, the parties involved wouldn't trade.) We all buy electronics made in Asia because they're cheap; that's a great deal for us as consumers (because we get to have more stuff for the same money) and it's a great deal for Asian manufacturers and their employees (because they get a slice of our wealth). In the long run, everybody is better off.
But as you point out, in the short run people whose jobs go overseas are in a pickle; they have trained for a job that's no longer available. The solution is to tax consumers a bit (so their cheap imports aren't quite as cheap) and pay for job retraining and income support.
There are some programs like this for lost manufaturing jobs, and there should be more. And their needs to be support for those harmed by the new wave of white-collar jobs. Write your congressman!
But the solution isn't to block trade. Trade makes us all richer, and blocking it makes us all poorer.
I was that naive. I had no choice. It was milk cows and live in poverty or borrow my way into education and possibly a better life. I know there are no guarantees, but I was pretty sure I'd be able to get a better job than milking cows. Right now, if all the white collar jobs flee overseas, I'm not so sure. That's my point.
I have the desire, btw. I worked 40 hours a week and put myself through college. Then I worked 40-70 hours a week for the last 7 years while also putting time in to teach myself new skills. I deserve success. I've earned it. The fact that the jobs just aren't here is the problem.
I'm a relatively old fart in this forum; I'm 33 years old, and I've been programming in one language or another since '95. I've been around; I did the comp sci degree, the Y2K effort, the Manhattan, NY, dot-com/dot-bomb experience, some corporate IT, and civil service in a few different organizations. I've been around to watch our field go down the tubes, I have a pretty good understanding of the whys and whens, and I've got some advice for you, so please listen. I might be able to save you some grief.
First, look at the problem at hand: corporate jobs are going away because of corporate greed and disloyalty. First it'll be IT jobs, then virtually everyone as corporations move everything overseas that CAN be moved. This is nothing new, they did it to the manufacturing sector decades ago. But it IS unique in that once it's gone, that's it. There's nothing left for an ex-corporate type to retrain to except dead-end retail jobs at six bucks an hour.
So, this is pretty scary. But you CAN keep yourself out of harm's way. You don't have to just let yourself get sidelined.
First of all, ask yourself: do you really want to work for a corporation? You'll have to sign an IP agreement, a nondisclosure, and a noncompete, so you won't be able to work for anyone else for several years even if you're fired -- this is sort of like indentured servitude. And you'll have to work 60+ hours a week with no overtime pay because they'll write you up as an "exempt" worker. And you'll have some idiot suit breathing down your neck all day, reminding you on a constant basis that "you're lucky to have a job in this economy" (believe it or not, I've heard of this kind of thing from a lot of different people). You'll have to physically restrain yourself from dropping him out the nearest window, which will cause you stress. And you'll have to eventually watch your job go away, maybe even training your replacements.
So all those corporate jobs sucked anyway. Fuck 'em. Don't even consider them. The only reason corporations are still hiring is that they haven't fully ramped up their outsourcing yet. Why help them while they're still in the process of screwing you and all your friends over? Blow 'em off and get a non-corporate job. Stay in school. Get that Master's degree. Go on to the Ph.D and become a professor. If that's too annoying and your suck-up skills aren't strong enough, get into the IT department of a university near you -- you get all the benefits and none of the headaches of a professor's post. Get into civil service if you can. DISDAIN the corporations. They've earned it.
If you can't score one of those jobs, try and find something with a small business. Parlay your knowledge of computer science into a position where you'll learn some other trade at the same time. Wear a lot of hats. Be the indispensible local geek who keeps everything running. Small businesses are better than you might think; if nothing else, they would NEVER have the resources to outsource your job. Think about it.
So, ok, now you have a job. You're eating, you're making your car payments, you're not rich but you're not dead meat either. So, now what, you ask?
REVENGE.
Say it with me. "Revenge". Feel how it rolls off your tongue. "Revenge". It's such a happy word, such a WARM word. It LIKES YOU. It's your FRIEND.
REVENGE.
Here's how to get one for the little guy, without breaking the law or doing anything that'll get you into trouble.
1. Don't buy anything from a major corporate outsourcer unless you absolutely have no choice. Or, be obnoxious: buy a Hewlett Packard printer (usually sold at a loss) and buy NON-HP INK. If you need a new laptop, buy it on Ebay, where the money goes into the wallet of one of your neighbors instead of a corporate bank account. Buying music? Buy it used in your local CD shop. Buying a car? Get a used one. BE CHEAP, and be proud of it. Convince everyone you can to be cheap as well. Think grassroots.
If you're buying an item like a TV, and you don't w
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
I'm an Indian, born and raised there. After working my butt off in high-school, and I got admitted into the University of Pennsylvania. I applied to America, because I was under the impression that America was the country which wanted the world's poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and were willing to work hard to get there. I also applied simply because I wanted to see what the rest of the world was like. What a mistake. I went and stood in the line at the United States Embassy with all the other applicants to get a student visa....this after I had already gotten admission. I had to prove to the visa officer that I didn't want to permanently stay in USA, and that I wasn't going to blow up the WTC. I got to the USA, and paid the FULL $120,000+ that the tuition costs me. But I was reminded everyday how I stole Joe Public's college place. I was also told "If you don't like it here, y don't u go back to your own country. BTW do you go to school on Elephants?". Interesting to see what other kinds of people make it to an Ivy league in America. Then when I graduated (The initial months of what would become the dotcom bust) I got a job with Amazon.com (again I stole Joe Public's job). Non-US citizens are NOT allowed to work in the US without a work visa. I don't know all those mexicans do it, but that's how it works for the rest of us. Then, I was told that I would get a work visa based on my performance for the next 6 months...at the end of which I got fired. This means I had to leave my job and apartment and leave the country, which I did gladly. Apparently, America is no longer the land of immigrants. You want to live peacefully and seek life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, do it elsewhere. So then I went back to my home country (India) because clearly I'm not wanted in USA, the miserable, decently educated thief that I am, and got a job with a software company. Guess what, now apparently, I'm still stealing Joe Public's job. Apparently, Indians will only be safe as long as they are only cleaning the shit out of your gutters, or acting like dim-witted kwiky-mart owners. Anything more high-level than that and we're stealing "your" jobs. First of all, this outsourcing revolution is unique to India. Software will remain an Indian monopoly, and the reason for that is English. Indian languages are closer to English than Chinese/Japanese or Russian will ever be. This means that an Indian can pick up English much faster than a Chinese person can. Second, Who the hell do American's think they are to point fingers at us for 'bad english'? Most Indians educated in English can outtalk an American anyday. Someone made a comment about culture. Apparently, teasing adolescents to the point which they steal guns and murder their classmates is a culture to be aped. Outsourcing is here to say, because it is a Big Business phenomenon. GE has a virtual empire here in India. There's no way it's letting go. Ford, GM, Yahoo, Microsoft, they all need us. Deal with it. The time will come soon, when American might will be challenged by Chinese and Indian might. Clearly you guys aren't ready to meet that challenge. Oh but we have a lead over China. Yes, a lead - we're a democracy and as proud of it as the next American is. Of course, to most Americans who wouldn't be able to figure out where their arse-hole is without class-action suit-induced directions, we're just another bunch of turbaned freaks who follow Bin Laden.... And we're a young country, whereas most of the developed world is greying out slowly but surely. Sorry dudes, the new world is Brown and Yellow, not White. So in effect. You're screwed. Capitalism/Free Trade is dead. Long Live Capitalism/Free Trade
A few years ago I worked for a long established American firm making 390 mainframes(*).
High level management were trying to outsource to India, my senior peers were coincidentally assessing static source code analysis tools.
They used the tool to assess the quality of the Indian code vs their own code. Result was the Indian code was measured to be better. The outcome? Tool was deemed to be broken and not used. Company went out of business a few years later.
Moral? Well the one I took from it was that everyone thinks other peoples' code is worse than their own, because it's different. When that code comes from a different culture, then the differences are going to be greater. But if it gets the job done (which encompasses reliability, maintainability etc), stop whining.
(*) Amdahl.
Bear with me a moment.
o urce merry-go-round. Every once in a while, some manager hoping to score brownie points would suggest outsourcing as a means for the company to improve their bottom line. And it would be done.
I am currently looking for a job and have noticed that many companies ask that I send my CV as well as my preferred salary. Okay, I can do that. Of course if I state my preferred salary is R10 000 and someone with similar skills and experience says she wants R5000, who are they more likely to hire?
A few years ago I worked for a company that seemed to be permanently in the outsource-then-bring-it-back-in-house-then-
outs
Then not too long in the distant future, the outsoursed jobs would be brought back home because some other manager suggested that doing it ourselves would be cheaper. And it would be done.
Face it, Joe Soap might have started his lemonade stand as a means of feeding his kids but when he started making more money then he needed for groceries what did he do? He grew his company, branched out into orageade, limeade and coolade and employed his brother-in-law to do deliveries.
That is until Joe realised that he can pay the Indian kid down the street a fraction of what he pays his brother-in-law for the same job and in the end Joe makes more money.
Does he stop selling lemonade when the kids are all grown up and can provide for themselves (assuming they're not American programmers)?
Of course not, because it stopped being about feeding the kids a long, long time ago. Now it's all about the money.
Is it not better for a company of 150 people to outsource 100 jobs and stay in business or not outsource at all and so all 150 jobs are lost?
It's still about the money because if you don't have money, you certainly can't afford to pay a programmer.
"I'm going to worry like hell and that's not an easy job, believe me" - Lu-Tze "Thief of Time"
ok.. I reply to you just because your the 1 too many comment writer which seems to think foreign aid is really aid.
How do you think foreign aid works ? do you really think it's a christmas gift check handed out to another government with a message like "Use this money for the well-beeing of your people" ?
Here's how foreign aid works. A company gives money in advance as campaign fund to government candidates. In turn the government, whichever one is elected since they paid both, give tax-payer money to the company via a third-party ( the "aided" country )in the form of Foreign aid. Foreign aid is a money laundering scheme: the company gets tax-payer money and the elected government gets it's share and that's what's important. The fact that the country gets the goods in the end is usually only a side-effect which can be turn into a positive spin : We're good people, we help the less fortunate or at least make americans think that everybody owe them.
example ? the us government has financed it's good friends in the weapon industry for 50 years with billions of dollars through israel. It's a win-win-win situation : the weapon industry get the money, israel defend american interests in the middle-east and the government officials get a piece of the cake.
It's not because we laugh that it's funny
The entire CMM argument is just a marketing tool for these firms. CMM describes process not result or whether people actually found the software produced useful and usable. And the real issue is often not IT and its process, but that the line of business people and politics do not let internal IT shops practice the process.
A lot of the problems of US IT groups and projects is that with programmers down the hall and senior level line of business (LOB) guys able to threaten and yell at and IT execs and get them fired for being honest, a US based IT shop often has to do a lot of changes on the fly, delvier before something is ready, etc. With a remote operation, a specification gets written and a contract gets attached to the spec. The senior business execs sign off but now THEY CAN NOT CHANGE things without renegotiating and visibly accepting responsibility for the schedule and quality impact of the changes.
They can not pressure the Indian firm to make a change and still hiold the schedule. When you are in IT and work for a company, you are always powerless and the senior management listens to the line of business folks and gets angy at or ignores the process or schedule or deailed explanations about why a change will cost 5x as much, slip 1 year, etc.
The distance and the contractual relationship put the discipline where it is needed - on the line of business folks. That isn't to say that there aren't bad I folks, bad plans, silly promises and the like. But a lot of the problem is line of business people who buy a pitch from some software comapny whose product can't deliver the benefit promised, that will take 2x and cost 10x to implement ans the like. It comes from them refusing to understand why the stuff they legitimately need can't be delivered when they want it.
So, the discipline of the Indian companies isn't in the CMM stuff, it comes from the arms length contractual relationship protecting them from the stuff that screws up projects. It comes from the distance keeping the line of business execs from demanding constant change. Most IT shops know about process, and reviews and the discipline. The problem is that the CEO's and line of business people will not let their in house teams practive these techniques.
I read an article several weeks ago where the man being interviewed, I believe he may have been European, expressed the following opinion (from memory)...
"In the future all of Europe will be like a 3rd world country, China will be the blue collar for the World, India will be the white collar worker for the world, and the US will be the innovators and middle managers"
Ok, I don't agree totally with the part about Europe, and he left quite a few innovative and important countries out of that list (Japan, Canada, etc), but I think his point was that as the economy becomes more and more global, it is inevitible that the now 'global workforce' will be broken up into the most cost effective 'divisions'.
I think the 'global workforce' has been in effect for quite a whhile now for many types of manufacturing, but with the ever quickening pace of IT accomplishments, the march towards a truely global worforce also quickens.
I think it will happen, sooner than later, and some people are in denial, and/or not willing to adapt.
Having a bookmark to Google does not make you an expert on everything.