Slashdot Mirror
India Becoming a Major Hub for Western Job Seekers
MaximusTheGreat writes: "IHT and Financial Express report that many qualified Western professionals are moving to India for jobs. Two of the most common reasons mentioned are adding the Indian experience to the CV and search of better opportunities in a booming Indian economy. According to a Mumbai based head hunting firm, "A lot of the highly qualified talent has traditionally been mobile and attracted to centers of excellence globally. This was true of the US in the early 80s when top flight talent from India migrated in search of better opportunities. Today, the same is happening to economies such as India and China" This should also bust the myth that foreigners are not allowed work in India."
It seems this would be something that would have been up and coming. With so many tech jobs being outsourced to India. Hopefully their booming economy will help give us a run for our money. Historically good things seem to happen when we have competition. At least I hope it will be friendlier and with at least as comparable results as the technology boosts during WWII and The Cold War. :)
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
I think anything that gets more people out of their own territories and out into a different part of the world where they have the opportunity to see what it's like in other places can only help in the long run. Sure, a fluid labor force is a "good thing", but people who have experienced different cultures, laws, religions, biases and viewpoints is even more valuable.
Unless someone wants to move to India forever, it doesnt make financial sense. Indian software companies are not going to pay more for an American working in India just because he is American (or whatever country he comes from). And so people moving there will have to work at the going salaries of that market. And with those salaries, you cant retire very comfortably in the United States, for example. So, anyone interested in a permanent move?
This is exactly the problem w/ free trade. Conservatives want it for obvious reasons and progressives want it since they mistakenly believe it will bring up the standards of living in the target countries. Although it does (bring up the std of living), it does so through achieving equilibrium. The problem with that is to achieve equilibrium, two sides need to meet in the middle and that means decrease in the std of living for the higher income group. To prevent this it requires a smart plan, one which is sorely lacking in this case. In the absence of this plan, the only people who benefit from free trade are the really rich as they income gap increases.
The facts bear out the assertion that the rich are benefitting from this arrangement since both the US and Mexico have seen a shrinking of their middle class and a growth in the income gap between top and bottom. Also, in the absence of a smart plan for implementing free trade, it allows the corporations to continue to support corrupt regimes with total impunity, with no control by any authority.
Welcome to the new world...
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
Won't argue with the job opportunities available in places like India and China, but careers aside, are those really suitable places to live for people who've grown up in western environments like the US?
Last I heard India is still a developing country in many aspects. How may are prepared to share the road with not only automobiles and pedestrians but elephants, sacred bovines, and pack animals which all produce fair shares of manure? Depending on where in india one might relocate to, problems with roaming bands of monkeys and the ocassional wild tiger, rare as they are, would still be unsettling for one who only see beasts in zoos.
Though China has come a long way from the 60s and 70's, My parents still carry lasting scars from the exesses of the Cultural Revolution. There are still many things that should/could not be addressed in public without considerable risks to the speaker and the listeners. Despite the incredable westernization/commercialization of the general population, China is still very ethnocentric in some regards. In short, American $$$$$ == good, dragonboats, home-grown rockets & national astronauts == better. I'm optimistic about the direction China is headed but I highly doubt it is a suitable place for a western job seeker unless (s)he is willing to make considerable lifestyle and mental adjustments.
just my 2 cents.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
I would imagine they would be hiring Westerners for precisely the same reasons that American or European companies hire Chinese, Japanese or Indian people: To help them do business with Chinese, Japanese and Indian companies/countries.
There would certainly be an advantage for an Indian company that does business with an American company to have Americans on the inside schooling them on how things work.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Do we really want this?
Do we want our lives to be traded as commodities to be moved and shuffled about at the whim of the free market? I'm just going to state a few opinions here. Markets should serve people, not the other way around. When freedom of choice (in this case, where to live), is superceded by the freedom of markets we have a problem. Markets are in theory, supposed to maximize freedom. I don't see how forcing a bunch of people to travel across the world just to eat is an example of "freedom". Instead, it's the commoditizing of humanity. I'd be curious, if we were to interview these travelling workers, what their response would be if they were given a choice between working that job over in India vs America. I'd imagine that they would choose to work closer to home. Imagine if we had a choice, any at all. Imagine if democracy (in other words, allowing those who are affected most by a decision, to make that decision) were placed above capitalism. Instead, what we have is the market being rigged to serve a priveledged few, at the expense of everyone else. There is nothing "free" about being forced to transplant oneself every few years just to eat. Freedom from means nothing without freedom to.
Just goes to show the /. community is no different than any other community. We're just as greedy and racist as the rest of the world. Generally speaking, of course. Pointing that out will get me modded down, but as we say, "Ni modo".
What?
You can sleep well at night knowing if you are a crack addict the government will pay your way through rehab
this is obviously a Bad Idea. it should be the goal of the government to ensure there are as many untreated crack heads roaming around the streets as possible.
you are going to pay for society's drug problems one way or another. you can either pony up some tax to get crack heads off the street, into rehab and turn them into productive citizens... or you can ignore the problem and pay in lost economic productivity, increased policing costs and in one lump cash payment when that untreated crack head sticks you up for a fix.
We keep throwing away American tax dollars at foreign nations only to be the most hated country in the world
are you counting the cost of cluster bombs as a foreign aid expense?
seriously. do you know who the single biggest recipient of us foreign aid is? israel. thirty per cent of foreign aid goes to that nation - and they are not you enemy.
of course, the us doesn't hand out foreign aid for free. packages often come with spending restrictions that are geared towards ingratiating the recipient country to the donor and then there are saps - structural adjustment policies - whereby aid is conditional upon economic reforms in the recipient country that are beneficial to the us corporate sector.
hint: learn something about how foreign aid works and what it does before commenting on it.
They should raise their nations taxes by several billion a year and take over babbysiting the rest of the world then
all the countries of the world that take part in un peacekeeping missions find your suggestion ludicrous and insulting.
2 1337 4 u!
Think about it. Let's imagine that it gets to the point that there are so few good jobs in the U.S., that large numbers of Americans decide to emigate to India to get a call center job answering tech support questions for Dell customers in the U.S. Clearly that couldn't happen, because there wouldn't be anyone left in the U.S. who could afford a Dell at U.S. prices anymore. Before any significant number of worker emigrate to India for jobs, the U.S. economy would have to drop to India's level. If the only jobs in the U.S. were at McDonald's, then the U.S. would no longer be a rich country, and we wouldn't be able to afford to outsorce jobs to India anymore.
It's Rubic's Cube. Rubic was the name of the man who invented it.
Sorry about your misfortune. I had a similar one in the early nineties when the cold war ended just in time to eliminate almost all demand for my major in Aerospace Engineering. However I disagree with your recommendation that people don't enter EE or CS. If the current lack of demand causes this country to stop producing graduates in those programs then there could never ever be an upswing here in that industry. The manpower wouldn't exist to even try to compete with China and India.
People should study whatever they are interested in and excel at. If that is CS then good for them. We will need them in the future. Keep in mind that all new technologies will intersect with computer technology. If someone invented a transporter or a holodeck tomorrow, you can be damn sure that it would be controlled by computers. Want to outsource those too?
And cheer up, since the economy is starting to warm up again and the H1B visas have dropped back to their pre-2k levels, you may get a chance to use that fancy degree of yours before long.
er. reduced from what? last year? last century? i am talking about police protection levels lower than they are currently - hence the word "reduced". you are talking about... i'm not sure what.
subsidized education -- Subsidized by whom?
it's been a long time since i've been to the states... do they have cover charges for high school now?
general infrastructure -- The roads in SIlicon Valley are collapsing.
the roads in silicon valley exist. were they created on the sixth day by god?
unemployment and old age security -- Social Security is approaching insolvency.
and paying less tax will help this... how? social security exists. is this another "sixth day" creation? nope. taxes, my lad.
public safety (ie fda inspections) -- We had 9/11 and now mad cow. That's the kind of 'saftey' we get for our 50%.
thanks for bringing up mad cow. thanks to your tax dollars, the infected beef was caught at the distribution level and prevented from ever getting to market. is less tax worth dying of vCJD?
100% of all taxes collected in the U.S. go to pay the interest on the debt
well, looking at the wikipedia page on the the us national debt, i notice that it says "47% of personal income taxes" go to servicing the debt. no corporate taxes, no sales taxes, no "sin" taxes - just personal income taxes, and less than half at that.
now, that's still a huge debt-servicing cost, but it isn't, as you claim, "100% of all taxes collected in the U.S.".
Ha ha. Man are you the one who is ignorant:
back at you pal.
2 1337 4 u!
The point is, Germany went largely unchallenged for 5 years before the US got involved.
Way to fucking rewrite history. Britain, Frace, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and others were all actively at war with Germany way before the US got reluctantly dragged into the war in Europe. Britain, Australia and New Zealand also fought against Japan in Asia and the Pacific Rim.
Please, pick up a book or something every once in a while. The world doesn't revolve around the US.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
A decrease in the standard of living for the American (or $COUNTRY_X) programmers, because they can no longer charge such high prices as before. But programmers and software companies are in a tiny minority compared to the users of software and business which need to pay for it. The people who benefit from free trade are not just the Indian (or $COUNTRY_Y) programmers, but the Western businesses who are able to get what they need more cheaply, and the consumers who (assuming decent competition) get lower prices.
Free trade is just bringing together those who have something to sell - the Indian programmers - and those who want to buy - American firms needing software written. I don't see any reason for a third group to whine about this just because they were previously able to get away with charging more.
This is especially hypocritical on a site such as Slashdot, where readers depend on a steady supply of computer hardware often built in countries with lower wages than the West. In stories about video cards or RAM I don't think I have _ever_ seen any complaint about free trade reducing the price of the hardware and the lost job opportunties for Americans caused by building it in the Far East. Or think of the constant RIAA stories - stop trying to get in the way of progress, stop trying to prop up a failing business model, you don't automatically have the right to keep on getting money just because you did in the past. I know this is partly the fallacy of assuming Slashdot readers speak with one voice, but it's still worth noting.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com