Slashdot Mirror
Jobs to India -- A Broad Look
dumpster_dave writes "Wired has an excellent 7 page article on the current and future trend and nature of IT outsourcing from the United States. The conclusion: the smell of inevitability--the economy will survive, though your job, as it is currently, will likely not. Outsourcing is expected to expand from Service and code projects to the creative aspects as well, with obvious correlations experienced in the manufacturing industry during the 70s and 80s. An excellent read that provides good coverage of the perspectives of players on all sides."
Jobs are being outsourced to India!!! That bastard headhunter acted like it was my fault. It sucks how some companies will pay for 9483 managers and can't pay for 2342 developers. So to keep the managers jobs they lay off the important people.
Enough said.
...the link to the article is already colored visited from when you read it last Friday.
Maybe I should karma-whore a little bit and repost some of the highly moderated comments from last time?
Dupe....how many damn times are we gonna talk about outsourcing to India now....jeesh....making me sick and depressed already...
Rather than rehash what I said about this already, i'll just link to my previous post regarding outsourcing.
Nobody ever talks about how this will affect our industry 10-20 years down the road!
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Outsourcing everything to India was in vogue around '97 or '98. It didn't work then and it's not going to work now. But everyone forgets the problems and history repeats itself.
If you don't like this fad, wait five minutes...
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
DUPE for pete sake ...
10 things never die
'wage arbritrage' as called by our CEO is only a short term trend and will only go so far.
Bob Cringely has a good article on this as well, aptly titled "It's our own damn fault".
Also, from another perspective is this article from the India Times
Notice how the article starts with:
"here's the typical programmer: screaming, wide-eyed, posting stupid web sites, holding up signs"
"Now, here are the smiling faces of his replacements..."
Any questions on where this is going?
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Please explain how the economy will survive when there is no longer a middle class because all the white-collar jobs have been moved over seas.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Maybe I should outsource my first posting. How does "Be not to forgetting to pay your $699 fee of licensing Mr. Teabagger. Thank you, come again!" sound?
How do dupes like this make it to the front page anyway? Do the mods not read slashdot on a daily basis as well? Great article and all, but I don't think it needs to induce that sinking feeling of deja vu...
maybe this time it's paid for by outsourcing companies? :)
So if service jobs, creative jobs, research jobs, and development jobs all get outsourced... What's left and why, exactly, will the economy survive? Oh, right, we'll all get jobs dealing with people face-to-face, selling things to people with no money. Or we'll all wind up being managers.
Excuse me while I look skeptical and write this off as one more piece to make executives feel more comfortable about destroying their country and killing the population.
How many times are we going to link to this article? Seven? Twelve? As many times as there are grains of sand in the Ganges?
That's what happens when /. moderation is outsourced to India.
Please to be joining me in welcome our hand-coding hundu overlords.
And how is this supposed to happen? Those who do not end up on the streets will be training as Fryolator operators working for enough money to pay the rent.
The only good thing I can see out of this is that all the malls will close.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Do you want to live in a world where everything is dirt cheap but you're chronically unemployed, or a world where you are well paid and the cost of living is expensive? Unfortunately, the world's corporations have made the choices for us already, but we're not completely there yet.
interesting... when reading the article, i notice the cost of their daily lunch is around 50 cents. now, for comparing:
average college cost - $70,000
average apartment cost - $800
daily lunch - around $7
just a few items. hey, to be honest i'd be happy making $20,000 per year if my lunch would cost 50 cents daily, apartment $30 per month (or free, as it is in many countries) and the best college runs around $3,000 for all 4 years.
all the amounts people make are relative to what they have to spend. would you like to make $300,000 per year? if your rent becomes $20,000 per month (hypothetically, for the sake of comparison), all of a sudden that doesn't seem like that much money.
I just love how people assume that in america everybody is fat and have free money growing on trees. we work 50 hours per week and our bills are very expensive!!!
I was just reading up on Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and how we have to be responsible for everyone who ever touches or affects our digital documents (and we are financially responsible for damages real or perceived). Our lawyers seem to think that if you read the law strictly (as any lawyer trying to sue would) that means that any offshoring that results in any damage or dissemination of data could cause us an enormous amount of money. We already carry a $100 million bond against accidental release of data (we deal in multi-billion dollar international contracts) and our carry gave a big 'NO" to outsourcing in any way shape or form. Hell, I can't even get opensource software in here because if something goes wrong, there is no one to sue.
Crazy world...
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Another quality dupe from the crack (smoking) editorial team at Slashdot! Hurrah!!
This is one of the reasons that I am relieved that I no longer work in IT. I worry a lot about those friends of mine who still work in the industry, especially those who have kids. I think that part of the problem is also that the market was oversaturated, so to speak. IT became the big degree to get in the 90's, because "that's where the money is", so the jobs that do remain have a number of people applying for them. Post-boom, post-outsourcing computer field sucks.
-1, "1337" speak
can I get a job as a Slashdot article duplication identifier?
Practice Kind Randomness and Beautiful Acts of Nonsense.
/. need to create something that will search their post database and match links... this would allow you to see that before posting a message someone else has already posted the EXACT link!
I'll shed a tear for the American Programmer the day the American consumer sheds a tear for the sweat shop laborer that made the overprices POS shoes you can afford to pay gross markups for from the likes of Nike.
Your country profits from the exploitation of child labor and people caught in poverty traps... You there, unemployed developer, reading this... reap what you sow.
The six Hexawarians are sympathetic but unmoved. They disagree with the very premise that cheap labor is hurting the US.
Seriously, then they need a brain refresher. This is one of the core issues, and it's really simple: Companies seek to maximize profit and minimize expenses. Expenses decrease with cheap labor. If cheap labor is outside the U.S., and can be logistically implemented for the company as such, there's a good chance they'll move some operations offshore. And this has in fact happened.
And they think it's somewhat laughable that, because things aren't going exactly our way, ordinarily change-infatuated Americans are suddenly decrying change.
How on earth is this a laughable thing? Change for the better, change for our better, is a totally pragmatic and understandable goal. When this goal is hurt, yes, we decry it. There's nothing laughable about that at all.
Translation: We're not just cheaper, we're better.
Tell that to Dell.
The coolest voice ever.
"The conclusion: the smell of inevitability--the economy will survive, though your job, as it is currently, will likely not."
... I thought something bad was about to happen.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
"wood you like frys with that?"
Labor, where it be Code or some other none tangible should be taxed when exported/imported just like is I want to buy a car or raw steal in UK and import it....
Interesting point, why should American people get it all and some other people not get it? People should be equal.
Better to stay home, drink beer and refresh slashdot.
"But isn't part of this country's vitality its ability to make these kinds of changes?" I counter. "We've done it before - going from farm to factory, from factory to knowledge work, and from knowledge work to whatever's next."
This isn't what makes discussions valuable. It's just talking to hear themselves sound intelligent.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
dupe
I can happily say that the company I work for is an answering service that will never outsource to India. In fact, one of the owners had me proof a letter she wrote to Marshall Fields' et all to discontinue her service as she was upset to find out their customer service was outsourced to New Delhi.
There is a critical shortage of IT personnel (good ones) in many areas of the country. This current trend is all about large multinationals trying to race to the bottom in search of greater margins.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Yes you heard me , let them NOT move to india. The last thing I want as an Indian, my country to be columbia/mexico of the IT industry. I think indians should be ashamed to be the janitors of IT industry.
Also for those of who are going to point to M$ and IBM and HP research centers being moved to India. I would rather see our own Indian companies becoming more self relient and working for the benefit of Indian consumers than US.
The more India depends upon foreign lands to create local jobs, the less it becomes self relinet and lesser powerful.
India for one should take lessons from its colonial past. Rememer East india company came as traders looking for spices and ended up ruling the country for 200 years. This time its going to be different, its economical slavery that we should be afraid of. In this day an age no power is better than economical power and serving joe six-packs for their problems loggin on to AOL, though a short term profitable business , is ruining the resourses of the country.
I am not ranting against US. Infact exactly the opposite. The US and its companies should also strive towards self serving economical structure.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Keep in mind that while some jobs are being outsourced to India, it serves companies even better to amplify the FUD about it. They don't have to actually do it, and their wage-slaves are bullied into terror, submission and lower wages -- especially the new-hires.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
i have made more money since i gave up the stress and became a plumber than i ever did in IT (and i used to manage million $ products), iam fitter , happier and never out of work, plus it's not exactly the sort of job that can be outsourced to India (unless robotics and broadband has come a long way), all of my work is in the community and gives me a good life, fuck all that false IT bullshit and the office politics that goes with it, just gimme a wrench (or a soldering iron in my time off) and iam happy now
Yea but the editor has been outsourced to India.
What do you expect?
Omnis amans amens
Good points. Isn't this what RMS is ranting about?
I don't agree at all with outsourcing IT to India. But can anyone cite examples that show beyond a shadow of a doubt that quality is lost? At indian callcenters, can they not speak english well and frustrate customers? Is their coding sloppy?
If so, I do think this is just a "fad" that will die out once people start complaining on a huge level.
I just hope it doesn't turn around like the car industry did, now american cars are (arguably) worse than chaper foreign cars, unlike 2 decades ago.
Just a note to all the people focusing in on India.. if it wasn't them it would be someone else, Eastern Europe, China, Phillippines, Indonesia, etc.
Welcome to the global economy.. something that the U.S. has been pushing. Get busy creating value and not sitting on your ass complaining and you won't have anything to worry about.
Amongst other companies, AOL, and others have outsourced over to india for customer support. This includes "Live support" for problems.
Go India!
...maybe our schools will admit that score-norming and social promotion aren't really teaching, once their charges have to compete with the products of less 'enlightened' educational systems.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
To export software or spreadsheets, somebody just needs to hit Return.
That about says it all. No wonder it's so easy to fire people. "All you do all day is hit return!"
This is what happens when people are asked to manage something they refuse to understand. Knowledge is destroyed and the economy is damaged. Think of the thousands of years and tens of millions of dollars worth of education that are being wasted right now.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Well, actually we are mainly expanding overseas to cut the costs of production, but once everybody (middle and lower classes) will move in countries where there are jobs (oversea), the companies won't even have to pay transport as most of the customers will be in the countries oversea: even lower costs!
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Isn't this a duplication of a post from January 27th? I know for sure I read the article, as it is still in my browser's history list.
Yes, RMS was preaching in India last week.
Maybe create a section called 'Your-Daily-Dose-Of India-Dept'
That's what I want to read!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Have anyone considered the privacy and security issues when sending this information to foreign companies? The call center for American Express in India may not have the same security and legal protection for your records -- but then again with the patriot act, we don't have any privacy anyways.
Fight Spammers!
Most of the high tech crowd is younger than most, and doesn't remember the outsourcing of manufacturing and even the big offshoring of textiles (remember that jean company by the name of Levi's?). Change is difficult, even moreso in this case because the people displaced are not blue collar, they are intelligent highly paid engineers and developers. This makes it easy to bash, rant, and become emotionally involved in the inevitable. What we need to do now is think ahead. What is the next great industry that the US will teach the world? At lunch the other day, the topic invariably came about and the discussion centered on the infrastructure of the countries where these jobs are going. Maybe there is opportunity in innovating something that will cause those countries to funnel money back to the US for the very badly needed instant improvement in transportation, power/data transmission, and medical care. We are not at the end of the road... just need to wake up and realize that we need to adjust for the turn in the road.
As if this wasn't depressing enough when I read it the first time
TK
The thing the SEI doesn't talk about, is that to actaully operate at level 5 (as opposed to get through a level 5 audit), you need to spend about 10% extra -- data collection and analysis mostly, but also experiments to evaluate new technology in a controlled way. Consequently, not many US shops care to get to level 5.
And of course, level 5 doesn't guarantee quality product, just quality process.
This is more like The Microsoft Way! They have tons of positions available in India.
I don't have a huge issue with a lot of things being outsourced. Manufacturing has been largely outsourced for a very long time, and that didn't kill our economy; I don't think programming being outsourced will kill our economy, either.
But I do think there are jobs that are innapropriately being outsourced. The biggest type is technical and customer support. Trying to get technical support or customer support from Hewlett-Packard, for example, is impossible--they outsource all of their support to a call center in New Delhi. I'm not sure what the issue is, but the standard of customer service I've received from the Delhi center is very low compared to the standard I've received from most U.S. based centers, and the standard of support I've supplied when I've been in customer contact positions. And it's not a fluke; out of twenty-six calls I placed to the India centers, my problem was never resolved, I was placed on hold an average of eight to ten minutes per call, and fourteen calls were disconnected, nine by the agents (not by the phone system). (To put this in perspective, I'm not an irate customer; I've done support for similar products. I'm aware they've heard, "I'm Cisco certified" or "I do networking" a million times, so I listen to what they have to say, and give them concrete examples of troubleshooting steps I've taken before we get into troubleshooting on the phone.)
I think the distinction needs to be drawn between customer contact (visible) and non-customer contact (invisible, at least to the consumer) jobs. "Invisible" jobs can, by and large, be outsourced without too much trouble. But barriers like standards, culture, and language (I lived in India for a year and I still have trouble sometimes understanding technical jargon through some Indian accents) make it simply a bad move to outsource jobs that have a high level of customer visibility.
Think!
Sounds like a job for anti-slash! What better way to further the jihad than to point out the lazyness of the slashdot editurs?!!
Any job that can be done remotely (medical record transcription, customer support calls, coding, telemarketing, ...) can and will be outsourced to save money. An answering service would be a perfect job to export. :wq
--Good morning fellas; Hand me that thing; Boy, this work's hard; Guys, break's over.
I read about this in the local Denver paper a couple of days ago. Here's an article that describes a few bills, local and federal, that deal with the outsourcing trend. I'm not sure if these will pass in their current form. I have mixed feelings about them too. I've heard some good arguments both ways. If my state punishes outsourcers, it's likely when the trend changes, these companies will be located in California and other states. Mmmmmm. To be fair, I'd probably feel more strongly if my company had outsourced my job to India.
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
Repost ..Yes. but look at the comments. No comments reposted here. All brand new and fresh opinions. No comments copied from the previous article post. Reposting articles kinda gives us an opportunity to think over the previous posts. The moderators should be given kudos for this...not flamed.
Good point! Overpatriotic stupid americans modded you down. FUCK I HATE TO LIVE IN USA!
Well, now we have "The NEW New Economy" which is supposed to be based out of Bangalore or something.
Has Wired ever gotten the fundamental long-term trends correct?
Seastead this.
Large scale human rights VIOLATIONS.
Dean, Edwards, Clarks and Liebermans platforms are "Hey! We're not Bush either!"
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Yes, why don't we outsource congress, what do we pay those assholes?? I'm shure we could pay a bunch of Indian PHD's (PHD in Poly Sci or something) to come up with laws at least as good as what comes from congress, at probably a tenth of the cost. Shit we would'nt even have to pay for all those building in DC. They could just email us our laws in PDF format and we could turn the capital into a 200 screen movie theater.
I thought sending manufacturing jobs overseas was a bad idea 20 years ago and sending Software jobs overseas is a bad idea. Eventully you have to do or make something cars, planes, software, genetic s, spaceships SOMETHING. We can't all sit around selling each other stuff at wal-mart.
People poo-poo this point of view, but I have yet to see any of these supposed "pure knowlege worker" positions advertised in the local paper. My guess is they don't exist and never will. They are the very wealthy elite's attempts to smoke screen the middle class.
In the 90's the laid off manufacturing were promised great jobs in IT or related fields. Now those jobs are being sent overseas. Next we are promised jobs as 'knowlege works' WTF is that. I 'm waiting for someone, anyone to show me ONE of these supposed position anywhere. You can't because they don't exist.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Personally what I hate most about the outsourcing movement is that it makes Indians my enemy.
I've actually found every Indian person that I've worked with to be very personable and professional. Now, I realize that they're here to steal my job and leave me penniless and bankrupt. Or if they're not here, they're over there. They're the enemy.
I now officially hate Indians. If I'm a bigot, I'm not ashamed of that. In this context it just means that I'm protective of what's mine. I hate terrorists, too, and this is worse. Terrorism kills you outright, outsourcing starves you to death.
Outsourcing apologists should be shot for treason. This is nothing more than the selling out of your country.
to my counterpart in India. I hope he doesnt troll!
Rapid Nirvana
In many ways, creative jobs are tougher than technical jobs. You can't learn creativity by rote, and you can't solve creative problems with brute force like you can as a programmer.
I have seen some low-level, amateurish design work being gobbled up by el-cheapo Indian shops at the expense of poorer US and Canadian shops, but I have yet to see any Indian designers getting contracts that pay useful money, or making any kind of a splash in the design/marketing/advertising world. Companies who buy rock-bottom design from India get what they pay for (i.e. derivative crap, no offense intended to any Indian designers).
Even more importantly, there is a powerful cultural aspect to creativity, art, and design. Every country and region has its own expections when it comes to art, design, and marketing. East Indian design sensibilities are profoundly different than, say, American, and I doubt the Indian creative industry will "get it" any time soon.
Add to that powerful linguistic differences, even within a language. Someone who does design work for an English-speaking audience with a dictionary is never going to write creative, ad-worthy prose, never mind the other subtleties that the creative industry requires. Even material written for a British audience would be unsuitable for a southern US audience, or an Australian audience.
Compare Hollywood and Bollywood. The Bombay movie industry produces way more than the Californian industry, and for far less money. They even make some darn good films. But Americans, by and large, will never "get" Indian movies, nor pay money to see them. Bollywood does get its materials into other foreign markets (even the British market), but America's culturally xenophobic melting-pot ideology in many ways protects the US creative industry.
There are plenty of other reasons, which I don't feel like going into.
Paul D
I guess it's time to apply for Indian welfare.
Having said that, why don't all corporations 'outsource' all work that is currently done by women to men. You could pay the men the same salary, but it would still be cheaper because you would not have to put up with the potential of losing your worker due to pregnancy, etc. Obviously, this idea won't fly. But what is different about this idea than outsourcing to India/Japan/what-have-you?
He'd out-source the air-traffic controllers to India. That'd teach them!
This highlights the reason why I think that John Edwards's plan is so great:
Edwards' plan is to eliminate tax cuts for companies that move jobs overseas and instead give them to those that will create jobs in the United States.
I really don't care if it's Edwards or someone else who ends up doing it, but something along these lines must be done or we're all screwed.
Everyone is saying how labor is outsourced and all that is left are stupid managers who keep their salaries. Well maybe that's where our country is headed. One day we'll all just go to college to become managers. The people who do the coding, manufacturing, and "other work" will be in other countries. Instead of all the managers being down the hallway, we'll just be across the ocean. We'll be an entire country of heartless Bill Lumbergs (office space). I wouldn't mind that job. I wouldn't mind at all.
Space Travel -opposed-we need $$$ for Slavery Reparations
Copyright-favor-I love Hollywood!
abortion-free and mandatory
education -higher pay lower standards smaller class size for more Union teachers
deficit spending -everybody in office is for that
I find this hard to believe. The creative part of sotware requires a client relationship similar to advertising- you need to have a pulse on a client that only comes from being there, fully immersed in the culture.
I expect creative outsourcing to happen when Jaguar hires an Indian advertising firm for their car campaign.
love is just extroverted narcissism
this might sound ridiculous.. am 29 years old, uneducated, except for high school. I am considering going to school for some computer courses. I am interested in programming. I wonder if I will be able to get a job. I am hoping to maybe maintain some servers. or keep some websites running. Do you think there is much future in it. Or will my lack of experience make that impossible? Any pointers, advice or comments? I am hoping for just maybe $2500 a month after taxes :/
Dean, Edwards, Clarks and Liebermans platforms are "Hey! We're not Bush either!"
But Kerry has something they don't: charisma
Oh, and somehow the term "Hitler" gets thrown out when talking about him. The way I figure it, he's already lost the presidency. He's got no platform, and he's already invoked Godwin's law. Not a great situation to find yourself in.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
average college cost - $70,000
As a non-USian, I have to ask : how the fuck do you spend so much for college?
Assuming a four year degree that's $17,500 per year.
Are the text books coated in gold and diamonds or something? You could train a doctor for that much - some computer jockey degree should be about 1/10th of that.
Think it's only private sector work? Thing again, the IRS has thousands of idians doing tax work and will increase it. If you've ever complained bitterly about the people you had to talk to about your tax issues, well, maybe the IRS heard you.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One of my Co-workers and I were talking about this the other day. Truth is, we had some vendors come in who were bragging about their reduced costs due to outsourcing, and we had a teleconference with their engineers. We couldn't understand a single word they were saying. With what did filter through, we could tell we were dealing with a couple of extremely intelligent guys, but the communication gap was killing us. At the end, I just asked them to summarize everything in an email and send it to me (the email was very clear).
:-/
But the thing that we kept going back to was the way salary and cost of living were related to location. The differences even in portions of the US is extreme (the wife and I were goofing off one day and found several places in the states where we could triple the size of our house and property for the price of our current place). I just don't see the world sustaining a global economy much longer supporting these kinds of differences. Eventually, everything must begin to even out. Their cost of living and salaries are going to eventually increase and ours will drop. The burning question in my mind is... How much? Will we have significant drops as they have only minor increases, or will they have major increases and our's drops a little. I'm not so much worried about finding a job... if you really want to work, you will work. I'm just worried about those unbalanced moments when the salary has dropped and the cost of living hasn't
You could try making a sandwich and bringing it with you. I don't spend $7 on my lunch unless I go out to eat.
It is funny to see how the internet was supposed to be a good thing, because people from everywhere in the world would be able to communicate, share information and knowledge, and work together -- but when it actualy happens, it suddently becomes a bad thing and people get scared when outsourcing is mentioned.
Hey, that was totaly predictable and unavoidable. Evolution. Wake up and smell the vaththalkuzhambu.
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
Outsourcing of this and other industries will lead to economic ruin in the US. Why? A healthy economy requires a large, healthy middle class. Outsourcing always harms the middle class, what is left after outsourcing is low-pay service jobs (working poor), and very happy investors. If the trend continues, there will come a time when consumers in the US cannot *SUPPORT* the same business who are outsourcing their jobs. Capitalism will *ALWAYS* sell you the rope to hang yourself with.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
So all you bitchy unemployed ones with time to spare and a broadband connection at home subsidized with your wife's salary should be ashamed. Shame on you I say!
Cut the guy some slack. He's probably coding PHP or something.
If my job goes to india, can my bills go too?
Okay, now here's my real question, what kind of opportunities does this present for opportunistic Americans who see this trend this early in its cycle? Should I go back to school to learn how to manage Indians over the phone? They speak english, so I don't have to learn Hindi (or another dialect). What about starting an outsourcing company? If its going to happen anyway, why not cash in..
TK
About a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my job. My employer is none the wiser. I pay him $12,000 to do the job I get paid $67,300 for. He is happy to have the work. I am happy that I only have to work about 90 minutes per day (I still have to attend meetings myself, and I spend a few minutes every day talking code with my Indian counterpart). The rest of the time my employer thinks I'm telecommuting. They are happy to let me telecommute because my output is higher than most of my coworkers.
Now I'm considering getting a second job and doing the same thing with it. That may be pushing my luck though. The extra money would be nice, but that could push my workday over five hours.
Those who protest outsourcing should also protest the export of goods from our country. After all, by manufacturing and shipping our products, we are depriving foreign workers from making these products in their own country.
I am as much threatened by outsourcing as you, but I also understand that there are various roles in a marketplace - producer, consumer and labor. Americans do not have a God given right to be any of these.
The truth is that India is able to get all outsourcing projects simply because the country has been mismanaged all these years. All they are really selling is their poverty! Think about it. If all other countries became extremely rich and USA became extremely poor, we would be the recepients of this "favorable trend". Would you prefer that situation?
All your favorite sites in one place!
I'm a Computer Science student, and because of the apparently inevitable decrease of coding jobs in the US am considering a change. Anyone care to kindly make a suggestion? (within the realm of IT) How about network administration?
I am reminded of when Coke tried to penetrate the Indian market with their sugar water. They hired a high power American ad agency, who made these commercials about the 'heart of India', with misty images of the Taj Mahal and such. It flopped.
Then, Coke hired an Indian ad agency. These guys made commercials with sexy women and fast cars, and Coke sold like hotcakes.
The moral of the story: creative work is more likely to be relevant in the culture it was created in.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
How about another Whopper, fatty?
Supersize those fries? No problemo. How bout a fill-up of your Hummer there, looks a little low since you were here an hour ago.
...when each new issue comes out? Just post every big story at once and be done with this nonsense.
Back in the early part of the previous century, few middle class, and certainly no upper class people complained when textile, glass production, steel, and later manufacturing were shipped off shore. Many people just smiled and wagged their heads whenever Unions complained about jobs going overseas. Some people warned that off-shore job movement would sink the US economy.
Fast forward to the present. Who's complaining now? It appears to be whoever is left in the middle class. The upper class still doesn't care. One difference this time is that the middle class is largely un-unionized and therefore un-represented during job/salary reviews and other decision making activities.
If people want to change things, here are several things to consider:
Corporate law specifically states that actions taken or products produced by corporations must be in the public interest. Yes, it says that. So a good question to ask is Is it in the public interest to put them out of work by moving their jobs overseas?
Corporate leaders currently earn over 600 times the average salary of their employees. Moving jobs off-shore is likely to make a small percentage of the US population even more wealthy.
Yes, it's still about the economy. For all his other failings, Henry Ford had an interesting idea that his employees should be paid well enough to be able to afford one of his products.
Until corporate officers are encouraged to employ people from the country that issues their charters, the gap between the have's and the have nots in the US will continue to grow.
So I toss a slur across her desk. I call her a protectionist.
"Oh, and I'm proud of it," she responds. "I wear that badge with honor. I am a protectionist. I want to protect America. I want to protect jobs for Americans."
"But isn't part of this country's vitality its ability to make these kinds of changes?" I counter. "We've done it before - going from farm to factory, from factory to knowledge work, and from knowledge work to whatever's next."
She looks at me. Then she says, "I'd like to know where you go from knowledge."
love is just extroverted narcissism
So we lost agriculture jobs to ourselves through efficiency gains. We lost and continue to lose manufacturing jobs to overseas. So, we don't have a huge trade deficit, right? Now we're losing programming jobs, engineering, accounting, etc to overseas markets. I'm afraid that we're sucking the intellectual wealth of this country to others at the speed of the Internet. I guess I can always work at Taco Bell...
This dupe is so fresh, the linked article still shows as visited. Do the /. editors even have Web browsers?
It's a quick, interesting read, and very apropos to the current IP debate.
The Philosophy of Liberty | lewrockwell.com
People poo-poo this point of view
Poo-poo!
uh yeah.....thats it.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
...and just put up every story when each new issue comes out? It would save us a lot of time here. Maybe one of the 5 people left with a subscription can volunteer to do it. I'm sure the Conde Nast people would happily cooperate.
Except Defense!
Then, have corps. ALL OVER THE WORLD pay 40% income tax to the U.S. for the priviledge and pleasure of selling us their goods and services. This tax is then evenly distributed to all Americans. That way, we can just sit on our asses!
There is no spoon or sig.
Piece of advice: read the sig.
[insert shaking of head and despairing sigh here]
I pay $19,000 a semester in tuition, which does not cover ~$500 in books and about $200 in misc. expenses per semester and $9,500 in room and board costs. We just approved a guy as a new president, changed our minds, and payed him $2 million dollars to forget about his $7 million contract; $2 million and not a fucking day of work.
/. article on the textbook racket. $150 for a fucking book that costs a third of that across the fucking ocean?!
And this isn't even an "Ivy League" school. The reason tuition is so high is because it's an educational racket. Academic assholes who have done nothing but administrate straight out of college keep the cycle going by raising tuition for various things that do nothing but make themselves and especially their buddies richer. Hell, look at the previous
Screw college.
Isn't the automotive industry heavily regulated regarding foreign content? Isn't that the case for precisely the reason that Wired is blithering on about?
Also in the past fourty years haven't we seen the demise of the single-income family? Hasn't the price of goods, services, taxes etc all outpaced the increase in income? Don't Americans have the least time off and the worst hours in the industrialized world?
I don't see how the automotive industry is an example of how outsourcing overseas is a win/win scenario.
Am I missing something?
And don't even get me started about how every single one of my teaching assistants (who lead required discussion sections and are responsible for %15-30 of your grade) are foreign grad students who speak broken English at best.
Whatever happened to morals in the vision of Capitalism? Adam Smith wrote that in order for Capitalism to be sustained, morals must be an integral part of it. Now that companies have no morals and will always go to the lowest bidder, will the principles of capitalism hold? Or is a redefinition of capitalism needed?
I nominate the name for the new definition "Corporate-Whorism."
Look man, I don't think our country will survive if we all end up having to work at 10 bucks an hour as the top paid job. Either the cost of things in our lives will have to SIGNIFICANTLY decrease, or we will all be homeless bums on the street while 10% of the population in the U.S. enjoys their huge mansions and comforts all day long.
I'm sorry, but this country will be destroyed before that happens. It's a nice wetdream for the corporate CEOs, but it's just not feasible.
For those that might have missed it, nerd nation on tech tv had a special today on how india is training for many of the outsourced jobs they are now getting. One of the things i found interesting is how they are training people on american culture as well as tech skills so that they can better interact with americans on the phone. I highly recommend checking for reruns on this for anyone who is interested tech tv article here
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Outsourcing to India is good on almost all levels. It'll create a world of wealthier people on both continents. The end result will be a broad, worldwide middle-class who can afford a decent lifestyle -- a lifestyle that can be had at a lower and lower price all the time.
In the short term, outsourcing creates displaced workers. The rate of outsourcing could to be controlled so the expanding job market can absorb all the quality people whose jobs are outsourced.
If there's a government answer to outsourcing, that's it. Add tax and regulation cuts to make it less expensive to hire Americans, and the outsourcing "problem" goes away.
They need to ship the old, dead, non-growth skills out to lower cost economies that can sustain those types of job and then retrain the workforce to take on new challenges that help the country and it's economy on the road to growth.
Nobody in the developed world needs to be developing code anymore, we need to use the minds we have for aids and cancer research, building hover bots and interactive hologramatic entertainment stations.
As an individual it's a harsh world, industries are going to turn over faster and faster in the future, we have to be ready to retrain and move on.
There is a reason why most European countries have worked hard over the last two decades to reduce the number of blue collar workers building cars or mining coal. This is just a natural extension of the same macro economics...a weak government will bend their policies and stop the flow of offshore low end jobs, a forward looking one will encourage it.
Sorry, I'm in a funny mood.
Most articles I've read in this overcommercialized bird-cage liner are usually way off base.
It is important for everyone to take note of some of the themes in the article, especially those of the Bhagava Gita.
Multi-national corporations are outsourcing labor to people who create better products, as was mentioned by their software ratings, and, more imporantly, are fatalistic in regards to their life here on earth.
While Americans are made of many different faiths and backgrounds, we are a country in respect to individual liberty, India and eastern philisophies are not. This is not an economic issue, it is a religious one. There is no upward mobility in India, there is destiny and caste.
We, as American's, can deciede what is acceptable for business to do by creating idea's, orginizations, movements. This is a liberty not afforded to the Indians.
Debt and Deficits.
I doubt you could eat $0.50 worth or rice, purchased in bulk.
Need protein? Leave some rice out and kill the rats.
I'm only half joking. Ha!
..don't panic
And a country that has no infrastructure to support the sudden unemployment rate.
IMO, it shouldn't be legal.
I work for Toyota (in America) and they are currently in the process of outsourcing my job to india.
If your employers in India treat you as bad as we have been here in the US your welcome to my job (you have it, now so choke on it).
Don't expect me to smile or say thank you when you call on the phone, or I call you though.
While we understand that forest fires are part of the natural cycle of things, and a good thing in the long run, it's hard to tell the deer (or the firefighter) who gets caught in one that eventually it'll be OK. For them, it will never be OK, because they won't be around to see the brighter future, only to suffer through the smoke and fire. The economy (and our country as a whole) may eventually be better off for the outsourcing in the long term, but for most of the people losing their jobs or under threat of such, the long term is lower wages and benefits until they can afford to retire.
The economy wants people with deep knowledge in a field. That knowledge is costly to acquire (either in money, time, or both) and forces one to choose to be a generalist (and unlikely to be paid so much, but who can switch fields more easily) or a specialized worker (who can make money until the field goes under). In an economy focused on specialization, it is nontrivial for specialists to gain the knowledge of another field needed to get another job (the only kind of "job security" many companies offer). This conundrum is likely to make life hard in the short and medium terms for a lot of people.
What comes after this, where do we go after outsourcing knowledge jobs? We've got the same in europe. There is a publisher in poland who just started issueing a php magazin, a hacking magazine and for almost a year now publish a red hat linux derivate called 'aurox' linux. The articles are written by polish stundents, the distro is maintained by polish geeks - the best of which probably work for half a week what I take for an hour - and all are translated once a month and once a release respectively into 8 different european languages, printed in poland over night for something like a handfull of euros per 'europalette' and shipped to all target countries. Probalbly within 36 hrs. the most.
:-) ).
See for yourself: Aurox Linux, PHP Solutions Magazine and Hackin9 magazine.
Top quality stuff. I've actually bought both the first and the second issue of "hackin9" and am probably gonna get myself a subscription. I got the newest Aurox distro too (codename "water" - they're useing up the elements first I presume
Suse, Xandros, Red Hat: Prepare for incoming.
So, again, my fellow slashdotters, where is this all heading?
The article give a hint in the right direction: High Tech Companies right beside slums and favelas.
Figure:
Companies spread across the entire planet, connected by virtual networks. You find a person tied to the ABC-XYZ Software company culture everywhere on the planet but you also start finding strong cultural transitions just by walking half a block. No matter if you'Re in a first or third world country.
Cultural shifts and differences become more and more independant of physical distance and the area you live in has less and less effect on or relation to your actual real personal wealth.
There is a very distincive term for this type of future culture to come, coined by the liturature that describes this very essence:
It's called cyberpunk.
I personally over the last 7 years or so have sticked with plain and simply calling this developement 'cyberpunkization'.
I have yet to be met with the evidence that this term is not entirely appropriate. On the contrary.
Bottom line:
1.) Read Gibson and Stephenson with a critical but open mind applying them to the real world.
2.) Then look at the world as it is now and how (fast) it has become that way.
3.) Do the math and make the best of it. After all, you're a geek, aren't you?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
have shown, that in a best case scenerio, after ALL costs are added in, its as expensive as hiring local talent. Usual it's more expensive, and the project failure rate is hirer, as well.
There is a difference between manufacturing and software development, and to compare the two will lead to some pretty specious arguments.
I have had the 'opportunity' to be interviewing for a job. In many of those interview, the subject of oursourcing has come up. In every one, there projects had failed, and internally, the project managment has started to prevent outsourceing do to its cost.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
South Indian Brahmins don't eat meat. If you're willing to eat lentils and a chapati, you can probably do lunch for a-buck-fifty. [Kosher Hot Dog and drink cost me about 1.50 at Sam's club.]
It was six words, not one; you mispelt 'would'; the 'w' should be capitalised; and the plural of 'fry' is 'fries'. Not that anyone ever talks about a single 'fry'.
Jobs to India -- A Broad Look
Apple is sending Steve Jobs to India?
Oh, jobs with a lowercase J.
When will people learn. This is how markets work. The free market causes economies to equalise. For Americans this will result in a fall in their standard of living - for most other countries it will increase their standard. Americans don't have a divine right to have a better standard of living than the rest of the world. Do Americans really think that they deserve to be paid more for the same work as an Indian just because they live in America? This is the global economy. Learn to live with it.
Really this is the only alternative for programmers who are fearful about slipping job security. You likely won't be doing work for the same massive corporations serviced by the company you work for, but they're not the only ones with money. I've done a lot of work for a few small to mid-size businesses in and out of the state and have done quite well.
The only catch is that you need a little bit of business savvy, since you'll be the one selling yourself to your clients. Consequently, this won't be for everyone (ie. not for programmers who hate dealing with people), but it's certainly one alternative to the increasingly unstable IT job market.
So? If you lot weren't so grossly overpaid for your average quality work, shit would be cheaper Or maybe you lazy fuckers could make do with less. You don't need 2 SUV's and a big house in the suburbs. Live in an apartment and ride a bike to work. You might not be so disgustingly obese then either.
Jobs to India: A Second Look
We import jobs presumably because their cost here is cheaper than their cost to others elsewhere; similarly, GM et al. outsourced their jobs because they could pay someone somewhere else less to do that job. This seems to imply that jobs exchanged in trade are likely lower-paying than the jobs outsourced; in another words, jobs that produce tradeable goods 9rather than services) will be exchanged to yield the lowest cost. Whatever jobs we get back are likely to pay less than those we export.
If labor in tradeable goods is outsourced to the lowest wage (or rather lowest cost) home, where are your customers? The people you laid off were probably the ones buying your goods; the jobs they find will almost certainly pay less than the jobs they had. The new hires elsewhere probably won't make enough money to afford your product (unless the cost drops lower, which seems to imply lower profit). This seems self-destructive to me.
There are too many people in India. When programmer A wants a nickel more, they will get rid of them, and get someone else who doesn't have an uppity attitude about money.
The only way the US will compete, ever, is if our standard of living drops...a lot.
Now, If everything I need to survive decently had its cost cut by 90%, then I'd be able to compete.
Personally, I'd like all corporat tax breaks be removed from any company that outsouces. If it makes them so much money, it shouldn't be a problem, right?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The US was (and probably still is) at the forefront of technology for the last couple of decades for one simple reason: innovation and invention. We have all of the patents for most of the major breakthroughs of the computing age. Look at the major US companies in the tech sectors, Microsoft, IBM, etc. What would the US be without Intel? What would have happened if Bell Labs had not existed? Oh, you don't think Bell Labs did anything? Look here [Bell Labs]. They invented most everything that makes the world turn, from UNIX, to C, to the transistor, and the cell phone.
Don't blame this on the failing economy, blame the US government for not funding the sciences more. Blame them for not cultivating this in schools. Where's the incentive to become an engineer, to become a software developer?
When money is poured into a field, great things happen. Look at the Apollo program. Look at Bell Labs. UNIX is the result of a bunch of PHDs sitting around with a lot of money. We are coming to a point in time where the US is losing its upper hand in the tech sector. And don't tell me that we build more airplanes than anyone else. Airbus overtook Boeing in terms of sales quite a while ago. The US is losing ground, and outsourcing is one of the effects of this.
The underlying reason is not the lack of confidence in the economy, or the cheaper labor in India, it's because America is starting to lag behind.
There are so many ineteresting things happening in the world of science, technology, and geekdom.
Now you're recycling 1 week old articles.
I mean, it isn't just similar, its the same article. This is lazy and stupid. I'm a subscriber, and I expect more than this.
.. as these guys invariably screw up & lose local civil engineering jobs. We end up getting said jobs and are then able to charge whatever we feel like because the customer is over a barrel timewise at that point. Some things just shouldn't be outsourced.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
I don't believe that's true. There were voluntary export limits, between 1.5 mil to 2mil units, from the 80s to mid 90s. But ever since 1994, I believe, there have been no tariffs on automobiles.
- James
While I respect much of the work Cringely has done over the years, this article is not "good". He is resting most of his argument against outsourcing on the belief that it yields worse customer service! Where is his proof and why does he believe that the free market suddenly stopped working? Are customers suddenly incapable of voting with their feet for companies that offer better customer service (presumably those that hire Americans)? Are CEOs suddenly too stupid to realize that they lose business this way? Did it ever occur to him that the company can hire a couple Indians who are more intelligent and better educated for the price of a single American? Perhaps the Indians don't have the cultural awareness, language skills, or what have you to work effectively in customer service, but Cringley's arguments are not plausible. Companies and consumers can make mistakes, the power of the free market is that we generally recognize that it's better to let them make mistakes on their own.
It's also absurd when he says, on one hand, that government is incompetent and then, on the other, he implies that we should have government tie the hands of business leaders and/or consumers. What's more, he argues that protectionist acts won't hurt the US because India is a net exporter of goods/services (and aid recipient) relative to the US. This may be the case, but he forgets that other countries may well follow suit against the US (e.g., Europe) and that as India gets wealthier it will likely grow into a consumer of US products. There may be good arguments against outsourcing jobs to foreign countries like India (e.g., that it has the potential to hurt innovation in the long term), but Cringley 's argument simply isn't one of them.
I had a long and thoughtful response typed up to your article, but I thought about it a bit and realized you're probably a kid, and probably one of those kids who thinks they're smart, but really is just annoying?
So I deleted it and just decided to tell you to STFU and stop posting here.
Let's forget for a moment that the dollars spent in other countries is all but permanantly not returning to this country and that the dollars which would otherwise be spent in the US stimulating the economy will be lost forever. (This is our national wealth permanantly leaving the country... is it coming back? Not when we're paying for services it ain't.)
What about the RISKS involved? Does anyone recall the story about the Indian (or was it Pakistani? Is there a difference?) medical company who threatened to release all their confidential information to the internet because they did not think they were being paid properly?
Even if that incident never repeats itself, we are dealing with nations that do not necessarily have our fullest national trust. Suppose, for example, a religious "idealist" decides he wants to terrorize U.S. companies and U.S. "consumers" (we're not citizens any longer or didn't you notice?) by releasing our private information or otherwise doing something nasty with the services that are being outsourced? It's a HUGE risk to our national economy.
We're not talking about manufacturing... that's hardware. We're beyond the "Industrial Age" which is why we didn't suffer a tremendous amount when most of our manufacturing left this country... we said, "Psh!! This is the 'Information Age!'" Okay so it's still the information age and already we're selling our informational processing commodities overseas leaving us with what?
Maybe these rich corporate bastards think the declining middle-class and soon to be lower-class will just silently die off? Maybe we'll wither away and stop voting? Perhaps we'll join gangs and kill each other off because we have nothing better to do and there'll be a mere 10,000 or so people left with all the money?
Nice game plan or maybe they aren't thinking that far in advance...?
I want cheap cars. I hate to pay more than 10k for a corolla. and I want the car to be japanese or german because they suck less than american cars in the same segment, in any given segment.
Heck, I want to buy a merc for 25k. I wish they set up plants in africa, so that these prices are possible and people in africa can make a living.
In my country, Canada, government is pouring money into education and R&D. The idea is that Canadians will create new knowledge that can be patented and licensed for profit. Right now, we have one of the best productivity rates for scientific discovery. It's hard to determine conversion to patents, though, because so many innovations are patented and commercialized in the US and UK. It makes sense to explore this route, since manufacturing will no doubt take place in countries with cheaper production costs. But how long can this work? Won't countries like India and China figure this out? Aren't their scientists and students willing to do research for less money? Couldn't foreign students study in countries like Canada, then go back home to create patents? Do patents even matter if they are infringed overseas?
-- SYS 64738 --
Plain and simple, you are not Indian, you are a poser. First of all, if you were Indian, you would never have the "middle east" in your name. Every Indian knows that India is a subcontinent by itself. No Indian thinks of himself as a middle easterner, and just about anyone non-american knows this difference as well. Calling an Indian a "middle easterner" is like calling Billy Bob in Arkansas, Mexican.
This proves that you are likely a fat, white american pretending to be Indian.
It also leads the reader to believe that the product is 'better' somehow. I can tell you from firsthand observation (as a user of several corporate applications, the development of which has been outsourced) that this view is simplistic at best and flat out wrong at worst. The poor communication across the Big Pond alone insures that there are more than a normal amount of bumps in integration.
The thing that people miss is that there is only one source of new wealth. That is the labor of people who create something others will pay for. Any change in value outside that is inflation, pure and simple.
We're steadily exporting everything Americans do that creates wealth, moving more and more of our population into 'service' jobs that are parasitic on the creation of wealth by 'producers'. We've moved out much of our manufacturing infrastructure, and corporatized our farms, the source of much of the wealth that made the US economy the powerhouse of the mid-20th century.
Now, we've moved into the information age - leading the charge, as it were - and just as quickly as we can, we're exporting these positions that produce value as well. There can be some debate about whether or not IP is 'real wealth' in the sense of food or manufactured goods, but I don't think many will challenge the position that America's economy certainly depends on these producers.
When all that is left is a chain of service (I wash your car, you serve John lunch, John cuts down a tree for Pete, and Pete fixes my deck), we're circling the drain, economically; with no infusion of new wealth, we're living on our savings.
The failure of the "Globalization" process is that it's not India or America that benefits, but the CEOs of corporations; this increases the divide between the 1% that controls most of the wealth and the 99% that control 10%. If Nairobi happens to figure out how to put together a solid programming base next year, Bangalores' economy will be in the shitter overnight.
The mutinational corporations (in the form of the most wealthy stockholders) are taking advantage of standard of living, population pressures, and the artificial barriers of visas, borders, and the like.
Thinking outside my Head
I find it interesting how the quotes from the article read like standard PR from ITAA.
Did the author randomly choose people to interview or were they preselected by the company?
This article smells like propaganda bought and paid for by the Indian software lobbyists.
That's okay. Those stupid foreigners are the easiest to take advantage of. Its like a big game. If you and your friends work them just right, they'll be running back to India/Packitan (same thing) quicker than you can say "H1B visa".
Extra points if you drive them to suicide.
Go for it.
I should have been a mechanic! :( You cant outsource cars. :(
Curse my geeky brain!
Many jobs will be outsourced. No, not just to India, but to anywhere labor is cheaper (Sidenote: I'd rather see white-collar jobs outsource to India than manufacturing jobs outsourced to children in Asia, which is now the norm). This includes coders, artists, writers, and their managers. Eventually, a few executives. This will mark the abandonment of America by a few, or many, large corporations. After all, the folks at the top of the chain, who make the real money, belong to no nation. They belong to their desires. America's economy will slowly deflate to a level more equal with the rest of the world, while nations with more jobs will rise a bit. Globally, I think this possibly will have an equalizing effect in general. But those with the deep pockets will greatly benefit. Otherwise, they wouldn't do it.
The above stands for privately-owned corps. I have no idea what may happen with publicly-traded ones. It's obviously a bit more complicated.
"Live in an apartment and ride a bike to work."
In otherwords, you are jealous of people in the US who own houses and cars, because you live worse than people below the poverty line in the usa.
But hey, you get socialized medicine for "free", and the only bad thing is you have to wait a few weeks for critical care.
But at least its free, and you get to live in an apartment, and you get your *very own bicycle*.
Life must be great for you.
"When it gets down to it-talking trade balances here-once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here-once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel-once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity-y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
The Deliverator used to make software. Still does, sometimes."
I suppose we'd better scratch "software" off the list, eh?
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
to be honest i'd be happy making $20,000 per year if my lunch would cost 50 cents daily, apartment $30 per month (or free, as it is in many countries) and the best college runs around $3,000 for all 4 years.
The fallacy in your argument is that they are making $6,000 to $9,000 per year. Where did you get $20,000? Or are you just to ashamed to admit to yourself that when your $60,000 job got outsourced, your company only considered you worth $6,000.
I am as much threatened by outsourcing as you, but I also understand that there are various roles in a marketplace - producer, consumer and labor. Americans do not have a God given right to be any of these.
God-given right or not, that's beside the point, which is anyone threatened with job loss, or who is already experiencing it, should do whatever the hell he/she can to remedy the situation, but voting for candidates that server their interest, and boycotting companies who utilize exported labor to their injury. Thank God Indians can't elect our government representatives.
--Slashdot: News for Turds. Stuff that Splatters.
is to vote this miserable failure out of office. This guy has done absolutely nothing for the average guy, instead his policies have benefited the big corporations. Another 4 more years of his disastrous policies, and there won't be any tech industry left in the US. People with higher educational degrees will be driving taxi cabs.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
The manufacturing and customer service jobs go first, then the tech jobs and it suddenly stops there. Bull-shit. After that it's accounting and HR, graphics and creative positions, account managers, sales. So, what's left? What's your next adjustment career? Anything that India and the Cheney administration are arguing for is guaranteed to be BAD for you.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"
"In the long run, we're all dead" - Keynes
No matter how true the rosy big picture may be, the devil is still in the details for those suffering from the change. If there are things we can do to make the transitionless volatile, why not do them?
Tweet, tweet.
These articles explain some of the nascent advantages of offshoring despite the job losses in the developed world. They are quite sympathetic of foreign IT workers like us, who have to deal with tough regulations on visas. It also explains why America is so productive in the first place. Read them, they are well written articles.
.cfm?Story_id=2282745
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaySto ry
Offshoring
Stolen jobs?
Dec 11th 2003
From The Economist print edition
The rules of free trade apply to services as well as goods
IN AMERICA, in Britain, in Australia, an awful thought has gripped employees in the past six months or so: India may do for services what China already does for manufacturing. Any product can be made in China less expensively than in the rich countries. Is it merely a matter of time before any service that can be electronically transmitted is produced in India more cheaply too? As "offshoring"-a hideous word to describe work sent overseas, often outsourced-has spread from manufacturing to white-collar services, so the pressure on legislators to step in has increased (see article).
Manufacturers have used overseas suppliers for years. But now, cheaper communications allow companies to move back-office tasks such as data entry, call centres and payroll processing to poorer countries. India has three huge attractions for companies: a large pool of well-educated young workers, low wages and the English language. But plenty of other industrialising countries also handle back-office work. Moreover, given the pressure on costs in rich countries, offshore sourcing of services will grow: a much-quoted study by Forrester, a consultancy, last year predicted that 3.3m American jobs (500,000 of them in IT) would move abroad by 2015. And the quality of outsourcing will improve. Many of the jibes at Indian outsourcing today-about thick accents and unreliable technology-sound like the jeers at unreliable and ugly Japanese cars 30 years ago.
No wonder politicians are under pressure to discourage companies (and public agencies) from sending service work abroad. To do so, though, would be as self-defeating as stopping the purchase of goods or components abroad. For, although the jobs killed by outsourcing abroad are easy to spot, the benefits are less visible but even greater.
Like trade in goods, trade in services forces painful redistributions of employment. A study for the Institute for International Economics found that, in 1979-99, 69% of people who lost jobs as a result of cheap imports in sectors other than manufacturing found new work. But those figures are only for America, with its flexible job market, and leave a large minority who did not find new employment. Moreover, 55% of those who found new jobs did so at lower pay, and 25% took pay cuts of 30% or more. Some of the gains from free trade need to be used to ease the transition of workers into new jobs.
But those gains are substantial. Some arise simply from organising work in more effective ways. A fair part of the work that moves abroad represents an attempt by companies to provide a round-the-clock service, by making use of time zones. To that extent, offshoring directly improves efficiency.
In addition, a recent report on offshoring from McKinsey estimates that every dollar of costs the United States moves offshore brings America a net benefit of $1.12 to $1.14 (the additional benefit to the country receiving the investment comes on top). Part of this arises because, as low value-added jobs go abroad, labour and investment can switch to jobs that generate more economic value. This is what has happened with manufacturing: employment has dwindled, but workers have moved into educational and health services where pay is higher (and conditions often more agreeable).
The thirst for the new
What of innovation, though? At present, most new products and services are developed in the rich world-and, indeed, predominantl
The dollar will weaken and Americans will effectively become cheaper to employ.
Oh wait. It's already happening.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
is showing! cover it up!
India is not as backward as you would like it to be for demonization purposes.
Even a sandwich costs more than 50 cents.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory .cfm?story_id=2282381
Offshoring
Relocating the back office
Dec 11th 2003 | BANGALORE, LONDON, SAN FRANCISCO AND WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
Reuters
The shift of service jobs to low-cost countries has only just begun. It promises huge benefits to consumers everywhere
THE debate over "offshoring", a phenomenon unheard of a few years ago by many of those now loudly proclaiming its economic effects, is in "the percolating phase," says Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute, a Washington, DC, think-tank. It could, he adds, be "a potentially potent contributor" to the increasingly protectionist mood in the American capital.
The debate has been brewing since a study by Forrester, a research group, in 2002 claimed that 3.3m white-collar American jobs (500,000 of them in IT) would shift offshore to countries such as India by 2015. There has been standing room only at recent presentations of a report by the McKinsey Global Institute suggesting that this process of "offshoring" benefits both the countries involved in it (see chart 1). It is, says the consultants' research arm, a "win-win" formula.
Others are not so sure. Stephen Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley, talks about a "new and powerful global labour arbitrage" that has led to an accelerating transfer of high-wage jobs to India and elsewhere. He reckons this is adding to the bias towards jobless recoveries in western economies. An anonymous e-mailer claiming to represent a group of Boeing engineers is putting it about that Boeing's offshoring of some design engineering work to a new centre in Moscow is causing lay-offs that are cutting "deeply into Boeing's talent pool". The e-mail also alleges that this is putting "the safety and quality of Boeing airplanes at jeopardy".
Although there have been no federal legislative proposals in America against offshoring per se, there has been a tightening up on the granting of visas that allow foreign workers to enter America for training and temporary employment. The annual quota for so-called H-1B visas used by itinerant Indian software programmers fell in October to 65,000 from 195,000 a year ago. The idea is to prevent foreigners from taking Americans' jobs. In fact, the effect may be the reverse. Craig Barrett, the chief executive of Intel, a chipmaker and a big employer of Indian engineers, says that America's main problem is a lack of suitably educated engineering graduates. The impact of fewer visas may thus be to encourage American firms to shift more work to India, where well-qualified computer engineers are plentiful.
English spoken here
But the vast majority of the service jobs that are now going offshore do not require highly qualified engineers. Multinationals may in future do original R&D in low-cost places, but for the moment most of the jobs on the move are the paper-based back-office ones that can be digitalised and telecommunicated anywhere around the world, plus more routine telephone inquiries that are increasingly being bundled together into call centres.
Several American states have moved faster than the federal authorities in trying to halt this "labour arbitrage". Lawmakers in New Jersey have proposed a bill to stop firms using foreign workers to fulfil state contracts. Public pressure forced the state to bring back a helpline for welfare recipients that had been outsourced to India. For similar reasons, in late November Indiana withdrew from a $15m contract with the American subsidiary of a leading Indian IT outsourcing firm. Governor Joe Kernan said that the contract did not fit with Indiana's "vision" of providing better opportunities to local companies and workers.
On one estimate, America accounts for over 70% of all offshoring business. The second biggest market is in Britain. Big companies there regularly announce that they are moving service jobs abroad, many of them involving the who
There's very little difference between the college tuition "racket" and the socialized welfare/tax/insurance/healthcare racket that goes on in the rest of society.
If you don't like the way it is, fine, but be consistent. Tuition is like any other social program. It benefits the poor at the expense of the rich (wait?! this is what happens when I'm on the upper end of the scale? I don't like that so much...) Don't just protest it because it's inconvenient for you.
The truly dissappointing thing is how much of the money is wasted. Many college students treat education as an entitlement, and fail to take advantage of the opportunities it creates. I say keep raising tuitions until students take it seriously.
The one's getting away with this is the large multinational corporations who have no national loyalty, and couldn't give a rat's ass if the American middle class is destroyed. People can fight back. People displaced by foreign outsourcing should lobby their congressmen and vote in their best interest come election day. Thank God the Indians can't vote for American congress and president. But Americans CAN. Use your vote. And harrass your congressman. Change may be ultimately inevitable. But there are better ways of handling this than wholesale rapid deflation of the U.S. IT industry, so as to minimize pain and suffering.
--Slashdot: News for Turds. Stuff that Splatters.
You gave these guys all the technology for free, they are well educated and are working for a few bucks a day, so isn't that the intended consequence of free software and the OSS movement? Power to the people! Proletarier aller Laender vereinigt Euch!
You guys in the US and Europe then get your income by supporting the free software written in India or Brasil. Or, wait a moment, will they really write free software? Or will they use your free tools to write products that kick out of the market what you wrote...
This is entirely understandable, because from all reports there's not a single American passenger car that would be competitive on the world market.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
And therein lies the opportunity for Americans. It's inevitable that certain things - fabrication, maintenance, testing, upgrades, and other routine knowledge work - will be done overseas. But that leaves plenty for us to do. After all, before these Indian programmers have something to fabricate, maintain, test, or upgrade, that something first must be imagined and invented.
But if you want to invent something, you need time to throw at it. Usually more than a bit. And that's not usually a commodity when you suddenly find that the only jobs available to you are those that pay so little you have to give extra time to make ends meet.
Tweet, tweet.
You'll be living in a cardboard box, but you'll see people drive their X5 to their $250,000 suburban home at the end of the day.
What's good for the economy is good for the people! C'mon, Jim, pass the wine.
Note to fat USians
Just thought I would point out, the correct term is "Americans" not USians.
why is it that all the candidates and the current president work for the rich. Well because most of them are souless greedy bastards. The only way this will get fixed is if the citizens of america, who out number the rich, finally realize freedom comes with responsibility. Being apathetic, complacent, ignorant and lazy only serves the rich. If you think for one second the Rich care about the poor, think again. Only a few super wealthy individuals care enough to donate to the poor, like the wife of the founder of McDonalds. Perhaps this is a good reason for people to get out and vote. I may not like the candidates, but I am taking time to figure which one is really looking for the average joe.
I call bullshit.
I work with some nice folks from over seas, so I have bit of an insider's perspective. A co-worker of mine, who's originally from India and I discussed this very subject just the other day.
In our conversation we discussed the conditions of the average citizen. Specifically how it related to our own temporary employees. The company I work for does business with a rather large, shall remain nameless for the sake of objectivity and professional courtesy type of outsourcing firm. Among other things, we talked about the living conditions in her country.
Narrowing our focus to the cities, where most of these jobs are located, I found out roughly how much it costs to rent an apartment, buy food, and so on. We compared those expenses with how much I am paying for my apartment, what food expenses were, and so on. Althought it's not very scientific, I was a bit shocked to find that the facts of the situation did not match my expectations.
I was surprised to discover that not only did the employees doing work for us in India did not make enough money to be considered middle class, but they had relatively little freedom to change jobs. They recieve rent (four people to one apartment), food, and a salary. It's not that they are living in poverty, but by no means can they be considered middle class, even by India standards.
The problem as I see it, is that people's entire lives are dependent upon their relationship to the outsourcing firm in question.
Someone out there is making huge money off of this, and it's not the people who are actually working these jobs. People more knowledgeable, and wiser than myself have commented on the relationship our executives have with the outsourcing firm. I am not making any accusations, but I would love to see the actual data.
I'm new to making decent posts, so if you got this far, thanks kindly for reading this, feel free to respond however you see fit. Thanks much,
SHDG
-kindly doing the needful since 1998
I don't know where the fuck you went to school, but here our President is recognized as the highest-paid educator in the country. By "administrators" I mean the people at the very top, who also like to set shit wages for the people below them. If these assholes can throw away $2 million while having a third of the campus under reconstruction and raising their own salaries next year then they very fuckingly much need to be metaphorically shot. I don't know where you're getting "over half", because only Ivy League schools and others like Stanford and Hopkins can afford to give half of their students aid of any kind. I get absolutely no aid and only qualified for a $2,000 federal loan and I pay my own way. On the other hand, at least 2/3rds of the foreigners I meet have some sort of aid, federal or not.
The high tuition is exactly the reason many don't take it seriously and try to get out of it as soon as possible; it's not fucking worth it.
Fuck this shit.
1. Funny that people who want to put thousands of MS, ORCL and other US software product company people out of a job by giving away software are now complaining that software jobs are moving abroad. Would it be alright if the open source software was developed mostly in Europe and all the developers in product companies were out of a job in the US? Is it alright that an open source operating system developed in Europe is causing US based MS developers to lose thier jobs?
2. Should we then ban open sourcing because it is causing US developers to lose their jobs? We should have a look at how open source software is causing damage to America and American workers.
The simple solution, my friends, is to hartily support Pakistani nuclear research and development. You see, if we support Pakistan in its nuclear efforts...well...American companies can't export jobs to countries whose inhabitants are radioactive! We could do the job ourselves I suppose, but much better to outsource our maniacal plans to cheap Pakistani labor. And then we don't have to feel so bad either when India (and Pakistan too!) are smoldering pits.
The average cost to see a movie $8
The average cost to see a doctor $250
in India Movie is about $1 and doctors visit is about $10.
RIAA, MPAA, and AMA are monopolies that extract a lot from the average US PayCheck makeing it more difficult for the US engineer to compete.
This comment copyRighted for life+70 years.
ThankYouVeryMuch.
I want to be the outsourcer instead of the outsourcee. I hate IT, I wasted $$$ + time on the CS courses just to have to compete with 30 year old men with 10+ years exp after college?
no thanks..
In capitalism only the capitalists survive.
I am going to become a capitalist
It never existed, that's what happened to it.
Today, shipping your job to India is immoral. A hundred years ago, paying women and children nothing for 16 hour days in the textile mills was immoral. 150 years ago it was the coal mines. 200 years ago it was cotton fields filled with slaves.
Capitalism is inherently about competition, and in competition, sombody ultimately looses. The only way to fix that is to devise a system where everyone wins.
Some guy won a Nobel based on work in that area. Made a movie about him, too.
--
You sure got a purty mouth...
The middle class in the US probably won't survive.
You've seen the pictures of starving people in Africa? That's you in 10 years.
Corporations want code thats easy to write, easy to debug, has limited impact, and can be taught to anyone. This will allow them to still at least break even while reducing risk immensely, in turn increasing their profits elsewhere. THEY DON'T WANT YOUR PROGRAMMING SKILLS. (this is why IT is often billed as an "expense" rather than as an "investment" in most corporate accounting books)
Face it people, RMS is right.
mmm.. some damn bastard who has no fucking idea of the quality of life or the wages americans make. Sounds like a random slashbot.
They will come back when Pakistan nukes India and then imposes Islamic law on them.
Go Pakistan!
Thank god we're all lazy. Can you imagine a country full of proactice disgustingly obese people? It'd be a wonder that the entire country didn't just stampeded right under water.
In the past 6 months I've been on the line with no fewer than 5 different outsourced support lines in India, and let me just say this....
You can replace "Patel" with "Josh" all day long (which BTW totally fucking cracks me up) but it is extremely difficult to get rid of the accent. Hell, you see the same problem in the US with children of immigrants who, while they've essentially grown up here, simply don't speak English outside of school due to their family situation or their circle of friends. I actually feel sorry for them, because many sound no better than their cousins who are FOB (Fresh Off the Boat, a word I learned from some Iranian immigrant pals) arrivals to the US. Call me racist if that's convenient for you, but I've found that in the case of Shawn and Jessica working for Dell in Bangalore it totally impedes the support process.
Even worse, there is a common tendency to be extremely polite and deferential (perhaps a cultural thing?) while simultaneously simply not understanding what the fuck I'm getting at yet refusing to deviate from the script or think outside the box. I count it among the most maddening things I've ever experienced on a telephone.
OBHHGTTGR
...
Your reference to shoes brings to mind the Shoe Event Horizon from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's planet Brontitol.
"The Shoe Event Horizon is now a firmly established, and rather sad economic phenomenon which, in future times will be taught as part of the basic Middle School Life, the Universe, and Everything syllabus.
TEACHER: Stand up! Harsh Economic Truths, Class 17. You are standing up?
STUDENT: Yes.
T: Good. You are living in an exciting, go-ahead civilization. Where are you looking?
S: Up.
T: What do you see?
S: The open sky, the stars, an infinite horizon.
T: Correct... You are living in a stagnant, declining civilization. Where are you looking?
S: Down.
T: What do you see?
S: My shoes.
T: Correct. What do you do to cheer yourself up?
S: I buy a new pair.
T: Correct! Now, imagine everone does the same thing... everyone buys new shoes, what happens?
S: More shoes.
T: And?
S: More shoe shops.
T: Correct... and in order to support all these extra shoe shops, what happens?
S: Everyone must keep buying shoes.
T: And how is that arranged?
S: Manufacturers dictate more and more different fashions of and make shoes so badly that they either hurt the feet or fall apart.
T: So that?
S: Everyone has to buy more shoes.
T: Until?
S: Until... everyone gets fed-up with lousy, rotten shoes.
T: And then what?
S: Massive capital investment by the manufacturers to try and make people buy the shoes.
T: Which means?
S: More shoe shops.
T: And then we reach what point?
S: The Shoe Event Horizon! The whole economy overbalances. Shoe shops outnumber every other kind of shop. It becomes economically impossible to build anything other than shoe shops.
T: Now, what's the final stage?
S: Um... every shop in the world becomes a shoe shop.
T: Full of?
S: Shoes no one can wear.
T: Result?
S: Famine, collapse, and ruin. Any survivors eventually evolve into birds and never put their feet on the ground again.
T: Excellent! End of lesson."
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
What is supply and demand going to tend to - raising the standard of living of a billion+ indians vs decreasing the standard of living of 290-odd million americans.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
First off, I'll spare you my thoughts on the quality of the piece, as it's irrelevant to the larger issue.*
The author notes that the cycle to new employment paradigms lasted 80 years from agrarian to industrial, and 40 years from industrial to knowlege working, and only 20 to whatever's next (hint: "Would you like fries with that?")
Well, India's about to see their golden egg crack apart in 10.
Free software changes everything... new development tools and paradigms make it easy for a small, loosely affiliated group of hobbyists to make software that can compete with huge, heavily funded projects. What's more, open source software is big into making tools and frameworks. You don't need a hundred Indian or Ukrainian programmers to put together an application suite. You need three or four in-house guys to plug the pieces together.
The author makes another good point in noting that India's coder culture is about toeing the line... adehering to the specifications rather than comming up with something wild and new. We're rapidly approaching the point where a five man team can change the industry with tools they can download for free. There are no shortage of American and European maverick geeks.
The biggest problem is business savvy. The dotcom geeks depended on baby-boomer, old-economy business management, and got burned and burned bad by their get-rich-quick scams. If you want to make money slinging code, you have got to, got to, got to grok how to run a business. You will be cheated and thrown out of work if you let someone else do it for you. It's boring gruntwork, but then so's writing a man page. Do it anyway. Better yet, write a program that will do it for you and open source it. Companies will pay you to tailor it to their own needs, and you can write code for money again. That's how it's going to work in less than 5 years. That's how it's working right now.
SoupIsGood Food
* Ok, so I won't spare you. The article is propagandist bullshit from a blindly libertarian wingnut. I can only stand to have so much smoke blown up my ass in one sitting before wanting to choke the everloving shit out of someone who clearly hasn't had to wear a security guard uniform after their job went to India only to have free-market absolutists blame him for being too lazy to see the Next Big Thing.
The only job you listed that actually has to be done here is that of lawyers. Guess what? There are already too many of them.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
I am 29 years old and need to get a job, I want to go to school for some computer programming, and at least at this point it is because I enjoy it. Is there going to be a place for an fairly inexperienced 30 year old guy. I don't expect to rule the world , and I know it will probably amount to whatever I make it, but I was just looking for some feedback from some /.'ers
After reading articles like this, it seems that maybe the job market is shrinking.
Step 1: Overthrow Bush regieme
Step 2: Unionize software development
Step 3: beat up non-union scabs
Step 4: use Union influence to pass laws against outsourcing
Step 5: nuke foreign scabs
Step 6: ???
Step 7: No more profit!!!!
How is this offtopic? This SAME STORY was run LAST WEEK!
Globalisation is a bitch when it threatens your job?
Don't whine. Get with the program. Indians deserve jobs too. If you want their job, then accept their pay.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
"The special interests will come up with all sorts of nonsense, all manner of jargon to support their fear mongering. They'll talk of
races to the bottom, living wages, social justice and other such things. But what they really mean is "gimme." (Read: I deserve to be making higher real wages for the same equivalent work because I am an American. When protectionists speak of races to the bottom, they ignore the flip side of the coin: a race to the top)."
It is called "Cost of Living". Per the article, the average yearly salary in India is $500, whereas the average programmer salary in India is $8000 (I think my company is paying something more like $15,000 to $25,000). Going just from the numbers in the article, this means the average Indian programmer is making 16 times more than the average Indian. Even considering the unusually high poverty level in India (which keeps the average yearly salary down), that is still a huge difference.
Contrast this to the U.S. The average salary, according to the article, is about $35,000. Years ago, that is what I started at as a programmer, and barely make more than that now. I don't make much more than the average American and I don't know of any U.S. programmer that makes $560,000 a year ($35,000 * 16).
So while Indian programmers can live like kings (according to my manager who loves offshoring), U.S. programmers live on an average salary (or in some cases a lot more, if they are one of the few in a good spot - but certainly not 16X the average).
So, please explain to me how I feel that "I deserve to be making higher real wages for the same equivalent work because I am an American." I just want a job in an industry that will be valid for more than 5 years. I can't be constantly going back to college to get a new degree.
I could be mistaken, but I believe some estimates put combined U.S. taxes as high as 50% of one's income. Think of the cost savings to the taxpayer if it were possible to outsource government function. Considering that various necessary expenses would fracture the half of your income you keep, government is possibly the most expensive thing you buy... shouldn't that be the low hanging fruit?
Surely all those 'God I lost my Job its not fair' programmers who are now wondering what the future is about should look back on history. When you look at the situation you can see that it is inevitable that programming roles will be outsourced. Having been to India I have seen that the people I met were capable and willing developers and architects, they were keen to learn and ply a trade. Yet, we sit back and wonder how this could happen. People who basically fell out of University in the nineties with an IT degree (not exactly rocket science) were being paid far more than their counterparts. This is simply the hard facts of life, if you are capable and learning then and now and you will continue to do well in life, if you can adapt and be creative then your value will come forward, however if you knocked out a couple of three form VB apps and wonder how they could replace you, then you might soon see. Though I'm not an American I believe that the American way is to accept change, and grow stronger from it, however this endless discussion on the unfairness of life, and should Americans be hairdresser or serve fries, belies a complancy that should not exist. Get up and do something, not simply exact laws to stop it but define how you can use the creative side of your brain and stop painting banners and start painting a future that is inclusive and drives out success. There is 18 million people (I think I saw half of them from the taxi) in Mumbai and they are keen to work, if America hurts is should be hurting to show them all the ideas it has that they can follow, not closing them off and portraying it as unfair that they carve out a living doing what we thought America could do.
Assumption of others that Americans [majority of them] are well off is perfectly valid. ,Water ,Electricity,Roads,Health care,technology etc
Americans live a high quality of life in terms of Food
boy, U gotta really travel around the world to see the picture
AMerica is no doubt a model country to the world
And no country can be superpower all the time
the Wave has a decline period
Sorry abt that..lets move with life.
Hello , this is my way.
Which way is yours ?
btw there is no right way
Because consumers what cheaper products/services. Companies are only responding to the market. If the market didn't want these cheaper products/services then companies wouldn't do it.
Indian IT is already far too expensive, their companies are having to outsource to Vietnam.
Having a single, global capitalistic economy is good for the world. However, in the short-term, in may not be good for many countries or individuals, because it will take a lot of time for economic forces to work on a global scale to bring all countries up to the same level.
In other words, when you are starting out with numerous closed economies that each have radically different characteristics, and then you open them up to each other, at first there will be huge imbalance, outflux/influx of jobs, etc. One economy will gain while the other will suffer. But once everything equalizes, then the global situation and the economic future are better off for both countries.
The only arguments I've heard against globalization and free markets are short-sighted, self-interested ones: I'll lose my job!, or My country will suffer as jobs go elsewhere!
Outsourcing to other countries for any type of labor is good. If they can do the work at equal or better quality, and do it faster or cheaper, then they should be getting the jobs. That's the entire point of a capitalistic economy: efficiency.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Dilbert has already dealt with this...companies that outsource their work have found that sometimes they are the cheapest, so they are outsourcing to themselves....
If you're saying that we should be paid more money for lower quality work because it hurts our feelings then you don't believe in capitalism. Yeah, I'm an American, and I'm aware of that fact that we've been overpaid for soo many years that we have developed a nasty sense of entitlement. I think that's the real reason we're not very popular abroad. We're the rich kid with the asshole dad.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
I saw an interesting statistic that [~1996], a 2nd income needed to make 35k$/year [pre-tax] to break even with the additional costs involved [2nd car, insurance on it, more take-out dinners, childcare, increased likelihood of health problems, etc].
For comparison, the median household income in the US is 49k$/year. Meaning that the 2nd job needs to be in the top 25% bracket to break even.
And that'd assume an average combined income. Add in the probable marriage penalty, and the fact that if you increase your income you will need to pay a higher tax on both incomes. For a family, it's not a viable option, though many choose it anyway--perhaps not realising that they're probably making the situation worse.
Are you paranoid, and without a clue!!!
1) Sure the low-caste people have rights. For the last 50 yrs, they have had 'affirmative action'. In Tamil Nadu, 70% of all college seats, government jobs are reserved for the lower castes. Any money flowing into India is going to be spent on essentials, and may be for a few imports. The money pretty much goes straight to the people, and not to some mythical upper-caste people.
2) India has a pretty decent legal system. Not as bad as most other countries, or your the US's bosom buddies Pakistan. Why in hell does India have to have YOUR laws? Do you expect the UK to have your laws? Since you seem to be clueless, may be you think that Europe and the UK have American laws too??!!
3) It's called a free market. So an Indian company cheats once. Do you think that they can get business a second time? Have you heard of companies needing references?
4) Wht the f**k does a background check have to do with any of this? Are you subject to a background check when you join a SW company in the US?
5) Customer Alienation - see free market, 3 above.
6) Any imports that you do are a form of out-sourcing. Let me know when you refuse to buy a PS2, Toyota, BMW, Benz or Nokia.
7) Sure high-tech was leaked to Terrorists - by your bosom pals the Pakistanis. Not by the Indians.
Check up on your facts you troll....
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
That's too broad and general because there are things such as consumer electronics that others cannot make in their own country due to historical and sociopolitical circumstances. I'm not saying they can't, but they don't for financial reasons. Most of our consumer electronics and parts come from a handful of countries; not every country can just go out and start producing these although many are certainly starting. Anyway, it's cheaper for them to import such goods from Asia or North America, and there's no direct problem with businesses trying to be cost-efficient although the social implications are far-reaching.
-- Not a
Wired: Outsourcing your job to India
Tired: Replacing you with a small shell script
Expired: Robots taking your job
There is a basic simple solution to this whole off-shoring debate.
.
Give in and realize that
a. Software for life critical things (airplanes, military, nuculear reactors, etc) will remain the the US.
b. Software jobs for just about everything else will move outside of the US.
c. Linux and open source software will lower the costs of software so that there are significantly less paying software development jobs worldwide.
d. US based IT jobs will center around:
1. Data managament and security (DBA for a bank)
2. Data analysis - high level decision support for financial data
3. Physical presence jobs - on site IT/network work (pulling network cables, rebuilding pc's, etc)
e. The total number of IT related gradutes from US universities will drastically decline since the perceived job prospects are declining.
f. Commodity hardware ($300 dell machine), bootable OS CD's/firmware, and web based services will greatly reduce the number, type and size of programs installed on an end user's local machine. This compounds the reduction in support and development jobs since all of those installation program developers will be obsolete.
g. Mainframe type data centers will be the big dollar items in corporate IT budgets.
I think, with 10+ years paid programming under my belt + 2 CS degrees, that
a. there will be IT jobs in the US
b. the jobs will pay better than other skilled jobs
c. the pay will be lower in real terms than the current level when adjusted for inflation
d. that it workers in the US will have a lower standard of living than now, unless there is a drastic lowering of taxes at federal, state and local level from their 50% plus percent today.
e. that significant simplifications in government regulation at all levels are needed to make the US more compelling to operation businesses and employ US workers
f. that the ratio of people producing product to the people not producing product will have to be corrected from the projected major decline from todays level. The not producing product includes government workers at all levels plus those receiving handouts from the government (e.g., social security, medicare, ssi, unemployment, etc)
Shareholders demand lower costs. VC's demand that, too. In fact, if I remember correctly, it was mentioned in the article that an outsourcing plan is the REQUIREMENT for raising VC money. American consumers want lower costs. Should all these categories of people who are all directly related to business be ignored? And for the sake of what?
When you cry that companies have no shame or loyalty to their employees, remember yourself 4-5 years ago - were you LOYAL to your company? If you're in the IT, chances are the you were not - you probably didn't give a rat's ass about it - you were hopping from one high-paid job to another that paid even more every 6-12 months.
So, let's not be hypocritical. We don't care about companies. We are not in the business of caring. We are hired guns and we get paid for our skills. Companies don't care about us. They don't and they shouldn't! They have other worries like meeting shareholders' expectations, developing new products (yes, CHEAPLY), beating wall street estimates and managing cashflow. Let them make their decisions. And let you make yours. It's called freedom.
I hope the kitchen is stocked.
Good luck to the rest of you.
They're taking the dollars because they intend to buy American goods with the dollars.
wrong. they intend to buy chinese goods, because these are cheaper, fool. Americans do the same thing at Wall Mart every day.
That we cannot import more than we export -- over the long term -- is true. To believe otherwise would mean we somehow live in a bubble where foreign countries work for us for free.they do not do it for free. they get your jobs and know-how. they get the dollars, you get the debt.
The special interests will come up with all sorts of nonsense, all manner of jargon to support their fear mongering. They'll talk ofraces to the bottom, living wages, social justice and other such things. but that is what is happening.
But what they really mean is "gimme." (Read: I deserve to be making higher real wages for the same equivalent work because I am an American. no, they mean: it costs a lot more to have the same living standard in the US as in India, so please don't take from me what i need for a living.
When protectionists speak of races to the bottom, they ignore the flip side of the coin: a race to the top). wrong again , fool. a Hindu will accept a 5% wage increase in exchange for your 100% wage decrease. otherwise the offshoring would not be generating any cost cutting. american wages will stagnate while corporate profits will go up. this means the social division of the GDP will become more unequal.
We can rack up debt in the way of trade deficits. Debt which will doubtlessly have to be paid off eventually. i'm sure there are some countries of the 3rd world which will tell you about the benefits of debt exceeding their GDP, because they had a fiscal crisis and their currency got grilled.But sooner or later the dollar will fall against foreign currencies -- as it is currently, btw -- and foreigners will begin to receive repayment of their loans to us, by way of American exports. so if the REAL value of the paper dollars they have received for their products is falling, didn't they, like, work for you for free?
As American exports increase, they wont. Chinese exports will increase. so too will employment, barring commensurate increases in productivity. maybe those service jobs, knowledge workers? like, the porn industry will be a growth sector. and also security. CEOs need protection from the begging mobs.
Fight Frist Psoting!
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That 50 cents the Indians are paying? Yeah, they ARE going out to eat.
The problem as I see it, is that people's entire lives are dependent upon their relationship to the outsourcing firm in question.
That pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? Honestly, where the hell is that more than $50,000 they save on each and every outsourced job? It's disappeared! People complain about the $8,000 per worked put into the Indian economy, but the disappearance of that much larger sum is a much greater issue.
Hey, it could be put to use giving an American another, slightly-lower paying job! Would anybody have a problem with that?
I heard they have weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps it is time for a raceme change in India to a government more friendly to western jobs.
Most disturbing in the piece was the guy who trained 3 Indians here on a temporary work visa before they returned to India. Don't issue temporary work visas. Issue permanent visas! One way or another we'll have to compete with the generation of well-educated Indian programmers. I would much rather compete with an Indian making an American salary than one making an India salary.
Spoken like a true economist, which is really the only one who should be speaking about matters like these that have widespread effects internationally.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Most college administrators have salaries that seem somewhat reasonable at first glance, but once you factor in the benefits, both official and non-official benefits, then throw in the job security, its a pretty sweet gig.
Of course, Kerry's specifically mentioned his opposition to outsourcing in the past...
Basically, what I consider to be one of the most important things these day is to be a bit-head, to steal a term from a friend. This means someone that LIKES working with computers and does it for fun. Someone who is intrested by how they work and teaches themselves, who reads computer news to keep up with trends and so on.
/. is a result of those that would like to grab a couple certifications, a minimal amount of experiecne and have a great job. Doesn't work that way in IT, or most any job.
The other important thing is good problem solving skills. When you have to write something new and different in code or when you encounter a new problem, can you sit down and solve it efficiently, or do you just give up when it's not covered in the book.
If someone likes computer and is a problem solver, then they will probably do well.
However, if you are going into it just for the money, you probably shouldn't. Why? Because likely you will be value-wise on par with the bunches of people in India, only they charge less than you.
The tech market does not need, and these days for the most part won't support, poorly qualified people who just took the job because they thought there was money in it.
As for experience, you do like all other jobs: Get it slowly. The whining you hear from people on places like
So start off with something that doesn't require much experience. Maybe a student job at the school you go to doing something simple like helpdesk. Once you get some experience, you can try for a bit better job that requires more experience (and will give you more skills). Just keep moving up. YOu will also find this is quite possible in a company. You get hired to do helpdesk stuff but prove you are competent and willing to be a system guy, you have a good chance of getting it next time a job opens up.
There are very, very, very few industries where you simply get trained and then get a top level job making lots of money. You start small, then as your skills and experience build, you move up.
I have a friend that started working as a student in the finincal division of our campus's network operations team. He showed a great proficiency with computers and an intrest in networks, and got a staff job after a while. He started as a low-level systems guy doing Windows support. As he learned more about the network and got more skills with it, he shifted over there and continued to be promoted. Now, he's the technial leader of network operations, head of the network, and a CCIE. In a year or so, he'll probably leave for priavte industry (since the university has a much lower pay scale) and be looking at $150,000+ per year. It didn't happen overnight though, he worked and learned to get where he is.
So you can do the same, but you need to be willing to work your way up, and be able to do your job well. An associates degree and a couple certs will not get you a great job, they will get you a starting job that will allow you to work up to a great job.
[and the president]
Who's to say they AREN'T outsourced, and just telecommuting to their global masters from their homes in the US?
At one time the US had a president who blamed September 11 and Anthrax mailings on the country of Iraq. This even though all available evidence pointed to Saudi Arabia.
It turns out, that in the 90's the Saudi Arabia dictatorship donated lots of oil wells to the family of this US president. Now THAT is performance!
I have an idea! Let's outsource all the "Sensationalist Muckraking Journalist" positions to India.
I think most of us who write code like to do it and it is even better when we get paid for it. In the future it looks like at least some of us will have to move to India to do what we enjoy. Some of us will adapt into new jobs. Some of us will continue to write code at a reduced salary. Some of us will continue to code at higher salaries. Perhaps it is inevitable, but I think that if it happens too fast we're going to suffer economic shock from it. Maybe these guys (www.itpaa.org) can help level the playing field a little bit and keep our jobs here for a while longer. Complaining about these problems individually on Slashdot is not going to solve them. If we can unify our efforts I think we could at least stand a better chance at slowing down IT jobs leaving the US. If the price of two Subway meals a month means that work is being done to at least try to keep IT jobs in the US, then I'll pack my lunch for two days a month.
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." - Tao of Programming
"If you added up all the time you spent programming Open Source software and debugging database applications, you could have graduated from UTI by now. Call and find out how we can make you one of the top automotive technicians in the country".
And perhaps even bigger, many of the people they employ will not really be skilled at what they do. There's a big difference between getting a CS degree and being a really good programmer (or engineer or support guy, etc). Really good programmers have to like computers, and like learning about them. They need to not only understand the code, but what it is the code does, how hardware and OSes work. They need to be able to use this knowledge to generate really good and orignal code. Above all, they need to be good problem solvers, that can work on unique and difficult tasks and come up with good, complete solutions, not just hacks that kind of work.
Problem is, most of the people working for these outsourcing shops are NOT going to be those kind of people. So they may be good for grunt work, but aren't going to be the guys that can really make a project happen.
I see tons of grads like this at my university, many visa students. They are in the program because it will get tehm a degree that gets them a job. They don't have any innate intrest in technology and the basically learn what is required of them in class. Tend to do well in class for it, but are the kind of orignal thinkers and problem solvers you need. Ask them about a programming language they know, they'll tell you all about it. Ask them how it translates to machine code, or how the system calls work and you won't get any real answer.
So while outsourcing to code-shops may be a success to a limited extent, there are just parts of the job they aren't going to be able to do well.
Tuition is like any other social program. It benefits the poor at the expense of the rich (wait?! this is what happens when I'm on the upper end of the scale? I don't like that so much...) Don't just protest it because it's inconvenient for you.
Unfortunately. when considering financial assistance there is no middle class. "Rich" means anyone with parents who make more than $20,000 a year.
Hehe, fun. Name calling.
"wrong. they intend to buy chinese goods, because these are cheaper, fool. Americans do the same thing at Wall Mart every day."
I can tell you've put a lot of thought into this. So I don't mean to burst any bubbles, but there's just one problem with your theory: China does not accept U.S. dollars for their goods.
They may very well convert their dollars into Yuan and buy Chinese products. But as I covered elsewhere in this thread, at some point, those dollars are coming home, unless they're being used for decoration.
It can go through as many hands as you like. It may even take twenty years. But eventually they must return.
"a Hindu will accept a 5% wage increase in exchange for your 100% wage decrease."
Well, now you're just making numbers up. Fictious numbers do not make a persuasive argument.
"american wages will stagnate while corporate profits will go up. this means the social division of the GDP will become more unequal."
This has been the case over the past few years, probably for other factors. But protectionists have been making these arguments for decades, all while real wages made meteoric rises in all income quintiles.
Sorry, the facts just don't support your hypothesis.
"i'm sure there are some countries of the 3rd world which will tell you about the benefits of debt exceeding their GDP, because they had a fiscal crisis and their currency got grilled."
I'm not even going to touch this one...Not sure how this relates at all.
"so if the REAL value of the paper dollars they have received for their products is falling, didn't they, like, work for you for free?"
No -- It's only falling in relation to us. In relation to them, their currency is worth more against the American dollar. They can buy more American goods with the same amount of their own currency. Through this process, American goods because cheaper (and more attractive). Thus, our exports rise, and our employment increases to keep up.
"they wont. Chinese exports will increase."
Oh no. Not this again. Funny, you think there would have been a headline or two -- 'China Rules Trade -- Exports From All Other Countries Cease.'
You're a decade behind anyway, buddy. China was so the threat of the nineties.
- James
Why is it MY job, and MY education, and MY 'qualified' work when these topics come up? Trade has, and always will be, vastly beneficial for the majority of users. Here are the REAL economic results of outsourcing:
1. Hundreds of desparately poor Indians now have jobs and can actually live.
2. Companies can now produce software for less.
3. Cheaper software benefits the consumer.
4. Consumers, now with more money in their pocket, can buy other things or save/invest in other businesses.
5. Other businesses expand and can now hire more workers (potentially even yourselves)
But it's far easier to talk about how many jobs are 'lost', rather than how many jobs have been created. But programmers would rather fret about being unemployed for a few months. Nevermind the Indians who now have enough money to live a decent life. We are global citizens, shouldn't we be concerned for the needs of the many, regardless of their nationality?
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
May be hard to the point of impossibility. Language patterns are quite set by adulthood and very, very hard to change. That's why you'll meet someone who has lived in the US for 25 years, is flunt in English, speaks it primarily, but still has an accent. It's just a hard thing to unlearn, our brains literaly loose the language plasticity they have at birth.
Depends on what consumers are willing to put up with and how good a job they can do training people. Thus far, my experience has been universally negative. One of my credit card providers switched over. I got a call, and literally couldn't understand anything other than my name and the name of the company. That's really bad given that there are a high concentrations of Indians where I work and I'm good with the accent.
I've also pointed out bigger reasons why the higher level stuff will fail at outsourceing in other receant posts.
Basically, I predict that there will be some success. Some grunt code work and the like will be successfully outsourced and money will be save without a sacrafice in quality. However I predict that companies that try it full bore will get bitten in the ass when quality becomes unacceptable and people go elswhere.
gary.bauer@mail.amvalues.org
Good riddance to the American computer industry. It sucked as I was saving their butts. It sucks now that they no longer want their butts saved. So let 'em swing high!
/. don't seem so important anymore. Pity, huh?)
I'm one of a growing number of the "highly educated workers" that Scott Kirwin, founder of IT Professionals Association of America (sic), referred to when he noted, "The problem is not a lack of highly educated workers. The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S."
So Scott's the founder, huh?
I say let the lot of 'em fix their own g**d&mn computers, if they're able. None of them will get any further help from me.
(Suddenly karma points on
This is what happens when corporations are allowed to grow to a size that the individual becomes unimportant. These transnational corporations have become immortal monsters with there own survival is the only reason for being.
Bigger is not better. Large should always be regarded with suspicion. Please take a moment to examine this. If your needs are dependent on a large corporation you should re-evaluate your needs. The very people who built up the corporations are now cheaply replaceable so it will be done, hey its' good for the bottom line. Forget what you were promised, you're screwed and if you singed a NDA you might not even be able to get another job in your field (if there are any!)
So like sheep (freshly fleeced sheep at that) you can line up at the next WorldCom, Enron or Dell Support Center or you can break free and join the revolution. If you have to be a number be number 1.
Or; America is irrelevant. You no longer matter. You have started to use force to feed your appetite for foreign oil, food, whatever. Your biggest corporations are checking out and finding better places for its labour and its headquarters (Remember Tyco?) Your presidents come in Cracker Jack boxes. Your education level is going down. As soon as your bank accounts and your credit has been drained you WILL be the third world. (Scary isn't it?)
The beef industry. It's what's for dinner.
'nuff said.
In 20 years, only managers will have jobs in the US, everyone else will work at Wallmart. Everything will be outsourced to India. Unfortunately for the Indians, they'll demand higher salleries so their jobs will be outsourced to low paid, highly educated people in china who won't demand higher pay out of fear of getting a bullet through the skull.
I notice that this wired article on outsourcing was duplicated in slashdot.
Why not make a new symbol for outsourcing - then the articles can be monitored more closely, and not duplicated.
Two suggestions for a symbol:
1 a minimap of the world to indicate the global nature of the trade
2 a picture of a luddite smashing up a piece of equipment.
Since there will soon be no work, at least we can all spend our time categorising the chit-chat.
Any other symbol suggestions?
think about it. If outsourcing trends continue as they are now including in fields other than the current business sectors it heavily affects now, the entire country will inevitably be a bunch of international business that don't really do any work, but just rake in the money that everyone else earns for them. I'd shudder to think that the only viable college degree in the future will be some form of business administration. The entire US will be full of managers managing other managers while all the foreign countries provide us with our real revenue.
Even though i'm from India and work in a call center theres a correction to a common myth.Its not just IT jobs that are being outsourced to India but a lot of others like telemarketing ,backoffice,insurance,data entry.
Regarding the telemarketing issue it creates an escape route for the big firms because it would actually be the indian company that would come under fire in case of a screw up and not the american firm.
Even though this post would work against outsourcing, i thought id just let the tech crow know.And the actual point again comes down to that big firms WANT to outsource cause its more money for them(in terms of cheap labour) and legal protection.
Lord of the Binges.
Ha!
hehe,
I'd forgotten realising it was a visited link until I read you mail.
That's where all our products, developed here in Europe, go to die!
Whenever we end of life a product it goes to India to.. err.. die basicly.
Good on India.. don't think they have the education system to match developers here in Europe.
Of course, Kerry's specifically mentioned his opposition to outsourcing in the past...
That's not necessarily a point in his favor. The question is what he wants to do about it. If solution is to close off our borders and make us internationally unfriendly, then it's a point against him. We need a measured response to problems, not a "cut it off at the knees" response.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Over the next five years, most people will realize the huge drawbacks to outsourcing: mismatch between expectation and result, longer development cycles, lack of innovative design. Unfortunately, the most efficient programmers (i.e the U.S.) will only have 25% of the market and the most innovative programmers (i.e. the U.S. again) will only have 5% of the market (but have the fattest margins). The cheapest and mediocre programmers (i.e. India) will have 70% of the market. Why? Because cheap matters more than anything else. It's not the only thing that matters, but it is the most important thing.
another commercial about "quality" of indian "programmers"
I have been working with these morons for years.
They cry for help whether it's a "no internet" problem or "NullPointerException" they absolutely have no clue how to solve.
Local indians lying in their resumes and in india they are lying about quality.
It's all about big companies getting big margins by selling crap, they are ordering these stories in the media.
a) Before the colonials (that is, Brits, Portuguese, French and Dutch) came, we were actually a thriving center of cultural and financial excellence. Want to take a guess why that was so?
b) I keep pointing this out, but for CENTURIES, calligraphy experts in my hometown Hyderabad have been doing projects originally from the Middle East, making it one of the leading centers of Islamic excellence until the Second World War (still is, in a broad general sense, but the Middle East now has more cash). Calligraphy then, computing/call center ops now... what's the difference?
More than mere navel gazing.
The article is the sameposted under "a Thoughtful look at Indian Outsourcing". Is revelent tech material in short supply....go back and revisit the 5 stories I submitted that were rejected.
Because somehow they ALL think they can outsource and destroy the middle class, yet SOMEONE is going to continue to pay American Prices for their products?
Years back I heard Lester Thoroeau from MIT talk about the US changing to a service economy, and how this was supposed to be a good thing. IMHO, you need to look at some version of Maslo's hierarchy of needs:
Food on the table...
A roof over my head, and heat in the Winter...
Clothing on my back, especially in the Winter...
(Can you tell I live in the Northeast?)
My effective income has been in decline since the end of dot-com. No salary reductions, but it's been stable while my health care rises terribly and all of my other costs rise, thankfully less quickly. I'm cutting back - there isn't much choice.
Toy purchases are the first to go. My 'main' desktop is still an old K6-3, nothing shiny and new from Intel or AMD. My TV is 20+ years old.
Services are next - I can do it, myself.
IMHO, a 'Service Economy' is a horribly brittle thing, and will fall apart when things get rough, because people fall back to the basics - food, shelter, and clothing.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I know enough money grubbing executive type golf jockeys that are perfectly happy with the US's
"economic recovery" and they don't want it to change. They are making more money hiring in third world countries, but getting less quality in the product. They don't care about the quality because that isn't what makes money anymore. What makes money is beating the competition to the cheap labor, and that is what is happening. You think IBM is so great? Go google for the new plant they are "beating" the competition to in China.
India: If you think you are exempt from this dynamic you are wrong. My advice to you would be to steal all the office supplies you can while you still have the chance. Your false sense of worth will be leaving soon when "US Corp" figures out how to get a 10 year old korean hooker to type WinBeginPaint() for the price of a stapler and a hummer. Good luck Apu.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
India, like Africa, is founded on a deep and utterly degrading exploitation that Western Europe has never experienced. The professional classes there see it every day, wallow in it, and turn their eyes away from it. We can compete with the Indians as long as we are willing to drive wages for those below us down to $100 per year, watch them live and die in squalor, and in general, reengineer our society back to levels of exploitation never before considered tolerable in any Christian country anywhere.
Gentlemen, I have been there. I have stepped over dead bodies in the streets of Calcutta and Chittagong. I have seen women whoring themseves to pay off their husbands' debts of as little as $200 to $300. I have seen women bought and sold over there for $100, and happy to BE sold when they were released from sexual bondage with a $500 dollar bonus. I have seen children of four and five who were deliberately mutilated by removing fingers, hands, eyes, and feet, to make them more "attractive" as beggars.
Look at the Indian programmer next to you. They all know this. They have walked past these children each day. They know this happens, and they have done and will do nothing about it. They are Hindu and Muslim, Jains and Sikhs, Brahmins and Untouchables (yes, they still exist and are still untouchable!) and their cultures accept poverty, squalor, and exploitation as a natural part of life.
This is not Japan, a first world monoculture in which everyone is treated the same and there is no one to exploit. This is the third world, with a thin veneer of civilization over an inflamed suppurating wound of humanity. No unemployment pay. No social security. No safety net. No doctor. No lawyer. No reading. No writing. No clean water. No clean water or soil standards. Gentlemen, India makes Mexico look like a worker's paradise.
The US can maintain high productivity by investing in education and infrastructure.
India can do the same. And, formal education tends to be out-of-touch with what employers want anyhow. Many Phd's are unemployed also.
Table-ized A.I.
My Dell phone call from two weeks ago: (note: My company has a three year next-day service contract with Dell -- they are no longer supposed to be sending the Commercial Clients to India yet somehow I wound up there)
[Indian accent]: "Thank you so much for calling Dell support my name is Josh how may I assist you with your problem today?"
[Upstate NY accent]: "Yes, this is Timothy [xxx] from [xxx], I have a Dell here with a bad power supply, I need to get a replacement sent to me. The service tag is [xxx]."
[Indian accent]: "Yes sir, thank you so much. Let me pull up your information sir. Ah yes sir I have it here. Tell me Sir what is your name?"
[Upstate NY accent]: "I already told you, my name is Timothy [xxx]. I'm listed on the account as the contact."
[Indian accent]: "Ah yes sir, thank you so much for giving me that information. Sir I need to understand your address."
[Upstate NY accent]: "It's [xxx]."
[Indian accent]: "Ah yes sir, thank you so much for giving me that information. Sir I need to understand your telephone number."
[Upstate NY accent]: "*sigh* This is all listed on the account. It's [xxx]."
[Indian accent]: "Ah yes sir, thank you so much for giving me that information. This is a Dell Optiplex correct sir?"
[Upstate NY accent]: "That's correct."
[Indian accent]: "Ah yes sir, thank you so much for giving me that information. How may I assist you with your problem today?"
[Upstate NY accent]: "Like I said, this unit has a dead power supply and I need to have a replacement sent out. We have a service agreement."
[Indian accent]: "Ah yes sir, I am understanding that you have such agreement. It expires in March 2005."
[Upstate NY accent]: "That's right, now can we make this happen?"
[Indian accent]: "Yes sir, we will do that. I need you to insert your Dell resource CD so we can run system diagnostics to confirm the problem."
[Upstate NY accent]: "Umm... the power supply is dead. I know what the problem is."
[Indian accent]: "Yes sir I am understanding that you think the problem is that, but I need you to insert your Dell resources cd so we can run diagnostic to confirm the problem."
[Upstate NY accent]: "Your not listening to me. The power supply is dead. I can't turn the unit on."
[Indian accent]: "Yes yes, I am understanding your problem, but we need to follow procedure. Please insert your Dell resources CD so we can run diagnostic to confirm the problem."
[Upstate NY accent]: "I can't open the CD-ROM drawer because the computer has no power. What part of that can't you understand?"
[Indian accent]: "Yes sir, I am understanding that the computer has no power. Is the computer plugged in to the wall outlet sir?"
[Upstate NY accent -- getting louder by the minute]: "You are not listening to me. The power supply is dead. That means it's not working. I can't turn the damn thing on -- please set up the service call for me."
[Indian accent]: "Yes sir I am understanding that you think that is problem, but we need to confirm it."
[Upstate NY accent]: "Alright this is going no where. Let me talk to your supervisor."
[Indian accent]: "No no sir, I can help you with this problem. Please insert your Dell Resource CD into the CD-ROM drive so we can run diagnostic to confirm the problem."
[Upstate NY accent - loud enough that the entire office can hear me]: "Ya know what? Fuck off. That's an American insult if they didn't teach you that in training."
[Indian accent]: "Yes sir, I am understanding your problem. Please insert the Dell resourc...."
[sound of phone slamming onto receiver]
[sound of me walking around the office threate
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
This whole position of X vs. Y is only valid if, in fact, X and Y are completely stationary objects.
... lets say ... ooh ... Kuala Lumpur ... and find themselves work, and live quite happily.
Fact is, *thousands, if not hundreds of thousands* of Indians have moved to the United States and other nations, abroad, to live and work. This is a huge resource drain for India.
There is no reason on Gods Green Earth today why Americans, if there's no 'jobs' in their local markets, can't move somewhere else
Its only due to the fact that both sides of the fence decide not to climb the fence that there is any fence at all...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Comparative Advantage often assumes that entire countries specialize in something. However, most populations are very diverse. Thus, if a person is good at A but bad at B, yet his/her country's specialization is in B, then an A-expert is hosed and is being wasted. Pure capitalism would allow such a person to become a citizen of the country specializing in A. But that does not readily happen today.
Table-ized A.I.
like all organisms will eventually ballance itself out. That's what is happening here.
;P
There are a number of facets to this.
According to some financial analysts, the US dollar has been over-valued for decades http://www.itulip.com/dollar.htm. The introduction of the Euro has started to bring it back to normality, but there is more adjustment to be done. The over-valued dollar has helped to fuel this process (making it cheaper to buy the overseas labour than employ it locally).
People in India (as a developing country) earn less money and have poorer living conditions when compared to the western world. Their cheaper labour combined with a lower currency value makes it even more attractive to import that labour. And people in India have already begun to complain about their IT work being exported to even cheaper countries like Bangladesh http://www.bitc-bd.org/.
Over time I think the living conditions in places like the USA, Europe and Australia will drop while the living conditions in asian and south east asian countries will improve. Eventually it will ballance to a point where it's unprofitable to outsource to those countries any more. But by that time a lot of people in the western countries won't be much better off than people in the developing countries.
Eventually the masses of people in the western world will become 3rd world labour in their own countries. The US, Europe and Australia already have a substantial number of working poor (and I think we can expect a lot more of that). The only people that will profit out of this in the long term are the top 1% financial earners while a great many of the middle classes become lower class.
It's all part of ballancing out the global economy. Just like when New Zealanders come to Australia, the average IQ of both countries goes down.
To know that you know what you know, and that you do not know what you do not know, that is true wisdom. --Scooby Doo
It's funny how we want this great "global economy" when it works for us. However, the very second it works to the others' advantage, suddenly it's a bad thing. Fruit, steel, lumber, it's all out there.
Even in the crazy world of politicians, I'm not sure somebody who wanted to do that could even get so far in the primaries...but then I'm an optimist. From what I hear he wants to keep outsourcing possible, but make it inadvisable, financially, to overdo it. By rewarding use of domestic labor with tax breaks, or by taking some away for use of foreign labor. (Don't they get enough breaks already?)
I'm not sure what planet you live on, but reading your writing it's obviously not this one. My comment about Russia and France was an extreme case but point was that we are Heading there, which you yourself valided by pointing out that the disparity is greater now than it was 5 or 10 years ago. BTW now something like 90% of the wealth is controlled by less than 10% of the people. Thats fairly extreme. Also all of the go back to school blah blah sounds nice, but in the real world when you have a family and children it's just not possible to drop everything and go back to school, let alone find a way to pay for it.
You make alot of assumptions about things you obviusly know very little about. You mention finding all these jobs better suited to my education or some such drivel. I'll let you in on a little secret, THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE ALMOST 6% AND THE ONLY REASON IT"S GONE DOWN OVER THE LAST 6 MONTHS IS THAT A MILLION OR SO PEOPLE SIMPLY GAVE UP LOOKING FOR WORK.
There are'nt alot of jobs period. BTW even if I were to go back to school and get more education, It would still be hard to find a job because they usually want experience as well as education.
I don't know whether you are a Demo or a Republican, but you mainly come across like an asshole.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
The Hindu reported some statistics on India outsourcing giving a good perspective on how outsourcing to India givings savings in US. Read Outsourcing IT? These are the real numbers... to get insight into the economics behind outsourcing.
Yes, but India's movies suck. Big time. I mean they are crap. Worthless. Shit. I would rather vomit up puppies spiked with large metal spikes, then have to watch any fucking Indian movie ever again.
Puppies, with spikes driven through their skull and abdomen. Swallowed down my throat. It's so much easier than watching a fucking Indian musical.
I'm gonna need some Bactine.
More than 50% of my company's engineering team is now H1b. The city of San Francisco proudly announced, yesterday, that it had received a $1.25M grant from some federal agency. Its purpose: SPECIFICALLY to provide retraining for current H1b workers whose skills are no longer needed by their employers.
"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.
It frees up Americans to "do other things" -- such as what? Pick cotton? Flip burgers?? These minimum wage jobs help the economy grow how??
Another exchange that sums up the problem:
"But isn't part of this country's vitality its ability to make these kinds of changes?" I counter. "We've done it before - going from farm to factory, from factory to knowledge work, and from knowledge work to whatever's next."
[Senator Turner] looks at me. Then she says, "I'd like to know where you go from knowledge."
Apparently, one goes back to general labour (farm work or flipping burgers). Except those jobs are already overflowing with illegal aliens. So what is an unemployed citizen to do??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
That's unfortunately one of the biggest worries that nobody seems to pay attention to. India and Pakistan have huge concentrations of troops on the Kashmir border, and have come minutes from full-scale confrontation dozens of times. I suspect that, while we have armed Pakistan quite well with F-16's, the Indian Air Force will rapidly sweep them aside with nothing more than numbers. Indian ground forces seriously outnumber their Pakistani counterparts as well. The end result will be a route of Pakistani forces on land, perhaps the threatening or encirclement of Karachi. Will Musharraf push the button? Almost certainly. The biggest question would be how long he would wait. Paraphrasing a cold war phrase, would the Pakistanis "prefer red to dead?" Any nuclear exchange will kill millions, and instantly devastate American companies that have disgorged their entire R&D and customer service departments to this region of the world. How well would HP function given the total breakdown of society and basic services in India and Pakistan?
Is Wired part owned by the Indian Lobbyists Association or what?
You mean Pakistan, Libya, Iran and North Korea.....the band of brothers! You all are the bung-hole of planet earth!
Personally, there are so many people in this world I wish they did make abortion mandatory.
In the meantime, the minimum wage has gone from $3.00/hr (roughly) to $5.50/hr, for a significant net drop.
The median family income has been sitting in the low $30k's for at least 5-10 years, with significant inflation in the meantime.
I call bullshit.
Unless you are a salesman, executive, or "Knowledge Worker" your real income has held steady or dropped in the past decade or three, and with outsourcing only the first two groups are still growing.
Pretty soon, the only people with significant money will be the salesmen selling to executives and salesmen, because in India you can have a US middle class standard of living for 1/10th the price.
Forget diamonds, copyright is forever.
Everything you mention above is still alive and well in the US. Perhaps not in the form you're thinking, but definitely alive and well. And guess what? Agriculture, manufacturing and IT have all overlapped in certain parts of the business process. Being an admin for a biotech company, I can tell you first hand that all three are pervasive in this industry.
The fact of the matter is, the employment in U.S. is not really dictated by free market -- because it's so hard to start a company and compete with established business. As a result, the big companies can do whatever they want without feeling the consequences right away. I don't know how else to explain how they can pay those huge salaries to the top level management and CEO and still be in business. They can afford to outsource, even if in the end it may or may not be worth it. Meanwhile, U.S. programmers who are out of job are losing their skills.
So I say, let's put in some protection laws. I'm really tired of pro-outsourcers talking about how globalization will ultimately benefit us -- because it won't, the situation now is different. In the past you could make a case (which I'm not sure is so valid) that the people losing manufacturing jobs can be retrained to do IT and get higher wages. But there is really no other industry outside IT we could go to other than low-level service jobs. And neither biotech or nanotech or anything else that's supposed to be 'the next big thing' can employ this many people. For one thing, not everyone has the brainpower to do research. This is really the end of the road, unless you can jump into sales or management.
Capitalism is inherently about competition, and in competition, sombody ultimately looses. The only way to fix that is to devise a system where everyone wins
The problem is, if that system designed to make everyone win fails, everyone looses, due to someone else's mistake.
No data, no cry
The same line of thought holds true inside the US. The folks outside the big cities think that people in the cities make more than them. We do, but we spend more to live here. Someone making $80,000 in someplace like San Francisco (where I live) is probably less well off than someone making $50,000 in most of the US.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
And Econ 101 told me that.
Trade is a Win-Win scenario for those involved in the trade. The problem is that fewer people in the U.S. are involved in the trade, and the ones that are have improved their skills at protecting the profits. The real problem if the concentration of wealth, which takes money out of the trade cycle, which is a loss for everyone but those accumulating the wealth.
Forget diamonds, copyright is forever.
I've noticed that one thing never changes, and that is women always want to buy stuff. When my job gets outsourced here in the UK, I'm going to start selling stuff to women....they can't get enough of it! As an aside, two call centres have just been relocated back to the UK from India due to poor performance. It swings both ways I guess.
>The main issue is that rewards will flow to those who have the discipline to wait for rewards, not those who choose to have them today. It's simply a case of short-term vs. long-term and we're on the wrong side of the equation here. If you think you're getting bit in the ass now, just wait a few years when the chickens finally come home to roost.
P almiter/Handout/Articles/Elkind-Lerach-King-Dead.h tm
Unfortunately, there is a bastard you need to blame for everything: http://www.wfu.edu/users/palmitar/Courses/SecReg-
I'd say that it was him who shifted the mentality of the upper management of all companies from the long-term to the "quarter ahead".
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
What is this "progress" of which you speak, my friend?
Outsourcing, for instance, is progress. Outsourcing represents progress for capital. Capital, having found a new lever to maximize returns, now sends American jobs to India. By any rational measure, that is progress -- for capitalists.
But social progress for Americans it definitely is not. What is in America's larger interest here? Greater wealth for its tiny number of investors? Or the expansion of its middle class even at the expense of greater wealth for a few?
On these critical questions, capital is answering with a resounding, Screw you all! I'm off to India! But no sane society can accept such a verdict from its elite.
The time is nigh for those of you who have cast your lot with right wing politicians and the debased libertarianism of Wired to rethink your mistakes. You had your fun in the 90s pretending the market would roar forever, and you swallowed load after load from the likes of Gilder and Friedman. Well, it didn't; it won't again like that in your lifetime; that dream is over. You've been had. Worse, now you are facing irrelevance. You are being replaced, and your erstwhile prophets are telling you it's inevitable.
So! It's time to wake up and ask: how can you afford your right wing lifestyle when you're flipping burgers? You are at a crossroads, and the ethos of unbridled greed has sold you out, so now what will you do? There is an election coming; think about it.
I think we just found a good place for North Korea to test their nuclear abilities.
"World-wide economy does not mean it's a smart idea to cut your own country's throat."
Yeah Right. I think you better know what it means.
World-wide economy means it's a smart idea to cut another country's throat.
"This is not the fabric mills. This is not the Iron mills, and this is not the fucking auto industry. Those were blue collar labor. While it is a fucking crime that those jobs went overseas, those were not really middle class jobs. I have never heard of a steel worker that didn't have 25 years Tenure that made the equivalent of $65K/year in todays dollars."
SO ????
I am confused. What about folks who lost their blue collar jobs? Do you have no sympathy for them?
"I'm not a man of action, I'm a man of vision"
Talk about megalomania. Your a man full of shit and high opinions about yourself. Get real piss-boy, your job is gone and never coming back.
Nature abhors a vacuum (apparently except the one between our president's ears.) Our current political system is tuned to give big business anything it wants, and what it wants is cheaper labor. Add the magic of global communication and suddenly you can find great talent in countries whose labor costs looks to us more like fast food service.
What they don't say or don't get is that this is an unsustainable ecology.
For the last 150 years, America has been hard at work building an economic vacuum outside it's borders. We built through trade control, an artificially high wall to keep wealth and resources inside our borders, in effect a dramatic pressure differential. During the 1980s the seal on that vacuum was broken by providing support for, and even encouraging the globalization of American corporations. Once these businesses began to establish themselves beyond the reach of American government, they began to lose any sense of accountability to the country which spawned them, and the standard pressures of business dictated that they use foreign resources to compete in a global market.
Since then, such programs as Nafta have made the breach in our economic system huge. The flow of wealth out of our country in now an exploding torrent. This is simple thermodynamics. Without sufficiently strong barrier to create an artificially high standard of living for our populace, the tendency is for our wealth to rush out into the world. Combine a tremendous trade imbalance with vanishing wage opportunity, manufacturing, then IP production, and finally services, and wealth go only go one way. This process will repeat itself at every level... India is now outsourcing to China, because it is cheaper for Indian business men to use even cheaper Chinese labor, than to utilize their own countrymen. So a cascade of wealth gushes from our shores leaving behind an American economy that'll ultimately reach equilibrium with the wealth in the world.
This is the scary part. People used to having the highest standard of living on the planet are about to discover that the distance in quality of life between themselves and a Ethiopian goat herder is about to shrink dramatically. In fact, this terrible problem our nation currently has with obesity, is almost certainly about to be a problem of the past. The wonder of Walmart only works as long as you have a realtively wealthy middle class to support the economics of tremendous consumption. When the masses are reduced to minimum wage incomes...
1. People can't make a living wage for themselves let alone their families...
2. People are forced to use wellfare to supplement their income for basic needs, and services...
3. The tax base for the Government collapses...
4. Wellfare vanishes, leaving the entire population without critical resources, and services...
5. The economy implodes. Deflation, depression, mass riots, revolution...
6. Here's the biggie... The world economy as we now know it collapses. Without the economic engine (America) powering tremendous economic flow through other nations... business falls to the dance between western nations and the new economic engine (China), and China just isn't built to provide (or is even interested in building) the kind of broad economic growth worldwide that America has over the last half of the twentieth century. American then begins to hemmorhage it's talent to Europe, and the Far East. Leaving it a third world nation not unlike Ireland before the tech boom.
The last nail in the coffin, is that the wealth as it flows from the U.S. is being concentrated into the hands of a very few. When this process is complete, a significant amount of the world's wealth will lay in the hands of a very tiny group. Much more wealth, much more concentrated than it is even now. The kind of wealth the moves countries, and controls governments. We can expect that the standard of living for the typical world citizen will be very low. We can expect that Americans will share that fate. We can
Yes, some nice totalitarian place like China or even better Burma, where we don't have to worry about wages because we can just decide by law that this isn't a problem. China might have a partial free economy, but they still have de facto slave labor any time they want it; and Burma doesn't even pretend. Just teach them how to program, and nobody can go lower, anywhere, ever. "Will code for food" is exactly what we're talking about, maybe even "Will code to stay alive".
This is the reason why nobody is even thinking about touching the Burmese government, a really, really ugly piece of work that is right up there with the so-called "Axis of Evil" members: The country is too important for the world economy. When Iraq is finally a happy democracy, the Iranian women wear hot pants on the streets of Teheran, and North Korea's baseball league is beating the crap out of Japan's, Burmas children will still be making our footballs and sneakers sixteen hours a day.
Well, you may go and get a company based on a carribean island, like Accenture. They in turn have coding factories in India and the Phillipines. Of course there are other consultancies with a true US base who still run their own off-shore development centres. If IBM, for example, screw you around then you can sue them even though the software may be a combination of open source and outsourced code.
Unlike most countries, US schools are not subsidized. US is becoming more capitalistic by the day and privatizing schools is just one thing.
(* actually US schools are still subsidized a bit. Otherwise, tuition would be even higher. You'll start seeing this with truly private schools, as called for by capitalism).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Subj is also in a process of being killed.
I live in Oregon, in Portland that is considered a "Rose city".
Guess what - 99% percent of roses that are sold in Oregon are shipped by plane from South America.
Chilean wines are flexing muscles and pushing locals out of the market.
And this happens with pretty much everything.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
But I'd prefer to have them shipped overseas.
;-)
Why not, if we do ship nuclear waste there?
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Its called Factory Refurbishing. A mechanic is to expensive so, for example instead of replacing brushes on a starter motor, they send the unit back and get a new one. Nobody outside the factory has any idea of the electrics now and some important subsystems like the EMU aren't designed for anyone to repair them. The end result is that the mechanic is getting dumber (job is being downgraded) whilst the cost of repair increases.
Modern software is designed with resuse in mind.
Do not invent the wheel.
If you are trying to re-invent it the one that is completely out of toucvh is you, not your Indian counterparts.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
As long as geeks do not understand that they are lost.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"Hullo... my name is Apu..er...Paul. How may I be helping you?"
Not only is this bad for American companies to do to the American workforce, these people on the other end have no more expretise, and sometimes less.
I spent an hour on the phone yesterday attempting to explain to them my problem with their company's web site. I asked to speak with this person's supervisor and I was put on hold for over 20 minutes and the same person came back attempting to disguise their voice.
I had to start laughing at them. Then I wrote a nice long scathing letter to General Electric on how they treat their customers.
"I'm not ashamed I can't function in society like I'm supposed to." - Paul Westerberg
You obviously know nothing about software design in which whole components are treated as building blocks of a Lego set.
Most Western programmers would like to think they are artists or craftsmen, the problem is that software development more and more requires the equivalent of bricklaying and plumbing skills: identify the problem and then apply a known pattern that solves that problem.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Funnily enough economies will revolve around your local community.
Also small companies (which make most of the economic output in most countries) can't outsource due to technical or economical constraints. Contracting for them will be the future of IT people wishing to remain in the field.
And eventually all should even out, so the best people in the IT field (either in India, China, SouthAfrica or the US) will do the work since salaries would be in a similar level.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
People in the US will intially become unemployed. Some, not all of you, don't be silly.
That means less purchasing power, economic slowdown, trade deficit.
Salaries by necessity go lower. Your currency devalues.
Then there is a point in which you become cheap enough to be worth to invest again in the US.
Painful? Yes, but frankly some evening out is necessary when you realize how much overpaid people in western countries are.
The wasteful SUVs, gadgetery, cheap air travel, cheap credit can't be artificially provided, you will not starve but will need to become more sensible about your spending habits, which is a good think in my book, since that will allow you to take a lower salary and thus become more competitive in the global market.
It is not going to be fun, but frankly better understand the situation and prepare for it that moan and advocate for supporting inneficient industries and companies only because they are base in your own country.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Funny.
India needs help with construction, sanitation, education, etc.
Companies providing stuff in those field may prosper. And also leisure, do not forget leisure. The more affluent they become, the more time they will have for leisure.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Having been on both sides of outsourcing (working in India on jobs that were outsourced and then having worked "onshore" on "onsite" as a permanent employee with software organizations), AND being a one-time failed business owner who tried to work his way around outsourcing, here are few things I would like to mention: 1. Outsourcing revolves solely around money. Any organization in the west, relies on outsourcing only as a means of reducing cost. This viewpoint may attract a lot of flak, but thats the bottomline. 2. Having outsourced, or wooing the employeers/stakeholders about outsourcing, the management then espouses other "benefits" - the large english speaking skill pool, low cost, high degree of enthusiasm, deep processes, etc. 3. Once outsourced, the problems begin to crop up: + They don't understand the overall picture. Most times they are not even bothered about the overall picture. + "Isolated" skills - Once you find the programmers/team members of your choice (and I must say, its a tedious process getting your choice from the "large pool"), you realize they don't know anything beyond their programming language/platform + Non-existent design skills - as pointed by someone else, either the design skills don't exist or they try to get around by re-using/adapting stuff available by few searches on google. + Unrealistic estimates - I have yet to come across a single venture where outsourced business units managed to meet the committed deadlines. Sure things go wrong, but hey, whatever did happen to keeping adequate buffers and/or checks and balances to inform what's going wrong or went wrong? + Tedious process - I love the detailed documents they keep and maintain regularly. I love the weekly reports I got. But the entire process is so blooming disjointed, one has to trudge through a heap of documents before tracing anything. + Last minute reporting - Heaven forbid if you have your timelines dependent on release (say, a roadshow/conference). Everything will be "on schedule" till last week, when suddenly you'll find 40% of stuff is buggy, another 15% incomplete Now from their perspective: + Hungry for projects - No matter what anyone says, getting a project is not easy. There's fierce competition driving down prices and they go to any extent to get the project. Which is good in a sense, but this also leads to classical overcommitting. + Customer apathy - most times, the customers simply want a piece of work done. Attempts to become a part of the process, or relate to the process/project are usually ignored, or declined politely.This apathy finally results in being concerned with just delivering. + Cultural and other differences: The client being the prime stakeholder, knows exactly what he/she wants. However, no matter how deep and detailed the requirements documents are, it is very difficult to convey the need. A true match is reached only by following an iterative process, which, funnily, most customers are averse to doing in an outsourcing model (no matter if they used to follow that in house)! + Customers concerned with just delivery - I've been witness to several customers who, after outsourcing, believe the unwanted baby is no longer their problem. Let the outsourced company handle it - we just want the end result. Hordes of emails asking more information, help, advice, comment are ignored, or delayed. While the outsourced team is waiting for a response, the clock keeps ticking and the deadlines keep looming. Caught between a rock and a hard place, they implement whatever they know, however they know. + IT skills and courses may teach you a certain skill, but they don't imbibe in you the principles that make a good design. Its something to learn yourself, or pick up from analyzing, evaluating other designs. Which takes time. But sadly, the best pool of programmers with such skills chooses to migrate to greener pasters (read USA). Besides, most customers in outsourcing, still have the labour market perspective - define the job yourself, let the outsourced chaps complete it. While the economics will kee
http://efil.blogspot.com/
We are clinging to an expired paradigm. Like purveyors of old LED calculators.
You see, we were raised in an era where we went to school, paid for and took courses in college, just to make us valuable to Corporations.
There's the rub! Valuable to Corporations... not to People!
Corporations can outsource... Easily. So, at the stroke of a pen, all your preparations and polishing to make yourself look sweet to the corporate eye is gone.
About five years ago when the crunch hit the Aerospace industry, I had a guy come to me and ask me if I needed my trees trimmed. He gave me a quote of $200. I looked at the trees. Maybe two days work for me to do it. Well, in the past, I had a job. For a corporation. They seemed to pay me well, but the problem is they exacted just about all my time, leaving me just enough time to eat, sleep, shit, and wake up the next day for the next day's efforts. All continuously supervised and evaluated. I started thinking how many hours I would have to work to earn that $200 . Well, at $20/hour, maybe 10 hours? NO. More like 25 hours. Tax. And keeping all that paperwork associated with tax, being an unpaid accountant keeping track of everything lest I fail to take deductions I am entitled to yet fail to claim. Maybe this guy is onto something. He gets ME to pay the tax on my pay, then he just takes pure clean cash, after I have paid all the tax on it.
Ok. I get the idea. Instead of designing satellite commlinks for aerospace corporations, I would probably do just as good diagnosing malfunctions on car electronics. I have all the equipment and skills to do so. Especially nice is that I have all the computer tools, such as C++ compilers which I can use to make me some really nice OBD-II parsers, and digital storage oscilloscopes, which when coupled to the appropriate transducers will tell me loads about engine component timings and operation. But the best thing is I will be working for another person, not under a corporation. He will pay me in cash. Its not that big of thing if I just get me a big SUV and load all my tools in it and drive to the job.
I flat do not want to run a big business. I just wanna provide for family and keep food on the table.
And I want to do my technical stuff. I am really good at it. Paperwork bores me to no friggen end. And I am not good at it at all.
The reason I mention the SUV bit, is I have a guy in my automotive classes at College, and he is doing this on the side, to the point he is quitting his "company" job because his moonlighting is so lucrative. That is exactly what he does. He has an SUV he fixed up, and he simply drives to customer houses and works on their cars. He only works on a couple types of car, and you have to know him quite well to get him. His time, through the business, is about $150 an hour, but if you know him, you can get his undivided attention to your problem, at your house, at night, for less than half that rate.
I have seen how he does this. No business per se. No advertising. No employees. No buildings. No hassles. He just likes to work on cars. And knows just one make through and through. He has connections through the grapevines which keep him stocked with all the diagnostic codes and mods for the engines which he can pull off as easily as we do computer patches.
I flat do not want any employees. Nor do I want a building. A good-sized "garden shed" in my back yard should be sufficient for anything I can imagine. I know what my thing is, my target is now to build skills where I am useful to People, and they will pay me to do my thing for them.
If they can get me alone a helluva lot cheaper than if I came to them via a business operation, and I do a good job, there oughta be enough people out there to keep me busy.
I had one guy tell me he works quite happily for five dollars an hour, provided he is paid in pre-1964 silver coins.
We all know what
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
A Mexican from here.
It really surprises me that an Indian woudl consider self reliance an antifote to became like Mexico or Colombia (???) when oit comes to outsourcing.
Mexico had what we used to call a "mixed economy" in which local privately owned companies always existed, but they were protected from foreign competition (they were local companies after all, they should be protected, right?).
The only thing that happened is that those companies never had an incentive to compete and improve their production processes.
When competition became unavoidable many industries collapsed (toy industry, sugar, coffee) and funnily enough what came to the rescue was manufacturing of goods outsourced from other places.
The standard of living in Mexico raised as a consequence, as it has raised in any country that opens to foreign investment, to do the "cheap jobs" (Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia) amd international competition.
Isolationism and self reliance were tried, do not work, they should be dismissied as the snake oil they are for long economic, sustainable success.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If only Ford had outsourced its work to Japan there wouldnt have been a Toyota or a Honda!! I donno who is the real winner the outsourced or the outsouring ??
- nobody can do anything to stop outsourcing
- it is CEO's___ god given, constitutional given, american right to boost profits regardless of the consequences tot he country
There are some more and I do not see any hard evidence for any of these assumptions.
Ask youself WHY
More importantly ask who you vote for this election year WHY?
They may/may not be able to succeed, but ask them what they have done to prevent outsourcing or what they plan to do.
If the answer is "nothing" consider voting for someone else
I read yesterday that in the 3 years bush has been in office the country has lost 3 million jobs. 1 million jobs a year. When was the last time you heard him speak more then one 10 seconds about jobs?
If he gets reelected, he gets another 5 years......another 5 million people out of work perhaps?
Steve
As a US expatriate (of US origin) living in Bangalore and setting up a software company here, it gets tiresome to here the continuous exageration about the price differential between the US and Indian workers. In the article, things like taco bell wages and 1/6th the rate were mentioned. This isn't the real story.
Bangalore rates are between 3-14 lakhs/year which comes to about $7000 to $31000. While $7000 may be a small fraction of the US rate, this is for someone with a junior college level of skill who has just graduated. Within 8 years they are over $20,000. probably about 1/4 of a US equivalent.
On top of that, most US firms aren't paying that rate. From a fully burdened perspective taking in to account communications, travel and other overhead, most companies are pretty lucky to get a 3 to 1 ratio and 2 to 1 is probably closer to correct.
What's more, they are already scraping the bottom of the barrel for available talent. I take interviews every day with people who are WORKING engineers with a junior college level of education who can't answer very simple programming problems. The best people will ask you straight out for 30% more than their last job which they've had for only 1 year.
The assumption that India can continue to take jobs at the rate it has is absurd, and the upward pressure on rates will make it less attractive as a destination in the future.
There are many GREAT engineers here, and they work for a fraction of the US rates, but extrapolation is the tool of the devil. Let's stop all this end-of-the-world talk.
Assuming that you meant, "Do not reinvent the wheel," I have this to say in reply:
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Oh, and a cliche in the hand is worth two in the bush.
In my company we win projects, and develop them in-house then deliver the back to our customer. We are a US based Software/Hardware outsource company.
We originally thought that the coding would go offshore, but we could do the tough design tasks. Well, we have found that those are going offshore too now. So we have been paying close attention to the outsource market, and recently (Past year or so) have been marketing and exploiting one of our Value adds over offshore, which is the "Down the street from you" feature. Our customers think we are really good technically, but also have the bonus of been very accessible and easy to work with/manage. We try to find those projects that need lots of interaction with the customer, or better yet those projects that a customer is nervous about outsource all together and will feel more comfortable having the outsource closer to home. This has worked great in the past year, as we have received very positive feedback from a couple of our local large companies about having us near by and how much that is worth to them.
The idea that the Indian outsource market is lower quality, or lacks the ability to design Software is no longer true. Many of the Indian Grad Computer Science majors (Who were quite good) I went to grad school with are back home (India), and I am sure doing a fine job designing and implementing software back in India.
Well change is inevitable but the rules can be modified. The guy mentioned what's after knowledge and he said creativity! He said that America will invent with India implementing it and collecting the monetary benefits.
Now the reason every other market, argriculture, manufacturing etc didn't completely die in the US is that any competing product coming back into the US for sale must not be dumped at below market prices. Thus the same should apply to software services too. That is software developed in India must have a tariff placed on it to make it more evenly/competitively priced with an equivalent software here even if the company pays for it directly and isn't planning on selling to the consumer. The cost savings of this internal software purchase puts another company who didn't do this or can't do this at a disadvantage. Thus, a tariff or cost correction would nullify any benefit of a company bringing underpriced software back into the the US -- just like all the other markets that are protected this way!
No one would complain if a US company wanted to hire indian programmers to develop software for an indian company since most people wouldn't move to india to work there since the have a job in the US working for the same company but doing software development for an american company.
Car competition between US and japanese cars can't be compared since it wasn't like the US car manufacturers fired americans, moved the jobs over seas and the brought the car back into the US to sell to an unemployed american, it was two different countries car manfacturers competing agains't each other on price using their countrymen (and at different wages) whereby the us companies wanted a guaranteed price since their wages were higher. They still could have gotten it, if it weren't for the quality issue which is why everyone started switching to the japanese, and thus forced the US companies to improve their quality.
That it's a good thing when you are not one of the 3 million people to lose their job under this political administration. The article does point out on very useful idea, that is vote with your wallet. You don't like how a company operates, sell their stock and stop buying their products.
But Officer, I DID read the f**king article!
(damn I wish I'd weighed in on this yesterday)
:-/
Anyway, blame MTV and Fonzi for this trend. When you have kids in the US who think its cool to be stupid, and totally lame to have a brain, this is what happens.
High test scores, good grades, and a strong work ethic are COOL things in young indian society. Kind if like they were in the 50's and 60's here in the U.S.
Just think about it for a second... over here we're geeks that nobody understands or cares about. Over there, they're just working stiffs who make decent money.
Teach your kids that its cool and fun to be smart. Unfortunately, only the geeks will be able to do that. All the non-geeks are teaching their kids that MTV is the source of all coolness.
And yo dawg, that textbook is whack. Dump tha shizzle in the trash and break off some abercrombie and fitch yo!
>:|
SpamapS -- Undernet #Linuxhelp
Are american's really over paid, or is it that our cost of living, and our exchange rate with third world currencies makes it look so?
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
For whatever reason, no one has commented on the author of the article, Daniel Pink. Mr. Pink (not the Pulp Fiction character) is clearly smart and well-educated (Yale Law), but that's not the important point. What's important is that his job won't be outsourced for a very long time, if ever, so he doesn't have much credibility in this context. He looks more like an enabler for CEOs and instiutional investors. Forget him!
Having been on both sides of outsourcing (working in India on jobs that were outsourced and then having worked "onshore" on "onsite" as a permanent employee with software organizations), AND being a one-time failed business owner who tried to work his way around outsourcing, here are few things I would like to mention:
Now from their perspective:
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Your average employee is not where the high costs are found. It would be cheaper to outsource CEOs to India. Sending one top level manager overseas would allow about 530 hourly employees to be added to production or sales. Or, heaven forbid, the money be reinvested.
Well, don't count all your chickens before they've hatched, esp if you put them in the same basket.
This happened to autos from 1975 to 1995. Japan gained so much market share and became a first world country too costly to manufacture that it outsourced back to the USA.
Its not clear whether this applies to services like software. Cars became a commodity where costs like trans-oceanic shipping tipped against out-sourcing. Software doesnt have this kind of overhead.
I even wound up talking to India a few months ago while trying to order a replacement power supply and bigger Hard Drive for a Latitude laptop. Dell outsourced (or used to anyway) the SALES department for laptop components.
I work in a 2-man IT shop with around 75 users, and I have my own Dell sales rep, who has her own team of specialists. When I want something, I talk directly with one of them.
You're a corporate customer with an IT department big enough to have its very own PHB, and you're ordering through the normal sales channels? What gives?
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
The second term we need to understand is reserve currency:
This means that the worthless green pieces of paper we convince foriegners to collect are often not spent at all but stacked in bank vaults.What this means is that the whole, "Indians are buying dollars with there labor and those dollars will eventually have to be used to buy American goods" is flawed. People don't just buy dollars to spend, they buy them to stack. When they do buy them to spend, they (or their banks where the dollars are exchanged for rupees) may be spending them on Saudi Arabian oil, or in other countries that want to spend them on oil.
What does this all mean? Dollars are considered to be worth more than they actually are. The American economy is getting something for nothing. This can't last for ever.
Be afraid.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
America is a continent.. USA is one country in it. I know Americans is the accepted term, but I prefer USians too.
trust me Canadians dont really wanna be linked with the US, then theres the whole south/central america thing.
First time I have heard USians, but im gonna keep using it. full marks to the man who thought of it!!
In europe we are considered european, but each country considers themselves English or French or whatever.
bah!*@%!
Actually, no, we are a corporate customer with me as the IT department and three PHBs who don't know a mousepad from a keyboard -- said PHBs view the IT department as a waste of money even though the entire business revolves around our computer system.
We actually got all of our PCs from a purchase program though a larger insurance carrier (read: third or fourth-largest in the nation). We aren't even supposed to deal with the small business division yet somehow our calls occasionally wind up being routed to India. Half of these calls are routed by human beings who ask you for your service tag and should damn well be able to see what kind of customer you are -- wtf is wrong with this picture?
All that aside it still doesn't address my main point -- why are the "normal sales channels" being outsourced? Forget customer service - this is sales. Why should it be a chore for anybody (home, small business, enterprise or government) to spend money? If we made it hard for our clients to spend money we'd be out of business in a week.
And hell even if that wasn't the case I think I'd be pushing to buy our PCs from a local vendor. I'd rather spend my budget locally and have somebody within driving distance to go yell at (should things go wrong) then deal with "Josh" from India when I hit the wrong option in voicemenu hell trying to do something as simple as replace a dead power supply.
Dell's only redeeming value to me anymore is that they don't put out the same shit (hardware wise) as HP/Compaq. Customer service for any of these large companies has gone all to hell -- fuck 'em all I say.
/me waits for the non-descript black boxes from local vendor to arrive.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The lazy incompetents that masquerade as "editors" round these parts, would we have to block fewer annoying ads?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I've actually heard that Dell quit outsourcing their call centers (and moved them back here) because of complaints just like yours.
RTFA!
They write there that many indians programmer live better than some US programmer who have jobs.
What is unethical in rising the level in India?
Im getting really tired of these outsourcing-to-India stories here on /. . Everything that has to be said about it has been said, chewed, digested and spit out. Can we talk about something else please?
[Upstate NY accent]: "Your not listening to me. The power supply is dead. I can't turn the unit on."
I hate to burst your bubble, but that's not an Indian problem, that's a competence problem. Way before outsourcing to India started, I was having the same problems with Good-ol-American tech reps from time to time. People who lived off of call scripts and laminated notebook pages. Not only that, many of them were rude, too!
Also, I have seen videos of these people. Many of them don't have the *slightest* Indian accent. Some are even taught to mimic Minnesotan accents, southern accents, you name it. That guy "Mike" could have been from "Texas," a small shanty town named for convenience in trade (in Japan, there is a town called Usa, in the Oita Prefecture, for instance, as in "MADE IN USA!"), or he could have just been outright lying to you, knowing he'd get abuse if he said, "No, I am from Jaipur, sir." He did say he wasn't from the US in your example, but I don't know if you meant that if he was Texan, whether he considered Texas not part of the US because he was being state-centric, or just really uneducated.
These Indian aren't dumbasses, either. Those images of brown-skinned people wearing wrapped cloth around their groin is inaccurate to modern India. They are hard-working, well-educated, quality-focused people. Maybe you didn't mean it to sound this way, but a lot of the comments in this Slashdot thread sound a bit like racism, or at least living in some stereotype of a universe where Indians are portrayed as a mass of unwashed dumb third-world people. How many people here have actually BEEN to India? Like outside the tourist areas? India has many subcultures, just like the US. Indian exists outside of New Delhi, it's a big country with a lot of people.
But aside from all that, the article mentions that even they know they will be outsourced someday. I have worked Internationally, and I know the conditions in some of these countries aren't so hot. All they have to do is pick a war with Pakistan, and BOOM... there goes all that outsourced talent. We used to have a site in Afghanistan under the old Taliban rule in the late 1990s, and we constantly lost contact with it because of all the local fighting. "Sorry, the phones are down, someone cut the cable... again."
But in the long run? It's inevitable. Complaining just slows me down and prevents me of thinking of where to go next.
at least I'll have an American to yell at on the phone if anything goes wrong.
And where do you think this "American" comes from? Unless he's Native American, like Pawnee or Dakota, I can bet this "American," including you, have roots back in another country. Maybe even as close as 2-4 generations back, your anscetors were Irish, German, or Italian.
Finally, someone gets the human side of all of this.
Not unless they did it this week. I got one of those "Shawn" people about two weeks ago.
I know outsourcing cuts costs, but not everyone really gives a crap about India and China to send all of their code to India and China and have it stolen or mimiced so they can put themselves out of business.
Now maybe some big companies see it as a cool trend to cut some costs but they also see that whatever their company is made from, which in this case is code, can easily "virtually" be replaced by any cheap knock off. It's not like you're exporting machines, you're exporting ideas that are practically free to reproduce. It's not like you have to buy materials and have a huge infrastructure.
If you're silly enough to send your entire site to some guy in India or China, trust, you just sent your entire company overseas.
Not unless they did it this week. I got one of those "Shawn" people about two weeks ago.
If you're calling for Inspiron or Dimension, you get an Indian. If you're calling for Latitue, Precision, or Optiplex, you get an American.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
No, I assure you that is an Indian problem. I've dealt with my fair share of "Read from the script" support people in American call centers (mostly related to Internet Help Desks). I've even commented on this more then once in previously articles about my problems with American call centers. The two comments I linked to were relating to problems with a local DSL provider (whom I know has their call center in Rochester because I have friends that work for them) and Verizon (was speaking to somebody in the Albany call center that time).
However, I assure you, that no level 1 American tech would be so stupid as to keep insisting that you insert a CD into a computer with a dead power supply. And they wouldn't keep asking me to repeat information that I'd already stated either.
but a lot of the comments in this Slashdot thread sound a bit like racism
Wow it took longer then I figured before some asshole used the 'R' word. There is no racism in any of these comments. We are simply sick and tired of dealing with people that can't speak understandable English in our support centers. Outsourcing code may or may not be a good idea. Outsourcing jobs that require clear communication skills to people that don't speak English as a native language is a dumb ass idea no matter how you look at it. Racism doesn't enter this picture -- except when people (i.e: CEOs) throw it at the people who are upset about losing jobs -- implying at they are racists so they will shut up.
And where do you think this "American" comes from? Unless he's Native American, like Pawnee or Dakota, I can bet this "American," including you, have roots back in another country. Maybe even as close as 2-4 generations back, your anscetors were Irish, German, or Italian.
And your point is? Part of my family tree can be traced all the way back to the Mayflower. Part of it is Native American. And (the largest) part came over between the wars from Germany. I am the prototypical American "mutt". But I fail to see your point here -- unless it's to imply that I'm some sort of rascist who doesn't understand what made my country great. If that's the case you are barking up the wrong tree buddy.
I'd rather deal with a first or second generation American then an outsourced call center in India. At least I'm supporting my own economy and my fellow citizens that way. And as I said before I'll have somebody local to yell at should something go wrong.
Go ahead -- keep outsourcing all the middle-class American jobs. All of these companies will screw themselves when there is nobody left to buy their products. How many PCs do Dell and HP think the rich people need?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Your faith is inspiring, but my experience differs, and I used to train people on the phones for an ISP. I had one guy, for instance, who blamed all modem outages with, "Was there a lightning storm in your area in the last month, sir? Well, your modem is fried..." He was from Virginia, not India, so I still don't know how that example could be an "Indian problem." Now, if he said, "Have you had any monsoon weather?" or "Did you ask her holiness, Sri Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, what she thought?" Now THAT would be more related to an Indian cultural miscommunication.
Go ahead -- keep outsourcing all the middle-class American jobs.
You can't look at it that way. Read the article. You can't outsource everything. Until they build really good remote controlled robots, they still need lots of hardware people, designers, and so on. All the grunt, back-end work is being done outside the US. Our goal is not to make sure everyone stays dumb and doing the same thing, but to educate people so they can get better jobs. Bettering yourself is the American way. Keeping everything the same and safe is more of a socialist way, and it's not doing France very much good.
All of these companies will screw themselves when there is nobody left to buy their products.
Then they will go out of business, and the outsourcing problem is moot. But in reality, those who outsource will save a TON of money. Pay a programmer $75,000 plus expenses, or pay three programmers $8,000 a piece and let another company worry about the free coffee? Dude, business wise, it's a no-brainer, and whether we like it or not, it's going to happen. Those companies that stay domestic will not be able to compete. Take the computer you are typing on right now. Who made it? Some US factory worker getting paid Union wages, or some factory worker in Taiwan, getting paid less a day than you paid for your lunch today? Say WidgetCo tried to make all their computers in the US. It would cost about $5000 to make one, once you factor in wages and changing the current supply line to the US (with tariffs, shipping, containment, storage, EPA, etc.). Get some people to do it in the Philippines, and that cost drops dramatically.
Like it or not, global labor is a commodity, like rice or orange juice. And no matter how tight we close our eyes, or shut other countries out with laws and trade discrimination, they are coming, and we can't stop being global if we're going to survive. Just look at China, as an example of not only the hypocrisy of xenophobia, but how it's hurting them as well.
If you want to stay the same, Sweden might be a great place to move, if you don't mind the huge tax rate such a "cradle to grave" policy must endure. But they do have a lot of great historical "living factories" and so on. I have been there, I know, and those who work at such places are as enthusiastic about things like centuries-old linen mills as you are now about IT jobs. Where did all the Swedish people go when linen production and distribution moved to another country? Just whither and die? No. They got other jobs, and I would never call Sweden a country of piss-poor unemployed people. They have a very high standard of well-educated living.
I know, you're scared. I'm scared. The IT industry is scared. But we will survive. Have faith in America, as well as your own ability to adapt. Don't waste your time with clutching your knowledge like handfuls of sand, but spend time figuring out what to do next.
Change, as they say, is inevitable.
... is that a person used to be able to get a factory job immediately after graduating from high-school, while a technical job requires years of expensive college.
That said, I still think an uneducated person should be able to get a decent job.
Wow..good post.
/month?
I for one, work in a corporation that outsources to many development centers in India and Mexico. My job is an IT manager. I have heated discussions with many of my friends on what the value of outsourcing to India is.
For short term, high turnover, and mission critical projects...it's tough to have the trust to give the work to someone that you can't see on a daily basis so you'd rather pay 10X the amount of $$ to hire someone in the US that is local to your team. That is a valid point, however from a sheer economics perspective, you can have so many more dedicated resources abroad on a significantly lower salary doing more work than that one genius programmer in the USA. The key is communication and quality standards. Run multiple projects with a slightly longer timeline and you will get the same volume of work done, just each project will have a slightly longer cycle time. And as an IT manager, I feel that even my job will be outsourced at some point. We have two Indian IT managers dedicated to our team too...one on shore and one off shore...they help to manage and maintain the quality of work and resources on our India team. I have to say..some of these guys are really smart...others...well, what do you expect for $500 USD
>50%? You must not live in the US. I'm making a pretty good living
>as a software engineer and I'm paying out about 35% in taxes, total.
Include:
federal income taxes (25%)
state income taxes
social security taxes (6.2% paid by you) (6.2% paid by your employer)
medicare taxes (1.65%) (1.65% paid by your employer)
property taxes (included in your rent)
sales taxes
use taxes (gasoline - 48% per gallon, oil, drivers license, state inspection, etc)
unemployment insurance (paid on your behalf by your employer)
worker's comp insurance (paid on your behalf by your employer)
hidden taxes (e.g., the cost of goods you buy is directly based on the total taxes direct and indirect paid by people working on the product)
This adds up to 50% or more. State and local taxes have risen more than federal taxes have been cut during the last 25 years.
>our tax burden is smaller than just about any other 1st-world country
Comparing the US to one of the welfare states like France or Sweeden only detracts from the real point:
Money taken in taxes by the government does not produce economic product or increase productivity. This means that it does nothing to help the US compete with other countries and also does nothing to improve productivity.
Higher taxes mean a lower standard of living.
The mission critical software and hardware systems will be produced in the US because the military does not want a foreign company, especially one owned by one of the enemies of the US, to access sensitive classified material.
Secondly, the US military does not want to train and help foreign corporations on how to implement and build military equipment. For example, project planning, trouble shooting, team originization, proposal writing, spec writing, testing, etc.
I have experience dealing with IT personal from india although limited I think its significant. One I bought Redhat 9.0 pro and had an installation problem. The problem was being handled overseas and the tech there had no clue! He could not resolve my problem, gave me newbee answers and nothing more. I also got a nice dell computer threw there incompetence, a friend was troubleshooting threw his dell phone support, the computer would not boot, not even to the bios, when I got there the tech in India had him removing his hard drive. It was the third hard drive he had to replace. So he was pissed and gave me the computer, I just hit control F2 or something like that and it came out of sleep mode. The tech's in india did not know enough to get a dell computer out of the sleep mode. They had him replace 3 hard drives over a years time, and they are all good. Companies are going to lose billions going overseas, in poor products and worst support. The IT people in india have no clue and are too far removed from american culture to develop significant products.
gnulinuxrat
Just a few things to say:
... there just aren't too many places in the world that speak french and english. Some companies have outsourced call centers ... to another province. But that's as far as they'll be able to outsource. I gather that this must be the same in other countries where the main language isn't english: Germany, Sweeden, France, Spain, etc. In other words, the communication barrier is keeping jobs in those non-english speaking countries.
... and the answer probably lies in placing barriers. In countries with a language barrier, that's a little bit easier because the locals want to be serviced by people who speak the same language.
Here in Quebec they can only outsource so much of the call servicing centers to 3rd world countries
Some people have asked about knowledge-oriented jobs, where they are and who's holding them. One could certainly point to the Linux kernel developers as having such jobs. I just don't see Linus, Andrew, and Ingo as being outsourced to India. In other words, there will always be a market for those who can do the job. The problem, of course, is that creativity comes with knowledge. No knowledge equals no creativity. So what's happening is that the IT industry in north-america is being wiped-clean of all its workforce, except for the very best among them. But how can even this workforce survive if there is no workforce to extract the very best from
Don't you like Indian people? It doesn't seem so from your post. You seem to forget, that most people have had that exact same experience with tech support all over the world. Your sheer blindness to this fact highlights your racial leanings, sorry.
And, for goodness sake - sort out your tech support procedures. We've only got one dell server where I work (25 people), and our tech support is on-site in 4 hours.
Don't go throwing the 'R' word around. This has nothing to do with racism. This has everything to do with nationality (I don't have a problem with Indian-Americans) and competence. For the 60k+ my company gave to Dell for all of our equipment we deserve to speak to somebody who can speak in plain intelligent English.
I'm not as worried about the outsourcing of coding jobs as I am worried about the outsourcing of service jobs. How do you hire someone for a job (American, Indian or what have you) that requires clear communication skills when they don't speak good English? Wouldn't you be pissed if you were Indian and got an American on the phone when you called customer service and he barely spoke your language or understood your culture?
Don't you like Indian people? It doesn't seem so from your post
My best man (and friend) is a second generation immigrant from India so don't give me that crap. This has nothing to do with that. If you had bothered to read some of my other posts you would understand that. You aren't going to scare me away from my completely justified position just by throwing out the 'R' word.
And, for goodness sake - sort out your tech support procedures. We've only got one dell server where I work (25 people), and our tech support is on-site in 4 hours.
Well we only bothered to pay for the next day support agreement. Where I work that is more then ample. Assuming I'm able to get though the voicemenu hell and get somebody on the line who speaks my language setting up the visit is no problem.
When I buy our next batch of PCs from a local vendor I'll probably spring for the same day support agreement. And you know what? It'll probably be cheaper then Dell and I'll actually get to speak to an American on the phone. And I don't care if that American is black, white, red, purple or a first-generation immigrant from India. But he/she will be an American (or at the very least somebody trying to become one).
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yes, I used to train Level 1 tech support people for a regional ISP as well. Hell, I started out in the IT world as a Level 1 tech when I was in school. Whatever stories of incompetence you can come up with I can probably do one better or at least match. That still doesn't change my point though -- an American would not have continued to repeat that script. In the worst case scenario you could have explained it to them (I've explained more complicated stuff to the chimps at Level 1 -- see the posts I referenced in the grandparent) -- fat chance explaining anything to somebody who barely speaks your language. Hell I had to repeat my goddamn address four times before he understood that it had both a P.O. Box (billing) and a street address (physical for the service call). He asked me for my complete phone number and then later in the call asked me for my area code. I'm sorry but that's frustrating as hell and I shouldn't have to put up with it.
Get some people to do it in the Philippines, and that cost drops dramatically
And the quality of the resulting product goes to hell -- meanwhile my next door neighbor is filing unemployment.
I know, you're scared. I'm scared. The IT industry is scared. But we will survive. Have faith in America, as well as your own ability to adapt. Don't waste your time with clutching your knowledge like handfuls of sand, but spend time figuring out what to do next.
I'm not scared about my job. I actually have some measure of job security -- my small Insurance Agency isn't outsourcing my job to India anytime soon. Hell and I work in an industry that is fairly resistant to the ups and downs of the economy (everybody needs our product).
I'm scared about the future of the American middle class. I'm scared about the future of my country. We are becoming dependant on other countries (more then half of whom hate us -- if you spend any time on /. or any other global forum you'll see clear evidence of this) for our basic livelihood (manufacturing) -- meanwhile we outsource our most talented jobs in the name of saving labor costs.
What ever happened to Patriotic companies that put their employees and country first? My local newspaper ran a piece on how the employees of the local factories rejected unionization 50 years ago (by a 6 to 1 vote) because they were treated so well by the company. What would happen in the modern world? Said company would reincorporate in Bermuda to avoid paying taxes and outsource every non-management job overseas to pad the bottom line. And don't tell me the cost savings are passed on to the customer -- the really good products (i.e: not off the shelf Wal-Mart crap) are as expensive as they ever were.
And why should I have to adapt? Perhaps I like my job and actually enjoy what I'm doing. Why should I have to change so some rich bastard can get 5% more on his stock dividend? Perhaps the communists were right -- we are all becoming slaves of the corporations and the "global marketplace". That's going to eventually stagnate innovation and progress just as surely as communism ever did. And what happens to the "American Dream" when we are all working in Wal-Mart or Starbucks? If you kill the idea of the American Dream (which you will do if you kill the American middle class) then what separates us from the rest of the world? To quote from the West Wing, "We'll join the league of ordinary nations."
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
even the most subsidized (by government) public colleges cost around $8-10K. if you want to go anywhere a little higher up, $18,000 per year is actually a very decent price for a *decent* (but in now way great) college education. so basically, we are faced with a choice - spend that much for college or settle for a high-school degree (which is worth a damn).
Now, if you want to train to become a doctor, a half-decent school starts at $30,000 per year! now take into consideration that they go to school for at least like 7 years, sum it up yourself and see what it runs up to. just the way things are here. take it or leave it. seems like a lot of money for you (one of my russian friends went to the best computer-related university in st. petersburg, russia, for around $2,000... that's the cost of 1.5 classes here, on average)
how much things are worth is dependent on where you buy it (how much is a brick of ice worth in siberia vs. in africa?)
my job has not been outsourced, but when people from other countries start stereotyping based on what they've *heard* about america, it pisses me off.
let's say your college loan payment is around $500 per month, your rent (cheapest apartment with no bedrooms, just one big studio) is at least $500, car payment (can't get to work without it, distances are much greater here) is around $400 per month (with insurance, which is mandatory here, anybody would agree it's a bargain), and food being at least $200 per months (let's assume you cook it yourself and just buy in bulk). that's $1600 per month just to sustain your existance. so, just for basic needs you need at least $19200 to survive (not counting food, medical bills, and thousands of other things). now let's say your job is moved to some poorer country where somebody is willing to do the same for $6000 per year, because the college cost $2k total, apartment is $40 per month, car is not required since everything is relatively close and food is $100 per month. for them the $6,000 is a good deal. can you compete with that?!
This is completely absurd. I was offered a tech lead developer position in Bangalore for 120,000 rupees per month. Your average school teacher, considered to be middle class, makes about 6000 rupees per month. Your average college professor considered to be upper middle class makes about 20,000 rupees per month. 120,000 rupees per month, not including the free apartment I was offered, is enough to buy a trick home, own 2 cars, private school for the kids, a full time maid, a cook, a gardner, a driver, a nanny, vacations in Goa, etc. etc. You are completely and totally right to think technical programming jobs are not middle class; thats because they are upper middle class at the very least. The average software engineer's salary is increasing at a rate of 25% per year. Do the math, it won't be long until those salary are not just middle class by Indian standards, but by US standards as well. Absolutely unlike commentary on /., there is not an infinite supply of SW engineers in India, if there was, how on Earth could the salaries be shooting through the roof.
The company that owns Slashdot is one big time outsourcing company. Its pretty obvious that the people who run Slashdot are beholden to there parent company that wants to ship the U.S. IT industry to china and India. Thanks alot you selfish fucks.
The article I linked uses rather unfortunate language (it seems to be from a motivational speaker's website), but it says in part "it took [the SA plant] two weeks to make a car that had seventy defects. By contrast, the Mercedes Benz plant in Europe could turn out a car in one week that had only fourteen defects." It goes on to say how the production problems were solved.
The original article I found was much better, talking about the difficulties of overseas sourcing in a broader context, but I read it a long time ago and I don't know where I found it.
The linked article was the second listed when I Googled for "mercedes south africa defects." The first article seems particularly relevant but the full text is subscription-only.
With great power comes great fan noise.
> Hehe, fun. Name calling.
yey, got humour!
>> "a Hindu will accept a 5% wage increase in exchange for your 100% wage decrease."
> Well, now you're just making numbers up. Fictious numbers do not make a persuasive argument.
of course they are made up. this is only an example.
you mentioned a "race to the top".I understand that you were arguing that for every wage decrease in the american job market (race to the bottom) there is a wage increase at the "off-shore". the whole purpose of off-shoring is to move production to a place with lower costs, which often means lower wages, but selling the product back at the primary market to people with higher wages. the race to the top must be slower than the race to the bottom, otherwise the whole concept of cost cutting would not add up.
EXAMPLE: the yearly earnings of a software project manager are $70K in the US and the average indian salary is $11K ( not made up, taken from the article). we fire the american and hire a hind. to attract him in a competitive market we give him a wage 5% above the average: $11550. for him, it's a race to the top. the company just saved $58450 per every dumped worker. just dump 17 more looser and as an CEO you just earned $1M more this year. profits hit record levels.
And the fired looser just got a 100% wage decrease. but he should not dare to use this evil, communist rethoric about a "race to the bottom". because that would be protectionist and he would "ignore the flip side of the coin: a race to the top". tough luck, try better in the next incarnation.
Fight Frist Psoting!
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> China does not accept U.S. dollars for their goods. They may very well convert their dollars into Yuan and buy Chinese products. But as I covered elsewhere in this thread, at some point, those dollars are coming home, unless they're being used for decoration.
Chinese exporters convert their dollar profits into Yuan (to pay workers and suppliers). The dollars get deposited at the central bank.
Jul 15, 2003:
Japan's foreign reserves currently total $496 billion, followed by China at $310 billion and Taiwan at US$170 billion, according to figures compiled in April by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Hong Kong, with 7.5 million people, has reserves of $114 billion, nearly seven times the total money in circulation in the territory. Other Asian treasuries are similarly bulging with dollars.
there is no rational reason for such big foreign reserves. unless, of course, you do not care about the value of your accumulated paper reserves, but have other goals, like GDP growth on your mind (transfer of industrial infrastructure). undervalued currency means the population does not buy much of imported goods.
for comparison: The UK Government's net reserves rose by $621 million in December 2003, bringing the end-December total to $17,903 million
since July 2003 the value of the dollar dropped by ca. 10%. so china's central bank lost say, $30 bln. they do not buy anything material with those dollars. they just reinvest them into US-bonds (as good as cash, but gives interest over time).
japan's foreign reserves are even bigger, because they tried hard to keep their economy afloat trough out the nineties. they bet on exports to the US, so they had to have a cheaper currency.
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Well, if you have tried to use DELL or HP customer support you know this trend is big. You can hear the Indian accent big time. Some of those guys have actually confessed that they are in India. No surprises there. I look around my office and 90% of the contractors are from ... well you know where.
I do not have anything against qualified immigrants but I think customer support is taking the toll. Some times these guys can barely speak english... and they give a rat's ass if your problem is solved or not... I personally think that customer support is a decisive factor for me to buy something... Hopefully the companies will realize this and keep all these jobs (or at least some) here in the states where people speak english.
It's tough luck that the post I was responding to was erased.
Said something to the effect of "That's what you fat burger-eating Americans get."
And I get modded as troll.
Life is hard.
- http://pakman.sytes.net/