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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."
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
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
Most of the failures with Indian outsourcing have been due to poor planning.
For example, if your SPECS make assumptions and have bugs, don't expect a contractor to do anything extra like TEST that what you asked for makes sense. You get what you asked for. Garbage in garbage out. Why should they care when they have no vested interest (assuming they even NOTICE your specs are broken!).
So US companies are getting better at speccing things, because they are NOT going to bring these jobs back. You can hire SIX Indians for the price of ONE American. You can't compete with that.
I really love the Bush White House quotes about "retraining" displaced tech workers. FOR WHAT? Walmart?? We can't all dance around on an aircraft carrier in a clown suit. Fucking pols.
It's a quick, interesting read, and very apropos to the current IP debate.
The Philosophy of Liberty | lewrockwell.com
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.
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
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
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
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...
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!
One other reason for the very high wages, have you ever met a 50 year old contractor? Unless they moved into managment in their late 30s/early 40s, they have usually physically worn out their bodies. They trade higher wages for a shorter career. There is no free lunch.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
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.
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/
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.
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/