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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."
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?
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/ .
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
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?"
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yea but the editor has been outsourced to India.
What do you expect?
Omnis amans amens
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.
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?
Well, I'd want to live in a world where I'm a tech company's CEO and rich as hell. I guess it'd be icing on the cake if everybody else was unemployed and poor so everything was cheaper also.
And it follows: who are the ones in the company choosing to outsource?
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!
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.
to my counterpart in India. I hope he doesnt troll!
Rapid Nirvana
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.
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.
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
...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
It's a quick, interesting read, and very apropos to the current IP debate.
The Philosophy of Liberty | lewrockwell.com
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.
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?
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
How about the low-caste people in India? do they have any rights? Are we really helping the masses in poverty in India, or just benefitting a small amount of upper-caste people and allowing them to continue their oligarchy? Is there any incentive for the Indian companies to be honest about their capabilities, to keep our information confidential, to subject themselves to our laws & ideas of legality?
I predict this will NOT work out in the long term:
Indian companies will lie about their competency to get work
They will sell proprietary information
They will take advantage of no legal venue to steal & commit fraud & breach of contract
they will employ people without regard to background problems, because there is no way to do meaningful background check in India
the commnication, time zone, and cultural differences will cause customer alienation
it will be found that the managers in the U.S. who recommended outsourcing are cooking the books to bury the true costs
it will be found that high technology is leaked, given, and sold to terrorist organiations
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
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.
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
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
The pace of change is hotting up and although there are new jobs in new industries - you wont get into them whilst ageist hiring policy is still the norm. Most high tech workers could easily adapt to working in Bio tech or whatever the next big thing may be - but you wont get in unless you graduated yesterday. This is a serious gap in all western economies, not only is it impossible to change professions but it is also - inevitably - impossible to retrain for new industries.
So having thrown generations of highly skilled manufacturing workers into the trash we are about to throw generations of highly skilled high tech workers into the trash. Sadly this is not going to change unless people start getting organised and changing the way our education system and our businesses work.
Outsourcing to developing countries addresses some of the wealth imbalances in the world and can only be viewed as a positive thing if their economies improve to the point where they can supply clean water to the whole population etc. However we should be looking for smart ways to help ourselves and since we have democracy this should be coming from our politicians.
So far all I hear is a deafening silence, no change from when the manufacturing jobs went.
Today not only can you not expect to have a job for life, but its doubtfull whether your particular skill and expertise will be needed in ten years time.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Jobs to India: A Second Look
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
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
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
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.
"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.
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.
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...
US exports to developing countries like India and China are continuing to rise. As the economies of these countries improve, they purchase more from the US as well.
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.
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
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
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!
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)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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/
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?
[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.
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.