Slashdot Mirror
Need a Job? Move to India
WhoDaresWins writes "As U.S. jobs move abroad, more Americans are willing to work overseas like in India as per a CNN.com story. The story talks about many Americans and also Indians who are American citizens moving to India for work. This story should be an eye opener to people who feel Americans cannot work in India. With a booming economy there is a need for skilled professionals with years of experience in a western enconomy and industry. Best of all, job listings are available online." Thomas Friedman has a piece called The secret to India's success.
Its not that simple to get a visa to India. Without a visa you can't get hired.
Its not a viable option.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I can go to India, apply for my old job and do the same work for less pay? Well that seems like the very definition of "fair trade".
its a sad day when the american dream is to movie to India.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
...this story...
libertarianswag.com
In this new "Global Economy" it only makes sense that people would be willing to move to where the work is. I was ready to move to the US for a geek-gig a few years ago. It's only "news" because the tide of immigration is shifting.
Trolling is a art,
No thanks, America is worth fighting for.
You could just stay at home and earn Indian wages
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
We don't edukate our kids. I'm going to move pretty soon, probably to Bangalore to start a business because only 10% of the people in San Diego can afford to buy a house now.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Is this one of those sacred monsters or is he edible. Please pass the nan.
That is such an interesting observation. Where can I g o to learn how to make such astute observations and put them into such eloquent and flowing terms?
Finally my dream of writing free software is coming true. Well, it's not entirely free, but for $300 a month it's pretty close, don't you think?
Next year on Slashdot - thinking of moving to Republic of Kongo? The software jobs paying $50 a month are all there, and you get free bowl of soup on the weekends and they don't beat you up on even days.
I'll make more money working a "shit job" in the US than as a programmer in India
did you forget to take your meds?
We need to beat them to the Mars!
...and still have to pay those outrageous prices at the Quickimart! Thank you. Come again!
"What the hell is an aluminum falcon?"
If you move to India, where jobs are going because they pay dirt cheap wages, what are the chances that you'll ever be able to come BACK to the United States?
If you do, chances are you'll be in poverty because you will have saved very little and your job here will *still* be gone.
Gee, what a deal! *sigh*
All those jobless programmers out there can spend money to make less money. Best of all you can use VOIP to talk to family from long distances. You can go native and marry a hindu girl/guy. Then most importantly, you can help in ensuring the freaking software and manuals use english and not engrish. I'm so tired of having worthless manuals and help references. "Warnings! XP takes most times two installs."
was more fishy than red snappah!
This story should be an eye opener to people who feel Americans cannot work in India.
Yeah, let me just pack up my family, sell my house and all of my belongings, kiss off my friends, and break every tie that I have by deserting my country so I can go work for $12 an hour.
Thanks for opening my eyes. I'll take my chances here in the US.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
Every job hit I got was in the US unless Philadelphia and Illinois have been annexed by India...
So, I can get a job in India - but I don't have to go there?
Sounds like this article was posted by a headhunter.
...and it's posts like this that cause you to default to 0.
Are we seeing a mini-exodus that signals that India is now the forerunner for the place of opportunity and a chance for success?
I think at some point the outsourcing needs to be regulated or even curbed back. I think also there should be a public list of companies that have outsourced to any foreign land and how many American jobs were lost because of it. I understand these are highly opinionated, but come on, we are cannabalizing ourselves.
The gulf between the rich and the poor just gained a few oceans. ;p
Were you unaware that a 'world economy' actually meant moving the poor to factories abroad? Grow up.
I'd arrive in Bombay only to discover they've started outsourcing. To some real hellhole. Like Antarctica. Or Detroit.
I agree. Also, I have an uncle who went over seas to do some civl engineering. He could not get out. Was supposed to be able to come home at christmas time (2002), they would not let him out of the country until May 2003, and he was required to go back on account of his contract. Overseas is a BAD idea.
Offshoring will never stop if you support the companies that do it. These companies would NOT want to give up the American consumer market for any reason. So if you want them to stop offshoring, stop buying products from companies that offshore. If the government won't do anything to help the American worker. Then the American public needs to do it themselves.
I'm not an economist, but that seems logical to me.
That is such an interesting observation. Where can I g o to learn how to make such astute observations and put them into such eloquent and flowing terms? I hear India has some fine universities that might be able to assist you.
2015: Simpsons: India Edition introduces Abe, the stereotypical American expatriate who works at the Kwik-E-Mart.
"Companies here are struggling to be more market- and customer-oriented," Iyengar says. "To have American techies and management come over here will help that process."
I'm just waiting for overseas companies to start cutting their US ties once the transfer is complete.
Anyway with broadband and the above mentioned "wages" telecommuting is a viable option. Bet corporations don't go for it.
... move to slashdot.
Way to go michael, master of idiocy!
Troll me, but fucked if I'm going to leave the good ol USA for India, when so many people from India (half of our IT staff here) are coming to the US because opportunity and life is better in general in the US. If I can't work in IT, I can work in construction, sales, anything. I can work. If I love to code that much, I can do it after work at home as a hobby.
I see no benefit to uprooting my entire life to go to India so I can write code for so little money, when I can get a temp job here that will pay the rent while I'm submitting resumes and waiting to land a job in IT in the US.
But that's just me.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
i ought not need to leave my country to get a job working for a company from my country. then again, i'm not in tech anymore anyway. But it's a matter of principle.
after the next recession which will begin as soon as taxes are raised and/or the FED raises interest rates.
Everyone in India is perfectly aware this Indian boom is good as long as it lasts, but it will end, and they prepare for this already. They claim their jobs will gradually move to Philippines and other countries where labour is even cheaper.
So, if you plan to go to India, remember to save for the return ticket...
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
I was listening to talk radio the other night, and I'm not sure whose show it was (I was just skimming through), but they were saying that one presidential candidates was proposing a tax to these big companies for outsourcing work to make up for unemployment.
I personally think (in my opinion) that's a wonderful idea. Maybe companies would think twice and start giving jobs back to those unemployed.
After all, you could pay someone from India $5 less an hour to do it, but.. you'll end up paying that back in taxes, so you won't really save much.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Check it out, it's a good read.
Excerpt: "So I went on the web to see how easy it would be to emigrate to India. I found NOTHING. I called the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC and asked how I could emigrate to India. They didn't know what I was talking about. What the Indian Embassy was prepared to discuss was how my U.S. employer might transfer me to India for some period of time. I told them PBS had no such expansion plans to my knowledge, though they might make an exception just for me. They were also willing to discuss how I might go to India as an entrepreneur, bringing capital into the country and starting a new business there employing Indians. I told them I had no money to invest. And the idea that I'd just arrive at the Mumbai equivalent of Ellis Island looking for a job, well they found that rather amusing. You can't just move to India it turns out. Someone there has to want you -- no, they have to NEED you -- OR you have to be bringing with you a big suitcase of cash to start a business. Journeyman techies need not apply. It's interesting that Indian immigration policies are more restrictive than U.S. immigration policies. There is no true Indian equivalent, for example, of our H1-B work visas. There is no quid pro quo. But then there is also no wave of U.S. engineers clamoring to move to India."
Outsourcing is just another sign that America and the West in general needs to get its collective shit together. For too long we have ignored Education and Research. Outsourcing is just another fire under the ass of the West that it has to take these things seriously.
We are going to loose some jobs no matter what. That is a fact, but if we stop bitching about jobs moving over seas and actually took seriously and invested in Education and Research, would not have to worry so much about it. As America's we have gotten lazy and we think we are entitled to high paying tech jobs. Well, break the news to you, we're not and 550 Million Indians under the age 25 are also saying the same thing.
Forget election year protectionism speeches. Just make the average American worker more skilled and educated and less jobs will flow over seas.
That's what it is all about. You heard it here first.
Linux O Muerte!
Funny how the job that was/is the ass-end of the computer industry is one of the more stable tech jobs in the US. While a lot of those jobs had been going overseas, they've been coming back to the US because of customer dissatisfaction with the Indian techs.
But programming being programming, you don't need to be able to speak fluent english to do it...those jobs will continue to go overseas.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
Friedman apparently spent a couple weeks in Bangalore recently. He's been writing about his experiences in his New York Times column (the tinfoil-hatted masses thank michael for linking to a mirror that doesn't require signing over your mortal soul). The gist of what he says is that the outsourcing of programming grunt work to India still leaves the creative work in America. This is not to say that Indians are uncreative people, good for nothing but code monkeys. Rather, the American firms choose not to outsource the creative work. Of course, the day may come (and given some of the driven, intelligent Indians I've known, I'm sure it will) where the Indian firms that began by doing outsourced code start developing ideas of their own to compete with the American firms. This may sound like Doomsday for some of you whose jobs hang in the balance, but I'm an optimist, and I believe that the American economy (and its workers) can adapt to the change. Goodness knows it's happened before.
"Den som vover mister Fodfaeste et Oieblik; den som ikke vover mister Livet." -Soren Kierkegaard
Sorry, Did not post this correctly. You can remove this if you like. I moved it to the correct spot.
The results I am seeing so far indicate that while they can do the work, as instructed, they are incapable of being creative, or adaptive, when confronted.
Yes, but they combine to form Devastator, the most powerful Ind.. er.. Decept.. oh, wait, wrong train of thought.
American's look down upon the third world as a shitty place. American's think that when they militarily conqured Japan they became masters of it. When Japanese progressed to challenge American industrial might, the American just pooped in their pants and used muscle techniques with the Japanese. This is nothing new to those of us living in places like India. The Britishers had the same arrogance and even racial superiority written all over (Just read any Raj era literature). When third-world opposed American businesses selling sugar water as cola and repatriating millions of dollars that is a trade barrier. And we are then given lessons in the greatness of free-trade. American's bring is huge industrial production capabilities that disturb the local employment structure. When third world complains it is said the progress is inevitable and productivity is more important than living wages for workers. When Indians create world-class (CMM Level 5) software delivery systems benefiting the American business they are accused of stealing jobs. Why is improved cost-benefit not a good thing? If a minuscle number of Americans prefer to go to grad schools how are Indians at fault for this? This is just the beginning pals, more is yet to come.
I have a little piece on the secret to India's success.
CHEAP LABOR
Thank you, I'll have another deep probing piece next week.
I can't find the article, but I read a good piece about an IT Manager in Boston was forced to outsource to save money by the CEO of their company.
Instead, he looked at what they would pay an Indian contractor including costs of working with him overseas ($42,000) and hired people locally, like college graduates, to do the work instead. So granted, some poor programmer making $65,000 is out of a job, but at least that job stayed in the USA and went to some college graduate.
Hopefully this will be the trend, I don't like the fact that everyone in IT is going to be looking at a pay cut, but it's better than losing all our jobs/productivity to India.
$.02
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
So will eventually India be outsourcing jobs to the US? I mean, they'll have all those skilled technicians over there refusing to work for peanuts, and that's the only kind of people we'll have left here, so...
Monster.com CEO Jeff Taylor was on Dennis Miller the other day and he said that only 5000 jobs out of 146 million jobs have been offshored to India. Seems to me this whole offshoring thing has been blown out of perspective much like other media hypes. Remember SARS? It killed something like 14 people and everyone on the continent was wearing a mask. I'm sure a flood of Slashdotters will reply with their own personal stories of losing jobs to India but remember: The plural of anecdotes isn't 'data.'
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
The results I am seeing so far indicate that while they can do the work, as instructed, they are incapable of being creative, or adaptive, when confronted with situations not covered in the textbooks.
Yep. And blacks really like fried chicken, Chinese people are good at math, Jews are good with money, etc etc
The fact of the matter is, you can't get a Visa to India to work if you are white. If you are an Indian American and you want to move back to India it's fine if you are a white American, good luck. I love how the article mentions 30,000 people they estimate moved to India from the US for 'jobs' when the H1-B alone allows for like 150,000 Indian workers to come here. Yeah that is fair trade.
By the way, just because someone doesn't agree with you, that doesn't make them a troll.
I have been long of the belief that this outsourcing would only flipflop the US's dominancy in hi-tech to current up&coming 3rd world nations, like India. However, these days i am starting to think, perhaps we (the US) should seize the oppurtunity of large amounts of skilled out of work tech workers, and utilize that to one-up our infrastructure so that by the time India meets our current level, we are miles ahead, or hopefully kilometers ahead (hey, intelligent, globalized units systems ARE techincal innovation, enough with the oil-lamp era ad hoc measurements!).
However, I am still on the fence on this issue, I don't like the fact that i can be replaced with someone i can't possibly compete with. But i realize that if this person continues to get paid well, they will soon have my current living standard, and presto, i will be able to compete with them!
Can I get a SUV cheaper? How about a laptop? Some things are cheaper, but a lot isn't. Truely a lower standard of living if you don't aspire to anything.
BTW I'm not into that "servents" thing. The south ruined it for me.
At least they are honest...
.. HR will never be the same again!!! Are You Hot ? .. Campus Recruitment will never be the same again!!! CLIENT Our Client was founded in 1989, and is among the worlds largest pri ...[more]"
"Campus Recruiter (Female)
Sizzlers wanted !!!
Right off the bat, this is wrong. The number of jobs being currently outsourced is fairly miniscule in comparison to the total number of jobs in the US. Somehwere less than a million jobs have gone overseas in a workforce of 130 million.
It's weird how slashdot is so pro-freedom, yet so against free markets and free trade when it can potentially affect them negatively. In the end, this outsourcing will only make the US a more efficient workforce and benefit all consumers.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
Move to a country bordering on 3rd world poverty from the wealthiest nation on the Earth for an IT job.
Personally, I plan on moving to Uganda for the healthcare and China for absolute freedom of speech.
"How come you clerks are always American? Speak Hindu!"
I said it in jest over a year ago: to stay in IT, the American should become an Indian citizen in order to be qualified to work in IT in America again.
This is kind of a new paradigm for labor, using an old paradigm for other assets. If you run a corporation in America, you register it in Delaware. If you run a cargo ship, you register it in Liberia. Now, it seems that to work in IT, you have to register your body in India.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
I thought about moving to India, as it's cheaper and they take the long view of history, not to mention the exciting growth of tech there among their many brilliant people. But then I realized that their lack of environmental and labor protection makes the place as unhealthy as it is cheap. The air makes New Jersey look like an oxygen tent. Feh!
--
make install -not war
Need electricity and plumbing?
Move to America!
"So if you want them to stop offshoring, stop buying products from companies that offshore."
No job due to outsourcing. I believe this problem is self-correcting.
Maybe I live in a bubble, but last I checked, India does make the world's best processors, I cant think of any software that is exclusively a result of Indian innovation. I find it hard to believe that such a technologically proficient country lacks at least one rock solid "best of the best" product, hardware, software or otherwise. As far as I can tell its just cheap, and you usually get what ya pay for.
That's the proof that jobs are more mobile than workers. Inevitable diffusion of the labor trade to India. Funny how their politicians are better than ours at protecting their major exporters: their workers.
--
make install -not war
Let us ask Bush to fake another terrorist attack this time claimed by India, and some nukes will solve all our problems.
...the excess people can work at the local Chut-Nee-Mart. Just imagine Johnny American saying "Thank you, come again." Maybe he has a degree from CalTech (not Calcutta Technical Institute, in this case).
Seriously, though, this seems like a bad idea. Someone above mentioned the earnings differential. Sure, you'll be okay in India, but you'll have nothing if you come back stateside. Also, it seems like bad news to go where
a) there are already tons of hard-working programmers readily available from pretty good (and more importantly, rigorous) schools like the various IIT's in India and
b) the jobs are right now (what happens if India realy DOES get saturated?).
I do like the idea of simply cutting people's wages here and hiring domestic workers. I know if I were at risk of being laid off, I'd be willing to take a sizable paycut to avoid unemployment.
Trust me on this. You can't drink the water. The pollution is overwhelming and you'd never be able to afford to move back to the US, since you'll be making a fraction of the amount of money. Also, imagine working in Mumbai or Hydreabad (if it's still standing) and dealing with approximately 10x the amount of people and unregulated traffic than NYC or LA. On top of that, you have a third world country emergency system (good luck if you get sick or injured).
;-)
I know Indians will find my post possibly offensive, but I've been there. It's like being on another planet and if you want major culture shock, go ahead. The poverty and pollution will make you jump on a plane back to the US in a minute.
Besides, all the programmers and engineers will be smarter than you anyway, so why bother.
now they'll steal our jokes like:
"Someone set us up the Bombay"
thelikesofwhich.com
While many will point out that even a reduced salary would go farther in India, the enormous plunge in quality of life just isn't worth it (to me at least).
While spending 10 days in Mumbai and Chennai auditing Citigroup's new offshore partners, I was courted by the senior staff of one of them. "Come work for us, and you can live like a rajah! Your wife's a doctor? Forget it, she won't have to work, and she'll have servants!"
Even treated like a prince, put up in 4 star hotels, eating in the best restaurants, invited to private clubs most of the population can't get inside, my trip to India was a visit to hell.
Monstrous traffic, unbelievable overcrowding, incredible numbers of beggars, and Mumbai smelled like burning garbage... everywhere.
No thanks.
Well, I'm a African Chinese Jewish Indian American, and I'm good at math, have an accounting degree, love fried chicken, and am incapable of creativity or original thought! So there!
Firstly, getting a visa to India is not a big deal. Being an Indian, I can tell you that you can get a 10 Year Visa for a little over 150 USD.
Also, if you compare the jobs over in India to over in USA, the pay might seem to be lesser if you make a direct conversion of currency as per the dollar rate, but what people fail to compensate for is that if you are living in India, things are not as expensive as the United States.
For example, a Bottle of Soda costs 1.25$, whereas in India it is only 20 Rupees which is hardly 50 Cents!
There is, of course, always a swing in the markets which would eventually prompt a change where jobs would shift back to america.
Some countries make shoes, India makes software...
I am playing with the India Monster and they do have a lot of jobs for System Administrators in India. My question is, what part of India do the people not smell?
I know that sounds racist but I really like the Indians (The nicest, friendliest, hardworking people you'll ever meet), but concept of taking a shower everyday has not caught on with them.
Linux O Muerte!
Just looked up a job I'm qualified for. Then chacked the exchange rates for rupees to dollars.
Turns out if I move to india, I could earn close to THREE THOUSAND dollars a year!! woohoo!!!
This space available.
Here's an online vacancy.
Nothing to see here
dont speack like that!!!
i work for only 1.5 dolars so i would like to earn 12 U$S peer hour so i had to work 3 weeks to get a 80GB HD, and a entire week to afford a 256Kbps internet connection so compare that. and not i dont clean the streets (no offences) or work in a McDonalds (also a respectfull job)... I'm a small net admin.
(i live in Uruguay)
How about moving to some country in Europe? Last time I checked most of them still had a shortage of skilled IT workers. The cultural difference between US and EU is much smaller than between US and India and living standards are quite comparable.
:)
Also, there are no crocodiles, tigers, pythons or cobras here.
"To America, it seems, it's ok for Indians to be poor and begging on the streets of mumbai. As soon as those same Indians out-price the US, they should be stopped. Double-standards all the way :)"
And what happens when China and the Phillipines "out-price" India? Is India going to remain silent, or are they going to get some of that good-time religion "double-standards"?
"Second, by accident of history and the British occupation of India, most of those engineers were educated in English and could easily communicate with Silicon Valley"
Really? easily communicate in what language? English? I think not sir. Every time i get a support monkey from India it takes about an extra 15-20 minutes just because of poor english and horrible accents.
They had a lot of pressure from their parents and family to return and the availability of jobs finally convinced them.
In addition, to the higher standard of living in Indian, they had the opportunity to buy a house (impossible in Britain on their wages) and a family. One of the fellows had an arranged marriage waiting for him when he returned.
These fellows are not software sweat-shop or call-center detritus. They are gifted database developers who left Britain to return to India. They were a real asset to the company.
This country made it difficult for them to stay and the change in Indian economy made it easy for them to return.
While I'm not arguing that outsourcing is harmless, it would be useful if people educated themselves adequately on the subject. The Economist in particular has had many quality articles on the subject (like this one). Here's a particular quote of interest...
"Government statisticians reckon that outsourced jobs are responsible for well under 1% of those signed up as unemployed. And the jobs lost to outsourcing pale in comparison with the number of jobs lost and created each month at home. Even here, the rate of job "churn" has, for unclear reasons, been falling since mid-2001."
Food for thought at least...
Harken back to the recent past, where workplace regulations were a dream, businesses routinely exposed their workers to deadly risk to save pitiful amounts of money, everyone worked weekends, and the minimum wage was zero dollars and zero cents.
Fighting an epic, intensely violent and brutal struggle against their aristocrats (adverseries so used to victory they had become surprisingly complacent), the proletariat of America carved out a victory, and they did it without abandoning capitalism or resorting to the dangers of political revolution - though we certainly came close on a number of occasions.
We now live in shocking wealth and splendor - a victory for the "common man" made possible through a lively democratic process and a series of reforms that dragged business owners, wailing, kicking and screaming, into the modern age - where the entire standards of what was acceptable in terms of working conditions, wages, and workplace safety changed. Yes, it cost more money. And... what a surprise - with a newly propsperous middle-class, it was also intensely profitable.
Free Trade was thus inevitable. It's the prisoner's dillemma of the modern business.
The issue has proved a bit too subtle for most people to grasp thus far, even as it impoverished America and eviscerated the progress of the middle and lower classes, handing victory after victory to regressive enterprises.
The question free trade raises is simple. Is it cheaper to produce goods and services in a society where the underclass is abused?
Why be surprised?
The American South used to produce cotton so cheap, you'd think it was picked by slaves.
The sad irony is that (with only a little help), we're doing it to ourselves. All I have to do is hold up cheap jeans, and the underclass will skewer itself on its own greed, happily selling themselves out to save money at the cash register, never wondering about the hidden costs of trade without policy, never quite realizing that they had just bought back into laissez faire capitalism.
And yes, when you admit that national boundaries can contain arbitrary laws but not trade, that is exactly what you just returned to. The fleet, famously, travels as fast as its slowest ship.
In America, when we legislated ourselves a decent life, we made it impossible to compete with those who lived indecent ones.
Of course, we shouldn't have to compete with them.
The logical extension is to ask a farm worker to find a job in a field full of slaves. His value is reduced to nothing.
"But Slavery is Illegal!" the farmworker shouts. "Not in Namibia," the slaves reply.
Free Trade is a code word. It stands for the elimination of the 1st world's gains for its ordinary people - by forcing them to compete with what they are bound to lose against: the economies of worker abuse.
Its proponents depend on the American population's ignorance of the issues. You can talk around it in circles with most people, while all the time they have carefully insulated themselves from the basic issue at hand:
Is it OK if I break the law, as long as I do it out of your sight? To people you don't care about? Maybe people in another country?
Free Trade is supposed to reduce the importance of nations and bring about the ascendance of a global community. And it has! The American Working Class is no longer in America. They are in India, China, and Indonesia! Mexico, and Costa Rica, and Guatemala! They are in Afghanistan, growing our opium, and in Iraq, pumping our oil.
So I welcome you all, prosperous last descendants of the old 1st world dream, back into the world you created.
Welcome to India. I hope they really do let you go. Just don't be surprised when you realize it's a one-way trip.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Free trade cuts both ways. If you want to be able to buy cheap consumer goods imported from countries where manufacturing wages are much lower, you can't complain about something similar happening in your job sector. The whole problem is that the US economy is way out of proportion with most of the rest of the world, because of trade with other countries and what you've gained from it in the past. Now that it goes the other way, you can't really complain.
I can't believe this overseas company outsourced to your uncle to come and do some engineering work. Don't they have engineers of their own? How immoral these Americans are, stealing our jobs!
Actually, this could probably even be done legitimately. Ostensibly US companies frequently incorporate in other countries for tax purposes, so why not incorporate in India instead? Then you really could pitch your services as outsourcing to an Indian firm. Hey you enterprising Indians over there, somebody could probably make a decent business out of setting up shell corporations for US programmers.
Remember the late 80's when we all figured the Japanese would own most of the West Coast too?
ack, doesnt make the worlds best processors. man i need to outsource my typing to india
Hell I'll work for $12.00/hour if I can buy a two bedroom house for say 16K.
Here in northern VA it will cost you 550K.
Something bad is brewing.
bOooYyyYyyYYyyYYYyYy
"It's interesting that Indian immigration policies are more restrictive than U.S. immigration policies." Do you mean to tell me that other countries actually have more restrictive immigration policies than wide open borders with free health care and education to all but their own citizens? I'm not really sure this could be true.
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
If you did think the benefits of globalisation were aimed at you, you've been mugged. When politicians and business leaders talk about globalisation they mean for *them*. They told you it would reduce costs and mean cheper products, but they didn't tell you that the reduced costs where as a result of sending your job overseas.
And if you think it's bad now, you aint seen nothing yet.
You did, and are voting for the chaps that aren't just allowing this to happen but are actively working toward it. You want it to stop? Start questioning your candidates as to their position on out-sourcing. Ask them what their position is on what amounts to selling off the IT industry in persuit of short-term gain. Ask them what they intend to do once the process of shipping your IT industry over-seas is complete and any competative edge you once had is lost.
But, but, but the Indian deserves to work too! Absolutely they do. The European and the North American also deserve to yield return on the industries nurtured in those societies. The IT industry did not pop out of the ether, and it was not forged solely on the back of private enterprise, it was built from a wide variety of national as well as private resource.
You are responsible for allowing this to happen when you allow your political leaders to persue their own business interests unchecked.
And this distinguishes the Indian workers you encountered from 90% of the American workforce how?
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
He thinks just because India is a poorer country than the USA he can just stroll in? And he has the arrogance to whinge that he can't? I did quite like his book and series (triumph of the nerds). I'm surprised to find out he is such an asshole. "I told them PBS had no such expansion plans to my knowledge, though they might make an exception just for me." Very droll...I don't think. If you'd spoken to me like that it would of been the end of the call then and there. I guess Indians have to put up with his rudeness because he is an educated white man?
3. ....
4. Profit
Ok, you go to another country and make $5000 a year. If you ever decide to come back and have a career in the US making $50,000.
It's going to be tough convincing American HR folks you deserve a 10x raise.
I ran my Monster query [(unix or linux) AND (perl OR shell OR scripting OR debian OR "red hat" OR solaris OR admin OR administrator OR web OR apache) AND NOT "work at home"] against US jobs:
Query Results
Then the SAME query against Indian jobs:
Query Results
79 for US, 3,433 for India. Yep, and now I'm even more depressed, and that's saying quite a bit. I have GOT to get out of this industry as soon as possible.
El riesgo vive siempre!
Incredible as the prospect of working in some mudhole like India or Poland is, consider this: If you had told people back in 1984 that the end of the decade would bring an end to communism who would have believed you?
You should have come in Illeagally from the southern border. Then you would automatically get amnasty from mr bush. Not to mention free health care and a free college degree(if Orin Hatch has his way). Following immigration law is so Passay. Its no longer polically correct to follow laws if you find them distastefull or unconstitutional.
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
Perils of Outsourcing
.sigs are for post^Hers.
I pointed this out a few days back... Outsourcing. Whine. Moan. Impossible for us in the USA...blah blah. Now, go and read the last thread on Tech Support humour. Look how many people spent the time insulting (l)users. Now, pick up the phone, dial a tech support number you know to be routed through to India. Compare and contrast. The American will be unable to help you and will most likely be rude. The Indian will be knowledgable, attentive and polite. Compare, contrast and get a clue.
me too
The only way you'll have a standard of living that's above what we'd consider the poverty line here (structurally sound accomodation, clean water, decent food, minimal health care) is if you get a managerial role. Indian programmers simply aren't paid that well, even relative to Indian living costs. They don't live in nice houses, they don't drive cars, they don't aspire to buying boats and retiring early. They basically aspire to not leaving debts for their children. That's why you see so many of them over here.
Now, if you're quick, you will be able to land one of those management/consulting roles. Now, next question: how long are you going to be able to keep it? Are you really skilled enough to keep ahead of a bunch of talented, enthusiastic - and, not insignificantly - native Indians?
Bonus point question: during any job reshuffle, will you be the last to go, or the first to go?
Extra credit question: when you get tired of chasing jobs that pay well enough to pay for health cover and want to move back to the US, will your period of low wages negatively impact your ability to buy your way back into the US property and financing markets? Think carefully about your answer.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
We're not talking about line jobs here. We're talking about those skilled people you refer to losing their jobs, not because they're not skilled enough- but because the cost of living here is too high and they're too "expensive" for the companies to hire compared to the Indian labor. Something that your professed world-view doesn't seem to take into account.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I have several co-workers that are Indian. They say that the starting wage for someone out of college in India, in those high-wage markets is like 10,000 rupees a month. This is about $2000 US a month.
However, for 1000 rupees a month, you can get yourself a butler/servant. As well, rent is like 1000 rupees a month, meaning you have several thousand rupees left to do what you want.
If you have more experience, I would think 20,000 rupees a month is more reasonable, which means that you could easily save $3000 US dollars a month and still live like a king, which is not bad at all. Even assuming 0% interest except inflation and no raises, after 10 years you could come back with almost $400,000 US. Not too bad...
However, hell would freeze over before I moved to India... I'd rather just take my chances here in the US.
India is not where the job influx will occur soon there will be demanding more then what the businesses want to give. They are in the limelight now but will soon be replaced.
The question is which world Government can be purchased to do work? Which region is stable enough to get stuff done.
I would look to Africa as the next employment center if it passes by the Middle East. Key here is business needs stability not Democracy. They need a stable pro-business exploitation. That is a Government who will make sure it is profitable for the few at the expense of the many.
One thing to note is that India is not creating anything new. It is just the center of work. When the Companies who are there feel that they will get better ROI else where the move will occur.
So what truly the US and the Industrialized world needs is more Investment in innovation.
Remember I need some capital to purchase the goods to make the prototypes, which will become the templates for the Factories. If I do not have this Investment, guess what all the education and study will be worth $0.00 in any currency. Can not wait till India realizes she has no Industry to call her own and that she is at the mercy of the business which are higher then your Government.
Much more opinion to say but will soon go off topic. By the way, vote come November then Protest at the Swearing in Ceremony for Employment because the Unemployed are excellent Recruits for any cause and the smaller the Establishment the easier the task is.
Most of the comments I see here are from guys who feel its beneath them to go to a different country, work at a rate considerably less than what they "used" to get paid here and live out a satisfactory life. Nope, they want to live here, since they are used to their lifestyle here, live among the opulence of others (even when they dont have it), and grudge day in and day out about lost opportunities and how well the market seemed a few years ago. Sorry boss.. its true that you dont have that many options anymore, and yes, its true that corporate america has screwed you in the arse ultimately, and has chosen India as its new bed partner.
Think about this, all these software engg you see or hear about in India do not take for granted that their jobs will stay and hold for the rest of their lives. And you, God forbid!, who lives in a Capitalist community believes having a well paid job is a privilege??? I hate Corporate America, their lobbyists and the politicians who would jump in to bed with the lot if they could top their coffers, but at the same time I pity the arrogance of people who feel that its beneath them to get out of this country and look for better jobs, better wages and a better life elsewhere in the world. Yes, you might have to cut your ties for a while, you may have to sell or stash everything you got for a while, yes you might have to get new friends for a while, just imagine what you would lose out if you were to stay inside your little coccoon for the rest of your life, with out being exposed to the different people,cultures,life styles,sports out there that you didnt know about?
I have been in US for the last five years of my life and I have seen and experienced more than I could ever bargain for and I have been better off for the most. I found new friends, people who I would have otherwise never find, I found a life which was better in some ways that I could have back in India, and I found slashdot. So yes, I am better off, in my own ways.
So, get off that pedestal and start seeing the world with a whole different perspective. Learn that life and people exist outside your community. And while you are at it, get a job somewhere else in the world and find out why everyone else think American's (atleast some) are so oblivious to the rest of the world and what they think. Good luck!
Rapid Nirvana
I would like a traveling web programming position in the Tuscany region. Preferably having an office with a Mediterranean view from a one of the villas of Cinque Terre. I'm not so sure about India...so is this too much to ask?
You can't just "land" at Ellis Island (moreover it's only a museum now) like in the 1800's and start looking for a job here.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Slashdot needs to drop the pro India stance. Every article I read has been how wonderful India is and how outsourcing our jobs is a great thing. Drop it! Outsourcing to India is not a great thing, India is not a wonderful place to live. It is almost impossible for a forgien worker to get a job there.
Indian work is not up to the same standard as American work is. For every "successful" indian outsource story there are 100 of stories that tell just the opposite. The tell of how shotty indian work is. How cost overruns drive the costout of control. We see stories of how indian workers routinly leak private information, steal IP. Why don't we see those stories here too.
Slashdot has the pro indian glasses on and all they see is how rosie it is.
While that was an interesting sidestep, I at least mention that the people i was referring to was "the people i encountered", while your comment makes a rather ignorant and broad generalization backed up by... absolutely nothing I suppose you have met and encountered 90% of the American workforce? Lots of great things come from places other then the US... Japan and Germany for example. Regardless if you like them or not, you cannot deny those facts. So.... show me some facts please and maybe you wont be met with so much hostilities.
If you are still listening to what Friedman has to say, I am afraid your brain tumor has spread way too much, and can't be removed.
India is the most densly populated country in the world.
I'd rather stick to canada, lose my programming job and raise cattle than live in that digusting pile of feces country.
fucking polluted to the max.
...and I don't think it's particularly muddy either. Quite the opposite if anything.
This article pretty much sums up the essence of Thomas Friedman:o mas_friedma n.html
http://www.exile.ru/185/outsourcing_th
Basicly he is a person who is relatively sure that his job will never be outsourced as long as he keeps writing articles about how outsourcing is good for everyone.
Well, not to be a butt-head, but...
I cannot believe that there are still people that think a programmer or sysadmin type has some divine right to earn USD$80,000!
We live in a global economy. Deal with it. Every heard of that new-fangled thingy called the "In-Ter-Net?" Guess what? It reduces the effect of the "distance" variable to nearly zero in some equations!
If your only redeeming quality, to your employter, is that fact that you are "near", and some other person is "far", guess what -- maybe you can get a job as Grover on Sesame Street, after your boss cans your a**.
If you have chosen a lifestyle that demands a high income for commodity work, then get prepared to walk away from your house and car. The days of Trade Unions dicatating, and IT people demaning, high wages is almost over.
-- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
Middle America thinks free trade is fair when America's gaining from it
America imports way more than it exports. That means we pay $$$ for what we import. The world's economy is very dependant on ours (some countries base the value of their currency on ours). We buy Ram, cars, and all kinds of things. This stimulates their economies and creates jobs in their countries. These people should be thanful. A lot of it we could decide not to and use internal resources. They could do the same if rolls were reveresed.
I am not saying that Americans are superior, we most certainly are not (some would dissagree, but not me), I am just saying God chose to bless America, and other countries seem to think *all* Americans are selfish because of this, which is not true (some close friends of mine recently took a trip to Gana Africa taking a huge generator with them to power their town, and many other goods, for free, install it for free, and maintain it for free, asking for nothing in return, how is that selfish? They have nothing to give in return except friendship, this is not a political move you read about on CNN, it's honest love). I agree that many Americans are greedy, but don't blame the whole nation for what you read on the news! We also donate billions of dollars to countries in poverty and see nothin in return. Sure sometimes it is a "loan", but we all know that America never sees it again.
This is where actual Indians look for jobs - get a better idea of what is there and the actual companies offering the positions.
I can however say I've had great luck in Brazil. I moved here after the market imploded in 2001. The java market is hot, most places I've worked at let me use linux, and culturally its very kool. The currency is 3 Reals to 1 dollar, so its competively priced on the market.
As far as work visas, they are almost impossible to get, as it is most everywhere. I was able to find work under the table though, and then eventually got married and automatically became legal.
I'm very happy - no regrets whatsoever. In fact, seemed like a good time to leave the states - I haven't been back since.
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." Stephen Hawking
I don't know if I agree (in my experience, most outsourcers in poorer countries are in a far better position than American labor of the early 20th century) but that was a well-put argument.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
the jobs find you!
The living standard in India is worse than China, but the living standard in U.S.A. is better than China. So, India's living standard is worst than U.S.A.
How could you go to India for having a job?
Some people are idiots or no-brainers.
If you read Jonathan Erickson's latest DDJ editorial, he says there's compelling evidence that the outsourcing fad is nearing an end
As the outsourcing fad begins to fade -- and there's every indication that's already happening -- these countries will be stuck with equally huge bills to pay. In a recent survey by DiamondCluster International, for instance, reportedly 78% of the companies contacted claimed they had prematurely terminated one or more outsourcing contracts. Likewise, TPI Inc. reports that, in 2003, the number of large outsourcing contracts was flat, while the number of smaller ones actually dropped off
(all typos mine)
There should be some sort of Nobel Prize for digging around in the pile of horseshit under the Christmas tree and looking for the Pony.
Everything is great! You can move to Calcutta and live like a KING just like those lucky bastards over there!
How stupid exactly have we gotten?
I know of lots of job openings here in Florida that we have trouble filling. Lack of skill / motivation in the labor force maybe, but certainly not a lack of jobs.
When my $50,000 education can land me the same pay in India as my ability to speak english can at any fastfood restaurant here, there's no reason to ever consider moving.
"Have you been to a Burger King here doc? They're not even lingual." - Ray on Dr. Katz
Theresa Heinz Kerry's company is the king of outsourcing!
but would that be running an Indian 7-11 or driving a cab? ;)
Am I the only one who feels murderous rage when someone tells me to go to another country if I want a job??? All so that the CEOs and major stock holders can get richer. Everyone say goodby to the middle class. Its walking out the door. In 10 years, you will be either poor, or very very rich. Bend over.
Almost every country makes it hard for you to move there permanently without a company sponsoring a visa for you. Some of the more liberal countries (socialist Europe) don't really care and you can stay as long as you want while spending money, but it's still hard to get a visa to get a job without finding the job first.
But as americans, we actually have it far, far easier than Indians. It is much more difficult for a person from India to get ANY type of Visa, even just for a short visit. Americans are used to just taking trips to wherever they like without worrying about it, but Indians face an up-hill battle to go to many countries. As an example, while I was working in Singapore (most free economy in the world), an Indian co-worker and myself needed to make a one week business trip to Hong Kong (second most free, before China took it back). I booked my flights and didn't think twice. He stood in line at the embassy to apply for a visa, waited for approval, etc. Just for a one week trip.
I have no problem with the lack of foreigners' abilities to get work visas in India without a company sponsor. It's just fair play. Indians are in a much worse situation.
He goes on to make his usual case: Americans needn't fear globalization, because our innate pluckiness will always overcome any obstacle. I was a little curious about that guy who made all the money off those shirts, though, and after doing a little Googling I found what I thought was a rather glaring flaw in the anecdote: the shirtmaker was neither unemployed nor American.
Except I got that one wrong. Sort of. You see, Friedman responded, pointing out that there was, in fact, an American selling a similar shirt:
Well, the larger point may rest on more, but the specific column is planted firmly atop that anecdotal t-shirt. And it was still an anecdote I found...questionable.
So I tracked down this guy--to whom, let us remember, Friedman personally pointed as a justification for the anecdote upon which Sunday's column was predicated--and sent him an email, and asked (1) if he is or was unemployed and, (2) if he's made a bundle of money off his shirts. (Also (3), if he's an American, which he is--Friedman got that much right.)
His name is Gary Young, and he was gracious enough to respond promptly:
So there you have it. At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'll say i
Friedman bloviates further, using the T-shirt anecdote to tout American superior innovation that renders these outsourced job losses as trivial.
But once again, the reality detached scribe is exposed again. This time, famed progressive cartoonist Tom Tomorrow got the straight dope on Friedman's "Americans profiting from their unemployment" spiel. It turns out, that the savvy entrepreneur highlighted in Friedman's piece is neither American nor unemployed.
Then, Friedman fired off a missive to the skeptical cartoonist in defense of his corporatist claptrap:
Mr. Tomorrow treaded on and located the enterprising zazzle.com proprietor, eager to discover if his tech career unemployment had led to new found riches. Here is how Mr. Gary Young answered the query:
AZspot
Move to India.....
"We've ignored education and Research..."
But, one can't help but see the commoditization of high tech skills that has gone on over the past 2 years all over the world. (even pre-9/11).
Dr. Norman Matloff's 1999 study on immigration and high tech work is finally resonating with the average Joe. But the cheapening of the work force, both foreign and domestic continues. Just check out the March 11, 2004CNN Lou Dobbs transcripts from last night's program on increasing the H1-B quota (again), and later on in the program a chat with a Republican congressman about the rosy future in high tech and the coming job shortages (chuckle). How many more fake high tech developer "shortages" do we need to endure?
The story talks about many Americans and also Indians who are American citizens...
It should be pointed out that Indians who are American citizens, are Americans.
Just checked out the DBA postions there, looked at the experience requirements and saw this: Mid Career (2+ years of experience). I don't know about you, but if I've only got two or less years to work as a DBA there, I think I'll tough it out here in Canada.
wonder where the extra $100 billion came from?
http://efil.blogspot.com/
So what does the protagonist do? He gets his new alien neighbor to put in a good word at his company, gets hired and moves to a new planet where his massive (by that planet's standards) salary allows him to live like a king.
Sounds familiar somehow...
Anyway, I'm talking to some guys in India who are having a very hard time finding experienced people right now. They've got one senior level guy and the rest of them are about the equivalent of a bunch of newbies hired out of college. Supply and demand dictates that this will push the price of the experienced people up and hey, guess what, at some point very soon now they'll be paying an experienced Indian programmer about the same salary they're paying an experienced American programmer. The talent drain appears to be happening now, not 10 years in the future.
I saw the same thing happening in Romania, too. The local economy was being priced out of the market, which was having a negative effect on the local university (Why be a professor for $400 a month when you can be a programmer for an American corporation for $1000 a month?) Our corporations will discover an area, start bidding on good people, and end up paying pretty close to what they are over here by the time the dust settles. Kinda sucks if you're a student in the local college though...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Argh! Perhaps if they moved all the business jobs to India, the Indian replacements wouldn't try to things like that to the English language.
Well fine, lets all creatovate new words into the language. It does not matter how uglyscusting they sound, or whether a perfectly adequasufficient synonym already exists.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
For one, you've now got a common currency among other EU member states. Which in turn makes it more attractive to move among EU countries easily. If I could move to Turin (my favorite Northern Italian city, believe it or not) I'd do it in a heartbeat. It's in close proximity to other great European cities. What is Mumbai close to?
Well, it's just that it occurs to me, that if it were lawyers jobs being outsourced... and a fair percentage of legal jobs *could* be sent overseas... we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Your political leaders were elected to represent *your* interests, not to represent the interests of the Indian worker, they have their own political leaders who you can rest-assured don't loose sleep over there security of your job.
And for those who feel I'm just being mean... I worked for 5 years as a shop steward for a union, my left-wing credentials are quite secure, and as a worker the *last* thing you persue is the reduction of wages to the lowest common denominator..... making sweat-shirts did not make the job of a seamstress either rewarding or profitable when it was shipped to Malaysia. Nor did the chance of the local businessman in Thailand to set up a shoe company improve when Nike set up a factory there.
When you allow large "Western" companies to set up plant overseas employing cheap local labour all you ensure is the *local business* can't compete... yeah, read that again.... globalisation allows the exists corporate giants to reduce costs and inhibit the introduction of new competitors in developing markets.
The one chance a business in a developing market has is the competetive edge given it by cheaper labour. You remove that competitive advantage by allowing the 800lb gorilla to wade into the shallow end and you've screwed the business-man in the developing ecconomy.
We wont see emerging competitors from India, from *Indian companies* while Western stock-holders steal the Indian competitive advantage and make it their own.
America was built on its own foundations, not by undercutting England. Then again it was not possible back then. How did we do it? We created our own markets, our own success stories. We invented. India is leeching off of our innovations, our brainworks. Create your own , then sell it to the rest of the world.. thats how america got to where it is today.
In India, they have "arranged marriages"!
If that doesn't motivate you, I don't know what will...
--
Perhaps not quite first world, but a lot closer to the US than to India in living conditions. 3 years ago when I last checked I could move to Spain and get a job, no more paperwork required. The only restriction is I could not stay in the country for more than 3 months at a time, but just going to France for a weekend (only a couple hour drive) is the obvious way around that restriction. (The only hard part is getting proof that you visited, with the EU there is nobody to stamp your passport)
My Spanish isn't good enough to get a good job there, and I really didn't try. Nice country though, I wouldn't mind living there.
Well atleast you can get one of this favarate Tees from The Register's Cash'n'carrion online store
My job went to India and all I got was this lousy T shirt.
Apple is like a strange drug that you just cant quite get enough of they shouldnt call it Mac. They should call it crack
Monstrous traffic, unbelievable overcrowding, incredible numbers of beggars, and Mumbai smelled like burning garbage... everywhere
wait a minute are you talking about New York city?
Yeah. I'm a management student from India. Just wanted to clear up a few things. IT exports only constitute 3-4% of India's total exports. BPOs/IPOs employ only a few hundred thousand Indians , just a fraction of the country's work force. So the whole IT/outsourcing thing is not as important as it is made out to be... The reason the ICE (IT,Telecom ,Entertainment[India has the world's fastest growing market for mobile phones and an estimated 400 million cable tv users]) sector has such a high profile in India is because it is India's best performing and fastest growing sector. The reason India has done relatively well lately in the ICE sector is because it is free from government interference and foreign investment is encouraged. And obviously because of the huge skilled labor force.
But to move to the next level , which is to compete with China , India has to free its manufacturing sector ,open it to foreign investment , deregulate , disinvest and debureacratise. This can potentially employ literally tens of millions and take away the pressure from the IT industry.
To the angry geeks of slashdot , India might be a place which takes away their jobs by offering to do the same at 1/10th the price. But to me , as somebody who plans to have some say in India's future as an administrator and policy maker some day soon , I'm more concerned about the untapped potential in India's manufacturing sector.
It is important when you consider a country as big as India to look at the Big Picture. India already has the 4th highest PPP GDP in the world at $3 trillion . Any slight increase in the average Indian's per capita will lead to a phenomenal national growth. This can easily be achieved by opening up the economy and implematation of liberalisation and acceptance of globalisation in its totality.
--------
And regarding the proposal to move to India - forget it guys. Last week , I know for a fact that as many as 9000 qualified engineers competed for a single entry level position in one of India's IT companies. Not surprising because India produces 200,000 engineering graduates every year. So it is actually much easier to get a job in US than in India.
Infact I plan to try for a job in one of the top consultancy firms in US later this year if I can't get through the IAS (Indian Administrative Service) exams....
its always amzes me how many peole get this worng..
India firms have a unwritten policy of favoring Indian citizens before others..
the Americans of Indian descent have dual citizenship folks..welll duh!
plus in mnay secotrs lower castes still pay under table fees for obtaining job intrviews..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
I'm going to Bhopal, I hear the air there is wonderful!
Slave labor, a caste system, no workers rights and no environmental protection, proctetionist trade policies (their markets are not open to most US goods) I'm sure if we implemented all that here, are work force would also be 'successful'. Fortunatley, the current administration is doing everything they can to bring about India/Chinalike working conditions in the US. M
I wonder if anyone has considered the long term effect shipping programming jobs to India will have on the US. Consider this:
1. Computers are the backbone of our economy
2. No jobs for US programmers means no one is going to train to become a programmer (i.e. Gates at MIT)
3. If no one wants to be trained, then so goes CS and IT programs at colleges.
4. Only programmers in India will know how our computers run our economy - OK 20 years from now.
5. Then India starts to play the nuke game with their neighbors. Someone doesn't blink in time and there goes the "US" programming talent.
6. Can't replace those programmers because the infrastructure for training them is gone.
OK, I'm going to extremes, but I'm sure my point is made. And I haven't brought up the security issue. I can't be any US company is checking the millions of lines of code written in India for "time bombs" - code that can executes sometime in the future to screw up the company' books - not enough to crash the system but enough to make them so inaccurate that no one will know the correct figures.
Could this happen? You guess is as good as mine, but it all sounds like a companies are very short sighted - and so are the politicans who are only out to get corporate contributions to pay for the next elections (both sides are guilty of this).
How did India, in 15 years, go from being a synonym for massive poverty to the brainy country that is going to take all our best jobs? Answer: good timing, hard work, talent and luck.
Bullshit. Go take a look on eLance.com. What American is able to work for 8 bucks per hour? My lunch was a local deli cost me $7.40.
How can an American compete with Indians? They cannot. If the cost of living her was that of India, it would be a totally different story.
_________ Help me get a PSP!
...so I'm supposed to move to fucking India to get a job...with an American company?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
From http://jobsearch.globalgateway.monsterindia.com
"Career Level: Mid Career (2+ years of experience)
Education Level: Professional-Engineering(BE or BTech)
Job Type: Employee
Job Status: Full Time
Salary: From 720,000.00 to 1,080,000.00 INR per year"
From: http://www.virtualtourist.com
"45.25 INR = 1 US$"
720,000INR = 15,911US
1,080,000INR = 23,867US
Not sure about you, but I can make a lot more than 15K to 23K in the U.S. with "mid-level" experience. Heck, working for In-N-Out Burger pays $15/hour which is 31,500 a year if you work full time. Granted, the cost of living is lower in India, but so are accomodations. And if you're flying or calling home to see family, it starts to add up quickly. In contrast, for people like myself with military/covert experience, I can make over $200K a year US doing dignitary security in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. and only work 8 months a year and the entities that pay also pay your airfare both ways four times a year... you end up working for 2 months, then home for a month.
This is a "wake-up call" for U.S. workers to redouble their efforts at education and research
Yeah, right. As usual, it's up to the people who do the actual work to figure out how to cope with these market forces. When U.S. employers have trouble making money because of foreign competition, the government is happy to step in and help them out with subsidies, tariffs and trade agreements. But when they find a bunch of smart people on the other side of the world who can live well on $20,000/year, well, then the story changes. Realities of global competition... free market forces at work... you're lucky to have that job... you don't want the government to run your life, do you? Now get back to flipping those burgers.
As usual, American businesses can't see very far ahead because they're bent over picking up dimes. The average American family has more than $8000 in credit card debt. That doesn't include mortgages or our individual share of the national debt, which is more than a typical Indian programmer's annual salary. As American incomes drop, I don't know how these businesses expect us to buy all the spendy crap they are continually shoving at us.
The answers seem to be more advertising and easier credit. Or maybe they expect a flood of online orders from customers in India. Like that will happen.
Let me put it this way....
Someone who would qualify for about a 60K annual income now in the US, would get between Rs.70,000 to Rs.90,000 per month in India. If you convert that, it works out to somewhere between $1500 and $2000 per month.
May not sound like much, but here in Bangalore, for example, you can rent a beautiful 3 bedroom apartment, buy a nice car and eat like a king on that salary - all after tax.
Basically, for the same skill sets, your standard of living is HIGHER in India. Oh yeah, I also forgot about the people, the REALLY CHEAP amazing food, the culture, the night life...
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Go ahead and try. Convice your congresscritters to pass the "No Jobs Overseas" bill, and you'll find that American products and services are suddenly higher than similar products and services available for import from Asia, Europe, or India.
Used to be, the cost of information flow was expensive. If you manufactured doohickeys in Dallas, you had your customer support staff located in Dallas. With cheap communications, you can locate your CSR's anywhere, or everywhere -- to save a few pennies on every doohickey you make, which allows you to stay competitive against all the other (foreign and domestic) doohickey makers.
The free market is now global. Can't stop globalization in a free market. Don't want a free market? Try Cuba.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
UNIX Systems Administration Guru (4 positions)
Salary: From 700,000.00 to 1,000,000.00 INR per year.
Wow, I never thought Id have a 7 figure income!
It almost looks like a lot, but even with the depressed dollar, it's still only about 22,000 a year. Im guessing that you could make that working full time as a manager at a McJob.
Those of us in IT departments really need to get over the idea of being entitled to job security. Why is the "jobless recovery" jobless? Because of increased productivity, i.e., companies can do more with fewer people. Where does increased productivity come from? Many places, but one of the main places is from the automation that IT departments provide. We have been putting other folks out of jobs at a furious rate. We don't have typing pools or mailrooms or nearly as many administrative assistants and customer reps because of email, web sites, and other stuff that comes out of IT.
We rationalize it by saying those jobs sucked anyway...and it's probably true...but many people were depending on those sucky jobs to pay their bills and feed their families. If it's wrong for your boss to save money by exporting your job to India, then it's wrong for your boss to save money by replacing someone else's job with code that you wrote or an application that you administer. If you believe that the people that you helped to displace eventually found other, better jobs, then you have to believe that that is what you will have to do when the time comes.
I don't like this, I don't like saying it, and I don't like management, but it's totally hypocritical to expect mercy after we have acted as executioners for so many years.
But you are not Canadian, so you dont like poutine nor maple syrup, you cannot play hockey and you think curling has something to do with hair.
--
the only reason IT jobs are outsourced to india is cost. English language and good education make it feasbile, but its all about the $$$. If the labor rates were anywhere near the same there wouldn't be any outsourcing there. It wouldn't matter if everyone in India had a PhD and a Nobel Prize.
All this blather obout how much smarter the Indians are is like the Japanese guy in 'Black Rain' telling Michael Douglas that 'we will own America in 10 years'. Its just bragging based on a temporary bubble. Just after that movie the Japanese economy collapsed and hasn't really recovered completely in over 15 years.
All that said, the only answer for Americans is to do what we did in the 80's/early 90's against Japan. Become more competitive. Unions, tariffs, sanctions will just kill the American IT industry and make everything more expensive in the US. We have to get off our butts and figure out how to compete.
Ahem. Indians who are American citizens are Americans.
Just thought I'd point out the (probably unconscious) racism that underpins the framing of this issue.
"I have no sympathy for the "What about my $500k mortgage and 3x SUV payments?!?" crowd. "
Look up "American dream". You may not have aspirations but the rest of the planet does. Or were you under the impress that a great nation is built upon desiring the bottom of the barrel?
"* Sell the house you cannot afford and get a reasonable vehicle
* Teach your kid to have a sack and send him to public school to learn to deal with real life."
And because of a declining economy that "reasonable vehicle" becomes the next SUV, while the "sack" morphes into bread and water.
They don't call it a "race to the bottom" for nothing. Sounds like you're the one that needs to deal with real life instead of being an ass.
It is 'lose', not 'loose'.
You *lose* your keys. You *lose* a job.
Your pants are *loose*. Your sister is *loose*.
10,000 Rs equal about 222 dollars not 2000 dollars. You may have rework your math and conclusions ...
(One $ buys about 45 rupees.)
So, you can't really save $3000. To save $3000 you would have to be saving Rs 135,000 every month. Some people make this kind of money, but not as many as you seem to believe.
.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
There is not such regulation in europe that could prevent an african farmer to seel crop here, this is just a "bushism" !
:)
:o)
... LOL !
...
(ie, proofless, dumb & non-sense)
We do have regulation that forbid transgenic seed and some pesticides. If you use them, then you can't import your seed here. That is a law and everybody have to comply to it.
But if you want to discuss about problem, then we can talk of the european common agriculture policy, which is just a nonsense and lead to lots of north african country loosing markets while south of spain is getting to be a ecologic disaster see "plastic fields hell" topics around the net !
FYI, Europe does not claim to want a fully liberate market. We want a ruled marked.
This is different with US, that claim to want a "liberate market" but define protectionist laws.
See for instance the tax on foreign steel bush has pushed, or the sanitary constraint on european food (this law state that cheese for instance should not hold anymore living part, which is a non-sense if you don't what to only live in "chedar world").
I will propose to the parliament a tax on all non-opensourced software product sell in IT
50% on each software, and the money should be given to a EU free software fundation
I will push another law that will forbid software that are not free from living parts. I mean Virus, Worms
I hope that Redmont have some good cheese to propose
...xe.com... Oh wait, thats like $20k or so per year $US... Er, uhm.. Ok.. Huh.. Well, my gadgets I want are still gonna cost the same so housing there better be nearly free and they better be throwing food at me.
What IS housing like in India price-wise? And food? It's a bit weird comparing things unless you have a handle on the differences in costs..
Where do you get the idea that there is one slashdot ideal? There are hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million different people registered to post comments, not to mention all the anonymous cowards, and those who don't post at all. Every person has their own set of beliefs. There are republicans and democrats, libratarians, and socalists, and that just covers those from the US. Slashdot is global, I don't know what parties exist in Norway, but I'll bet that all with any importance at all are represented by someone reading slashdot. (And English isn't the native language in Norway so it is skewed a little OTOH english is a popular second language there so I don't know how much) And that is just one of the hundred different countries in the world.
There is no one slashdot position. All there is, is an interest in technology; and a slight US bias (on the editors part). What I belive cannot be taken to mean what anyone else believes, even if I'm modded +5 insightful it doesn't mean anyone agrees, it just means a few moderators were able to overcome their own bias to admit that some position I took had value even if wrong.
....yeah, like I'd trade steaks for curry. Not!
No one said it was impossible, just that it might as well be impossible. It cost me over $30,000 to move from Los Angeles to Washington, DC -- and I was able to do it blindly without the visa hurdles, obviously. If you've tried to support two unemployed people during an apartment AND job search in a new city, you know what I'm talking about. The necessary burn rate for the first eight weeks is equal to the subsequent eight months. Unless you have already lost everything down to the shirt on your back and you're planning on walking, it's a logistical and financial nightmare.
You don't just wake up in the morning and think "gosh, I'll move to India." Moving overseas for employment is horrendously complicated if you are attempting to immigrate. When you are talking about people who have been struggling for 18-24 months already, it's a pipe dream for all but the most flush with cash. Regardless of the local laws, it would be suicide to come in without at least an entire year's budget in cash--and most countries require it, some of them require two years (see: New Zealand). For two people in most countries, that's roughly $120,000 in reserves. I'll just pull that out of my wallet. Obviously, India is cheaper, but what say we call it $10k per year per person. That's still $40,000 in burnable cash. That's undoubtedly far beyond what most of unemployed IT workers have sitting around--and if India doesn't work out, congratulations, now you're getting off a plane homeless and broke, but with all that bankable international experience. Whatever.
Besides, "you can just move to India" is so fscking abusive it makes me sick. It's basically saying "we think your life is worthless." Want to know why people accuse Indians of being arrogant about this issue? That's it. It ignores all of the cultural and social aspects to existing. "Just give up all of your family, friends, acadmic and professional relationships, oh and sell the pets too, to move to Bangalore." Unless your professional ambitions already include such ventures (in my case, they do and I have done it, so don't start with me), moving half way across the globe just for a paycheck is ludicrous.
Normally, i detest whiners who complain about moderation, but this is a truly exceptional case.
How is it that a post that starts off with a "cleverly" disguised racial epithet (Translation for the clue impaired: "Fuh Q Raghead" = Fuck you raghead.) has anything other than flamebait mods?
The rest of the argument is entirely redundant when taken in context with the rest of the posts on this article, so what's the excuse?
Note to the cretin who wrote the original post: "raghead" is most often applied to Arabs, not Indians. If you're going to be a bigotted asshole you should at least do it right!
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
This sounds like a fantastic idea! As a Unix systems administration guru I could make between 700K and 1M rupees a year! (US$15,473.03 - US$22,104.33) I hope I don't spend it all in one place.
In a few years, the US will be just as much of a scumhole as India, the whole world will pretty much look that way. All the rich people in the world will live on say, Bermuda or something, and everything else will just be a huge slum.
"Go ahead and try. Convice your congresscritters to pass the "No Jobs Overseas" bill, and you'll find that American products and services are suddenly higher than similar products and services available for import from Asia, Europe, or India."
And you seem to have forgotten that that higher price gains the average worker not only a decent wage, but freedom from being exploited by the company he works for. It gains him clean air and water. It gains him time to have a family. They don't call it a higher standard of living for nothing.
Now if you don't want any of that? Please feel free to buy from those who don't value all the above, but don't tell us that we're wrong for wanting those things, and that others are right for ignoring them.
No amount of legistlation is going to stop the market. If you start legislating outsourcing out of existance, the U.S. will become less competitive and Indian companies will start supplying software and services directly.
What's happening is a market correction. Like all market corrections, its painful, destructive, and leaves a lot of unemployed people in its wake. Its also rather inevitable.
What is mainly going to happen is the Indian standard of living increasing over the years while the U.S. decreases until they have some parity. At which point business will move to the next cheap labour country (China?)
Welcome to Free Trade. You westerners invented it. RTFM.
- get fired from your job
- give up your home
- move away from your friends
- move away from your extended family
- move your family away from their family and
their friends
- move to a foriegn culture in the 3rd world
- accept a lower standard of living
- take a cut in pay
All so billionaires and millionaires can have a tiny bit more money
What a special deal!
Steve
Yay! No more poverty, disease, or corruption! Thanks to some nebulous feel-good bullshit Friedman fervently believes, India is no longer "a synonym for massive poverty."
The good timing starts with India's decision in 1991 to shuck off decades of socialism and move toward a free-market economy with a focus on foreign trade. This made it possible for Indians who wanted to succeed at innovation to stay at home, not go to the West.
So, starting in 1991, "Indians who wanted to succeed at innovation" no longer had to leave India. Uh huh, cool. I always like how Friedman is able to ignore distracting facts and cut through the haze of reality to make his rhetorical points.
His conclusion:
As one Indian exec put it to me: The Americans' self-image that this tech thing was their private preserve is over. This is a "wake-up call" for U.S. workers to redouble their efforts at education and research. If they do that, he said, it will spur "a whole new cycle of innovation, and we'll both win. If we each pull down our shutters, we will both lose."
Empty bullshit pure as the driven snow.
Middle America thinks free trade is fair when America's gaining from it
What on earth would make you say such an irrational thing? Do you have a clue what middle america (middle class) people even are about? From your description, you've certainly never met one, and have a chip on your shoulder large enough to keep you from ever grasping the concept of empathy.
Don't forget middle class folks are only one to three generations (at most) away from being the huddled masses. My grandparents worked in steel mills and nasty chemical yards where employee death was an "unfortunate possibility" and I'm not that old.
What do we want? Equity. Fair trade. Do you think it's fair trade when the pro-big business and union Democrats in our country pass all sorts of laws to make our labor the most expensive in the world? ADA? OSHA regulations? Child labor laws? Excessive paperwork? And excessive taxation (to the point where it's illegal for your employer to report to you how much they have to pay in addition to your "withholding" that you usually see on your paycheck stub).
People always rant about the Republicans, but it's big business Democrats like George Soros (founder of MoveOn.org whose Soros Holdings Group owns the largest portfolio of US companies offshoring jobs to India - while he parades around criticizing the president for the problem, and laughs his way to the bank every day). Don't get me wrong, the Republicans have their own evils as well - such as wanting to let Mexico in so that they get their votes.
it's ok for Indians to be poor and begging on the streets of mumbai
Not at all. We're actually wondering why you permit such a corrupt government that doesn't take care of its people. That's why your labor is cheaper. Your companies don't have the same rules and costs.
Some of our rules and costs are absurd, but many are appropriate. India is only cheaper at the expense of the safety and quality of living of its people.
So you want a fair trade with us? Then earn it. Don't expect to compete with us on our level when you're not. If you don't address these issues in your own country, you can be guaranteed that middle america will address the disparity in ours. Fair trade is equitable trade, not trade with slave owners where slaves are just given a different name.
Dude , all that stuff about 'caste discrimination' etc. may be true in villages , but not so in urban India where 45% of the population lives. Its totally impossible to make out which guy is from which caste and really , nobody cares anymore. I think it is same as racism in US - where the prejudices exist more in small towns than in the cities. But there is indeed a class system in India. The guy with the most $$$ is king - regardless of his caste/religion/sexuality etc.
That is exactly the point: no matter how desperate you are, there's always going to be someone out there who's just a little bit more desperate.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
UNIX Systems Administration Guru (4 positions) ...[more]
Unique opportunity for UNIX gurus to enhance and apply their sysadmin proficiency by working with a team of cutting-edge UNIX experts to manage world-wide enterprise class servers. Exposure to system
Career Level: Mid Career (2+ years of experience)
Education Level: Bachelor's Degree-Graduate Degree (BA, BSc, BCom)
Job Type: Employee
Job Status: Full Time
Salary: From 700,000.00 to 1,000,000.00 INR per year
I got all excited until I saw the conversion rate
Live mid-market rates as of 2004.03.12 18:21:57 GMT.
1,000,000.00 INR India Rupees = 22,104.33 USD United States Dollars
1 INR = 0.0221043 USD
1 USD = 45.2400 INR
DOH! Granted I could probably live well on 22k in India, but I'd miss good baseball and p0rn
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
Actually, you've put your finger on the larger problem in your last sentense:
"Or maybe they expect a flood of online orders from customers in India. Like that will happen."
This is one key problem with the outsourcing of labor to other countries. As cathcy as the phrase "globy economy" is, it is easy to forget that a majority of businesses rely solely on domestic customers. The more payroll which gets paid to international entities, the fewer dollars are available to be spent domestically.
What? "Go global" I hear you say? That's nice, but still cumbersome and mostly out of reach for small business. Let's say I have a chain of three small to medium grocery stores. I should sell overseas? Not really practical. How about if I'm an engineer or an architect? Other countries have vastly different building codes and construction resources. Move an office there? It's hard enough trying to open a new office more than 100 miles away, much less overseas.
No, the ability to outsource certain professions is mostly a drain on the economic engine of this country. It does keep the "saved" money in the pockets of corporations, and hence the stockholders, but the (lower) salary may as well be gone. The world economy isn't "efficient" yet, so this balance can be tipped.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
After all, what does Pakistan intend to do with those nukes & missiles?
Nope! The amazing thing is that some people see it as somehow wrong when others don't play by the corporate rules that brought this mess about.
Let's look closer.
"...how people whine about losing jobs"
Did they lose them thru their own actions, if not then they have room to "whine" as you so patronizingly put it.
"...then when you show them where the jobs are, they give you all sorts of reasons why they can't take THAT job"
You're about as subtle as a brick. You act like there are no good reasons for not doing something.
How about this? I have to take care of my aged parents, and can't be trappsing around the globe to satisfy your reasons to look right.
"...and then continue to whine about losing jobs."
Ah yes, the problem has been solved in the interm between your complaining that we don't have any good reasons, and our jobs suddenly coming back.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
No, fuckwit, I was talking about two of the better Indian cities.
Unlike you (probably some Eurotrash America-hater), I lived in New York City for 20 years; New York is like unfiltered Nirvana compared to Mumbai or Chennai. In India, my chauffered car drove past slums of 3-foot-tall tin shacks with an open hydrant for sanitation to get to the gated ultramodern building of the consulting company.
Offshoring is a problem for us in the expensive labour West because people in the cheap labour every-where-else can do a lot of the things we do cheaper. So how does that happen? The more people there are, the more of them there are who can do any particular thing. However, there is not necessarily any need for so many more people to do those things. So some people offer to do it cheaper. What's the solution? Vasectomy. Tubal ligation. Depo provera. Tightly crossed legs. Lousy social skills. Whatever...stop having so many kids, here and abroad.
My other machine is a lever.
UNIX Systems Administration Guru Career Level: Mid Career (2+ years of experience) Education Level: Bachelor's Degree-Graduate Degree (BA, BSc, BCom) Job Type: Employee Job Status: Full Time Salary: From 700,000.00 to 1,000,000.00 INR per year 700,000.00 to 1,000,000.00 to a million dollars a year! Pack the bags it's off to India :)
I moved to the U.S. at the age of fifteen and now, almost ten years later, I cannot imagine living elsewhere. You might think that I have become a spoiled young brat with a nice BMW in his garage because I say these things, and you're wrong. I am just an average American dude who works as a sys. admin and pays his taxes. Why would I maintain my average status in the United States if I could get a better life in India? Here are my reasons.
The beauty of the United States is its lack of a mainstream culture, an official religion and strong traditions. That is enough to keep me in this county because I can be whatever I want to be and theoretically I am protected under the Constitution.
I can choose my religion and whether I want to celebrate certain holidays. I am going to marry a girl of my choice and nobody will stop me from doing it. When I have kids, my daughter and my son will have equal opportunities and when they grow up, they will be allowed to date and live with their partners (regrdless of their partner's gender) before they get married. That is the beauty of the United States and this is priceless. I have visited many countries and I have met a lot of people; my experiences suggest that although the United States is not the perfect country, it is a good place to live and would like to stick with it.
Please do not get me wrong: I am not trying to put India down. I am sure that it is a great country that has a log of great people. However, if I had to choose between Boston and Bombay, I would stick with the former simply because my views are closer to Western culture and because I value personal freedoms that exist in the United States.
"Companies are owned by their shareholders. Directors have a fiduciary duty to their owners: they must manage the business in their interest. They aren't there to manage "expectations", or to drive their stock price.
;-)). Vote with your dollars. Don't buy from companies that outsource; start a consumer advocacy group (like the ones that pressured businesses not to invest in South Africa)."
Some companies are owned by their shareholders. The majority of the companies that make up the US economy are private.
"The job of a company is to make money for its owners, plain and simple.""
At what price to the rest of society? The job of a soldier is to destroy things, and yet in WWII some couldn't get away with "I was only following orders" Is the new mantra "I was only living up to my fiduciary responsabilities"?
"(This is what Regis at Adelphia, Ken Lay at Enron, everybody at Worldcom etc. forgot)"
Oh they didn't forget who's "interest" they were doing things in.
"If you want Amercan companies to be run for the benefit of the - abstractly - American economy, or American workers, then that's fine."
If they're not American companies, then who's are they? Are you arguing that companies are completely independent of the society they're in?
"But you must expect in turn that foreign countries will impose tariffs on American goods, and you must accept that companies will make a lot less money. "
You mean they don't now?
"You must accept that VC money (and other sources of finance) will flow to places where the business environment is nicer."
"Nice" is a very relative term. But then "bottom of the barrel 'nice'" does have it's appeal.
"And you must expect that entreupreners will - instead of coming to America - will leave to go to more free market countries."
Considering there's no such thing as "free" in this world, I don't see much of a point to this statement.
"If you still think that's good for America, that's fine. But you cannot abstractly tell companies how to manage their business."
They're called laws. Every single country on this God-Forsaken planet has them, and for longer than you've been on this planet. You very well can tell a corporation how to conduct it's business.
"If you want to discourage outsourcing to India, then there is a way to do it (also known as the South Korean way
Agreed to a point.
"But don't pass laws."
Laws are for when common sense fails to work.
I'm a woman. I don't feel like getting killed just because someone doesn't like what I'm wearing.
No matter how technical they are, the Indian culture still has NO rights for women.
No thank you. I'd rather work in a different industry.
Check out the poverty... guess why you can charge less? No social network at all...
Pakistani, you insensitive clod!
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
So first they steal all our jobs, and put me into bankrupcy and living on my friend's sofa..
and now im supposed to be HAPPY and MOVING to that god forsaken hell hole on the ass end of the planet??
I want a fucking gun... and a rampage...
RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!
Trying to take over the planet.
"Hoboken is known for baseball, Frank Sinatra and Shloka"
Very true, Sam.
Bathroom stall scrawl in Hoboken offers the most glowing praise of her willingness and aptitude.
The advent of the techno-Raj?
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
NG ? it's an american mag, much like america TV. also the timing of the article coicided with aboutthe time India told USA to go fly a kite hen they asked for trooops to die instead of their own in Iraq.
the next wek I heard on american radio about an america jury which had to caution an american white cop not to treat an american black citizen as an animal. So, let's say, you guys are not exactly vry pure either. you have your own caste system here. atleast in India they care about caste mostly only when it's wedding season.
so you uninformed ones yapping about caste system, please shut up. your ignorance is showing way too much.
I cant stand those damn indians... taking ALL the tech jobs from US (both context; united states and us)
I hope their economy collapses and all the work comes back to america!
We need to penalize companies who outsource!
That is exactly the point: no matter how desperate you are, there's always going to be someone out there who's just a little bit more desperate.
Yeah, if we carry this to its logical extreme then it'll be the people who need the jobs most who get them! A fine mess that'd be.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
The parent was hardly a troll. I too find this sort of latent racism quite irritating and offensive.
Codec shootout time... this time between jobs in the US and in India. I'd like to see where jobs in *my* field are :-)
Experiment:
A: Go to monster.com, search for jobs, any job, any location, keyword H.264
B: Go to monster india.com, search for jobs, any job, any location, keyword H.264
Result:
12 jobs in the US
43 in India
After being unable to find a job for over a year (I have a BS in Computer Science and 10 years of great experience, my wife and I are 32) we are seriously considering moving in with my wife's parents - they are all Canadian. We'll take any job we can get and fortunately the cost of living is lower in Canada.
You may be making less money but end up better off or the same as you are now.
This is true if you only consider cost-of-living. It's not true if you consider how much wealth you will aquire. You can work for 30 years on the West coast of the US and pay off a mortgage on a half million dollar house. You can work 30 years someplace else, earning less money, and own a less expensive house. Your lifestyle may be similar, but at the end of 30 years on the West coast you own something worth half a million dollars. If you're making less money someplace else you end up owning something of less value.
The low income route only makes sense if you're committed to living there forever and will never need to pull your money out and take it somewhere else.
If you need a Linux or Unix related job in India, feel free to check out this list:
Linux Bangalore Jobs List
You aren't remembered for doing what is expected of you
It is a natural course of action. In this world, where countries and corporates pursue their interests independently, corporates are effecting our lives much more than state governments. Geography is history. With the advancement of technologies, corporates are becoming more and more powerful and flexible. So how do you contain their powers?
I think employees of a corporate (especially big ones) should have enough representation in decision making (i.e. stocks) so that they can contain the management to make erratic decisions. Otherwise there is no difference between a human being working in a factory and the machine on which he is working. At the same time, if employees make a wrong decision to save their neck in short term, the company will not survive for long. This can be compared to democratic process of governance. I think if you have a group of people that work towards a common goal, they must have a say in making decisions.
Ofcourse one can say that this is against competitive market. But that is not the point here. The point is once a group becomes so powerful that it can change millions of lives, it must not be left to a bunch of people working on their calculators.
You may take a pay cut, but everyone around you will be making far less money than you. It is very common for the wealthy in India to have servants for cooking, cleaning, gardening, anc even driving.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
an opportunity to see peaple dying in the street, black plague, no protections for the citizens, and that smell. oh god, the smell.
Oh, and lest I forget, you get to be in a country whose bitter rival is nuclear armed, and may, or may not, believe some god is on there side.
My friends from India dread going back.
The beauty of the United States is its lack of a mainstream culture, an official religion and strong traditions. That is enough to keep me in this county because I can be whatever I want to be and theoretically I am protected under the Constitution.
However, if I had to choose between Boston and Bombay, I would stick with the former simply because my views are closer to Western culture and
The former contradicts the later, dont you think? There is a mainstream culture in US. Its the McD's culture. Every small town is virtually indistinguishable from every other small town, except when you encounter minorities - amish, mormons or Red Indian tribes or mexicans/blacks and like.
Your assumptions that people outside your country dont have the same rights as you is ridiculous. Some of the European contries have more freedoms than what you got. Just like in the US, if u fuck with the administration,u wud get screwed elsewhere too.
Its laughable to suggest that India has a mainstream culture. India is the most diverse place in the world. There are 18 official languages, if I am correct. I see people in US crying fowl when there are instructions written in Spanish - just a 2nd language spoken around here. Its a standard practise to write it in 3 languages atleast in India. India has more religious cults than US.. both wacko and non-wacko. There are certain religions that survived only because they chose to live in India - like the Zorastrians aka Parsis - originally from Persia, all but wiped out due to the advent of Islam. They have been around for 1000 years in India. FYI - India even has MORMONS and some stone age negroid tribes who are, well, living in stone age still.
And yea - Hindus dont believe that all non-hindus are evil and go to hell.
US is a good country for an average guy because of the number of opportunities available. US is a great country for the really smart too. In India life has been tough for past 300 yrs. Only the best shine there.. Its not a country I would recommend for the mediocre americans.
1. Well educated people who don't have jobs - Being well educated doesn't mean anything. I could go to school for 4 years and learn how to snake juggle, but it doesn't mean I should make $40K/year. You are worth only as much as your productivity, and if someone is willing to work for less than you in, that's your problem.
2. "If we outsource all our jobs we won't be able to pay for our goods" - Makes absolutely no sense for a huge number of reasons:
a) When we outsource production goods are cheaper to produce. These savings are passed on to the consumer who can then spend their money on other goods or save it, making it avaiable to companies. Both of which increase employment nationally.
b) Even if the amount of job created were less than the amount of jobs gained, we couldn't possible outsource everyone. Eventually unemployment would rise and people would bid down their wages, making American competetive again. This might seem so terrible that our wages might drop, but wages are not wealth. Our production ability makes us wealthy. This happened with Japanese automakers, and they are doing just fine.
3. Outsourcing should be regulated to protect the poor Chinese laborers handcuffed to converyor belts making shoes - First of all, it's not slave labor because they have volunteered to do it. They obviously chose this job out of a list of alternative things they could be doing. By denying them this job you will make them worse off. We cannot superimpose American standards on third world countries.
Minimum wage will be a terrible thing to implement as well. These workers are far less productive than Americans. If you pay them minimum wage it won't be profitable to hire them anymore, and they'll all be unemployed. Your policies will hurt these third world countries, not help them.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Now now.. lets not issue blanket statements shall we..
:) (Yes, that is a blanket statement).
:)
From those last two lines, you come off as someone who absolutely has no understanding nor knowledge of India, its culture and its people.
Sure, I agree that women are abused in various parts of this country, but women arent obviously hated!! Remember, we had a woman as our Prime Minister when the rest of the world was still letting their women run around in Bikinis and swinging to pop culture
The biggest problem in India is that there are still an immensely large population that has no education, has no healthcare, has no idea how to stand up for their rights. Corrupt politicians are not delegated to the Western world, we have them as well.
The Hindu Religion (Despite being a Christian myself, I have immense respect for Hinduism and for other religions as well), does not look down upon the women, the so called "holy" individuals who wanted to bend their religion to their needs and wishes, decreed that women were inferior. As a religion and among its scriptures and texts, Hinduism has utmost regard for Woman as a Mother, Wife, Sister, Friend and an Equal. And believe me, this religion and the indian culture has existed for thousand more years than the Western Civilization and Christianity (heck, Christianity came to India way before it reached the Western world, in 52B.C when St. Thomas reached the southern tip of India). So yes, this is a Land which is steeped in culture, which has treated women with utmost respect in all corners of it, and yet has been vandalized and abused by people in power, by religious nuts, who had their own agendas.
And when United States (formerly known as Land of the Free) shudders at the thought of letting immigrants who werent born here, having a shot at being President, India has no qualms in letting the Wife of a Former Prime Minister who was born and raised in Italy, get a swipe at becoming the nation's Prime Minister. Also, voting rights for Women, We didnt had to think twice about that either.
Oh one more thing when you are still trying to comprehend.. Gay Marriage is Legal in India (we just dont let them fornicate, now thats another story!)
So please crawl back to your trailer and show not your face and your intellect to the rest of us (That if you didnt know was surely a blanket statement, but meant solely for you)
Rapid Nirvana
I could live with this system if I was getting some of that cheap opium you mention.
The best reason to move to India is to develop skills in higher level positions that you could never get in America. Programmers would be wise to become managers in India for a few years and reapply in the US for management positions the next time they get laid off since the US job market is starting to cut off at management.
Many high level executives also work in India to build up their resumes for positions in the US.
I keep hearing people say that great new innovative jobs will start to spring up to replace the old IT jobs.
Does anyone have a clue as to what these great new jobs will be?
I'm not surprised at all... It was inevitable that U.S. businesses would figure out what we've all known all along: A guy who is 12,000 miles away on the other side of the world and only accessible via phone and e-mail is just not as valuable as somebody (equally skilled) that you can face-to-face with by the coffee/soda machine and bounce ideas off of.
What I did find surprising was that the guy had the scruples to give his best workers raises and benefits rather than telling them "Get bent! We can replace you in a heartbeat" after they had earned his trust and respect (and a raise to a fair-market wage.) A few more stories like this and I might just start having hope for the future of America again...
Who did what now?
Elite? Hardly. Not all geeks are millionaires. I do not aspire to some sort of Aryan ideal, nor am I a pedophile. Your generalizations are as bad as you claim mine to be. You wanna talk about blood money going to the Swiss? Is America's war on drugs doing any less damage to folks south of the border? Do me a favor and buy a copy of this book.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Most of the growth in Indian IT market is due to outsourcing. Considering that the IT growth in US/Europe has stabilized over the last couple of years, the growth rate in India is bound to stabilize in sync. At the same time, my friends in India tell me that for IT people other than code-monkeys, salaries there tend to grow at around 15% (they claim 25%, but that's hard for me to believe) annually. Which means that in a few years the salaries and therefore the corporate costs won't be as competitive as they are now. Combined with the unashamed government corruption and the tendency of nontrivially many people to make a quick buck, the incentive to outsource any further will diminish. IMHO, therefore, this is near-term pain while the jobs get recycled. There of course will be plenty of opportunities for the qualified people to move to India and help boost local technology consumption, but it's completely ridiculous to imagine Americans moving to India to work as telephone operators :-)
Re-education of laid-off people in the US is the answer, not moving to India/bashing outsourcing..
There are two streams of thought here:
1. Without an immediate halt (this is a generalization, my apologies) to job offshoring, The US especially will just have a glut of workers able to serve fast food.
OR
2. Without moving everything that can be moved (again a generalization) off shore to save money the US just won't be able to compete, and there will be no job growth and all the companies will leave and die etc etc.
The "free traders" call the people worried about this as ecnomic isolationists, and the others call the free traders naive.
The fact is that it is possible that both sides of the fence are right... about some parts. There IS middle ground here people. Ecnomic theory with trade suggests that it is better if Country A who can create cheese well, but not wine as well trading with Country B who's attributes are the converse of such (Creates wine well, but not cheese) is advantageous to engage in trade.
That makes sense.
However, when one country is able to create wine and cheese, and the other has to comparitive advantage, that part of economic theory breaks down or dictates that trading is a bad idea in that case.
The US can't live by itself, but it can help raise the level of other fields before just opening the borders recklessly thinking that somehow all this will work itself out, trade without foresight and policy is just as dangerous as not trading or faith based trading that is one sided.
My 2 cents
I'm an American-born ethnic Indian, and I've been there many times.
It *is* a big difficulty to live there if you weren't born there. Most American-born Indians don't like it.
So if all you white people are repulsed by the idea of moving there, thank God for his mercy.
I remember living in San Diego and seeing Orange County engineers diffuse in. These people started demanding the removal of evolution from the teaching curriculum, and in general started throwing their weight around.
The average Indian wants your money, not you. Please keep your white superiority and proselytizing here in the North American Wal-Marts, where it belongs.
We had enough of you people last century.
All this hate-talk against Indians just tells me one thing.
You're SCARED of them.
Good.
However, all the fear and hate in the world is not going to make your life any better.
I just got back from China. My standard of living, making ~$500 a month was pretty descent. That's about average for China, and I could have made about 40% more if I put in more time. Of course, food is cheap there because the laborers have next to nothing, so there's a wider range of incomes. Many people make subsistence wages and live with their parents till they get married, etc. Sometimes afterwards. So goods are cheaper and wages can be lower and still be good. But you don't want to be in the bottom 30% in one of these countries, or you get treated like homeless people do in the U.S.
Still, considering India has passed laws to protect their labor markets, it would be fair to retaliate and do the same. Of course, the government serves corporations, rather than labor so that isn't going to happen.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
1. LINUX/OS/GNU is great. Everyone else is fookin codemonger. Free software for all! Winbloze!!! MicroShaft!!!! M$!!!!!!! ROR.
2. TECH SUPPORT. God my job sucks. You wouldn't believe the fookin (l)users I have to put up with!!!! They should learn to use the command line and install debian from source themselves! Lamers!!!
3. INDIA. (Problem: India is a democracy that produces well trained erudite analysts. The slashdotter must consider the wider picture here). Er, Indians! Steal our jobs!!! Can't speak English (...oh but they can, but don't let that stop you).
So. You want free software. And not to have to deal with people who don't knowledgably use free software. Congrats, that is exactly what you are shortly to recieve. Indians will be the employees of the Evil Software Corps, leaving you plenty of time to contribute to free as in beer software. They will also deal with all the mere mortals who regularly do your head in. Rejoice, be happy. Quit moaning.
And here in Minnesota in the US that $60k would have you owning your own house on 1/2 to 5 acres of land (depending on how far from work you wanted to live; assuming a workplace in the city), still able to afford a good car, and live well.
Seeing the world and living in different places is great, but any American SW engineer who thinks that in order to have a good standard of living they have to move abroad is either insane or stupid.
Not all tech jobs are in the Bay Area where $60k is considered an entry-level salary.
About 1% of American jobs are moving to India & co.
American jobs of ALL kinds have been leaving the states since 1950 and guess what? About 14% of all jobs in the US are in manufacturing.
The problem is that jobs are moving its that Americans are not maintaining their bleeding edge skillset which normally, at least for the last 200 years contributed to creating NEW jobs to take their place.
If you really want your smock-wearing industrial production line type techie job to stay in this country then you should be willing to watch the next generation of knowledge workers pass you by. And when it does, expect it to pay less and less each year.
Typically, the most senior or the oldest male is the person with the most authority.
Behave and dress in a low key and conservative manner - no bare shoulders or too-short skirts - and avoid the stereotype of Western women as aggressive and sexually forward. Since some Indians may be uncomfortable making physical contact with a woman, unless they offer to shake hands, it is better to stick to say "Hello" as a form of greeting.
Snippets from the the links on Monster.1) The implication is in regards to those who studied computer science, or business. I'm quite aware that getting an MFA doesn't guarantee you a steady job.
2) that's an interesting arguement... "you are only worth as much as your productivity, and if someone is willing to work for less than you, that's your problem" Later you say, "these workers are far less productive than Americans. If you pay them minimum wage it won't be profitable to hire them anymore, and they'll be unemployed." So what your saying is that firing productive well paid workers, and unemploying them is okay. Then hiring slave labor, thats not very productive and paying them more is bad because its not profitable. That if we pay them minimum wage it will make them unemployed. So unemploy US workers good, unemploy 3rd world workers bad. Umm yeah..... I can see the logic in that.
if someone is willing to work for less than you , that's your problem.
Naw, its not my problem. Its your problem, my problem, and everybody elses. There are alot of jobs you can outsource. Only a few jobs have true security. However, with alot of unemployed people, there's a larger pool of hungry laborers just willing to take your job if they can. They'll even do it for less, provided that the law allows them to do so.
You claim that our productivity is our wealth. Yeah, so that's things like steel, semicondutors, computers, cars....stuff like that right? We put lots of that stuff out....oh right, lots of that is outsourced to foreign countries, and from what I recall, the steel industry has been hit hard as of late due to cheap Asian steel. In either case, I couldn't care less about "OUR" productivity. I'm talking about living wages that allow people to buy cars, houses, and raise a family. So maybe Productivity is the nations wealth, but wages are the people's wealth.
as for your remark on 3, yeah, yah know its nice to take an attitude of "who cares", but the fact still remains that we got rid of working conditions like that in America for a reason. However, your right, they DID CHOOSE a slave labor job above others. I mean, if YOU had a choice between poverty and a .14 a day wage, or poverty and starving to death. Which would you choose? That's like saying, "these people chose to be slaves as opposed to being gassed. They wanted to live."
We cannot superimpose American standards on third world countries. Minimum wage will be a terrible thing to implement as well
Your right, we can't impose our standards on 3rd worth countries. However, we can on our own businesses. Fung-Shue-slave inc. isn't the one importing the shoes to the states, its Nike. I think that american businesses or businesses that want to sell in america have to adhere to a certain level of business practices. That means, ensuring that the environment that workers work in are safe and liveable. Also that their wages meet our own federal minimum wage. If a business can't meet those requirements, then they shouldn't do business in America. Mind you that it would not be more expensive to do this. You have no proof that it would be more expensive, and I challenge you to cough up the evidence. You also have to ask why they are less productive (in your own words), could it be because they live in piss poor conditions. Course you probably wouldn't know that considering that your probably living quite comfortably.
My politics would not hurt the third world countries. That's like saying "your repairs will hurt that broken down old car." You cannot break what is already broken. These countries are being exploited, and they certainly would not hurt countries that DO pay their employees a living wage. Honestly, India would not be harmed by my idea because they are already being paid well enough for where they live. If they make $40k a year, then they obviously are being paid more than our own federal minimum wage standard.
*sigh* here I go replying to cowards again...my fire burns more brightly than you could ever know from a slashdot comment, baby.
h p
http://holophrastic.com/javascopes/september_02.p
http://holophrastic.com/javascopes/may_03.php
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
I wonder what you really fear from the US if you feel you have to bash it so. Is it the fear that so many new and exciting things come from here, or that we are excitied about the future(instead of living in the past) or is it just that you could get laid in the good old USA!!! Is it such a bad thing that you cannot distiquish one town from another or is it that the standards for all American are more equil than in other contries? And yea - a Hidus can practice his religon here in the US open and FEELY and we are all not that ignorent to we know that Hindus dont believe that all non-hindus are evil and go to hell.
Okay, lets assume that we're talking about sweatshops rather than outright slavery. So no one is actually forcing these employees to work there, and indeed, many prefer their $0.05/h over sustenance farming. If we were to impose minimum wage on Third World countries, it would be depriving them of the possibility of working at all. Instead, we hope that as global productivity increases, the global standard of living will also increase.
The other worker abuses are things like the right to unionise and protection from hazardous environments, etc. All such privileges and protections can be assigned a willingness to pay, i.e.: the amount a worker would be willing to have their wage lowered in order to avoid the risk or gain the privilege. First World workers' wages are so high, that they're willing to accept a slightly lower wage for a better quality of life. However, if an employee would starve to death if their wage gets reduced at all, then they probably don't care about the quality of life.
So ultimately any standards we impose on other countries is a form of taxation of the world's poor by depriving them the right to compete. The only fair thing to do would be to pay this tax back through international welfare. Since we want the Third World to become self-sufficient, though, we shouldn't just give them handouts. Instead, the First World should subsidise the wages in the Third World to make up for the imposed rights.
Now this could all be performed by our tax-hungry governments, but since I'm a big fan of markets I'd like to at least give them a try first. So I propose that the government impose worker-condition labelling on all manufactured goods including cost-of-living adjusted wages, denied privileges, and hazards that would not be acceptable in the importing country. If consumers actually make decisions based on these labels, then companies like Nike will have to improve the conditions of foreign manufacturing, all without undue government regulation and colonialism.
these are just the countries US messed with. No wonder Life there is Miserable. Thank god India was non-aligned.
There's one question no one seems to ask when discussing outsourcing. What effect is it having on the social structure? How many families has it destroyed? How many will it prevent from forming? How many more will this migration cost us? Our families is as much responsible for the US being what it is, as our money is. Families are already under attack, will this be the straw that breaks the camel's back?
If you get a job offer and if you understand baksheesh, the visa is simple (relative to the bulk of Indian bureaucracy, that is.) After my 4th work visa (electrical engineering) the company sponsored my application for citizenship, as well. Tech companies are falling all over Americans who are willing to live and work in India... the larger companies get someone who can interface with the stateside operations, and the smaller companies seem to think it is auspicious to have a token American on the staff, sort of a cargo-cult thing.
India is like those Chinese fingercuffs... the harder you struggle the worse it is. But if you take the time to learn the fundamental differences betwween Indians and the rest of the world, the struggles disappear.
For tech jobs, the biggest hassle is that the national language is Hindi, but a lot of the jobs are in the south where the speak Tamil. (More jobs are opening up in Mumbai and Noida, so this problem goes away a little, but for a westerner south India is infinitely more preferable in terms of culture.) Learn the language, learn the customs (EVERYTHING runs on baksheesh), find an employer who wants you, and all of those 'not a viable option' problems disappear.
Namaste...
I'm personally confused by a lot of the outsourcing discussion in high-tech fields and software specifically. I see a lot of articles about unemployed people, but I always suspect the people just aren't qualified for the IT field, got hired in the boom without qualifications, or haven't taken the initiative to retrain. Right now, my company is looking to hire, but we can't find the people. A lot of unqualified applicants who don't read the job description though...
.NET (not C/C++)
In many cases, the best source of talent is India.
The skill set required for IT has changed:
* Skill in architecture (not coding)
* Skill with XML, J2EE,
* Skill with Mainframe & Enterprise Technology (not scripting languages)
* Skill with selling & customer interaction (not writing cryptic/snide/cynical emails)
* Skill in demonstrating value. How will you help a business (not how much code can you write).
* Skill in project management / estimating (not all-night code fests)
* Being proactive (not playing DOOM or reading slashdot if no active task assigned)
The skills in ()s are useful to some extent, but they are tool skills and won't help you stand out. Most employers place 0 value on them unless it applies to some specialized work.
Anyone smart enough to read and understand Slashdot can learn these skills and either start a one-man consulting company in the US or get hired easily. A good test to apply is to go out and create a new web site with a database that does something valuable (anything, as long as you could explain it to a non-tech person and keep their interest for 5 minutes). If you can't do this, you probably don't deserve an IT job and should go into another field, probably related to manual labor! I have a non-technical friend, no CS courses, who takes photos for a living, and he did all of that for his own business. If you can create the website, it won't be hard to get a job. Just network, keep trying, and put your best foot forward. If you create the website, trot that out on your portfolio as the independent business you've been running.
Sadly, of the few people I know that are unemployed, most of them seem to be sysadmins who lack initiative to retrain or gain a differentiated skill. I don't know what to say to them, but their job wasn't just offshored to India; the Indians I have interacted with tend to more qualified than them and have degrees in CS or Math.
The real people who have been hurt by the offshoring are the blue-collar, non college-educated folks who have less ability to retrain. I have little sympathy for college-educated software guys who haven't learned how to take initiative to show value and find or create a job for themselves. Eventually they'll learn and in the meantime, offshoring reduces the cost of goods and services for the rest of us.
2. I have no idea where you got my 'logic' from. I am against paying 3rd world people minimum wage beacuse it will unemploy them. I am against forcing companies to hire overpriced American labor because it will drive up the price of goods and make the economy more sluggish and more unemployed. Therefore: I am against unemployment.
Employers are not in the business of supplying jobs, they are in the business of supplying products. This means either:
A. Hiring very productive people and paying them well.
B. Hiring fairly unproductive people and paying them little.
Which you choose depends on the actual numerical values of the production output, and the wages paid. In this case, it is more economical to pay Indians to do the same work as Americans. If Americans don't want to work under those 'dreadful' conditions, that's too bad. I'm happy for the Indians who actually have a job.
There's nothing wrong with someone willing to do your job for less, regardless of where they live.
3. Productivity is not just goods, it's service as well. America is a producer of 'service' people. These include your 'fast food' employee, but also doctors, lawyers, managers, CEOs, marketers, decision makers. These are jobs that require talent. Moreover this talent is scarce. Computer programmers are not scarce. And if you know anything of economics, this means computer programmer wages will fall. And they should.
More on third world laborers: Third world laborers are more inefficient. They aren't as educated and they don't have the machines we do. Paying them even minimum wage would grossly overvalue their production. Giving them so-called "livable" environment is also expensive. Any measure that would over-value the employees would cause them to be unemployed.
It is unfortunate these workers live in such conditions. They didn't grow up with an education or with great infrastrucutre. That is the reality. You can't remedy this with your policies, only through slow economic growth. Such growth comes from free trade and a healthy economic climate.
If they have a choice between a $0.30/h corporate job or a $0.15/h local job, who are you to deny them the corporate job? You are unknowingly damning them to a lifetime of poverty. By forcing companies to pay $5.00/h you are removing those jobs as these companies will find another country that is worth $5.00/h
Yes competition is a prerequisite for low prices. Fortunately there are no monopolies on clothes, shoes, tires, electronics, etc. Therefore prices will go down, despite your picturesque vision of corporate shareholders feeding from the trough.
People then save money when import goods are cheaper. This is either saved or spent, both of which stimulate the American economy. People predicted that when all the auto-making jobs went to Mexico after NAFTA that we'd have massive unemployment. In reality the reverse happened. This is comparative advantage and I suggest you read up on it before you post again.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
they are smarter than you.
I think this Naomi Klein commentary ads a dimension to Friedman's commentary: http://rabble.ca/columnists_full.shtml?x=30806
I just took a job in Canada, after being laid off for the second time in less than six months in Dallas, Texas. Everyone here seems to think that things are worse here (Toronto, ON) than in the U.S. but it certainly doesn't seem that way to me. I told my friends that I'm "offshoring" myself before my employer (employer? What employer?) does.
The two most common things in the Universe are dark matter and stupidity.
I already addressed this "cruelty to women" in the same thread elsewhere, so heres the link. Agree or not, its up to you.
:)
Now, you speak volumes about how we abuse and devalue our women.. (Devalue is such a perfect word!). Would you care to switch on your TV?? Hmm.. how about you look at the print media, the Ads, the Sports. Everywhere you see nothing but SKIN!. Now after what America and its people has done to degrade and devalue the image of women, I am not sure there is anything left for us poor Indians to do!
Seriously dude, climb out of your hole and visit India for once. You will find it not much different than any other place you been to. Dont take what you read/watch on TV, at face value. Dont you want to find out for yourself???
You really need to stop believing what others tell you and get a job in India.
Rapid Nirvana
No more jobs in Europe - people go to (newly founded) America No more jobs in (now just a wee bit older) America - people go to Asia (India) Now what ? No more jobs in Asia - people go to Antartica Then back to Europe Then to America Then... In the long term, this sounds like a pointless job macarena to me...
I work for a large fortune 500 game publisher that contracts out much computer/3d art to Malaysian contractors. But I believe that if we could find contractors here that
*fast/good/cheap*
then we would. This company doesn't care about long term employees/contracts, it's money.
We tried american ones last project, and they were slow/lousy/expesive, and that's the truth...
I couldn't possibly earn enough in India to pay back my student loans, and it would be wrong to simply flee, default, and make my cosigners - my parents - liable, and disrupt my own family.
My whole future, the future of my family, and the future of my parents depends on me working. Say what you will about getting into this situation, but I'll be damned if I will listen to you tell me that I shouldn't dare fight for a job for myself in this country.
I have every right to fight for a job for myself in this country, as surely as I have every right to fight for my life and the lives of those who depend most directly on me, under pressure of those who would snatch it from me.
The mighty, the elite, the wealthy, will fall before I fail in my duty to my family.
I have no idea where you got my 'logic' from. I am against paying 3rd world people minimum wage beacuse it will unemploy them. I am against forcing companies to hire overpriced American labor because it will drive up the price of goods and make the economy more sluggish and more unemployed. Therefore: I am against unemployment.
In order to see the logic, all you have to do is re-read your initial post and what I said. Pretty much, you said. If you lose your job to somebody in the 3rd world who can be paid less, that's okay, too bad for you. However, if we make the requirement that outsourced business require liveable working conditions and be paid the minimum wage at the very least (in order to do business in the US), that is bad. Why? because it will unemploy slave wage workers. Essentially your statement means that unemployment in the US is okay, if it gives a job to a 3rd world worker. If we then make conditions that require fair and decent working conditions in the 3rd world business, it may unemploy the worker, that's bad. How is that bad? Or better yet, how is that worse than unemploying somebody in the US? Mind you I never said that a programmer had to be paid $80k a year. In fact somebody linked to an article on some programmers who make around $40k a year. Also, and again. Give me proof that it would unemploy them. I want you to show proof that it would unemploy these workers if they got a decent wage. You cannot tell me your over paying them if you give them workable conditions and better pay. That's insane. You think that underpaying workers will lead to a better infrastructure? yeah right. Cause you know how countries like vietnam, and the phillipines are up and coming. I hear they might become 2nd class nations in the next 200 years based on current incomes.
Employers are not in the business of supplying jobs, they are in the business of supplying products. This means either: A. Hiring very productive people and paying them well. B. Hiring fairly unproductive people and paying them little
really?! I thought that they were. You mean this isn't communist Russia? Seriously though, I'd choose A everytime. Paying well, doesn't = being overpaid. In many cases, it can mean, enough pay to raise a family, buy a house, car, etc... B is stupid, and in the long run, I think that it will end up hurting more than it does good. Who knows, we'll see. All I can say is that you get what you pay for. When it comes to "overpayed" workers, tell that to lots of hardworking tech workers who are oncall and do a ton of work. Some fly or drive to a different state on a moments notice. Many of their pay checks are justified.
Which you choose depends on the actual numerical values of the production output, and the wages paid. In this case, it is more economical to pay Indians to do the same work as Americans. If Americans don't want to work under those 'dreadful' conditions, that's too bad. I'm happy for the Indians who actually have a job. There's nothing wrong with someone willing to do your job for less, regardless of where they live.
Okay, good for you. I'm glad that you enjoy it.
Giving them so-called "livable" environment is also expensive. Any measure that would over-value the employees would cause them to be unemployed
Am I supposed to care if they become unemployed? People in the US become employed because of 3rd world labor, and I'm seriously supposed to care? Boohoo, it co
Yeah, but what about retirement?
When you get old you usually want to move home. That is impossible - one way trip.
Also - what about debts? Old loans have to be repaid and that is impossible if you make so much less.
Exporting high tech jobs is not the same thing as the exodus of manufacturing jobs that took place several decades ago. Manufacturing labor is a ubiquitous commodity, and it makes sense to buy it at the cheapest possible price. If you can make widgets cheaper in China than the US, then everybody wins: the Chinese get some hard cash (and an industrial base), while we get cheap widgets. "But what about the poor American factory worker?", you ask. Well, they didn't exactly starve to death in droves, did they? They got other jobs, collected unemployment, or retired. They could do that because we retained a strong economy that could continue to support them in one way or another. And they told their kids to go to college and become computer scientists.
The export of tech work is an entirely different kettle of fish. The problem with this practice is that it often does not make good business sense to do it. It's a management fad that is yet another manifestation of the awesome capacity for stupid decisions on the part of the numbnuts who run our large corporations.
Yes, an Indian programmer will work for less than an American programmer. So if you add up the hourly labor cost of the same project as done by Indian and by American programmers, the Indian sum will be smaller. That's simple arithmetic, and even a CEO can do it. The problem is that it's not that simple! Here, in no particular order, are some of the reasons not to outsource:
That last item is, to me, the most crucial reason why indiscriminate outsourcing (whether it be to Silicon Valley or to India) is a Very Bad Thing. We Americans are, in effect, destroying the intellectual climate that has made us world leaders in high tech innovation. To have the kind of creativity that has driven the wave of innovation in American technology since the 1950s, you need a critical mass of inventive people, and you need them more or less in the same place so that they can work together.
What the numbnuts are doing when they export our high tech jobs is obtaining a cheap short term solution that has a very high long term cost: they are eating the seed corn. People like that should be defenestrated.
By the way, this is not an anti-Indian rant. It's not their fault! In fact, a lot of the brilliant people who made our technological leadership possible were immigrants from all over the world. Moreover, I'm not saying that outsourcing never makes sense. There are definitely instances when it makes a lot of sense to outsource a project (say, when you want to do something once, and it takes expertise you don't have and don't really need to acquire). No, this is an anti-executive numbnut rant. These submorons
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Dude, I posted the grand-parent about my trip to India. I also used to work for a management consulting company (okay, Hay Management Consultants) for which I had to commute to Toronto every week for a couple of years. Subsequently, I worked as a consultant for a Montreal client.
Get over it... your major cities (like Toronto) have their grimy, disgusting elements to them, just like US cities. But your cities don't have the redeeming critical mass of culture that makes New York (for instance) worth the trip.
Outside the cities... a vast, cold, snowy wasteland.
When we have the secret vote next year, I'm voting a big NO on annexing Canada.
Dude,
I own 20% of my $700K home, and 35% of my new $370K vacation condo in Sarasota.
In 7 years, it'll be 80-100% of both.
I blame you for bringing DOWN the average.
My company outsources like 50% of work to India.. thats a *forced* number, handed down by management.
/usr/local/apache/bin ./apachectl stop ./apachectl start
My experience, being a sysadmin and working with the 'team' over there, agrees with yours. Very little creativity or sense of urgency, or adaptivity. I can be guarenteed to give them something I could do in 2 hours, and have them take 2 days to do it, and probably do something wrong. Several times I have gotten burned by giving them something at 8AM (our time) that *had to be done* by 5PM, and at 3:30 having to tell them to *stop*, hop in, and do it myself (yes, starting at 3:45PM and done by 5PM, by myself).
When I can cut and paste in an instant message:
cd
And 10 minutes later ask if they are done and get "hold on, I'm going to that directory now"... no! We are on a phone call with 15 other people waiting for this to be done, a production system is hung up, this isn't dilly-dally take your F'ing time day! And I logon, like I should have done in the first place, and did it myself (including logging on) in 30 seconds.
But, I'm forced into it. 50%. No choice. If I give them thoroughly documented step-by-step instructions, I can be fairly well assured they'll get it right, or mostly right, in 4 times the time I could do it in. If its a critical 'production down' situation and it needs to be solved and fixed 'ASAP', I'm better off doing it myself... they have not shown themselves to be able to solve problems in a timely fashion.
i feel it could be easier if you had a big dollar endorsement for applying visa also let them know u r not terrorist.
Anonymous Coward-it's a bad nick.
A little over a year ago, I moved from L.A. to here in Manila after losing my job as a programmer. Since then, I never looked back and never had any regrets. India might have some opportunities, but the level of culture shock the average american would suffer would be far less here in Manila than India. I'll explain why. First, unlike India (and other countries), Manila doesn't have a cultural identity of its own. It's just a carbon copy of western culture (for example, there's still a burger king, mcdonalds, wendy's, and carl's jr on every corner), and for the most part, the level of adjustment that one has two face here is really two things: traffic, and the weather. As for the work environment, it's far more relaxed and laid back here rather than in the U.S. What makes this place (Manila) so attractive is that unlike India (where programmers seem to be a dime a dozen), the market of qualified programmers here is pretty slim--meaning that you won't have to compete with several hundred applicants for the same position. So before you move to the land of the sacred cow, give the Philippines a shot...
p.s. oh, and the real reason why i moved here is the pinay chicks here are hot...if I moved to india, I wouldn't be able to see more than ankle...:)
... is simple. It's American greed, as always.
I really hope India won't start giving out visas to americans. It would be nice that for once you americans feel what it's like to be told "you're not welcome in this country, you illegal alien".
What I am about to say applies to capitalism in general (so don't assume it's just the computer industry; what I say should equally apply to, say, farming).
You are wrong
I think your understanding of capitalism is completely wrong. There is NO SUCH thing as CONSERVATION under capitalism. This is why capitalism can increase the wealth (eg. GDP) of a country. In fact, trade can increase the wealth of all countries that engage in it*. If your assertion were correct, this wouldn't happen (the total wealth in the world will be constant). Your conservation principle is automatically violated by the growth in wealth.
Why some don't support the present
There are many reasons people are against what is happening. Clearly some people are racist and don't want to see "other kind" get jobs. Some people on this message board have already shown that. Then there are others who are clueless when it comes to economics and somehow think that they "own" the jobs (whatever that means). I'm not any of these. I'll tell you why I'm against so-called "free trade" and the most popular form of capitalism today, neo-liberal economics.
I'm not a capitalist, and I'm not a nationalist either. I could care less about countries (I can't wait until all countries dissapear). The problem with so-called free trade is the following. We know for sure that trade benefits countries. However, the benefits can be shared in many different ways. One country can benefit completely, or the other, or in a mixture of some sort. *I* claim that what is happening is that the benefits of trade accrues to the shareholders and their corporations (what Marxists would call capitalists). I further claim that what passes for "free trade" these days is nothing more than an attempt by capitalists to undermine worker rights and environmental regulations, among others. Capitalists have always been angry for the success of the socialist policies enacted in defense of the workers (eg. minimum wage, inability to fire without cause, mandatory paid holidays, etc). You just need to read popular press or economist opinions over the last 50 years to see what I mean. What is happening now is simply removing the regulations placed by socialists in the past. When you move to a poor country, all these regulations dissapear IN THE LONG TERM.
The worker, either in India or in USA, do not benefit--although some may or may not benefit in the short term. The American worker loses because their wages are driven down (close to zero). The Indian worker loses because their job is temporary** and nothing more than a transit job. Overall, workers are worse off. A job which provided good working conditions all of a sudden doesn't have these worker benefits. I am a socialist and to me, it seems like everything we*** fought for and won won is slowly being eroded. For instance, a country like USA or Canada mandates the number of hours you work or the number of vacation days you get. The poorer countries either don't have as strong of a regulation or don't enforce it. When a job moves from USA to say Mexico, you automatically lose the worker benefits.
So that's why I am against what passes for free trade these days. Make no mistake about it: I'm in favour of trade. But the type of trade I like is called fair trade (a concept foreign to capitalists).
Capitalist defense
Finally, I'll mention what the capitalists are saying about all this. A lot of capitalists like their country so it's not as if the American capitalists are out to destroy their country. The capitalist argument was mentioned by Thomas Friedman in one of his previous articles that was mentioned on Slashdot. Basically, it says that countries benefit from trade (true) and USA, in this case, will create superior jobs to replace those lost through innovation (questionable). Of course, capitalists like Friedman don't mention that the shareholders and their corporations are the ones that benefit in the end.
My Prediction
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
US citizens move to India looks like Taiwanese move to China. I have several friends who were asked to work in China because the employers would close the plants in Taiwan. They could keep their salary equivalent to what they had in Taiwan for two years. At first, they thought that they could speak Mandarin as Chinese, so it would be OK to live there. Two years later, their income were significantly reduced as that for ordinary Chinese workers. If they didn't accept it, the local workers in China could run those plants already, and those employers would lay them off. Consequently, they quit and looked for other similar opportunities again and again.
The importance of agriculture to India is gradually decreasing. It accounts for 23% of the GDP , Manufacturing accounts for 27% and Services (where IT is included) accounts for 50%. True , agriculture still employs 65% of the working population , but that is something that needs to be reduced. IT is important because it is India's fastest growing industry along with Telecom and Entertainment. (ICE). The urgent need of the hour though , if to deregulate and open up the manufacturing sector to foreign investment. That will see India compete with China and very soon reduce the dependance on agriculture further. And by the way the guy who said that IT is bad for India because it supposedly 'creates disparities' is a fool. Any activity that creates wealth for anybody is always GOOD.
Half the posts on this thread are by this character with confused sexuality , 'anonymous coward'. So boring.
No. The logic wasn't based on 3rd world labor = good, American labor = bad. It's based on government intervention screwing up the marketplace. This is artificial unemployment. THAT is what I'm against. Minimum wage laws have a history of causing unemployment. Here's your proof/source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/153901_unemp loy26.html?searchpagefrom=1&searchdiff=49
I am completly in favor of employing 10 third world workers if it puts one American out of work. Why? Because I am not as nationalistic as you. I realize that an unemployed American will be far better off than an unemployed Indian.
A) may be a better choice. For example:
An American worker can make 150 T-shirts in 1h at $15/h.
A Chinese worker can make 10 T-shirts at 2$/h.
In this case it would be wise to higher the American worker. He makes 10 T-shirts/$h where as the Chinese worker only makes 5 T-shirts/$h.
But this is not always the case. It depends on productivity. To blindly pay somebody more out of 'good conscience' will end up putting you out of business. The above anaylsis is crucial if you want to stay competetive. Any attempt to 'level the playing field' will cause more unemployment and drive up the price of goods.
As a reasonable human being, yes of course you should. It's funny you complain that these people need protection like living standards and minimum wage laws, and all along you don't really care what happens, just so long as it benefits American. Try to be a little more compassionate.
Yes, sometimes increasing the living environment makes the workers more productive. Sometimes it doesn't. These are the decisions that a business must make on their own. And they are very good at it. Believe me, if increasing working conditions would make the business more efficient they would have done it already. But to arbitrarily say that they must do these things makes them less competetive and causes unemployment by increasing costs. Let the workers decide if they want to work under the conditions, or take a low paying job somewhere else.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
I got bored so I wrote this:
http://www.pc.chrisjames.me.uk/cj/contents/pages/f unstuff/000081.php
(Of course, please realise that all the quotes are made up. Stating the obvious - i hope - it's a satire.)
Your comment has been one of the few that have been well thought out.
But you have nothing to 'fear' from India. Sure India has a massive population. Imagine the opportunities! Indian businesses need better processes, software and hardware, in order to be efficient enough to serve the Indian market alone! As things stand there is no way that India can be fully self-sufficient, or even provide essential things to everyone there. Unless there is a massive increase in productivity, and a huge boom, things will go wrong.
China is now teetering on the brink, their centrally planned (forced) economy is now bursting at the seams. If they do not manage to transfer the wealth from the rich coast to the populous interiors, all the repressed anger will blow up.
India although much slower, is almost completely decentralized. So much so that in a recent congressional hearing, the southern parts of India were termed 'close to Developed nations', as opposed to the mostly lawless and backward north. Hopefully these disparities can be handled well.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
China, India, and other countries do it. Why the fsck shouldn't America look out for herself first?
This political BS about "fairness" and fairtrade is a pipedream. Don't like the American way of life? Fine. Leave. But don't judge a guy with a wife and two kids who lost his job, health insurance, and his house and can't get a job. Ever imagine what's it like to look your kids in the face when they're hungry or sick and you can't do a damn thing about it?
Okay, I made a small mistake. I wanted to say that my views were closer to Western philosophy, not Western culture. Also, I was trying to compare the United States with India and not some other European countries.
I know that there are Western countries that are based on democracy and that can be just as good as the United States; I do not argue about it. Additionally, I would like to discuss what you call as McDonald's mainstream culture. Yes, we do have fast food but this is not the only thing that defines America, and franky I'd rather eat that crap that Indian cousine (that's another reason for staying in the U.S.). My point is that in the United States people have more opportunities and ways of living their lives due to lesser degree of cultural and religious influence. That is something very important.
Now let's talk about traditions. In my post I did not try to suggest that everybody is the same in India; no, they are not. I have enough Indian friend to know better. However, all my Indian friends have something in common: all of them had arranged marriages, their dads were considered to be heads of the household, and most of them praised the United States for making men and women equal in the eyes of the law. Now, that's a mighty good reason for me to stay here. If I have a daughter and a son, I want them to have equal opportunities everywhere. There are many traditions in India and they are pretty stong too. In the United States I choose my traditions, in India it seems vice versa; at least that's what my friends said. My former co-worker was so happy to end up in the United States because his children could actually go to school and his children were able to choose their own destiny.
Finally, let's talk about opportunities for an average guy. From your point of view it seems like only the best deserve to live and less fortunate people are doomed. That is not very nice, do not you think? Should we kill the weak ones or the ones who cannot be as good as the others? For example, I have a close friend who is disabled. He has an advanced degree in a disability related discipline and he is trying to help physically challenged people to live normal lives. According to his recent studies, developing countries are the worst place to be for anybody who has a disability due to the lack of appropriate laws; India was on his list. What's your take on it? For me, that is another reason why I'd like to stay in the United States.
The list can go on and on and on. I will not bring up stuff like pr0n, living together without being married, premartial sex, being gay, etc. I do not need these things to make my life complete, but I like having those options. Have a great weekend.
But the majority of indian population is living on this 23%. IT and other fields make a few people rich. The condition for the majority is getting worse and worse. Few days back i spent aroun 30$ for medcine. I am sure most people around me cant afford this. Their life is terrible.
India is Shining for IT People.
India is at Dark for majority.
Amen to that my brother. You described it better than I have, if I could, I'd mod you up. I feel the same way as you do I think that people are afraid of new things, that is why they resist "Western Invasion."
I remember being told not to wear blue jeans to school, because, according to my teacher, only working class people wore jeans in the United States; that happened when I lived in the USSR. She did not like me listening to rock-n'-roll music as well.
A minor problem is that Friedman is full of shit, but who needs facts when you've got a newspaper to sell?
[o]_O
First, nice to know you ignored large portions of my responses. Second, nice article not only does it appear to be an opinion but it just so happens that its a dead link. Other than that I suppose the rest of this part of your argument is okay. Sure, an unemployed american will be better off, but don't complain when he/she is receiving unemployment. Second of all, in terms of 3rd world countries, you cannot seriously believe that poor wages and working conditions help a country.
But this is not always the case. It depends on productivity. To blindly pay somebody more out of 'good conscience' will end up putting you out of business. The above anaylsis is crucial if you want to stay competetive. Any attempt to 'level the playing field' will cause more unemployment and drive up the price of goods
Well, we're not actually blindly paying somebody. In fact, we are not even saying that they have to be paid minimum wage. However, I am saying that if you want to do business with the US then you should be paying them our minimum wage, in the context that the company is from the US using foreign labor. They should also have safe working conditions. None of that is arbitrary, and if you really think that safety is arbitrary then go move to a 3rd world country. btw: thx for the math lesson. First you point out the obvious, now this.
Comparative advantage is the hallmark of free trade. It is the only 'free lunch' that exists. Free lunches do not come from minimum wage laws unfortunately. And you are right, there is a transitional period where we do have unemployment (known as strucutural/frictional unemployment) which is largely considered healthy by all economists. Go ahead. Look it up. Specialization's benefits vastly outweighs the negatives. Otherwise we'd never trade with anyone other under any circumstaces. When you try to interupt free trade you are telling people they shouldn't be allowed to make voluntarily transactions. How is that fair? Do you really think said 55 year old, with years of experience under his belt is going to work at Wal-mart? Companies like experience. I'm sure he's going to be fine. Unless of course YOU can show me some proof of huge amounts of unemployed 55 year olds
yes, except for the rule that states, "there is no free lunch". I think I also said CA was a big load of something that stinks. When you are 55 retraining will be a major hassle. Sure, maybe they will be fine, but do you really want to retrain when you are that old? Also as you've pointed out to me many times in another form. Experience doesn't gurantee you a job, especially if you go into another field of work. Which btw: I'm not going to bother giving you proof on an example. Mainly because you left out key points that I made, I'm half convinced your just trolling. Also, once again you take liberties on what I am saying, by claiming what you said is what I said. Somehow, you think that I said free lunches come from minimum wage laws? okay.....
As a reasonable human being, yes of course you should. It's funny you complain that these people need protection like living standards and minimum wage laws, and all along you don't really care what happens, just so long as it benefits American. Try to be a little more compassionate.
The context of my statement, is that if you don't care if an American gets unemployed, why should I care if someb
You are not making any points. You keep regurgitating that they need standards and living wages and minimum wage and all these things that I knock down repeatedly, yet you continue on in the most pretentious and mocking manner. If I left out quoted text it's because it was redundant. If I missed something important, than bring it to my attention. Otherwise you are creating strawmen.
Here is the link, I hope it doesn't disappear again:
here
I can not quote you on everything because it is reptetious and mostly void of argument. I do my best to summarize your arguments (rather than quoting paragraphs and making red herrings) because it is simply more logical, and a more condensed read. Let me start with your arguments you've made and why they are wrong:
1. Companies should be forced to pay living wages and improve living standards of their employees.
Wrong. As I've said before you are damning them to unemployment. You consistently ignore that in every post you make, and it is the crux of my argument.
Providing a low wage is not slavery whatsoever. Like I said it's voluntarily. You say that's stupid because they will die without the job so they have to take it, and therefore have no choice. Let's see why this is a poor argument.
i) If the choice is to take this job or starve to death, your solution is to let them starve, or at least the majority of them through your insane minimum wage laws.
ii) If the choice is to take this job or take another low paying job, you are making them worse off by preventing them from getting access to those jobs, either through minimum wage or making it outright illegal.
You then list off a host of oxymorons: Voluntary rape, voluntary slavery, voluntary murder, etc. None of these make any sense. They would really be: voluntary sex, voluntary work, and voluntary suicide. Very poor argument.
They choose to work in hazardous conditions and take a low pay? Why? Because they would rather take this job than a local job. Who are you to deny them that? Once again: you cannot give them better working conditions because you will be damning to unemployment. Come up with a better solution, if you can.
As far as I can tell that's your major argument. And you've made no effort other than pejoratives to argue back. Come up with a solution that doesn't involve massive unemployment in third world countries and we'll talk.
2. We are exporting our jobs away making us poorer
You brought this up on 2 occasions and both times you ignored an important reality.
As I've said many times, cheaper imports mean more savings which mean more spending. Yes, a minority of people will lose their jobs, but many more will gain jobs now that the economy has grown due to the increased spending power of money. It's likely that person will find work in one of these new jobs. Whether it's better or not depends on the talents of that person. It's possible he won't get a better job, but that's no excuse for forcing millions of people to pay for overpriced goods.
You are only looking at it from one side, while conveniently ignoring the millions of other people who have benefited and contributed to the economy. The car example is one of these. Yes, the automakers lost their jobs, but thousands of other people gained jobs. Yet you conveniently ignored this.
3. It apparently doesn't take into account, a vast labor pool of desperate laborers, which means no need to increase wages. No labor laws, means no incentive to improve wages, or working conditions. As you've pointed out, its not economical to do so, and there is no incentive to for a business to do any of that. Therefore, they do not gain better wages, and the economy does not improve, or if it does, it takes a very long time. D therefore doesn't take place, or when it does, all the jobs are lost when the people or government make demands on better conditions. The compan
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
"On average, the economists estimated that the total number of U.S. jobs lost by movement of operations overseas since 2001 has been 188,000 in the services sector and 502,000 in manufacturing, for a total of 690,000. That's a small fraction of the 58.6 million in overall layoffs that companies undertook between 2001 and 2003. The vast majority of those layoffs were offset by new hiring elsewhere in the economy, but on a net basis, payroll levels declined by 2.3 million during this period."
It's just that before the demand for tech jobs was so high that no one really noticed. Fundamentally we were working with historically low unemployment rates during the bubble, thus things seem even worse than "usual" because of our frame of reference. (no, im not saying the 5.6% umemployment with a large drop in labor force participation is good, just comparing to history)
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
How many counter examples would you like? One could almost write a perl script to generate them in bulk. Corrupt politics? Crack dealing? Sustaining big wars just to make money on Pentagon contracts? Invading and conquering a country so that a few businessmen can enrich themselves by controlling its main natural resource? Selling young women into prostitution? Scamming the elderly? Destroying competitors to monopolize an industry? Defrauding stockholders? Exploiting people's religious beliefs to take their money? Exploiting the fear of terrorism to make money on government contracts? Not "always GOOD".
There are TONS of smart and attractive Indian women with MDs and PhDs trying to get into this (USA) country... :) :)
So what you do is the following:
Go on a trip to India and get married to a doctor.
Come back w/ wife or come back alone and file all the necessary paperwork to allow your new wife enter US legally. Why not just send her a visa?
Fiance visa will probably be investigated and visitor visa for her to enter US will definitely be denied, especially from India. So you will have to get off your ass and actually visit the country (you plan on living and working there eventually, don't you?) and get married there.
Support your wife for 6 months or more in US until she passes US medical licensing exam and has her MD degree recognized in this country.
Then she will have to complete her residency at a hospital and hope that they will hire her.
Once she's set, you can move to India buy a nice condo for $30k. Get a job as a programmer or whatever it is you do. Beg your wife not to divorce you and beg her to send you more money
If things work out, she may even visit you once a year...how does next January sound?
Learn to enjoy cricket, hot weather, spicy food, long soap-opera-like movies where everyone will suddenly stop whatever they are doing and dance in the rain...
Try to get along with her family...unless they disowned her or moved to US as well
Live long and prosper... and hope that one day your dual citizenship will let you vote.
In one side you have gay marriage in San Francisco, in the other you have, er , George Bush.
US climate? Which? The frozen lakes in Minnesota or the desert on the Death Valley?
US culture? Which? English? Irish? Native American? Hispanic? Chinese?
US political system? Which one? Corporation sponsored democracy? Where? California, NY or Texas?
Legal system? From which state?
Your family? How often do most people visit or even talk to theirs?
It is great for people like me, who has worked in 3 different continents and that has visited many countries in 4 continents to see people imposing artificial barriers to their own development.
Leave the world and it opportunities to us that can adjust to different cultures and can give a regular phone call (or plug a webcam) to keep in touch with family and friends wherever they are.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Just for starters, farming subsidies (in both the US and Europe) are killing any hope of countries whose only chance to improve economically is farming.
The US in the past has not hesitated when a company that has a monopolic position in a given country (bananas is Guatemala or Colmbia for example) required to overthrow a goverment amenable to their interests.
And of course we all know that Irak is about freeihng the Iraki people people. Oil? No way, my dirty cynical mentality of course. Oil has no part on this charade.
Google for "New American Century Cheney" and learn for yourself in place of showing your blantant ignorance in public.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Where are the droves of people starving on the streets?
Where are the scenes of people hunting pigeons or rats in order to survive?
Common, show us how th US is going down the drain.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Then when prices of the goods and services you use creep up you will of course protest.
The cheap computer you are using, all the modern electronics that permit the optimization that support modern life in western countries, is a direct consequence of companies looking for more bang for their buck.
The US laws are not the most wonderful thing in the universe, it is only the realtive openess of the US markets that makes the US a hub for international commerce.
Make an stupid mistake (like mandating companies incorporated in the US should employ people in the US) and your economic hegemony would be over faster than you can say "catsup with those French fries please".
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The level of life in Mexico has raised as a consequence of NAFTA in spite of the carelessnes of the Mexican political leaders to protect sensitive industries that were not ready for competition (cars, farming). Salaries in real terms have raised since the introduction of NAFTA.
Mexico has benefitted so much that has instituted frre trade agreements with the EU and several countries in Latinamerica.
In the EU countries that used to be backwards like Portugal, Spain and Ireland have raised their level of life greatly thanks to free trade.
No wonder all of Europe is rushing to join the EU in spite of the sometimes onerous political burdens, the economic benefits are too obvious to ignore.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Shame that until the 60s blacks were treated like dirt, and in some places, thy (and other minorities) still are.
It seem like the land of the free is not too different after all.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I am an American, and my experience has been that unless we go through life as a hermit we're subject to a pop culture that wants to dumb us down and spoon feed our opinions to us, all while making us feel good and warm and fuzzy about being fucktards. And as a whole we gobble it up and ask for more.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
Do you think the labels on food are often false? Do companies claim lower levels of fat than are actually in the food? I suppose the difference is that the food labels are about what is in the package, so are easier to independently verify, but I think labelling legislation still works to a certain extent.
I'm not suggesting we have labels that say "Sweatshop Produced" or "Fair Trade" the way many leftist extremists seem to see the world now. Instead we put objective information on the labels like the wages paid to the workers and whether any International Labour Organisation conventions are not being followed. Sure there'd be some deception, but at least it allows legal action against the deception unlike PR now.
The search results match the quality of the workers:
/jobsearch.asp, line 474
Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a000d'
Type mismatch: 'search'
I don't know if you'll ever track back to read this now, but please accept a personal +5 informative from me.
Actually there's a lot of scope for foreigners in India except it's not in programming, it's in the marketing, management, public relations kind of jobs.
.us/.eu expats for local jobs. The primary quality you must have is a willingness to understand and adapt to the local environment. A client of mine a large Indian hotel chain has an expat at head with a salary running into 8 figures in dollar units.
Call it the colonial hangover but white skin and a (preferably) british accent with people skills and you have a pulsh job in an Indian company.
Lots of Indian companies (not MNCs) are now hiring
The life is good, even a lower level manager would get a chauffeur driven car, a cook and a maid.
Plus the purchasing power parity (almost everything except tech stuff is cheaper in India) means that you could buy anything much cheaper here with the same salary abroad.
- cnb
It seems I don't mind paying for the Clean Air Act after all. Of course, since I do, I can't possibly compete in the world-wide employment marketplace in my chosen field.
The problem is Free Trade is just a new word for Slavery. Perhaps that seems harsh, but what we're doing is employing workers and denying them what we would consider a basic humanitarian standard of living. That's slavery with a chance of a vote. Yeah, the programmers in India aren't living like this, but their government isn't ensuring that the rest of their population isn't either. Let's not get started on Asian child labor.
We ought to setup a Human Rights Fund for each country getting our jobs. Figure out what it would cost per outsourced job to provide an acceptible standard of living for the people of that country (by our moral standards), and add that as a tax to corps outsourcing the jobs. Funnel the money directly into foreign aid for that country.
If they can still compete, great, but we'll be on less ambiguous moral ground. Everybody wins (n.b. corporations aren't people).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Dude , 40% of Indians were living in poverty in 1990 (BPL) , before the opening up of the Indian economy. Today 23% of Indians live in poverty.Every year , there is atleast 1% drop in the poverty level. How is that not improvement? And IT in India potentially can employ 50 million people by 2008 according to certain experts. Though that is nothing compared to what India's manufacturing sector ,if opened up to foreign investment, is capable of.
But what I find interesting is - you guys seem to suggest since a section of India's population is poor (according to you , the majority) , the rest should not e allowed to get rich either. Keep them all poor , eh ?
The anger of the laid off geek knows no bounds. Seriously , what harm has poor little India ever done to you ? Get a life.
i can go through my entire wardrobe and count just one garment made in asia and it is from pakistan. i will nto pay taxes for your guilty conscience
First, sorry it took so long to respond. I had way more important things to do first. However, I like how you ended your last response so that if I didn't bother to respond it would seem like you've "won" the arguement.
You are not making any points. You keep regurgitating that they need standards and living wages and minimum wage and all these things that
Actually, yes I am making a point. If I wasn't then you wouldn't bother to respond.You do keep ignoring important points. You are also hypocritical, you allow exceptions for yourself but not me. When you make a statement, you assume its automatically true, but do not allow such things for me. Many of the theoretical perspectives you apply only work in countries that are A) industrialized B) Value human rights C) Have a similar belief system to our own, and you cannot tell me that Asian countries value the individual over the group.
yet you continue on in the most pretentious and mocking manner. If I left out quoted text it's because it was redundant...Otherwise you are creating strawmen
And your text isn't redundant? Mind you that if I do sound mocking, its only to discourage what I call the "duh" factor. Assume that I'm aware of simple mathmatics, the principles of economics, and that having a diploma doesn't guarantee a job. Also assume that I CAN walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. BTW: You are right, I'm not an economist, and neither are you. I'm a computer programmer. If you were an economist, you wouldn't be quoting 100 level econ theory and stating that its completely applicable to the real world. Course I can pretend to be an economomist just like you. All I gotta do is crack open one of my econ books and quote it or I can google a question.
I can not quote you on everything because it is reptetious and mostly void of argument. I do my best to summarize your arguments (rather than quoting paragraphs and making red herrings) because it is simply more logical, and a more condensed read. Let me start with your arguments you've made and why they are wrong
repetitious, yes, because A) you didn't knock it down B) you seemed mixed in your feelings. You want to see those 3rd world workers improve their surroundings via the "invisible hand", but you seem to care more about getting cheap products. C) My arguements are only mute or void when you fail to consider the alternative, or convince yourself that it is non-existant. Therefore you can win in your mind by default. Also, I don't make red-herrings, I make red snappers, its a very tasty fish you know ;). If I quote paragraphs, sorry. Its often easier that way for me. At least I try to respond to every comment of yours. Mind you that your "arguements" can be knocked down as well, considering that you see it from a moral/ethical view, as well as reality instead of theory. You also have to ask more questions. Just because new and "innovative" (I love that word) jobs came about after the automotive industry outsourced doesn't mean that the move was directly responsible for it. In that case, we could say that during the summer, burglary goes up with the amount of ice cream consumed, or we could say that as jobs were lost the amount of burglary and the amount of inmates in a correctional institution went up.
New and "innovative" jobs may have came from the shift, but it could also be because new technology came out (new field to train in), temp jobs, that Y2k thing. I'm sure some new jobs came about because of the move. In fact I read a few articles on how it created new jobs in America. New and "innovative" jobs, course they failed to list in what sector, the pay, the number of jobs.
Providing a low wage is not slavery whatsoever.
sure its not. Cause you know how making next to nothing isn't slavery. I guess you just have to make nothing in order for it to be slavery. Not like there is such thing as legalized slavery, legal plunder, or anything like that.
Like I said it's voluntarily. You
Once again I'll address your points and arguments. If I missed any arguments you made, please list them concisely so it makes it easier to rebut them. Starting from the top:
...
1. When you make a statement, you assume its automatically true, but do not allow such things for me. Many of the theoretical perspectives you apply only work in countries that are A) industrialized B) Value human rights C) Have a similar belief system to our own, and you cannot tell me that Asian countries value the individual over the group.
Course you don't provide any proof of [the relationship between unemployment and minimum wage], and its just as much opinion as my own.
Basic economic principles are not false simply because advanced principles also exist. The advanced principles simply build upon them. The basic economic truths are not falsified. Calculus still recognizes that 2+2=4.
Economics does not discriminate industrialized vs. unindustrialized, human rights or no human rights. These principles have applied since the dawn of civilization, from the egyptians, to the Romans, to the Dark Ages, and today.
The only assumption economics makes is that property is protected. If people are being robbed involuntarily, then none of these rules apply.
Here's another example of minimum wage laws creating massive unemployment:
When Hong Kong was a British colony and its wage rates were set by supply and demand, its unemployment rate was less than 2 percent. After China took it over and mandated worker benefits the unemployment rate went over 8 percent. And these are CHINESE standards of minimum wage.
Another example: "Nhep Chanda averages 75 cents a day for her efforts. For her, the idea of being exploited in a garment factory -- working only six days a week, inside instead of in the broiling sun, for up to $2 a day -- is a dream." NYTimes (link is dead, I apologize)
Similarly in South Africa, massive waitlists for employment were generated from minimum wage laws. Employers would be swamped with hundreds of resumes in one day after announcing an opening.
Source: PT. Bauer, ?Regulated Wages in Underdeveloped Countries,? The Public Stake in Union Power, ed. Philip D. Bradley (University of Virginia Press, 1959), p. 346.
Adequate proof? Even basic supply and demand curves can demonstrate this, albeit the real life examples are more powerful. Minimum wage laws are indeed counterproductive, as I previously mentioned and you so cursorily dismissed.
Therefore, 3rd world countries must still obey economic laws. Living standards, better working conditions, etc. are just minimum wage by another name in their overall effects. Your Honduras example is flawed because nobody has talked to the workers. Are they glad they actually have a job? Are they glad that no minimum wage laws exist that would drive them onto the street? Are they glad that they can leave this job whenever they want?
The American laws for minimum wage and living standards had little to do with our economic growth. Every economics textbook (that you claim to have picked up) will state: A countries wealth depends on its productivity, not minimum wage laws. (and yes, some go so far as to mention state minimum wage. If you need a source I will dutifully provide.
I can guarantee if minimum wage laws were lifted scarcely anybody would see a drop in their wages. More importantly, millions of teenagers could now be hired and gain valuable work experience that they otherwise would not have.
2. You make a cause-effect fallacy when you say that outsourcing increasing employment in the long run.
This is partly true. The only way a cause-effect fallacy can be detected is by doing a radnomized statistical study. That is we randomly allocate >10 countries, and put them in 2 treatment groups. One that prevents all trade (or outsourcing, or has minimum wage, or whatever) and one that has free trade. Only then can cause and effect be determined.
Obvi
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
A variety of studies looking at the impact of an increase in the minimum wage have shown that it has little or no effect. Besides, you could say we'd have more jobs if we paid people $3 an hour. We need to establish a floor beyond which companies should not be allowed to go. The economy is not a force of nature. We intervene all over the place. We need to ensure these workers get a fair shake. Fortune (Europe); 9/29/2003, Vol. 148 Issue 6, p27, 1/2p, 1bw
First, notice that Fortune is a credible source, and I am citing something after the year 2000. Instead of from 45 years ago. Unemployment does not necessarily result from an increase in the minimum wage. There are a variety of factors that influence it.
it is not known how high minimum wages can be pushed before consumers begin to substitute away from goods and services that are produced using highly labor-intensive means
in other words, you can push up wages and consumers may not even notice the difference.
The fact that a majority of the businesses we surveyed indicated they would not be affected by a wage increase to $7.25 is an indication that the current minimum wage is below the market-clearing wage. However, we can expect that disemployment effects will increase as the wage approaches a market-clearing wage....As a society, we have an economic and moral interest in ensuring that those who work earn a wage that allows them to live in dignity above the poverty line. With appropriate consideration given to wage structure and employment consequences, the minimum wage can be used to boost incomes for those at the low end of the wage scale. Today there is the additional concern of growing wage inequality, and research into the relationship between the minimum wage and wage contours could provide some insight into means of narrowing the wage gap. Challenge; Mar/Apr2000, Vol. 43 Issue 2, p86, 11p
In other words, raising minimum wage can be done, and without a major loss in jobs.
Again, implementing and using a minimum wage that ensures a decent living wage can be a good thing. Sure there will be unemployed, but they can find work elsewhere. Its also pos
The Forbes article is quite right. Minimum wage laws do not cause massive unemployment, but this depends on the minimum wage increase. For example, increasing minimum wage from $5 to $6 will only unemploy people making $5/h, which is clearly a minority. This does not make minimum wage beneficial at all, as overall employment has decreased, and nobody gets an increase in their wages either.
If someone makes $0.75/h, surely a minimum wage of say, $3, $4, or $5 will cause drastic unemployment. I'm not sure what level you wish to set, but too little a minimum wage will be pointless, and too high a level will be devastating. Anything in between will be a combination of both.
The article's most supportive claim for your argument is as follows:
Minimum wage can help in certain situations when the free market is values labor lower than what it should be. By increasing minimum wage they will shuffle off into more productive employment.
This is indeed possible. The free market is not smooth. It is often jerky and sudden, as the business cycle indicates. But it is difficult to tell when labor is being undervalued. A permanent minimum wage policy may do good in some situations, but harm in many others. I apologize for not providing more examples, my books are in another city at the moment.
Here's the NYTimes link that isn't dead, it's not directly about unemployment, but rather about the situation of 'exploited' labor:
here
And although we can't follow up Nhep Chanda, between working in a factory, and looting through garbage, she'd probably be better off 20 years from now with the former.
A combination of pure capitalism and socialism can be beneficial, particularly in controlling education, pollution, and natural monopolies. This much is true. The effects of other policies are questionable.
Thank you for the debate and I hope we've both taken something out of this,
Killswitch1968
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.