Slashdot Mirror
Builder.com Writers Outsourced to India
An anonymous reader writes "Builder.com, which is part of CNet.com, is now outsourcing some of their writing to India. The funny thing is, the editor claims it's not as much about money as because he's 'getting a better interface with producers of the content.' He claims CNet isn't giving up control, but if they're the publisher, and he's the editor, and they can't hire and manage their own writers, why shouldn't the Indians just put up their own website to replace CNet, and we can all read what they write direct? I mean, we're all going to be buying software direct from Indian companies soon, so why not?" Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN. OSDN also runs sites like devchannel.org which are more-or-less direct competitors of builder.com.
Who gives a flying fuck about "total prosperity"?
China and India accound for about 2/5 of the total world population. If the whole world up and gave everything they had to make everything even, the rest of us would be taken back to 1904 standards of living (or even farther back).
It's not our fault these people couldn't or wouldn't plan their economies/population growth. It's not our fault they're starving. It shouldn't be our mess to clean up, and damnit, I don't want to be piled deep with a bunch of Chinese and Indians!
We're trying to get by, too... But we (used) to try harder. The only difference is that the rules are changing. Fuck the global economy.
I've never met a single indian person who hasn't suffered from the same hackneyed indian-english problems as all of the others.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Why should it stop? So you can live in a country that monopolizes technical knowledge?
Suppose India outlaws software today and no one in India writes another line of code. The rest of the world still competes with North America. The technology to outsource remotely now exists.
Nobody has job security in areas that are fully defined. A lot of software development jobs are like that. Fully defined jobs should tend to earn the minimum wage at the limit.
Everyone needs to try harder to do something new. Technology is supposed to help us reach new heights. Isn't that supposed to create more jobs?
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
First developers (Or many tech related jobs) and now writers.. This is starting to get really scary, especially for people my age; I'm still in high school and it's going to be a few years before I can get a _real_ job, and at this rate it's going to be hard to find any local ones. This really needs to stop, or at least be done in moderation, it's getting out of hand.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
First developers (Or many tech related jobs) and now writers.. This is starting to get really scary, especially for people my age; I'm still in high school and it's going to be a few years before I can get a _real_ job, This really needs to stop, or at least be done in moderation, it's getting out of hand.
You know, back in the the late eighties, in northeast ohio I was in your shoes. Graduating high school and you looking at "all the good jobs" going to japan, or korea, or mexico. You know, high paying jobs in the auto manufacturing industry. Similarly, my dad graduated in the mid sixties just in time to see the steel industry leave the same way. Guess what, we're all better off because of it.
In a couple years you'll have to take an economics class or two, pay attention. Until then, google "comparative advantage". When something can be done cheaper in another country, whether it's making wine in portugal, steel in china, cars in mexico or software in india, it frees up capital in the "outsourcing country" to be used in other things. Capital is that stuff that rich people have and they want more of it (like the rest of us), so instead of socking it under their mattress', they invest it. Where do they invest it, in companies which employ the rest of us.
Great you say, but how is that going to find me a job? In software development it probably won't, but the investment will bring jobs which pay the same or better in a new field, maybe biotech, maybe space exploration, who knows. Just watch, the cycle will repeat itself and in 15 years you too will be advising some high school student not to panic because the then "hot field" will be headed off overseas. Til then, keep your eyes open and your options loose, be flexible and you'll probably make a killing.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
I am by no means supporting outsourcing or anything
Geez. You know the f*cking populists have won when you have to distance yourself from an economically sound and mutually benifical practice. The fear of outsourcing is a direct result of people being ignorant of economics. Slashdotters are never hesitant to lambast the general public on their ignorance of other topics, but have no problem in not only accepting, but buying into this brand of ignorance.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...