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How India is Saving Capitalism
alphakappa writes "Salon goes onsite to Chennai (Madras) in India to investigate the whole offshoring phenemenon (free daypass) and comes up with an interesting series of stories. Katharine Mieszkowski starts with a company CollabNet which creates collaboration software for teams to work together on projects from locations all over the globe, and has centers in Brisbane (CA,US) and Chennai (India) - a company that would not exist if they didn't have access to engineers from India. She makes the case that in most cases, it is the necessity to survive, rather than greed that has fed the offshoring process. As Behlendorf from CollabNet puts it - 'We saved the jobs of the people who are employed in San Francisco by hiring people here [in India],' he says. 'I don't know that we would be around as a company if we hadn't done that. What was the right thing to do, morally?'"
Since when did capitalism have anything to do with morality?
So now the media thinks we should *thank* them for taking our jobs. :-) Capitalism is great for the top 2% of the country. For the rest of us... Well, we dont have time to think about shit like that, we have to get up, go to work and make other people rich...
When will the middle class realize that the upper 2% is screwing us in the ass daily, and actually do something about it???? We are the *majority* afterall...
--Ryan
that every company's situation is different. While it may be true that CollabNet has to outsource to survive, other companies (Dell comes to mind) DO NOT need to outsource to survive, they outsource because it is cheaper. We can argue all day about the morality of outsourcing, but the bottom line is going to be profit in many cases.
'I don't know that we would be around as a company if we hadn't done that. What was the right thing to do, morally?'"
The right thing to do, morally, is probably to go out of business. What if the choice was to not pay for workman's comp insurance or go out of business? Or to pay their employees $2 an hour or go out of business? Using "but... but... we'll go out of business if we don't do this" is a lame ass excuse.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
Thats why its been called "A race to the bottom". Once your competitors start hiring offshore, you're forced to do it to compete on price.
The NY Times Tom Friedman has written many articles arguing a similar point.
Nike wouldnt exist if it wasnt for childeren in Pakistan. http://www.american.edu/TED/nike.htm
Are you intolerant of intolerant people?
It's a system where you compete against your fellow human. I prefer co-operation. That's one reason I use linux.
Sounds a lot like justification to me. Whatever helps him sleep at night.
We couldn't save all the jobs, so we saved half.
If companies refused to go off shore, then everyone would be able to survive and we wouldn't lose any jobs.
Can I bum a sig?
Get the cookie without watching the ad and read the article (or simply load the page and not read the article, since this is slashdot :-)
The real question here should be not was this right morally, I think we Americans are being far too self-righteous (not like that'd be unusual..) if we put it in terms of morality. What we really should be asking here is what can we do to warrant our pay? How can we become more competitive in an increasingly connected world? Rather than complaining about outsourcing, we need to find out how to be more competitive. Any ideas?
The old rationalization was "we outsource to increase value for our shareholders". How generous!
Now, this rationalization, it's "we outsource so at least some people in the US can keep their jobs". How noble!
Prediction: later it will be "we outsource because otherwise we'd have to move entirely out of country and then the US wouldn't get our taxes." How civic!
All have the same underlying message they wish to send, "we want to help people!" But corporations don't generally exist to help people, they exist to make money.
There are 2 _good_ reasons to outsource, both based on the fact that labor is always the number one expense for a company.
1) We can stay in business, whereas otherwise we can't. 2) It makes us more money long-term (not just short-term profit sheets). Unfortunately, both may be true right now.
A.
"'We saved the jobs of the people who are employed in San Francisco by hiring people here [in India],' he says. 'I don't know that we would be around as a company if we hadn't done that. What was the right thing to do, morally?'"
Uhh... exactly how many US jobs were offshored to save how many remaining jobs?
And what's morality have to do with firing X number of people at $60-80K in order to replace them with Y number of people at $12-$15K (or whatever amount)?
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
As many people are still wanting the wife/husband, 2.3 kids, a dog/cat, 2 cars, a TV, home theatre, good computer (maybe 2), etc, goods and services will have to remain relatively inexpensive.
Now add in health insurance for the family, dental insurance, minumum wages, retirement matching, etc etc that a company has to setup for its labor in American, and you'll see that goods and services cannot be inexpensive if made in America. The cost of labor is too high here if we are to guarantee cheap goods and services.
It's an interesting paradox: In order to keep prices reasonable for a middle class, a majority of the labor needs to be paid at or just above the poverty line...which would theoretically remove the middle class.
So what should we do? In my eyes you either make wages worth more to the people (ie lower taxes) so you can offer less, or you cut down the overhead cost of labor (ie have the government install laws against frivolous malpractice lawsuits to reduce health insurance costs).
What do you think?
(Taking tongue away from cheek) Ha ha only serious. On a more positive note, it's also India's Bandwidth Capital because of all those transpacific cables landing here via Singapore. And electricity is very cheap here, probably the cheapest among all of India's major cities.
I believe that it can be shown with little doubt that it is corporate greed that has led to the current situation. That said, it is not necessarily corporate greed that is the current motivator... it just started the chain of events.
With all other corporate scandals and problems taking place, greed is essentially at the center of the motivation wht with pump and dump activities, monopoly abuse, anti-trusts and the lot going on. But the start of the trend changed the landscape considerably.
I complained in-person to a Dell representative about Dell's off-shoring of support to India. I exclaimed that I would never again buy Dell while they are off-shoring the ONE thing that made Dell great -- their support. The representative said it was a decision made so that it could remain competitive. I still think it's a tremendously stupid and inappropriate thing for Dell to do -- sell-out on their one and only unique selling-point and gambling with their brand-name as their primary value...bad idea guys! Now Dell is just another clone! Back to IBM for big business.
Anyway, I digress. I believe that the start of this is corporate greed and the current status of the problem is now competitive culture. The end of it, if there will be any, will start with legislation. Only law can correct the problems that greed/capitalism creates.
I can't beleive how dense these outsourcing people are. You employ 100 people to develop software to ship thousands of jobs overseas. How does that help us?
I really dont understand how companies can layoff people, send their jobs overseas, and expect their profits to rise. They layoff people, their customers... WHO will buy their products? with no one having enough money to buy them.
There is only ONE reason for outsourcing. Only one reason: to make the CEOs and execs of these companies more money.
These stories of how outsourcing is better in the end are a complete farse. There is NO benefit for the average american worker.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
Wow, this perfectly parallels today's Doonesbury strip. Couldn't fit better if they'd planned it.
In one sense this is helping to achieve some economic unity, but by and large as far as I can see the general trend is for things to "spiral down" into a competitive frenzy.
Ideally, standards in developing countries should rise to those in developed countries. Instead we are seeing some rise in developing countries at the expense of a fall in economy in the developed countries.
IMHO, protectionist import taxes should be avoided, but it is high time the wto encouraged countries such as India to impose taxes on these boom industries and feed the revenues back into thier own infrastructure so that health, education and other structures can be improved. Perhaps a start would be impose "export taxes" to limit thier growth to agreed limits.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Sometimes the morally right thing to do is not the best thing to do. For example, at the fall of Germany a large amount of medical research data was siezed - most of it the result of some incredibly horrific experiments on prisoners. The morally right thing to do would to have been to lock away that information, as it was tainted by the methods used to obtain it.
I'm not saying that the cases compare at all - the difference in scale is huge - it's just a good example. So, your company needs to employ 20 people but only has the resources for 15. Do you
a) Outsource 10 jobs to somewhere where you can pay half the wage, thereby keeping the business afloat
b) Fold
c) Try to limp on on 15, provide a substandard service and end up folding
d) Ramp up your prices to pay for the extra 5, lose your customers and fold.
Option a loses the country 10 jobs, options b-d lose all of them. So, the answer is easy, yes?
Question 2: What happens to your competitor who you just managed to undercut...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Click the advertising just so they get their $$$, but while thats happening...
Get the cookie
Click the article
Now does anyone have a quick way to get through the NYtimes process?
Used to be you could add archives to the link and you'd be in.
" The moral thing to do is for management is to uphold their DUTY to the shareholders"
That isn't a moral imperative, that's a fiscal imperative. But fiscal duty can and must take a back seat to moral imperative, otherwise you can justify virtually anything by saying "I had a duty to the shareholders...".
NO.
Corporations exist as a legal fiction primarily because society decided the benefit outweighed the risks. If corporations become more of a burden or risk to society than they pay back, they will simply be done away with (in a legal sense).
There is no inherent right for a corporation to exist.
Irrespective of the morality of the subject, when people experience hardship, they vote with their hearts, not their minds. This is how totalitarian governments get installed...when businesses run over the common worker. Whether or not the net effect to the country is positive, when Joe Sixpack loses his job, he'll vote for whatever wacky political candidate that says he'll help him get another.
Keep bringin in the problems: -Capitalism -Outsourcing -Jobloss in US Now give me the solution? -Communism? Anarchism? -Companies going down? -Still no jobs for countrys like India It seems to me that this egoism of some countries is that they want their jobs kept, on the cost of jobs for people from countries who arent as rich as the US. We all are so noble to keep saying we want wealth spread over the world, and not let "those capitalist pigs" from the US keep the most money. But how do we react if countries like India take our jobs for being cheap and being good? We scream as if we where an poor country! C'mon, those countries and companies are beginning how it works, how the US has done it for decennia. Dont start worrying if they get the jobs for being cheaper, cause thats how capitalisme works, the cheaper guy gets the job, just as you buy the cheaper product for same quality. So the problem is capitalism? Maybe, but that because we need to evolve to a form a capitalism (opposed to the original form of Adam Smith), where we can care about people. And with people I mean the US, Europe, China, India, and all others. We could manage ourselves perfectly, because we where the strong ones. Now that other formal poor countries are coming to an strong and educated civilation we cry like we get hurt where it hurts, like we have been hurting them for a long time. So now it is time for us to show we are 'more civilisized' once again, and come to a more social form of capitalism, where we care about the people who get or dont get the jobs. But dont yell at the India or their companies for picking up any job they could get, we have been doing it for way to long.
(:
Let's not forget the difference between Dell moving 2,500 jobs to India and another company hiring people in India.
To me, it's much more a slap in the face to move existing jobs overseas than to create jobs overseas to begin with.
You know, there's a similar situation going on in the farming industry. It's been declining since the 70s - THE 1770s. Back then I think 90% of people were farmers, and thanks to *progress*, we don't need that many people working to feed the country. There are people all over the midwest complaining that their way of life is going to disappear, and we all pay extra taxes to subsidize their plight -- the plight of people unwilling to change jobs when the market disappears.
And not only do we pay higher taxes, and higher prices for food, but farmers in places like Africa have nowhere to send their goods, and they don't have the infrastructure to do anything else.
I think it was Bill Maher who said (and I'm paraphrasing), "Americans seemed to be more concerned with taking their own lifestyles from 10 to 11 than to help others bring theirs from 0 to 1." And that's the absolute truth. No one reading this is starving. Even if you did nothing but collect welfare, your lifestyle would still be better than 90% of the world.
So, you're a programmer. Someone else can do your job for 1/4 of the price with the same quality. You have a few choices:
1. Find an employer who requires a warm ass in a seat in the States.
2. Raise the quality of your work.
3. Be your own boss.
4. Change careers.
You know how the RIAA doesn't provide a unique service anymore? Neither do you. You have lots of competition, and right now you can't compete. Or can you?
"Americans need to be proactive about making employment more competitive"
Yes, just as soon as those corporations cut the price for cars and food, and the guy down the street cuts the price on that apartment, then I'll be *glad* to take a 2/3 pay cut.
Until then, I guess I'll live in a cardboard box so that I can be "more competitive", and make sure my corporate masters make more money.
Why is it always the working man that must make the sacrifices, never the corporate fatcats?
How much has Microsoft lowered the price of their software lately to be more competitive? How much did GM lower the cost of their cars this year to be more competitive?
But workers need to be more competitive. You are a tool. I'm gonna laugh my ass off when a bright college boy comes out school, has to work for $5/hour, get an apartment, food, and then pay off those $100K college loans.
Write down your words on tasty paper, because you'll be eatign them within the next few years.
That is, if you see any bandwagon passing by that sounds like a plausible explanation to the real motivation, jump to it and see where the ride takes you.
First, it was because it just meant reconverting lower-tech jobs into "creative jobs", whatever the hell it means. That didn't quite float.
Then you see another bandwagon, say, a study that says students are not choosing computer science as much as they used to and claim that the reason why you're moving the jobs is because you can't find enough skilled people locally. Apparently the masses of skilled people finding themselves in the unemployed lists didn't quite bite that one either.
Next one, let's turn things around and show how the offshoring is actually helping the economy and the people by creating New Exciting(TM) employement opportunities as a middle-man parasite. Anyone wants to wager how far that bandwagon will travel?
The fact is that companies are doing that to cut costs and increase profit. Plain and simple in a capitalist market. The interesting thing is that they have to try so hard to make whacky justifications about it, pointing out the general consumer population (remember, we're not people, we're consumers) doesn't quite like the idea.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
My biggest problem with outsourcing is that it is the product of a system which is skewed in favour of corporates, and screws the little guy. The problem as I see it is that one of the reasons why wage costs are so high in developed nations is because our cost of living is equally high. And one of the reasons for the cost of living being so high is because people cost too much to hire. But the problem we are getting now is that companies don't want to hire expensive people so they outsource. But the prices don't go down to reflect this. So as a labour force we still can't compete because our cost of living remains too high.
Why is outsourcing considered immoral? It's a fucking free world, buyers and sellers are out there and that's all there is. Offering jobs to local people only, is like shopping from the super market next door only.
If you deserve a job, you already have one.
Detroit was faced with the same problem in the 70's. The Japanese were whipping us six ways to Sunday. The unions wanted us to support American-made cars even though they were utter crap. You could go into a showroom and see that the doors were mis-aligned, switches were poorly installed, etc. And that's just what you could see doing a casual inspection. American public said, "I don't think so" and purchased Hondas, Toyotas and Datsuns (now Nissan) They were simply far better products.
Detroit bitched bellered and bawled about it but finally got their act together and started producing a much better product. For Detroit, it was a stark reminder that they couldn't just throw up barriers and hope to have a captive market. It was painful but they came around and are able to compete globally now where in the 70's they were getting creamed.
Same thing is happening to us - we simply have to be able to compete. Whining about unfair competition just makes us look like whiners.
You might ask how you can compete with a $5/hour worker. What I've done is started a small business that uses software I wrote. The business is large enough to support me and a couple of other people but small enough that it doesn't attract competition. Niches abound if you're willing to go look for them. Just don't sit around waiting for someone to hand you a job - get out and create your own job.
"Major American companies get most of their business from the WORLD. It was convenient for Americans to enjoy record growth and prosperity when the world sent their huge investment dollars to the U.S., purchased tickets to watch Hollywood movies, and purchased American products. During these very same boom years, 99.9% of Americans completely ignored the plight of poor workers in the Third World who complained of illegal farm subsidies and globalization issues. Now, some of these same Third World countries have opened up their markets (India/China), educated themselves, adopted American-style marketing and are competing on a more level playing field. American workers...have to show why they should be paid more for a job that can be done equally well for a lower cost in India/China. If they can't show this, they will have to develop new industries and skills to adjust for their lack of advantage."
...at least on an individual level.
If you are a developer in the US and you are worried about outsourcing, get a job that requires a security clearance. That job must always be done by a US citizen, in the US, and therefore can never be moved offshore.
In the Washington DC area there is a huge, huge demand for IT people with clearance, and there are also lots of companies that will hire you and help you get a clearance.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
There are several other models which can coexist peacefully with capitalism and which benefit the workers, consumers and society.
Co-operatives spring to mind first e.g. The co-operative bank: http://www.co-operativebank.co.uk/
Then there's charities. There also seem to be other organisations springing up, particularly to provide local government services which are not charities but are otherwise non profit making by design.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
What was the right thing to do, morally?
Quit paying you and the top executives and senior management team filthy, unreasonable salaries. Not only are they inappropriate in most cases, the fact you failed (repeat that over and over again a few times to let it sink in) means the top brass should take it, not the producers in your company.
This is not the rant of some 20-something employee just out of college. I've run two companies I founded and grew, and don't see that I should fleece my customers or shareholders for obscene personal benefit (yes, $100K individually and over in this economy is obscene - you need to be living with less, providing good jobs for people, and investing in rebuilding your company!)
I see this over and over again. Wharten, Harvard, Yale types born on third base (thinking they hit a triple), that are slaughtering company after company for short term protection of their fat income. I own and run a tech company in the midwest that employs twenty people, and I'm the lowest paid. And no, it doesn't produce amazing profits I pocket as dividends. Someday it will be a nice company but I haven't earned that yet.
I get those silver spoon types all the time telling me how I should outsource my labor - which would be possible for us. Put all the tech oversees, along with support call center. I'd be making over $300K annually. The funny thing? They simply cannot understand why I would want to make less and employ people, because (you may have guessed), THAT IS WORK! Outsource it and collect the checks is the new Harvard MBA strategy, apparently.
Seems I saw the movie Wall Street. I've seen people pursue short term profit through slaughter. But you know, someone's gonna have to be around to buy your product, and if you get rid of the middle class, you might not have many customers. And don't forget, as long as you're expensive overhead (and not producing hard, tangible results towards the bottom line), you're expendible too.
Why do some people always assume that when somebody else doesn't like capitalism, they must like some form of socialism like canada, or soviet russia. There are other alternatives you know.
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Pure capitalism is ugly, generally you want a mix of capitalism and social reform.
This is not a moral issue. They are not morally obligated to employ you. I guess I don't understand some peoples attitude that companies are obligated to give them a job?
Now if you want to argue this from an ethical standpoint you may have an argument. What they are doing may be unethical, in certain circumstances. However, I think it would benefit us all to remember that they are doing us a favor by employing us and if the situation changes, hey, that's hard luck.
Note: I am not even a manager where I work. Just someone with the right attitude.
NAMBLA demands you stop your blatant conservative bellyaching. Failure to comply will cause us to kill you. Hard. And eat your entrails with onions.
Mm... onions.
Brazil has a very viable capitalistic system, too.
Unfortunately 95% of the people are quite poor but for the rest it's an excellent place.
Once the USA had it's middle-class destroyed, too, it will definitely resemble Brazil.
Sigged!
maybe my research is crap - but these look like the funders of Subversion...
thought that name rang a bell.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
I do not understand all these arguments and doomsayers when they talk about outsourcing stealing our jobs.
Ya see, there's this guy, names Joe. He was a good kid in school, tried to do his ABCs, got good grades. Other kids from rougher neighborhoods teased him and took the piss, and overtime he began to change. Over the years he stopped doing his homework, and his grades went from A's to F's. A teacher told him once, he could get a scholarship, go to to university, and not just on a football scholarship. He stared at the floor, wishing he could go home and play on his Sega - he hates school and knows he will hate work. After trying once, teacher couldnt care less - she underpaid and overworked she had 30 other kids just like him. Faced with a school that has no trust in him and friends who smoke weeed, Joe drops out.
10 years later Joe's got a job; its not much but its enough for the essentials - a beer with the guys, weed on the weekends. Governemnt pays for his sloppy joes and the council's given him a nice phat three bedroom house for his wife and his son. By day Joe works as a telephone operator, by night he spends it all away on dope.
A year later and we're in 2004, and the company's outsourcing to india. Joe loses his job, but he doenst care - the government takes care of him, only change to his lifestyle is can afford less dope. The next day his son breaks his leg, they go to County, and medicaid pays for it, its no big deal. The sun shines down on Rover, the family dog, and for Joe, life is good. He knows another job will be comming his way soon - he can jsut sense it.
There's another person in this story, her name's Maya. Her mum died during childbirth in the streets of Calcutta, the only animal to comfort her during her labour-pains a mangy, flea-bitten ally dog. Alone except for her older sister, the two girls stand outside of the airport begging for money from rich foreign tourists, every day prayign they will be able to afford rice. Wanting to provide a future for her baby sister, the elder girl becomes a prostitute, selling her body for sex three times a night. If she's lucky, she can seduce a rich white man - they pay better. She hopes of better things for her sister.
Suddenly, Maya's luck changes. Her sister's boyfriend is a line-manager for a telecoms agency - he teaches new employees English and tells them about Sheapard's Pie. He agrees to take Maya on, and pay her. Maya cant believe her luck - now she can afford to eat everyday and she can even afford a modest appartment for her and her sister; but the best thing of all, is she's learnign English, she knows the company has a high turnover, and maybe she can get a job as a secretary or an assistant in a few years time. She's already started saving money - although she has no boyfriend, she wants her kids to have an opportunity to go to University. Maybe, if they study hard and get good grades, they could move to the States and send her money every month to tide her over in her old age. The time is 7:00, and her sister has just started applying her makeup...
In Calcutta, the rain is ending, and the sun is peaking round the clouds. In Counciltown, UK (or Suburbia, US), Joe is looking up at the clouds, a spliff in his hand, and a dog at his feet, and is smiling.
It's a dirty little secret of modern Capitalism that it basically can't work the way it's "supposed" to, given the current conditions. I'm not trolling, and I'll be specific.
The Classical theories on which Capitalism is based were written in the 19th Century. At that time, capital was basically land, and labor was much more free to move about than it is today. Before anyone objects that transportation is more advanced today, let me explain what I mean: in those days, workers were not locked into compartments from which they could not escape, and could basically go where the work was without having to worry about passports and work visas. Anyway, because of the conditions that obtained in the 19th Century, the Classical theories are based on assumptions of immobile capital and highly mobile labor.
The conclusions of the Classical theories are nice, especially "mutual advantage." Unfortunately, those theories have about as much to do with our current reality as the "spherical cow" of every physics nerd's favorite joke. In today's world, capital moves at a high fraction of the speed of light through wires, or even at the speed of light as radio signals in the air or visible pulses in fiber optic cables. Meanwhile, because of the fortified borders between countries and the need for passports and work visas and such, labor is basically locked into little compartments. As a result, the situation of today is almost exactly the opposite of the situation assumed by the Classical theories.
Because of this, the conclusions, like "mutual advantage," are utter bunk in today's world. In fact, there is basically nothing now preventing capital (a term I also use to refer to those who control large amounts of capital) taking total advantage of labor. So when American workers want adequate safety conditions at work, capital dumps them and goes to Mexico. When the Mexican workers get uppity and want a decent working wage and don't want pollutants dumped in their rivers, capital takes the jobs to Vietnam... etc., etc.
More relevant to this discussion, when computer programmers in Silicon Valley start getting six-figure salaries, capital starts by importing Indian programmers. When the imported Indians get wise and jump ship to higher-paying companies, capital gets smart and takes the work to India. In general terms, capital (the "2%" mentioned in the parent post) can play the labor forces in different countries against each other and pick and choose which countries' laborers will get work.
Is all lost? Maybe not. It might be possible to restore something more closely resembling the "mutual advantage" ideal of the Classical theories (though I'm sure there are some who don't see "mutual advantage" as a positive ideal and prefer the current situation...). All we have to do is restore the mobility of labor. Make the borders as open to people as they are to capital. Yes, in the short term, there would be disruptions, like a huge mass of people whose knowledge of the USA comes from Hollywood, who would flood the USA temporarily looking for that streets-paved-with-gold-and-everything-works paradise, but eventually, things would settle down again, only with better conditions for workers (read: people).
For those who worry a lot about the short-term consequences, consider that that worry is part of the "playing labor forces in different countries against each other" I mentioned above. You want to preserve the apparent advantage workers in your country currently appear to have, and capital plays on that to make you oppose the kinds of changes that could actually make Capitalism work for many people, instead of horribly failing the great majority, as it has been for quite some time.
--Mark
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
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With all due respect to Mr. B and Collabnet, "we saved the SF jobs" sounds like a well thought out rationalization, for a much larger problem which is ultimately destroying IT, research, and technical innovation in America.
The first excuse from companies from two or three weeks ago, was, "American colleges are not producing graduates with strong enough skills in CS, math, science, and engineering, so we are forced to outsource"..
Now we're hearing, and I bet other corporations (of Collabnet's size and position) will pick up on this, that in order to save a few jobs and the company there was a "moral" directive to go get cheaper labor.
Nobody says American companies are required to create jobs - but by outsourcing everything they're destroying the next generation of technological innovation - you saw the last wave of hackers in the dot com boom. The next wave you see is going to be a mix of MBAs and sanitation engineers - the new U.S. demographic mix.
The technical industries are far more important to preserve than say, the automotive industry, ever was. Cars burning petroleum were never going to be the final answer for the planet - we knew that since the 50s.. technological innovation is going to save the planet. Too bad it won't be coming from the U.S.
Mob: We want our jobs back! we want our jobs back! Ms.Lovejoy: Will somemone think of the children!? Major(to spinmeister):Are these people getting dumber or stupider? Spinmeister: Both sir. Major: Listen, the reason we don't have jobs is the country of India. Indian companies are stealing our jobs! Moe: I knew it! I knew it all this time! Major: My re-election plataform will be: Bring back the jobs to Springfield!
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
- A Chennai resident
If outsourcing to india saves jobs in the US, just think of how many jobs could be saved if we stopped criticizing sweatshops.
I mean, cheap labor = good, right?
If you want to save jobs stop paying management absurd amounts of money and start giving a shit about the health and well-being of your employees. That way maybe they'll feel good about the company and start doing work instead of spending time on the net looking for a new job because your company fucking sucks. This saves jobs because maybe then your company will actually prosper.
Or you can outsource your tech support to india and just piss off your customers.
'Sup EA.
If you can explain the fundamental difference between the decision to buy a car made in Japan vs one made in the US on the one hand, and the decision to outsource a programming job to India vs hiring a US programmer, then you'll impress a whole bunch of economists and get yourself nominated for a Nobel prize ...
Hint: There *is* no difference. It's all trade. The slashdot crowd is just having the same reaction US auto makers had to imports 10 or 20 years ago (and that steel manufacturers were having a year or two ago).
Everybody's a protectionist when their job is on the line, and that's perfectly reasonable. But please don't think there's anything *special* about outsourcing jobs that doesn't apply to every other sector of the economy.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
The whole "outsourcing is destroying our job market" is a political red herring ANYWAY, tossed out by a Democratic Party that cannot seem to find an issue where they can get any traction against the Republicans, notably George Bush.
/.'ers :)
Since NAFTA was enacted, something like 600,000 jobs have gone overseas where NAFTA was a factor, while the US economy created 18 MILLION jobs over the same timeframe. I recall recently hearing on NPR that the economy has continuously created roughly double the number of jobs outsourced, even in the last 2-3 years.
Besides that, the shrill keening by IT professionals who are remarkably OVERPAID* (typical contract computer service work is at LEAST $90/hour, more frequently $120), losing their jobs to people who can do the work just as well for cheaper, well, it rings about as hollow as Longshoreman whining that they can't manage to afford to kick in for their medical insurance on 'only' $90,000 per year.
Personally, it sounds very much like people started thinking they were 'entitled' to dot.com fat bonuses, big paychecks, and the high life.
From 1992-2000 we went through a period of ridiculously inflated job and concomitant salary growth, fuelled by a soap-bubble economy. I watched a lot of tech friends of mine parlay their salaries into multiples of my own. I was pretty darn jealous, I'll tell you, being in the relatively static paper industry. But now- they're scrambling to make their house payments and I'm helping them as much as I can. But even they say: when a bubble bursts, the economy corrects. They lived through the high times, now they have to suffer the lows.
* I realize this is really going to ignite
-Styopa
Um, the bottom line is profit (or loss), by definition.
Retrain to do what? Please name some fields that we can retrain to do that can not be offshored. And factor into your response the fact that education in Inida is FAR cheaper than in the US and that most indian grads do not near the level of student loans to payoff.
That's the biggest load of corporate doublespeak I've ever seen.
Outsourcing doesn't help the country, it helps the corporation!!!!
To say, "Oh we SAVED jobs by moving jobs to India!" is like saying, "Think of all the money we saved by firing everyone!" The simple fact is that had all the jobs remained in the US, more people would have jobs. Just because costs went down, and the corporation does better doesn't mean that the country is doing better.
I want to see software prices drop from this. Instead of corporation pocketing the difference, I was that price savings to go back to the customers. If salaries are going down by 80%, then damn it, I want the software pricing war to start and I'd like to see massive waves and waves of software companies go down because of competitive pricing, and THEN we'll see how it actually benefited the software industry. At that point, only open source projects will be left standing.
You cannot become competitive with people who make less than minimum wage.
What is needed is "financial parity". The US dollar needs to drop in value (or foreign currency needs to gain value) until it is no longer a cost advantage for companies to outsource.
All the worlds indeed a
I am really busy and my time is more valuable than I could buy outsourced developers. So I am going to start an open source project and hire India developers for peanuts. I will then put on my resume that I developed program widget and get a higher paying job.
Does this seem stupid at all levels? If it does than outsourcing should be viewed the same way. If not than maybe this is a massive shift by society and I'll have to keep the idea for my future management move...
Saved Niki, it wouldn't have millions to poor into advertising and celebrity endorsements. Putting women and children into sweatshops saved our pro athletes from the humiliation of only being single digit milionaires. God Bless Em!
I think you all are confusing morality with ethics. If something is morally correct in doing, that is an individual, if not theological based, decision. Ethics looks at whether if a company or an individual should perform a specific activity due to the issue if is it correct.
Ethically, hiring people in India to keep people in San Franciso seems abit stupid. I say more the jobs to a small AMERICAN community, like Idaho Falls, Idaho, or any other small community. The cost of doing business in small town America is much less than San Franciso. Also, it keeps American jobs in America. The advent to high speed telecommunications makes it very easy to put large production (software or hardware) outside the expensive coastal areas. How would the CFO and CEO of CollabNet like to save about 2/3 on labor, office space, and other operational cost my moving most of his company activities to a small community.
For example, AMI semiconductors did just that. They moved their HQ to Pocatello Idaho. Why, because it is so much cheaper. The have production facilities as well.
I believe the future of keeping American high tech in America is keeping the high tech companies and employees in America. Small town America has a great future, if and only if the companies' CEO have the strength and courage to explore that small town communities of this great nation.
I know being a tech geek for 24 years, I love the smaller communities. Good pay, cheap ( and lot of) land, great outdoor activities, NO TRAFFIC CONGESTION, NO SMOG, safe communities for my children, and CHEAP TAXES.
Just some thoughts.
Please help me understand this. Why should an American have a greater moral right to a job than an Indian? Moraly speaking, how many Indian jobs would it take to equal an American job?
I'm British, is my 'moral rights factor' equal to that of an India, or an American or somewhere inbetween? How about Black people, or Chinese people like my wife?
Simon Hibbs
"What passes as a "sound education" in this country is laughable."
That's because we think that we need to have computers and internet access in every classroom.
The basics of a good, solid, *dare I say it* liberal-arts education hasn't changed in centuries.
You study math. Lots of math.
You study writing. Lots of writing.
You study literature. Read till you bleed.
Natural sciences. Tell kids that "crystals" and "horoscopes" are a joke. Teach them what the constellations really are. Give kids a basic understanding of the world they live in.
You have real phys-ed class. Exercise till the sweat drips.
Add music, and fine-arts.
As you reach teen years, you study physics, chemistry, and keep studying even more math.
Guess what! You don't need to study "computers". Talk about a waste of time.
The free market works on a small scale, but not a global scale.
How small is small scale. I live in Leuven, Belgium.
So if global is not working, what will? Should I protect the European Union. If I do that jobs will be outsourced to Poland. Just Belgium? If I do that jobs will be outsourced to Walonie. Just Flanders? Then they might be outsourced to Antwerp. Just Leuven? The they might outsource to the shop across town. Just my street? My neighbour might do it cheaper. Just my family? My son might be willing to work cheaper.
You can translate this to any place where you live.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
As long as employees are not in slave labor, outsourcing is essential for many successful American companies. If I couldn't buy great quality items from China and resell them, I would have starved to death a long time ago. I am just one American guy that was saved by outsourcing. I'm sure there are many more like me.
Learn About Outsourcing. http://www.pioutsource.com
April on Despair's 2004 calendar is 'Potential'
I've only been back to work for 3 months, after spending 7 months unemployed, but I'm not of the holier than thou belief that someone owed me a job. [yes, I was fired because of someone's napoleon complex, but I didn't think that meant I should just get an instant job out of it...more that he should lose his for having done it].
There will always be a need for a wide variety of professions, and we can't just go shooting telephone sanitizers out into space, and we're not all going to get jobs playing video games.
I think it's a problem with both society, in thinking that people are 'owed' a job, and in education, for teaching fixed subjects, without focusing on how to improve an individual person in a way that will make them a more productive person in society. [oooh....he can add...and can write papers.... sure, that's useful, but if they don't care, they're not going to apply themselves well... find a way to center the curriculum around them...maybe 'math for people who enjoy fixing cars' or such]
I'd like to see programs in training people fix those important, but overlooked jobs in society. Sure, there are classes for learning computer programming, or even system administration -- but what about manning a helpdesk? [and I don't mean, get them off the phone anyway possible], or even computer operations [handling computer backups, monitoring systems for oddities, aka. playing computer games while babysitting computers]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Simplistic model.
The economy operates on satisfying the demands of others, and in turn getting your own demands satisfied.
Jim makes red beads for 6 demand units, 2 of which he spends on glass, 3 of which he spends on red dye.
Joe makes red dye for 3 demand units.
John makes cotton candy for 2 demand units.
Jim and Joe use their demand units to buy John's cotton candy.
Indian Sandeep enters the market and produces red dye for 2 demand units. Jim buys his red dye from Sandeep instead of Joe.
Jim now buys his red dye from Sandeep and has one additional demand unit to buy cotton candy from John.
If Sandeep bought cotton candy from John, then the market would have two new demand units for cotton candy. Joe could get a job as a cotton candy maker.
But Sandeep doesn't buy goods from the US, so Joe is screwed.
Do you see? Off-shoring is acceptable for the US if the off-shored workers create a market for US goods.
The free market is in transition. When the free market stabilizes, Indian IT workers will have the same demands as American IT workers, and the system will stop screwing over US workers. But while the market is in transition, Indian IT workers will be less demanding, due to the rapidly growing pool of educated Indian workers.
And it's going to get worse. The improved Indian economy will result in more money for education which will result in an expanding educated labor pool, which will result in sophisticated jobs moving to India until the free market corrects itself.
A lot of people are saying, "We'll just have to move people in the US to higher skilled jobs." Not good enough! Indian workers will eventually get all the education they need to be competitive even in the financial markets.
It's not India's fault. You need to have a global free market from the get-go in order to avoid problems like this. The free-market is self-correcting, but the self-correction will prove painful to US workers. We're talking about 1 billion people the market needs to correct for, for Christ sake.
I don't know what the answer is, but it may very well be a measured amount of protectionism. Protectionism is only good if it still permits the free market correction to occur, but just makes it gentler. An obvious and effective example is unemployment pay. Maybe we need to slow off-shoring by requiring a restricted reverse Visa... and perhaps some not-too-harsh tariffs on buying goods and services from India.
Comments?
See this post.
Capitalism does not magically end at the US border.
In other words; you expect a company to hire the people willing and able to do the job for the least money here in the country, what changes when that person is across a political border?
Perhaps he was moreso referring to other countries like Sweden. In the US there is a huge difference between the rich and the poor. In Sweden the majority earn a very comfortable living, everyone gets the benefit of world leading education and a top notch healthcare system.
Sweden as a country doesn't screw anyone, and everyone gets a fair chance at a good life.
This Scandinavian fairness is best reflected in the fines here for speeding, they are given as a percentage of income, so when a bigwig in Nokia was fined for speeding he recieved a 100,000 euro fine.
Thats fairness.
Supposedly anyone who kicks against outsourcing is against companies being profitable. I have no problem with companies being profitable.
What I have a problem with is the fact that I'm in my mid-40's and high up in the payscale for my particular niche. If my job got outsourced, I'd like to know what these profitable companies expect me to do for a living?
So far -- as the article points out -- all the executives can tell us is "Uh, think of something."
So forgive me if I don't cheer for India's (current) good fortune. Twenty years ago, when the manufacturing jobs began leaving the US, at least The Information Economy was on the rise, and most people managed to change gears.
Today there's nothing on the horizon unless you count flipping burgers. Uncool.
What's next? How the Inuits saved the world from a race of flesh eating aliens coming through an intergalactic portal in the North Pole?
EvilCON - Made Famous by
So unless you plan to give up your car and a lot of other nice things, Capitalism is here to stay.Just like Gas won't be replaced anytime soon.
Face it, people don't give a damn about morals. We only give a damn about ourselves and our families. Let the poor people in those other countries die. Let the poor in this country die. We need to get rid of taxes and stop letting the poor leech off of us.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Well not compared to other Americans anyway. What happens is that value of the Almighty Dollar falls as the economy weakens, becoming worth less on the global market. *That* effectively reduces your wages compared to the rest of the world, making you cheaper to employ and your products cheaper. Your pay remains at a similar level compared to other Americans. e.g. A Harley now only costs 5200GBP. That same Harley cost nearly 9,000GBP a couple of years ago.
I don't know if you've noticed but the Dollar has been falling for the last couple of years. In 2002 1 dollar would have bought you 0.7 pounds sterling (GBP) or 50 Indian Rupees (INR). Now, 1 dollar will only buy you 0.55 pounds sterling or 44 Indian Ruppees (INR). That's more than a 10% reduction in all American's wages right there.
Another example is the Japanese Yen. It halved in value during the 90s while their economy was contracting, effectively halving the wage bill compared to the rest of the world. Harder times for everyone in that economy.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Since when did capitalism have anything to do with morality? Since those with the most money twigged they could buy the morality of those with less money pretty easily.
It's so easy for theorists to proffer that outsourcing is better for the country, better for the economy,etc.
But it really becomes important to these folks when their job is on the line.
Sounds funny, if it's other's people's jobs, they don't care. But I'll bet when it's job next, they'll raise a different opinion.
To all the hypocrits.
Become more educated(more fit) and you survive. Stupid people can die. I'm tired of paying taxes to support poor lazy ignorant bastards who drop out of school.
Just let them die already and lets speed up natural selection instead of fighting it.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
facing global competition much like agricultural
You want to know a little known secret about ag competition? The destruction of the family farmer has to do with Federal social policy, not agriculture competitiveness.
We farm east of Corning Iowa, which was the one-time home of an emerging national farmers union (before the government got it stopped). (see the USDA website for a timeline of some farmers movements). The problem the government's always had with farmers is that they're darn near impossible to control. Look at the John Birch society's prevelance, as well as election returns from "Red" (which should be Blue, FYI) states vs. "Blue" more liberal areas.
Why are farmers so difficult to control?
o They're independent workers and are raised to be independent. Their whole ethic system, though processes, motivation, etc. is intrinsically defined (meaning THEY are the law that gets their butts out of bed at 5AM, not some external authority).
o They deal with reality first-hand, every day, and subsequently grow up being the most aware of the truth of Reason. Sluff off and plant the crop two months late? You have no crop. Skip maintenance on the tractor? It breaks. Get sloppy on fence mending, your cattle disappears. Do this a few too many times? You die. (You haven't seen work ethic until you've met a modern farmer) Live in a city for a big company, you get further and further separated from first-hand consequence of reason. Sluff off on that report due? Oh well, do it tomorrow. Boss won't yell till next week. Implement a less safe or innovative product? Market won't notice for maybe a year. Give crappy service at the DMV counter? What are they gonna do? Fire you? Action and consequence are distanced. Belief in Reason leads to very strong and dangerous thinking - dangerous if you're a government parasite.
o Bottom of the model independence. How do you control someone who doesn't need you every day, and you can't starve them? You screw with the government in the city and they'll have you screaming uncle soon enough (whether it's from a cell or not is your choice). But there's little you can do to that family farmer, and did you notice, if you have to go get him, you're on HIS turf, not yours? Might get shot.
o The worst thing, is if you piss off the farmer, YOU starve. He'll just let his crop rot. He's got enough for his family to eat. This isn't a good thing for government bureaucrats.
So the government, starting with FDR and significantly extended under Johnson, Nixon and Carter, introduced massive controls of production, regulation, consolidation/centralization of purchasing, application of all sorts of environmental regulatoins, etc. By adding substantial costs (ala barriers to entry) to the process, it forced farmers to grow to several thousand acre farms to be able to bear these costs (while the market price was capped through centralization of purchasing). Not only was this effective, but the government was right in line to "help you buy those few more thousand acres", created programs that get you hooked, and once you're in, you'll never get out.
Now they've got a foot on the farmer's neck. So no, per the previous poster, this isn't a function of global competition decimating the farm as it is the intentional restructuring of an American class by bureaucrats who felt they were getting too big for their britches.
But then again, how is the outsourcing issue any different? Didn't you all get too big for your britches, buying all those stupid dot-com stocks, fleeing to the burbs (leaving the government to clean up the mess), putting your kids in private schools, and buying all those damn SUVs?
Don't worry. Both the marxists and the country club elite will set things straight, just like they both did for the farmers.
It's also high time that countries such as India enact labor laws similar to those in more developed countries. Companies would find developing countries a far less attractive outsourcing option if those countries were held to the same workplace standards as their competition.
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
Sweden again, as an example |(I'm not Swedish, but i do think this country is the most advanced culture in the world).
A whirlpool/electrolux factory was here making microwaves, but 1 person working in the factory cost the company the same amount of money as 40 people working in a Chinese plant. So, they moved. Swedens old paper/textile industries are largely run by robots, as is thier automotive industry. All the old unskilled labouring jobs are gone, So what did they do?
They have responded as a country by doing what cannot be done in India or China. They have specialised in extreme high tech areas of work, and do shit loads of research. Biacore systems were INVENTED here for fucks sake. You can't get more high tech and shit cool than shining light at some gold to find out how much cocaine is in the blood on the other side of the fucking gold! The guy who came up with the premise of surface plasmonic resonance lives down the road from me here! This is hardcore research that isn't done in developing countries.
Or, in Ireland, they responded by making taxes on Industry a miniscule little number. So loads of companys set up in Ireland. they make a component (any component) and price it to themselves as a very expensive commodity, and pay very little tax on it. In all other countries where this company works, they pay high taxes but can pretend they make cheap components and then as a global company they save a lot of money. And Ireland gets lots of jobs and tax money. The US is a big country and it can handle itself, I'm sure it will be bouncing back in no time at all.
You know, I'm so fucking sick of hearing people bitch and complain about all of the jobs flowing overseas. You know what? Get over it! The United States encompasses less than FIVE PERCENT of the world's population. Do we have a God-given entitlement to jobs? Fuck no! Why should 80% of the world live in squalour whilst we drive around in our two-mile-per-gallon Humvees and gorge ourselves on Mickey D's supersized value meals? Short answer: they shouldn't. If offshoring means raising the standard of living for the 4/5 of humanity who have to worry about an empty belly at the end of the day, I say let it happen. I will survive.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
I watch the news whenever I can, and it's rare that I see them address any real issues like this. On the rare occasions that I do, it seems to be pro-CEO like this one. 99.9% of the time, I get bombarded w/ non-news like the continuing investigation of that college girl in Wisconsin (she's been found, let's move on), which means nothing to anyone outside of Madison (I live in Ohio, so it's now meaningless to me), or how John Kerry uses botox, or Janet Jackson's nipple. You know why? Because people like Ms. Mieszkowski (the news media) are in no danger of losing their jobs to someone overseas. I'd say that the news media puts out a lower quality product than any other profession, so if I had a choice, I'd gladly watch an Indian on the morning news delivering ACTUAL NEWS. Wouldn't that be something?
It's so easy for theorists to proffer that outsourcing is better for the country, better for the economy,etc.
But it really becomes important to these folks when their job is on the line.
Sounds funny, if it's other's people's jobs, they don't care. But I'll bet when it's job next, they'll raise a different opinion.
To all the hypocrites.
"Good food, good curry, good Gandhi, let's hurry!"
Americans are racist bastards. It's really that simple. What? You think this can be a white dominated world forever where all the jobs stay in America and get handed down to you from generation to generation? You are as bad as lazy minorities in the USA who want affirmative action because they are too lazy to compete fairly.
Don't you get it? Nothing is given to you in this world, or at least nothing is owed to you. The government does not owe you shit. Your company does not owe you shit. I do not owe you shit.
I should not have to pay higher taxes because your lazy ass cant find a job and wont finish school. For hundreds of years white males have had an unfair advantage in the workplace and now a few indias and chinese finally get to compete on a level playing field and you cry foul like its the end of the world!
What do you think all the other people of the world have been living like for the past few hundred years? You people remind me of the germans who blame everything on the jews, or the blacks who blame everything on the white man, or the silly hippie who blames everything on the man.
If you can't find a job, blame yourself.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Capitalism is GREAT for everyone. Sure there are people in the top 2% who are making out like bandits. But without capitalism you would be either...
a) Dead. Without capitalism there would be far, far fewer people on the planet right now. It is capitalism and the economic incentives therein that have driven the innovation and development that make it possible for a billions of people to live on this planet.
or...
b) Starving and miserable - assuming you were one of the "lucky" few who were alive. Remember things "before" capitalism. War, hunger, disease, suffering... ah, the good old days. With out capitalism you would be struggling just to live day to day. There would be no computers, cars, etc., etc., the list goes on and on.
Thanks to our capitalist system an average working American lives far better (and longer) than any one, and I do mean anyone, that lived 300 years ago.
Sure capitalism is unfair (if it were "fair" it wouldn't be capitalism.) But have some prospective here... just because you have to work a 40 hour (or more!) work week, and don't have as much money as Bill Gates, doesn't mean that you are getting screwed by the system.
I don't see you supporting any minority owned businesses in the USA. Many US companies get completely ignored because white America won't invest in their company, buy their stock, or eat or purchase their products.
The US economy is racially divided and I don't see any of you people complaining about how whites have an unfair advantage over minority run businesses in the USA. So why complain when minority run businesses outside of the USA have advantages? Don't you think its about freakin time?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
when they outsource your ass, then we'll see who'll be crying.
if US wants to win this so-called "free market globalization", then we should subsidize college tuition.
What kind of world will this be, when indians have free/easy access to great universities, meanwhile the average joe can't afford a decent college and have to suffer in a community college.
if you think that everything is on a level playing field, and let the cookies, or economy crumble where it may.
Businesses which survive longer are more competitve. Businesses which grow create more jobs. Competitive businesses which survive grow and create more jobs.
Market growth = Job Growth. Can't you connect the dots? George Bush explained it perfectly in his speech.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Ah yes! Since we're going for the easy argument here. Likewise the American public isn't morally obligated to give, or continue to give these outsourcing companies the benefits of American laws i.e. Court protection, Patents, Copyright. Nor the benefits of American society i.e. Health care, Education, Government Research, etc. The American people through their representitive granted these companies charters. The companies didn't grant these themselves.
So "Who" is doing "Whom" a favour? I thing you forget who's country this is? And it's not the corporations. So if they don't like that then, well that's just "hard luck".
Said by a person with the right attitude, dude.
fine talk from a guy with the handle "Adolph Hitler".
Software engineering has the tools and methods to produce high quality software efficiently. Too many people ignore them. It is too easy to continue the shoddy ways of going from concept to code, doing quick hits in maintenance, and any of the numerous other "methods" of wasting effort in the name of speed. The Personal Software Process and Team Software Process are good examples of what we should be doing ... others also exist.
If US programmers want to compete they will succeed only if they adopt the techniques that the US invented and that the Indians, Chinese, Russians, and others have taken to heart. Unfortunately, these techniques cost money (investment) to implement and it is now cheaper to buy from those who were wise enough to make the investment already.
Gee, this mess sounds a lot like the Japanese adopting Demming (again US) 30 years ago and taking it to heart so they could beat the unholy crap out of our automotive and other industries.
Those who refuse to learn from history can rest assured they will get a refresher course roughly a generation later.
We have seen this situation before. It used to be that only a few could go to college. Now a college eduaction is much more widespread and available. That means we need to find more ways to stand out to secure our careers and jobs. When more people went to college, it flooded the workplace with "educated" people. It was still the best and brightest (or best connected) people who got the jobs. The offshoring just opens the field more.
An answer, improve ourselves and make ourselves indespensible. This doesn't guarentee anything, but it helps to hedge out bets. When it comes down to it, skills and competency will always be needed, at whatever cost. Also, we need to make it obvious why our "local" work is necessary. Increasing personal interaction in a productive way can make a huge difference in overall productivity. This is something that can't be felt with workers around the world.
I think the offshoring is good. The only moral issue is whether you are doing what you need to do to secure your job in the face of supporting a family or that BMW. The work makes us sharper, and the exposure makes our lives richer.
They are closet racists. What you say does make sense and it is moral to support outsourcing. It's also a lie to say that we don't benefit. Buy stock in companies and you'll benefit when that company outsources. Outsourcing could save our social security and retirement systems because with a more stable stock market its better for our retirements.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
American company gets cheap labour for software, sells products to European companies, makes money, American stockholders circulate money through US markets, generating domestic wealth, and hence further demand for domestic products and jobs.
Why is that so complicated?
If open source is good for programmers, than outsourcing is also good for programmers.
We all know chennai sux. it smells of cooum where ever you go. But I like the weather. It is much better than Pennsylvania, US, where I live. I never fell sick in Chennai and the heat kept the fat out of my body. I have gained 20 kgs since I landed here in PA and routinely fall sick due to cold related sinus problems.
is all the socialist employment / environmental laws the US politicos keep passing to get reelected - like the Clinton era family leave act. That costs employers real money, the end result of which is employers go to where they don't have to play by those rules, nice as they sound.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
What if in the US companies stopped hiring over priced white Americans and started to target minorities for jobs such as programmers? This has happened many times in the past and these same jerks who come out of the wood works when minorities are taking all the jobs are the ones who come out now saying outsourcing is ruining our economy and Indians are taking all the jobs.
Can't you see whats common in both these situations? Minority/Sub-Human/Outsider is taking the jobs from white America.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
The executives are handing out 1 million dollar bonuses to each other and patting themselves on the back.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
If you think you can do better than those guys, start you own company! Thats the basis of capitalism after all.
nobody has really addressed this question:
if you loose your job, what do you do next.
if you don't have any savings, you can't start your own business
if you don't have a college degree that's on demand, and you don't have any money, you can't retrain.
if you don't have any of the above, plus you have a family, then you're really screwed.
any answers folks
From that post:
Someday it will be a nice company but I haven't earned that yet.
So no, increasing the company's profit is not a bad thing. Doing it in a short-sighted, near-term "I'm going to pocket 300K next year with this" way is. Companies can increase their profits and, more important, better guarantee their survivability in the long term by developing a strong market to sustain them. Offshoring and putting people in the unemployement lines doesn't help your company's future, but seems like the types the grandparent was talking about don't really care about that.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
If big cities and tech centers command such high wages why not move to economically challenged areas of the U.S. before moving off shore? I live in upstate NY. On the whole upstate universities churn out many highly qualified programmers. NYC is a stones throw from here by car or plane (low cost carriers make round trip to NYC $100) but the cost of living is phenominally lower. Why not move jobs here? The cost of doing business is lower for the company and the workers are more accesible than say those that may be in Bangalore. Additionally communication would be easier given the same time zone and culture and if need be the upstate worker can just jet down for the day.
If you are using the context of IT consulting, which many of us here understand, then the key to increasing value of work performed is something called Intellectual Capital. It is the main method for capturing knowledge from knowledge workers, and refining it into so-called reusable assets and repeatable methods for solving typical customer problems. The more consultants you have reusing and refining the assets, the more valuable your consultants become.
Even a "one man shop" can do it, just by documenting experiences and creating repeatable steps for performing common, but complicated tasks. How about entering into arrangements with other small consulting firms to share their Intellectual Capital?
Scale that up to the likes of IBM, and imagine 136,000 employees in the consulting division. Try to imagine the rate of growth of the knowledge stores and the quality of the standardized methods that have been used, refined, and reused over the years. [shameless plug] When you hire an IBM consultant, they bring along the documented and refined experiences and standardized methods for solving every type of IT problem a customer could face. When I am faced with an issue or request, chances are someone else has already had to solve that problem once before. That's why my discounted rate is $235/hr. When you hire me, I have access to (theoretically) all of the experiences had by thousands of employees over the last 12 years (when Global Services was created). That's a lot of experience sitting behind a Google-like search engine.
Free help.
Don't you notice, its only white America that complains about this? Mexican-Americans are just happy to work. Black Americans will work anywhere and for cheaper than the average white American. Chinese Americans will do your job and work longer hours, work harder, and do it for less. All in this same country. Even women work harder and for less money than the lazy white male.
Think of it this way, if you want to keep your job without having everyone else "Taking all the jobs" then you fight for it by working harder and getting a better education. Why should you get any hand outs when no one else does? Everyone else works harder and for less money!
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
At the cost of your job too, I imagine. How altruistic of you.
Maybe if kids growing up in poor families in ghettos accross America could work a real job they wouldnt sell drugs! Perhaps if we did have child labor. more businesses could start in poor communities, think! Why are crime rates so high in the USA, yet not so high in places like China where people are even more poor? The reason is in China at least the poor have something to do instead of just sit on the street corners.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Its simple, really. The U.S. Government, and
U.S Corporations, and a host of other (mostly
leftist) groups have betrayed you, the American
citizen. There is nothing to say or debate.
It's now up to you to do something about it.
Both Democrats and Republics are traitors. We
need new political parties which are going to
represent the interests of Americans and not
big corporations that want to maximize profits
in an immoral manner or by groups who seek to
flood our country with immigrants (legal and
illegal) who we don't need, our not us,
and do not belong here. Until you get fundemental
reform you can pretty much stick a fork in the
America we knew and loved because it will be
pretty much done (for).
The main reason for the outsourcing to India is quite basic at heart, their hi-tech sector is maturing later than ours did. Wages in India are rapidly rising, and once that tech sector reaches the maturity of the US, a balance will be struck between the two and some jobs will come back over here as the wage savings won't be enough to cover the other expenses of outsourcing (time zone difference, communication barriers, etc).
Because we are taling about American companies that only exist because a few million Americans died so they could.
Damn it, we are not talking about numbers of a spreadsheet, we are talking about peoples lives here and those people you just so offhandly dismiss vote.
I think it will be funny when India and/or China nationalize a few of our industries over their. You know, like Mexico did with the oil industry we built up in that country.
...came about from a variety of reasons. This is complex, but I'll hit a few points.
Originally, in the US, corporations had a duality they were forced into, they were granted charters to incorporate-it wasn't automatic, and part of the deal from government was that they had to be of the public benefit-inside the united states. Profitability was one thing and taken as a gimme, but the other applied as well. That's just historical fact. If the company failed to stick to that, their incorporation charter wasn't renewed or it was pulled. The united+states was a federation of (much more than today) independent states, so we had a "common market" that had a default language and used a common currency, and the tax structure was setup to insure that the economy as a whole *inside this federation of independent states* improved, and there wasn't as bad a currency drain to outside the borders. We still had trade with other nations, but the default was it had to improve THIS nation over-all, and not replace anything domestically. Excise taxes at the border were a part of this, and why we didn't have the onerous "income" tax. There WEREN'T income taxes. We had protectionism by default, for the nation as a whole, but states weren't allowed protectionism legislation, only the federation.
We then gradually realised that monopolies stifled trade, so controls were put into place. We also had the phenomenon of collective bargaining finally being allowed, so that gross exploitation didn't occur, and that general over-all standard of living increased as more and more people as a percentage of the gross population had disposable income, could save for retirement, could afford even beyond basic necessities, and etc. During this time, we also used a currency that was backed by tangible assets, and was productivity-based, not credit-based.
Once all those were in place, we had the fastest and most successful rise of a true middle class that the planet has ever seen. It worked, it was a combination that worked, and most of it was based on common sense, nationalism, and yes, morality.
That's all gone now. It's based on greed again, exploitation, no thoughts of being loyal to your nation or your neighbors.
I EXPECT an Indian or a Chinese to be loyal and patriotic to their respective nations, to be looking out for the best deal they can find, it is the natural order of things and I approve of that, it just makes sense. I EXPECT that of a USian as well. The argument now is, is that it doesn't matter, nothing matters other than short term profits. No long range view of what is happening to your (anyone your, speaking generally here of course) nation or your neighbor. It's also pretty short sighted. Put your neighbor out of work, you've lost a domestic customer for your widget or widget service, as they have no money now. In the US now they have to cook the books and outright lie to keep true unemployment figures out of the mainstream press. Put enough of them out of work you have a national balance of trade deficit, which is the largest in our history now. We had a domestic balance of trade surplus for our entire existence as a nation UNTIL corporations got given tax breaks to outsource, and it's recent in historical terms. Continue that for a number of years and your nation is forced as a stop gap matter to abandon asset and productivity based currency to a complete fraud lying debt-based inflationary currency. this has happened, and was inevitable when we abandoned asset based currency. That is for sure happened, it's undebateable here.
Shipping off your carefully built up manufacturing base means that some other nation or group of nations can hold you hostage at some point for critical infrastructure. that's happened. Shipping off your agriculture means the same. This is also true now and accelerating. Allowing the rise of the monopolies, the same, it's happening.
*True* wealth is a bona-fide tangible, despite the bankers and casino traders assertions otherwise.. True wealth is refl
Out of frustration in my job I jokingly started looking for employment in a place I was sure to find a job - overseas.
I found jobs in India for developers with 5 years of development experience being paid approximately $50kUS a year. How is this is drastic difference from what they are paying Americans? Maybe Chinese get paid less, but in the case of India, the only difference I can figure is that the company isn't having to pay as much in the way of taxes. If this is the case, then perhaps the only real benefits are the companies.
Why not analyze the flip side of outsourcing. I am a software developer who is about to be "bangalored". Fine. I am not going to pout about it. The media writes that we are in a "global economy" so deal with it. OK I will. But we should take the global economy one step further. If US corps. can offshore their labor, allow US consumers to offshore their consumption. For example, if Pfizer Pharm. can offshore its IT staff to save money, then I should be able to purchase my drugs from Canada or Mexico to save money. I would like to see how IBM would react if I could buy an imitation Thinkpad laptop from Singapore for $300. US corporations are lobbying for the right to offshore yet also lobby for protection for their products. I say make it fair. If you want free trade, you should feel the sting a free trade. Allow US citizens to buy goods directly from countries with lower costs of living. I guarantee that offshoring consumption will make the big US corps. whine and pout and hopefully, the outsourcing proponents will deliver the same message that you are delivering to the US IT workers that are getting laid off. Free trade is good for you. It's a global economy. Deal with it. The threat of duty free imports will make CEOs rethink their offshoring strategies.
the aristocrat choir sings, what's the ruckus?
the haves have not a clue.
reech bee-yond ur clip-0n
You know, I'm so fucking sick of hearing people bitch and complain about all of the jobs flowing overseas.
Then stop reading the articles fuckwit.
You know what? Get over it! The United States encompasses less than FIVE PERCENT of the world's population. Do we have a God-given entitlement to jobs?
Yes, at least to the ones in companies on American soil that we help support
Fuck no!
I said yes.
Why should 80% of the world live in squalour
Nobody is forcing 80% of the world to be poor. The US is the US's responsibility. The world is not our resposibility. Despite our newfound roll as world police.
whilst we drive around in our two-mile-per-gallon Humvees and gorge ourselves on Mickey D's supersized value meals?
That is a stupid generalization of American people. That is like saying "Fuck the rest of the world, they are all spearchuckers anyway".
Short answer: they shouldn't. If offshoring means raising the standard of living for the 4/5 of humanity who have to worry about an empty belly at the end of the day, I say let it happen.
No, the American people shouldn't be fleeced by American companies to provide worldwide welfare for poor states. Sorry, but your idology is sad.
I will survive.
So lets get this straight, you'd like to see Americans starve if it will save people in other countries. Sounds like you should move somewhere else.
It is immoral because unlike the fortunate few who went to the valley the majority of us broke our backs building and nurturing a new industry that American corporations where promising would support us thought our lifetime. Also because American corporations sold us a bill of goods on education and that if we obtained it we would not be disposable. Most of us made good money for our but part of the fact that we did not charge $300,000 a year for them was that most of us where looking for careers and not entrepreneurship. We chose to do the innovation and let the corporations take the risk of brining it to market in return they received the lions share of the reward our reward was to make an upper middle class salary and to have a long term career. If you remove the long term then it is really not worth it as you could make millions if you did it yourself but you would have to take the risk. What happened though is we where screwed, the corporations took our innovations and brought them to market made millions off of them and then made us train our replacements. Any way you slice it that is immoral many corporations gave their employees the assurances that if they brought their innovations to them that they would be rewarded over the long haul. This was not the case. Knowing then what I know now I would have not given my innovation to American corporations but rather take the risk myself as I did not get what was promised but was rather sold a sack of shit in which my wages where good but rather low if you factor in the hours the typical IT personnel had to work and to only get about 5 good years out of the 10 years in the industry. Not to mention the wasted money spent on a CS degree. To me that is immoral.
Adolf, a couple of decades in hell have really changed your perspective!
second society
Amen brother.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
It wasn't that long ago when everyone was talking about telecommuting and how it would save millions for people because they wouldn't have to drive their cars to work. With the Internet, people could work from home.
Programming should have been the first job that could have been done remotely. If programmers can't make telecommuting possible, than no one can.
Turns out that telecommuting never materialized. Why? Because management can't stand not being able to watch people like a hawk. (Besides meetings, what else do they have to do?)
And even now, management can't seem to manage programming projects when the developers are just down the hall from them. What made us think that telecommuting could ever work.
Now outsourcing (global telecommuting) is being tried because of money. So following this line of logic we would conclude that telecommuting in this country failed because we paid programmers too much money and those same programmers lived too close to the company and were culturally too familiar with other people in the company.
What is needed is people half a world away who literally work while management sleeps and who program to written specifications (since that's always worked so well in the past) and can get the simplest of questions answered in a matter of days via email, fax or voice mail (ain't technology great). Yes that's will surely succeed in producing products of equal or higher quality than domestic products at "competitive" prices and will line the pockets of every shareholder throughout this great land.
I can hardly wait.
Just stop stealing peoples money with tax, and get the corporates to pay tax for once , some pay zippo, yet make lots of profits. Once that happens, and debt is reduced, govt will have even more spare cash. Oh and cut inflation, coz its legalized theft.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I'm sorry but that's prejudiced. I live in Atlanta where we have a high minority population. I've seen just as many blacks bitch and moan about only making minimum wage, in fact I've seen black people who don't even have a GED refuse to take less than 10 dollars an hour. As for mexicans, my experience with them (and my experience is quite vast as I worked in some local restaurants in high school) is that first generation mexican-americans will work their ass off in jobs no other american (white, black or otherwise) will take. But once they hit the 2nd or 3rd generation, they believe that they are entitled to better. I have no experience with asian workers, so i can't speak about them.
In a capitalist society, the more skills you have, the more value you have. That's why it is called a job market. You are selling yourself to an employer. You have a monetary value (or rather your skills do.) If you have more skills in your field you will typically (market permitting) make more money.
The problem I am seeing right now is, as one poster already noted, that we are getting into a similar situation to the japanese economy: deflation. Wages are shrinking, so people are less apt to take the jobs when they realize they can't make as much money. However, that is a problem that is temporary. When people realize that it's work or die, they'll take what they can get. I personally see no shame in working for minimum wage if there is nothing else out there for you. But unfortunately, to many people in this country disagree (regardless of race.)
Right now, if i felt I needed a job badly enough I would quickly take a job makes minimum wage (and I don't cause I've actually browsed the job market and found that there are plenty of well paying - by my standards - jobs for which I am qualified, I am simply in a position where just focusing on my education is more important than getting a job that I will have to leave in July for my service obligations.)
Derek Greene
Look, if over consumption is the issue well then nothing is wrong with capitalism. Putting a cap on consumption so that its even accross the board is called communism. Everyone is equal and everyone consumes exactly what they need, no more and no less. A fair system yes, but its the opposite of the current system and can never happen in capitalism.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
The tax burden when you combine both embedded and the obvious taxes is destroying the American dream. Corporations are required by shareholders and owners to deliver a profit. The government seems hell bent to drive the costs of operating up.
This gets passed down to the consumer and workers as embedded taxes and loss of jobs. Look at the small business owner. You know one of the hardest decisions? To higher your first employee. The amount of regulations and such that you are subject to is astounding. Those same regulations introduce a ton of risk too, mainly being sued over ANYTHING.
Outsourcing is the result of technology and the need of companies to stay in business in a cut throat environment. Outsourcing will also be the only way to keep the amount of services we have to expect viable. As the baby boomers retire we will face a worker shortage far worse than the tech boom. This will be compounded by the fact that those newly retired persons will be eating even more of the employed's income by way of taxes.
What the US government does over the next 10 years will have far more effect on readers here than outsourcing. They tax burden is on its way to obscene. Only stupid people think that the poor pay no taxes. Their lives will simply get worse as the embedded taxes increase.
How do we fix this mess? One way is to reduce the regulatory burden faced by small business. They are the greatest producers of jobs this country knows, not big business. GOVERNMENT produces NO jobs. When government gets bigger the burden gets bigger. Hence Government must get smaller. Find the justification for some many Cabinet departments! Most are just jobs programs... providing services a PRIVATE company, one that generates revenue, can do better. Some are obvious requirements of government, like defense and foreign relations, others are just jobs programs, agriculture, energy, veteran affairs, and education.
Don't look overseas for the problem, don't look to the boardroom. It all starts here and with our Government. It is simply crushing the American dream.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Unrestrained globalization is as bad an idea as unrestrained capitalism. The reactions to it are only getting warmed up. Expect more violent protests at WTO summits, not fewer. People all over the world feel threatened by it, and not without reason.
...only works if the following 3 statements are realized:
1. Moving of goods shoud be free
This has been realized. The moving of goods from one country to the other is cheap.
2. Moving of workforce should be free
This has been partly realized. For example, within the EU workforce can move freely. However, in many countries you have to get a work permit to work there which restricts getting a job in the country. The cultural differences and the cost of the moving are also an obstacle.
3. Moving of knowledge should be free
This is far from realized. Patents restrict transferring of knowledge from one person to another.
So, corporations exploit the latter two points to their advantage.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. - Ludwig von Mises
This is different and more like communism than capitalism. When there are no owners of the finished product then its ok for everyone to work as a team on that big project, like Linux for example because we all own it. We build it for utility not profit. Microsoft has a monopoly and the only way to fight a monopoly is by building competition. The capitalist method of competition won't work because Microsoft can always but it and own it.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
You have a car. That is a luxury. You have a roof. That is a luxury. You have a family and are probably not affected by crime or war. That is a luxury.
I'd like you to meet Ndugu. His parents are dead. He doesn't have a home. He's lucky if he gets food, and even luckier if it's nutritious. He thanks god for the days when he sleeps, eats, and isn't shot at.
Now ask him if he gives a fuck that you have to scrounge for coffee.
I'm being a hypocrite because I don't send Ndugu any money. Hell, I don't give to any charity, but at least I'm thankful for the things that I have.
would it be an issue of survival if executives werent so greedy and snatching up 20 to 25% of a corps profits in personal bonuses? So the collaboration software industry is going to employ the 20 million people in this country who lost their jobs due to outsourcing? I think this reporter is trying to ensure her sugar daddy's wealth.
Oh, and by the way, I didnt know that capitalism needed to be saved, wtf is that?
Last time I checked, it was illegal to fire an employee in India, period. Once your hire someone, you're stuck with them until they quit or croak. I think India should reject trading with the US until we adopt such "progressive" labor laws. And, yes, India has unions and a minimum wage.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
Capitalism implies the existence of a free market. This is not the case. Outsourcing is the practice of large corporations taking advantage of the global market for labor. The problem is that we consumers don't have that same freedom. We can't buy medications from Canada or Mexico, we can't play cheaply purchased Asia region encoded DVDs, and we can't even purchase imported goods without paying a penalty for their having been brought into the country (tariffs). Companies want a captive serfdom of consumers constrained from taking advantage of a world market to the detriment of those companies, but want to be free to take advantage of the world market to their detriment. This is not free market economics. It is predatory Rockefelleran monopolism.
Even the competitive pressures argument (we have to outsource to stay in business and save jobs!) doesn't hold much water. Where is the competitive pressure? Companies are indeed outsourcing their labor requirements, but they aren't translating that benefit into lower prices for goods and services, the only way competitive pressure could be applied to organizations not engaging in outsourcing. This means that it is much more likely that business are outsourcing simply because they notice that the other guys are making more profits doing it.
There's certainly nothing wrong with making money, but when the transaction is taking place under the duress of unfair market conditions, the behavior is no different than illegal monopolism, racketeering, or any number of other ways we recognize illicit profiteering. Bottom line - it is wrong, it is unamerican, and you are an avaricious scumbag if you do it.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
So, considering the Caste system still exploits nearly 200 Million people - called Untouchables -- treated as virtual slaves by their caste superiors, its nice to see American Capitalists praising India for its Capialist Victories.
The trouble is simple, there are many many poor in India. They are many educated intellectuals, and a growing upper class. YET they still have teaming masses of poor. I can gaurantee you that India's poor will not tolerate the this -- India is a Secular Democracy -- and its people can see the "promise" of Capialism for what it is: Extending the domination of the Upper Class.
In a global context, the USA is the Upper Class. The rest of the world is being (via propaganda like this, WTO treaties and open Warfare(justified time and again by self-serving lies, but still never comes close to excusing the Imperial Warmongering Aggressors to anyone with perspective, a lack of jingoism, a bit of history and a mote of objectiveness) taught a lesson (and sold a noble lie) either continue to serve our economy or face conequences. The DOMESTIC US middle and lower classes had better wake the heck up -- only you will prevent the US plutocrats from extending their Empire over the world. If you dont, these (cluefull) foreign masses *will* eventually kick off their yokes. Inspite of all this flower-y "India as proof of Capitalism" propaganda. The only thing it is proof of, is that YET AGAIN, USA's Plutocrats will make league with ANY CORRUPT system that will butress their status... Saddam, Shah of Iran, Gen. Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan in the 1980's (who helped nurture what later became Al Qaeda), Gen. Suharto in Indonesia, Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, Ferdinand Marcos, and and and. Obviously the American people DO NOT CARE about justice and democracy in the world as long as they Can Get Rich.
So when you middle and lower classes in the USA finally realize that "Free Trade" really means "Tolerate sinking living conditions at home, so we can finance the extension of our empire and underclass-serfs, so we may get stinking rich or else be hungry today." than we can discuss what the implications of Free Trade with India's wonderfull New Capitalists.
Do you really want to live in Ayn Rand's world of objectivism? Do you really want corporations to simply choose the most efficient route to profits? Should we return to the robber baron period - child labor, twelve-hour days, horrific pollution? For all of those stating that the US needs to simply become more competive, how exactly do you propose to do it? Should we cut labor rates to what poverty levels in order to compete? What sort of society would we become? So, how many of you Slashdot readers attended public schools in the states? Drive to work on public highways? How, precisely, can these services (and others) be funded if US wages collapse in order to become what you term competitive? I have a feeling that this debate - like most outsourcing debates on Slashdot - is being argued by folks who have little if any knowledge of economics. The US can compete with India / China / Mexico if we are willing to have a substantial fall in our standard of living and quality of life. For you techies who kept your jobs in the .com bust - why do you think you can't be outsourced? There is a definite trend towards a "race to the bottom" in numerous fields. If manufacturing continues to go offshore, it tech, accounting, and other high end services follow, if our trade deficit continues to grow continuously - your jobs will follow.
Capitlism is not an end to itself; an increase in GDP does not necessarily mean that *society* is better off. Understand that for the US to be *competitive* with unrestricted free trade *necessarily* requires a drop in income for US workers.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
The "Offshoring Saved Our Company" Myth
It is ironic that India that succumbed to a single British corporation - The East India Trading Company - should be seen as savior of capitalism. Here is the classic example. Indian weavers and cotton and silk was some of the best on the planet. The Egyptians mummies were wrapped in Indian muslin (ends in an 'n'). The British at the onset of their Industrial Revolution had no consumers for the crap their power looms produced. So the East India company kills Indian cottage industry, takes away Indian cotton to England, processes fabric and sells it back to India. Some percentage of that fine industrial age English middle class must have immigrated to the United States.
It is not much different today. The iron ore produced in India gets shipped to Japan to come back as automobile engines, the GSM chip designed/QA'd locally comes back as Motorola cell phone etc.
Morality? Gimme a break.
and filled with "fluff jobs". It reminds me of similar arguments about the "gutting of America" at www.gonewiththeworld.com
Maybe we should consider lowering our cost of living first if we want to compete globally.
We use alot of energy per person here and those resources are going to become more expensive as economies like Chine and India start demanding more.
Start by pressuring polititians to build better mass transportation so every man, woman and teenager in America doesn't need a car. Even the cheapest car costs alot.
Lowering our ridicuous housing costs and building energy efficient communities.
Lower the cost of medical care and elimate bs lawsuits.
We have to start working together as a nation to make our lifestyles cheaper.
But, you do know such a person. Someone who will always work for free on your plumbing.
This person is Yourself. Or, do you mean to imply that all DIYers are stealing jobs from plumbers and other contractors?
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
Open Source is one of the main problems with software. How can companies make money on software is the problem? When everyone like IBM, SUN, Novell, etc... is screaming linux + Open Source -- people hear "Free Software." This then leads to no one wanting to buy software, people just want to buy service for help questions and tech suppport. The Free software movement is taking away because software is no longer as profitable and therefore companies have to find a way to make it cheaper. That means if you can make your program with 20 coders make 10k instead of 20 coders make 60k+ then that is what these companies are forced to do.
It applies to software, and here is a similar one:
In the economy, you are the following 3 things:
1) a consumer
2) a investor
3) a worker
Now pick two. What's good for those 2 choices may not be good for the remaining one.
Currently, it's number 1 and number 2.
Speaking of India. I hear there's a remote village there where if one person in the village gets something special - everyone gangs up on him and takes away whatever they can for themselves. Needless to say, instead of everybody striving to get alittle something, everybody ends up with nothing.
Unfortunately many have that problem here in the USA too - and isn't it ironic that of all the poor people who have migrated to the USA, the demogaphics that want to tax the rich the most are the ones that consistently end up remaining the most poor.
The worst part is that people are so green with envy that they don't realise that our tax system doesn't even tax wealth - it taxes income. That means the guy sitting on a billion worth in assets will barely even notice a tax increase while the small business person who busts his ass to earn his first 300K will get his teeth and nuts kicked in. Not only that, but the billionaire will get more tax deductions to boot - WTF do you think the Kennedys want to "tax the rich" for the sake of the little guy?
Taxes don't hurt the rich, they hurt the little people who are trying to become rich.
Because our American forefathers busted their asses to give us the privilege.
It's all about ramping CEO compensation.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
If you look at this story you will see the real issue. US companies going overseas and hiring workers, and making profits on those workers, don't have to pay tax on those profits.
That's a losing proposition for American workers. I know some web designers who would have accepted $20k/yr to do work, if they could work from home. THey had broadband, there was no functional difference between them and the Indian worker. The problem is, corporations can hide profits made my Indian workers and skirt paying taxes, and all the other hassles American workers have with them, such as employment benefits, the paperwork associated with W2s. You can write a single check to an outsourcing firm overseas. Anyhow, read the Yahoo article.
Bush doesn't care, he'll give US corporations anything they want, any tax loophole they can find he will support. The middle class is destroyed, and so you will need business skills and the ability to create an LLC and be an indepedant IT consultant to make it, because nobody will hire you.
Something most Americans do not seem to be aware of is that, up until the Civil War, it was relatively common for the government to essentially "kill" corporations that got out of hand. Each corporation was chartered in a state, and if a state did not like what a company was up to, they could revoke the charter, which made it impossible for the company to legally do business. During the Civil War, many large corporations used the chaos to buy immunity from what was basically a corporate death penalty.
Now, the idea seems absurd, since few suggest it anymore. But, as the parent said, companies exist on the basis of a social contract, that they will benefit and so will we. If society is actually harmed by a corporation's actions, it should not be allowed to exist, since that is a violation of that contract.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
I tell you what. You give up your job
to someone who has had his sent overseas
and then we'll talk about it. Okay?
Ever hear of the "robber barons"? The anti-trust laws in the US were created in response to these people.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
It works fine, in theory.
But in reality, someone making $500,000 a year already spends as much as he is likely to spend on goods and services. Adding $50,000 to his income doesn't mean another $50,000 in circulation.
But hiring someone who does not have a job and paying him $50,000 means that most of that money will be circulated back through the economy.
In fact there is a supply and demand curve: if labour is cheaper it means more people will be hired. If they produce the goods for less then people will buy more of them. And of course those Indian workers will get richer and want to buy consumer goods, which we can make and sell to them.
Also, if US companies don't or can't outsource then the goods they make will be more expensive than goods made by companies based in countries which do outsource, and so those US companies will go bust.
Canute thought he could order back the tide. People trying to stop the "export of jobs" are on pretty much the same trip.
(Actually, Canute didn't think he could order back the tide. He was just staging a scene to make his sycophantic counsellors look like the idiots they were. But thats beside the point).
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
You cut job in US by outsourcing to India.
The problem is, well is this realy a problem ?
I mean, Car jobs were outsourced to Japan for instance...
The other point I would like to make is that this is really a case of the chickens coming home to roost. The US has subsidized for so long agricultural production that it has in essence removed the potential profit from that industry for those in developing nations. The results of this is two-fold: One, by definition protectionist agricultural policies have raised prices and therefore costs within the US making the US less competitive against other nations. Two, by eliminating the ability of developing nations to compete at the lower end of the ecomnomic tier, we have forced them to vault the value chain in order to participate in trade.
Finally for those of you who are upset about the moral aspect of this: It is far more "moral" in my opinion for a US job to go to a person in a developing nation than it is for the US to raise protectionist barriers to force those workers out of the potential labor pool.
Outsourcing is nothing more than a natural market reaction to overpriced labor in certain areas of the economy. It is clearly in the interest of corporations to find the cheapest labor skilled enough to do a job. Outsourcing is a market-driven hint to some in the labor pool to expand their skills, find new opportunities, invent, completely change career paths, or otherwise find a way to make themselves valuable.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the US enjoys a trade surplus in services, to the tune of $60 billion. A large portion of that surplus is computer services. This bears repeating: we import more programming/analysis/consulting than we export. The the overall service balance is shrinking, from $64B in 2002 to $60B last year, but is still a large surplus. The shrinking is easy to explain: as more nations/laborpools develop the skills to do certain jobs, companies are given greater selection. Salaries in the computer services secotr in the US will trend downward, while they will be pulled up overseas. They will meet in the middle somewhere
Not all jobs will be outsourced. There will still be many jobs, especially in emerging markets, that cannot be outsourced because laborers overseas do not yet have the skills needed to do the jobs. This is a great opportunity for those left without a job to improve their skills and enter these 'safe' markets.
There is no sence in complaining about outsourcing. "Evil" corporations are going to do it whether you like it or not. Government protection is not the answer, mainly because it isn't the government's responsibility to ensure you have a job. That onus lies on you. If you are unemployed, stop reading Slashdot and find a way to be valuable to the economy. Self-reliance, innovation and hard work are what made this country what it is and will continue to keep it great.
As the US labor pool is forced to become more skilled, the standard of living in countries like India will rise, creating a larger market for US produced goods, thus creating more jobs is the US.
I repeat: THE ANSWER IS NOT GOVERNMENT HANDOUT, SUBSIDY OR PROTECTION!!!! IT'S AMERICAN INDUSTRY AND HARD WORK!!!
yes, in a way they are forced. US based companies are given a serious tax break to move overseas. Why*, I don't know but it's reality. It's insane if ya ask me. We are also supposed to compete with nations who have MUCH higher tariffs on our exports to them than we have on their exports coming in to here, in particular china. Why, again, no idea, but it's reality, and those two issues are not much talked about in the financial press. If we had "free trade" the tariffs would equal, or be eliminated entirely, but they are most certainly now, not at this point in time. It's hugely unbalanced, and in no way "fair" to US workers or US based companies who have an interest in staying here. That's the force, the carrot and the stick used by our government rulers.
* I do have a theory why, but it's a long elaborate side issue that doesn't fit in the discussion.
FIVE PERCENT of the world's population.
We also produce about 40% of the food.
> What's the Deal (Score:-1, Flamebait)
Well, I guess that pretty much answers the
question now doesn't it.
Though you do not state it, you seem to be implying that the reduction in percieved value of software caused the trend in outsourcing.
Even if there was no open source, and the percieved value of software was very high, big companies would still hire Indian programming teams, because doing so greatly reduces their development costs.
The decisions aren't along the lines of "well, since software isn't worth much, we may as well hire Indians to make it." They are more along the lines of, "well, since the Indians are just as educated and talented, but cost less, we can produce high-valued software at low cost." It is simply good business.
People who didn't buck up got laid off and replaced with people willing to work 80-100 hours per week.
I'm sure my friend would have something to say on the matter, but s/he doesn't have time to read or write to /.
Names and genders have been obfuscated to protect the already tenuously employed.
The CB App. What's your 20?
mostly any american clothing, you have no moral right to whine about outsourcing.
Oh wait, outsourcing is good when it isn't YOUR kind of job being outsourced, is that what you're really saying? tough luck.
i had a sig, once..
Capitalism means endless hell for the vast majority of the world's people -- poverty, hunger, sweatshop exploitation, repression. All these things happen because capitalism, especially now in the form of imperialism, MUST seek out the most desperate workers who can be forced into the worst conditions. All profit comes from exploitation, you cannot have capitalism or profits without it. I hope India doesn't save it, it's main thing holding humanity back from equality and eliminating all the screaming injustices that happen every day.
Agreed that companies and optimistically shareholders(...ignoring for the moment, fudged accounting practices and pocketing by CEOs..) get their share prices high. What do these companies do then? They lay off programmers. The profit that was earned in now stagnant - or maybe going back to more outsourcing. In the end, its taking money out of people's pockets into Cayman Island account or corporate accounts. Its making money stagnant. There is just no way that this can do any good for the economy.
Being an Indian, I root for outsourcing. But also being a student who is getting an A grade education at a A grade American university for free (in exchange for research), I have to be honest. That is ironic. But true.
What you describe would be an awesome deal for the US. You get goods and services from India, and only send very cheaply produced pieces of papers with numbers printed on them in return.
Many aspects of economic science is counterintuitive. It really pays off to actually study it to learn the facts. What you hear in the media and from friends is probably 90% wrong.
Oh wait a tick, I still need a job...
In 2001, only roughly 16% of the 1.9 trillion on books amount spent on the operations of the US Federal Government was spent on "two million dollar" bombs (Defense spending...).
In contrast, in that same year, nearly 62% of that 1.9 trillion was spent on "Human Resources" spending. Welfare, Social Security, etc. The breakdown's interesting (and better yet, it's appalling how much of that spending's "off budget"...)- roughly a third is in the form of Social Security spending, the other two thirds comprises Medicare, Welfare, health services (like the CDC...) and Veteran's Benefits with Welfare and Medicare comprising the lion's share of the remaining amount.
You want to know where your taxes are spent? It's being spent on "Income Insurance" (Unemployment and Welfare...) and the retired in the form of their Soc Security payments and their institutionalized healthcare. It's also being wasted on a bunch of projects that suit a small minority of individuals that are all feeding from the Federal feed trough.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
surely you can concede that morality has nothing to do with capitalism
Capitalism is founded on the moral principles of respect for private property, rule of law and freedom of association.
Your question probably reflects that these principles are so ingrained in your society that you can't even imagine them not being respected. That is a product of capitalism.
Someone needs to learn something about the so-called "rights" of corporations before writing this sort of hagiographic dreck.
Funny. Offshoring was started because of a "lack of skilled professionals in the US".
t /bizco ach/stories/NW_033004TBCoutsourcingDS.d46d8d3a.htm l
It has driven salaries down, and taken enough jobs from programmers to inspire students to not be computer science majors, 23% less than last year preliminary report on the findings of the CRA.
http://www.king5.com/sharedcontent/northwes
report's conclusion:
The report concludes: "One major reason for this striking new trend is that the decline in the technology industry and the moving of jobs offshore is making computer science and engineering less alluring to new undergraduates."
I'm sure that's great for our economy. Those students will now be enrolling in other fields, making other fields more competitive, therefore driving the value of those occupations down.
Can anyone say "short sighted".
My $.02... So either Americans are dumber than their offshore counterparts, and can't handle computer science, or the need to offshore, is a myth, hiding greed. My own conclusion is that offshoring will have a ripple effect to other occupations and lower the standard of living here in the U.S. Those CS would be's have to end up somewhere.
l8,
AC
This has happened before. In the late 19th Century, Capital had its way before. It also moved to expolit labor worldwide. It did eventually generate its own backlash. It took the forms of Democratic Socialism, Marxism, Fascism. and National Socialism. Those reactions eventually brouight us 2 world wars. Expect the same, or WORSE.
Labor is no different from any other good. Americans happily reap the benefits of cheap imported products, yet are outraged when firms do the same with jobs. This is not to say that firms have license to act amorally and disregard the impact of their decisions on real people; in fact, people--American or otherwise--will benefit most in the long run from open borders and free trade of all goods, including labor. At the very worst, offshoring is merely a short-term "growing pain" of the global economy. Realistically, it is a desirable step in that direction.
In my experience software coming from India specifically is cheap, extremely low quality, and barely functional.
Where as software coming from the United States is higher quality but more expensive.
When nation $FOOnia sells a product or service to nation $BARistan, they get $BARistan money in exchange. Since the only place you can spend $BARistan money is $BARistan, the people of $FOOnia really have no choice but to turn around and buy something from $BARistan.
Employing people in other countries is simply an element of free trade between nations, and is a Good Thing, in the macro-economic sense, even if it means that you can no longer get a crappy consumer tech support job in the US.
The problem is that the money flows out of the US and away from the workers, into India and the transnationals that are doing the offshoring, and the money that does come back to the US doesn't come back to the people who lost it -- it goes to the people who have Big Things to sell like real estate. IOW the net effect is that some money flows to the top tier of the US economic cake while it flows away from everyone else.
The symptom of the problem is that hundreds and eventually thousands of people who were relying on those crappy tech support jobs to meet their car payments, rents, child support, whatever, are now forced to take a lower paying CRAPPIER job that doesn't meet those obligations. Those people fall through the cracks (bad for them) and onto unemployment or welfare rolls (bad for the US economy).
The only people who win in this scenario are the owners and major stockholders of the companies.
The Indians themselves have a window of about 10 or 15 years before the bottom drops out of *their* little dream. I don't resent them, they are as much pawns of the game as anybody who's lost their job to offshoring.
um... i think you have your cause and effect a little off there dude
;-P
The British at the onset of their Industrial Revolution had no consumers for the crap their power looms produced.
so why did they build power looms?
that's like saying microsoft had no consumers for the crap their software engineers produced
it was cheaper, and they made more of it, and the quality was good
yes, the quality was good: microsoft makes better software if you take gui into account, and the east india trading company made better fabric if you take reliability and consistency into account
artisan weavers making beautiful high quality fabrics in limited, undependable, and of shifting providence does not an industry make
you need to reread your 19th century history, as you seem to be drowning in revisionist malarky
i suppose if history were different, you'd be complaining about how the east india trading company forced millions of poor indians to weave for them when they had perfectly good power looms that could do the work of thousands, freeing the indians for other pursuits
why are sowing conflict and blame where none exists?
the east india did vile, evil things in india to indians, but by your reading, we would all better off without the power loom... ummm... no
you can hate microsoft, you can hate the east india trading company, you can hate any large corporation all you want
and i agree with you: microsoft, the east india company, they have all done evil things
but no corporation has ever existed, will ever exist, or is currently existing that didn't get to its behemoth size because it made something someone wanted somewhere
no one is pouring coke down your throat, no one is remotely turning your computer on at night and installing internet explorer, no one is forcing indonesian sweat shop nike sneakers on your feet, no one is forcing mexican or chinese t-shirts on your back
The iron ore produced in India gets shipped to Japan to come back as automobile engines
yes... and? are you saying that this is wrong somehow... somehow immoral (!?) that's a leap!
it's called global trade, and no one is stopping india from building automobile factories... malaysia tried it ambitiously (read: the pm's hubris), called the proton, to great failure
so are you supposing that indians won't fall into the fate of east germans and yugoslavians driving around trabants or yugos? of course, they may not, the indians may make the best cars the world has ever seen if they tried, what do i know? but that's up to the indians, and they don't want to make a car, so where are you coming from?
the japanese make damn good cars, people want japanese cars, so japan buys raw materials and makes cars, that's it!
nobody is stopping india from making cars, no one wants to, but india isn't making cars... why? because they're perfectly happy buying japanese cars!
but the way you phrase it, it's some sort of conspiracy against indians that japanese buy iron from them... and give them back cars?!
are you ok?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And their wages are rising rapidly. This article quotes an avarage IT salary growth rate of 12-14% in India last year.
A couple more years of that, and the benefits of offshoring are going to diminish to the point that we wouldn't have to worry about India anymore. Already many offshoring companies reporting savings of 20-30% instead of 50% couple of years ago.
Companies for profit are morally a bad thing. These are not states of nature, they are socially constructed concepts.
Commodification of labor is fundamentally unethical and the real term, alienation, should be used whenever possible.
Farmers should farm to feed people, programmers should code to produce software, and automakers should assemble to produce cars, all of the above for people to use. Instead, each of famers farm for money (and the crops are merely another irritating step, much less the consumer), programmers code for money (and the code is merely a laborious inconvenience, much less the consumer), and automakers assemble cars for money (and the building a quality automobile is merely another tiresome stage in the process of acquiring money...)
You say "money is the root of all evil" and people treat you like you are saying something quaint and simple, but in reality, it's not far from the truth. Consider this analysis from one of the most preeminent social theorists of our era:
"Political economy, this science of wealth, is therefore simultaneously the science of denial, of want, of thrift, of saving -- and it actually reaches the point where it spares man the need of either fresh air or exercise. This science of marvellous industry is simultaneously the science of asceticism, and its true ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser and the ascetic but productive slave. Its moral ideal is the worker who takes part of his wages to the savings-bank... Self-denial, the denial of life and of all human needs, is its cardinal doctrine. The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public-house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save -- the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour -- your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life -- the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power... All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice."
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The problem isn't that Indian coding droids are getting jobs. The problem is that American workers are losing jobs to overseas labour simply because they cost less. It's not that the Indian droids are any more skilled (The article quotes somebody as saying they are indeed less skilled), it's just that they work for next to nothing.
You imply that there is some sort of entitlement issue here. If this were indeed the case, why don't you hear more about the native Indian IT industry? Why can't they compete with products, rather than simply the ability to fill a job for less money? (Yes, it is conceded that there IS a native IT industry in India, but that's not at issue here)
This, of course, is what the company profiled in the article seems to be driving at. Great, kick off a native industry in-country. Launch Indian-made software products to compete in the market. Great, more power to them, and good luck! That's how it should work.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
SLAVE LABOR, sure slave labor is good for capitalism, that doesn't make it acceptable. M
Yeah, the IMF does 'covert stuff back and forth.' They really don't wan't you to know what they are doing with all that money. 'Just put all your politicians right there in our back pocket, we'll make sure you get lotsa weapons!' Covert stuff indeed. ;-)
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Unless I am mistaken, all of this can be reduced to an imbalance between living standards and consumption in the East and the West. Because the West has higher living standards, (ie, more expensive), it will always be less expensive to hire labor in countries like India and China.
Only when everybody has approximately the same cost of living and consumption standards, will labor cost the same across the globe.
The problem is that there isn't physical space or resource for the few BILLION people in India and China to industrialize out of their mud huts up to the same standards Americans have grown to expect. And guess what? The result will not be one of everybody being pulled up by the bootstraps in cheaper, overpopulated nations, but rather a natural decline in the American standard of living.
This (of course!) is unacceptable. And so you suggest that we here in the West stay ahead of the game through "Hard Work and American Industry" (Who wants to live in a mud hut, after all?)
The only problem is. .
This isn't going to happen. Unless somebody invents a really kick-ass widget which nobody can produce off-shore, the American dream is in for a rude awakening. Heck, we reached peak oil production a few years back. What do you think will happen when every Indian decides to buy an air conditioner and a refrigerator? The petri dish is getting tight and we're nearly out of nutrient agar. And THAT is one of the big aspects of what this latest world war is all about; consolidating resources.
Conservative economic dogma is fine for a planet with infinite growth curves and resources, but this ain't SIMS, my friend. Unless you're in with Bush and the other Bunker Boys, you're going to hurt along with everybody else.
-FL
if so then every programmer that creates, supports or maintains a billing system has caused thousands of accountants/bookkeepers to be laid off or, what is essentially the same outcome, not been hired!
Regardless of the whining and somewhat suspect logic/philosphical skills shown here, most if not all programmers/analysts have the skills to contribute economically in a meaningful manner outside of IT!
Isn't that Pareto Optimal from a systems perspective (ie: if the employees are considered interchangable)? The total utility in the system has increased, therefore, to a utilitarian, the right thing has been done. Since the owner lives in a country with a higher standard-of-living than the new employee, they need the money more.
More than half of American households own stock, therefore it is often the case that the employees being laid off are the very same shareholders that are benefiting from the outsourcing. According to the 200 census, there are 105 million households in the US with an average net worth of $55k; if every citizen liquidated their assets and invested them at a 5% rate of return, their interest would be $990/year: more than double the average income in India and nearly three times what the UN says is required to support life. And no American would ever have to work again.
This seems to be primarily a debate on other countries with massive populations finally being able to claim an equal proportion of the worlds resources.
America has a large share of the world's land with a much smaller proportion of the population. The benefits of this agriculture, natural resources, are the first order advantages enjoyed by the US. The mechanism of free-enterprise, and the risk-taking mentality in the have created second-order benefits which the US is enjoying today. Also, the vast separation from the rest of the world, kept the US industries standing after WWII, allowing th US to supply the rest of the world.
Now the massive population in the rest of the world has finally become a market that is worth serving, and is clamoring for resources proportional to their numbers. The US having used an enormously large proportion of the world's resources so far, is going to find itself using a smaller and smaller proportion of these resources and going back to the first-order advantages.
India and China, with their huge populations, will be able to do any service jobs that don't require actual physical presence at a much cheaper cost. The only platform on which americans can compete is their incredible efficiency, learnt over many decades. However, IT provides much of this efficiency, and can quite easily be transported anywhere in the world.
As trade between the rest of the world increases, trade between the US and the rest of the world will become proportionally smaller - except in key IP areas, where the US still enjoys a large knowledge monopoly, and agriculture, where the US has the advantage of area.
This is different from the previous scares (Japan, China etc.) as it represents for the first time, the benefits of a countries huge population, as opposed to the benefits of a small population.
The US should try to compete by growing R&D, getting and keeping knowledge workers, using NASA etc., as a springboard to newer techs, which the developing nations can only dream of.
Sorry for the long ramble... I hope some of the comments will be able to get some clarity from this..
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
In the past 100 years, the United States has been a world leader in technological innovation because we have gathered a vast pool of talented individuals and gave them an environment that rewarded hard creative work. We are now in the process of demolishing this environment, and one of the most destructive wrecking balls is the inappropriate use of "outsourcing".
When a company "outsources" a job, they are saying that they place no value on the expertise required for this job or on the knowledge gained while performing it--they desire only the end-product, and they want it as cheaply as possible. If they thought that the knowledge and skills of the workers was valuable, they would seek to retain this value by hiring the workers.
In the past, American companies like AT&T, IBM and HP went to great lengths to nurture their pool of talented inventors, theorists and engineers, and jealously guarded these valuable individuals against poaching by rival corporations. They recognized the value of in-house expertise and accumulaed institutional knowledge, and they did not shy away from incurring short-term costs in the interest of the long-term gains that could be had through innovation and invention.
This practice has been largely abandoned by the new breed of corporate executives who look only to quarterly reports for vindication, who think that marketing is far more important than discovering new principles that may some day become saleable products. These people are a self-perpetuating oligarchy that seeks only its own advantage, and who regard corporations as a means to obtaining that advantage. They are responsible to no one, they set their own wages, they are rewarded as well for failure as for success. That, my friends, is the evil face of capitalism.
Please note what I am not saying. I am not saying that foreigners are less intelligent or less creative than Americans. That would be silly, since immigrants have always been the main wellspring of creativity and innovation in America. I am saying that to have an innovative and creative culture, we must value those qualities in individuals, and we must maintain an environment where such individuals are not only rewarded, but where they are abundant enough to form a critical mass. Real talent is cooperative; real invention is the result of collaboration, of cross-fertilization. Though scientists and engineers working for an American company can teleconference with their contracted counterparts in India, this is not a climate that often facilitates creative collaboration. No matter where they are located or what their nationality, outside contractors are seen as what they are: outsiders. They are temporary, their expertise is valued only in terms of what they immediately produce. When the job is done, they will be gone. Why work hard at establishing a relationship with them? Real collaboration requires physical proximity and a degree of permanence.
The destructive effects of inappropriate "outsourcing" are manifold. First, the work that is farmed out is seen as being less valuable; second the individuals that perform the work are perceived to have no intrinsic value at all. Third, a crucially valuable resource--the worlds best pool of creative thinkers and doers--is being frittered away. And that's a crime.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
...but I dont believe that those jobs going oversea has ever been controversial.
I wonder how long until India stops needing American funding and the role gets reversed.
-AC
How can the whole world go into depression at once? What would this be measured relative to? If everyone's dollar is going up, if everyone's buying power is going down, isn't it just status quo, because everyone's on the level?
For the whole world to go into depression it would mean that we weren't actually able to support ourselves. And if that's true, there shouldn't be so many of us around.
I feel better, so when my job goes away to indea and I'm slinging burgers instead of code, I can know my suffering is for the overall good
vsper
"If wishes were fishes we all would be casting nets" Dune -Frank Herbert
Morality, rather than ethics, transcends cultural norms. Therefore, in order to be moral you need to be conscious, or at least able to think. Corporations, as entities, have no minds. The shareholders, represented by the board of directors, act as the homunculus for corporations. It is the shareholders who decided to offshore, or at least gave the executives the order to maximise profits and the free rein to do that by offshoring if need be.
Do you own stock? When was the last time you went to a shareholders meeting? You have no one to blame for offshoring but yourself.
let's have this conversation again in about 5 years, by then we've lost all our jobs
Right now, there's a big assumption, and an incorrect one at that, that the Republicans are behind all of this out-of-country outsourcing of American jobs.
Well... consider this... if the Democrats get back into office (hold you applause please), then they will likely try to "fix" the problem by taxing the companies more (Democrats regard all companies as evil heavy money greedies that need to be taxed and regulated to death)... which in turn will make companies want to employ more inexpensive out-of-country workers.
Companies need to realize that out-of-country workers do NOT follow OUR laws... now, there are some "good" countries and some "not-so-good". Since most of the "cheap" labor is found in developing countries where laws and ideals are often sacrificed for the sake of survial (money)... What is the long term end result? What are you going to do when India/China/Indonesia/etc. steals your "patented" idea, tells you to take a hike and starts selling into all countries using the engineering and upfront work that YOU provided to them for FREE?
To me.. this is the crux of the matter. U.S. companies no longer compete with each other by investing large somes of money into R&D, but rather by putting patents/etc. onto OLD ideas and suing each other. We assume we can move our (small) R&D offshore to save money.. but don't realize that the long term effect is FREE R&D for those developing countries (so much for R&D "savings"). So revenue now comes from "lawsuits" and from "cheaper labor"... does that sound like a good long-term business plan to anyone here??
The fix is extremely long term. Taxing everyone IS NOT the answer... that just pushes the snowball faster down the existing slope.
The fix is to put back the incentive for American companies to take bigger risks in R&D just to survive. Let's take away to the friviolous lawsuit engines fueled by silly patents... America can return to the days of productivity rather than just being a service shop for goods produced outside of the U.S.A. And then.. just maybe, there will be value in hiring our own instead of others (who often times are anti-American and often times are looking for anyway to cheat the American "system"). Let's make the cheap-labor unattractive by giving tax based incentives for U.S.A.-only backed R&D.
In my "perfect" U.S.A., we return the days where large companies competed with each by trying to come up with the "big thing" rather than hiring lawyers to protect inventions that are many, many years old and finding the cheapest source of (potentially anti-Amercian) labor.
Patents should only help those who CANNOT afford to help themselves... right now our patent system is primarily of use to large industry and it's used to STIFLE our R&D and keep us locked into the past. If we should regulate something, we should limit the number of patents that can be filed (if not get rid of them altogether) based on the size of a company. Give the patent back to the small inventor.. .where it belongs. Which allows the inventor to take some time deciding on how to bring the new idea to market. This is what patents are for.
Tax incentives should be used for potential long term gain, instead of short term bandaids. Give tax breaks for good things... like helping to offset the risks of true R&D... make it good enough to where out-of-country R&D would be STUPID.
Fix these kinds of things and we can probably bring jobs and prosperity back to the U.S.A.
Doesn't mean we can't use other labor... but let's stop sending our "future" overseas.
"Offshoring creates wealth for U.S. companies and consumers and therefore for the United States as a whole: that is why companies choose to follow this course."
No, the reason they choose to follow that course is because it SAVES THEM MONEY.
"Offshoring is just one more example of the innovation that keeps U.S. companies at the leading edge of competitiveness across multiple sectors."
It was INNOVATION that enabled them to move the work offshore. But moving the work offshore is NOT innovative.
Example: Driving to work is no more innovative than riding a horse to work or walking to work. But the car was an innovation.
"If it did not benefit U.S. businesses, they would not offshore."
This is correct. But it is irrelevent.
"The more companies innovate, the more competitive they become and the more benefits are passed on to consumers."
Again, this is correct, but irrelevent. They are trying to link their incorrect claim that offshoring is "innovative" with the fact that innovation helps consumers.
All of their "benefits" are phrased as "potential" and based upon previous, NON-OFFSHORING, changes.
"None of this may seem too convincing to someone who has lost their jobs, but it's worth reflecting that the number of jobs outsourced is a tiny number compared to those created and lost as part of the normal economic cycle."
It isn't just about the numbers. It is about the JOBS.
A software company starts up, hires people, goes broke and fires people. That's normal. Another company can start up an attempt to fill that niche.
But when a company starts up and then hires offshore, the cycle is NOT the same. The niche is being filled. Those JOBS are gone.
"The lack of jobs now owes more to the current adminsitration's reckless economic policies than to outsourcing."
I believe those are linked. Their economic policy makes offshoring so much more attractive. It is possible to work an economic policy so that offshoring will be less attractive.
Person? Family? Community? State? Country? Species? Planet? Be more specific. Natural selection works on more than just individuals. Cooperation is a competative advantage our species has. Why throw it away and go back to dog eat dog?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
is that instead of firing everybody and going out of business they fire part of the domestic workforce and hire cheap labor out of country to take their place.
It's called damage control.
If a company is in danger of going out of business because they can't afford to keep all the people to keep their product moving then yes, the "right" thing to do would be to fire a minimum of the people locally and hire a minimum of people out of country.
Better to lose a few domestic jobs than all of them.
It's really not that difficult to understand the reasoning. Some companies may be unholy bastards just looking to improve the bottom line but some companies are in a dilema and need to find a way to stay afloat and not fire everyone.
"There is NO benefit for the average american worker."
How exactly is attempting to retain jobs not a benefit to the American worker?
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Example of a self-hater.
I have often tried to explain this to people, but have never been able to put it quite so well as you. I also harbor no resentment to the Indians. I and many others are truly happy that they are doing well for themselves.
I hope that the Indians who read your post take note. These companies are not outsourcing to India because they want to help the Indian economy, or because the quality of work in India is higher than in the States. They are doing it to save themselves money. As soon as they realize that they can get "adequate" work done cheaper somewhere else they will move somewhere else. Enjoy the boom while it lasts, but save your money. You'll need it when these companies pull out of India. In the meantime, I hope that the Indian economy can grow enough to absorb most of the impact when these companies do leave. Good luck!
Your first allegiance is to your country. My first allegiance is to humanity. What if my country sucks? Killing humans so my country can profit is worse than treason.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If the readers of Slashdot organized into a Pac we could buy a number of US Congresscritters and start making demands of corporations.
As long as we are not organized, we have no say. Organize or die.
The Waltons didn't "cleverly split their wealth". Sam Walton, who owned it ALL, croaked and that is what his heirs got.
I'd like to see a few CEO's get outsourced.
90% of the people in the stock market exist for the sole reason of giving their money to the other 10%. I don't even want to think about what would happen if we were all to try to make our living off of the stock market.
So in Sweden, if I worked 60 hours a week I get to pay 50% greater fines on traffic infringements compared to someone who only works 40 hours a week at the same job. Yeah, that's fair. Glad to see hard work is rewarded in Sweden.
It would be better if we were all mindless drones, at least then all the companies won't have to pretend that they give a rats ass about humanity.
Outsourcing isnt the problem, greed is.
"I'm not rich! The _really_ rich don't even LIVE in this country!"
Grow up...i live in India and we dont get paid $50/hour for programming 10 hours a day (at the least).
Neither do we get DOLE from the government when laid off and NO pension or medical benefits for the old from rich governments. We are expected to open our economy in the name of Free Trade in accordance with the WTO demands aided with the right amount of pressure and arm-twisting by USofA. So why should you whine, did you whine when your companies hired people on H1 visas as they were short of technically qualified people and now the just decide to go where the labour is cheaper thats all, plus think of all the Tax benefits !
Capitalism is an economic system. It may be the most efficient means of generating aggregate wealth, but it has no mechanism to guarentee a socially balanced distribution of wealth. Would you want a society with enormous amount of wealth concentrated in the top 5% (such as the US), or a more moderate amount of wealth spread out over the whole (Sweden, Norway)?
The argument given for so-called "free trade" by the oh-so-Libertarian members of Slashdot fails to acknowledge that while outsourcing may, in fact, generate aggegate benefits to the world economy, many, many people are forced to suffer for that prosperity. The economic benefits of "free trade" accrue primarily to shareholders of multi-national corporations, with the majority of the shares being owned by the very wealthiest members of society. In other words, free trade does produce economic benefits, but those benefits are not spread in any way equally.
When you lose your job, it is small compensation to learn that shareholders (i.e. the top 5%) have made even more money than before.
By offshoring middle class jobs (manufacturing, programming, acounting, etc.) we are indeed increasing the nations aggregate GDP. At the same time we are increasing the already outrageous disparities in income within the US. How long will normal Americans support such a trend?
From a political perspective, not economic, the job of our elected officials is to ensure the prosperity of Americans - not Indians, not Chinese, not even Canada or Mexico. An economic policy that hurts the average American, that crushes the middle class - the base of our democracy - cannot be considered the best course of action for the US.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
The top 1% alone in 2000 paid 27% of the taxes.
Nice try, buddy. They paid 20 % in 2003.
2000 is NOT A GOOD benchmark year. That was the big windfall for the rich in the stock market boom so the did pay a lot of taxes that year.
Starve the other beast: the fat cat.
is good for the gander. If CEO's are so excited about the savings of outsourcing workers' jobs to India, then by all means let's save ourselves as the shareholders another bundle of money by outsourcing the CEOs' jobs to India too. With video-conferencing there's absolutely no reason why a physical presence is required. Hell, fit 'em with networked gaming helmets and they can even play virtual golf together.
But if that solution doesn't sound fair, I'm all for tying all these CEOs up into a big bag and beating it with sticks, too...
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Ah, you've listened to Rush Limbaugh. There's a big difference though.
When the country shifted from faming to other industry, if you remained a farmer your life didn't change. No one "fired" you. If you wanted to, you could still eke out an existence on the daily farm, working from dawn until dusk, until the day you died.
OR
You could get one of those newfangled "factory jobs". You'd have to learn new skills, but they were generally achievable for most farmers since it was still somewhat manual labor. You could learn the new job in a couple of weeks. But the nice thing was that you got paid more, so you could buy your food instead of growing it. Your free time increased, and you were able to raise your standard of living.
But now, we're being told "you're going to lose your job because 80% of the jobs in the US can be done cheaper elsewhere". We're not given this newfangled job where we will have to learn new skills, work a bit harder, but have more free time and have a higher standard of living.
Some of us will be able to get other jobs, but only the ones who can afford to risk their own money for a lot of education on a profession that still might be offshored.
And the rest of us will have to work longer hours in order to compete with the rest of the world. And we're going to have a lower standard of living because our wages will be reduced.
We're moving to an economy where if you're the best and the brightest, you'll be OK, but if you're not, then you'll be as poor as the poorest person in the world.
How is that a Good Thing for this country? Change may be tough, but rapid change for the worse is unbearable. If our population attains the same demographics as the population of a third world country, then things common to third world countries -- like riots, coups, dictators -- will happen here too.
Not a pretty picture.
I'm not an economist. But, is the basic point of what the reports states is that for every dollar outsourced we see the following return:
Savings to US investors/customers - $0.58
Import of US goods/services by India - $0.05
Transfer of profits by US providersin India to US - $0.04
Adding these up gives the total direct benefit to the US as $0.67
Then, for US labor reemployed another $0.45-0.47
Making the grand total - $1.12-1.14 dollars returned for every dollar spent outsourcing.
It looks like we are getting a sweet deal. The only problem I have with this is where they get the $0.45-$0.47 for reemployment of US labor. I don't quite understand it. It appears to be explained in the following paragraph:
More than 69 percent of workers losing jobs to imports were reemployed. Among those reemployed the mean wage capture was 96.2 percent. Since the wage loss for every dollar spent offshore is 72 cents, these levels of reemployment and recapture translate into an additional 45 to 47 cents of value recapture for the economy, even taking into account the typical period of unemployment bfore a worker is reemployed.
What precisely does this mean?
Here is the way I interpret their numbers. In the US we get the direct "benefit" of 67 cents for every dollar offshored. I think the 45-47 cents recaptured by reemployment comes out of said 67 cent benefit. The way it seems to me is that the only way these people could be reemployed is if the 67 cents savings were reinvested into the economy. I don't see how the wages the reemployed people make from that reinvestment could possibly be termed as value recapture. As far as I can tell, 20 cents of every dollar spent offshore is pocketed by the execs and and shareholders.
I really, truly would love an explanation.
It is unpatriotic to hire labor outside the US but it is morally acceptable. You are still hiring someone so they can put food on their table. I also feel hiring offshore labor has little to do with captalism. Capitalism will survive with or without offshore labor. What offshore labor brings to capitalism is the ability to minimize costs. In the past it was unlikely for small companies to hire offshore labor due to communication problems. Today it's easy. I am in the process of hiring several engineers in India along with a project manager. All communcication will be handled via email. The savings are huge - today I pay about $90/hour for contractors and soon I'll be paying $15-$20/hour.
http://www.bringithome.us Thought we had had enough of this..
My question is, whatever happened to hiring starving college students for a startup? I've had a few gigs where I was paid in hosting space, or spare parts. And that experience allowed me to take on far more demanding professional work.
because of the cost of education and the anticipations set forth by everyone in general, people expect to march right out of school into a 60k/yr job with no previous experience other than internships/co-ops. try hiring college grads for beans and let us know how it works out...
Maybe it's time to be sending out resumes instead of bitching on slashdot.
U.S. Jobs growth soars
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Okay, clearly something about international trade needs to be explained to you: Money never flows out and not back into a country, unless they are your colony
Currency can not flow one way but wealth absolutely can. If $BARistant runs a trade deficit long enough, one of two things will happen:
1) $FOOistan will own all of $BARistan. The residents of $BARistan will own nothing. Scenario #2 follows almost inevitably.
2) The value of the $BARistan currency will drop to zero. The citizens of $BARistan will be unable to purchase anything from $FOOistan. If items from $FOOistan are needed to run the economy then the economy comes to a halt. More accurately, is reduced to the level that can be sustained entirely from internal resources, without international inputs.
It is actually no different than a colony. The wealth transfer just happens behind the sceenes in relative currency valuations rather than up front in Dollars and Cents.
Really? And how much are the corporate officers of this company making? If it really was about cutting costs to survive, those corporate officers would be fired and replaced by ones just as good (if not better!) from Europe for a tenth the price.
I mean, come on. We've seen these arguments far too many times, but not once has anyone bothered to reply to the strategy of cutting out the most expensive employees to save money or "survive".
Nathan's blog
The consumption point is also interesting, the Greens would agree with you on that certainly.
A: Move to India so we don't have to pay exorbitant amounts of money to live in a corporately controlled state.
Nathan's blog
It amazes me how much the media and wanna-be reporters are cramming this outsourcing is good thing down our throats. Everywhere I look I see jobs going overseas. It's not good for us.
Call it protectionism if you like, but I'd rather our industry stayed here. because there's no way I'd be let work in India, even if I wanted to. so it's a matter of survival.
Perhaps somewhere along the way a law can be put into place which will require you to make a certain amount of money (or have a service job) in order to be a citizen living in the US.
Let's also not forget that this trend of outsourcing occurred just around the time the corporate scumbags got caught lying to their investors. A big chunk of this outsourcing is, I believe, another scheme for them to justify their own MAJORLY inflated salaries/bonuses/etc.. Why isn't CEO (and other senior exec) compensation linked directly to their companies performance?? It should also be capped at a certain amount.. It's just a JOB and I'd argue one that, in most cases, does less than a good many of its other employees (the hardest part of it being justification of one's own salary and existence)..
Why should 80% of the world live in squalour whilst we drive around in our two-mile-per-gallon Humvees
Ummm, because we invented those Humvees? because we developed the technology that lets those Humvees get produced in quantities? because the rest of the world never even saw a use for all that black gunk until we developed shit that used it?
Get over it, dude! It's the rest of the world that hasn't yet earned the right to live like we do!
Da Blog
Not a single SCORE:5 - FUNNY ???? Mod this up as funny please then!
To all the people who couldn't care less about the rest of the world: I couldn't care less about you.
My well-beign and security is directly related to the security of everyone - U.S. and others alike - in the world.
Don't like it? Get the hell out of my way.
Spoken like a person who is currently employed. The bottom line is that no one has a right to anything other than whatever they happen to have brought into the world. You are not entitled to law, a civil society, democracy, or anything else you seem to take as a natural state of being. However, if you want to keep those things, you had better stop thinking of your fellow countrymen (and women) as whiners and start figuring out how you maintain democracy, law, civil society, etc., when most people are unable to find their next meal. Because that's where all of this is heading. But then, I'm sure that you feel so much that you are not entitled to a job that you'd be happy to give yours to someone in India or China. What's that? Oh, it's OK for other folks to do so, but not you. Well, that's good to know...
That is all.
You think it really makes sense to buy stock in one of these companies? How many of them will exist by the time you retire, the time that the investment will pay off? We see now how well run some of the big-boys are and you want to bet the farm on some transient company always thinking short term? Great long term investment strategy you stupid fuck!
Besides, how far away is your retirement? Don't you have to eat between then and now? Hows that going to happen when your job is outsourced? A company that pays -say a $0.50-$1.00 per share dividend twice a year- that ain't going to do much for you....unless you have a few million dollars lying around your house collecting dust.
This bullshit theory smacks of multi-level marketing to me. The first in are the only ones to gain.
When some one starts telling me to my face how they saved me or are doing me a favor. That can mean only 1 thing. They are screwing me in the a$$.
Isnt anyone amazed at the flood of articles on how great offshoring is. Makes ya wonder who is behind the media blitz. And also makes ya wonder whos dumb enuff to believe it.
nuff said.....
GO MUSHARAF!
NUKE THOSE DOTHEAD NO ORIGINAL IDEA PARASITIC LEACHES!!
The only thing India is saving, is shit to cram in their skulls since they can't come up with anything original themselves aside from job theft. Low life 3rd world shitbags
KASHMIR FOR PAKISTAN! DEATH TO INDIA!
I will go to the clue store, but I shall be picking one up for you- you see, Wealth != Income. Two very seperate things.
Do some homework before flaming please.
The per capita income in the US is roughly $35k
The average income for a developer in the US is $70k.
The per capital income in India $2,570
The average income for a developer in India is $8k.
This means that developers in the USA are getting 2 times per capita. Meanwhile, developers in India are getting over 3 times per capita. This does not even begin to take into account differences in the cost of living. And senior and talented individuals are making over $20k which is 8-10 times per capita. Most senior level people are luck to make 3-4 times per capita here in the US. So while it is true companies are taking advantage of the price difference they certainly are not paying slave or sweat shop wages. Developers in India are actually doing better than here in the States.
Also it is interesting to note that when the Pharmaceuticals companies try to block people from buying cheaper drugs they get called greedy. Both groups are suffering from what Economists refer to as pricing parity. That is the notion that prices within an area will move towards parity. The concept originally sought to explain why prices at the local level tended to be the same. However, local is relative and as the world becomes the global village the size of local becomes the whole world.
Rabi Satter
Is it just me or is this whole thing really being blown out of proportion? It isn't like people are getting homeless on the streets of America that you have to stop outsourcing completely.If America can live with manufacturing in China then it can live with a little outsourcing.
When it comes to the media giving it too much attention, thats their job isnt it? It might be for or against depending upon certain interests.
Maybe its easy for me to say because i'm in India and people here are not pissed off at getting 'more' jobs but it wasnt like we had too many jobs anyway.As long as outsourcing does'nt hurt the overall American economy , I don't think its such a BIG deal.Its just the perspective you take on the issue(or the article you read.) Cheers.
Lord of the Binges.
There are a crapload of Indians here in the US on their H1-B visas and whatnot. They arent citizens. They are just here as cheap labor so companies can profit more. These companies dont care about all the US jobs lost. They barely speak english and dont belong here. Go into any Circuit City or Best Buy on the weekend and you will see them all there buying all sorts of crap to bring back to India, smelling up the place. I cant help but look at them with hate because I know that they are here taking an American job. Jobs that BELONG to Americans. Jobs that are done here.
A lot of those people working at CC or BB are former programmers laid off because the companies they worked for brought cheap Indian labor over for 6 or 9 months. Just to increase profits and skirt taxes. Those sales people hate those Indians. Here in CT there are a lot of insurance companies with work visa Indian labor. Pratt and Whitney is also here, along with a horde of rude smelly Indians, always trying to bargain and haggle. I dont want foreigners in this country that dont belong taking American jobs. Bush can go to hell.
Preach it.....
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
The moral thing to do is to arm the workers and burn the churches. Comrades, let's get to it.
He does look like a fat sleazebag.
It is. More earning power should only decrease the price of buying things, not the price of crime.
And please stop modding yourself up. It's so obvious.
I'm not an economist; and I must admit, I am failing in my duty as a citizen of a democracy, in this case U.S, in 1) keep myself reasonably informed of the issues affecting our lives, 2) think deeply about them, and 3) participate in the political process based on the decisions I arrived from doing 1) and 2). So in this case I can't speak intelligently about the overall effects of outsourcing IT jobs to India or China. What I have done meanwhile is spending a lot of time at work, which happened to be in IT. If I may, I like to take the conversation to a slightly different direction. I would like to question the basic premise here. I think for software development at least, we're not at a stage where it's an engineering discipline yet. We're ready for outsourcing the whole process overseas. Making software is still not the same as making sneakers. And I haven't seen any signs of that changing dramatically in the short to medium term. For the past 11 years I have worked as an consultant and employee at Fortune 100 telecommunications, finance, entertainment, broadcasting, and food & beverage companies, companies whose names you probably hear everyday. There were all great places to work for, but none of them would I put at even CMM level 2. I have seen a lot of medium and large projects succeed and fail. For ones that failed, not one of them was because the programmers were too expensive. The failures I see were mostly caused by failures in management, and occur mostly in analysis and design phase of the projects. I have worked with outsourcing companies as early as 11 years ago, when I first started out. In the area of pure technical expertise (languages and tools), I think they have improved a lot. But they fail in the same area of analysis and design, areas where it's crucial that you 1) understand complex operations and business rules of the industry and your company, 2) communicating with users who, a lot of times, don't even know what they want, and not used to think about their own business process in such systematic manner, and 3) translating those requirements into design. Where I have seen success is where the local analyst programmers here have done all that work, and wrote very detailed specs, complete with prototype, on what has to be done (mostly reports), and shipped that to India. In projects where they have to take over the whole development cycle, even when it was version 2 of a product, they have failed very badly. Not a single success in my experience. Companies don't save money when their multi-million dollar projects fail. In fact they lost money by outsourcing. So I think the more immediate question is not whether we should outsource or not, but whether we can outsource or not. As a profession I don't think we're mature enough to actually take advantage of outsourcing yet. However this doesn't mean the management won't try outsourcing anyway. It's the new rage. Everyone's doing it, you have to do it to stay competitive right? Who can fire you for that?! Well, I think in the short to medium term a lot of people are going to learn some very hard lessons. And I hope, unlike the internet bubble, all that lost investment won't translate into a lot of lost jobs. But I think it will take a few spectacular failures before the management community realizes that. Outsourcing is still coming. It's the long term trend. Here's the second thing I want to question. Don't think there's nothing you can do personally about it. Regardless of whether it's immoral or illegal, you need to think about what you should do if it became fact of life. We all need to ask ourselves, what is it I can do that will be valuable to a company that a person working thousands of miles away can't do for cheaper? I believe there are answers, and there is time enough to react and change.
I used to think that Slashdot was a forum for people interested in Tech, and "news for nerds. stuff that matters".
The lot of you have however proven that you're nothing but a pathetic bunch of xenophobic whiners.
I'm glad those Indians have taken your jobs. You deserve to be jobless.
I'm not sure if you guys know about this but there is minimal customs duty on computers and electronics imported by Indian outsourcing companies.
Most of this hardware comes in straight from the United States.You have no idea how much companies like IBM,Dell,Avaya & Compaq (american owned companies i believe)are earning in the bargain.Most of the telecom infrastructure required to setup Call centers here has to be shipped straight from USA.That again is an example of how the economy balances itself out eventually.
Lord of the Binges.
Like many things in life, outsourcing is not inherently evil but can be used for evil purposes. As far as "getting rid of jobs" is concerned, they said the same thing about machines in the 1940's and computers in the 1970's. (earlier?)
The result was that yes, mechanized production got rid of some factory jobs and computers got rid of jobs as well. But those jobs were replaced by better jobs that were unimaginable at the time.
If we were to put restrictions on computers and mechanized production back when those technologies came out, the US would have been passed up by the rest of the world by now.
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
I'm a University of Texas Undergraduate, and a very large percentage of my classmates in the CS program are foreign. Some CS mixes naturally with EE, and the same thing can be said there. I have no idea what the limitations or requirements are for foreign students (nor student visas), but the amount in the CS/EE program at a state university is rather amazing... Another strange fact I was made aware of was when looking for part-time work on campus this semester was the amazing competition for 7-8/hr "computer lab assistant" jobs. It turns out there are a decent number of jobs that, if you work 20/hr a week or more, somehow allow you to gain instate tuition. These jobs are overwhelmingly dominated by foreign students, who are therefore paying the same subsidized instate tuition I am. The graduate programs even more interesting. I don't think in the entire time I've been in the UT CS program (1 semester left) I've ever had anything other than a foreign TA. A friend who will be graduating in with a Masters in EE this semester says she thinks there must obviously be no limit or requirement to the number of foreign students. I have no hard data or knowledge, but it seems an overwhelming majority of the CS/EE grad students from the University of Texas are not citizens. American Universities for quite some time have been considered the best in the world (despite our elementary schooling constantly being trashed)... but with foreign students dominating the CS/EE programs, I suppose it doesn't matter. At least in the case of public universities, we're subsidizing the education and training of people who will now be filling a job overseas.
Indeed, I recently ran across this item. It seems alternative energy and streamlined solutions are definitely being allowed out of the toolshed, (finally).
I did find it interesting, however, that in this particular case, the device was created in Japan. I wonder how much lobbying it will take to enforce American hydrogen fuel cells into the dominant position.
I guess the other thing I ought to keep in mind is that the power of 'belief' is staggeringly strong. If people believe that they ought to live in big houses with two cars, etc., then that goes a long way to perpetuating the reality. I have to keep reminding myself that the health of the economy, in the largest sense, is driven by the perception of how healthy it is. This kind of thinking is right up my ally and I feel somewhat obligated to do my part to dispel the overpowering myth of economic decline, the propagation of which I believe is a deliberate action on the part of Upper Management. Foolishly, I get so into the pattern of looking for the ugly that I miss those times when people like me broadcasting such a message is part of the problem, and possibly even part of the design.
There have been a lot of very loud and pervasive, "The Economy is Dying!" stories circulating over the last few years, sinking deep into every demographic group.
(Think happy thoughts. . . Think happy thoughts. .
-FL
Outsourcing overseas has been under the microscope for years now. We seem to be going over and over the same question - is it right?
That question is not worth debating. If suddenly the domestic supply of programmers multiplied by a factor of 10000 perhaps due to the availability of a powerful machine that lets anyone write computer programs, what then?? Right now the supply has multiplied, not domestically but virtually so.
Cars put horses out of the transportation business. No one is erecting hitching posts on main street. We would be completely screwed if we couldn't stop teaching people how to ride horses but not to drive cars.
Industry and the education system have the onus of teaching people what to do with the latest technology.
One of the great difficulties is the consumer profile. I don't think I own that many things, but when I look at what I do have, I have a lot of different types of things - computer, shampoo, printer, bicycle, car, toothbrush, books, fan, newspapers, milk, pens, tables, clothes, etc. I have enough commonplace things to live, and I suppose most people wouldn't have a much greater variety of items.
A suite of products that is really missing is the kind of product that helps people live. Wouldn't it be great to have a box that you could just plug in to the electrical and plumbing, turn it on and ready-to-eat food comes out. That would put a nice touch on the set of consumer items that everyone could use.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
And is now moving on India?
There's such a severe shortage of water here that while the wealthy buy theirs commercially and have it delivered to their homes in trucks by the tankful, their servants -- the legions of drivers and cooks and maids and guards -- wait in line for more than an hour each day to receive their own subsidized rations.
Um.. maybe it's illegal or something, I don't know.. but if I myself was in this situation, a pile of copper pipe, some seawater, some pots, some black paint, and some shiney metal for mirrors would soon be producing all the triple-special solar distilled water I could drink.
..don't panic
Answer: what's the next thing?
The next thing may be aiming for zero or negative population and economic growth, or the next thing might be accepting a dramatically lower standard of living. It could be a communist revolution. Nobody knows, but those are some choices nobody wants to hear.
Don't like it? Get organized. Instead of bitching about the machine, it IS a democratic republic in the US. If enough people feel like you do, you could at least in theory get elected and start some serious smackdown. I think people underestimate, or are trained to underestimte, the power of a grassroots politcal movement. It's worked to positive effect (Fall of Communism in Russia; French Revolution), and negative effect (Nazi Germany, China's little incident running over students with Tanks) in the past.
Who knows what one populist leader could accomplish in the USA right now? There are enough people who are working class and don't vote to effectively overthrow the status quo. Except they've been brainwashed their votes don't mater. Here's a hint: The wealthy vote.
(disclaimer: I am Canadian, and am not overly upset with the state of affairs in my country, yet).
..don't panic
Wait a minute, we capitalists are doing fine, India didn't save us! They couldn't even get the British to leave them alone - we took care of them over 200 years ago. =) Anyway...
I am in a position where choosing to work with the selected outsourcing company that our executives inked a deal with is quite literally a choice. I'm not high up on the food chain but I've gained recognition for my contributions and hardwork.
Enough recognition so that the 'account manager' from the company we outsource to mentioned that his CEO and my CEO know eachother. They think we all should work together on some of the programs that I am working on.
I said "Our CEO knows a lot of CEOs. But our team won't be working with you. No thank you. We do not outsource innovation."
I didn't give a reason because I don't have to. The account manager was shocked. My boss backed me up.
Why? Because I do my job really well.
What's the point? Where people send work is a choice. If you are in a leadership position, don't keep your head down about outsourcing just because you're not an executive. If you are in the trenches make sure your boss and his/her boss and his/her boss know that you do your job well. Don't just show up - that's the main reason why executives *here* are moving stuff offshore. The quality of teams is poor, people have grown to expect a job. I'm not saying that this is the case everywhere, but it's what I've seen being in the trenches myself.
And for the people on top (feel free to print this out and leave it anonymously on their desks)...
Remember, we are all part of the same community and have to *work* together. Unemployed people (or people with very low salaries) can't buy your goods and services. Too many hungry people that vote are a very serious problem for the people who take food away from them. You think your taxes are high now?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My delicious sweets, Indians accept unsurvivablly low wages because they are oppressed byproducts of a slave state which is still devoted to keeping a caste system, providing only the alternative of licking toilet bowls clean for the Brahmins for fifty cents an hour.
Smart people are born of every class and color.
Our imperialist skank @sses went over there and vibed up the caste system as a means to help the British Empire continue to suck the country dry with no provisions for indigenous people (once upon a time,) and by golly, in following in Big Brother's steps, America has now decided to do the same thing.
Our companies have abandoned us as a nation of workers, and all they can say for it is "well, everybody else is doing it, so do we."
I would like to round these fools up in a room and convince them I have some koolaid they have to drink as well.
Our lovely American-run companies have revived the slave trade in the name of our economy. That was tried once before, and we eventually survived without that method as well.
Here's an idea... how about we reinstate the structural integrity of our corporate culture in America to include on-the-job training of current employees so that companies can cultivate talent at a reasonable price on-site instead of paying huge fees to house, feed, and clothe Indian recruits in the name of "cost effectiveness."
Outsourcing to lesser-qualified candidates is also unsustainable in the long-term because it creates absolutely no worker motivation and actively encourages employees NOT to be loyal to their company (since their company will not be loyal to them,) meaning that in the end these companies STILL get only what they pay for, resulting in a drop in customer service for a drop in price. This fact is unavoidable and will become more evident as more people like myself refuse to use customer-ranking call centers that keep impatient, low-ranking callers on hold for five hours, only to be told by a barely English-speaking rep that he/she does not understand the language I am speaking, much less my actual concern to be addressed.
Personally, I have NO problem competing with Indians for jobs based on skillsets and experience. May the best man win. What makes no financial sense is to pay that much money up front to set up Indians with no experience into call centers/ programming hives and then pay them peanuts and treat them like dirt when your call center is suddenly cited as the worst in your industry, or your code has more vulnerabilities than functionality.
This is not a business model, this is a "short term, shareholder profit increase initiative" known in some states as a pyramid scheme. Except this is much worse than usual because it is preying on the desperation of the lower castes (slaves) of the Indian nation who are striving to be like their mythic image of us, and we in turn are giving them impossible to fulfill job roles, p1ssing off required customer bases with ineptitude instead of customer service, and we're spending more money on the whole fiasco than training local employees on a long-term bases would ever have cost. So yes, it IS unethical. Not to mention profoundly poor business practice.
Now, the claim is "outsourcing saves capitalism". If that fails, we can look for "outsourcing will save us from TERRORISM".
Outsourcing makes sense when the price of labor is a very large proportion of the cost of a product and "good enough" or "sucks" is good enough.
Dell illustrated this when they returned their customer service for corporations to America but left their small business and home users to the dubious mercies of their Indian outsourcers.
Programming? If one is doing custom software projects for a specific individual customer, if one can specify everything in advance, and if "who owns the intellectual property?" afterwards really doesn't matter, substantial savings can be realized from outsourcing.
If one expects to sell 1,000,000 units of a software product, the labor cost per unit should be pennies... using American programmers might add $0.01 cent to the cost of MS Office or Windows or whatever. Perhaps as much as a dime.
To whom would adding a potential dime per unit sale to the corporate bottom line at the expense of getting rid of American employees make a big difference outside the Third World outsourcers?
CEOs, mainly. A few cents per unit, whether real or an excuse to cook the books to show enough of an apparent growth in earnings to trigger next quarter's stock options.
If the profits of their corporation drop drastically in a few years, it really doesn't matter to them. They'll either have moved on to someplace else they can stripmine for profits or have cashed out into blissful, wealthy retirement.
The investment their corporations have made in growing a trained manpower base for their future competition from India and transferring their technology to effectively unaccountable outsourcing companies will pay off. But not here and not even to the company's stockholders who didn't know when to bail out in time while Third World outsourcing appeared to be adding to company stock value?
What's the downside? American college students are already dropping out of technology fields. Can America remain strong in the areas critical to technology, science, and military power if we no longer have a technologically trained workforce? You know the answer.
Will the stockholders of American corporations profit when Third World companies decide that US management adds nothing to the value of the products they are designing, building, and servicing customers for their American corporate customers and they decide either on unfriendly takeover offers at a fraction of book value or to simply dump their US customers, take their customer lists and the knowledge of American corporate business practices and start their own competitive companies?
Note: the only situations where outsourcing make sense are where labor costs are a substantial part of per-unit profit costs or where one is selling to a local Third World customer base. However, if one is selling to the Third World, there is still a substantial parasitic cost penalty for American corporations that Third World companies don't worry about. The price of US management itself.
You can bet that there are people in the Third World who have figured this out and intend to take advantage of this and of their superiority in ability to localize home-grown products to better meet local customer needs. The American companies who have made substantial local investments in the Third World to better sell there will be lucky to recoup their investments, let alone profit. However, that problem is the problem of their future stockholders. The CEOs responsible will have long since retired.
Will benefits trickle down to Americans below the CEO level? Don't bet on it. The CEOs aren't doing this for us any more than they're doing this for employees or stoc
Tech Public Policy stuff
youre resorting to name calling and im the idiot? ;).
That's an interesting benchmark of intelligence you have there
But anyway, back on topic, is that you missed my implied point, which is that yes these figures are based on wealth, and not income, and apparently figures are not really kept on what their incomes are so that we can not say for sure whether they paid their fair share of taxes, but I think it is fairly reasonable to conclude that the wealthiest have a more proportionate income to the less wealthy, especially if you only include realized (aka not paper) income.
Seems to me that a massive amount of military potential energy was generated by the victory in WWII and the subsequent creation of a nuclear superpower. Potential energy wants to become kinetic, and it is merely being channeled now by American businessmen. I am neither in favor nor against that, I just see it as something that is. What annoys me is politicians, globalists like Dumbya who try to pretend they're patriotic leaders. Globalism and patriotism/ tribalism/ nationalism are practically opposite concepts, and politicians who try to play both sides of the fist between nationalism/globalism deprive the general public of the spoils of both outcomes-- we receive no nationalist prosperity, and we receive no globalist unity or sense of humanitarianism. All we receive is the onset of second world living conditions and the annoying persistence of first world guilt trips. If we're so spoiled, try to go to the ER after being laid off. American wealth is an illusion.
If you want to "constructively criticize" the article, don't buy anything collabnet sells and if you're in a position where decisionmakers are depending on your recommendations to make buying decisions, find a competitor.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Actually, not all outsourcing fits that. I work for a company that does tech support and our biggest competitor is in Chennai (they handle most of the support online chats). The Chennai agents constantly are rude to and hang up the customers. When a customer is dropped and i pick them up I can see what the previous agent has said and half the time its a language barrier. The agents don't even try to understand the problem. The customer doesn't understand they never talked to the company that made their software and is therefore angry their software vender instead of lousy workers
Well... "chooses to live in", or "is effectively trapped in"? Are you aware about relocation costs, about the problems with getting citizenship in another country, language problems, loss of social network...?
There are fewer choices than what you think.
Looked at from the other side, many or most of us humans will often make decisions based on our own self-interest. It's a strong instinct, like sex. It's not going to be replaced anytime soon by some cosmic communitarianism.
One of the revelations of the 60s, for those of us who were around then, was that individuals who passionately espoused the "overthrow of the establishment" would cheerfully screw a friend if it brought them some personal advantage.
Obviously greed is the cause of many problems, among the whole universe of problems that plague the world. But it's not going away anytime soon, and, IMO, the regulated free-market capitalism of the developed countries does a pretty good job of channeling it into constructive uses.
In group behavior: 'because they're evil/morons/sheep/crazy' is not 'insightful' it's 'oversimplified'
What I think people forget (for those who lived through it). The auto industry did what the Airline is doing presently. They went to the government looking for a "save me" handout, and the government gave it to them (Chrysler?). So much for the "they kicked our ass, and we came fighting back" argument.
And as someone else pointed out. There are areas STILL devestated from then.
Last POST!
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
Reading Slashdot.
http://blameindiawatch.blogspot.com/
"We had to destroy the jobs in order to save the jobs."
Yeah, right. You and Robert MacNamara and your mother too!
Face it, its racism to feel like you are entitled to a specific job just because you are white.
"Race, that taboo of American culture and politics, has reared its ugly head again. First we had the Senate Majority Leader telling an audience that if President Strom Thurmond had upheld segregation, we wouldn't have "all these problems" today. Then we have a bunch of crybabies who couldn't get into law school through the normal admission process trying to sue their way in (oddly enough, backed by the same groups that otherwise normally decry our lawsuit-happy culture). Then we have an unelected President attacking a program that helps students who worked a lot harder and did a lot better than he did at Yale but weren't lucky enough to be born with the right skin color and last name.
Unfortunately our society has never done a very good job of dealing with racial issues. The best we can manage is to look the other way, pretend that racism doesn't exist and comfort ourselves by saying things like, "I'm not racist, I have a black friend," or "My great-grandparents were Irish and were discriminated against too." Unfortunately, many of the folks who claim to be "not racist" as long as the issues are kept out of sight and mind quickly jump to the white right side when forced to confront the problem.
At the center of all of this swirling controversy are three main facts:
1. Centuries of mythologizing "the individual" - from Horatio Alger to cowboy stories to the liberal mushiness about the personal being political - has kept us from understanding and confronting the true nature of racism.
2. Members of the dominant race in the most wealthy and powerful nation in the world feel a certain sense of entitlement and ownership. This leads to a White Supremacist outlook even among "nonracists" that comes to the fore when that sense of entitlement is challenged.
3. As long as scarcity exists (in housing, wealth, education access, or whatever) and we're all fighting over small pieces of pie, folks are going to want to make sure they get a bigger piece - even if it means someone else gets none. People will rationalize this behavior however they must, because if they don't, they won't survive. Only by solving this problem can we really deal with racism (and its cousins sexism and nationalism)
In some ways, the civil rights movement is a victim of its own success. Pretty much everyone will agree that racism is bad, or as Rob Hudson puts it in a recent journal entry about Hitler:
"Who else in history shares the kind of name recognition that Hitler enjoys? I was trying to think of someone, and the only person I could think of (and this should spark some hate mail for sure) is Jesus Christ. Jesus and Hitler. Is there anyone else whom you could mention anywhere in the world and get a universal response like those two? And even then, people would react in a variety of different ways if you asked them to tell you what Jesus was all about, but Hitler, I believe, would get a nearly universal response. "Oh, yeah. That Hitler, he was a motherfucker."
Folks know that racism is bad. Folks know that being a racist is one of the worst things you can be - up there with child molesters and serial killers. The problem is that since no one wants to be associated with this evil, instead of dealing with the problem they simply claim, "I'm not a racist, I'm colorblind." In reality the only blindness going on is turning a blind eye to the truth.
In short, (almost) everyone agrees that racism is bad, but they don't agree on what racism is.
Further, rather than thinking of racism as a societal issue and a problem to be solved, many people see racism as merely an individual problem. Both conservatives and liberals have furthered this view, especially by focusing on things like "hate" rather than things like employment statistics. Racism is often confused with "prejudice" and "stereotyping" and the focus is too often on not saying the wrong words or admi
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
First of all, I never claimed to not be a racist. I don't particularly like Asian people. They refuse to learn your language and they smell bad.
Second, the reason that you appeal to white supremacy and nationalism is that those people will fight while everyone else just pussy's out and takes their prozac and enjoys a good hard butt fucking.
All colors of the political spectrum have their place and uses.
"I AM IN HELL. HELP ME."
--Sam Walton, last week.
What about exchanging the money into their own currency?
Money never flows out and not back into a country, unless they are your colony.
Well, actually, yes it does. America spends half a trillion dollars a year more than ir earns. It does this by a little thing called debt.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
Most of the replies to this article seem to miss the key point: The 40 some-odd programmers, quality-assurance engineers and customer support staffers who work in CollabNet's two-floor outpost in Chennai are mostly in their mid-20s. By mid-2004, the managers here hope to recruit about 15 more of them. The market for their skills has become so heated in Chennai that headhunters brazenly call them up in their cubicles to solicit their services, dangling pay hikes of 30 percent
This suggests that the massive shift to India is nearing its completion. Of course new generations of Indians will arise but universities have only so much bandwidth. There are other countries of the world to consider but there are few with a highly educated English-speaking workforce and one by one they are being pushed up the price curve. Ireland was the cheap place to be five years ago. Then it was totally saturated. Now it is India. It will be saturated soon also. At no point will any country come online fast enough to wipe out the American software industry.
TTTAAC... Now that I think about it... I read about that law a decade ago in a P.J. O'Rourke book that was itself a decade old at the time. So, things have changed in 20 years?
Anyway, the original poster suggested the US shouldn't do business with India because its labor laws aren't up to par. I've read about India's unions and minimum wage more recently. I think my point still stands: that India's competitive strengths are real, not due to sweatshop conditions.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
Then how do you explain that perhaps the most capitalist country in the world, USA, has a system where politicians are more likely to be bought, than in other countries with socialist ideals, like Norway? Is it a coincidence that money has a greater influence on US politics than in Europe?
...invalid premise. Are you kidding me? Capitalism implies open, fair and free commerce on a "level playing field" unhindered by government or bullies with big money and highly skilled lawyers.
The USA is not the most capitalist country in the world, or the most democratic (Trust me, I've been here a while). I don't know if the playing field was ever all that "level". I'd still rather be here than in Norway, anywhere else in Europe or anywhere else period. I think it's still the best place anywhere to make a career, make a home, get educated, raise a family and live a fulfilling life.
...just curious. Precisely how many Indians out of a billion have regular access to any kind of computer?
...or been anywhere near a call center?