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What Should a Documentary Filmmaker Ask About Offshoring?
Philadelphia-area development economics and finance student Rachel Anderika and her associate, programmer/filmmaker Krishnan, are making a documentary about the effects of offshore outsourcing. Their "still under construction" Web site, Project Outsourced, gives you more information about their work. They're interviewing economists, bankers, anti-outsourcing advocacy groups, pro-outsourcing CEOs, columnists, and others. Where you come in is helping Rachel and Krishnan come up with good questions to ask. We'll forward 10 - 15 of the highest-moderated ones posted here (within the next 24 hours) to them. Expect summaries (and possibly audio or video clips) of the answers in late May, and news about the finished film this Fall.
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Valence Technology
VA Software
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Here is a list of companies that use outsourcing.
I've heard Poland is a good place to open call centers, but unfortunately they do not have a solid power grid.
It seems that this outsourcing thing can and does work both ways, no?
(err, cue massive down-modding by disgruntled outsourced IT workers...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
"Err, I may be wrong, but didn't Honda "Outsource" their labor to the United States (as it was cheaper to hire American workers to build cars for sale in the US than to build 'em overseas then ship the things via ocean freight?)"
For the japanese it is much less expensive to produce a car here. They use very strict processes that have cause for little waste, high quality (so they don't have nearly as many bad parts made and don't have to do the same amount of testing) and they don't use unions.
Evolution or ID?
What if the Toyota was actually made in America?
On the outrage meter, where should I be on this one? 1? 10? .... 11?
to climb into their Toyota
:-p
Just nit-picking here, but for a while, Toyotas have been made in Mexico, and within the past year or so have moved their base of operations into the US.
Nissan is also locally made, in Texas and Mexico. Next time, try ranting with Honda, Daihatsu, or some other obscure company that makes bad cars
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
The best factual source for these numbers is directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor.
Their March 2004 Report is online, as well as archives of past reports.
Do NOT rely on any "statistics" from politically motivated people or organizations such as Robert Reich, or even any Republicans. Anybody can manipulate and cherry pick numbers to make them fit their political agenda. Use the BLS numbers only!
Unfortunately since almost all documentaries seem to be created for political/social agendas or with biases, I highly doubt that my suggestion will be used. That's why I as a potential film viewer will almost never watch a documentary on current events, regardless of the position or whether I agree with it. If it doesn't have footnotes and references I can check, I don't want to be fooled into thinking something is fact when it is not.
It had less to do with ocean freight than the cost of tariffs on sedans... Ironically, most of these tariffs are artifacts of the "free trade" Regan administration in an attempt to save American car makers from the Japanese car makers during the 80s.
The difference is that outsourcing is a reality while the software that writes programs (at least as you described it) is fantasy. Such software would have as large an impact on the tech industry as the invention of the microprocessor. It would be similar to software that wrote an entire novel based only on a plot outline.
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
How about a look at how and why offshoring fails. There was an article about it just today at MSNBC.
On a couple of occasions, my experience, bear in mind we are a talking a VERY limited set of the total here. Two projects out of millions.....
The first 3 or 4 months we got thier A-Team, the code was good quaility, and we had make a few revisions based on them not completely understanding our business requirements. After the A-team left, we got code that was so bad I was working 60+ hr weeks to rewrite/fix the stuff from india. We actually hired more American Programmers to fix the indian stuff. This happened on the next project as well (Different Indian Co.). After that our management went to small XP groups that actully sit right next to the users and everyone has been very happy with the results. For some things like reports, we still outsource those, but for anything very complex our we do our own......
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Correct. Many Hondas sold in the US are made in the US. If you want to check, look at the first character of the vehicle VIN. If it is 1 or 4, then it was made in the US. My Honda Civic Hybrid's first character is "J", indicating it was made in Japan. Here is a partial decoder.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that the importing of brain power from India has been going on for several years. However the exporting of work to India only started recently. Once more organizations export their work to India the flow of people coming from India will decrease, as they won't have to leave their country to find work.
"But it's still a question wether or not this will in the long term reduce the standard of living of the US to make it more in parity with other contries..."
No, that's not how it works. Our standard of living is set by how much we get. Trading with another country can't reduce our ability to get stuff, only increase it (we still retain the ability to make more stuff by employing the unemployed).
If you want to worry about something decreasing our standard of living, worry about something that will *decrease* imports. That could happen by a fall in exports (people become less interested in buying our stuff) or if we stop producing the world currency (we get a certain amount of free imports because we produce the world currency; same reason that the Federal Reserve Bank always runs a surplus).
Imports are problems for companies, as domestic companies compete with foreign companies for sales (note though that domestic companies also get benefits from imports, as they have to purchase stuff too). In terms of the country as a whole, they are good, as they transfer stuff to us. Exports are bad (except in that they fund imports) as they transfer stuff away from us.
Imports are a tiny part of our economy. Focusing on them just takes away resources that could be spent looking for ways to produce more stuff for us. Especially important are areas that are currently expensive: housing, oil, etc. Falling prices in those areas would allow the Fed to pump more money into the economy, which would provide more funds for companies to use to hire workers...including IT workers.
Yeah, your car may be made in the USA, by good ole' American people and that's fine. But you're only gaining the benefits from the taxes paid on their incomes not on the corporation. The profits of the company in the long run are going to back to the homeland.
So do you support your American workers or your American companies?
There are NO RESTRICTIONS on the L1 visas as far as making sure that there is not a qualified American to do the job. There is NO WAGE REQUIREMENT, so it may be these people are working in the US and making Indian wages.
These visas are snapped up by the big Indian consulting companies as a way to market their cheap labor in the US.
For fun, notice the age and sexes of these imported workers. The big Indian consulting firms that import labor are NOT bound to US hiring laws, and frequently advertise age limits in the job postings in India for these positions.