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Increasing the Value of the Domestic IT Worker?
KoshClassic asks: "To state it simply, in today's global economy, the IT worker in America is in direct competition with IT workers in countries such as India who are willing to do the same job for less. Much of this willingness has to do with standards and costs of living in these other countries, and without lowering ours or raising theirs, the American IT worker can not compete on even terms if the only consideration is cost. What should American IT workers be doing to differentiate ourselves from our overseas counterparts, to add the kinds of value for employers that will make them want to look beyond direct costs and see other benefits that will make it worthwhile for them to keep these jobs in the US? I'm not sure what the answer to this question is, but I am convinced that the answer lies in trends and industry wide changes, rather than just individuals polishing their own resumes. When an employer decides he needs to fill a programming position, what is going to make him want to fill that position in the U.S. rather than overseas, even before individual candidates are considered"
.. if you bring management skills to the table you will be better off. The biggest challenge today is to manage projects across time-zones and successfully coordinating between the teams in US and India. If you can demonstrate that you can work in such an environment and can actually manage the tasks also you will be in high demand.
In my realm of IT, our technical support is outsourced to India. While we still provide limited support here in the states, our technical support unit is wary that their jobs may disappear.
My advice to them has been to establish yourself as indispensable. If that means bucking for the "promotion" to 2nd tier, or product contact, or product development, then do it.
Strategicly, the BEST place to be is the domestic Handler, or the technical liason of those outsorced partners. (It has the best job security, for now.) Organization will need someone to make sure that their oversea workers are remaining up-to-par, so they will need to:
A) Know what the right answer is.
B) Make sure that the outsourced workers are providing that answer.
C) Hold the outsourcer (and the geniuses who decided to save money with these outsources) are held accountable to their decisions.
Granted, this is a fraction of the jobs that can remain after being outsourced. However, in my personal example, we are now using our original technical support staff as a 2nd tier unit for our global outsource call centers. (Not because we can, but because we NEED to, as our outsourcers are not as adept in supporting our product as our veteran staffers here.)
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
hm, maybe you should read some Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers:
f shore.htmh tmm
Here is America's job future for the next 10 years:
waiters and waitresses;
janitors and cleaners;
food preparation;
nursing aides, orderlies and attendants;
cashiers
customer service representatives;
retail salespersons;
registered nurses;
general and operational managers;
postsecondary teachers.
For further reading:
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/economy_of
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/job_data.
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/where_jobs_go.ht
Insightful? I've already taken several pay cuts in the past few years. I've had job offers for $9 an hour for laptop repair, and the recruiters get all huffy when you say they're less than half way there.
I am an indian student who is doing is graduation in UK. I have studied a bit in India as well(in Mumbai) and there is a difference in what is being taught there vs in UK or US.
Back in India we as students are taught the programming language i.e. the syntax and code creation. No one there teaches how to program i.e. problem solving and designing a solution from the problem. Therefore most companies in US are offshoring their coding work to India. But this is after someone else in US has already anaylsed and designed the solution. So this is the skill that you need to develop. In most cases, the end user is an American and thus you can have a better understanding of what they want. I don't think there is any way you can distinguish between code developed by an Indian or an American. At present, some people may believe Indian code to be worse but this is a small problem and in time Indian programmers will get experienced and improve their coding skills. So you won't keep getting a higher pay for doing the same work, times change and everyone needs to evolve.
Don't expect any company or government to stop this, doing so will only make them less competitive.
Congress writes the checks. The President just signs them.
A little OT, but what is wrong with Walmart? I haven't read any bad crap on them.
You are joking, right?
In case you aren't:
- Many Walmart stores lock their night employees in. As in, they can't get out until the morning, even if their shift ends in the middle of the night. There was a story in the NYTimes (only available paid now) about how people who were injured on the job during those shifts were told that if they went to the hospital, they'd be fired.
- Walmart managers tell new hires that if they unionize, they'll be fired.
- Walmart stores put small local retailers out of business, and replace the jobs they offered with minimum-wage positions.
There's more, but those are the main reasons I won't shop at them. If you are honestly looking for information, just do a google search on the first topic and it should hook you up with a plethora of sites.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Unless, of course, you are willing to sacrifice some things for others.
You have to eat - but you could support a local farmer's market and buy fresh vegetables & produce instead of Megasized Overpackaged Instant Something-or-Other. Or maybe you save money by canceling cable, or selling an extra car. Perhaps you could purchase clothing at a second-hand or thrift shop instead of Walmart.
There are plenty of ways to avoid patronizing businesses you don't agree with. You just have to be willing to make the necessary sacrifices. That's known as 'opportunity cost'.
Most IT systems fail because they dont do what the customer wants them to do. (for whatever reason - design/technology/usability) Developers in the same office (or at least in the same city) who can walk over and chat to the users and solve their problems, have a much better chance of producing a workable system than a bunch of developers half way across the world. CIOs know this. Pity the poor Indian developer trying to develop a system for a business he knows nothing about for users he has never met. So get out there and listen to your users and understand them, and you have an advantage that no Indian can match without blowing 1000USD on an airfare each time. However if you are stuck in a server room, dont like talking to your users very much, and dont understand their business then you are probably in trouble.
From m-w.com
Main Entry: exploit
Pronunciation: ik-'sploit, 'ek-"
Function: transitive verb
1 : to make productive use of : UTILIZE
2 : to make use of meanly or unjustly for one's own advantage
Clearly, this word has a positive and a negative connotation. Generally, when people talk about exploiting foreign labor, they probably are referring to (2).
Check out what a software office in India really is like.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
WalMart's not disallowed from anything -- it's they who chose not to build in Inglewood under the same rules as all other businesses.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I'm from the UK, and I concur.
Stop being so Xenophobic and get competitive !
Depends on what you do. I've watched my pay rise 30k in the middle of the economic downturn, and that's after turning down a couple good jobs that would've raised it even more. I've gone into interviews asking 20-30k more then my current [not too shabby] salary and had it offered to me on the spot, just because I'm good and have a high-level clearance.
These are very rough numbers because YMMV on degrees, certs (laugh, but the gov't loves 'em), and overall experience...
Tech 1 - 45-58k (help desk)
Tech 2 - 50-68k (low level desktop support)
Tech 3 - 61-75k (mid-level admin)
Tech 4 - 68-99k (little more senior)
Tech 5 - 100-??? (expert)
Again, the numbers or rough and off the top of my head (at 5AM no less). I fall along the high end of the Tech-4 group without a degree (working on it), a crappy Solaris 8 cert, and 6 years experience.
The key to it, however, is that it's STABLE work. I did the dot com thing, I did the telecom thing. I left both for stable work. I NEVER go into work wondering "is today the day?" like we all did during the dot com fallout.
First post on slashdot wuwu. I'm an unemployed software developer / administrator in Canada. I have a few responses to things in many threads on this subject. #1) Outsourced IT workers living in another country I dont believe they are sweat shops, and do believe they get paid almost the equivilent of North American developers in respect to cost of living. What I'm tired of hearing is the opinion "dont you think IT workers in India deserve a job". I think everyone in every country should live well, but I'm not going to give my career up for someone else in some other Country - I care for ME and only ME. #2) Outsourcing to reduce costs benefits us. BS. Any gain made by reducing these costs only goes to shareholders and CEO's. Do you think I'm happy for top management to make an extra $50,000 bonus while I'm outta work? #3) Find another Career Easier said then done. White collar workers generally have a skill-set thats been developed over years. You cant simply switch to something else overnight. Someone in blue collar industry mainly services, can more easily find a job because they dont require immediate skills (as long as the market has jobs). Have you SEEN the requirements for IT positions these days? They want 4 years Java, 3 years .NET, 6 years unix, 5 years windows, 10 years for a product thats been alive for 2 years, want you to hold a pager for 24X7 support, and "willing to work in a stressfull and demanding environment", putting in 60+ hours / week.
Anyone with any knowledge in IT, specifically software development knows that someone who develops quality work will know either Java, or .NET (as an example of common development requirements), and not BOTH. Also, I find it near immpossible to be coding a project, and doing "Project management", "Support" at the same time, these are completely different skill-sets.
#4) There should be tariffs for knowledge work.
As an example, to me theres no difference when the US tariffs Canadian lumber (its cheaper i think). You could comment on this stating "why dont they do the same for texttiles etc". Well, I dont know, this type of politics is not somethign I look into every day, but now that it hit me personally, I do have an interest in what effects me.
#4) Offtopic - job search in the IT industry
Anyone else find job searching almost useless, and networking your way into a job the only way?
We seemed to have moved to "electronic" recruiting using workopolis etc as the main way, and now that the market is saturated with unemployed IT workers, any position offered are flooed with 1014340101 resumes.
At this point, I have no idea what to do.
Unemployed Tech Worker #494343
There are some reasons other than what you mentioned that I won't shop at Wal-mart:
1) Their business model is to always lower their prices - you've probably seen the happy face ads on TV. In order to do this, they demand that their suppliers lower their prices. If the supplier refuses, Wal-mart threatens to look for a new supplier. Because Wal-mart is so big, the loss of such a contract can be devastating to most suppliers. So the suppliers cut costs to meet Wal-Mart's demands, laying off workers or moving operations overseas. (There was a good article about this about a month ago, but it's expired.)
2) They no longer let me use my bank MasterCard as a credit card because they don't like the fees MC charges.
3) Their practice of offering lousy employee benefits is encouraging other retailers to do the same.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
Before you spout off your opinion on subjects of which you have no understanding, maybe you ought to educate yourself. Because if you did, you'd know that the caste system is endemic to Indian society and cannot simply be legislated away--which, incidentally, has already been tried (the Indian government even has affirmative action programs to help those in lower castes, e.g. by mandating quotas for governmental offices)--any more than America can legislate away its problems regarding race and class.
Now if you'd like to explain how the situation in India is any worse than the issues America faces, I'm all ears. But you know, DAldredge, I don't think you're capable of building a consistent, rational argument grounded in reality. It's not just that you're ignorant; it's that you're comfortable in your ignorance. And that, DAldredge, is just plain disgusting.
If you'd like to respond, I'm watching.