Slashdot Mirror
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"
I respectfully suggest that voting would be a good start.
DROS - Open-Source Robot Software
I just had to drive to the data center. How's someone in India going to accomplish that?
a.Find a refrigerator box to live in.
b.Sell drugs on the side to buy clothes.
c.Use the shower and bathroom at the YMCA.
And
d.Scrounge behind Safeway for thrown out rotten food.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
One thing that limits how fast jobs move overseas is communication. If you've worked with a group overseas, you're probably acquainted with the problems. For instance, if you give them an assignment and they do it wrong, they won't get your correction until the next working day. And running a meeting means that you either have to get up really early or they stay up really late.
My job might be more easily done by someone overseas, but my boss has told me how much he values having me right here and being able to walk over and talk about a project.
Programmers should devlop soft skills. You can't outsource that
There are a whole host of advantages to being local. First is that local developers work the same hours as local employees, and are able to communicate for the whole working day, except after the normal employees go home. Second is the language issue. Even if foreign IT workers speak good english (and often they don't), they won't know all the buzzwords, corporate nonsense-speak and slang that are specific to the region. Third is the ability to come on site. This is great for learning about requirements for development and installing the system. Also, my clients really appreciate it that I can come and support software installations and examine and fix bugs in production systems by visiting them. This decreases the turnaround time for problems. I'd really play up the communications issues. Email is great, but all managers know that face-to-face interactions are the best for getting information to and from nontechnical users.
---
Find out more about the impending downfall o
Perhaps aligning ourselves with a particular industry would enhance hireability. For example, If I am a programmer with experience in insurance, wouldn't I be more hireable because I know what the tendencies of insurance agents and customers are, and I know what types of information are worthwile.
Just a thought.
You don't have to go to India to find tech workers who don't speak English. (Or at least don't know how to use it.)
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
You obviously have no forethought. At $1000 a month you'll never be able to own your own home, provide for a family, save for retirement, etc... Just because you're currently a starving college student with no ambition doesn't mean we all are.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
I would argue from my experience that many do not end up doing "the same job", at least in terms of what they bring to the table, and the results they generate.
There may be people with similar or more impressive resumes, but work alongside of them for a while and you quickly learn that not all developers are created or grown equally.
That's not to say there are not worthless American developers. Ideally you'd replace THEM with the brightest, best performing offshore people.
At least when hiring American developers (speaking from a US point of view), it's easier to ascertain the ability of an applicant than it is by email or phone overseas (and in some cases, you don't even speak to them).
Lastly, sometimes it's not such a bright idea to outsource a measurably valuable part of a company.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
English is becoming a second language in the US and Spanish is taking over more and more. Knowing Spanish might give a US IT worker a distinct advantage over say an Indian IT worker.
In quite a lot of cases, offshoring takes place because the offshore company has demonstrated strong skills in executing that kind of project. Jobs are not simply outsourced because of cost -- competency is a key factor. Many of the programmers in India for example have excellent academic qualifications and been part of groups that consistently deliver quality products repeatedly, on time.
My advice is to work more as a team rather than as an individual and also to improve your academic qualifications as much as you can.
In many cases, build a strong knowledge of the underlying business -- if you have a good feel for how the company makes money and you have ideas that can improve the bottom line, you are in with a better chance of keeping your job.
Consider this. Both India and China are in the middle of economic booms, but neither country is 'rich', as such. Therefore, it made sense for the Indians and the Chinese to work for US companies, and make a lot more than they could locally, despite the inconvenience and quality issues of working online.
However, the Indian and Chinese economies are reaching points where their own citizens are crying out for advanced services. Who will code them? Those Indian and Chinese programmers. Yes, eventually the Indian and Chinese economies will force salaries up, closer to US rates. When an Indian worker's salary reaches 75% of the comparable American's.. guess what? Outsourcing will not make economic sense anymore.
From my own experience of shopping around for coders, the rates the Indians charge have SHOT UP in the last year or two. Two years ago, if I were a big company, I would have outsourced what I could. Now? No way! The salary expectations of US workers have fallen, the Indian rates have tripled, and now it makes more economic sense to hire a local American worker!
But, as always, I suggest that American workers simply work on their natural benefits.. The benefits are that they can meet me 'in the flesh', that we share a culture and can understand each others' jokes (damn necessary on big projects!), and they tend to be smarter, and not just code monkeys. If you can reply to my e-mails within the work day, be pleasant on the phone, and sound excited about the projects I'm giving you.. you're going to be hired over a half price Indian any day of the week.
Web Hosting Reviews
Great. So after I get my $1000 and send $800 off for student loans I'll have $200 to buy food and decorate my cardboard box. Hooray!!
If an employer is already willing to overlook the obvious benefits of hiring locally, do you think he can be convinced otherwise.
1) Location. The programmer is nearby and likely in the same time zone making questions easier to ask and schedules easier to sync.
2) Language. While most Indian programmers speak English, they speak it with a heavy accent that is difficult enough to understand, even more so over the phone. Local programmers most likely speak with the same English dialect as the program manager
3) Labor laws. America has some of the most lax labor laws in the Western world. "Fire at will" laws allow employers to get rid of dysfunctional employees at the drop of a hat instead of having to deal with heavy government restrictions like in France and Sweden.
4) Guaranteed ownership of ideas. Local programmers are much less prone to simply taking their employer's ideas and reselling them to the next bidder. Foreign companies with vast distances between them and their hiring companies sometimes decide that because they wrote the software that they have the right to redistribute it. Lax foreign IP laws and (lack of) enforcement do nothing to discourage this kind piracy.
But in the end it is the hiring manager's decision. If he wants to go ahead and make the decision to forego all the benefits above in exchange for maybe 100,000 a year cost reduction, then there really isn't much you can do to stop him.
I have been pwned because my
If two people with the same skills charge different amounts, the one who charges less gets the job.
:-)
All you can do is move to a job where you need a skill that you have and they don't.
Unlike everyone else in the (1st) world, I really like the way more and more IT jobs are going offshore. That's because I don't create computer software with my brain, I create it with other people's brains - in other words I'm a manager.
Now I can get my (human) resources for less. Cool!
If I want a Bayesian decision engine written, why would I get Mr Pale Skinned Programmer to do it at three times the cost of Mr Dark Skinned Programmer? I mean, I'm not too fussed about their skin colour, timezone, or mother tongue. I am fussed about their ability to write good software to spec.
But then my Bayesian engine is a highly technical component. It requires someone with fairly good maths who can follow a formal spec in detail.
When I want to attach that engine to the website that my UK based customers use, then I hire someone in the UK. Because that bit of software requires being nearby for physical meetings with end users, it requires being able to write good English, and it requires at least some understanding of, say, the medical decision support systems market.
So, if you want local jobs, specialise in something that non-local people find it hard to get experience of. Move out of the purely technical fields, into areas where an understanding of the social setting is important.
Or, become a manager
-----
...and provide personal (on-site if necessary) service with lots of reassuring face-to-face meetings.
Build up relationships with customers who appreciate that you are reliable and have the ability to understand their needs first time around.
If your clients are the type that don't value that relationship and will send work OS just to save a couple of bucks, then maybe you don't want them on your books?
Then again, if you don't provide a reliable service, then why shouldn't the jobs go the eager masses abroad?
I'm a web developer. I'm already competing with template-style businesses, cheap developers abroad, clients' cousins who can do it cheap, and the like. Yet my (2-person) business in Australia is growing each year, has many long-term clients, and shows no sign of falling over due to losing clients to cheaper workers in India.
One thing we do with our key clients is to arrange review meetings (at least yearly) at which we run through the achievements of the last x months and lay down our plans and thinking for their sites in the months to come. I think they appreciate that we're there as their partner doing a lot of the thinking and strategy for them. We try to make sure that the money they're spending is providing them with an asset that gives them some return (whether it's PR or direct sales related). I can't imagine that many of them would even think of taking the work away from us and sending it overseas where they would be starting a working relationship from scratch, and have less a chance of personal service from people who really understands their business first-hand.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Eduction, Education, Education.
Simple as that. Be better at what you (we) do. Keep going to school, at least take a class per year; if you have a BS, go for a Masters, if you have a Masters, go for a PHD. There is nothing better for job security as being able to do a job where it's very hard to find someone else who can do it, or can do it as well as you can. There's nothing that saves money like doing something right the first time. If you have confidence in the person you hired's ability to do something right the first time, then it doesn't make sense to take the risk of hiring someone else.
RandomAndInteresting.comdefending the world from stupidity since 1979
Under a capitalist system the chief responsibility of a company is to make money for its shareholders. Looking after the rest of society is a very secondary issue and currently most companies only look at this to comply with legislation or when running marketing campaigns (profit again being the main motivator).
The fundamental problem here is that companies are able to make money in ways that do not benefit society. We need to ensure this is not the case by changing a lot of fundamental systems, and this is itself fundamentally difficult.
So any move towards lowering the standard of living in a country, for example by outsourcing to a third world country should not be rewarded. I don't know what the answer is. Taxation and legislation are the only two ways I see this happening but I'm no expert in this area.
We should definitely be striving to raise standards of living worldwide, otherwise you have large groups of people with nothing to lose wanting to take the wealth out of wealthier nations. Never a good plan no matter how good the technology you defend yourself with is.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
While the goal of IT for the last 3 decades seems to have been "how can I get a computer over there to do something while I am still here", I think that the only advantage that we can exert is physical on-site presence. We can make house calls like the old doctors did. Someone in India, as skilled as they may be, is not likely to fly for 14 hours to come format a disk for someone, or fix their printer. Don't think that some of these tasks are below you. This is what will set you apart from your counterpart in India.
Why doesn't anything interesting happen when I have mod points?
This is just protectionism, and will backfire.
This will force the US based companies to pay more, making them even less competative on the global marketplace.
So rather then just outsourcing a portion of the company, they move the entire company or workgroup offshore. Or they cover this extra overhead and remain less competative.
Then why is China doing so well? They have very protectionist policies as do most of our other trading partners.
We are being forced to play on an uneven playing field.
The industry as a whole won't do anything about it because it is run as a top-down concern, not on behalf of programmers. Unfashionable thought it may be to say it, there are only two things that can improve the situation for First World programmers: (1) a strong labour movement with worker representation through unions, or (2) government intervention.
Anything else is just wishful thinking: the bottom line is that companies don't give a toss unless it's about money. And that's not a criticism of the people that run the big companies. If it wasn't them making those decisions, they would quickly be trampled down by other companies willing to employ the most efficient tactics to succeed.
Although it's unthinkable in this age of free market orthodoxy, laissez-faire economics and the constant preference for business over democracy (they call this 'small government' -- small only on action for the people, of course, while big on tanks, planes and bombs), my suggestion would be a system of punitive tarrifs against countries that lack statutory decent worker's protection. (Oh, except that would include you guys in the States -- whoops ;)
[ UNSIGNED NOT NULL ]
If you can't be more productive (in terms defined by your employer) than someone in India, then you aren't worth more to your employer than someone in India. It's as simple as that.
So, what can you do to increase your productivity? Really understanding what you're trying to build is a good start. Face-to-face communication is a big plus, too. (Studies show that 55% of communication is in facial expression and body language, 38% is in tone of voice, and only 7% is in the words.)
Quality counts. Code that actually works counts. Production-quality code counts, so that your employer doesn't have to hire somebody else to turn your code into something that can actually be shipped.
Since the current administration has the interests of big business above those of the common IT worker; the IT worker has to become a guerilla of sorts.
A friend of mine who lived through the Cultural Revolution in China where his parents (Norwegians) were thrown out of Shanghai. Their palace of a home had to be left behind. This family were totally disenfranchised and deported penniless.
From this experience he taught me that "your only security is your own flexibility, currencies collapse, and governments fall."
The IT worker in the U.S. is going to have to use the immense brainpower it took to become good at his/her craft to find something else to do. Checking out other industries where there is a dearth of qualified workers is a good start. There are worse things in life than becoming a nurse. That field needs good help. Look around, find a "hole" and fill it. Trying to go against such a large trend is counterproductive.
This is not trolling, this is wishing my IT brethren good lives with lots of money. Remember that one time buggy whip production companies had to go out of business. In a way the home grown I T worker has the same problems as they did.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
I would suggest more than just being fluent in English, being fluent in communication can be an amazing strength. Interpersonal skills, presentation abilities and even understanding of some of the research about interface design can all help you in ways that you never thought possible.
My blog
1) There is nothing that IT workers in the U.S., as a group can do, that they can't do in India as well. Don't say that they can't be at the office in person, that is not my point.
2) Politicians could save the jobs. But I doubt that they want to. If they agreed with the idea of trying to keep jobs within the country they would have set a precedent with the textile industry. You'd still have your IT job, but you'd pay $400 for a t-shirt.
3) The weak dollar and the strong rupie is your friend. This is how you will lose your buying power, without really noticing it. And it is how you will become competitive with the Indians again. And this is why the U.S. economy will grow slowly and it is the reason that the Indian economy will boom. They are catching up.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
Perhaps it would be better to suggest more social skills in general.
We spent so much time distancing ourselves from management and users (granted, it's justified and understandable) that they end up not caring who (or where) we are.
This is a nice idea, but it won't replace all the lost jobs. No one needs a project manager for each developer. I imagine most project managers are over 4 - 12 developers. Where are those other 3 - 11 people going to find work?
But unfortunately it isn't you who determines what your effort is worth ... just as it is not any producer who determines what his products are worth to the consumer. The consumer (in this case, your employer) determines what your product (your labor) is worth to him.
You are perfectly free to demand high wages (what you think you're worth) -- and employers are perfectly free to not hire you. If you do not wish to work for the going wages, don't work ... just don't complain about being worth more than you were offered, because you're not.
[Note: Nothing in here is meant as a personal attack. I could just as easily have said "If I do not wish to work for the going wages, I won't work ... I just won't complain about being worth more than I'm being paid, because I'm not." And no, it has nothing to do with having low self esteem.]
The Ezine Directory
- Improve your communication skills. India's native language isn't english, and sometimes that's painfully apparent. The better domestic IT workers are at articulating their thoughts, the broader the language barrier will appear.
- Be more responsive in the work place. India is in a very different time zone. Face to face answers to inquiries could potentially go a long way. Why wait until tomorrow for a response?
- Be more 'available'. This may mean an extra hour of work out of the day. Maybe don't go out for lunch, eat in so you have the apppearance of being at the office longer. Get there earlier, leave later. Ugh I hate suggesting this, but it's funny how bosses think sitting at a desk == productivity.
Enough participants here can make a big difference. "Yeah, you could spend less with them, but you won't be getting what WE offer!"
"Derp de derp."
Look at what happened to steel workers. Look what happened to auto manufacturers. Then find another career. Nothing short of govt intervention is going to stop the work going to the cheaper countries. You only chance is to work for Microsoft - they will last the longest, but I can assure you even they are already making plans to move out of this country. The only IT work that remain here is 1) work that requires on site hands on support or 2) secure/classified work. I assure you, there are too many developers for those positions already.
It's a good time to become something else. Make a bet on the next big fad - my bet is on biotech, although nano-tech may beat it. Look for careers that have inroads to those fields.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
Rule 1 - Companies are in business for the purpose of maximizing the CEO's net worth. The CEO has spent years brown-nosing, back-stabbing, and delegating the blame, and now it's time to make some serious dough! The CEO is supported in this by the board of directors which consists of other CEO's (quid-pro-quo time), ex-political hacks, and the odd clueless celeb, or academic chosen for their docility.
Rule 2 - Wall Street will forgive anything provided you beat earnings estimates by one cent a share. Fire the staff, move operations to North Korea, level and pave an orphanage, eat puppies and kittens - no problem as long as the you beat the analysts estimates.
Rule 3 - Honest politicians stay bought - political favor can be purchased by carefully organized campaign donations by an industry. How else could you explain things like H1-B, or the DMCA. Do you really believe that voters demanded these laws?
Rule 4 - Screw the customer - used to be that (better) companies competed on quality and customer service. Those companies are dinosaurs, and likely are now extinct. All that matters is price. Quality doesn't matter, support doesn't matter, service doesn't matter - just price. Hell, you can even harass or sue your customers. And if you can form a cartel - price doesn't matter either*
Rule 5 - You are expendable. You are a cost, if your function can be provided by someone cheaper either here or overseas - hasta la vista baby.
Rule 6 - Yesterday was yesterday. Doesn't matter if you produced something that made the company $100 million last year - that was last year. All that matters is what you cost today.
So where does that leave you - your options are as follows:
1) Got a good speaking voice, a pleasant manner, a degree of ruthlessness Genghis Kahn would envy, a diagnosis of sociopathy, and most important; a good head of hair. You might be CEO material.
2) Otherwise, practice and learn one of the following phrases: "Would you like fries with that?" or "WELCOME to Wal-Mart!".
* However, the government MAY force you to refund $13.86 to consumers. Think of it as a cost of business.
Seriously, go over to www.growbiointensive.org, and buy their book. Use it to learn how to grow your own food. Then LEASE -- don't buy -- a 5-acre piece of farmland for 50 years. (50 years x 5 acres x $30/acre = $7500). Get it going with biointensive farming, and feed yourself.
Forget working for others, until you get a decent offer. Forget about buying all of the latest and greatest, and keeping up with the Joneses and helping the economy.
If our country's shakers and movers (both economic and government) do not see fit to pay a family wage, then they shouldn't expect to do business with the rest of us. Working for a wage is like any other business transaction: if the transaction is not profitable to all involved, it shouldn't happen.
I'm really serious. Besides that, you can take your farming skills with you wherever you go, and really supplement your lifestyle.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Quick background. I'm an Australian programmer, and, in the height of the .com boom, a lot of work was being outsourced here. I was over in San Fran talking to some Development Managers and CEOs of some fairly respectable corporations. They quoted me some insane figures, stuff like graduate programmers wages going from 40K to 90K...and having to pay 130-150K for an intermediate programmer...which was why they were sending the work down under. They just couldn't justify spending that kind of cash. So, my question, and I'll try to make this not too flamable. If U.S. developers were prepared to profit from market demand, and push their wages up (and think back a few years, the wages were stupidly high...you'd be hard pressed finding a developer that could _honestly_ justify the 1999-2000 wages)...why should you expect the same companies that were being screwed over a few years back to have any loyalty now? This is something I would actually appreciate an honest, well thought out response to. Because as someone from outside the U.S., I'm inclined to say "serves you right"...so I'd like to see what I'm missing in the equation.
Where is the advantage to the average American in offshoring? It looks like it is helping the people at the top of the companies get very wealty while hurting the wages of the middle class.
BusinessWeek has once more surveyed executives of major corporations, and the folks at United for a Fair Economy (www.ufenet.org) have used its data to calculate that the average CEO collected $155,769 per week, compared with the $517 earned weekly by the average production worker. This means CEOs took in $301 for every dollar earned by rank-and-file employees.
I see so many of those particular professions are in the service or retail sectors - so what happens when the middle class is no longer able to afford many retail products, or eating out at places other than fast food joints (if even that much)? We can't exactly be a nation of food servers, cash-register-jockies, and appliance salespeople - such folks don't have a lot of disposable income, and the upper-crust will only shop so much.
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
My PHB likes to use Indians for outsourcing because of the "culture differences". Personally, I would call "culture differences" an act of discrimination. He told me that it is easy to "boss" (as in push around) an Indian programmer. He said an American is more likely to stand up for themselves or ask to many questions.
We outsourced to Russian programmers for a while but we switch to India programmers. I was really impressed with the Russian programming and they did a very good job! The only bad part was that they commented their code in Russian. We ended up dropping the Russian guys because my boss said they wasted too much time when they wanted clarification on requirements before they started coding.
Fact is that in the 90s it became accepted that spending 3 months learning a programming language made you a "programmer" commanding 80-100k per year. There were enough tasks around and low hanging fruit that everyone could get a job. Fact is, now no one will pay you to write another editor, or code another HTML page. So -- guess what -- times have changed, and if you are not a true software professional and skilled in the craft, you will be and deserve to be hit by outsourcing. When the apprentices have been trimmed, the craftsmen will still have jobs.
In our startup all my programmers make above 95k per year -- the top guys much more -- and they are local. However, no one has a lower qualification than a Master's in CS or EE. Interviews take a full day and then you get probation for two months. The top guys are faster and cheaper by any metric than an outsourcing (we tried Russians, and Indians), even with some outsourced programmers working for $2k a year, some for up to $60k per year. And these outsourced guys were hand-selected and pretty damn good.
Why?
You can divide guys/ladies with a future in the US programming community into two groups -- true hackers, who read pattern books at night, can hack Unix kernel as necessary and play with the TCP/IP stack for fun. They can code in a day what takes others a week and yet make it extensible and bug free. Their skill will save their jobs, since it allows the company to reliably deliver.
Their being local also bring an ability to capture business logic and hence an understanding of the business as it grows will diffuse into this group's code. This we found is impossible with outsourcing. We call these supercoders. They re-use some core libraries and use tools to maximize their performance. They know HOW to code complexity and keep codebases under control.
The other group that have a future are good programmers, but focus on laying out and designing the software architecture, or developing algorithms -- IP. Most have EE or Math backgrounds. In short, they tell the supercoders WHAT to code. They are secure in a company that designs products, because no outsourced company will do your thinking for you or build your IP for you.
If you are in neither group, why do you think you deserve better pay than anyone else who went through four years of college, or acquired a professional skill -- such as a teacher?
How many times should we pay for another string
Yep. Its called local unskilled and semi-skilled labor. Don't feel like going to college? Welcome to your new job. Don't feel like working hard, hiya. Don't want to compete? Hows it going.
But even this is slightly off the mark, because General Contractors, Plumbers, Electricians, etc already make more than your standard IT flunky. More than your standard IT Manager. And those jobs aren't going anywhere.
But if you don't want to compete, you will be a waitress. So? You thought you were going to get paid the current equivalent of approx 100k/yr to work on an assembly line? It kills me that people think jobs will be given to them, that they can live in the neighborhood they grew up in and get everything handed to them with no effort. Wake the fuck up. If your job gets sent overseas, then you chose poorly; the handwriting was on the wall and you didn't read it.
I am a little bothered when engineers go wanting for jobs, because we didn't get to party that hardy (usually) in college. But even there, I think it has more to do with folks not getting offered a job that they like, in the place they want to live. I see enough work for folks who want to work and planned ahead; most of the crying seems to be coming from people who didn't have any savings, made poor choices, and want something handed to them.
andy
Civic pride. Keeping your dollars as close to you as possible, by giving them to companies that are close to you, keeps that money within your local economy, ultimately benefiting you as well. What 'close' means can vary a lot. It can mean buying books from your local bookstore instead of B&N, so more of that capital goes to the same guy who may spend it at the very company you work for. Or may buy coffee from the coffee shop you like, keeping it in business.
Or it could mean, as it does here, keeping money and jobs within your country. Keeping the trade deficit less up (can't say down, can we?) Researching which companies outsource and giving them your patronage instead of buying a Dell might keep a laid off Dell techie with three more years experience than you from getting a job you otherwise would have been given.
Going out of your way to support companies whose policies you support is an admirable thing to do. It encourages corporate values that go beyond shareholder value, in a culture where corporate ethics need a lot of shaking up.
One thing that a local worker can do that a foreign worker won't do is care.
Care about the end user of the application -- provide him a good user experience. Care about the ultimate ROI of the project -- not just your cut. Care about the application's security. Care about the stuff that's not mentioned in the specification or the stuff that's underspecified. Care about the person hiring you and whether that person is happy he did. Care about doing a good job. Care about meeting your schedule.
When something isn't going right on your project, and you're frustrated, explain that you'd "like to do a good job and [whatever factor] is going to compromise that".
You get the idea. Your foreign competition won't be able to compete on motivation because he's not there. He can't see the big picture. There's a disconnect, and no matter how much he cares, he won't be able to overcome the distance.
I mean you can find tons of programmers that can churn out code if given tight constraints that works ok. That's all well and good. You find far less programers that can come up with unique solutions to new products and generate GOOD code that gets the job done.
./ has worked with many of these kind of people before, and every IT person has supported them. These would be the programmers that can't even deal with basic system tasks, or the computer engineers that can't trouble shoot simple computer errors.
I work for an Electrical and Computer Engineering department and I'd say that, as stereo types go, the uncreative one is reasonably fair of most of the foriegn students. We have a very large number of Indian students, probably even the majority. They all tend to quite well in their classess. However, none that I have ever met are geeks. They are all here to get an engineering degree because that will get them a good job. They learn what they need to learn to pass a class, which usually doesn't require creative thought or much application.
Graduates like these form the group of people that often get called "code monkeys" (or I guess circut monkeys in this case). They know the part of engineering they've been taught, and are good at doing routine tasks. Now these may be complex tasks, involving lots of calculation, etc, but still routine. They are not very good at being presented with an open ended problem and being required to come up with a solution from scratch, do all the calculations, and then implement it.
I'm sure every engineer and programmer on
Now there are no race limitations on this, code monkeys come from, and are, everywhere. They are generally the people that are in the field for the money, not because they are intrested in, and just go to school. They don't do anything to get a further education (like intern, or hold a different, but related, tech job), just do what is required to graduate.
What I do notice is that a disperportinate amount of the foriegn students are of this type. They are going to school for an engineering degree as a means to an end for their future, not because they really care about what is being tought.
Well, the easiest way to get a leg up on people like that is to CARE about what you do. Learn about and I mean REALLY learn. Understand why you do something, how it relates to what else you've learned, how it is applied, etc. As the parent said, be something of a rennaisance man. Don't JUST code or JUST design circuts. If you are a CE guy, take some programming classess and learn how the code works. Then work to understand the relationship between the code you write and the circuts you design. Get a job doing tech support (universities usually have tons of these for students). Learn how it all actually comes together in the applied world, and flex your problem solving skills.
There are not so many people that can do that. From all the stories I've heard of outsourcing experiences and from what I've observed in students, I think those people are in even shorter supply overseas. They are also needed greatly. A good program doesn't just happen by a bunch of code monkeys sitting down and bashing away, it happens by talented problem solvers designing a workable system, and doleing out the basic tasks to the code monkeys.
The pro-outsourcing people don't really address that, it's more fun to scream ISOLATIONIST at you.
Agreed. You should see employer's faces when I tell them that I'm pursuing a Bachelor's of Fine Arts while preparing for my MS in CS.
They love it.
Why shouldn't they? You just told them you understand more of their business process than "just a programmer" does. Add in business and management skills and a bit of experience, and it just gets sweeter.
Why shouldn't we be broadening our base? research has shown that those who are naturally gifted in math tend to think with both sides of their brain and be left handed (which tends to signify that they tend to the right brain - look at % of students in art school that are left handed... nutty). Critical thought books talk about how the best thought is the thought that is both logical and intuitive (Art of Thinking for instance).
What I'm saying is it's sick how art school is better at teaching creative/critical thought than science schools are. Esp in any engineering degree. It's like they're anti-right brain. No value to intuition. Just logic. My art teachers so far encourage you to balance the two, and usually away from what you're more comfortable with. They want you strong on both sides so you can go deeper and don't get "stuck". Heck, the Visual Communication program encourages Calc. as an elective. When's the last time you saw a CS Dept say "Take sculpture, or Color and Design Theory, it'll help you in your intuitive skills"?
Anyway, I think we should study Visual Communication, Music, Philosiphy, Religion. Anything that can get us thinking intutively along with our logical thought. I think it will benefit our terribly myopic profession as a whole.
It is really sad how just about all big business only thinks of the current quarter. As they continue to strip jobs from Americans, that is that much less money in the economy to come back to them. Think about all the crap big business can get away with. They cannot vote, yet they can still bribe for laws through "campaign contributions". They try to maximize profits by charging the most that the market will bear for their products/services. Yet they drop American workers to save any tiny amount of money they can. They hire the most shady accountants to pay the least amout of taxes that they can get away with. They abuse patents and copyrights as a game to get ahead in business instead fo the purpose for which they were created, to enhance the public domain. Many of the CEO's even give themselves a million dollars or more for turning deals like laying off workers to save money. What was that one airline that recently asked their workers to take a pay cut while the CEO was going to give himself like a million dollar bonus for the deal?
We need a new political party in the USA that will clean up the politics and put big business back on track. The Republicans are all just about paid for by big bisness. The Democrats are all bought by other special interests and the Libertarians would just let everything go in a free-for-all. I don't see any solution in site, other then hitting the books and staying on step ahead of overseas workers.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
I did it myself. I changed from pure old-fashioned programmer and I became a pre-sales engineer for the networking industry, and later a trainer. I was able to susrvive the crash right here in Silicon Valley (being myself a foreigner) while a bunch of other people was being laid off, never making less than 120K/yr.
I acknowledge I was lucky too, and I was in the right place at the right time, but here is my advice: cut your hair, shave, and put on your suit. Learn to speak and "sell". If you have a direct face-to-face communication with your customer, you'll be the last one to be shot.
As an I.T. worker myself, sure, I'm interested in keeping up with what's happening in my field. But at the same time, I think I've seen the same basic topic on Slashdot at least 10 different times now - all with slightly different initial "takes" on the theme.
What can the U.S. I.T. worker do to remain competitive? Simple, folks! Hone those communications skills! The most important skill you possess that the foreigners generally DON'T is the ability to speak clear, fluent English, and understand complex problems, even when the person describing them to you isn't doing a very good job of it.
You can be the most efficient programmer in the world, but if you can't follow directions and explain your progress (and pitfalls) while you're assigned to a project, you're not really wanted.
Why is all the outsourcing of helpdesk jobs failing miserably (causing firms like Dell to bring some of it back to the U.S.)? Customers don't like fighting a communications barrier when they're already frustrated and need assistance!
There's no doubt in my mind that some of the best and brightest software developers are in other countries. Some of the best remote control/remote desktop type packages I've seen for Windows come from Russia, for example. (By contrast, the U.S. firms offer bloated, inferior, and overpriced solutions like "PC Anywhere".) IMHO, if they're providing a better product than we can make here in the U.S. - so be it. Support whatever's "best of breed". But U.S. firms aren't going to see real gains in the long run if they "outsource, outsource, outsource!" with salary as the only motivator.
I really have no big worries about this whole thing.... The "dot bomb" was much more harmful to my career than this outsourcing trend will ever be.
Is that the US programmer/engineer generally has a lot more real project experience than the offshore engineers. Of course, if the offshoring trend continues it will be just the opposite in a few years.
Most offshoring projects are 'on-the-job-training' for the foreign engineers who work on them. A former co-worker of mine was recently sent over to India to do some training in the Indian office, he said that one of the first things he realized was that he needed to teach a course in basic C programming.
The strange thing is that none of these companies would hire unqualified workers in the US and then train them on the job. They expect us to know the intimate details of obscure technologies before they'll even consider hiring us. Yet they're hiring unskilled foreign workers. Sure it seems like they're saving money in the short term, but it's a risky bet, isn't it?
Isn't it great that all these US corporations are suddenly so altruistic that they're going over to 3rd world countries to train the workers there to do highly skilled work. It's almost like the Peace Corps or something.... Oh, wait, it would be altruistic if they weren't throwing US workers out of their jobs.
In Seattle, IT workers with seven to ten years of experience are a dime a dozen. The same can be said for places like LA, Chicago, and many other major cities.
:)
On the other hand, how likely is it that there will be someone with your skills and experience in Indiana, or Wyoming?
There are many places in the US, where IT jobs are not getting outsourced, and not getting filled for the simple reason that there just aren't any qualified IT workers near bye.
Translation: You'll be hard to replace
This signature has Super Cow Powers
There's more in life to worry about. If you find that you can't compete, or that it's no longer feasible financially, then look into fields that are. Get started with real estate. Become a car salesman. Become a plumber. There are many lucrative jobs that are here to stay, it doesn't matter whether or not your extroverted.
Every career has a learning curve and it's safe to say that IT has one of the steeper ones. So go, find something else to do. Maybe somewhere down the line someone will realize that it was a mistake to force this dilemma on you in the first place; when it no longer pays to get a technical degree, perhaps then someone will realize that a strategic mistake with lasting consequences has been made.
In any market, there are two general ways to compete: price and quality. Competing on price is always a losing battle for all players except the largest; therefore, the way to compete successfully long-term is almost always by providing a better product or service.
Specifically regarding IT and other professional positions, the trick lies in possessing deep, domain-specific knowledge. The more focused the domain, the better. Your domain could be intimate knowledge of a company's specific procedures and systems, a specific technical platform, or, best of all, technology applied to a specific industry. If you're at the top of your game in, say, health club technology, you'll always have work. It's a wide enough field to have a lot of clients or employers, but narrow enough that you'll likely have little competition.
While you master one domain, it's important to maintain a "bell curve" of related and diversified skills. At the top of the bell curve are your core competencies, while further down the curve are other, lesser skill areas that you could easily move into as market demands shift. Know everything about a couple of things, be good at a few more, and and know how to spell a bunch of other stuff.
...of poor campesinos out of work in mexico and some other central american countries, oddly enough, and not much known to the US public I think. All of a sudden these campesinos couldn't compete with the larger american corporate mechanized farms. whoops. They could still grow their families food of course, but their cash crops became undervalued in their own countries. Result was they streamed north, literally by the millions, in search of work. Once here, they flooded the labor pool,already increasing in size from the blue collar manufacturing jobs being outsourced, and those blue collars trying to compete with each other for replacement jobs, many in service, agriculture, and so on. wham, the two forces hit, result, big drop in pay and increased living costs all around.. Dropping wages for those already here, making a mockery of national soverignty and "borders" and putting a huge strain on suddenly over whelmened local government support structures, such as public schools and community hospitals, water supply and sewerage treatment, etc. One of the results here was that already poor or semi poor rural areas got even poorer, as property taxes had to be raised to pay for all this increased infrastructure cost, the speed of influx overwhelemed slower, planned growth, at the same time the previous residents found massive increased competition for low income housing in a shrinking job market.
In short, it's been an almost complete disaster for all the countries involved, because of the speed of the changes. Even manufacturing facilities transferred to mexico, only lasted a few years when they were moved again to yet another nation, leaving more workers stuck with no jobs after getting their hopes up for a few years.
It's nuts, and has been pointed out, it's really only gone to benefit* the top 1 or 2% of the worlds richest.
*temporary cheaper consumer goods "advantages" are offset by longer term economic decline caused by loss of actual purchasing power due to job loss, underemployment or shrinking wages accompanied by inflationary monetary policies and over extended credit all around. In many nations, the IMF/world Bank conmen have had a hand in it, by loaning "money" they poof create out of thin air and using the borrower's nations natural resources and other assets as collateral. It's international loan sharking on a massive scale, usury gone amok.
The whole deal is interconnected, quite complex, but the gestalt is, yanking around the worlds economies to here and there instead of concentrating on *each nation building a core vertically-integrated, diverse and self-supporting economy FIRST* is causing severe global economic problems that will in a lot of cases lead to even more severe "boom and bust" scenarios that historically, once again, only go to benefit you know who, the connected string pullers who are already rich as croesus..
In short, it's a scam. They rotate around the bones they throw to the various populations then move on to the next set of suckers.
Do what you can do get a security clearance. I've got one, courtesy of the USAF, but friends of mine with no military background whatsoever left telecom jobs and were able to get a security clearance. You got that, you're gold.
But you have to get hired into the position FIRST if not in the military. It is just like any other job which everyone and their dog are trying to get.
Table-ized A.I.
The problem is no that Indians are entering our Job market - the problem is the Balance of jobs is shifting.
It is the duty of government to insure balance - because individuals simply cannot effect change. Slogans only whitewash the problem - and the truth is most "buy american" bumper stickers are printed in taiwan.
The real goal should be to figure out how American Investment in India can create More Total Jobs and it would help immensly if the Indians were consumers in the new market as well as producers.
AIK
Hey everyone, it's easy to make sure you don't get outsourced: provide value to your business.
No part of the business that is deemed "essential" would be outsourced. This means that IT is not considered essential, and it's not contributing to the business as a whole.
This is true of most IT - how much value-add do you bring? Do you actually help make the business better, or do you sit around talking about Lusers and how dumb they are? How those business people are morons? How they're so stupid they can't even turn on their PCs?
Are you a BOFH? Then you'll become an unemployed BOFH, and a happy worker someone else will do a better job than you.
Are you actively involved with your business groups, and understand how you help them make money? Then you won't get outsourced. Period.
Outsourcing is the business striking back at the geeks. The geeks have held sway for too long, basically removing value from businesses by being totally unresponsive to business needs. And if you can't get what you want at home, you go somewhere else. Its' that simple.
The U.S. government petered away its manufacturing base by representing the few, the wealthy, and now its blind subservience to the rich threatens to squander our intellectual capital. I would encourage every American who reads this to write to his congressman and senator to express his concern, except that doing so didn't save our factory jobs and it won't save our engineering jobs.
<sarcasm> Personally, I'm going to write to my senator to see if he has any openings for henchmen. After all, its better to be a houseboy than a field slave. I think I may use the immortal words of Homer Simpson in my plea, 'Listen to me, Mister Big-Shot. If you're looking for the kind of employee that takes abuse, and never sticks up for himself, I'M YOUR MAN! You can treat me like dirt, and I'll still kiss your butt and call it ice cream! And if you don't like it, I can change!' I could throw in some comments about Rush Limbaugh being some kind of genius and how sending jobs overseas will make commodities ever cheaper benefiting those Americans who will still have an income source. </sarcasm> Think it'll work?
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
And if you go to school now, you can be in the prime of your career 20 years from now when the baby boom busts and you find the unemployment line at the pediatric unit wraps around the block.
Before Dean was submarined by rest of the Democrat candidates, he talked about reforming payroll taxes.
It's a shame he was so beaten up over this, because he was right on.
Payroll taxes punish employment. The tax rate might seem small (about 6.5%), but considering most corporate revenue goes to pay wages, this becomes huge money.
Further consider just how poorly corporations compensate shareholders. For the S&P 500, the average dividend rate is just 1.5%, so a 6.5% tax on wages is gigantic relatively speaking.
It's obvious that when a company has a choice, they're going to try to avoid this tax and that means greater unemployment here.
Even when they don't have an outsourcing option, they always have a downsizing option.
Dean was right and it's ashame politics ruined a great chance for discussion about reform.
We have been discussing this over at http://www.windley.com in the forum. Look, we aren't going to stop outsourcing, so lets try some practical suggestions Here are some things that can be done: The US Government can get the US Trade Representative to make a deal with say, the Chinese. They have industries (agriculture, soft drinks, etc) that are suffering from US competition as bad as the IT industries are suffering here. (Both countries are getting totaled in the manufacturing industry) The WTO has no rules on this, the Chinese could raise prices for IT work, and we could raise our agricultural prices (for example) so that both industries in both countries could develop. There are good arguments why this is in both countries best interests. The government can help create semi private companies that could employ most US IT workers without violating the WTO. Doesn't require legislation, doesn't require funding, just some Congessional legislative comittee to hold DOL's feet to the fire to get them to act. The J.O.B.S. bill contains funding provisions and the US Department of Labor has identified plenty of already funded but unused programs for this same purpose according to Mr. Samples of DOL at an AEI conference on CSPAN. What sort of companies should the DOL incubate? Here is a one example: The Veterans Adminstration spent 20 years and tens of millions of dollars developing VISTA, a free OSS hospital admin suite used around the world in thousands of hospitals. DOL could create a base infrastructure company (a la Eclipse) that would provide the toolkit for adding new health tools. We could minimize out healthcare costs (a major national priority) and prepare for the aging baby boomers at the same time. Maybe even help solve the Medicare crisis. I have a number of other ideas about possible companies, contact me if you want to hear about them. Here is another suggestion: The major difference in labor costs is the relative costs of living. Laws that promote alternative COL mechanisms like LETS exist. Military workers, for example, get access to PX's and other facilities that reduce their cost of living. Why not allow companies to become reserve "Army Corp Of Engineer" units so those facilities are available to them? IT workers could be competitive with less actual pay if their costs went down commensurably. There are too many other things the US could do than I could list here. That isn't the problem. First and foremost, our leaders have to decide that they are willing to fight for U.S. IT workers. Right now, they don't have the will. When they finally do, all that is necessary is for them to instruct the DOL to make it happen, or else. They might want to look at,say, General Arnold of WWII and Boeing for an real world example of how to make it happen. The US is suffering from a failure of imagination and will, not macroeconomic forces. That's the problem that really needs to be addressed.
The fallacy of this viewpoint is the assumption that exploitation and coercion are separate. Maybe in some airy theoretical world, but not on this particular planet. The problem with the fallacious viewpoint is that you can use it to justify child labor, inhuman working conditions, and chattel slavery. "Hey, it's just 'exploitation,' the same way I exploit my skills or the farmer exploits the land, so stop complaining and shut up, okay?"
Comparing the "exploitation" of your skills with, say, child labor in Hong Kong -- that's just word games. There is very little exploitation of human labor in the Third World (or, to use the new politically correct term, "the South) without overt or implicit coercion, not to mention numerous human rights abuses.
"Don't blame the corporations for doing what all corporations do. You might as well blame the wolf for killing the sheep." Please! Corporations are human enterprises, not imponderable forces of nature. If we have problesm with corporations, the solution is not to sigh heavily the way we would about an earthquake, but to change the institution of the corporation. It's not like trying to move a continent or stop the sun in its tracks, and to make it sound impossible is to be complicit with the abuse.
That seems entirely to depend on whether or not you're an executive at a company employing people overseas or not...
=)
there is nothing you can do to compete with low cost labor.
I mean if the people making the decision don't realize that every job they export is exporting the countries tax base as well and in turn that means that they will eventually have to pay higher personal taxes..oops who am I kidding they won't pay more since they own the Republicans so they will just jack the taxes up on the few remaining middle class and poor.
So vote for god sake and make sure that these weasels are stopped before they destroy the nation
Wage-slavery will always be a race to the bottom, to see who can undercut the poorest nation in the world, but entrepreneurialism creates new jobs, new opportunities, new wealth. If you don't want to compete with the wage scales of Zimbabwe or Mongolia, you're not going to want to do commoditizable labor. Instead, rely on your capacity for invention and your marketing savvy (or ability to organize the invention and/or marketing savvy of others) to create new lines of business.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Simply put whatever programing position you hold if you want to be more valuble than outsourced workers, learn your bussiness. I mean who do you program for the automtive industry, the chemical industry, the film industry? Learn the bussiness, the process and why. What i am trying to say is learn the in's and out's of what your program is designed to do realy well. Not just how to program it, but the actual workflows, ect that make up the actual work. Not just programing a generic metadata driven application but acutaly knowing the metadata. Realy get to know the bussiness drivers and stake for your applictions. This is a big advantage for those of us in industrial/corporate programing
Or maybe neither of them succeed... but many others will.
One thing is certain: neither would have had the income they have had it not been for that "exploitation." These are two diverse ends of the very worse of that (very) bad exploitation, but they will both have the same result: an increased economic status for the individual and, ultimately, the community - which will inevitably result in the people of that community cracking down on their perceived injustices. Either way, it's better than Yuan's family starving to death or Sveta freezing under a bridge with a sack of spray paint in her lap.
This isn't an excuse - it's a simple fact of life. Yeah, it would be great if everyone in the world could do whatever the fuck they want and we all had whatever we need provided to us and life was shiny and sunny all the time - but we don't live in that world. The tools of this new economy help bring us all a little closer to that end but we still have a long way to go. And, in the bide, most of the complaining I hear - just like yours - amounts to litle more than a moralizing defense of your own self interest. Yeah, it sucks that Yuan makes fifty cents a day and lives in a cardboard box and little Sveta has to suck boris' dick when she's not in front of the camera - but at least Yuan can feed his family without having to huddle on the roadside at night and Sveta has a warm bed to sleep in and proper medical attention when she needs it. And no one is forcing you to support Boris OR Nike.
Consider this: I practice what I preach - I avoid wal-mart like the plague, damn near everything I use in my life is recycled cast-offs (from the car I drive to the laptops I reurbish and resell to the vintage clothes I buy). Even my entertainment comes from artists who trade online and my custom made clothes come from an online tailor - and in both these cases that usually means overseas. So am I to be damned for supporting artists who get essentially nothing (as opposed to nearly nothing, as in the domestic releases) from their recordings? Or for buying tailored clothing from one of those "sweat shops" in Taiwann that employs garment workers at a premium because the clothes they make all have to be custom cut to my (very large) measurements and stitched to my preference?
And what are the alternatives? Make my own clothes? From cloth made in China or Pakistan? Or grow my own cotton, have it ginned, then pay a weaver? Where does it end? And who benefits from me growing my own clothing? How does it help my neighbor if my entire life is so consumed with basic self sufficiency that I end up living in economic poverty? I can afford to pay Yuan to stitch my clothing - I don't even know of a tailor in my own community that actually makes the clothes they sell. And I'm not going to buy "off the rack" imports then pay for alterations - as I already pointed out I can get that done better, cheaper, by doing the import part myself.
So what of you? I'm not asking you this to attack you, I'm asking you this because I know where I'm coming from, but I have very little insight into your approach - and from what I see in your post, it just looks like more of the same cheap talk.
Coercive exploitation is a bad thing - but what makes the bad stu
The book is "The New Ruthless Economy" by Simon Head and there is a sample chapter online at this URL (PDF file)
I work in IT and this book made me think about the situation in a way I hadn't before.
The bottom line is that there may be no way to stop this bleeding of decent jobs overseas short of legislation. But a little protectionism might be in order in this situation.. But it might be futile.. But even so, one way to go might be thinking more long term.
The corporate structure also should be changed to make cororations more accountable to the community. This might require changing our participation in some international treaties which override the democratic process. For example, companies can sue countries that impede free trade under the NAFTA treaties and others. This was done to prevent countries from imposing limits on corporate power through the ballot box. See yesterdays New York Times for more on this..
We need to do a cost analysis of the full cost of exporting jobs overseas. Because eventually, a lot of people will be going on welfare, etc. if the bleeding continues. It wont just be IT workers. Basically, a large percentage of people in the so called "service industry" and managerial jobs are also threatened..
The solution I think is to look at the *real cost* of eliminating the US technological infrastructure. If we ship the jobs overseas, eventually, those buyers and sellers of services will eliminate the middlemen.. the US companies.. Its an old story that empires do this in their decline.. by the way..
Its not that the money to pay Americans isn't there..the corporate interests are just getting greedy.. The IT workers (in their opinion) were being paid too well. The bottom line is that even though IT workers saved the employers a lot of money, they are still workers.. i.e. expendable. Blue collar workers have been dealing with this for a long time. Their solution was unionization, but that only goes so far because you cant unionize robots. It's not going to get better, IMO. In the future, very few people will need to work. this could be a good thing, if we can adjust to it. But it could also mean poverty and civil unrest on a massive scale if we don't. Its a slow process, so people aren't noticing it. But wages have definitely stagnated for everyone except the CEOs of this world..and the independently wealthy who live on investments.. We are headed towards a postindustrial society...with all that means..
The fallacy of this viewpoint is the assumption that exploitation and coercion are separate.
They are different. One improves the economy and the other does the exact opposite.
There is very little exploitation of human labor in the Third World (or, to use the new politically correct term, "the South) without overt or implicit coercion, not to mention numerous human rights abuses.
In general, bad things happen in countries with bad economies. The best way to fix things is to improve the economy. However, this will never happen if we tell corporations not to exploit workers in third world countries. If corporations have to treat third world workers as first world workers, then they have no incentive to go overseas, and the third world countries will become even worse off.
Instead of fighting exploitation, we should encourage it. What do you call it when multiple people are trying to exploit you? It's called competition. It's a good thing.
Well, that's the trouble isn't it? If Asian workers are taking what used to be $75/yr jobs in the US and doing them for $7.5K, the US workers no longer have disposable income. How do you propose to increase income in the US? And before you point to biotech as the Next Big Thing, I saw an article today that it is the next industry on its way offshore. And I'm quite sure that nanotech will be gone before it even arrives.
The trade advocates have not, and can not, tell us how the middle class in the US survives when the "knowledge workers" can only make 15K/yr. How do we prevent the US economy from doing an Argentina?
I went to school for CS in the beginning, and realized, hey, I don't want to be a code monkey my whole life, I want to be calling the shots. So I switched over to advertising/marketing, and started learning about business.
You see, now that I have basic business skills and people skills, I am much more in demand than someone who's job it is to push buttons. I know that its important to make a product, but as we've seen time and time again, its not necessarily the product that sells the product, its the marketing behind it.
Also, while I understand that the difference between the job market for advertising and IT is different in that people get fired when their job goes overseas in IT, in advertising, its just a slow period for the agency, and people get shuffled around between agencies basically. But still, people in advertising have come to accept it as part of the job. You WILL get laid off, its not a question of if, but when. And thus we've developed some serious networking skills, which I'm sure would benefit any IT worker.
Adapt dammit! That's what humans do! That's great that you are in a field you love, but if it doesn't pay what you wish it paid, guess what, maybe YOU need to take the initiative and either get new skills, or figure out a new way to make money. Because things aren't going to change any time soon despite how many articles may be posted about the subject on Slashdot.
Mods, I don't mean this post as flamebait, but it really irks me that people feel it is alright to sit and bitch and moan about their lost job when they take little to no action to better their skillset or connections. These are basic business skills, and despite whatever fairyland some people choose to live in, IT is a part of the businessworld, so they have to play by the rules too.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
It gets downright expensive to try to talk with someone who can barely understand you, and who you barely understand. Misscommunication leads to rabbit trails, which last for at least 12 hours, because that is the time offset between here and india.
Comparing the "exploitation" of your skills with, say, child labor in Hong Kong -- that's just word games.
He was comparing American knowledge workers with Indian (and other) knowledge workers. Indian knowledge workers are being exploited in a way that will probably double their standard of living in a few years. I'm sure they're very happy to continue being exploited in this fashion.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
At its heart, this is a Tragedy of the Commons problem. Outsourcing to get cheaper labor is always beneficial to any one company. It's when everyone does it that the center cannot hold and you get one big clusterfuck. By the nature of the problem, it's in the selfish best interest of each company to do it.
The solution really is legislation. This situation is no different than the environment in that respect. Sure, it's in the free market best interest of every production company to have no environmental standards if not required by the government, but if that's allowed, pretty soon nobody can breathe or drink water anymore.
My solution: Make it disadvantageous to outsource/trade with countries who have protectionist policies preventing U.S. workers from competing for their jobs. (This has the added side effect of making the common slashdot refrain that outsourced IT workers should look for jobs in India or China 75% less ludicrous.) Do the same for any country that won't match our labor health and environmental standards. If another country can compete even up with the U.S. in an industry without poisoning the air or forcing children to work in factories, more power to them.
That won't stop all outsourcing, nor should it. But it would be a step in the right direction.