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IT Outsourcing Need Not Threaten Our Future
Xeo writes "The topic of the moment in a lot of people's minds is the outsourcing overseas of 'white collar' jobs. While many people are perhaps rightfully worried about this, there's an editorial on the subject that tends towards the other direction. It makes some very interesting points on the whole idea of outsourcing and what it means for the US at least."
Well yes, as I have maintained in the past, outsourcing does not present a strategic long term concern for the US. Sure, there are certain jobs that shall be relocated or executed from remote locations, but even if one looks at the current trends - anything that remotely involves creativity or innovation is not going anywhere
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Outsourcing need not threaten your future, there are plenty of new opportunities for aspiring programmers within the food service sector. Dare to dream!
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
The assertion that jobs are being outsourced because there aren't enough people in the USA that have technical credentials is BULL SHIT.
Try telling the guys with PhDs that can't get jobs that there is no talent in this country.
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
...but what happens when government policy/action/inaction stifles innovation? For an example, take a look at how the US government punished Microsoft for anticompetitive behavior. Also: I wonder how many cool new inventions are swept under the rug because of national security concerns?
This leads me to believe that innovation is at the whim of our government and thus cannot be counted upon to stop outsourcing.
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
The articles author makes decent points, but what it all boils down to is that, usually, change doesn't lead to disaster. Which is essentially true. I'm sure that whatever the econimic trends, some sort of equilibrium will be found. But as someone getting ready to leave a university with a CS degree in a year or so, I'm pretty worried about the interim. Although I suppose I'm in a far greater position than someone whose got a family to support. I'm sure many /.'ers would agree that money is a distant second to having enjoyable, challenging work.
:)
After all the doom and gloom about the tech industry I'm happy to hear a positive viewpoint, true or not.
Ansi's and stupid tricks!
This is an article about how Americans see themselves -- or rather, about how the author would like them to. It does not appear to actually touch on the economic realities (good or bad) of outsourcing.
Yay for fluff.
However, it is quite interesting in the American self-image that it pushes. While Americans are indeed diverse and tolerant, I think the remarks on innovation (which I hear often) could do with a little consideration.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
i worry about.. being replaced with a shell script
Only morons moderate based on a sig.
While there is outsourcing taking place, people neglect a major factor of why there are less and less jobs... efficency.
Employers are benifiting from workers doing more work than ever before, and this is spured by all sorts of automation and technology. With more efficient workers, need less workers. And after economy goes down, the pressure is on to push the efficiency further.
OK, I'm supposed to be working, but everyone likes to blame politicians and the tech bosses. Why do you guys never consider the fact that its technology itself that is helping to drive you out of jobs?
As my reference, check Newsweek of a few weeks ago. I'd find it, but I gotta run.
Doh. or not :(
OK then - human flight, disputed. Refrigeration - I don't know (benefit of doubt to America then). Automobiles - Germany. Television - Britain. Computers - Britain. Space travel - Russia (or more accurately, competeting sets of Germans working in Russia and America after WWII). The Internet - America.
Perhaps a tad more humbleness might be in order from the writer of this article? A bit more recognition of the fact the rest of the globe does work as well? That final 'or has some link with Americans' is a get-out clause - "we claim it as ours even if we didn't invent it, so there".
As for the final question "what is it about our (the US) economy that nutures innovation" - that's easy. The US economy is the largest homogenous market, so all suppliers will tailer their goods for that market. It doesn't mean to say the goods themselves have to be either invented or produced in the USA though.
Cheers,
Ian
America's technological strength is based on innovation.
I would say it is partly based on innovation.
One huge advantage that the USA has in most areas of business is a huge, practically borderless, single market containing almost 300 million people. The benefits of this can't be understated, and it's something that other countries can't completely emulate (although in Europe we're trying to create a single market, we'll always have the issues with different languages and cultures).
I think commentators often overestimate the advantage that the USA has in terms of the greater capabilities of it's people, and also are blinkered if they think that other countries can't achieve greatness as well.
Five years ago: "So, do you want me to install a scsi interface too?" Five years from now: "So, do you want cream and sugar in your coffee?"
Just post a vague article about "IT Outsourcing" and take the rest of the day off.
Good work slashdot janitors!
The guy is a President of an Engineering University. Is enrollment is down between 20-50% based on nationwide trends. Of course he is going to push a positive forecast to push enrollment up. But the kids are not buying it. I wonder what a good field is these days in the US?
IT outsourcing doesn't necessarily threaten the US economy in the long term but it does in the short term. It'll be like when the manufacturing and steel industries moved overseas to Russia and Japan and elsewhere. We as a civilization will figure out how to make new industries and replace jobs.
You'll have that sometimes...
The Indians get high paying jobs
The corporations get higher profits
The consumers get lower prices
The American worker is freed up to pursue a more efficient allocation of his labor. (this is the tricky one)
The end result will be US companies outsourcing themselves out of the technology field. If the US becomes dependant on other countries for it's IT needs, what then?
Simply put, American engineers excel at creativity. Indeed, when you consider the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th Century as reported on the National Academy of Engineering website - innovations such as human flight, refrigeration, electrification, the telephone, automobiles, television, computers, space travel and the Internet - you see that almost all of them were either invented by Americans, or had some crucial American link that helped turn a fledgling technology into a major boon for human kind."
Endless debate. Check here who was the real telephone inventor, an italian living in Italy in a region where they speak italian and french.
No american connection at all.
Which will then be outsourced.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
Yeah, and let me guess... some french-speaking Italian invented the internet too?
Regardless of how much Ford (the original) made cheap cars, he knew that it would mean jack if his employee's can't afford them. He hence paid his employees very well.
There is no point for a company to be cutting costs if all it does is starve the consumers - it will create a vicious cycle whereby the more you cut costs, the smaller your market.
Granted, you are opening a new market in the countries where you now do most of your hiring - BUT then it's still a comparative small market because your prices are aimed at consumers with assumed income several times that people in whose countries the products are made.
Isn't this just another great example of the great human fault of discounting the future?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Why dont you make that comment to my face? My friend made a comment about food service technicians once. ONCE.
A point I think the article misses on, and a fairly important one, is the current education system in the US. While problem solving (vs. memorization) is still the focus of education here, it's not as enforced as it was in the past.
I have family in several states in education and most agree that we're turning out fewer problem solvers than in the past. None seems to have a solution, outside of parenting (or lack thereof), which I think is the leading killer of a solid education.
What used to draw innovators from other countries was the freedom and opportunity found in the US. Both of those seem to be dwindling. Where does that leave us?
I think we're also in for a lull in innovation in the US, which is scarier to me than the trend in offshore outsourcing. I've been a professional developer for 13 years. Although I haven't been affected yet, I have to assume it will affect me sometime (hopefully later than sooner).
With three children, I am the math and science homework helper in the house. What I find is my children are taught tricks and workarounds rather than an understanding of the fundamental math problems. I'm glad to help my children, and love seeing the light go off in their head when they actually understand the problems they work on. So I have this idea. When I "retire" from development (forced or otherwise) I'm going to become a math teacher, preferably at the middle school ages. I've worked in math my whole career, and have had a wonderful experience with my own children (I know, teaching 25 kids is completely different). I think if more people were to go into teaching towards the end of their career, and in a field that matches their respective career, we would be turning out more innovators and maybe worry less about the future of the working world in the US.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
innovations such as human flight, refrigeration, electrification, the telephone, automobiles, television, computers, space travel and the Internet--you see that almost all of them were either invented by Americans, or had some crucial American link that helped turn a fledgling technology into a major boon for human kind.
Hmmm.. Okay, I'll grant human flight (assuming we mean powered controlled flight), and possibly TV (Assuming we mean an electron beam based system). Computers were invented by the british, space travel was pioneered in Germany, and accomplished by the Soviet Union. Automobiles were simply an extension of the steam locomotive with a control system added.
it'll be like when the manufacturing and steel industries moved overseas to Russia and Japan and elsewhere.
The one problem with stuff like this is letting business move anywhere it damn well pleases is is better for both economies concerned on a broad scale, it can really fuck over specific areas for a long time. I'm definitely better off with cheap foreign steel, but Scranton, PA for example is pretty much fscked.
I don't think that IT outsourcing is going to create blight areas the way mill closings did - MCSEs have a lot more options than assembly-line workers. But I wonder. A lot of Lisp people still haven't got over the AI winter, even if it was largely their own fault.
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
Slight problem here. Germany and Japan are certainly not known for their lack of innovation, while in many areas the US is notorious for its lack of precision and continuous improvement of products (missiles and other ways of killing large numbers of people being obvious exceptions).
America's biggest strength is nothing so vague and ephemerous as "creativity" and "ethnic diversity" (unless by ethnic diversity what you really mean is the disproportionate number of advanced science and engineering degrees given to non-Americans), it's just size of the population and access to wealth (raw materials, energy sources, etc.)
As global economies and improving technologies make these strengths less important as compared to such things as precision and continuous improvement (not to mention a highly educated populace and a sane top leadership), I think that the future of the US will become a very different one than what happened there in the 20th century.
CC-licensed translations of Japanese fiction: http://tonygonz.blogspot.com/
I think it is this first article, but the day I was reading the BusinessWeek on the plane, both of these articles raised some good points about the lack of jobs and increased productivity:
The Price Of Efficiency
Stop blaming outsourcing. The drive for productivity gains is the real culprit behind anemic job growth
Where Are The Jobs?
Economic growth is very strong, but America isn't generating enough jobs. Many blame outsourcing. The truth is a lot more complicated
I've worked as an IT contractor for over 10 years now and IMHO it works really well. Many companies, specifically for their IT needs (Well that's the area I know best and that I'm most familiar with), choose to outsource rather than employing full time staff. In the IT industry, with things changing so rapidly, it makes sense to outsource your needs and when a "need" has been fulfilled, the outsourced staff move on to a different client.
Free Firefox news reader.
Our Guild of Sanitation Engineers makes a living out of the by-products of Food Service Technicians, so we think they are a valuable ASSet.
In the UK a lot of call centres were outsourced to India etc. But now a lot of them are being returned for a few reasons. Reasons that can be summed up as "it was more hassle than it was worth".
Which will then be outsourced.
True enough. It's like 2PiR
You'll have that sometimes...
And given that fact, why would we need quite so many engineers and creative people here when they are cheaper elsewhere?
The fact that elsewhere may not have the same cost of living or the same level of worker rights is a concern.
I say make it simple: tax foreign labor.
I know! Can I outsource my family? Specially the inlaws. That way we wont be visiting them anytime soon as travel to India is a bit expensive.
"Get Moose and Squirrel!"
I'd like to get to know the leash girl slut much, much better.
She could have me on a leash any day...
Because once a few engineers innvoate, we don't need indians or chinese, or hell, factory robots, to build the actual product.
Because everyone can be an engineer! It doesn't take 6-10 years of difficult math, chemistry and physics courses to become an engineer, and everyone, and by this I really do mean everyone, say at least half our 300 million population, can not only be an engineer, but a innovative one too!
Wrong cliche, since they wrote this, rather than saying it aloud, but how can they say this with a straight face? I'll tell you how. Because this asshat is one of the privileged, one of the elite. He gets to write stupid opinions for a living.
At least this opinion isn't nearly as sickening as some of the nascent, not quite formed opinions I see everywhere else. Ask Joe CEO what he thinks, and if he cares to reply at all, it's something to the effect that we should all be daytraders or the like. Too bad we're all sheep.
Baaaah! Baaaaah!
-In the early years...
Get a college education... then you get a better paying job...
** Oh guess we were wrong... most of these qualifications can also be done overseas **
-Current years...
Get a Ph.D... then you might possibly get a job...
So this is nothing more than a ploy to make sure that teachers will profit from poor loan-ridden jobless students...
A big problem is that a lot of inovation has its source in the work that is being out-sourced, unless you are totaly emersed in the problems how are you ever going to come up with great inovative ideas on how to solve the problems.
OK so we're saying that "we're good at innovation so we'll be okay" - but where is the evidence?
What have we really innovated in software in recent times? Windows? From a user perspective little have changed since Windows95 (from an engineer's perspective little has changed from WindowsNT3.1!)
Linux isn't an example either (firstly it's non-commercial, second it's a rewrite of Unix - the change is more social than technical).
I guess the browser is THE standout example - now how long did it take for that to become a commodity item? Not long. In software innovation is hard, but refinement is easy. I don't think that this "innovation" thing is going to protect us (even if we are "better at it" and I don't see any evidence to suggest that we are anyway).
The real issue here is the massive disparity of wages in the "global economy". American workers (and British, like me) can't live on the wages that Indian workers can, money here doesn't go as far (Indian workers are getting wages that are generous for the region - they are doing well). So we simply cannot compete - what is required is to attack the root cause of this - the disparity of the buying power of money across the global economy, because this outsourcing ISN'T a sign of the health of the global economy it's a symptom a massive distortion in the market.
Of course how you do this is difficult to see, but THIS is the end that we need to look at. We need to be VERY careful how this is done, because large and rapid corrections would be catastrophic to Indian workers and they deserve protection too. But shipping IT jobs (and hence skills) to off shore locations isn't smart in the medium term. Indians aren't stupid, if they are doing all the technical work, why will they be happy to report to foreign management forever?
I don't believe they will, Indians can be just as enterprising as anyone - they will have a ready work force of skilled workers, trained by OUR companies, it won't be hard to motivate them to set up on competition with US companies (stock options, maybe?)
It seems that we're underestimating the skills and drive of the Indian people, this is a fundamental mistake.
If we REALLY want to make the "global economy" work we must correct the distortions within it. I'm sure that the we can compete with India (and other emerging regions) if this is done (it won't kill the outsourcing, but at least we'll all be on a level playing field). Don't think I'm underestimating the Indians, I think they are as capable as any of us, and I think companies that are massively outsourcing either don't understand this OR the decision makers are not concerned with the long term (only short term profits).
No news here. These are MBA-type CEOs that love to ruin people's lives because they can't lie enough to keep customers happy but screwed. The kinda guy who thinks he's a success because he's filthy rich, and who can't understand he needs people. He can't grok that people want to do something instead of bloodsucking like him. So his company lacks an Y-shaped career path.
Contrast this to Germany where CEOs are engineers.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
In the words of Homer Simpson "You're living in a dream world...".
Innovation costs money. Bleeding money off shore through outsourcing until the common guy on the street can't get a job is not going to help scientists and engineers innovate. The more you lower the standard of living in a country, the less people will be concerned with innovation and the more effort they'll need to spend just to stay afloat. Eventually you will simply bring the standard of your own country down closer to the level of the countries you outsource to.
Outsourcing to another place where people work like slaves for peanuts just to keep themselves from starving is evil. Period. You reap what you sew. This BS WILL come back to haunt us all.
Everyone who genuinely wants to work should be able to make a living. If they're willing to make a gigantic effort they should be able to expect proportional rewards.
Sammy
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
It is a threat to the present.
DOWN WITH DELL!!! DELL IS NOT AMERICAN! THEY ARE INCOMPITENT OUTSOURCE BULLSHIT! IT HAS TEAKEN ME 3 HOURS WITH INDIA JUST TO GET A REPLACEMENT DVD DRIVE FOR MY LAPTOP!
---story mode on---
It has taken 3 calls (and 1 hr per call) to dell tech support to get a "fixed bay" dvd drive replacemnet sent out to me.
The first 2 drives shipped out were modular.
-----------------
One glorious afternoon, the left hindge on my display breaks. I lose sanity and call dell tech support. I tell the tech i need a new hindge. Also, i need the fixed-bay dvd replaced because it has read problems. After spending an hour on the phone with India, I feel satisfied and go to dinner with my roomate.
2 days later, a tech shows up at my apartment. Great! replaces the display hindge, then gets this funny look while putting in the DVD drive. uh oh. Turns out he got the modular drive.
Call dell again, spend another hour on the phone with india. This time, I'm being firm with him. I look up my laptop "as shipped" configuration list and READ HIM THE FSCKING PART NUMBER. 2 days later, Airborne express arrives at my door. I pop open the box and WTF?!?!? its a modular drive!
Again, I spend another hour with India. This time I tell the tech "the left one that needs to be screwed in" I get him to read me the part number of what he is shipping me. He tells me "It is a Toshiba drive" Oh great! A Toshiba drive would be wonderful (beause my failed drive was a Hitachi).
Yesterday, I received the replacement drive.
I pop open the box and it is the correct drive! PRAISE THE LORD, ITS A MIRACLE, THERE IS GOOD IN OUTSOURCEING!!!
Pop a DVD in the drive, it plays smoothly. Ship the modular and the defective drive back to Dell.
---story mode off---
-Grump.
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
When I talk to CEOs about the career paths of the engineers in their companies, they say that many reach a career plateau very early, often after only five years. This happens not because of any technical deficiency, but because of a lack of "people" skills such as communication and teamwork. Moreover, engineers often come up short when they have to deal with people from different fields, such as manufacturing and marketing.
How enfuriating! This CEO sycophant would have us (engineers) believe if we improved our social skills we could all be executives and all would be right with the world. Bunk. Corporate management structure is about the few controlling the efforts of the many. The structure is not imposed through democratic means - CEO's don't run for office. Neither is the structure merit based. (What do you think about the review process at your company?) It is based on ambition, alliances, and persuasion. Climbing the corporate ladder is considered by some to the the ultimate competition. To me the game resembles musical chairs more than anything else.
One of the reasons the free software culture appeals to so many in this forum is that those who have reached a "career plateau" can bypass the rigid heirarchy of the corporate world and express themselves professionally though writing software. No management required!
an ill wind that blows no good
OK then - human flight, disputed. Refrigeration - I don't know (benefit of doubt to America then). Automobiles - Germany. Television - Britain. Computers - Britain. Space travel - Russia (or more accurately, competeting sets of Germans working in Russia and America after WWII). The Internet - America.
;)
Credit where credit is due of course but sometimes it's not who invents an idea that counts in the big picture, it's who is able to take that idea and run with it.
Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile but his mass production assembly line made it an applicable product vs the traditional method of trying to produce cars. (It almost could be argued that the invention of the assembly line really should be mentioned vs that of the automobile but meh.)
On to computers; while the term 'computer' can be applied to anything that can add 1 and 1 the real breakthough with computers came with the invention of the transistor which was done in Bell Labs by Americans. A further breakthough in turning that transistor into an integrated circuit was then produced by Jack Kilby, another American working for TI labs. Finally, I don't think there is any real doubt that the US was the one that was then able to take these combigned techs and make computers what they are today. IBM/Compaq/Apple all were/are American and have made computers what they are today. (A nod to Finnland for it's contribution of course but even it's work was based on stuff that was invented here in the US by AT&T and Berkely.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
1) HVAC work 2) Carpenter, Electrician, Plumber. The rise of HGTV, This old house, etc has created a demand( artificial?) to do $10,000 remodeling jobs. People spend more money redecorating than our parents did. 3) Painter 4) Ceramic tile/ carpet Hmm do I see a trend?? We, in the "High Tech" are in a big trough. The "next big wave" hasn't started yet. Lets face it . The transistor is 50 years old.We are a silicon based industry. Silicon has become a commodity. We are all in a commodity business. , not unlike the Iron, Steel, Steam , Plastic and Coal industry before us. Once the general public (circa 1989) knew who Intel was, the handwriting was on the wall.
Hmm, every time I hear about a story of outsourcing, signs all point to the types of jobs getting outsourced being extremely basic programming work and call center support. Are these even that big a deal? I could see if DBA's, designers, etc were getting outsourced... not a tech support specalist making $7/hr... Anybody with any sort of engineering/CS degree who can think on their own shouldn't really worry.
Last I checked, the remunerations in IT were among the highest in the US across all industries. Or did you mean a formal reward - like a recognition?
...well, foolhardy
As a number of other people have stated before, yes, the moving of jobs to other locations is a concern. But isn't it the same natural progression with a different execution aspect? Haven't bad performers in the past been replaced by good performers? Haven't machines replaced humans in some jobs? How is this principally different than an organization firing an "average" employees and recruiting better and more efficient employees?
The sheer scale and degree of remorse, fear and paranoia about losing jobs because of outsourcing makes one think that Americans are losing jobs by dime a dozen! Reading some of the FUD posts on here would make you think all of America would be unemployed by now?
This post also reminds me of "Zen and the art of motorcyle maintenance" - old people being afraid to use new devices which they don't seem to understand, the prevalent fear that machines will replace people, etc. Seriously, why is no one afraid that all human jobs will be replaced by machines? What about the claims that CASE and RAD tools will end all programming jobs?
If one own's a business, one wants to make a profit. If something can be done cheaper, at the same or better quality but less price, then why not? Forcing someone to run business in a manner which may render them incompetitive, or un-profitable, is totally and utterly wrong. Insisting that if they should do it that way is
http://efil.blogspot.com/
As long as the cost of living (and therefore the cost of labor) is higher in the US I believe corporate America will continue to outsource. Anyone who thinks efficiency or innovation is primarily an American product probably has a bit to learn about the rest of the world.
A subject that hits close to home for me is outsourcing support operations. I work for a fair-sized federal agency and we're currently looking at consolidating Level 1 helpdesk operations from 13 separate helpdesks to one outsourced agency to serve the whole organization.
Current industry standards say that for an organization our size a helpdesk call should cost the company ~$20. Outsourcing to India would cut that cost in half, so it's easy to see where that option would be attractive to big business.
Support operations do not generate income, therefore offshore outsourcing reduces operating costs. IM frequently less than HO corporate America's first loyalty is to stockholders and unfortunately altruism doesn't increase the bottom line, so I think companies will continue to outsource until there's a financial incentive for them to quit doing it.
I don't think code written in the US is necessarily more innovative than code written in India for half the cost - so until third world IT organizations raise wages it's still gonna be more attractive to outsource.
I think the bottom line is that wages for skilled American IT workers will continue to slip unless they're in a job that cannot be outsourced - I just suggested to my son-in-law that if he wanted a job in IT the place to be was probably in networking - preferably telecom or Information Assurance. Those fields will probably remain for the most part in the good old US of A ;-)
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
According to wikipedia.com:
Automobile -- France via Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot
Television -- Germany via Paul Gottlieb Nipkow
Computers -- Britain, sort of, via the Colossus. It was not very programmable though. ENIAC post-date's it but was a true computer in the modern sense that it was designed to be Turing complete.
Space Travel -- Germany was actually the first to send an object into space in 1942. The U.S. was the first to send a living organism into space in 1946. Russia was the first to achieve an orbital launch in 1957 and subsequently send the first animal up one month later. They also sent the first human up in 1961
Internet -- US via DARPA.
Most people say this will kill of the middle class, and the only people left will be CEOs and fast food people. But I wonder when unemployment starts getting around 30% or so, we're going to start seeing crime like they have in Mexico, Russia and Iraq. We're talking about America becoming a 2nd class country.
Waaaahhhhhh.
Here's a very insightful article regarding this(CAUTION - read till the end):
Read this story till the last line
The Nation That Lost Its Jobs, But Got Them Back - ON GOOGLE
"Engineering in Germany is known for its precision. Japan is recognized for continuous improvement of products (as American automakers have learned all too well). America's technological strength is based on innovation. Of these three, I'll take innovation for the most enduring competitive advantage." Germany does engineering well because we buy their porsches. When america loses its middle and upper middle class, porsche may just go out of business.
India has just a had a federal election with a suprise win by the left. It seems that alot of Indians have not seen improvement themselves despite a hugh growth in there own economy. This is hardly surpising given the level of poverty present in that country - India is a country that is never going to have a standard of living even close to that of a western country. Meaning that outsourcing is here to stay unless these new guys attempt to wind back the clock to what it was like in the the early 90's (ie no technology whatsoever). Which is not realistically going to happen.
Anyway getting back on topic - outsourceing has it's source in explotation. Indians are no better then programming then Americans. The best argument for this is that England has a massive Asian community, many of whom must have been through the humanities are for wimps and try to think as little as possible Indian educational system. Yet I don't see jobs moving from America to that country. Do you? In fact the English software industry, which has always been strong (see Bullfrog, Sinclears etc) seems to be shutting up shop. If Asians where better at programming then its only natual that you would expect a revivel of the English software industry.
Outsourceing is all about cheap wages period. And 9 women to carry a child for 1 mouth thinking. It will continue unless Americans can match those wages and this just isn't going to happen, because, like I said before India does not have a wage correction function present on there side.
What we are seeing is the selling out of the many by the few. For ultimately short sighted gains - if all jobs go over seas then then American econonomy will ultimately collapse.
Trying to stop outsourceing is like the RIAA trying to stop music downloading. This article just reeks of someone going down to the sea when the tied is turning and saying they ain't going to get wet.
And I for one welcome our Hindi overloads, hell the last couple of bollywood movies I've seen haven't been bad and no worse then most of the crap that seems to come out of hollywood these days. The foods good. And seeing how you guys run a war just makes me glad that in the future you might not have as much money to spend to the lastest WMD's.
Indeed, we think there is something wrong if our neighborhoods and educational institutions do not reflect the incredible diversity of America, and we seek to remedy the imbalance.
.....
Are we speaking about the same country? Where people drifts to 'hoods with the same economic/cultural/religious background? Is he being sarcastic?
Or
Is this article really just a big troll?
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
The article claims America's diversity is responsible for it's creativity, but I don't see how diversity inspired the Wright Brothers to invent airplanes. I think innovation comes from the brainpower available, of which growth is not going to be spurred by outsourcing.
By Lawrence Lessig, who is widely praised among /. readers for his work in IP law. I wonder if his thoughts on economic protectionism will be as well received. :)
We can say that "gee, we're only sending out low-level programmings, not the high level design and architecture jobs that are critical and require creativitity"
Guess where the creative people come from in the IT world? Right. From the ranks of "low-level programmers".
or do people think people with 10-20 years of experience suddenly materialize out of nowhere?
One thing that most CEO's are probably not taking into account is that while they are saving money in the short term they are also supplying their furutre competition with money and technical skills. I know of one Indian company (InfoSys) that has already opened offices stateside and started competing directly with some of their past customers.
I would not be surprised if some enterprising young developers overseas were to take the money and the skills that they aquired from working on code from software companies in the US and put together (for example) a enterprise-level RDBMS and begin selling it globally for a fraction of the cost of Oracle or SQL Server.
Its high time that americans start to accept outsourcing as a way of life.With the amount of outsourcing increasing as we speak I doubt its gonna go out of fashion for a while.
Economically and logically speaking , it would be more trouble to bring back outsourcing processes than to manage them in India.This is especially true when it comes to customer service jobs.Telemarketing and collections can be shifted easily as they are outbound.
Lord of the Binges.
Over the past 10+ years or so, India has seen great economic growth. Many economists attribute this to the adoption of a more capitalist/free market system. Recent elections threaten to turn back these reforms as many rural people feel they have been left out of the boom. Such a backlash might make doing business in India more difficult. In fact, shortly after the elections, the Indian stock market dropped about 4%.
I'd like to hear the opinion of Indians on these elections and their impact.
Many corporations interested in outsourcing spend lots of money on public relations to quiet down the concerns of the public who are affected. There is plenty of research on how outsourcing negatively affects individuals and not just the people who lose their jobs. It takes no genius to see how and if you dont want to take the time to identify and read scholarly books on the why and how you can see a movie like "Roger and Me" that can demonstrate it without getting into the heavy economic aspects.
If your read the article again you'll notice that all of the points are really just conjecture and not based on any large scale samples nor has it proven itself historically. Remember all those hardware engineers back when companies outsourced PC manufacturing, factory workers when they outsourced to sweat shops, etc, etc. Look at alot of those cities now. Its happening again to the Software Industry and all those who were planning to have a living working in that sector. The only people who do well will be those jobs that can't be outsourced or obsoleted (yet), management, and of course the owners who always come out ahead. DONT BE AN IDIOT and believe such nonsensical articles. If nothing else it just takes some common sense.
No comment.
Obviously the industry is growing, but industry leaders are using every trick in the book to manipulate labor costs.
Sure, there are thousands of new jobs being created in the US, but Americans are not even given a shot at filling many of these positions.
I agree, it's not as bad as one may think, it's actually alot worse!
www.displacedtechies.com
Instead, they'll offer you the job that's in India and require you to relocate.
Those that think that outsourcing is harmless have not learned from what happened in the consumer electronics (TV, VCR, Radio) field. While most of these devices were invented or perfected in the US, they were all outsourced, actually emigrated, to Japan and now Korea and China. The result is that the US may well be the largest consumer of electronic but barely assembles or engineers one.
An industry moves as one large block. Production first and then engineering. So a massive exodus of enginering jobs should not be considered harmless as history demonstrated.
Sadly it also seems inevitable. If it's done by US corporations seeking cheap labor or foreign companies competing on their own. The large sucking sound is loud. While the former can be legislated out, the later is much harder to circumvent successfully. One can only hope that China and India quickly become expensive enough to balance out that trend.
The US grants 160,000 eningeering degrees a year per 260M people
It is just another argument to bolster support for unlimited outsourcing.
And then the salmonella struck and he spoke no more...
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
Progress always fuck people over, but the alternative--never improving anything--is worse.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
While I sure would rather have a job than the next guy, I can't really bitch too hard about outsourcing.
Here in america we're sooo rich compared to the rest of the world. I gotta admit that I like that. It's good to live in a wealthy nation.
When I hear that the rest of the world might get a slice of the pie at our expense I am bummed out, it's true. But I can't in really bring myself to think "Hey we gotta stop this! We gotta hold the rest of the world down so I can have my *symbol of wealth*."
I'd rather be richer than the next guy, if given a choice, but I can't advocate kicking some poor third-worlder in the teeth to make it so. I gotta be pro humanity here. So, uh, good job, India! You want fries with that?
You're forgetting. It won't be them that gets kicked in the shorts...
We'll just retrofit our vocational schools to churn out nuclear plant engineers instead of programmers! Yes in just a few short weeks of study at home, you can get your degree in nuclear plant engineering! Then we'll all be a lot better off!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Factories and machines have a certain intrinsic value. A factory can be retooled to make a different product. But we're turning into a country that makes...nothing. Entertainment products like movies and music, and mind share products like software. Mind share products run the risk of being commoditized over time and are significantly easier to offshore. No factory to move.
Makes me wonder just what products we're counting on for future economic growth? We're becoming a nation that consumes much and produces less and less. When Boeing's next assembly facility is built in Singapore or South America, when your doctor is from India consulting with a neurologist in Pakistan and typing notes on a PDA made in China with software written in Russia. Just what job are you going back to when you get out of hospital?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I'm not that old for a /.er, but I loved international relations as a younger buck. It's quite interesting to see how similar the complaints about India's outsourcing are to complaints about Japan's rise as a semiconductor (back when DRAM was the shiznit, Arabs would take that or gold for oil) and auto manufacturer. Look at where Japan is today, they certainly didn't get everything and really missed a whole bunch of the computer industry. However, there is one major difference, in the Japanese case, CEO's, upper management, and stockholders were effectivly being outsourced (as Japanese companies were started from the ground up and competed directly with American companies). However, in the Indian rise, they are working with our companies do some jobs remain here.
In the Japanese rise, there were plenty of businesses created out of nothing here that profited significantly from the growth of Japan. Done by people who took the time to learn what was important to the Japanese, not just throwing products over there. The same will be true in the rise of India. Since all of us are early to the game in realizing the magnitude of the change, we are well positioned to capitalize on any gains. Some idea's financial services (tools for newly wealthy to invest and managage their new wealth), items of cutural importance (Japanese demand for luxury goods, art, and expensive liquer) increased signficantly from 1970-2000, find a similar business exposed to India.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
"Low pay, long hours"
LOL. The average teacher in the UK earns not much less than I do, is far less useful, and probably works far fewer hours, even including work outside school time.
"Vouchers are stupid and don't solve any problems."
Of course they do. They allow parents to remove kids from bad schools and send them to good schools. How can that not be a solution to those parents' problems?
""Performance" based teaching is totally moronic."
Why should teachers who can't teach continue to be paid the same amount as teachers who can? Why should they even be employed? What's so special about teaching that the same kind of performance-based pay that applies to most other jobs shouldn't be applied to them?
"Give teachers the money the deserve,"
$5 an hour?
"fund classrooms and education properly,"
But we've been doing that forever. Every year the teachers whine that they don't have enough money and that's why they're crap, so we give them more money and the schools become even more crap. The solution is to give them less money and make them work for it.
"all those countries that totally kick our ass when it comes to the education of thier children don't do it with privatized voucher systems."
And how many countries, exactly, have such systems to compare against?
Of course, Alexander Graham Bell was in fact born in, educated in and researched and developed the technology later used in the telephone in Scotland. IIRC, the purpose for the technology was to assist in speech therapy (for the deaf/hearing impared), which was his formal background.
He moved to the US and continued to develop and then market his invention as he saw a wider audience for it, but sought investment and he saw the US was the easiest place to obtain it, before he later retired to Canada.
I once tried explaining all to a zelot running a historical site with famous American inventions and inventors on it, who produdly proclamed AGB and his inventions American (along with other things invented thousands of miles away, including the automobile, television, lightbulb and the computer) but he was having none of it, he was convinced America was the inventor of all the technology in the modern world.
Oddly, this attitude appears to irk some people.
Yes, to make way for even newer industries.
Our economy is adaptable and dynamic precisely because it's not centralised and homogeneous, and entrepreneurs make independent, autonomous decisions.
The surest way to cause the economy to stagnate and inhibit the advancement of technology is to change the purpose of private enterprise from "earning a profit by selling products and services to customers" to "keeping people employed."
Creative, innovative people will always find a way to make a living. If you try to protect people who put all of their eggs into one basket and grow dependent on a single employer for their livelihood, you just wind up stilfing free enterprise, and we'll all suffer.
some of the growth industries in the US now are defence related, and the "justice system".
Jobs in the future for kids now inside the US will be soldier, prostitute, house maid, gardener--and that car wash example. About like that it appears. Tongue in cheek but it's roughly true, too.
They got all these kids now faked out they will be a sports star or a rock star or something, or some other job along those lines. It's pretty sad when those are the best paid jobs to strive for from societal brainwashing. It's obviously the most interest that the vast majority have. You can fill a stadium -or multiple stadiums and venues really- with 50,000 people any given weekend near any medium or large US city to watch some game or get entertained with some various music, but you're *lucky* to get 500 people to a political conference even occassionally. Ya, I just invented the numbers, but I think you can see the point.
IF "globalism" as they push it now was so successful, then WHY are we now the worlds largest debtor nation, when a bit over 20 years ago when all this big push started we were the largest creditor nation? If it was supposed to make the nation all this loot and be successful, where's the beef? They keep claiming it's working, and the numbers keep proving them wrong, so they say we need MORE of their schemes to make it work. It's nuts. There's the big lie staring at us, along with we now have the highest incidence of mortgage defaults since the great depression, personal bankruptcy is at record highs,pension funds in both private and government are in the most serious problem levels, and so on. Can't even think about the ponzi scheme social insecurity is, that's gone for most practical purposes.
Nuts, it's a series of big lies. This "new and improved" system is designed to transfer even more wealth to the upper 1% of the population that is already the richest and most powerful, and it has to come from someplace, and that someplace is the US middle class, because that's the only other place it exists in the fist place, it's the last place they can steal it from, so there ya go.
"The ONLY jobs that can't get outsourced are the ones that require a person to physically be there"
That is precisely correct. This idea that somehow little brown people from loser countries are incapable of being creative or innovative is the sort of hubris that's going to lead us to a country where we all shop at AND work for Wal-Mart.
Washington DC (AP) - Citing the growing cost of running the Federal
government and the need to cut costs in order to reduce the budget
deficit, President Bush announced today that he was laying off all
535 members of Congress and transferring lawmaking operations to
a legislative support center in Bangalore, India.
"Hey, outsourcing is the way to go these days," said Bush at an
impromptu news conference where he announced the decision, adding,
"The American people want to see less government waste. Since every
one of those ex-Congressmen had a salary of $150,000, this move
will cut our costs by over $80 million per year, and that's not
even counting what we'll save on health insurance and retirement plans."
Sources indicate that the Indian replacements will be paidapproximately $250 per month.
The outcry from the newly laid-off Senators and Representatives
was swift. Ex-congressman Tom Delay said, "This is absolutely
outrageous. How can a bunch of replacements over in India run
Congress? What do they know about filibusters and committee
hearings, lobbyists, fact finding junkets, pork barreling and
PAC contributions?"
As he was being escorted out of the Hart Senate Office Building
by US Capitol Police officers, Delay complained that the newly
terminated lawmakers were only given 10 minutes to clean out their
desks and leave the building.
"I think it's a great idea," said Vice President Dick Cheney,
speaking from a secure, undisclosed location. "The American
people were fed up with that expensive do-nothing Congress
which didn't give the president everything he asked for. Our
new Indian replacements will be much more cooperative to the
President, which is what we all want."
Asked whether the outsourcing may be unconstitutional, Cheneynoted, "That's up to the Supreme Court to decide. But they never
pay much attention to the Constitution anyway. To them it's a
'living document' that will be different every day."
The new members of Congress seem thrilled with the attention they
are receiving. Speaking from the offices of All-India Legislative
Support Center Ltd. in Bangalore, new Texas Senator Ramchandra
Shektar Gupta told reporters, "The Indian people are very hard
working and we will do our best as US Congressmen and Congresswomen.
And we are going to have some fun too. Just think: we have $2 trillion
of the American taxpayers' money to spend!"
This article tries to claim that a market equilbrium will take place. That the standard of living will increase forcing wages to rise, a wage setting function. This is basic economics 101. Newsflash - this is not going to happen. India is a country with such a hugh population that such calculations do not take place. If your average Indian IT worker does not like their wages or conditions then management will simply fill their seat with the 90 or so applicants willing to do the same job. The guy who wrote this article simply has not been to that country, poverty is really that bad.
Nor is protechionism a alternative since that will mean that America will be left behind will the rest of the world does take advantage of the cheap wages present in that country. This being the ultimate lose lose scenario.
The only way that outsourcing will stop is if the software industry and amercian government got there act together and createe a competitive business environment again.
Outsourcing is a result of a regression to a mean in the employment market on a macrolevel. The current state of the software market is that of monopoly. Microsoft more or less runs everything. Dell more or less controls the distribution system. Apple plays nice in the little niche they have dug for themselves. Adobe Ownz the multimedia market, In IT there is monopoly everywhere you look. Government has failed because instead of doing there job and limiting the power of these companies they have just thought with with there hip pocket. Now we have to contend will Asaian choices like Software patents, The DMCA and whatever braindead legal claptrap seems to go through the civil courts of America nowadays. Brought in only for the the benefits of the local school bully.
Imagine what things would look like if there there was a situation of perfect competition, If there where as many distributions of Windows as there are of linux. Then your job would be protected because it would be your talant that was important, and not your ablity to clone the latest fad application. You could command a greater wage to support your standard of living. Its true that alot of programmers would be still be indian but the judgement would be based on talent as it should be and not on replacing your job with some guy doing the exact same thing only cheaper as it is now. In a market of perfect competition then your job is protected because you are payed not to work for the competition. As of right now, if your job is outsourced then you are just thrown on the scrapheap. after all who are you going to work for? - and that is not right. All this in the name of managerial kickbacks.
Gee that Karl Marx guy might have been on to somthing don't you think?
-- I speak only for myself
...especially if you happen to live where the outsourced jobs are located. It isn't outsourcing then.
Let things happen. Protectionaism just leads to a workforce stuck making buggy whips.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
It seems in many ways that email/IM has become a more important part of the internet's impact than the web. I think we can even argue that email would have succeeded with or without the web and the overall internet hype -- it's just too convenient a medium.
Where white-collar jobs go has nothing to do with anyone's skill-set.
Corporations are completely amoral creations driven by precisely one thing: money. They will do anything to get it, and anything to keep from spending it, just up to the point of legalness. (The ones that cross over into illegal territory we tend to call "organized crime".)
Corporations will find the cheapest source of anything, and will switch at the drop of a hat to save a penny. America, thanks to its inflated style of living compared to the rest of the world, is not the cheapest source of very much. Thus, it's hemorrhaging jobs.
That's not going to change until either a point of equilibrium is reached, or the corporate system of capitalism is reformed.
The problem with outsourcing is very simple. For the brain dead that keep pimping this horseshit about how its good for the economy, I will pose this simple example.
-You have a bag of M&Ms.
-I come along and take half of them to china/india.
-You have 50% less M&Ms
It's that simple. So who does benefit from china having half your M&Ms?
Surprise. The M&Ms company. Were you surprised?
It's about a company making more money buy selling a product at a reduced cost of production.
Period and friggin end. It is *that* simple.
The funny fsking thing is, the same people that are loosing their jobs to the outsourcing,
are consumers of the product that is now made in a different country for way less money,
but we still pay the same price for it.
Think about that the next time you buy some software, a new pair of shoes, or some underpants. check out the label - see where it's made?
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
"innovations such as human flight, refrigeration, electrification, the telephone, automobiles, television, computers, space travel and the Internet"
Lets just take the last 3...
Computers - Manchester Mark 1, Manchester ENGLAND
Space Travel - Von Braun (sp?), GERMAN
Internet - what most people perceive as the internet is embodied in the world wide web... Tim Bernes Lee - British working at CERN.
So America has a corner on innovation? twaddle.
I am sick of Americans re-writing history to show that they did everything.
In the article, the self-promoting president of an engineering school says,
:)
"When I talk to CEOs about the career paths of the engineers in their companies, they say that many reach a career plateau very early, often after only five years. This happens not because of any technical deficiency, but because of a lack of "people" skills such as communication and teamwork. Moreover, engineers often come up short when they have to deal with people from different fields, such as manufacturing and marketing."
Okay, so I'm thinking to myself about the outsourcing of a large variety of white-collar technical jobs, especially those that deal with people, to places like India and Pakistan. These are people world-renowned for their people skills... especially on the phone!
This author is trying to promote his own trade which is training the hopeful to get jobs. As the jobs disappear, they are faced with the same problem facing us. People are looking elsewhere for work and income and they only have one thing to sell.
I hope these anti-outsourcing laws come into play soon and I hope they are strong enough.
Sometimes they play accounting games like billing back to different departments and making it look like the internal helpdesk turns a "profit" but that's just stupid accounting. Companies with internal help desks (i.e. no "customers" from the outside calling it) usually don't care about "repeat business" except for the management of the helpdesk itself. Their goal is to get people to not call the helpdesk at all.
Outsourcing of manufacturing in the 1980s was supposedly going to destroy the middle class. All of those displaced factory workers were going to be working burger flipping jobs. It was bad for the companies outsourcing since they were supposedly eroding their customer base because 'there won't be anyone left with a job to afford to buy their goods'.
Guess what. All these arguments were bunk in the 1980s, and I believe they are also bunk now. The US GDP has roughly doubled since 1983 (from around $5 Billion to around $10 Billion:
http://www.eh.net/hmit/gdp/gdp_answer.php
Go to bls.gov. Payrolls have increased by over 40 million from Jan 1983 to Jan 2004.
According to the US Census bureau per capita income has increased from ~$16,000 to ~$22,000 from 1983 to 2001 (The last year for which data is available).
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/p01.html
So outsourcing manufacturing was NOT armagedon for the US economy. Outsourcing IT won't be either. In fact it's likely that IT employment, like manufacturing employment before it, and agricultural employment before it, will simply fall victim primarily to rapidly rising productivity more than outsourcing.
The problem is that all humans basically have the same capabilities. It isn't as if Indians are good enough for programming but not good enough for innovation. With the right education, everyone can do any job (provided their genetics play along).
Now the point. First low-level jobs were moved abroad. Why should we do what those poor third-world citizens can do just as well, but for a lower salary? And it's good for their economy, so we are helping them too! In the meantime, we will focus on the jobs that require eduction.
The third-world nations boosted their economy, so they were able to educate their citizens. Now there were many people able to do the low-to-medium-level tech jobs, and since the salaries over there were still lower (simply because things are cheaper and there are not that many requirements on the work-environment) the low-to-medium-level tech jobs were moved abroad. We can concentrate on the high level tech jobs!
Economy of third-world countries will be boosted even more. They'll become more expensive (so the move abroad has diminishing returns), and can afford even better education. And they are still cheaper than the high level tech jobs. My guess is, these will move abroad in the very near future.
So what are we going to do? Concentrate on management jobs? What is a manager worth who has the people he has to manage living and working overseas? Management will follow rapidly abroad.
Of course, by that time we'll have a huge population of unemployed people will to take on any job, even work that does not require any education. The Indians will be happy to outsource those tasks to us, if we are willing to take a hand-out.
How can this be stopped? Probably by three measures: (1) Government should force companies that outsource work to supply the same work environment overseas that is required at home; (2) Government should penalise companies that outsource work by higher taxes, since these companies cause unemployment, which costs the state money; (3) To avoid screwing the third-world countries, the government should stop subsidising national companies to allow them to compete on pricing with third-world countries, as long as those companies overseas provide the same work-environment that the government expects from national companies.
It used to be that IT was "bulletproof" as far as the job market. You go to school for a few years, get out with a CS or IT degree, and you'd make 40-50K your first year. Now, see what it will get you with a dime..
I think the worst part about outsourcing is that it recursively hurts the American economy. American programmers(sys admins, help desk guys) can't get American jobs. This means that these people, now jobless, cannot buy a house, a car, whatever. So, because they now have no place to live and no transportation, they cannot get a job. See the cycle? Of course, it could happen to everyone, too, and then nobody would have a job, or everyone would work in fast food.
In short, I think there is no upside to outsourcing. It hurts our already failing economy. We can't risk walking on such thin ice.
Yeah, keep dreaming, pal. There is no such thing as a backup and recovery plan in most places. But you are right - very few jobs require creativity or more than basic problem solution skills.
To look at this from another angle, we are all living far beyond our means. Oh yes, we can sort of keep going because we can still use our 'global credit card' - fossil fuels and other resources - but it will end, probably soon. Then there will a debt to pay.
Research and innovation needs money. Research money goes to industries that make money. There was no profit in going back to the moon so nobody did any more efforts to get there. So now we want to go to Mars we don't have the technology we would have if there was money in it.
It's all a bit sad really. And surprisingly, military research (death science) has blossommed into many technologies we use today (hint:Internet) because there was money in it.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "Shadows are as important as the light" - Jane Eyre
Object-oriented programming invented in Norwegian. :-)
Structured programming in Nederlands.
Mechanical calculating machine and cellular automata by Brits.
Sounds very American to me
If you've ever read a booster speech about how Americans innovate so they'll always come out on top, then you can skip this article.
If anyone knows this guy, I have one question for him. Do his kids go to public school?
If so what school district? What are his property taxes? How does his school's funding compare to the average school funding in his state? In the country?
We are not going to be innovating much anymore. The WWII-era education extravaganza is over. The Neoconservatives have declared it a failed experiment, and would happily find ways to divert people into religious education, taking the public education funding with them. The rest of the political spectrum can't seem to find any motivation or clout to fix it. Creationism is taught on equal footing with evolution in public schools in the rural south. The public at large, even much of the punditry, blithely accepts the over-20-students-per-class myth.
Our high school dropout rate is abyssmal. Higher education costs (public, let alone private) will soon be leaving the range where people below the upper-middle class can afford them, and our governments are losing the ability to run the financial aid systems that bridge the gap.
I am consistently amazed at our capacity to believe that we will somehow find a way to be rich, even if our citizens can't hold any jobs that can be done cheaper in the 3rd world.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Just look at Japan. Japan's consumer electronics kick our ass.
The article was nothing more than a feel good rant about how things won't suck in the future.
Creativity and innovation WERE supported in the US. Or copyright and patent laws were put to good use.
NOW it is possible to get a patent without having a working model and that KILLS creativity and innovation. Companies now look to patenting possible concepts in the hope of making money off of court cases and licensing from people who actually produce the item.
The US turns out more lawyers than engineers. That doesn't bode well for innovation and creativity.
Look at all the bogus patent suits around today.
Then look at all the jobs that are leaving.
The author's belief seems to be that someone (a US citizen, of course) will take the time to learn a field so he can create something new, when there aren't very many jobs in that field and there is a high risk of litigation.
And his supporting material for that belief?
Nothing. Just an overly generalized view of our history PRIOR to software and business process patents.
As I've said before, this is the traditional article of faith that free trade advocates have been talking about for at least a decade. When you ask them a direct question such as, "Tell me what is going to replace all the IT jobs.", their response is,"We don't know yet.". This guy's article is a variant of that "article of faith". He's basically saying,"We're creative, we'll think of something". Nevermind the fact that people need to pay their bills NOW, not 5-10 years from now.
a y.asp?I D=1383
Here's an article that talks about the "leap of faith" we are expected to have.
http://www.cwa-union.org/news/CWANewsDispl
Business as usual... Basically the guy that they appointed to run the economy, I know the name but can't even come close to spelling correctly, is very much a all the way with foregn investment type of bloke. After all if what you are doing now seems to work then there is little interest to change. Most companies are going to continue as if nothing had happened.
India has a weird political system to say the least. The main government was form out a coalition of about a dozen parties, large areas of the country do not speak the same langerage as others, almost a third of people voted for parties in the "other" catagorie etc. In short it is about as far away from a American two party political system as you can get and still call democratic.
The election was mostly run on social issues for example religious fanaticism mainly Hindu is a big issue in India. People don't want the economy to change they just what there slice of the pie to be bigger.
As a side note Indians do feel the effects of globallism as much as Americans, for example there use to be a large range of soft drinks avilable in the country but now there is only Coke which is apparently contaminated with pesticide.
Sadly what normally happens in countries with large populations like India is famine, similer to what happened in China, and what is happening right now is North Korea. At least you only have to worry about lossing your job and not where your next meal is going to come from. The other scary alternative is war because these guys do actually have WMD.
You know, I was really was starting to take seriously the "delayed gratification" justfication for offshore outsourcing...until I saw this article yesterday:
REUTERS: U.S. CEO pay rose 27% in 2003 -- Study
Lesson of the Day: US workers have to endure unemployment lines and dry lectures about enduring short-term pain for (nebulous) future prosperity - but CEOs get to reward themselves right now with an unprecedented pay raise! Horray!
[Yes, I realize that CEO pay is largely determined by their Board of Directors...of course, who do you think sits on those Boards? If you said "other CEOs" - dingdingdingding!]
From Europe this looks a lot different: Americans are just getting what they wished for. Enjoy the global economy.
;-)
America has been probably the most aggressive pusher of globalization, but as we have seen, it has just been one sided. The goal of America has been to open all markets to America but deny American markets from others. It even seems that not many in America really understand what they have asked for, since, as the editorial mentions, laws are now being drafted to prevent outsourcing from America. I guess that means that every other nation in the world should make laws against outsourcing anything to America.
America is seen as a selfish nation and this is just one example of it. I am not saying that everyone shouldn't protect their own back but if you want something in the name of a reciprocal idea, then you probably shouldn't be surprised if the same is wanted from you too.
And blaming your leaders is not a good excuse. You selected and/or allowed them to guide you into this direction therefore you support what they do.
Sorry, you did not elect Bush and you couldn't do anything about it either, but that just shows how badly you have broken your country.
As someone here already pointed out, the US Business sector (i.e. the bigger job absorber) was NOT responsible for the US based innovation (well except for airplanes maybe). But the internet, comes from research based at DARPA and Universities and Space flight was hugely funded by the government.
I think the author is desperately trying to convince students to enroll to engineering and CS, so he purposedly want to sell the concept that "the creative US programmer" will find a great job because he (as opposite to programmers anywhere else) will be magically be capable to "innovate" between one deadline and the other.
I think this guy is plain dishonest.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
Most of the PhD's I know of in Math are working as Actuarials or some such.
They aren't doing anything "innovative" or "creative". They picked up the degree because they like math.
Now, not every field can be handled with a notebook and pencil. Chemical engineering. That takes some money for research (and without research, you don't have "innovation" or "creativity").
If those engineering jobs go overseas, where will the people who will make the "innovative" or "creative" discoveries learn?
This article reads like someone falling off of a 100 story building.
10 floors down, doing okay.
25 floors down, doing okay.
50 floors down, doing okay.
75 floors down, doing okay.
90 floors down, doing okay. Based upon evidence collected at this point, there will be no problem when 100 floors have been passed.
splat
The diversity and globalism argument being shoved down our throats from every media and educational outlet is astounding (and tiresome). If we allow business to do whatever it pleases, as far as outsourcing, we will be competing for jobs with people that make $3000.00/year (India) and $500/year (China) and live in third world nations. The ultimate result is the elimination of the middle class and the death of any kind of employer accountability to employees. It's already happening. Why do you think productivity has been so high with all the layoffs going on. People are working 60 hour weeks for 40 hours pay because the have no choice. Vacation has become a distant memory. While Europe takes a few months a year off Americans are lucky to get sick days without worrying about being fired. Try to force the issue by making reasonable hours, sick days and vacation manditory, and the business goes to India where they can do whatever they please. Oh yeah, there are some wonderful things about outsourcing.... It makes the wealthiest amongst us wealthier and pushes the working class down yet another notch.
Profit is a good thing but it can't be the only thing or life will be very hard for the average working person.
as in indian i have to say that nothing is going to change. india is not the US -- our prime minister and parties and logjammed in most cases and the government barely moves. we arent a republic .. we're a socialist country which has a significant communist base.
better than having an out of work workforce that doesnt know how to make anything let alone buggy whips.
It is a common fallacy to think that Germany is more precise. While typical German design methodolgy lends towards a highly precise initial design, another German trait is extreme beaurocracy and entrnchment of ideas. Consequently, the US has the highest efficiency for our workers because of our inherent ability to change design or ideas on the fly (sorry I don't have a source for this. I believe it was a report issued by the German government that stunned just about everybody).
Japanese cultural tendency also leads to well designed and well built product and highly competent services. The embarassment and shame of standing out tends to curtail a lot of creative or forward thinking.
Love it or hate it, but Americans cultural tendency to be egotistical, driven, and self-absorbed leads to creative, productive, and innovative products or services. It also leads to greed, which has been our downfall before (man I hated the 80's).
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Philo T. Farnsworth, an American from the state of Utah, is the man who actually invented the television, not the Brits.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
Americans are typically more willing to get into debt to have the latest gadget. This allows companies to flog stuff to consumers that will buy the lastest thing - even if they can't currently afford it.
There are (at least) two potential explanations for this:
First is that employers are entrenched in the Prisoner's Dilemna - each assumes that other employers will furnish high-paying jobs so that the other guy's employees can buy this employers products.
Second is that employers are in the process of losing any concern/regard for the US market, and are planning on expanding into India and China. One could look at this as a form of 'crop rotation', where the crop being harvested is the workers' output. As a labor market unionizes and becomes expensive, move to a labor market where they'll work absurd hours for peanuts. Then as that market 'matures' move to the next. Eventually the first labor market will have become so depressed that they'll work absurd hours for peanuts, and the cycle starts over. Not only that, but the cyclic standards of living implied also imply a wave of new sales as you rotate your workers.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
We have been importing out-of-country IT talent for a while, at least judging by my workplace. The only major difference is that they now get to stay home while holding the same job.
Absolutely !!!
Vajpayee is our hero who is too matured in this political arena.. Kashmir Peace , Disinvestment policies, IT growth are some of the achievements.
Today he is humbled down by congress , which to me is corrupt and unwise
Congress forms a coalition party
I would not be surprised to see many foreign investments of any form could be discouraged due to the fucking protectionist ideas of congress and communists
okay i agree, poor are not taken serious care and congress claims that it would do
I belive many middle class segments got boosted due to disinvestment policies.Readers , please note congress has ruled for many terms after independence but has been largely ignoirng poor people.
So i think , The period that India is going to face is one of a troubled times like increased kashmir conflict,Outsourcing to India will be lessened, less jobs , poor poorer , rich stay the same and dont get richer
Im hating India now , thoughht it would be a regioanl power soon
now im wondering if it would !!!
Im an Indian student in US
Hello , this is my way.
Which way is yours ?
btw there is no right way
After 10 years of demonstrated contribution at Dow Jones, made them millions a year, and 10 more years making companies like Digital Equipment and AT&T richer, I'm now signing up with Walmart to change oil and tires.
During the interview I had the pleasure of interviewing with a guy who was an intellectual contributor at Prudential. The guy was still paying off student loans, too.
No good will come of all this. We've already expatriated manufacturing, now we're expatriating intellectual property generation. What we'll have is the ultimate "service economy", Walmart, food services, etc. What is a "service economy"? You make nothing, just move it around for a fee. Trouble is when you originate ALL your stuff from overseas you end up with a massive trade imbalances, ala 3rd world nations. Oh, wait, the US trade deficit is already at record levels. Then, one day, the massive S. American inflation comes.
I MUST differ.
While the educational system may not be perfect, IMHO the real fault lies within the HOME.
My cousin sent me a humor quip, 'No tooth left behind' about a fictional dental equivalent to 'No child left behind'. It held dentists responsible for kids' cavities, *regardless* of the kids' diets at home, or their parents' enforcement of dental hygeine.
It was meant as a simily for teaching, and how education begins in the home. My wife has spend quite a bit of time subbing, so she sees what these teachers are coping with. By and large, the kids who do well, have support at home. What's even worse, are kids who *should* be doing well, and come from what *seem* like good homes, but to say it mildly, the parents' attitude is 'counterproductive'.
Examples:
Kid acts up, kid gets disciplined, parent backs kid and gives school a rough time. (Kid was caught drinking alcohol on a school trip, btw)
Male teachers afraid to enforce dress code against girls - what are YOU doing ogling me!
Then there are the kids who 'merely' need support at home, and don't get it.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The market in the US also dropped %4 or more in the last week or so as the Congress Party swept the elections. So by your comment our society has now outsourced the driving factors of our markets to India.
What a bunch of hoo-ha.
WWW pre web users is irrelevant. The Internet has two useful critical functions, email and file transfer, i.e. SMTP and HTTP (formerly FTP).
Credit whomever you want with the WWW, it was no more useful than Gopher until Mosaic proved that a graphical browser could exist (neat proof of concept) and then Netscape CREATED the modern Web.
To credit Tim Berners Lee because you discount the pre-web Internet and NOT be crediting Netscape is nothing short of absurd...
Netscape BUILT the modern web Internet, and did it with US Venture funding, because the American economy lets you take risks easily, and has pools of capital for those taking them.
Linux moved from being a toy to a real powerhouse because of what Red Hat did with venture funding.
America's biggest strength it its capital markets, and nobody's dumb ideas like government funded "venture capital" funds will duplicate what an unfettered flow of capital does.
The new Indian Govt is committed to reforms.
If they listen to communists partners and prevent imports, its again the American companies that would suffer. An Indian buys American products from tooth brush, coffee to the Bed he sleeps.
From morning till night its American products.
Any conservative policy will affect both American Companies and Indians as well.
India has taken loan from IMF and no government can revert back to socialists policies even if they wish.
Sure, Engineers could use liberal-arts educations, aquire social skills, and move up because of them. But would that HELP us innovate? This guy doesn't know. I don't know. Nobody does. Huge innovations made by American engineers may have been made BECAUSE they had no lives, had no outlets, couldn't see the much bigger picture, had no joy in their lives through interactions. If Dilbert drinks from the cup of management, he LOSES the knack. Is that true? This guy doesn't know.
Meanwhile, saying we can send out our lower work, while keeping the innovation part strikes me as like saying, "who cares if our dairies move all milk production to Canada. We are the world's best at producing CREAM. We'll keep the cream and forget about all the lost milk work." If the cows are gone, Mister, how are we gonna make cream?
We'd be forced to buy milk from Canada, that's how.
And if we send our small engineering jobs to foreign parts, we loose our ability to make engineers, because it's in the milk work where we find the engineers to make the cream.
The problem I have with outsourcing any job is that most of these projects fail and fail miserably. The root cause of failure is a shoddy financial analysis that doesn't take into account all of the factors.
1. The company taking on the work has NO VESTED INTEREST in your companies success they just want to be paid.
2. The company taking on the work may not have a skill based nor experienced staff to perform the work. Most of their employees are underpaid. Sure you can talk all you want about the International pay scale differences and exchange rates plus cost of living but it still comes down to lower pay in many cases. Not all jobs are being outsourced to India alone. Many are outsourced inside the US or to nearby locations like NAFTA countries.
3. Those left behind who are not outsourced now have to deal with incompetent outsourced workers along with all the communications problems. No outside company is going to absorb all of a companies internal culture policies and processes overnight. It will take years to iron out all the processes.
I am in a situation where we just outsourced half the IT jobs to a vendor. Only the infrastructure was outsourced and for weeks now I have noticed that service levels have tanked. The vendor has hired 80% of it's staff off the street with little in the way of skills. Heck they don't even know their own processes let alone ours. Morale is at an all time low (if there were IT jobs to be easily had, most of the remaining staff would jump ship in a heartbeat).
It was very poorly implemented on both sides both the vendor and the company screwed the whole rollout up. It was pushed through way too fast without a proper plan. The end users are pissed, the developers are pissed, the managers are pissed, and I am sure the vendor is pissed.
Either this will work itself out over the next year causing immense pain and stress to everyone involved or it will fail. Meanwhile with all the pain and suffering we get these employee wide emails praising it as a success, makes me want to vomit!
Why does this bother me so much? Well unlike many IT workers I actually care about the end users and their productivity. What used to take 3 minutes to fix in the past has been taking days to even weeks to get fixed. Help desk tickets are being bounced from department to department while everyone points fingers at each other and says 'not my job'.
We had an elite IT infrastructure that was worlds better then the status quo and we were keeping the workers productive. We were able to solve 85-95% of the calls on the first call! Now there are like 4-5 calls and much phone tag being played. Sure we were expensive but we delivered! Now the company is going to have to learn the age old lesson "You get what you pay for" as they watch their financial estimates get blown to pieces. Supposed to save at least $40 million but it's going to be considerably less. Just the lost productivity is going to hurt them is ways they can't imagine nor measure. Users can't do their jobs if their computers don't work.
Meanwhile, I am updating my resume while I wait to see if half my department gets downsized and if I will still have a job 6 months from now. I am going to have to find work with a smaller company with less benefits and probably half the pay. Or I will be working at Mikey-D's. "You want fries with that? How about a hot apple pie?".
Talks cheap if you are not the one paying the piper.
I tend to agree with the notion that innovative thinking from a diverse set of viewpoints will stand us in good stead, but then he goes and trips over narrow thinking himself.
When a good techie stops being promoted, it may not be because he has no ambition (that is, isn't interested in abandoning the field which he embraced, on which he spent much money and many years of his life, to become a manager) but because he is achieving his ambition right where he is. Some of us prefer to have others work for us as CEO, etc. so we can get on with the interesting work and leave the counting of paperclips and silly political posturing to somebody who cares about such matters.
We work in an enviroment where the mindset is "See what you can do..." I'm always trying to find the best way of programming something. Creativity keeps me sane. I look at the programs I did 5 years ago, dreadful, I'm ashamed I did them so crappily (hey the word works). But at that time I had no clue as to what I was doing.
I just had to go back and add another "feature" to one of my programs today, one I wrote 4 months ago, damn that's sweet code. It took me 5 minutes to do the change because of how efficiently I wrote it. I love having the ability to do what needs to be done. If it breaks, I fix it. How? I don't know, I'll come up with something.
Creativity...It's a big part in my job.
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
The market in the US also dropped %4 or more in the last week or so as the Congress Party swept the elections. So by your comment our society has now outsourced the driving factors of our markets to India.
What a bunch of hoo-ha.
The Indian stock market is nearly in free fall today.
It's obvious to everyone that the elections are the cause.
The Dow, on the other hand, has been mostly stable.
I am most likely wrong about this but innovation doesn't really help out people (workers not consumers) , when it comes to jobs if the work is outsourced does it?
The way I see it is Company ABC innovates some new product, Product its owned by American company, software is written in India, hardware is created in Japan, product it put together in China. Where does this help out American works?
Sure, out sourcing isn't going to hurt business, in fact it will help business's grow, and yes inovation will expand in many areas, and the "American" technology industry will grow, but their will be little returned to the American works, who don't exist.
TruePunk | Games
It is not by accident that our national motto is "E Pluribus Unum" (from many, one).
o tto.asp
Aparently they don't teach much in the way of history and politics at your school (or research for that matter). Thanks to the idiocy of the cold war, we now suffer the association of "In god we trust".
A Legislative History of the National Motto
http://www.aclj.org/stories/historyof_us_m
We have gone from being uniters to being dividers and our current political, social, and corporate environment reflects it all to well.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
The party that is going to come to power (Congress), is the one that started the reforms in the first place.
You must remember that unlike most of the US's better friends, India is a democracy, and therefore must follow the wishes of the people.
Shortly after the results were declared, once everyone found out the Congress was going to come back to power, the stock market went back to its previous level.
Definitely the reforms will not roll back. They might slow down for a while to let the rural areas catch up. Or priority might be given to the development in rural areas.
At least IMHO.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
better able to appreciate cultural differences
Hmm... not quite understood the Arab world view just yet, eh? Mod this troll all you like, the only cultures most Americans understand are fucking yogurts.
Which will also then be offshored.
If you're building a company, and offshored labor is a lot cheaper than local labor, then pray tell why would you build it with local labor? The answer is that you probably won't. And that is how most companies, new and old, will answer the question.
The greater the availability of cheap offshored labor, the worse the prospects for local labor. And therefore, the higher the local unemployment rate.
It'd be one thing if offshoring was a gain in economic efficiency, but it's not, because the amount of human labor expended to do a job remains the same, if it doesn't actually increase. That means that offshoring has to be analyzed in the context of a zero-sum game (economics is zero sum unless there are gains in efficiency involved, because the money transactions themselves are zero-sum). And in the context of a zero-sum game, offshoring is a wealth transfer from the lower and middle classes (those who are losing jobs) to the upper classes (those who own, run, or have significant investment in corporations), because at least some of the money saved from offshoring is going towards additional payouts to the CEOs, upper management, board members, and large investors.
The move towards offshoring won't help the U.S. economy, which gets its strength from the middle class. It'll destroy it, because it'll destroy the middle class. And it might (depending on how far it goes) destroy the world economy as well, because it'll force entire countries' economies to compete with each other with only one variable determining who wins: the standard of living (the amount of resources the average person has above and beyond that which is needed to barely survive). That's because the lower the standard of living, the fewer resources being used by the population, and thus the lower the cost of that population, and thus the lower the cost of using that population as labor.
Which means that the end result will look a lot like the middle ages did: people were either insanely wealthy or dirt poor, with very little variation in between. Most were dirt poor, and little more than slaves.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Industrial biotechnology - Medical technology - Nanotechnology - Telecommunication - we have only seen the tip of the iceberg.
A few questions: Where will this research be done, in the U.S. or another country? Where will the products be manufactured, in the U.S. or another country? Who will be hired, American workers or foreigners?
I'm betting that the tip of the iceberg is all we'll ever see in these areas.
I read the article and like other assurances it lacks details.
When people buy a car they want to specifics. How much will it cost? What do I get? When do I get it?
With outsourcing we should not accept general assurances "that it will all workout somehow"
The only point the article had to make was that American Engineering is known for being innovative.
Will there be enough American Engineers in the future to generate that innovation?
What would motivate college students to major in fields that get outsourced?
If America did continue innovating how would that help if all the work of bringing the innovation to market is done overseas?
If you care about your future and the future of the country please don't accept vauge reassurances.
If you care about your future and the future of the country please don't accept the word of CEOs, politicians, or economists who have their self interested motivations that all of this is necessary.
If you care about your future and the future of the country please do pay attention to which politicians are promising to help Americans with this issue and follow those politicians to make sure they keep their promises.
Steve
When I read where the author was from I thought it sounded familiar. Olin College of Engineering is non-accredited.
THEY TUK' OUR JOB!!
Yep we all look small and insignifigant.
This article is the similar fluff from CEOs as before. However, I maintain that looking behind at our great achiements won't help the future's lack of them.
As Tyler Dirken said
"F**k Marth Stewart, she's polishing brass on the Titantic"
This guy is polishing something (maybe his head) and he's trying to placate the masses. Don't pay attention to the larger picture of the US is slowly losing it's ability to innovate. I'm sure out sourcing will help CEO's and the people who hold stock options but it will still screw the rest of us.
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
Smaller jobs, and OSS will probably enable companies to keep more jobs in the US. (Since reusing GPLed code is less work than a big rewrite from scratch.)
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
I worry about... being replaced with a cotton mill, you insensitive clod!
Damn those 19th Century politicians and tech bosses!
His argument is that America benefits greatly from the diversity of the population - that the constant encounter with difference stimulates new ideas.
Given that, India may have the advantage. India is a mix of a great number of different ethnic groups. They may all look "brown" to Caucasians but the differences are more-than-evident to Indians. There are hundreds of languages (so many that English is the lingua franca), thousands of tribal groups, and diversity (caste division) even among the dominant Hindu culture - itself the world's most diverse religion since many, many different gods are worshipped, each village having a few local favorites. Add to this significant Muslim, Jain, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Parsi populations.
India is way ahead of the US on diversity, and has been diverse for a lot longer. If this writer is right about the value of diversity, India (not China - 90% Han) should be the dominant country in engineering innovation by mid-century.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
The article claims that the United States is unique in having people from diverse cultures, backgrounds, and races. The article claims this is what is feeding our innovation.
He's wrong; we're not unique in this. India has diverse cultures and LANGUAGES- Hindu alone is a religion made up of several local tribal Gods in a political framework imposed from the outside. These people have 3000 years of experience on the subcontinent with understanding diverse and varying culture. If this is truly where our soceity gets its innovation from, we're in BIG TROUBLE.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I was given the opposite advice, by a mathematics teacher about to retire who knew me well. She recommended I take my maths as high as I could, and then transfer it into whatever field I wanted to work in. That turned out to be some of the best advice I've ever received: an undergraduate degree in maths and a post-grad CS diploma later, and I'm more qualified than most of my peers. More importantly, I understand maths and can apply it in new contexts, as well as having easily enough CS to work in software development specifically (where a lot of people don't have any formal CS background anyway).
I'm also curious about this idea that mathematics opens no career paths. My peers now work in finance, IT, bio-tech, engineering R&D, and numerous other interesting and/or well paid fields. A few did go on to do PhDs, but certainly not the majority.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
On the contrary, some of the best paid people around these parts (and I work in a heavy tech city) are now the people with solid practical skills in timeless industries: plumbers, electricians, craftsmen...
Too many people have gone chasing a dream that a degree will guarantee a good income. Anyone stupid enough to believe that when the UK government target is 50% degree educated where it used to be 5-10% doesn't deserve a degree in the first place. No, as always it's the people who've worked hard to gain skills that are in demand who will benefit. Right now, the future is pretty bright for the practical workers, and why shouldn't it be?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Elections in India are more of a popularity contest than anything else. The one who is more popular today wins and people do not care too much as to who is in power.
To some extent this is a valid reaction. Considering the size ( in all senses of the word - population, financial stores etc), the elected government rarely matters.
Anyone who thinks outsourcing is inherently bad should read up on the economic principle of comparative advantage. The good outweighs the bad, for the same reasons that we no longer live in completely self-sufficient families, making our own clothes, soap, tools, food, etc. We each do what we're best at, and trade that for everything else. Comparative advantage works on the personal, community, state, and national level.
Businessmen can run one company into the ground, and turn right around and start another to pay off the debts. Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement. The culture in America allows people to take chances. A few of them pay off. In most countries, failure is not socially acceptable, and so people just don't take such big chances there.
America's ``diversity'' has helped, of course. It has allowed weird-os and immigrants fresh off the boat to make something of themselves. We would have forced a lot of talent to go to waste without that tolerance of difference. Still, I suspect that the diversity hasn't made nearly as much difference (during the last 50 years or so) as our free labor markets. The fact that it's easy to fire means it's safe to hire. If you want to start a business, you can quit your job and do it. You'll be able to find another job if you need it, because it's easy to hire. You'll be able to hire workers if you need them, because they don't need jobs for life (which no startup can offer), and you can hire, because it doesn't require the sort of long-term commitment that no startup can offer.
Then there's the large market and (until recently) educated workforce within our borders, the ready availability of capital, and so on. Most of all, we had, at least into the 1930s, free markets for goods, commodities, labor and capital, to an extent that few countries have ever matched. Even today, in the middle of a long slide into socialism, we have more economic freedom than many countries.
See what I've been reading.
"Well yes, as I have maintained in the past, outsourcing does not present a strategic long term concern for the US. Sure, there are certain jobs that shall be relocated or executed from remote locations, but even if one looks at the current trends - anything that remotely involves creativity or innovation is not going anywhere"
I think that this statement contains several assumptions that we need to look at critically. I think you will see that if we depend on this kind of thinking to set policy, we are fucked. It's an arrogant statement without basis in fact or history.. And this has been said many times before in failing empires.. It is never true..
First, I should explain that movements to 'outsource' jobs historically have come after
economic increaases in productivity that have empowered middle class workers and especially, skilled craftsmen/women (yesterday's 'programmers') Basically, its driven by greed. Productivity increases should be shared, but instead, the upper management prefers to keep them all themselves. So, in a sense, the explosion in offshoring is the executive management's revenge for the salary increases many of us extracted from them in the late 90s. (Also, where do the designers and creators come from? They have to work their way up to that point. How will they do it if the bulk of entry-level jobs have dissapeared? It won't happen. Most people will never enter the field. Those who are midway will be forced to leave it for more renumerative work elsewhere, if they can find it - doubtful, at that point..because most service jobs - the ones that cant move overseas..will be automated by then..)
But they are also making another assumption they shouldn't. That they will be able to, after training these offshore workers, be able to remain as the middlemen offering their services to others, and making a princely, easy profit off of them. That wont happen. What will happen is that those jobs and technologies will leave the US, never to return. All because of greed.
Basically, the loss of technical jobs is creating a vicious circle. People are less drawn to technical careers, (to put it mildly) and this creates a 'shortage of skilled workers' that sends the innovators in technology elsewhere to start companies and build equity.. Like Spain, Holland and England before them, the US will lose its 'empire' to other, more innovative countries if we dont stop this hemmorhaging of technical investment now..
But it may already be too late.. Those of us who like working in technology may eventually be forced to move where the jobs are.. or do something else..something boring and nonproductive.. Its our loss. If the US government turns into an inflexible corrupt protector of the status-quo - the monopolies and monied interests.. intelligent people without extensive investments or inherited wealth would be well advised to go elsewhere.. The inward-looking government will be all-consumed with erecting barriers to their success here.. Head for the frontier.. Since you cant go to America, there must be another frontier somewhere.. China, Asia, Canada, Europe, Australia..New Zealand???? Look for places where innovation is rewarded..appropriately.. The offshorers wont care at that point.. they have already made their money.. now their main obsession is preserving it... Preserving the status quo.. Fighting creativity.. At least thats how I see them.. Look at the DMCA, the RIAA, wage stagnation, the loss of privacy in the workplace (like Foucaults Panopticon), the financial scandals on Wall Street..the 401k scam, massively inflated real-estate prices masking salary stagnation, cronyism and corruption..the shifting of the tax burden away from the rich and onto the (shrinking) middle class and poor.. The signs of the collapse of an impending bubble are all there..
Thats economics 101 Its already begun..
Those stinking goobacks...they took our jobs!
factual troll alert!
from paragraph #1:
the outsourcing overseas of such previously "secure" white collar jobs as programming, software engineering and application design.
from paragraph #2:
But if we focus on our traditional strengths in technology and engineering...
from my perspective; if paragraph #1 is valid, then paragraph #2 occurs were paragraph #1 is located at. OUCH!
being affiliated with educators on an intimate level. the one thing that's really going to be entertaining is when a student gets on the internet for their class in old english lit. from their teacher in india, then vedio conferences that teacher about it.
"But here you are with your faith, and your Peter Pan advice." - Billy Joel
The real culprit is increased productivity.. Robots will eventually be doing most non-creative jobs, so we should be concentrating on keeping the creative jobs here in the US. Once they go overseas, they wont come back.. We need immigration because of the falling birth rate.
Otherwise, because Social security is a Ponzi scheme, we will have to raise taxes on the rich, and they will never allow that.
The editorial says that Americans are more creative than foreigners in engineering advances. And that will remain America's specialty, as foreigners retain other advantages that draw some of the global engineering economy their way. But that creative edge was born in the unique global America of the 20th Century, and is now going the way of that time and its conditions.
Americans were unusually fortunate in developing a scientific culture, while the rest of the world was still mired in faith cultures: religion, racism, royalty. But those cultures failed, especially when they competed directly with America, most obviously in war, but also in global economics like colonialism. Now American scientism has spread to other cultures, like in Europe and Asia where previously at best a tiny elite indulged. And their share of scientific innovation, and its overachieving younger sister, engineering, is dramatically increasing. Note how many American science papers are coauthored by visiting foreigners. While Americans are increasingly turning to the exact bad habits that kept their global competitors back: complacency, entitlement, anti-intellectualism, faith exclusive of reason, and competition via force rather than excellence.
Americans, dominating the 20th Century invention scene, stood on the shoulders of foreign giants, some of them immigrants to America. The wave moves on, with the compliance of the medium through which it moves. If Americans keep reorienting towards faith, exclusive of science, and waste all our hard-won opportunities to lead, the wave of innovation will move to where it is more welcome. And many of us, compelled to innovate, will move with it, to foreign shores.
--
make install -not war
The reason for the USA's success is economic freedom. (The USSR had a huge, single market, too, but did not have a successful economy.) Any country can achieve economic greatness if they have the nerve to try economic freedom.
Assuming, of course, that there is one..
Things like the DMCA make the USA less capitalistic (more mercantilistic) and free.
That will hurt us.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Half a million H1-B visas issued for tech positions that are currently filled by foreigners.
Half a million unemployed in the tech sector that could be working right now.
Do the math.
Actually I think the number of H1-B's working in the US right now exceeds a full million but I don't feel like looking it up. Right now the unemployment rate for people with college degrees is higher than the unemployment rate for high school dropouts. If we looked at only the tech sector, I would be willing to bet that the unemployment rate in the tech sector right now is even nastier than the overall unemployment during the Great Depression in the early 30's.
And there are reasons for the falling birth rate that are outside the scope of this discussion, but immigration isn't the means to fix it.
You are right about Social Security, though. Seven and half percent paid by you, seven and a half paid by your employer - paid only on the first $70k'ish dollars earned. If we could have personal accounts with that money we would all retire mega-wealthy at 55.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
The root of the problem is that the parents are too afraid to stand up for their rights and demand that employers give them sane working hours with proper benefits. This problem has the same root as free trade. The problem is that our economy is crumbling due to the fact that there is no longer any market incentive for hiring a lot of workers. More and more tasks can be automated and those that cannot be automated can also be shipped overseas. This is what happens when you let unregulated markets run your economy for you. The irony is that our production has more than doubled in the last 30 years. However, that extra production is going into the pockets of the upperclasses, while at the same time wages are plummeting. If we keep letting markets run the economy, what we may end up with is a highly productive society where only a fraction of the population works at any one time, for poverty wages, while the rest scramble to find one of the remaining jobs. But, I don't think it will get that far, when people that have never been homeless, or hungry a day in their life start to experience what free trade is all about, they will rise up. Of that, I have no doubt.
Market awareness is.
A common phrase in Germany is: The Germans invent it, the USAmericans sell it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Richard K. Miller,
President,
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
This is a school that is funded by the Olin Foundation, which is one of the largest funders of anti-labor causes in the US. The Olin's are multi-millionaires and fund to the tune of millions a year causes that are the most strident in screwing workers and helping millionaires and billionaires. There are not many wealthy American families on the front lines of what they must perceive as a class war as them. The only other ones I can think of are the Coors family, and to some extent Richard Mellon Scaife.
I read through this article and what is he saying? Nothing but a lot of bullshit. But other people here have mentioned that so I'll just throw up a red flag about who he's connected to (and paid by).
I should also mention that if there's a "problem" they'll always say it is American workers versus Indian workers. As if we're in a race and have to compete - working longer hours for the same amount of money, improving our skills so we generate more profit for the bosses and so forth. What is not mentioned is overwork, that if American workers and Indian workers got overtime pay, unemployment would fall (as people would be cut down to 40 hours work per week), and wages would rise, since supply of IT labor hours would shrink, increasing the price.
I am really tired of hearing the bullshit. The problem is not with the IT workers, we can administrate and program just as well as we could five years ago, if not better. The problem is with the people who control the capital, and their broken-down economic system which has the sole purpose of making profit for them. The only way to fix anything of this for ourselves is to talk to other IT workers who are of a similar mind (which there are many of), organize together and do something together. The sum is greater than the total of all of the parts. There are already nascent efforts out there working towards this, we just have to join up with them and push them along.
The first Electronic television and therefore the real deal was invented in America by Philo T. Farnsworth. This is one where you could actually take a picture of something and display it on a tube.
Sorry Europe, not smart enough to come up with that one.
IT outsourcing need not threaten our future... if we nullify all I"P" laws: What??? I hear you say. Well, it is I"P" law that prevents me setting up my own business to compete against the corporations who have outsourced similar work to the third world.
I have nothing to lose by the removal of copyright and patent law, american corporations, which use those laws TO RAISE THE COST OF COMPETING WITH THEM IN AMERICA - that is what patents do! - can get away with outsourcing because of I"P" law. Remove I"P" law, and I can compete with them on a level playing field again. And I would kick their asses, if I knew I couldn't be sued for providing an interoperable service (yeah, I'm a software-as-service guy...)
I am eagerly awaiting the day they start offshoring attorneys. Except for the rare times someone needs to appear in court (I'm thinking of civil law here), there's no reason I can think of that the paper-pushers have to be statebound. To take it a step further, even courts could be virtualized with videoconferencing equipment. I can't wait until a good attorney costs $8/hour (what's that work out to in rupees?)
Loading...
Sorry, HTML existed in the US military clear back into the 1960's. Xerox had hyperlinking in the mid 1980's, even to another machine. I remember as a student at the University of Maryland, we had a browser with pictures that would pull up stuff from other machines in the 1980's. Didn't use http:// though, it was . I still have some docs that have that in it. We didn't do anything with it because the internet was government owned and we didn't think it would ever go anywhere. I know MIT had similar stuff and so did Carnegie Mellon. MIT's ran on X and went back to the 1970's.
I disagree. For that to be true, you have to assume not only that most "middle class" workers are employed in positions that can be easily outsourced and that all positions that can be easily outsourced will be, but also that not enough jobs will be created to offset a significant portion of the jobs lost to outsourcing. I don't think you can show evidence of any of those conditions. Add to that the fact that there is already some backlash occurring against outsourcing, and I don't get all the gloom and doom.
here's the deal. i'm doing my master's right now in EE in canada. i've did some job search when i finished my bachelors almost 2 years back. all you see are postings that require 5+ yrs of experience, and absolutely nothing for fresh graduates.
here's what i think. if all companies only hire experienced engineers with 5 years of experience, few years down the road, there will be no more people with that 5 yr experience. then there's going to be a big gap between new grad hirings, and people with experience. is that what they really want to do. (i guess they really dont give a fuck really)
but oh yeah, there were career fairs, but only about 3 companies came up. i had a bunch of interviews with them, but i've asked around, and no one got an offer afterwards. companies were merely giving us anal probings. teasing us with interviews, etc, etc trying to keep into "good" terms with the school. bleh.
anyway, worked hard to get pull up my grades to get into masters' and concentrated in my studies - and havent been really thinking about the job market. now towards the latter part of my studies, i started looking at postings.
same shit. except one or two more fresh grad postings. most of them are down in the US. being canadian, they're not going to hire me. how am i going to compete when there's already so much unemployed talent south of the boarder? we've all worked hard in our studies. i've had experience working as research assistant and practical internship experience. i starting to feel more and more doubt that i'll find anything.
other options? am i going to do a phd? 4-6 more years... not to mention i have no idea how i'm going to pay for my expenses. i certain wont mind doing it, but the money factor's really starting to weigh in down on me
now all i hear in the news - EVERYDAY - problems in iraq and scandels here and there. fuck.
my blog
Sadly what normally happens in countries with large populations like India is famine, similer to what happened in China, and what is happening right now is North Korea.
No. Famine is almost always caused by a lack of political representation. In fact, famine is often very selective, only affecting the classes that lack, or have lost, political power. For example, the last famine in India was the Bengal famine of 1943 in which there was no reduction in the levels of the national food supply. Over 3 million people died in that famine they were almost all from one specific disenfranchaised class - rural laborer.
See the writings of economist Amartya Sen for more information on this specific topic. He won the 1998 Nobel Prize for his work on the causes of famine.
Scranton is mainly fucked because the people that live there are happy to be miserable. I say this only as someone who lived there for 25 years. Someone who was no longer happy with being miserable, that is.
As a project manager in the IT sector, I can attest to the nature of outsourcing. The fact of the matter is /. posters are much cheaper in India than in the US.
-- "Someone's gotta go back for a shit-load of dimes."
Actually, 6.2% paid by you, 6.2% paid by your employer, up to $87,900. Yes, if you invested that yourself, you would be rich by the time you retire. Of course, the corporate tax structure incents companies to match 401-k contirbutions up to 6%, so that idea is still in there, but there are only so many 6 percents in 100%, and you have to live on something in the mean time.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
...changing my name to Rastus, so I can practice saying "yas, massah, we's be shufflin off now to do yo' biddin".
Yep, it's getting that bad.
Of all the crap out there, that one that REALLY gets me is random "courtesy checkpoints". That is THE most heinous thing going, out of a boatload of heinous stuff goping dowen. It just bugs me that it's going on and getting worse. I mean, it's right out of a grade B old ww2 nazi war movie.
I've been thinking about this: Politicians Lawyers (Dr.s or something medical?) Auto Mechanics (although, the industry is trying to consolidate that career back into the dealership fold.) Tenured Professors CEOs, other high-management, possibly low iq or low moral types... And, let's think about it, the obvious choice... Journalists! Think about it, who's been doing all the reporting on outsourcing? Somebody who learned English as a second language? fwiw
I hte to reply to myself, but it is an indication of /.'s readership that someone poor mindless sod moderated that post as "funny".
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
When I talk to CEOs about the career paths of the engineers in their companies, they say that many reach a career plateau very early, often after only five years. This happens not because of any technical deficiency, but because of a lack of "people" skills such as communication and teamwork. Moreover, engineers often come up short when they have to deal with people from different fields, such as manufacturing and marketing.
This does not explain why companies continue to only hire vertical engineers who have laundry lists of languages, technologies, and certs on their resumes, rather than horizontal engineers who are well-rounded and have better-than-average understanding of a wide range of industries and disciplines.
The whole statement that we need more "broader" technical talent is bullshit. It clearly has not been communicated down to the people in HR who are continually and consistently denying resumes because they haven't hit enough of the checkboxes on the acronym chart.
Corporations failed all through the 90s to truly harness and benefit from the diverse interests of broad-minded workers, instead fostering a stovepipe theory of corporate growth which in fact lowered the morale of broad-minded employees because the areas they were once able to branch out into (due to small-company necessity) were yanked from them in the name of territoriality.
If corporations think they need more broad-minded talent, they need to do two things (well three, but "get their head out of their ass" goes without saying): 1. Un-fuck the unenlightened roboticness of HR resume filtering, and 2. Actually create and promote positions that have broad domains.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
The Apologist understands what you're saying, but they're tentatively optimistic that it will be the opposite.
[o]_O
But what good does it have to add new, innovative engineers to the labor pool if there are no jobs for them and VCs aren't interested in funding *real* innovation that doesn't match the latest set of new/hot buzzwords?
The other point is that yes, we have real creative artists in the engineering field. However, to develop them to the point where their skills can produce new inventions of the sort which will benefit us all, these people need starting points for their career paths, i.e. entry level programming, electrical engineering, etc.
These are exactly the jobs that are going overseas.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Due to recent elections in India outsourcing costs there are about to skyrocket.
Hurray for US programmers. You know, those people that pay taxes in the US. Those people that were raised in the US. Those people that possibly served in the US military. Your neighbors, if you live in the US. The ones that spent the past 10 or 15 years honing their skills only to be ousted by Congress through the changing of immigration laws so that outsourcing to India would be possible for US corps in the first place.
Oh, and we need manufacturing back as well. Strong economies are built on a number of things and manufacturing is definitely at the base.
Creativity is important... but I am sure that many Africans are creative as well, only they have to spend all of their creativity on aquiring food. They would laugh at the people who would willingly give up jobs. The market can be regulated and always has been.
Hurray for India! Get a job in India? Yeah right. They are a highly socialist nation and they do protect their jobs. In fact, many there complain about the brain drain on India that outsourcing has been. As their brightest (or greediest..matters not really) tech workers are absorbed in solving problems that exist here and not there. Many H1B friends I have feel that they have been used - and they have been - to lower my salary and then eliminate my job... and then their jobs (unless they go back to India...which most did not want to do - surprised? I wasn't) The new government may turn back emmigration a bit for those who attend state sponsored colleges to keep them in country working on problems that India faces. The shifting base pyramid of globalization only benefits the wealthy and I have confidence in India that India will see their way out of the trap that has been set for them.
It really disgusts me that the "pro-outsourcing" crowd loves to throw statements like this out there as if it is a realistic solution for a professional with a family to take (or, as you'll soon learn the hard way, even get offerred) a $15,000 per year job that has no benefits. Since somebody who works at Home Depot makes about 1/3 of my annual salary, what you're really saying is "If you can't beat 'em, (by working the same job for 1/3 as much money) join 'em! (by taking a different job that pays 1/3 as much.)"
So you know, I don't object to opportunities for others... But I DO object to having my income taxes subsidize the companies that want to export jobs from this country so they can hide money from the IRS in "foreign subsidiaries." The long-term effect here is that my taxes will go up to make up for revenue not collected from these robber-barons, even as my standard of living drops dramatically. Fuck, dude, I've already taken a 40% salary cut since 2001. Do you want my fucking kidney too?
What you're really saying is that since I'm not a member of the elite, ruling class here (my parents aren't millionaires, neither am I) that my entire lifestyle should be forfeit at the whim of whatever robber-baron I work for. That, since I can't afford to buy off any senators like Disney or governors like Enron, that its just "too bad for me." When I get laid off because the crooked-CEO at my company cooks the books and skates off to Barbados with a $20 million golden-parachute I'm told the CEO was just "looking out for the best interests of stockholders" so maybe I, in your words, "should go to work at Home Depot."
It upsets me to the point of nausea that all the years of taxes I've paid are now used to my direct detriment to create tax breaks and shelters that encourage companies to take high-wage jobs like mine overseas. Show me the value for Americans in this scenario, because I don't see it. And I specifically mean replacing career positions like Software Developer that pay $40k-$100k now with positions like Cashier that pay $7-$11 per hour and have no benefits.
When I was out of work (2002-2003) I applied for literally thousands of IT jobs and was having a real problem getting interviews. So I decided it would be best to also apply for various jobs of this sort ("cashier", pizza-guy, etc) so I could pay my bills and perhaps preserve SOME of my financial wealth. Response at every single one? Always "No." The people who had the balls to answer the question "Why won't you hire me?" usually responded with some variation of this statement:
"You're overqualified. You'll just quit when you can get a better job in your field."
These answers are, of course, cop-outs. Truth is, "my kind" is as welcome there as Will Smith would have been on a golf-course in 1920 (read: not at all.) (For those of you who don't get the reference, check IMDB for information about the achingly bad movie The Legend of Bagger Vance.) Pretty much all of these companies' work on thin margins, since we Americans love a bargain! This means it is crucial that they have mostly low-wage employees who have no other prospects for employment... This creates a great culture of fear, because the people who need the work most (the uneducated and poor) will stay as long as they can, and ones who don't will quit or be fired. Also, this pretty effectively eliminates the need for pay raises, since people who need the job will fear being fired as a "troublemaker" for demanding one, and so, won't.
You might want to enlarge your world-view a little to include at least some tiny corner of reality. The reality is that "managers" of organizations like that want employees they can hire cheaply, abuse as needed, and fire for taking too many toilet breaks in a week under "at-will employment" laws... Often (perhaps not coincidenta
Who did what now?
"Ugh I really hate this line of thinking. "
As you should. As the author of the "GET OUT!: Your in my job." program, posted here many times. The attitude is elitism masquerading as common sense[1]. Here's another thing for people to think about. How many of the "doing it for the love" is on the committee for "help keep our jobs pure"? Bet they've swayed many, to not hire one of those "doing it for the money" immigrants.
[1] With the way the economies going. I expect the "doing it for the love of minimumn wages" crowd to now complain about the influx of people doing their jobs just "for survival".
"There is no affordable way to replace the guy who runs around replacing busted mice with someone sitting in Rawalpindi. "
Lovely. We'll be a nation of busted ball replacers. Talk about a kick to the groin.
"Some jobs are so specialized that it'll be hard to save any money by shopping more widely. "
I guess it's true then. The US is a one trick pony. Bet you've never seen an entire nation ride a unicycle, before?
"Churning out endless revisions of the payroll report program is steady work and pays okay, but is it really interesting?"
If it was fun, it wouldn't be work?
"Finally, turnabout's fair play. Find some IT work in another country that you can do for less and "steal" one of *their* jobs. If they can do it, you can do it."
The Irish, had the potatoe famine. We'll have the "your job's going overseas, and it's not coming back" famine.
who's going to have enough money to buy the products?
The problem isn't outsourcing alone, the problem is unmitigated greed.
IT has lost most of its geek appeal, everything is becoming a commodity. Corporations want to use the patent & legal system to make money, instead of making products.
The ratio of compensation between upper management and works has increased radically in the last 20 years. Yet the corporations all cry the same song about having no money and needing to outsource.
The year Iacocca saved Chrysler, he made 20 mill. He shut down a plant that was losing a mil a year, putting 15,000 out of work. The cost to the state of Michigan far exceeded the 1 mill. Did Iacocca really need 20 mil instead of 19 mil?
>lot of the people in any industry who are in it "for the money" are orders of magnitude better at whatever job they're in than those who are there just "for the love of it".
I agree. I get so well paid for my 7-24 job as a physics researcher! Damn, that Jaguar looks nice...how much does it cost?
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Outside of biotech, it's hard to find any major large scale R&D operations left in the US. In the computer/electronics field, who is doing innovative work? PARC is moribund. Bell Labs is dying. IBM Almaden is cutting back. RCA sold off Sarnoff Labs years ago. DEC is gone. HP Labs has downsized.
No, all I have to assume is that the vast majority of middle-class jobs are the kind that don't require a local physical presence, which is absolutely true and becoming more true all the time as technology improves (the fact that offshoring is viable now is because of technology). The rest follows from the economics of the situation: offshore labor costs much less than local labor.
As for new job creation, new jobs don't arise as a result of greater availability of manpower, they arise as a result of greater demand for labor, but greater demand for labor only occurs when there's something that someone with money needs to have done that isn't currently being done. You don't hire more people to do your yard just because you can afford to pay more people, you hire just enough to get the job done. And that's true everywhere.
And even if there is an increase in available jobs, the economics of offshoring guarantees that those jobs will preferentially be offshored, and will remain local only when the company in question has no other choice. Again, the economics of the situation demands this.
Backlash doesn't make any difference any more. The fact that the war in Iraq happened despite very heavy and vocal opposition should be enough to convince you that the government (which sets up the rules the corporations play by) doesn't give a crap what the people think anymore. And they have all the guns, so they don't have to. The government is now almost completely in the pockets of the large corporations, and has been for quite some time.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
>>If you're building a company, and offshored labor is a lot cheaper than local labor, then pray tell why would you build it with local labor? The answer is that you probably won't. And that is how most companies, new and old, will answer the question.
Because you are selling to Americans? And if no American has a job, then you can't sell it to them.
And guess what? You don't pay your overseas workers enough to afford one of your products either.
Hiring people from other countries to replace american workers, when your primary source of customers is American a zero sum game. If only one person offshores their product, then they win, but if everyone does it, everyone loses.
Our country should be self sufficient for all the basics that are needed to at least defend ourselves against other countries, or we are the losers.
America won WWII because we could produce planes, ships and tanks faster than our enemies could shoot them. If all manufacturing ablity is in India and China then who do you think will win WWIII? (HINT: It ain't gonna' be America.)
And if you don't think that there will be another big war, you are stupid.
The problem with most American business men are they are craven cowards who would betray their own country for a buck quicker than they can prostitute their own mothers.
So good to hear some posters here on Slashdot who know what is going on with neoliberalism. THe vast majority of Americans do not even know what that word is, even though the USA is the center of neoliberalism. I think some of the posters who are speaking out against neoliberal policies here are from countries other than America.
Am I right?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I completely agree with this. I'm not arguing in favor of offshoring, I'm arguing against it, by showing what the likely long-term consequences will be, and why things will go the way I predict. And except for real increases in efficiency (meaning, being able to produce more per man-hour), economics as a whole is basically a zero-sum game.
Not that it'll make any difference, mind you: the people who have the power to control how this goes don't listen to people like us. Rather, they're the very people who are pushing for this.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
The author is right, outsourcing need not be a threat. But he is an educator, not an economist, so he doesn't have the right words to express the answer in non educational terms.
Lets be practical. Protectionism will not work; China's cost of labor is 3% of ours, so we are NOT going to stop outsourcing.
So what will work?
If you read the literature on the competitive advantage of nations, you realize that what really happens is that a "cluster of expertise" on a particular area forms within the nation, and eventually it develops into a national hegemony that makes that nation competitive in that area for a period of time.
We have seen this with Swiss watchmakers and with German cars, even with America's Silicon Valley that grew from the HomeBrew Computer Clubs cluster.
India invested heavily in developing their clusters (the Indian Institute of Technology, for example) and China has done the same (the Shenzen Special Economic Zone, for example). It has paid off handsomely for them.
America has not made a real effort in this area until recently. It isn't enough to just give funding. The J.O.B.S. bill or, say, Utah's Fund of Funds are necessary, but not sufficient.
The investment we need to make is to actively "seed" the creation of clusters of expertise, but that's not being done; so no wonder America's competitive advantage is rapidly slipping away; we aren't investing in our future.
The author of the article is looking to education as a way to seed the clusters.
But that's haphard, indirect, and more importantly, America does not have the time or patience to wait for that to happen.
The federal and state governments have to take an active interest (possibly by issuing contracts) in turning those funds they have made available into projects that cause clusters to form.
So far, there has been little effort in this area.
In the meantime, the US Trade Representative has been trading American jobs for agricultural export advantages. So America gets to sell more GMO soybeans to China, and China gets to sell more IT and telecom services to America. Perfectly reasonable from the USTR's point of view, agriculture is a far less risky proposition than services.
That needs to change. We, as a nation, cannot be reduced to agriculture as our one single major export. That is far too risky.
We, as a nation, need to pick specific areas to develop clusters of expertise in, and then focus on developing those as fast as possible.
But to make that kind of national effort happen takes leadership on the part of the state and national legislatures, or at least in the Department of Labor and in the current atmosphere of political balkanization, that is highly unlikely.
Perhaps after the next election we will get a more activist government.
There is some hope however, since some seeds already exist.
Utah, for example, lead the country in pioneering digital signatures in government. That could develop into a national hegemony where the US is to digital identity what Japan is to consumer electronics. Certainly thats a potential export item in an age where governments all over the world are trying to sort out what citizens get what services.
There are many other examples. Most major governments are facing the same issue as America, the aging of their population and the ensuing medical care crisis. America already exports VISTA, the VA developed open source hospital administration system thats used in hospitals worldwide. It would not take much effort to turn that into another national hegemony that would be a good export item.
Will these and others existing seeds (like the UWB cluster forming in Silicon Valley) be enough?
Unless congress and hte administration gets it's act together, it will have to do.
I have a question to our Indian friends.
... etc.)
The way I see it (I may be wrong), the BJP originally won because of a strong Hindu nationalist agenda. Lal Krishna Advani supported the Ayudhya incident, and gained support (much like Sharon and his Sept 2000 visit to Al Aqsa mosque).
This has led to serious riots, killing and ill will between various ethnicities/religons in India (e.g. Post Ayudhya riots, Gujarat riots,
Some Indians I know are disppointed by having an Italian for a PM, and others said that she will not understand what the poor really need.
My questions to our Indian colleagues are:
- What was the real reason the Congress lost back in early 1990s?
- How much a factor was the sectarian strife in the Congress returning to power
- What do you guys think about Sonia as PM?
Thanks in advance for the replies.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Yes, a single individual or small group can do remarkable things with respect to software with only an investment in labor. Innovation implemented in hardware, electronic or otherwise takes capital investment.
DARPA's funding remarkable things as usual, but they are increasingly defense-oriented, not basic technology research. You know any civilian-sector apps for a gun that'll spit out 1M rounds/min?
The VC community basically is a herd which will only fund whatever matches the new, hot buzzwords.
The private sector is in general only funding short-term applications-oriented research, and even the projects they're helping fund in academia are increasingly the same kind of research.
The answer I keep coming up with respect to "who" is, nobody. I'm not expecting to see a whole lot of real invention in the US (inventions, yes... but we all know what's wrong with the patent system) in the next generation. Perhaps other countries will be smarter about this.
BTW, I metamodded your post "interesting".
Tech Public Policy stuff
No, all I have to assume is that the vast majority of middle-class jobs are the kind that don't require a local physical presence, which is absolutely true....
No it's not. You seem to be assuming 'middle class = white collar office worker'. Middle class simply means middle income, especially in this context of driving the U.S. economy. That includes most tradesmen (electrician, carpenter, plumber, mechanic and many variations on those basic categories), many categories of sales (that often depend on face-to-face contact), most small business owners, some lawyers, lots of healthcare workers, and despite the gloom and doom we heard about in the 80's a growing manufacturing sector. All that and many more, as well as the easily outsourced office work we think of as 'typical middle class'. If you have some data that show that I'm mistaken, I'd like to see it.
Backlash doesn't make any difference any more. The fact that the war in Iraq happened despite very heavy and vocal opposition should be enough to convince you that the government ... doesn't give a crap what the people think anymore.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. First wrong: the "government" may not care what you think about war in Iraq, but many state legislatures are setting rules that state contractors cannot send work overseas. There may be a move to expand this at the federal level as well (there are already rules preventing foreign work and/or products in many areas). Second wrong: companies do care what consumers think, as evidenced by the fact that Dell brought their call center operations back stateside after customers complained. Third time wrong: the backlash I was referring to is from companies that are finding that outsourcing often doesn't live up to expectations, and it makes better business sense to keep the work here or even bring it back. But you'd know that if you looked at the link I provided.
Linux isn't an example either (firstly it's non-commercial, second it's a rewrite of Unix - the change is more social than technical).
And it was started by a Finnish-born Swede and undoubtedly most of the work on it historically and currently is non-American.
I guess the browser is THE standout example - now how long did it take for that to become a commodity item?
The WWW was created by a Brit while working in Switzerland. The Web didn't have American presence until a few months later.
Oh, and the extent of its innovativeness is arguable, given the existence of Gopher.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Who said anything about it being American?! (BTW I'm a Brit too)
My point was how little real innovation there actually is, American or otherwise. My point about Linux was that it's a Unix clone, it has some interesting design choices that make it easy to port, but hardly something "innovative". What is innovative about Linux is HOW it was built (nobody has ever attempted such a large project with the mantra "release early, release often" before). The innovation here is social not technical.
As for the browser/webserver - OK you don't want to count that (and your objection sounds just like the kind of thing I'd say), we'll agree to differ.
My point about Linux was that it's a Unix clone, it has some interesting design choices that make it easy to port, but hardly something "innovative".
Oh. Alright. (And btw, it was actually started as a clone of a clone [Minix]).
My apologies.
But after all, the source story was about the importance of America's alleged strength in innovation to the viability of its siphoning economy, so I was reading your post from that angle.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Yeah, my point was I see little to support this "innovation" claim. There seems to be little on software that's actually innovative. Really that's also true in hardware.
I think what we've seen is rapid (and sometimes not so rapid) refinement. But the discontinuous "innovation" is a very rare beast indeed. Personally I feel that the rush to move jobs off shore is very short sighted, and claims that we'll replace it with something else are hard to swallow. This "innovation" claim seems like hogwash.
BTW I knew the Minix connection - somewhere I have (or at least had) a copy of Minix. Unrelated to this, but doesn't that make SCO's claims seem even more foolish?
Just find yourself a position on your local slaughter house's steer killing floor.
I'm time traveling, right now