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."

Comments

Flamebait

[mccalli]

From the article: 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. What is it about our economy that nurtures innovation, and how do we support it?

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

Re:Flamebait

[cperciva]

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.

Don't forget the Telephone - Canada.

Re:Flamebait

[Asterisk]

Actually, the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, not by Canada.

Another good article on this

[stry_cat]

A similar article can be found here Here's a brief quote from it.

A fundamental mistake made by the critics of outsourcing has been to confuse the passing pain of the IT recession with an alleged long-term decline in the sector. That mistake is compounded when current output and employment levels are compared with levels at the frenzied peak of the boom in 2000 rather than with more normal levels from the late 1990s. A more accurate and less alarming picture of the industry emerges if we compare the state of the industry a few years after the bubble burst with its state a few years before.

Beginning in the early 1990s, with the takeoff of Windows-based computing and the Internet, employment in the IT industry surged. Employment in software and related services grew by one million between 1993 and 2000, before dropping by 166,000 between 2000 and 2002. The story has been much the same across other IT sectors: stupendous growth throughout the 1990s, then a pullback in employment of 10 to 20 percent during the recession. In the IT industry as a whole, employment levels even after the recession were still no lower than in 1998. During the past decade, annual employment in the industry has still grown at a rate twice as fast as employment in private industry in general.(emphasis added)

It's really not as bad as one might think

Corrections

[div_2n]

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.

The recent elections in India might have an impact

[mc6809e]

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.

Re:Basic premise

[drudd]

I agree. My wife graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Math, but without any programming experience, was unable to find a job.

So when I went off to graduate school in Astronomy (no real life for me thank you very much), she went back to school to be able to teach CS at a high-school level.

She's now finishing off her student teaching after only a year of classes, and she'll have a Masters in Education after just a few more classes (which she'll take concurrently with teaching).

Of course it was a very expensive year, but the starting salaries in Chicago for teachers are acutally not bad (mid to upper 30's for an teacher with no experience).

Doug

Re:What incredible ARROGANCE!

[WildThing]

Computers - Manchester Mark 1, Manchester ENGLAND

Ummm....

• Manchester Mark 1 - 1947
  
• ENIAC, Philadelphia,PA (USA) - 1944
  
  • The ENIAC was placed in operation at the Moore School, component by component, beginning with the cycling unit and an accumulator in June 1944

Re:creativity and innovation

[Cromac]

Alot of K-12 teachers still get paid essentially crap wages.

That's teachers union propoganda. The average teacher in the US makes nearly $42,000 / year. Factoring in an extra 35 days of work that the rest of us work every year brings the average teacher salary to $52,541.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/07/04/teacher.sa laries.ap/

Re:creativity and innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where CNN got those statistics, but both of my parents are K-12 teachers, and they barely break $42,000 between the two of them (and my dad is about 3 years from retirement). I don't know if that's how it is everywhere, but I seriously doubt the average teacher makes $42,000 a year (at least not without majorly massaging the numbers).

Why I don't buy it

[RomulusNR]

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.