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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."
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!
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?
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.
US economy is the largest homogenous market, so all suppliers will tailer their goods for that market.
Emphasis mine. The crucial thing about the US is that it is a market system. If you need investment, you can get it, from someone who has the authority to make a decision there and then. If you have an idea, you can sell it without waiting for a central planning bureacracy to factor it into their 5-year economic plan. The old Soviet Empire couldn't innovate because it centralized its decision making. The US works because of the feedback inherent in a market system: the better you are at satisfying the demands of the market, the greater the resources placed under your control. If you fail, your resources will be depleted and you'll get no more. And who is this market? Everyone to participates in any way in the economy gets to spend or invest their own money how they please.
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
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.
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.
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make install -not war