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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?
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.
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?"
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?
The American worker is freed up to pursue a more efficient allocation of his labor.
Like reinforcing his home/cardboard box with duct tape.
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
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.
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.
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/
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
--
make install -not war
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.
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.
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