Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Outsourcing High-Level Work
philistine writes "The Seattle Times reports
A Seattle labor group said it has new evidence that Microsoft is shifting high-level work to foreign contractors, including work on the next version of Windows. The evidence is a cache of Microsoft contracts with Indian technology vendors that were leaked to the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, an AFL-CIO affiliate that has focused on outsourcing in its effort to organize tech workers."
A Seattle labor group said it has new evidence that Microsoft is shifting high-level work to foreign contractors, including work on the next version of Windows. The evidence is a cache of Microsoft contracts with Indian technology vendors that were leaked to the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, an AFL-CIO affiliate that has focused on outsourcing in its effort to organize tech workers."
Does this mean that MS Windows is now a security threat threat too? Because afterall, we could now have terrorists embedding code into Windows that is malicious!
For all I know the Indians might be better programmers but working on the law of averages the problem solving ability of an indivdual is probably independant of their location. So it really is about the cold, hard dollars. The thing is capitalism isn't any more free than communism. What good is being able to criticise your government when there is only a choice of two parties?
If you took Joe Six-pack and actually took the time to educate him on the fact that he can't mess with the chips in *HIS* playstation 2 legally because of some weird-ass law called the DCMA then I bet he'd see the onimous tone to it straight away..
Out sourcing is an evil plain and simple. Why should a company's profit be at the expense of an individuals welfare? Who has the most votes after all.. the individual or the company? Government should serve you and me before the MD
Simon
I was going to say something about the government taking issue with Microsoft outsourcing Windows code to non-Americans... how it might make it possible to introduce dangerous code, backdoors, security exceptions and all sorts of potential disasters.... ...and then I realized, well, how much worse could it be?
Are these outsourced workers going to be working on the same Windows code that Microsoft claimed would be a national security risk if it was ever exposed? Anyone else remember that?
Here's what I don't get. If you take the URL for this article, replace it. with games. you get the games color scheme.
/. could be.
In other words, all that matters is slashdot.org, the "section" only adds the shitty color scheme.
So why not let users pick a scheme they like in user prefs? Personally I'd rather never see the games. or it. again, though it. is particularly crap-tastic, I honestly thought the games. was as ugly as
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
A Seattle labor group said it has new evidence that Microsoft is shifting high-level work to foreign contractors
That's hardly surprising really, they're a multinational corporation, and everyone's foreigh to someone.
I donb't begrudge Slashdot working up a bit of controversy for ad hits, but stirring up racism is immoral imho.
The key to not getting bumped as a tech wage slave by outsourced labor is to not just learn a TECHNOLOGY, but learn a BUSINESS alongside it. Then your value will lie in the combination of business knowledge and tech know-how that you have. The kind of work value that this results in is not nearly so easily exported.
You click on the link and read the article and then you try to create a reply.
Instead we have "Write snarky remark, read article never - obviously the headlines tell the whole story.".
If you actually read the article, you'd see that the stuff being outsourced is 'glamourous' stuff like migration guides and testing tools - nothing relating to the kernel or even Avalon/UI.
This is just WashTech beating the union drum trying to scare people. If that's the best thta they can do, then there's a good reason there aren't techie unions.
I'll say it until people understand it or refute it: you cannot be both for free trade and against outsourcing. They are the same thing. There is no difference between importing computer hardware and importing software services (outsourcing) except in the particular sector affected.
Perhaps the ranters should send back all their hardware to Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, etc. and buy American!!
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Politicus
Unpatriotic? Are you high?
If a person leaves a New York, which has a state income tax, and moves to Texas, which has no state income tax, is he being disloyal to New York, or is he being smart?
Where is it written that American corporations have an obligation to hire American workers?
Microsoft has only one obligation, and that is to make money. The government, with its litigation, regulation, and taxation, has obviously made it hideously expensive to hire American workers, so the companies are outsourcing to India.
Sheesh.
The evidence is a cache of Microsoft contracts with Indian technology vendors
Isn't it strange how Slashdot's outsourcing stories are always about India and China?
They're never talking about shocking evidence of contracts with e.g. Canadian or Irish technology vendors.
Not that I'm suggesting that this is barely veiled racism. You can get modded down for being honest about that.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
Best quote:
"Review is boring and time consuming, and it's hard," said Steve Lipner, manager of Microsoft's security response center. "Simply putting the source code out there and telling folks 'here it is' doesn't provide any assurance or degree of likelihood that the review will occur."
And if somethings hard, we just shouldn't do it, right? And "boring"! Like testing software is ever "fun".
So, MS's suggestion seems to be that, since it's kinda tough and not super fun to look through source code for problems, we just shouldn't bother having the source available at all. Great logic!
Casual Games/Downloads
Unfortunately this is a byproduct of the Internet and a borderless world it created.
Is it painful in the meantime? Yes, I was laid off before, it sucks. But I found work again and started over - you can too.
Can it be stopped? Yes, but not through government regulation, protectionism or trade barriers - these will fail, just like internet censorship and halting file sharing.
Yes, unfortunately America can not stop the balancing of wealth around the globe. The US better do something quick, or soon people in 3rd world countries will be eating 2 meals a day and have shelter and clothes.
Remind me why outsourcing is bad? Global employment looks pretty good to me. Give the job to who can do it the best, at the lowest cost. Even if this means a few less Americans can afford their Lexus payments.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
- d00d did you hear the latest about M$?
- what?
- they're outsorcing most of their development work to Inidia d00d!!
- really???
- no shiet. I saw it on Slashdot. Windoze is being written in India and like
.NOT and Yukon and stuff!!
- OLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!
Selective quoting and intentionally misleading write-ups. FUD, plain and simple. You whine when Microsoft does it to you, but you have no problem whatsoever in doing it to them.What Microsoft, and all these goat cheese for brain companies dont realize is, once most high paying jobs move out of US, who is going to buy their overprice crud? Do they see Chinese or Indians lining up to spend 300+ dollars to buy Office?
India is a country of 1bn people. If Microsoft wants equal access to the Indian market, it seems only fair that they have proportional numbers of developers in India, which means that you would expect 3x as many Microsoft developers in India than in the US.
Microsoft's outsourcing moves not only involve cutting costs, they also involve politics. Both China and India have very high rates of software piracy and as companies like Microsoft demand greater protection of intellectual property, they run the risk of pushing said countries into free open source software. If OSS becomes the standard in India or China, then Microsoft loses Windows and Office sales forever.
So in an effort to prevent the spread of OSS, Microsoft is investing millions of dollars into a research center in China and efforts in India. This makes big time political points too, which makes it less likely that the governments in either country will lock Microsoft out of the game with OSS. It's still risky though, as both India and China have made moves to encourage local software development on Linux.
Right now I'm betting that MS will eventually put a good portion of development in China where the labor costs are even less than India and it is politically more stable. But that's just a wild guess. In any case, low and mid level coders' days are numbered at MS.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I've got an idea-- let's give Microsoft a tax cut to keep those jobs in the good ol' USA.
Losing jobs to overseas factories on the unskilled or low-skilled side is sad. Losing jobs on the highly-skilled side is scary, because reversing the trend will require years of major investment in education from K-12 up.
How this will be done in the face of the baby boom retiring is a mystery to me.
And that's different from the current Windows version...how?
"But there is a certain "nationalism" which one expects a company to have."
Typed the geek using his computer built in and/or have components made in Taiwan, China, Malaysia, etc.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Microsoft is still growing. They're hiring more workers here in the US. According to this article, they're also hiring people in India (and other places as well, I'd assume). They've given programming jobs to the companies in India.
But they're still hiring programmers here, as well. So what's the problem? Should Microsoft hire only US workers? Should they only be allowed to grow here?
What I don't see here is Microsoft getting rid of their US workforce to hire in India. And (according to Microsoft's statements) most of the core work, and all the "IP development" is based here. And Microsoft is hiring more US workers as well.
In summary, this really doesn't appear to be a Big Deal. Now, 3Com dumping their product operation to pretty much outsource all their product development to Huawei? That's significant. But 3Com is just a shell of it's former self, so nobody really paid attention to that. When Linux starts being spread around the world, then I'll worry about globali...
(What? You say Linux isn't a US company? It's a global project already? Developed by volunteers? Oops...)
Um, never mind that last point!
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
The government, with its litigation, regulation, and taxation, has obviously made it hideously expensive to hire American workers, so the companies are outsourcing to India.
What is obvious to you, O Chanter Of The Conventional Line, is not quite so obvious to some of the rest of us. I bought this line for a long time, and there are elements of truth to it, but it misses the main point entirely. The overriding reason the companies are outsourcing is simply to take advantage of people who live in conditions of deprivation.
Outsourcing is a problem only because we have a slavery system. Our livelihood depends on working for others so we can pay our taxes. The reason that we have to work for others is that 99% of people have been deprived of an inheritance in the wealth of the land. Income property is owned by a few and the state. The others are slaves. Artists, programmers and inventors depend on their work to make a living. Can we blame them? We all depend on our labor because we are all slaves. So now we are swimming in a ocean of laws and rules that take away our remaining liberties, one by one.
Let's face it, if you cannot put a fence around it or put chains on it, it does not belong to you. Makes no difference whether it is ideas, writings, software, music or what have you. Once you've released it, like the air, it belongs to nobody and everybody.
Intellectual property owners (such as Microsoft and the music industry) will fight freedom with everything they've got. Right now they have two formidable weapons: IP laws and powerful police states to enforce them. But those who yearn to be free also have a formidable weapon, the internet.
The internet and other communication technologies (e.g., file sharing systems) are the first major kinks in the armor of a sick system. As technology progresses, the system will eventually collapse. What will happen to a slave-based economy when robots and advanced artificial intelligences replace everybody, i. e., when human labor, knowledge and expertise become worthless? It will be orders of magnitude worse than outsourcing.
And don't think for a minute this won't happen in your lifetime. The internet is the latest giant leap in human communication. Before that came mass telecommunication technologies and before that was the movable press. If history is any indication, we can expect a giant leap in technological progress and scientific knowledge. In fact, it is happening before our very eyes.
We should all demand a system where everybody is guaranteed income property, a piece of the pie, an estate if you will. There is plenty for everybody.
Communism confiscates all property and enslaves everybody. Capitalism gives property to a few and enslaves the rest. It's sad. The land should not be divided for a price. It should be an inheritance for us and our children and their children. It's the only way to guarantee freedom and a truly free market in a world where human labor is about to go the way of the dinosaurs. Demand liberty! Nothing less.
I hope they aren't going to hire offshore programmers. Wasn't there an article on Slashdot just the other day about how some terrorist rogue programmer might slip something awful into Linux and destroy the civilized world? The article said that the US government shouldn't use open source because of this bogus reason.
Seems to me that the government using proprietary code that has been out sourced would be an even greater risk.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
That's not what he's getting at, and your suggestion that it is is unreasonable.
Ignoring the history of Microsoft's product security at large the simple point he makes is a good one: opening the source for inspection is not the same as the source actually being inspected. In fact it takes some time and skill to inspect source for vulnerabilities, and it's a distinctly unglamourous job. And that's why the "it's open source, it must be secure" mantra rings plenty hollow -- very few people are interested enough to take the time.
Or did you never have to compile a new version of Apache, OpenSSH or OpenSSL to fix a security problem?
Eh, what was it, 12, 14 years ago? Downsizing was all the rage and cause of much spillage of ink and political discussion. Yeah, I think Bush the elder was king of the 'downsizing' economy, and Bush the younger is king of the 'oursourcing' economy. Lets see, before then it was 'automation', and going way back, hah, 'industrialization'. Yeah, all those steam engines were putting laborers out of work!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Heaven forbid that society asks you to pony up a fraction of your income to help support the society who's benefits have helped you achieve the standard of living you now enjoy.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
Believe it or now, majority of millionaires in US are first generation millionaires. The reason being is that the children of millionaires tend to be spoiled and are more likely to blow their money away.
How about have the government provide a guaranteed income property, why don't you stop pissing away your money on stupid crap and use the money saved to buy your income property? Do you really want to government to chose your investment for you since they did such a great job with Social Security?
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
This is another classic case of slashdotters flip floping on their values. Most slashdotters want MS to crash and burn, yet now they are arguing that MS shoudn't outsource because it's bad for it.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
I've gone to grad school were the large majority of student, over 60%, where Indian with the rest of the student population mostly being dominated by Asians from China, Korea, Thailand and a small minority of whites, blacks and latinos.
I was never offered help once by foreign students. When I could give help, and was asked to help, I would not only be met with more questions but with more students, mostly foreign students.
Am I saintly? Hardly. I want to point out that these foreign companies, employees and students are competing against their US conterparts like Hell!! They're not letting pride blind them from interacting with us, working with us or befriending us.
They're leveraging our economic system and visa system to beat us. Believe me, the odds are stack highly against American workers. Its not just corporate America peddling for more profits.
The thinly veiled racism you suggest is not only inappropiate, its wrong.
Maybe you've been raised to feel superior to other, but lots of people made their own decisions how to feel about other people. This isn't a fight over who's intelligent and who's more creative. Our livelihoods are at risk because nations with incredible and irresponsible growth have the ability to commoditize their own people.
The US for a long time valued workmanship, and people still believe it still does, and some politicians believe it to. But somewhere along the way our leaders forgot to protect this ideal.
This is a failure of policy, not of American workers. If our leaders created laws to level the playing field with countries the size of India and China, this discussion wouldn't be nearly as heated, and we could avoid the type of discourse that attempts to measure the worthfullness of people. No one is better than another.
--
Yes, I just finished the DNC finale.
It seems to be quite good.
What you are advocating is that we become a subsistence farmers society, or what, is our plot of land going to feed us in autopilot mode or what?
I guess you are also a proponent of rigid population control, in the style of one child only policy in China, since otherwise your "inheritance" will srhink with each new generation of new forced farmers.
We, specialy in developped countries, live in an era when we are living longer, healtier (smokers, you suck) lifes, of food overabundance (in most developed countries obesity is becoming the #1 killer, followed by car accidents and perhaps AIDS, nothing to do with bad nourishment).
We can choses what we want to do for a living (horror of horrors, we have to work to obtain life necesities. Point us out to your golden age when this did not happen).
We can elect wo lead our societies (if you and your ilk chose Bush, Kerry or whoever and can't be arsed to even vote or get politically active, well, big duh for you)..
But somehow, in your dope induced haze we are slaves and the machines are out to get us.
Gimme somme of that herb please! Gimme some!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.