Slashdot Mirror
U.S. IT jobs Down 400K Since 2001
Cryofan writes "A research study shows that American information technology industry 'lost 403,300 jobs between March 2001, when the recession began, and April 2004.' Over half of those jobs - 206,300 - were lost after the recession was declared over in November 2001. In all, the job market for high-tech workers shrank by 18.8 percent, to 1,743,500, between March 2001 and April 2004. And the bloodletting continues -- as
reported here on Slashdot earlier this year, the number of employed Software Engineers fell by 15% from April to July of 2004 (from 856,000 to 725,000)."
india and china's economy growth is booming :)
no really. it's true.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
It's just that all these qualified people getting blinded by seeing the IT section of slashdot...
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Guess I am ready for a new operating system.
Click HERE
I'm not the only one living with my mom again.
Doesn't this belong in politics.slashdot.org? ;)
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
and outsourcing to other counties doesn't help. ppl need to realize that the IT gravy train is over, it's time to put up or shutup. certificates and degrees no longer hold the water they once did. find a skill, hone it, and hunker down, cause it's going to get windy before there's another round of jobs with the 'wow' factor.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
I thought Bush has created more jobs, and that the recession was over. I can't believe the Washington Post would try to sneak such false statements into the transcript of the Presidents address at the RNC. They must be French owned.
BTW, Here is a login for the Post.
And before anyone get's pissy, may I remind people that flamers are joyless, humorless, SOB's. Don't trust a person who can't laugh.
bush has put american in such a recession, not to mention his spending on iraq which put america in a huge debt, he could have used that money right here, to fix problems in USA.
i'm with you brother, down with bush!
While the IT job market has shrunk by close to 20%, how does the industry do? Was profit/revenue etc down by similar margin as well?
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
If you work in one of the industries of the nineteenth century, namely farming or steel, the politicians call you "regular Americans" and bail you out with subsidies and trade protections. If you are one of the far more numerous IT workers whose taxes bankroll the nation, you get a shrug and a suggestion you go back to school.
You know, I was really starting to buy into some of the arguments about how sourcing some of these jobs overseas was actually a good idea if you looked at it just so....... Well, I had no idea that the scope of the loss was this big and that the overall job market for such workers had shrunk. How can it shrink? I think something stinks here....
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
india.slashdot.org
Where does that leave us?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Any idea how many less jobs are available for new grads? This could have a turnaround effect on college degrees as well, something I don't think our pro-outsourcing President considered.
CB*(_)&
free ipod and free gmail!
All your base are belong to George W. Bush.
I bet almost all the jobs lost in the USA have gone to India and/or the Phillipines, instead of just being lost. More will go as outsourcing increases, until so many are gone that people over here are willing to work for as little as those in the Far East. Then, we'll see qualified techs doing support again, qualified programmers will be back at work and our economy will be in the tank because wages will be so low. And all the MBA's that caused this will be banking their profits.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Learn a trade. I think I'll become an auto mechanic. a plumber, or an electrican. Anything but a code-monkey button-presser. But not until after I sit on my butt for six months and collect my unemployment. This economy makes me need a vacation.
Before anyone cries out "foreigners are stealing our jobs", read this.
They are doing to us IT workers what they did to advanced, capital-intensive manufacturing jobs in America (as opposed to "assembly jobs"): they spirited it away to Asia. And we could have stopped it with trade barriers. But they sold us on neoliberal trade policies with $24 worth of trinkets.
....
....
Read here:
>>>>>>>>
commentator Eamonn Fingleton speaks bluntly about what he sees as the frittering away of the United States' manufacturing base and what he regards as the consequent stagnation of the American standard of living. For those who believe in the superiority of the current U.S. postindustrial strategy, a reading of the OECD Economic Yearbook makes for a distinctly chastening study. As Fingleton puts it: "The United States trails no fewer than eight other nations, all of which devote a larger share of their labor force to manufacturing."
Fingleton, who distinguishes between high-end and low-end jobs, insists that the former, advanced manufacturing, must be reconstituted if the United States wants to remain a superpower. And what are these eroded industries? Semiconductor materials, ceramic packaging for semiconductors, charge-coupled devices (CCD), industrial robotics, numerically controlled machine tools, laser diodes and carbon fibers, to name only a few.
Where did the manufacturing of these items go? In most cases, Japan now dominates the more advanced areas of these industries, says Fingleton, who lives in Tokyo. Moreover, he argues, by dint of superior know-how and large capital investments Japan now enjoys a global lock on key manufacturing processes.
Fingleton recalls an America where men and women went to work and made the nation great, the old-fashioned way, by producing products people wanted and needed. And he juxtaposes the loss of advanced manufacturing jobs in this country with what he regards as the overvalued dollar, America's compulsion to borrow huge sums of money to fund its deficits and an illusionary U.S. prosperity based on unsustainable debt. For now Japan and China, both running huge trade surpluses, pay the United States' bills, he says. Where does this leave the American worker? He puts the answer simply: Out of work!
It is not true that Japan is in dire economic straits, Fingleton maintains. In a recent article in the London journal Prospect entitled "Japan's Fake Funk," he writes: "The Western consensus is that Japan is a basket case: It is not. That is a misreading by the West."
Meanwhile, he says, ill-conceived U.S. policies have failed to protect home-based American industries, leading to the transference of the most advanced technologies known to mankind. Fingleton says flatly that Japan has built up its industrial base at the expense of the United States, and that China now is chomping at the bit to do the same.
Eamonn Fingleton: I mean those engaged in advanced manufacturing. Specifically, industries that are both highly capital intensive and highly know-how intensive. They typically are many orders of magnitude more capital-intensive and know-how intensive than the most advanced of "New Economy" services, such as computer software developed in the last three decades.
Although Japan is known in the West for its leadership in certain consumer products such as cars and television sets, its area of greatest leadership is in much more advanced industries that largely are invisible to the consumer. Specifically, Japan leads almost right across the board in the sort of advanced materials, high-tech components and production machinery that are driving the electronic revolution. Some products may be assembled in the United States, but their key manufacture - the manufacture of the advanced components and materials - is done in Japan.
much more here: http://www.pushhamburger.com/edge.htmEconomic
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I think I speak for everyone (except Indians) when I say. Outsourcing, HURRY UP AND F%&$ING DIE. I can only hope this bubble bursts soon as tech support compaints rise and software quality declines.
At least Windows will always meet our IT expectations. And cause IT pros to keep getting hired for tech support. Programmers have to move to india.
because it is so funny watching you Americans slowly lose your freedoms and your grip on world dominance...
This process actually accelerated under CLinton. Clinton was a better Republican than Eisenhower, or maybe even Nixon.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
a lot of roles were filled by bandwagon jumping idiots running IT into the ground with their lack of skills.
ill not shed a tear for them
First it was the Tech Bubble Then it was 9/11 Then it was Iraq Now its the weather. When will this country wake up and realize this administration has failed?
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
During the same time period there was an explosion in H-1b and L-1 visas. The impact on US programmers, particularly the older programmers -- you know -- the guys that actually founded the Internet -- is near Great Depression levels. And yes that includes the ramping up of employment in the few years leading up to the dot-con implosion.
Seastead this.
Additionally, there were so many idiots in technology by 2000. Sysadmins that didn't know the dif between Cat3 from Cat5, programmers that didn't know what a for-loop were getting 100k Java jobs, etc, etc, etc. I don't know if there were 400k, but I do think that a lot of people lost jobs that didn't deserve to have them. Also, I have had a lot of very smart friends out of work that did.
Even in 2000 and 2001 there were still tech areas hiring. I really wonder how many of those 400k were jobs that should never have existed in the first place?
Just some random thoughts on the subject.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
I did a quick search on /. and didn't find it, but I thought I saw an article awhile back saying jobs have finally started coming back up.
One thing I've noticed in the US though is a lot of education-related companies are hiring. If you're in the Minneapolis area (and would like a job), just look at the listings for my company - some of these have been there since July!
As it stands, a lot of brick and mortar based colleges are expanding into online ventures - with that comes the need for a knowledgeavle staff to support that industry, might be a good time to start learning some online courseroom software and see if you can't get lucky!
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
...Dey took err jerrrbs!
The last president to not have a single net job created during his term was Herbert Hoover.
Turned the corner. Right.
Maybe computer programming could be classified as manufacturing jobs too, if they aren't already...
Not good for some people. But this may be what we need to filter out the clueless lusers with paper degrees and certs. No more gravy train, only those with skills need apply.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I've seen estimates much higher.
Read some of Paul Craig Roberts columns on http://www.vdare.com/roberts/all_columns.htm. I agree with his assertion that we're exporting jobs that provide ladders of upward mobility and importing poor people. He makes the case that this is not free trade but global labor arbitrage.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
With a combination of outsourceing and people starting to get a little bit smarter ( very little on average) haveing computer skills is no longer a specialtiy skill but a co requisit to maintaining/getting a job.
It's a pleasant day to take a break: step outside, get some vitamin D and experience the full power of Shiva's spear.
One of the expectations of outsourcing programming jobs to lower wage countries is that the number of higher paying, project management jobs will increase. Anyone out there who made the leap from programming to project management (or know someone who has)? If so, how did you go about it?
And is there a greater demand now for project management jobs?
On a similar note, it seems to me that the number of consulting and professional services jobs have increased as of late. However, many of these jobs do not pay salaries comparable to programming jobs during the late 90's. I could be wrong about that though.
They just went back to their coutries after Y2K.
eom
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
Only slightly offtopic, things are hurting bad. I need a job two months ago. PC/network technician here (5 years experience), self-taught coder, windows and unix, C++, perl, VB. Can do nearly anything... just need a chance with a non HR droid.
I'm really concerned that the prevailing opinion on Slashdot seems to be that outsourcing is horrible. I hate that it's hard for people to find work and that many IT workers have lost their jobs, just as much as anyone else, but stopping outsourcing is not the solution. We operate in a global economy, if companies did not outsource then they would not remain competitive in the global market and you would all lose your jobs. Despite the temporary hardships of the people who have lost their jobs, this is, in the end, for the good of the U.S. economy. It's just a restructuring of the work force right now.
I'm sorry if anyone here disagrees (and I'm sure there are those who will) but I really think you need to look at the big picture and I hope you'll agree that it's for the best for all of us, despite the temporary problems it's causing for many of you.
If anything, new college students should be told how many people in the 90's picked computer science as a major because some magazine which ranked salaries said CS was #1 in pay and projected growth. Better to study something which is interesting than to go for the money. I knew a guy in college who was an english student. Everyone asked him, what are you going to do with an english degree. He shruged his shoulders, and said "dunno, but i like reading". After college, he got a masters, then found a teaching job. He makes more than some of the CS people I knew, and he gets the summer off. The kicker is he is doing what he likes. And he was supposed to be the poor one.
Come and say hi. http://forum.penpals.com/index.php
Two consecutive quarters of negative growth consitute a recession. That's what the term means, and so there isn't anthing inaccurate about saying that the small recession we had ended years ago, even if the job situation is sucky right now
As for the current lack of jobs and the patchy situation of a lot of americans, you can take it one of two ways.
I choose the second option. Make fun of him all you want, but Schwarzenegger said it best - don't be a girlie-man economist. It used to be that germany and japan were going to crush our economies and that all americans were poor. Then, in the early 90's, many americans bought into the idea that NAFTA was a terrible peice of legislation that was going to send all of our jobs to mexico. There's never going to be a shortage of pessimists and naysayers claiming that now things are different - now, this time our economy is in trouble unless the government can do something to stop it.
They're wrong. They've always been wrong, and they will always be wrong. Don't buy into the pessimism and anti-trade rhetoric out there. If you've lost your job due to oursourcing, of course that sucks. But no one ever accomplished anything by being pessimistic and complaining about their situation. Get out there and look for a job - any job. Don't tell yourself that you can't find one or that there aren't any - negative predictions are self-fulfilling. It's far better to be foolishly optimistic about your situation than needlessly pessimisstic.
The US economy is an incredbily powerfull beast that has brought incredible wealth to millions of people. It's not going to stop working over night. Current trade situations are a result of an economy out of equilbrium. It'll adjust itself, and then we'll be back on track and new jobs will be created and we'll all be wealthier- you'll see.
My blog
It's not that Bush is really great. It's that Kerry looks like crap anyways. People aren't voting "for" Kerry, they're voting against Bush and couldn't care less about Kerry.
What? You want to send my job to India? How about I strike for higher wages instead?
He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. -- The Sphinx, Mystery Men
I mean, we all know about the Dot-Com bubble bursting, but why hadn't the economy recovered by November 2001? Did some kind of event negatively affect the economy a month or two before that?
Can't figure it out...
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Accounting majors jumping on the dotcom bandwagon because the companies would hire anybody that touched a keyboard? The problem is the economy was oversold in IT. There was no need for grocery2you.com. They hire 300 people and the business plan sux so boom ... 300 accountant/programmers out of work. Now the snowball effect... Sun can't sell as many systems because tiddlewinks.com went caput and their servers are on ebay for 0.02 on the dollar. Same for cisco/nortel/lucent...etc. The market is beginning to stabilize.
Outsourcing is an issue and it needs to be addressed. I think it will end up correcting itself in the next 3 years as the true global economy takes shape.
In 1999-2000 things were out of control. Consultants cost $220-$300/hour and people were paying it.
Zoid.com
That's a lot of jobs, and I think it's a shame that so many people with great skills can't find a decent job. On the other hand I know that most of those jobs were most likely performed by completely incompetent jerks who require a walk through just to perform mundane tasks. I say cut the fat, how else can we (The USA) hope to compete?
Both political parties claim that free markets require the free exchange of goods and services (which includes labor) between the USA and other members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and fusing the American market with the Chinese/Indian/Mexican market maintains the free market in the USA. Unfortunately, the politicians are just playing a verbal game with economics.
Allow me to explain. The USA, in isolation, is a relatively free market -- with relatively little government intervention (compare to, say, China). So is Japan, Canada, and the rest of the West. However, Mexico, China, and India are not free markets. Excessive government intervention has damaged the markets in those economies, and they cannot provide jobs for millions of underemployed persons.
When the USA interacts with, say, China, we have the interaction of a free market and a non-free market. The by-product (i.e. millions of underemployed Chinese) of non-market forces now affects the market dynamics in the USA. The underemployed Chinese are a continuing stream of cheap slave labor; jobs are then transferred from the USA to China.
The USA is no longer a free market because non-market forces (in this case, Chinese government intervention) is altering the dynamics of the labor market in the USA. The verbal game that politicians play is to simply define the USA to be a "free market", ignoring the fact that the Chinese government is now grossly affecting the labor market of the USA.
Similar comments apply to both India and Mexico. Similar comments apply to H-1B workers and illegal aliens from Mexico: the American government has, in effect, actively used H-1B workers and illegal aliens to intervene in the labor markets in both high tech and low tech. Illegal aliens have destroyed the upward pressure on wages in the market for unskilled labor. H-1B have hurt salaries for engineers. Shortages are a normal part of any labor market, and they are an upward force on salaries/wages and working conditions. When the government actively works to wipe out such shortages, the government is damaging market forces.
If you hate what is happening to our country, the USA, then please write the following on the November ballot.
president: Bill O'Reilly
vice-president: Tammy Bruce
Do you deny it? Because it's true. The disparity between the rich and poor is increasing in the united states and the world. Incidentally this is a strategy that appears to be a good one for the armed forces, because the poor no longer have a choice; they simply have to join the army, or starve/be homeless/die.
We should respect the poor more than we do. They're the ones fighting for us right now, fighting on the orders we give them.
And is it really any surprise that after the bubble burst jobs were lost? Here's a reality check: those jobs were based on wishful thinking. They had no foundation. No offense to those who lost a job in the downturn, but I've met a number of so-called IT workers who were barely HS grads with an MCSE during the boom.
Color me not-terribly-surprised.
"a lot of roles were filled by bandwagon jumping idiots running IT into the ground with their lack of skills."
Ah yes, another "insightful" who can't let go with the past, and who will when 2007 rolls around will still be blaming the same old foes.
What is you and your ilk going to do when your supply of "enemies" runs out, and you find you're still sliding downward?
Well there's still all those HB-1's and "foreign" workers we can all demonize. Anything to keep us from looking at ourselves, and our individual roles in this whole mess.
See my home page for ideas on how the Europeans used strikes to build their welfare states.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
This is only looking at a segment of the IT industry -- software developers. Sure, it sucks if you're one of them and out of a job (been there, etc).
On the other hand, the demand for sys admins, security specialists, DBAs, etc seems to be increasing. Pay rates vary all over the board depending on experience and particular skills (and how cheap the company is), but this is nothing new.
Locally I've seen a big turn up in demand starting about six to nine months ago. And that's not counting the huge demand that exists for anyone with a computer background that also has (or had and can renew) a security clearance. (And you know those jobs won't be outsourced.)
-- Alastair
the number of employed Software Engineers fell by 15% from April to July of 2004 (from 856,000 to 725,000)."
Yet nearly every business uses computers. The entire economy is practically based on computers, yet there are fewer than 800,000 software engineers? Glad to see all that time (and overtime, and weekends, and vacations) spent learning as much as possible about technology was completely wasted.
Nope, no free market here either.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
it's down 48%.
Thanks, George. You useless freakin Dork.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Obviously the apex of the biggest speculation bubble in one industry for a century is the minimal baseline that all other times and circumstances must be measured against.
Any deviation from that state of supreme normality is evidence both of evil and massive conspiracies, and the need for massive government support of the Entitled IT Masses.
That profession's that have been traditionally supporters of the Democrats have been slaughtered, while the professions that have been Republican have prospered?
Obviously, since some are doing very well, the failure of the other must be their own fault.
Yup, nothing to see here, move along.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
This little statement (new jobs created are lower quality) gets passed around quite a bit, and I'd like to see a source that confirms it.
The problem with the tech market is too many people got into it. In the late 90s, everyone got in the market, and we all know that many of them were not qualified. Some cab driver learns Word and Dreamweaver, gets a job, and then gets laid off because he never should have been hired in the first place, and he blames George Bush and people in India.
This isn't too complicated: the tech market had a huge boom in the late 90s, it crashed in 2000-2001, and companies cut way back in personnel to where they should have been in the first place, and many people got displaced. The simple fact of the matter is that there were just too many workers, and those jobs are not coming back, because the market cannot support them, and therefore should not support them.
I wonder how many IT jobs have been created in the overseas market. It would be interesting to compare how many persons over there it requires to supplement one US IT worker.
Those lost jobs, are they measured from when the bubble started, the peak of the bubble, a pre-bubble trend line predicting normal growth? India and China's high tech growth, is there a bubble over their? Have we, in typical American fashion, over reacted to one extreme and gone to the other? The only point I am trying to make is that things are far more complicated than a simple statistic suggests.
They run commercials all of the time talking about the "1 million new IT jobs", etc... Hate those assholes. Nothing but a cert mill.
This guy is way out there
It's all we have left!
"And is it really any surprise that after the bubble burst jobs were lost? Here's a reality check: those jobs were based on wishful thinking. They had no foundation. No offense to those who lost a job in the downturn, but I've met a number of so-called IT workers who were barely HS grads with an MCSE during the boom."
Gee what do you know? It's ALL the dot-boom's fault. It's all the OTHER GUYS fault. Gee do you think that a simplistic answer will cure what ails the world? Why not? After all a simplistic cause is what started it.
The thing I don't understand is why people are complaining about undoing the smoke-and-mirrors of 1999-2001. Businesses which had no business plans to speak of thus no long-term prospects were given millions of dollars of investment capital on some lofty marketing hype of being able to create profits out of thin air. Just because you put money in doesn't mean you were going to get money out, even if you have a catchy domain name, and investors have finally wisened up to this. Personally I'm glad the industry has, for the most part, gotten over its investment adolescence and can move on. You don't hear of people in the catering business complaining that things were so cushy before the donut crisis of '97 when people were coming in droves just to buy donuts.
Damien
I'm sure this will get burried but that is a pretty slanted post.
'Over half of those jobs - 206,300 - were lost after the recession was declared over in November 2001.'
Is really saying that out of a 3 year span, almost half of those jobs were lost in the first 9 months.
all you point and click, M$, crackerjack box IT folks don't qualify as a real IT person.... I could see how they could replace you Windows Folks... lol... real admins.. are *nix peeps..
The Exporting Jobs Scam
Service versus Manufacturing Economy
You name it... radio manufacturing, cars, steel, etc etc the list goes on and on.
Yes, initially there was a significant loss of jobs due to this outsourcing, but then a light at the end of the tunnel.... more jobs in other industries. Industries were created when older industries outsourced to other nations, for instance the IT industry. Once the IT industry becomes outsourced completely and people are done losing their jobs, there is bound to be another industry that arrives which will require new workers and new skills. Everyone will flock to this new industry, which will eventually blow up... leaving people out of jobs and companies will begin to outsource to other countries.
And the cycle continues...
It can only be said that a country that continuously finds ways to outsource it's industries and maintain on the top of the world economic ladder is the country that truly innovates and grows. If we stop outsourcing, we'll stop growing... and stop innovating.
Over half of those jobs - 206,300 - were lost after the recession was declared over in November 2001.
Mission accomplished!
It appears that Rush has found the bottle of Oxies again! I wonder if his whole audience is stoned too? Remember all the idiots running around with "Rush is right" bumper stickers? I think that should be looked upon as just cause for sterilization.
Once upon a time, specializing in railway engineering virtually assured you a fantastic job. Unfortunately, times change. To think that a new field like "software engineering" would remain uncommoditized is wishful thinking. Code is code, no matter where it is written. And the world is full of brillant coders. My solution was to start jump fields and start a niche company that (hopefully) will be enjoyable to run for years. Heck, any unemployed software engineers out there looking for a career in the film industry? ;)
"I also think that our universities and tech schools were pooring out IT workers like crazy in the late 1990s, and companies were hiring them in an artificially inflated economy."
Um...if you're going to be ripping on other people's skills? I suggest you learn to spell. The word is "pouring".
Economic Fallacies: Is America In Trouble for Lack of Manufacturing?
So the gap between the rich and the poor grows - so what? Suppose you earn $10,000 a year and I earn $100,000 year, working for the same company. The boss comes in and says that due to increased sales, you and I both get a raise. I'm now making $10,000,000 a year, while you make $100,000 a year. You used to be earning 1/10 of what I made, but now it's 1/100th. The gap between us got bigger, but so what ? You're still a hell of a lot better off than you were. Does it affect you, in any way, shape or form, how much money I make? No! All that matters if how much you make and what you can buy with that money.
The 'gap' is probably the best example of class-warfare claptrap that's being spread about by economic naysayers. The fact is that any 'gap' is irrelevant, as long as everyone is getting better, which they are. Even the poorest of the poor have cell phones, air conditioning, automobiles, refridgerators, color TV's and 2000 calorie diets. They don't have to worry about dying of typhus, malaria, diptheria, diaherra, the flu, measles, mumps, smallpox, or rubela. A man can work just 40 hours and a week and easily support himself. Roman Emperors couldn't possiblly have imagined the life of luxury that the poorest of americans enjoys.
So yes, the gap between rich and poor has been growing. Does it matter? Not at all.
My blog
...dropping all that money on dot bombs missed a pretty good steady monthly income when they FAILED to run the last mile of fiber to all the places in the US that *don't* have it. Look around outside of urbania-see all them satellite dishes? the ones ontop of almost every home of any size, from the smallest single wide to the largerst multi story mansions? Thats 50$ a month, multiplied by millions of homes, that went to the satellite companies just for television. Now imagine if they had run the fiber instead, they would be able to offer more channels, telephony service, and internet/data and video on demand.
How much is that potentially worth? Getting a steady check from millions of places a month for say 100$ for Tv/phone/net service is chump change?
Naw, the carriers are dumb for going for the quick cheap buck for a few years, and ignoring the tried and true long term buck that comes from long term business thinking that hasn't been adled by massive cocaine and booze usage, which is part of the dot bomb phenomenon that no one wants to remember I guess. Too many business decisions built on chemical hysteria and delusions of grandeur and get rich quick schemisms combined with stock market casino tulip mania, instead of just regular old-fashioned sober boring work.
All the nerds I know who are smart and experienced and competent are at least as employed as they want to be. I've interviewed a couple dozen people for software development/management jobs in the last 18 months, and didn't see a lot of truly great candidates--by and large the good ones are still working, and we mostly saw marginal candidates.
Times may be bad now but I think the late 90s "golden age" of companies trying desperately to fill seats with warm bodies is long gone. The free ride is over, and if you're not noticeably great at your job, your employer will eventually realize that there are a lot of people out there who can do it just as well, a great many of whom are willing to do it for less.
There are a lot of world-class techs in India and other outsourcing hotspots, and even factoring in the costs and risks some companies report when outsourcing, it's more and more of a numbers game every month.
they could, say for example, restrict h1bs.......
Well said.
Don't make me take out the poking stick!
You can declare recessions over? Why didn't we do that sooner?
Having spent the last year working as a project manager for a graphic design firm, coming from a development background, I think I now understand why: you must be task oriented, not system oriented, and you must have no aversion to telling someone (not something) else to do something, rather than doing it yourself, and finally, keeping schedules and budgets is not immersive work, it's work that requires lots of shallow and responsive handling.
Programmers are inherently system oriented. When there's a problem to fix, they want to build something that solves it, or enables someone else to solve it. The old saw about the programmer who will spend hours to write a script that could do something (perhaps tedious) that he could have done in 30 minutes is what's at work here.
Most of the programmers I know also have no problem telling a machine to do something -- or even talking about how an organization should run. But when it comes down to telling someone what they should be doing and when it needs to be done by -- that's a whole different thing.
Most programmers I know like immersive tasks... something you can sit down, focus on, mull over, work deeply in, and then deliver. PM is about turning lots of shallow details fast. There's a lot more task switching (which is why if you try to do some of the work yourself, you're doomed to failure, because immersive tasks and having a large volume of shallow details to take care of don't mix at all).
These are problems I share, and it didn't take me long to realize what they were, but it took me months to get over them (and also, to get the organization to stop thinking of me as a person they could *also* give web dev work to as well). I've gotten much better, but it was a hard haul the first six months, and sometimes I'd rather be back making cool things rather than dealing with this.
But: the good thing is that most programmers are skilled at breaking a problem down into smaller, more easily solvable problems. Their systems thinking can be a great strength if the project allows enough slack to let them set the system. They're introspective enough they can self-improve. And if they've got deft enough social skills to get people to do what they're supposed to, they can become quite succesful.
Tweet, tweet.
Y'know, the recession isn't entirely to blame here. IT is the red-headed step child that NO company really wants to spend money on, and won't if they can possibly get away with it; At very least as little as possible. It doesn't help that IT is becoming a saturated market, much like all the A+ and MCSEs. Those are a dime a dozen these days and it doesn't help that you have a lot of wannabes out there to.
Frankly, you've got two strikes against you before you even get to the economy these days, which, according to every other indicator, is recovering. It just doesn't come as a huge surprise in either case.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
also this and this explains how that happened
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H.G. Wells, "The Outline of History"
If you hate what is happening to our country, the USA, then please write the following on the November ballot.president: Bill O'Reilly
screw that.
vote Kerry or give up
Funny, I think the same thing when one of my non-ultra-left-wing comments mysteriously gets modded "Overrated." There is unfairness on both sides.
As for Bush job losses, he's running on the same unemployment rate Clinton ran on. Surprise, IT jobs were lost since 2001 after the dot-com burst. I knew someone, eventually, would bring up Bush in this discussion, but I would be pinning my blame on the ridiculous dot-com investors in the late 90s and 2000 that caused the fizzle-out going into 2001.
This story is interesting and I don't want to have to go to politics.slashdot.org.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
you need to get a lawyer who actually understands how copyright works. yours has been reading microsoft press releases instead of law textbooks.
btw... mr troll...
if you take a copy of linux "tweek it up" and then make money off it, aren't you just stealing it?
This is of course different. The jobs aren't physically moving. Outsourcing virtually means it will always be more profitiable to hire someone at $2 an hour someplace else.
Huh? How exactly is India or Mexico not a "free market"? Or even China for that matter? China hasn't been "socialist" since the 80s. In fact China has a more "free" market than America does! No minumum wage, no labor laws, no unions, no nothin'! It's all laizze-faire capitalism, baby!
I figured someone would try to go political on this. Bush is running on the same unemployment rate Clinton was. As for job losses since 2001--yeah, that sounds right considering there was a dot-com burst going into 2001. It's no surprise at all that there are less IT jobs now than there were at the end of the dot-com bubble.
It's just too easy of an excuse to blame Bush. I blame the dot-com investors.
We went from the "agriculture age" to the "industrial age" to the "information age", which was supposed to be where all the manufacturing experts were to "move up the value chain". Now that age is ending also. But what the hell is the NEXT age???
Potential candidates:
* Walmart Sales Clerk Age
* War Age
* Unemployment Age
* Welfare Age
* School-is-useless Age
* Brains-are-a-cheap-commodity Age
* Marketing-guru-or-death Age
* (your suggestion here)
Table-ized A.I.
"Consultants cost $220-$300/hour and people were paying it."
You sound so left out. Here's something for you to think about. What do you actually cost your employer? You bitch and moan about what consultants make, but you forget that for consultants that 220-300 isn't gravy. Consultants in essence are one-man companies and that's how the IRS and the legal world treats them. Taxes, taxes, and more taxes. Supplies and equipment. Education (what! you thought they grew on trees?). Insurance of all kinds. The usual debts we all have. Hopefully something to retire on. AND lots and lots of hours (no safety net). So think about all that before you start complaining about others. Hell you could become one instead of complaining.
Bush's real reason for Job losses was due to his extreme hatered twoards nerds and for being a greedy little troll with ideas of making BUSHLAND theme parks all over the world.
Huh? How exactly is India or Mexico not a "free market"?
1. Gov subsidize fields of expertise they feel will give them an economic and/or military advantage.
2. They purposely undervalue their currency because exports are more important to the gov than cheaper local consumer goods.
Table-ized A.I.
Crack Smoke this punk-ass chump:
t ic leId=22458
http://www.iraq-war.ru/tiki-read_article.php?ar
- The report, funded by the Ford Foundation, was conducted for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a Seattle organization that wants to unionize workers at Microsoft Corp. and other technology companies.
Nice how the results play into the very central purpose of the funding organization, isn't it?In reality there are probably still a couple hundred thousand in IT that need to go elsewhere. How many have had the experience of meeting a "former" dot-com tech worker that had great sounding credentials but no skill or work ethic? Sure, good people can fall on hard times, but if there is not a need in the market for 400,000 former tech workers, there is a market-force reason.
My wife is an RN, non-practicing as she raises our three children, and her field suffers ebbs and flows in demand/supply as well. When she was in school there was a shortage of nurse and getting into an accredited program was difficult due to the rush of applicants. Upon graduation the market shifted as there was a glut of nurses and people were leaving the school and the profession for greener pastures. Who were the ones leaving the profession? Ones not wanting to be or capable of being a nurse, generally. Sure some good ones were bypassed during the glut periods, but the determined nurses just kept on nursing.
When I was in college (late 80's) there was a shortage of IS (now IT, previously DP) workers and the classes were flooded with wanna bes. Those, like me, who did this stuff not for class credit but for the love of it, spent time helping our classmates get by (without cheating). During that time I was asked by a family friend if I was worried about the large number of potential competitors that were in the processing of joining the workforce; it was then I realized it did not matter how many competitors I was up against, only how good they were.
Now, if I have to compete with top tier developers (the fame and fauna of IT) I'll be the first to break a sweat. But I have never worried about finding a job as long as I have been in this business -- not because I'm so good but because this is what I do. And I always find someone who needs done what I do. It's uncanny. But, ancecdotal evidence is very weak, of course. Just that in my limited experience I've met many DP/IS/IT workers who should be doing something drasticly different. Some examples:
- The MCSE-candidate proud that he was "earning" his certifications via braindump and braindump alone; he hated computers and could not install a reference implementation of Exchange 2000 in 2 weeks; whee.
- The Perl programmer who spent months trying to get a SPARC-compiled executable on a RedHat Intel box; he left to become a peace officer
- The Perl hacker who surfed eBay looking for neat stuff for his BMW he bought after getting his first Perl coding job; he never actually wrote a line of code in the 3 months he worked at this first and last Perl job
- The VB/VBA programmer who couldn't stop making MADD mad
- The 25 member development team responsible for sinking an otherwise profitable company by switching to a prohibitively expensive Oracle-based system without producing a viable product in over 24 months; they were replaced by a two-member team that ran circles around them
- All the EDS, Lockheed, and other SDLC-style development teams I ran across while working solo or with small, agile development teams.
Anyway, I am highly suspicious of a Union-funded study that perfectly matches the union-line.One other thing: the very fact that Unions want to organize tech workers means, emphatically, that there is too much fat in IT. If everyone in IT today belonged in IT there would be no need for "organization" -- what a joke!
Put the same cynicism we exercise against ADTI, Mindcraft, Gartner, etc., toward these kinds of "studies."
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
That's what happens when everybody decides to go into a field to make big bucks. You have an oversupply of labor. And when that labor won't take lower pay because the market value is lower, you get unemployment. Luckily, I ignored the advice and didn't go that route.
My mistake was focusing on the web after I got out of school.
I have a B.S. in Mathematics, for a good foundation in theoretical stuff. Everything from C to Java and the scripting languages that start with P, and by 2002 I had 8 solid years of experience. And I still spent a year and a half unemployed (and I didn't find a job as a programmer -- I'm managing artwork projects for a graphic design company).
Though there probably are better programmers in the world, I'm probably a litte more qualified than average to do software development... and certainly far beyond a cabdriver who learned Dreamweaver. But it's still a nightmare to try to get a job.
Tweet, tweet.
bush has put american in such a recession, not to mention his spending on iraq which put america in a huge debt, he could have used that money right here, to fix problems in USA.
Here here. There was a great chart recently (in the New York Times I think) that showed how the money we 've spent in Iraq could be better spent here on home... on things like better border security, more cops on the street, etc. Very sobering.
Bush has completely screwed up in the war on terror. He left things unfinished in Afghanistan, Bin Ladin is still at large, no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, increasing violence in Iraq, rising anti-American sentiment throughout the world, and strained relations with our allies. The Bush administration keeps beating the drum about what a steady and determined leader he is... but is anyone paying attention to where he is leading us?
In Bush's convention speach he went on about all the stuff he would do in the next four years. Reduce the deficit, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, protect the environment, and make us safer from terrorism... but he had the last four years to accomplish that and he did the exact opposite. He rolled back environmental protections, ran up a record deficit, adopted an energy policy drafted by Enron, and engaged in a illconceived, preemptive war that has become a recruiting poster for the terrorists. And we are suposed believe he will do better in the next four years?
The Bolachek Journals
Ooops. These were targeted mostly to China and to a lessor extent India, not Mexico. Sorry about that.
do those numbers suggest that 856,000 of 1,743,500 "high-tech workers" are Software Engineers? (as of April 2004)
I farted
I remember lots of grumblings about Gore being more "tech-friendly" than Bush, around that time. To me the recession seemed to follow the election's outcome quite fittingly. Remember the slap on the wrist Microsoft received in 2001? If economic logic holds that competition makes for a healthy economy, then Republicans (based on behavior alone) are quite anti-healthy economy.
;-)
I've lived in third-world countries enough to know that the very poor are kept in poverty by the very wealthy -- who hold, not just most of the wealth, but most of the power. What my armchair-economist opinion says is:
1) Robin Hood would have made a good Democrat and a great economist. To tax the rich to support the commoners (Welfare, Healthcare, decent Unemployment benefits, Social Security, etc.) forces money to "flow".
2) When one cuts taxes for the rich it cuts off the flow of money -- plain and simple.
3) "Trickle-down Economics" is pure myth. There is no such thing. It's a nice idea and, like a lot of get-rich-quick schemes, is based on a few grains of truth.
Wealthy people *hoard* money. It's in their nature to do so. That's why they're wealthy. You have to incent them to invest their money. Taxes make for a great incentive to "shelter" one's money -- through investments. Use it or lose it! Ever wonder why VC's are being so stingie these days? Their money is much safer, today, from taxation. The most important factor in converting a stagnant economy (as found in so many 3rd world countries) into a bristling one is simply to get one's currency to flow!
It's easy to think a recession couldn't just happen so quickly; Easy to think the resession was "inherited". But economic policies have very real, fast-acting consequences. If you don't believe it, then you haven't watched the reactions on Wall Street on the days when Allen Greenspan speaks.
Well, I guess the earlier poster was right. This *does* belong in politics.slashdot.org
Capitalism-sucks-and-it's-time-for-revolution Age?
Didn't a story a few weeks ago say that total IT numbers were up? It claimed that more "software engineers" made up for losses from offshored "programmers".
Table-ized A.I.
Likewise, it would take courage to face up to America's worsening financial situation.
Sayeth the governor of California:
"There is another way you can tell you're a Republican. You have faith in free enterprise, faith in the resourcefulness of the American people...and faith in the U.S. economy. To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: Don't be economic girlie men!"
This year, both parties have shown a real genius for propaganda. If you dare to face up to the realities of the U.S. financial system...you are an "economic girlie man." Real men just take it as an article of faith that the "resourcefulness of the American people" will somehow override the laws of economics...
Except for a few cranks and Don Quixotes such as Pete Peterson, Ron Paul and Laurence Kotlikoff, no one in Congress, academia, the administration, the Republican or Democratic parties, nor in the Federal Reserve has the courage to face up to any of America's looming debacles.
Americans get poorer by $2 billion per day. Who even mentions it?
The American government has run up $44 trillion worth of obligations - with no way to pay for them. Who cares?
Americans now absorb as much as 80% of the entire world's savings - not to build a profit-making economy, but merely to maintain current levels of consumption against a backdrop of slipping real incomes. Who warns them?
American workers now face stiff competition from 3 billion foreigners who will work harder, longer and for a fraction of the pay. Unless he tightens his belt, saves furiously, and learns to produce higher quality goods and services...the average American is going to lose ground in the years ahead. Who has the guts to tell him?
U.S. householders owe more money to more people than ever before in history. A financial collapse will not just affect rich speculators...instead, like the hyperinflation in Germany in the early '20s, it will reach down to the bedrock of American householders...and upset it badly.
Germany was so unsettled by the financial calamities of the '20s it welcomed a whole new team of scoundrels. Italy welcomed Mussolini largely because the nation was bankrupt. The Argentine generals launched the Falklands war in order to divert the public from its financial catastrophes.
And now, the "Nation of Courage" itself...lumbers toward its own wussy ruin...
"I don't see how anyone with an IQ over 70 can be anything but utterly pessimistic about the long-term outlook for the U.S. economy..." writes Marty Whitman of Third Avenue Funds. "Everybody's - and I mean everybody's - emphasis is on the short-term outlook. Nobody, but nobody is focused on solving real structural problems, organic structural problems that exist."
No. That would take courage, the one thing the nation most needs and most hasn't got.
Regards,
Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning
OK, the funding organization was the Ford Foundation, not the Union, but the study was done FOR the union. I don't know the organizational relationship between the Ford Foundation and the union, but my cynicism remains intact based on the benefactee if not the benefactor.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
If only it had been 401k, then it would have been much funnier. Maybe even ironic in an Alanissy kinda way.
Shit. I hate to say it, but that might solve TWO problems for us:
1. Loss of tech jobs
2. Osoma's existence
Table-ized A.I.
why i'm working at intel. I guess the tan got me in. JD. Karma Bad: It comes with the territory. And being a filthy racist.
Kerry is just as bad as Bush on this issue. He says he'll fiddle around a bit with the tax code, but if you look at what he'll really do to change the current situation, the only conclusion you can draw is that he'll do nothing.
You have the choice to vote for either a right-wing globalist elitist Skull-and-Bonesman, or a left-wing globalist elitist Skull-and-Bonesman. Ain't "democracy" wonderful?
Hire an Indian Lawyer, who knows what copyright, GPL (Gnu Protective License [ha..haa...haaa..]) actually means.
Or else visit www.gnu.org and READ the F* stuff there.
Time to start our own businesses, form co-ops, and stick it to the outsourcing bastards age?
Seriously, I've been toying with the idea of a nationwide tech co-operative to provide consulting services, provide tech services, etc... A large enough co-op with the right people joining in and spearheading it, could seriously compete. No corporate bullshitters or middle managers skimming off the top. And we could outsource things ourselves when we can't beat an outsourcing company.
While I can envision it, the idea is bigger than me. I just wish I knew who to talk to about this. I have 5 grand of my own money I'll put up to get started and I'm willing to bet, provided a real plan to make money exists, I could find 100s if not 1000s of others with their own money(maybe not as much as I have) to put up. It's either we go this route, or go unions, or else we're all going to continue to get nailed to the door.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
India, China, and many other such nations also have a huge demand for infrastructure growth and development. Before they get greedy about the foreign markets, maybe they should take care of building up their local business market?
Wouldn't that also help get a few more people employed in those countries instead of merely sucking jobs from other nations?
Maybe we need to find ways to work more efficiently as well, and put more of our resources into actually doing our job instead of wasting it on IP lawsuits.
Can you imagine starting a business nowadays? Before you could even think about approaching potential partners, you'd have to spend months or even years just working out how you're going to defend against Microsoft, SCO, and other overly-aggressive companies.
It may sound trite, but imagine how much more actual work and revenue-generating business enhancements could do with, say, the money IBM has spent defending against SCO so far?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
At this point, I'm willing to take almost any job. I just don't want to end up on the "B" ark.
Uhhhh.... I was with you until this:
If you hate what is happening to our country, the USA, then please write the following on the November ballot.
president: Bill O'Reilly
vice-president: Tammy Bruce
Seriously, I've said the same stuff about the situation with India and China, just got finished mentioning it before I saw this post. But, and this is a big but, your conclusion makes abso-fscking-lutely no sense whatsoever. Bill OReilly can't keep left and right straight, much less understand how the hell to deal with pushing Fair Trade instead of Free Trade.
How would an anti-Union, pro-Corporate shill for the right do jack to help the American Worker?
I was really expecting to see you throw support to John Kerry, but WTF? Did I miss a joke somewhere?
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
.
So much more could be happening with IT but we're stalled.
During the 90's, the world's leading computer scientists, including Jean Paoli and Adam Bosworth of Microsoft, went most of the way towards solving the single biggest challenge in IT, interoperability, by developing and standardizing protocols for communication and data translation among disparate systems. The result is XML, an acronym that even CEOs and CFOs know but one which has not been widely productized.
Why hasn't XML lead to a new generation of innovative products?
1. XML technologies are not supported by the monopoly browser.
2. "The industry" hasn't invested to develop XML platform products and bring them to market.
Could you sleep at night knowing you failed to invest $56b?
Thank you for illustrating yet again why libertarian free market globalists are raving morons.
Time to start our own businesses
Fuck that. I tried it. It takes clever marketing skills -- IOW, master liars.
beware!!!
I hate to say it, but this is *exactly* the kind of thinking that makes the rest of the world hate the US.
We could crush all of the robots in the factories that make cars. It'd create a ton of new jobs. Of course cars would suddenly become a hell of a lot more expensive and less reliable.
If you have a problem with capitalism then don't whine, propose something better. If you believe that capitalism is as good as it gets then read the following quote. If not, check out Parecon or read about some of Noam Chomsky's theories.
In the future there are two roads. One is to look backward and hang on to what we think we're entitled to. The other is to recognize what has made America. Our virtues lie in a flexible and open, technology friendly, risk-taking, entrepreneurial, market-driven system. This is exactly the same type of challenge farmers went through in the late 1800's, sweatshop workers went through in the early 1900's, and manufacturing workers did in the first half of the 80's. We've got to focus on setting in motion a debate that pushes us into new sources of job creation rather than bemoaning the loss. There are Republicans and Democrats alike who are involved in this protectionist backlash. They're very vocal right now, and they need to be challenged.
Stephen S. Roach, managing director and chief economist of Morgan Stanley
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Kerry is not left-wing. He's right-wing.
I hate to say it, but this is *exactly* the kind of thinking that makes the rest of the world hate the US.
The same people who danced in the street on 9/11 and have all kinds of wildass Jewish Domination conspiracy theories? They already hated us.
Those figures certainly agree with what I've experienced. In April, I was laid off from my decade-long software engineering job in the North SF Bay area. I quickly noticed that every week, *hundreds* of other local guys were being laid off also. Some from big places like HP, Agilent, and Autodesk. Some from little shops like the place that I was at.
From talking to other people in my situation, it seemed that the rule of thumb was that you should expect to search 1 month for every $10K that you expect to earn. Based on that, plus the nasty cost of living in northern California, I beat a hasty retreat from the area. Thankfully, I'm gainfully employed elsewhere now.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Who really believes that the recession ended in November of 2001?
Congress ought to change the tax law, and give companies a tax credit for each U.S. citizen they employ. Say somewhere between 30-50%.
Suddenly, those off-shore workers become a lot less competitive.
Workers win, companies win; but the Fed does take a hit in its bloated budget. I suppose we could try to balance it, but with a real deficit at $45 Trillion (yes, that's not a typo, just a recent report from the GAO IIRC), that's going to be a tad hard to do.
Still, it seems like the only real option in this off-shoring debacle.
My company is hiring developers. I interviewed a few of them this week, and none of them met the bar for a medium level position. Coworkers and I would give them some simple coding problems, stuff like merge two arrays, reverse a linked list, reverse a string in place, and none of them gave a satisfactory answer. And some of these questions have been published in several books - do these guys not show up prepared? Going beyond coding, it was clear none of them really understood the software business despite claims of 5 to 15 years experience.
I don't doubt there are some good people out of work for too long, but even with all the outsourcing going on, there are companies hiring as there will always be software development done in the USA. All these custom applications by small firms will forever demand local employment, just as one example - Billy Bob isn't going to want to deal with a bunch of Indian devs across the world for his inventory tracking system, he's going to stay local.
As others have stated, first ask yourself if you really are a good developer, and if you default to "I have X years experience," rather than enumerating your accomplishments, the answer may very well be no. If yes, you'll find something soon enough if you use some saavy in your search. Just keep an open mind and be prepared to make some adjustments, including but not limited to moving.
I'm sorry but even though I agree that he has a point here, I can't ever vote for O'Reilly. He is a mean, impatient, and overtly biased reporter. He twists words and plays games -- and he's not even a politician. I can only imagine what kind it would be like if here were a politician!
right up until you proposed writing in Bill O'Reilly for president.
To a far-leftist, Kerry is "right-wing". To the rest of us, he's merely left-of-center, or a liberal.
The point is, whatever you want to call him, the fact remains he doesn't represent a meaningfully different choice from Bush.
Not according to Hillary. When asked what was the biggest event during Bush's first 4 years, what'd she say? The economy in the tubes.
Way to represent your state, HRC! Wasn't it one of the ones attacked? Oh, I guess that wasn't as big a deal for you, was it?
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter...
Seriously, drop me an email, I'd like to know a bit more about this.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Indonesia and Pakistan in a nuclear war?
Here's something that isn't talked about very much: the fact that users with "too much" knowledge are being penalized in this job market.
What I mean is that workers with years of experience and/or an advanced degree are some of the workers that are being hurt the most. I have an advanced degree and I am finding it almost IMPOSSIBLE to even get companies to look at me in my market. I have a cousin that has TWO Masters degrees in engineering related fields and SHE can't get anyone to call her back.
And these same hypocrites are the ones saying that the US's education system is so amazingly "broken". If this is true, why do we have so many people from other countries that want to come here to learn? Why do we have so many well educated people that can't find jobs of ANY kind because they get labeled as "overqualified"?
Maybe it's because they assume that they will actually have to be paid at middle class levels? That's not even true for me now... but I willing to bet that this idea comes into play at almost every company I contact.
I have a master's degree and right now I am spending my time in classes becoming even more "overqualified." Since I can't make myself dumber or give back my degrees it's about all I can do right now until as a country we wake up and realize how idiotic the situation has gotten...
Don't worry, unemployed SW engineers can apply for jobs sweeping up in untaxed churches. It doesn't pay much, but you never have to worry about testing anything ever again.
--
make install -not war
We heavily subsidize things like military contractors, farmers, textile factories, steel plants, mining companies, drug companies, and oil companies. We do it for the same reason you state: economic advantage and/or stability and military advantage. We also devalue our currency (though recently we stopped doing it because the dollar go too weak). I agree those are all non-free-market actions but they are practices just about everywhere, including the US.
Yes, and no. It does take clever marketing skills, but you don't have to lie. The reason these corps lie half the time is they really don't understand their products and they don't have decent products.
If we had a nationwide co-op of local IT professionals contracting with local businesses under one nationwide brand name, we would have pooled resources to engage in effective marketing. Marketing that wouldn't have to be done by each individual. Marketing that could be done in nationwide publications like businessweek and the like. This type of campaign would deliver huge mindshare to local members of the organisation and would allow them to focus on what they do best, IT work.
It's all an idea right now, if someone out there has any suggestions on who they think I should talk to about this for pointers on getting started, let me know. I think this could work, but the idea is much bigger than me.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
for those of us still in college. I'm going into a computer science major and I will kill myself (or marry my indian friend which would result in the first choise) before moving to India. I can't wait for all of those outsourcing companies to see the bad effects of it though, such as us not being able to understand a damn word their "tech support" people say. And even if we did understand them, its not like it would help because they tell you to do what youve already done 20 times in a row instead of listening to you or making sense. ...I'll calm down eventually but I'll always hate India
You're recommending we send a delusional hack, who aspires to an imaginary childhood in Levittown, NY, to the White House? What, do you work for the Chinese? If you hate what's happening to the American workforce, go to a union, and ask them how to help organize your fellow info workers. That's the only politics that's ever protected American labor. It's no accident that such a successful movement would send O'Reilly into a spasmatic fury.
--
make install -not war
"463,000 H-1Bs were employed in the field, as of 2002"
The H-1b quota was reduced in 2003-but the L-1 visa program has even fewer controls-and is now effectively uncapped.
After years of "huge economic rises" and years of "it's a new economy" is anyone surprised? The so called tech boom created thousands of new tech jobs, many of them software engineers, for stupid start up companies who thought they could ignore how the economy really works.
So, four years after the dust settles we're still going to see the backlash of what happens when you hire too many non-qualified people and too many people looking for the quick gold rush buck. Of course there are less jobs in this area, because perhaps we didn't need them anymore once the "new economy" evaoporated.
Hint: There never was a new economy, it was a farse.
I'm somewhat stumped by people blaming Bush for this. The economy didn't shrivel because he became president, it was already going down before then, tech companies IPO'ing without a major project, or a product that in todays market is just pathetic will cause stuff like that. Tons of money tossed into "new avenue markets" by big venture capitalist firms instead of going into current growing markets that have a proven track record.
It's not Bush, heck it wasn't Clinton, the jobs are gone, they even deserve to be gone. Now everyone just needs to find out why everyone else is so dang surprised.
...Chimpanze should be beat like a rented mule.
Yes, the amount of money you make and especially how much you throw around affects me. If you don't mind paying $100 for a hamburger soon I will be expected to as well.
You wrote:
So the gap between the rich and the poor grows - so what? Suppose you earn $10,000 a year and I earn $100,000 year, working for the same company. The boss comes in and says that due to increased sales, you and I both get a raise. I'm now making $10,000,000 a year, while you make $100,000 a year. You used to be earning 1/10 of what I made, but now it's 1/100th. The gap between us got bigger, but so what ? You're still a hell of a lot better off than you were. Does it affect you, in any way, shape or form, how much money I make? No! All that matters if how much you make and what you can buy with that money
THat is not what is happening. What is happening is that an ever-decreasing percent of the population (Group A) is obtaining an ever-increasing amount of money (Amount M) . And conversely and ever-increasing percent of the population (Group B) is obtaining an ever-decreasing amount of money (Amount N). That is the very essence of neoliberal econonics/lasseiz faire economics/corporate capitalism. It is a system designed to place an ever increasing amount of wealth in a ever-decreasing number of hands. Witness it happening before your eyes.
Yes, the overall pot is increasing because Amount A is growing faster than Amount B is decreasing. But so what?
Also, since this is The Law of Jungle, i.e., that is the basis of Neoliberalism/Lassiez Faire economics, we can see what effects this will have by looking at animal behavior when the balance of power shifts dramatically. What happens in the nest of certain types of birds when one of the chicks gets bigger than the other chicks? The bigger chick pushes the smaller one out of the nest. Or when one of the young male lions gets bigger than the others? It runs off the rest.
So when some humans get more resources than the others, they exploit the ones who have less resources. There is no "rising tide lifting all boats," but instead suddenly powerful entities that inexorably impoverish, enslave, and eventually push out of the nest, all the little ones. THe means of control are many. Wherever there is animal entity that gains more power than its competitors, it uses that power to improve its own position. And when these powerful entities exist in a democracy, they use propaganda to lull the lesser humans, to fool them by whispering sweet, lasseiz-faire nothings into their ears. "Hey, Little Red Riding Hood, look at my Cornucopianism Religion I created for you. A rising tide lifts all boats, Little Red Riding Hood. I would never hurt you."
They do this with a vast array of think tanks and foundations that have been created with over $2 billion dollars of funding over the last 30 years or so. Read Tentacles of Rage from this month's Harper Magazine to find out more.
I used to be under their spell, too.
You wrote:
Even the poorest of the poor have cell phones, air conditioning, automobiles, refridgerators, color TV's and 2000 calorie diets. They don't have to worry about dying of typhus, malaria, diptheria, diaherra, the flu, measles, mumps, smallpox, or rubela. A man can work just 40 hours and a week and easily support himself. Roman Emperors couldn't possiblly have imagined the life of luxury that the poorest of americans enjoys.
This is simply the result of an accretion of knowledge. We stand on the shoulders of giants. And by the way, a lot of the basic research to obtain these improvements were funded by taxes. But the profits were taken by corporations. Hmm. Sounds like a peculiar form of socialism to me.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I think this guy should be modded down to about 3, not 5.
Why? There is nothing good that could come of Bill O'Reilly.
I think even most people on the right would agree with this.
He is a pathological liar who drapes himself in the flag. Watch the cuts of O'Reilly on OUTFOXED and you will see him for what he really is.
it's not that americans are being ambushed in the parking lots or whatever. it's that at least some of the jobs being "taken" are manual, untrained labor. the people who desperately need money (ie - jobs) are having at least part of the employment market shut down because there are fewer entry-level positions availabe. you don't see CEO's or execs getting pissed off about this issue, because if they can pay workers less, that means they can bathe in yet more money. the people that are getting screwed by this situation are the ones at the bottom of the proverbial pecking order.
Along with having too many workers, the skills companies need from workers has changed. Most places aren't building new stuff from scratch anymore- they just need folks to maintain what they have and maybe upgrade to the latest, greatest thing. The network is in place, the web page is designed, and so forth. Maintaining a system takes less workers then designing it and setting it up.
I can't help but wonder how many cabdrivers and their ilk, who asked me in the late 1990s how to "learn computers", are counted in those unemployed "IT workers"? Corporate management spawned thousands of HTML "programmers" who learned from books for "Idiots". How many graphic artists are still kidding themselves into applying for programming jobs, or at least saying so on their unemployment forms? The entire IT industry was destroyed by Baby Boomers who always believe everything they see on TV, and stayed glued to market-watch programs that peddled anything that said "Internet". We turned the profession into a joke, with no necessary qualifications, and now the joke's on us. Too bad we can't even distinguish the unemployed programmers from the unemployed fauxgrammers.
--
make install -not war
Outsourcing has definately put a dent in the US job market, and while this: http://www.criticalconcern.com/satire-president-ou tsourced.htm Clearly Satirical Article is but humourous and entertaining, I thought it would be a refreshing laugh for those slashdot readers suffering from this sad state of affairs.
Also, Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liers who Tell Them presents a wonderful point-by-point analysis of where Bill O'Reilly lies in his books.
O'Reilly really is a whacko and God help us if he is ever elected to presidential office.
Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
The main difference is bush has already prooved himself to be a moron. Now its kerrys turn.
And people buy the least expensive item possible.
Who cares why Indians and Chinese are willing to work for less? It doesn't matter. If their governments are willing to force their people to sell their labor for cheap (an assumption I disagree with, but let's run with it anyway) that's just good for us.
Americans want their own jobs protected, but then turn around and buy the imported item that's cheaper. And that *IS* a free market - Americans are deciding that saving a few bucks is better than employing other americans, and THAT is why jobs are outsourced.
Because Americans WANT jobs to be outsourced.
Just not theirs. But they lose that vote.
paintball
Nothing is valuable to employers except the money grab.
You can either be worth more to an employer than what they pay you, or you can start your own company and pay people less than what they are worth to you. Your call, but that's what makes the employment universe go around.
BTW, I'd advocate the second option, but most people are too lazy for that.
paintball
There are many circles that suspect that Bin Ladin will be "found" as we approach the election.
Bush's tax policies - specifically, accelerated depreciation - have encouraged companies to spend their money on *stuff* rather than on people. Companies can presently write off *half* or more of the cost of a purchase in the year of purchase, rather than writing it off over 5 or more years. That's a pretty hefty incentive.
In the past, spending money on *stuff* would boost hiring of people who make, service, and run the things purchased.
Now, though, the *stuff* is probably made overseas, so no manufacturing jobs. And the service probably consists of disposal and replacement for many things, rather than skilled work, so service jobs are less necessary. Some things don't require more workers to run them, or they might just be operated by the same person who ran the old one.
And some of the *stuff* bought are expensive software packages which help companies cut down their staffing requirements even more. Or they reduce the amount of inventory that has to be kept on hand, reducing the amount
of stuff they buy.
So, ironically, Bush's tax cuts may have reduced hiring!
Luckily, the accelerated depreciation provisions are expiring next year. So, with luck, 2005 will see more hiring.
That is, unless rising healthcare costs, reduced consumer spending, and other influences conspire to slow the economy and hiring.
They do note that overall, Silicon Valley is down 1500 jobs in the long run though... however that figures...
-----
"Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
Right, because somebody who writes a book called "Lies and the Lying Liers that Tell Them" [sic] is a good person to go to for unbiased reporting.
Uh, or not.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Oh ya! You have proof of Indians dancing on the street and celebrating 9/11? India was one of the first countries to offer unconditional support to end terrorisim. We lost thousands of innocent people to these assholes who you fucking morons funded. Go grow a brain.
Don't even bother... this troll is about as old as the one about Stephen King being dead... Though that one actually scared me, since he hadn't finished the Dark Tower then...
PageTurner Reader: open-source e-reader for Android with cloudsync. http://pageturner-reader.org
Change your title and department to anything not related to IT. Stay the hell out of customer service though. Marketing and Finance are good hiding spots. HR is solid gold but you WILL go to hell in the end.
First off, let me tell you that I fell for the cert craze. I have A+ and Network+. I also have a psych degree (bachelor's) and it's worse than IT field as far as finding a job that isn't clinicial.
Anyways, the main problem has been the certs that are still advertized on G4TechTV. They portray certs as being good as a degree and companies believed it. They hire losers that have no idea what is happening and then companies start to consider that a real degree in CS and experience is more important. Look at Atari, Microsoft, and Intel in the early days or even today. How many only had employees with certs and high school diploma?
I worked as a temp for a PC maker and I can tell you that certs don't provide skills. I seen American techs dispatch a motherboard to fix an error that said NTKRNL was corrupt or reinstall Windows even though a diagnostic reported the hard drive fail. A+/Network+ should help get me entry level jobs (I hope) but they only way to fix this problem is to provide companies with properly university trained IT people.
So far, my certs look good on the wall and that's it.
Unfortunately to many Amercians, everyone from the Middle East is an Indian (and muslum).
It isn't intentional ignorance, it is simply that we are in a huge country cut off off from Europe, Africa, and Asia by a lot of water. Proxmimity plays a major role. What goes on in the neighboring states is generally more relevent to the average American's life than what goes on in countries they will likely never come anywhere near.
Unforunately, we are also really damn loud, so the opinions of our most ignorant citizens gets broadcast everywhere.
Now you know why i wash windows
The USA, in isolation, is a relatively free market..
The problem is that most people in the USA like to believe that this statement is true. If the USA is is isolated, it would **NOT** be self-sufficient in all areas of the economy - including technology workers. The reality is that, when isolated, the US relies on Mexico, China, India etc. for all kinds of work - unskilled, military and technical.
It is not very wrong for these other countries to demand their pound of flesh.
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I don't have a newsletter, I'm just a guy with an idea, but I'll be sending you an email.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
That's it! You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college!
Yaz.
Really, I am. You see, for years I've been putting up with "I'm a techie, too!" people. The kind that have no idea what they're doing.
They're people who go to a two-week certification class. They're people who take a 6-month class. They're people who go to ITT for two years. They're people who learned everything on their own. And they're even people with four-year degrees.
For every 100 people that say "Yeah, I work with computers, too!", I'm lucky if I meet three or four that actually have a clue, and (here's the important part) actually have any marketable skills.
Yes, they're the ones that whine and moan that "the market is flooded", "you can't get a job in (insert state name)", "it's all these people willing to work for nothing", or "the economy is so horrible."
I know a lot of people who make their living with computers. And while "the economy was bad", I can honestly say that the job difficulties they faced were inversely proportional to their expertise. The better they really were, the less trouble they had.
When we put an ad in the paper for a programmer who (a) has used Perl in a CGI environment, (b) has some knowledge of SQL, and (c) has some knowledge of HTML, you'd be amazed at how many applicants we get - literally, hundreds. And again, literally, without any exageration, over 85% of the applicants do not meet those requirements in any way, shape, or form. We're lucky if we get three or four people out of 150 applicants that can really say that they're proficient in those three areas - and to me, that's not asking much at all.
The sad fact is that the tech job market was massively, grossly over-inflated during the "dot-com craze", and is now back at a more reasonable level. Yes, I know, that makes it tough for all of the "But I want to be a programmer, too!" people, but that's just fine. They've been making it tough on the rest of us for quite some time.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
I just quit my job(IT) for an IT position that's 3x my current pay, work from home with no end user support required. not only that but i am beating the work off with a stick i have as much as i can handle. thats because i don't program in crummy java or do windows NT sysadmin crap. learn some real computer skills people, and you won't have trouble finding a job or getting outsourced.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The people that flock to him are wealthy CEOs and anyone with a MBA degree. They manipulate the media to make Bush look good so they can get more tax cuts and benefits for anotehr 4 years whie screwing us. If Americans (I'm one), wasn't so damned concerned about SUVs and crap, we wouldn't have this problem.
When the USA interacts with, say, China, we have the interaction of a free market and a non-free market. The by-product (i.e. millions of underemployed Chinese) of non-market forces now affects the market dynamics in the USA.
I'm not sure I understand how the influx of cheap labor would be any worse for the U.S. than if China truly did have a free market.
If China had a truly free market, and your assumption about this improving the Chineses domestic job market was true, then who would all these workers be employed by? Chinese companies. And who would these Chinese companies compete with? American companies, which would have a competitive disadvantage since American workers are more expensive than Chinese workers, thanks to high living costs.
The American companies would then lose business, forcing them to trim their workforces.
The problem here is that if we try to compete with other countries in the unskilled or lesser-skilled labor markets, we will lose every time. In the long run, there are only a few things that we can do if we want to keep our jobs:
a. Become exceptionally skilled workers (not difficult, considering the exceptional quality of educational institutions in the U.S.)
b. Keep on moving into new markets as the old markets become dominated by companies that rely on cheap labor.
c. Do something about the high living costs in the U.S., which are making this country extremely hostile to the working classes.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Much as any politician would hate to accept, the economy is now well and truly in the hand of the Corporates, not the political forum. Anyone getting elected to the presidency will hardly make a difference to the economy. Consider the strength of the Chinese and the Indian economies, and consider for a moment who's been in power in those countries for some years now....
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
But according to Chaney we still got eBay. Hurry up and sell more crap on eBay so we can keep this war time economy afloat.
So let me tell you guys a little story. There is particular guy named Chuck Eakins who works at this particular media and software company in downtown Beattle and its called Unreal Networks Inc. - they make some kinda media players and stuff. Anyway lets talk about Chuck.
Chuck is an American with nothing but a high school degree and he gets a salary of 60k for
1. growling and bitching half the time
2. bullshitting half the time at work and doing sloppy work the other half
Wait - is that a day and a half? Well too bad - it must be chuckomania - well more to the point. Chuck my dear friendly American brother works about 6-6.5 hours a day and slacks off most of those 6 hours reading slashdot or other websites. On the other hand you have people from these third world countries working 9-10 hours a day working their asses off to make some contribution that is worth something to the company. Now you ask yourself - if a clueless moron and slacker like Chuck Eakins gets away with wasting 60k annually - a salary perhaps two people might want to work and be four times as productive...wonder why there are no jobs...
Before any one starts trolling about how great Bush is here is a pre-emptive rebuttal. The economy wen't down on Bush's watch. Terrorists struck on Bush's watch. Overtime got cut on Bush's watch. Outsourcing increased due to tax incentives on Bush's watch. Both the House and Senate are Republican controlled. Now you can argue its not his fault. Wrong. By being the commander and chief one has a exacting duty to this country and responsibility to do every thing possible to maintain balance, peace and prosperity.
...That is the sound of inevitability. You can not stop economic trends, IMHO. You can mediate and lessen slightly the economic impact by shifting economic emphasis, but it is inevitable that the industrial age is peaking and more distributed models are taking center stage.
Tyler: You don't know where ive been, Lou. YOU DONT KNOW WHERE IVE BEEN!!
The job loss probably was not Bush's fault. Combine an inherited recession with 9/11 and you have a difficult situation. In fact, the numbers show that job loss in SOME areas began BEFORE Bush.
http://factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=234
So many people use outsourcing as the major cause of job loss, including John Kerry. The fact is that jobs lost to outsourcing make up a small percentage of the total jobs "lost each year even in a good economy."
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=225
And to those claims that the new jobs are ONLY low paying jobs...it would seem that the case isn't as clear cut as some would claim.
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?DocID=208
factcheck.org attempts to find the truth on BOTH sides of the aisle.
Finding your email address is difficult. Drop me a line, if you have the time and it is convenient. The address is my slashdot "name" at the domain specified in my "home page" URL, sans the "www". I'm a self-employed consultant and partial owner of an LLC (with two other members), providing IT services and consultation to businesses in a local market. I don't know if I have anything valuable to add to the conversation or not, but I'd certainly like to hear your perspective re: your prior message. Odd way to try and reach you, I know-- hopefully you'll see this.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
There was a story on the local news (NHK) the other day about how Japanese manufacturers have been moving highly skilled, key manufacturing back to Japan and out of China. The main reason given was being tired of teaching the locals how to run their plants and processes only to see them run off to set up and become competitors. This is especially a concern given the low priority given to intellectual property by the government in China.
It wouldn't really surprise me to see something like this happening to software R&D in the near future either.
I can't figure out why the so called bubble ended up busting. How did all those companies fail when Moore's Law garentees that profits will double every 8 months ?
We have 9-11-2001 to thank... No matter what the Dems say...
http://www.DaveNet.biz/
Grow a dick... idiot.
Do you even know where India and Pakistan are on a map?
Well, if lying openly in public is the norm for the current administration, then Bo'R (a bore however you spell it), is a prime candidate.
Did he inhale?
Well, I still remember a course I did in first year where during an introductory lecture, when the lecturer was talking about how programming languages have advanced from the 1s and 0s initially to asm to high level languages we have today, and finally ending off at a slide showing a computer on a pedestal and titled, "Self Programming".
:(
So is this our future? Eventually these damned things get so clever that they can program themselves?
Anyhow, doing a CS degree in this time and age sure stinks
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
You're missing a big piece of the picture here. Putting aside the fact that America isn't a free market and hasn't been for quite some time, let's pretend for a moment that the entire world - every single country - is happily following Adam Smith's theory as closely as possible.
What happens? The overall wealth of the entire world rises, probably markedly. The system as a whole benefits from free market economics. Let me repeat that: the system AS A WHOLE benefits from free market economics.
This DOES NOT MEAN that EVERY NATION benefits from this situation. All free market economics guarrantees is that the world, taken as a whole, will be wealthier than it was before. Some areas will see their wealth increase by vast amounts; others by lesser amounts; and some areas will actually see their wealth DECLINE. But when you add them all up, the world - as a whole - will be wealthier.
The free market doesn't distribute wealth fairly nor equally, nor should it. That's what socialism - the antithesis of the free market - tries to do. It could very well be that even if every nation in the world were as close to the free market as possible, that the U.S. could end up being one of the losers while many other nations wind up being the big winners.
The free market doesn't guarrantee an increase in wealth for every part of the system, just for the system overall. Smith himself mentioned this but saw it as a good thing, standing apart from national interests to give a (mostly) objective rendering of his theory.
As an American I'm concerned with the welfare of myself and my fellow citizens first and foremost, and this only makes sense. If I were more concerned about Nigeria, it would behoove me to move to Nigeria and become a citizen of that country, since I'm putting Nigerian interests before that of any other country. But seeing as how I'm an American and I don't have any hankering at all to be a Nigerian, my primary focus is on increasing the wealth of AMERICA. It would be incredibly stupid of me to sacrifice my own rational self-interest - along with that of my countrymen, my relatives, my friends, and my children - to argue for free-market economics in a situation where America stands to lose and others stand to gain. Deliberately depriving yourself, your friends, your family, and your chilren of opportunities, shipping them overseas for others to take advantage of, isn't 'altruism'; it's foolishness bordering on the criminal (or the insane).
Oddly enough, both the Democrats and the Republicans argue that this is a good thing and that we do all this in accordance with the 'free market' (again, despite the fact that America isn't much of a free market). That selling out American workers is fine and dandy because it upholds the mantra 'free market', and that in some magical fashion all the jobs lost will eventually be made up through the invention of new technologies. In the interim between the old economy and the imaginary new one which has yet to come, we lose more than 2 million jobs, 1.1 million of which are replaced by jobs which pay nearly $9,000 less than the ones which were lost. Unemployment is still higher than it's been since the recession year of 1983, but so many workers have been off the unemployment rolls for so long the government no longer counts them - and therefore, in some bizarre bureaucratic fashion, they're no longer unemployed.
(How all of this innovation is supposed to occur under the new IP laws is beyond me, but that's a discussion for the next RIAA/MPAA/Disney news item.)
As the parent poster mentioned, the situation becomes even worse when you embark on free market economics with nations that themselves don't practice anything like the free market. Massive government intervention along with vastly lower standards of living almost assures movement of jobs from the free market (or pseudo-free market) nations to the non-free market nations. Exactly what we're seeing right now, actually.
The only way to stem the tide is
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
The tech industry crash might not have been caused by Clinton, but it started on his watch.
I'll agree with you on this point. But there are smart things you can do, as president, to minimize the impact of such a crash, and then there are dumb things you can do that will only exacerbate the situation.
Do you think the Japanese motor and electronics industries have got where they are today by whining to their Government? They got there by making what people want to buy.
All your jobs are belong to us !!
-- CATS, talking from China
I work in the UK and Sweden and the job market for IT people is pretty damn good.
I'm reading a lot of comments by Americans here and it's all negative. Are there any Europeans reading this who want to confirm/deny that the IT market - after a prolonged recession - is good?
At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, I can't help feeling it's because European management has recognised that throwing the requirements over the wall and some dude in India coding them is not a great business model. Programmers need to sit and talk to the business people.
Even the feverish hacks at The Economist seem less certain that offshoring will change the IT landscape. Compare:
"The shift of service jobs to low-cost countries has only just begun"
(The Economist, Relocating the Back Office December 13, 2003)
with:
"So even the bullish-sounding projections about 'infrastructure-management services' hardly suggest a revolution either in the global outsourcing market or in the structure of India's information-technology industry: not so much one big wave; more a rising tide."
(The Economist, After the call-centre, now the IT department is off to India, September 10, 2004)
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
No, free trade helps both countries. Just look at how hurt many industries were when Bush raised protectionist tariffs on steel: the steel industry was happy, but the rest of the country got hit with higher supply costs.
The overall wealth of the entire world rises, probably markedly.
Why should that be? I agree that the free market is one way to reach an equilibrium where any further reduction in cost on one side will lead to an increase somewhere else so that there's no net gain. But this state is always in accordance with the rules of the game. Change the rules and you'll get a differen situation.
For eample take the transfer of goods in the European Community. At the moment, it's very profitable to truck half finished products from one country to the other. German potatos will get shipped to Italy for peeling, slicing and frying and then sent back as chips in bags to Germany.
If the freighters now would have to pay more for the upkeep of the roads, because communities see no business case in maintaining highways - for local traffic a dirt road is good enough and gives the people a good reason to buy a SUV, probably the free market will kill the idea of shipping potatos twice across the Union. Building a smaller frying plant will be cheaper.
In all of this, the free market doesn't create any wealth, it distributes it only in an unequal fashion. It makes no difference, if the transport workes make a good living or the corrupt local gouvernement, except naturally to the transport workers and corrupt politicians.
Just like every superhero has his pet arch-villain, the free market has also an opposing force, just as strong: Peoples desire for a happy life. The forces of free market can make people's life miserable up to a certain point, after which the rules get changed. With new rules, the free market will find another equilibrium.
In the above example, this could be some Austrian communities sitting between Germany and Itlay being fed up with all those potato-trucks and deciding they won't maintain those roads for the benefit of German couch potatos any more.
No, you have Bush and his piss-poor economic policies of tax cuts for the rich and no help for the poor to thank.
Ok, when I was growing up I had to help pay the electricity bill for my mom with the money I earned from my own job. I have a great career now, that I built with sheer willpower. I worked hard every summer, I bought a car for $100 and learned to maintain it myself. I got scholarships for college (my parents paid probably less than $1000 total, the rest was loans and grants) and worked my way through college as well until I was out. Then I spent months finding a good entry level IT job (that was a few years before the boom and it was pretty hard then).
Don't tell me the poor have it so bad and they are stuck. I worked my way out, through education and a whole damn bunch of HARD WORK. Anyone can do it, if they choose to do so... I did have one advantage, I had a great family that really helped me learn and motivate me (though my parents were divorced before I went to college).
I firmly believe the "GAP" is there in part because the people are TOLD there is a gap. If you cease to believe in a gap you can do whatever you like instead of being trapped in your own situation. Sure there is a real advantage for people that have money - but those kids generally squander that opportunity anyway and leave very large holes for those willing to try outpacing them.
The message that being poor is an insurmountable barrier is a terrible reinforcement for the populace at large. It's hard to pull yourself up when you're constantly told it's too hard to even try. If something sucks, that should motivate you to work all the harder to escape it, not force you to live with it forever and just endure it because no-one else will help pull you out. A few summers working grounds maintenance at a golf course taught me that I'd rather be working with computers for a living than working grueling hours outdoors for minimum wage, and I made that happen myself.
And aren't you just buying the media feed about what it's like to live in the US? I was living far under that "line of poverty" but managed to escape without turning to a life of crime or peddling crack.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have mod points but the category does not exist. Arrogant point #1: "millions of underemployed Chinese", most people in China work the entire time it is daylight just to eat and stay warm. Just because they don't have a clock-card does not mean they are "underemployed". Arrogant point #2: USA Inc. has been steam-rolling most of the world for the last 50 yrs by "government intervention" at the expense of everyone including thier own population. Now you start crying and squirming because the world is starting to insist you play by the rules that were mainly invented by yourselves. Arrogant point #3: "When the USA interacts with, say, China, we have the interaction of a free market and a non-free market". Go tell that to the sugar farmers in Australia who were recently shafted by the US, they are just one very small casualty of USA inc. From an overseas viewpoint, it makes sense that an arrogant punce like you would live in the USA and hero-worship Bill O'Reilly. What would make me really laugh is if you and Bill ended up begging for an Indian "green card" after your economy implodes.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
That's pretty much how lawyers and doctors started out. After awhile they decided that they had enough members and needed to restrict new entries. With state sanctions they drew up requirements which tightened over the years, and also were awarded the ability to boot their members (with no alternate organizations as recourse) whenever those members didn't toe the party line. If those booted members dared to practice their profession, the professional organizations would cry 'foul!' and the government would come along to thump the miscreant.
So tell me: how long will it take your organization to go the same way? Or do you honestly think that unlike the doctors, the lawyers, the plumbers, the electricians, the psychiatrists, and all the others that have gone before you, you'll somehow be exempt from the same sort of greed and corruption?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I'm not sure what to think of so many pro Kerry people seemingly fine with the concept that Bush is responsible for hurricanes...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You need to read a bit of history. The Japanese economy enjoys some of the strictest governmental protectionism seen in the First World. They use that protectionism to excellent effect, keeping their industries vibrant while effectively co-opting big chunks of business in other nations.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
..as long as the employees that were fired don't file for unemployment-benefits, nobody gets any worse of it:
- The industry cleans out bad coders
- Less bugs
- More efficiency
- Less wage-costs
- The economy still gets income from the unemployed - they need to eat now don't they ?
No no, this is not meant as a troll - just a reminder of how some people see these figures.
It would be 'bad' if these people would actually stand up for their right for benefits or were the best coders the company that fired them had or were the driving force (!) behind the productivity of those still employed ("Hey Pete, you know why blabla doesn't work" "Sure, just change that and that and you're done." == this last remark was done by the fired person, with that remark missing - who knows how long the code takes to finish ??).
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Predicted weather report from Microsoft's Bangalore Campus
Microsoft doesn't have a campus in Banglore.
That outsourcing is the sole, or even primary reason for the reducion in jobs. Notice they cite the fall as starting with the mild recession, not with the outsourcing trend.
.com behind your name and suddenly you were worth investing in.
.com days and expended their lifestyle to match. However they were being paid more than they were worth. That fact hasn't registered, though, and they still act and feel liek they are underpaid when, in reality, their pay has just returned to a level more in line with their skills.
.com boom days where a basic cert and a MS Word wizard resume would have 5-6 figure job offers flooding in. Sorry, not the case anymore in tech, and basically not the case in any industry. IT is just equalising to a state like most other industries where skill, experience, and personal contacts are what get you a job, not a couple of Microsoft certs.
The thing that many people don't seem to want to admin was in the late 90s we had an artifical bubble fueld by overspeculation on the Internet. Any and everything that had to do with the Internet was getting money. Put a
Problem was that the Internet is just a communications mechanism, nothing more. It doesn't create money. Most of these 'net bussinesses had no bussiness plan, no idea how to make money, and often no real product to boot. This was a situation doomed to fail. It was on a downward slide when the terrorist attacks shook up confidence and accelerated it.
Well, this caused a glut of tech workers. All kinds of people were going in to IT and programming because it was seen as easy money. Get an MCSE, get a great job. Never mind if you were any good at it, companies needed tech people badly and would take what they could get. This literally led to situations of kids straight out of highschool making 6 figures in some cases.
So, when the crash came, these people found themselves out of work. However what they didn't realise is that it was more or less permenant. There just isn't the need for that may IT workers espically that many INCOMPETENT IT workers.
Others who have more skill and were able to get job bitched about the lower pay. They had raked in the dough during the
I personally believe this is tha major cause for the "tech crunch". Everyone I know that does IT/dev hiring says they still get floods of resumes but the problem is they just can't find qualified people easily. There are plenty of hacks out there that got in it for the money but lack real skill, however the good ones are much harder to come by. As a corrilary to that, basically all the skilled IT/dev people I know do not lack for jobs. They have one, and have no trouble finding prospects.
So really, I think the big problem is a lot of people long for the
Now this isn't to say there aren't tech workers in the country getting the short end of the stick saliry and/or hours wise, there are. However show me almost any industry, I'll shouw you workers somewhere in this country getting screwed. There are good and bad employers, and good and bad employees.
Just because there is someone telling a sob story about how much they hate their job, or how they can't get a job does not mean that the tech industry has gone to shit (or to another country). It just means that it is swinging closer to some kind of equilibirum.
So yes, outsourcing will cost some jobs here, at least in the short term, but to pretend liek that's the only reason there are less jobs than 1999-2000 is just stupid.
> The most important factor in converting a stagnant economy (as found in so many 3rd world countries) into a bristling one is simply to get one's currency to flow!
I'd like to add that as long as the people keep their money in the market and don't liquidate it , they don't pay taxes.
If your stocks appreciate to 200% of the original value, you get double the money - but the government punishes you with taxes if you try to liquidate and hoard it.
I'm not an economist, but IMHO Income Tax on investment liquidation is an essential part of Capitalism . Tax cuts will encourage liquidation of assets and weaken the economy in general !.
I pay around 28% of my income as tax (India) and I don't like taxes anymore than you do - but they are needed. (oh, and I don't want any of that used to fund a war)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Even if the parent is wrong about the economy and this really is the one time the pessimists are right, he's still right that bitching about it isn't going to accomplish anything. If you sit around and whine on /. that you can't get a job, we'll you'll be right, but mainly because you are sitting around and whining on /. rather than doing something about it.
Even if you believe the pessimists are right, do something about it personally. Get out of IT and work on another field. Computers aren't the onyl way to make money in the world and if you truly believe they are dead end in this country, do something about it personally.
I'm not saying you shouldn't alert the government of your views if you truly believe this will be the crisis that kills our economy but please understand the skeptics:
Doom and gloom is a popular human passtime. You get it on all levels, of all kinds. You get the economic doom and gloom that X event or policy will ruin our economy. You get the religious doom and gloom, that the apocolyps is upon us. You get the environmental doom and gloom, that we are ont he crux of destroying the enivronment. And so on and so on.
This is: They are ALL WRONG. We know this because here we stand. Our economy is not in ruins, it's the biggest in the world and inded in history, we are not all dead, the environment has not entered a new ice age or melted down, etc. All the predictions of doom have failed to some true.
Thus when new ones, that look very much like the old ones, come about, many of us are skeptical. I'm not saying that they might not be right this time, but I hear little in the way of proofs of how this time is different and lots in the way of screaming and misinformation.
Either way: Sitting around and waiting for it to happen gets you nowhere.
Your faith in the "Free Market" looks naive. The US itself is not a free market when it comes i.e. to the steel industry or to the products of agriculture. In these economic sectors the US apply heavy taxation to goods from Cina and other developing countries. It's the greed of the capital holders who is destroying the US and the european economy. The politics and the administration of the public health aren't done in the interest of the people who live in a country but only to serve who can buy them.
Bangalore is farther away from Pakistan than New Delhi. It's land locked , surrounded by mountains and cool dry place. It's the last place pakistan's going to drop the bomb . If the unthinkable ever happens it would be Delhi and Bombay first ... and then Islamabad would be glassy crater by that time . India has a "No First Use" policy for nuclear weapons :)
... (hmm... maybe that's why).
Oh and Microsoft's Hyderabad campus in Summer feels like 45 centigrade with 40 KMPH dry winds whipping dust . If you don't have an AC car and an air conditioned home, you're more likely to eat , sleep and work in office
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
In a true free market, competition will drive the cost of anything down to the marginal cost of production. The US has had (until recently) a limited supply of IT professionals, which reduced competition and drove up costs (wages). Adding the IT workers of China nad India does not give infinate supply, but it does greatly increase competition, driving prices ever closer to the marginal cost of production.
Now, what is the marginal cost of producing one day of work? The cost to feed the person prducing it for 1 day. Not clothe or house him, just feed him. What you complain about is in fact the ideal according to classical econimics.
I had just started university in 1998 when it was really getting in full swing. I started picking up computer support certs not to dropout and go get a .com job, but just because it was easy to do and I'd figure it would help me in the future with jobs. I was correct in this, as many students apply for student tech support jobs, not many have any certs. Even simply ones like the A+ and Network+, which is what I had, were enough to give me the edge.
Well having completed basically all that CompTIA offered at the time, I figured I'd ask the cert company where I ought to look next. I was thinking MCSE, since it was the grand daddy tech support cert at the time, ro so it seemed.
They sat me down with a rep and we talked shop. First thing he wanted to know was what I did, other than school, which at the time was act as the webmaster for the school paper. This was great, he said, because the web was The Holy Grail, and all you needed to be rich. He recommended a couple design and administration certificits (and their training for them, of course). Any time I asked about things liek the MCSE he told me not ot worry about that, maybe after, the web was where money was.
Well I decided not. I didn't really like webdesign enough to make it a carreer, and my roomate was a bussiness major who knew enough about the market to know this shit wasn't going to last. The cert center, meanwhile, was pumping out people left and right with a couple moths training and some peices of paper who were getting quite lucrative jobs as web designers/adminstrators.
So where are we today? Well I don't know any of those any more. All the designers I know are either good graphics/layout people, or good programming/backend people, neither of which I was. Administration is done by competent (usually) tech people, and I'm happily working doing systems and network support.
It seems this crap was hardly unique. In all areas, but the web espically, people were being pused out the door with meaningless certs to find great jobs. Well one knows that just can't last. A peice of paper doesn't mean you do your job well and if I had a nickel for evey "IT" person I've met with a cert but not the skills/knowledge that cert allegedly implies, I'd have a lot of nickels.
I'm sure outsourcing isn't helping the job situation any, but I hardly think it's the cause or major factor.
That is interesting. I know a number of people on H1-Bs on very high salaries. Too high, even. (read: salaries that make the U.S. work force so expensive, that people are turning to India, China and other countries with cheaper labour). I also know U.S. citizens asking for salaries that are much lower than those of H1-Bs.
h p
;), and we all know that can't last. In order for things to continue, they need to remain in the equilibrium. What you see with job shifts is just one small part of that - keeping the global equlibrium.
How are H1-Bs lowering U.S. salaries then? I am talking about a high-tech sector.
Illegal aliens are illegal. We could stop the discussion right there. But I won't. Your ancestors came to country that was not yours, and created the USA. So live with the fact that migrations are something that will never stop, and try to understand who look for a better life, the same way your ancestors did.
Let me quote something for you:
FROM THE AUGUST 14, 2001 ISSUE OF VILLAGE VOICE
ONLINE: http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0132/letters.p
ENTRY LEVEL
Michael Kamber's article "On the Corner" should serve as a wake-up call to
all New Yorkers on the need to reduce immigration to levels that America
can absorb. But it tells only half the storythe people standing on street
corners are replacing American teenagers who need entry-level jobs to
learn how to support themselves.
The city comptroller's office has estimated that New York City's teenage
employment rate is 20 percent, which is 25 points less than the national
average. The reason for the disparity is that New York is overpopulated
due to immigration.
The comptroller's office is advocating public service jobs and tax breaks
to increase employment, and those are good things. However, the number of
immigrants in New York is severely impacting the lives of American
children, with overcrowded classrooms and few jobs. That would make an
excellent follow-up article for Kamber.
Ed Price, President
Tri-State Immigration Moratorium
Manhattan
Michael Kamber replies: There is anecdotal evidence that immigrants do
indeed compete with entry-level American citizen workers. On the other
hand, the wave of immigrants in the 1980s is widely credited with
stimulating New York's economy during tough times. There have always been
movements to close America's doors to immigrants; fortunately, these were
not successful before my grandparents arrived here - or yours.
As for things shifting from the US to Chinas and Indias of the world, I see that as a nature keeping things in balance. Why are jobs moving there? Because the labour in the US is too expensive? Why is labour in the US so expensive? Because people are living like there is no tomorrow: big houses, several houses, several cars, big cars, SUVs, monster malls, tons of air-conditioners, a LOT of consumption, a lot of waste creation, a lot of pollutants, etc. If things were to continue this way, there would be a huge disbalance, a big disturbance in the force
Simpy
You really remind me of those inspirational posters around where I work. You know the ones I mean. The work harder so that we can sell you labor faster. "Be Happy Put, A Smile On Your Face, No One ever got anywhere by working only 40hrs a week." Oh wait, I guess I am being pessimistic, don't forget anti-American, by not buying into the crap about the politics of spending. IT jobs going overseas is good for the Economy you say? huh, kind of reminds you of what they said about manufacturing jobs going out of the country. And economic protection is bad right? I wonder, where do you work? Are you phone support? Management? McDonalds order engineer? Money Is getting stagnate, which according to the trickle-any-direction-you-want-theories is a bad thing. Damn, I'm sorry I come from a pro-union family in a "right to work state."
Bugger, Why can't we all get along and live equally, Marx had the right idea for the most part if you actually read his work. However, he had far too much faith in human nature, and it was not rolled out in the best of ways in Russia, but do look at Cuba, both our news and theirs.
Tim
Even if Kerry does end up being as much of a moron, at least with a Democrat in the Whitehouse and a Republican Congress, they will be too busy fighting with each other to screw things up to bad until '08 rolls around.
It's that there are too few IT jobs compared with the number of well-qualified people, especially in software development, but in some other areas as well.
Demand for people in any field will vary as the US and world economies change. That's inevitable.
But demand (=jobs) is not the whole story. US universities are still producing IT graduates, most of whom will never find a job at a salary that will justify the tuition costs. That is not inevitable. That situation could be fixed by better informing high-school graduates about the employment market. Kids are going into CS courses with the expectation that this is a route to a well-paid future, when in fact it's an expensive trip to nowhere.
What has happened is now that all of the failed companies and wacky business models are out of the market, these marginal tech workers are returning to the industries they were trained for. Yes, lots of good, highly trained programmers and analysts got caught up in the crash, because even the lamest of DotComs had to have someone to do the real work. But I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of technology jobs "lost" to outsourcing simply represents a shift of these cross-industry workers back to the areas they are trained in and a decision by US industries to pick a lower cost (and therefore, lower risk) alternative for staffing these lower end tech positions. Why pay $75k and full benefits for an informally trained web developer in the US when you can get the same skills (likely formally trained) offshore?
I'm not defending the trend, but I think that it IS fair to point out that a lot of people were working in the tech industry, far outside their areas of expertise and far ahead of their skill levels and that imbalance has simply been corrected. To call it a loss and to blame that loss on outsourcing is to ignore the incredibly rapid gains that preceeded it.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
India also no doubt has a "don't assassinate the prime minister" and a "don't let the parliament get invaded" policy but the practice and the theory don't always match up. I hope the protocols for those nukes are more secure than e.g. the lives of the leaders of the country.
Good strategy, I know a bunch of folks who (unwittingly?) have taken that approach. But scratch HR off your list, it's being outsourced too !
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
Guess what, one of my uncle's lives under the poverty line according to government statistics.
Owns a half million dollar home, a few cars, a RV and a pair of nice bikes. His income is practically nothing but he has incredible capital resources.
FWIW, to live in "poverty" in the US is to live better than most of the world. How many people in poverty in the world do you know have televisions, cars, cell-phones, 700+ square feet of living space, refrigerators, and many other items?
Poverty is all relative. In the US the large concentrations of wealth bring better health care to the poor as well. While there are a large number of uninsured people in this country no one is prevented from getting medical care, and a lot of those who cannot pay do not have to pay.
I look at it this way, if you cannot support yourself on 40 hours a week pay then you should try to find a program to teach you a trade so that you can. If you can't do that then get two jobs or find ways to cut your costs. There is no excuse for not being able to support oneself on a full time job. Yeah, if your minimum wage its a bitch but you have to expect to cut out lots of extras and then share the burden with a few others (ie roommates). If that is not incentive to improve then nothing is.
Those foreigners can only do a few things with their dollars. They can spend them on American exports, they can buy American owned assets (such as American owned companies or land) and they can lend the money to America. If they do more of the second two than the first (so that the value of US exports is less than the value of US imports) then the result is a trade deficit.
This is exactly what HAS been happening to the US. My guess is that almost all of the difference (the surplus in the capital account) has been lent to the US - and much of that to the government to fund it's growing national debt. Some asian countries have large dollar foreign exchange reserves, too, which is not so very different from lending.
This can't go on forever; there's a limit to how much foreigners want to lend to the US. The dollar will fall and outsourcing will stop being so attractive.
Unfortunately the increasing borrowing by the US government will push US interest rates up in order to attract more money in from abroad and away from other domestic investments (which means you can expect to see a fall in investment by US companies). That'll help keep the dollar up - but a lot of people still seem to be expecting the dollar to fall quite a lot over the next few years.
This probably isn't going to be too good for the US economy. A lot of people will whine when they can't buy 20 dollar DVD players any more and when higher interest rates burst the (admittedly small by international standards) US housing bubble - but at least some jobs will go back to the US.
I've interviewed for several companies, and all were companies I found out I *didn't* want to work for.
Just as much or more incompetence exists at the managerial level...
I suppose my wanting to work for a good company keeps me out of a job.
What a refreshingly accurate assesment of GWB's leadership of the US from someone in the US, not a hint of the infamous arrogance. What should have been a carefull international -criminal- investiagtion of 9/11 is rapidly turning into GWB's self-serving belief in armagedon. The world was very sympathetic to the US against the Taliban & AQ after 9/11 and still is. GWB squandered that good will by attacking Iraq. The speed that the Whitehouse tuned on the still mourning Spainards was blinding. US sympathy for THIER bombing evaporated with THIER election. GWB seems to think terrorisim is new in Spain but the Spanish (like the British) have been dealing with it for years. The Spanish people kicked the sitting Govt out power because they -lied- about the bombing (blamed it on Basque sepratists when they had evidence to the contrary). The opposition had campained for the troops to withdraw before the bombing. For the US to then chastize the Spanish and blast the media with the message "the Spanish caved in to terrorists" is the height of arrogance. I live in Australia and we have John Howard as prime minister, he swayed the last election by lying about refugees (children overboard scandal). His lips now require urgent surgery to remove them from GWB's arse. The opposition is campaining on "troops home by Xmas". I hope in October we tell the US where to stuff ALL thier wars on social_problem_X. War is a zero-tolerance "solution" to social_problem_X. War is a major social_problem_X. "Let's see now. Cat won't eat mouse...plus...Mouse won't eat cheese...equals...IT JUST DON'T ADD UP!" - Dog from WB cartoon.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The fact that America or any other civilized country cannot compete against outsourcing seems to escape alot of you armchair "work will set you free" fucksticks. I'm German, and I know exactly what that means. Where I came from 6 Million people didn't know what that meant. They do now.
This is not a level playing field we're up against. We are competing against State sanctioned slavery in some very big ass parts of this planet. It seems that money comes before human rights, even when you are an American. The fact that everyone is treated equally even if we don't have a red dot on our forehead, or set our wives on fire, or kill people with a different opinion, abort all of our daughters, enslave the one's that survive, et. all. You get the picture. Now, let me paint you another one.
It's all OK. You see, as these armchair Arbeit macht Frei supremacists have pointed out- It'll all just work out for the best. Just.. Like.. So...
I don't mind finding a piece of a chinese kid in my 5 cent noodles every once in awhile- it's cheap!
I don't mind knowing that the 50 Indians that are learning linux on www.linuxquestions.org are building the new US supercomputer for nuclear missle testing- It's cheap!
I don't mind that the Chinese are clubbing their citizens to death in the middle of town because they were using the Internet when they should be copying Doom3 CD's.
No, I don't mind at all- DO You Know Why Johnny?
Because corporate America/EU are going to have their very own slaves. These new slaves are called YOU!
And YOU can get these slaves for the low price of whatever you want- because.. heh.. get this- They don't have rights!! These idiots don't even have a Union! The best they can do is blab on IRC that they're working 110 hours a week with 2 IT guys running 2500 computers in 3 states!! If they start bleeding out of their nose, just make up some excuse like- "You're a crackwhore drug addict!", and fire them! Sweeeet...
Isn't that a real growth opportunity! I thought you'd like it.
Now, where do YOU go to get these completely hapless and powerless YOU slaves? That's the gag! Odds are- You've already got them. All you have to do is turn off the water, and lock the door- and they'll work until they drop from exhaustion or a heart attack (YMMV(tm)).
And remember, that guy next door could be your next YOU slave- so keep your chin up! You're competing with the Big Boys Now! Arbeit Macht Frei!
Would outsourcing to india had any impact ?
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
The reason jobs are moving to these developing countries is that some of these developing countries have developed skilled workforce and infrastructure to do the job at much lower cost (in good part due to lower wage level) than we can at home, and trade has become freer to let it happen. This IS free market in action.
If you are insinuating that somehow "excessive" and unfair government interventions are to blame, that is insignificant. The fundamental culprit is that we are failing to keep up our lead (productivity/education level of populace/technology/infrastructure/innovation) head and shoulders above the rest to deserve making 10 times the income the people in developing countries are making. Economic system exists within the political framework, and all government intervene in the economy. If our (US) economy was so free, we wouldn't have all these corporate lobbies.
If you hate what is happening to our country, the USA, then please write the following on the November ballot.
president: Bill O'Reilly
vice-president: Tammy Bruce
Now you are being funny.
The system is broken.
We keep playing the game like it's an open system, and it never was, and now we are quickly discovering the end stops.
Designing an economic model which awards wealth to those who grow, is doomed when a company, any company reaches market saturation.
The American economy no longer exists, American business is multinational, global, and not limited to our borders. It finds cheap labor and brings the saving in production back to the U.S. where American consumers rejoice at the low cost of service and goods. Sadly it's all a sham. It's as unsustainable as a constant diet of junk food. It tastes good while you're eating it, but it's slowly killing you. It's all take and no give, the dollars fly out of the country faster and faster, until the nations fundamental wealth is gone, and the citizens of the nation notice they are now the collective bag holders.
* Money that leaves never supports U.S. economy and infrastructure. * Money that leaves undermines U.S. labor, costing jobs and quality of living. * The growing gap between haves and have nots in the U.S. suggest a growing economic instability. Loss of jobs starting with manufacturing, but now quickly moving up through intellectual "white collar" professions, points to a growing joblessness with no end in sight. As the government services fail (and if you haven't been reading the paper or watching the news at 11:00, local government everywhere in this country is on the verge of collapse), the means to manage and provide basic life needs to the growing disenfranchised evaporates. The middle class vanishes. We are all reduced to the same level of living enjoyed by billions of starving people all over the world. Already 3% of our population owns 75% of the wealth, this is the greatest desparity in wealth in our history. And still the insanity accelerates. This is just the beginning ladies and gentlemen. What will you do, when your kids fresh out of college, with hundred thousand dollar college loans to pay, can't find work. What will you do, when you haven't received a raise in 4 years, and the boss says "Sorry, the work is heading to China."
I've personally spent the last 6 months looking for work, I've had my resume tuned, I have 25 years of technical experience, and I've made it clear I'll do almost anything, and I have not had a single interview. I'm not alone, I have a couple hundred friends and acquaintances who've been unemployed for between 2 and 3.5 years.
I keep hearing neocons mouthing the lines of Scrooge from a Christmas Carol... "the surplus population shold just get on with the business of dying...", or some variation of that. It's not bad yet. It may well get there. If it does, our government, is going to have a very bad time. Our society is going to have a very bad time. We need to begin addressing sustainable business practice from an economic, environmental, and ethics based context. To simply let the train go where it will is to insure a crash none of us will walk away from.
Genda
Could be, it was not in the US media, at least not in the big one, but a few months ago, the Pakistani Government was into a heavy fighting near the borders with Al Quaida, they asked the US for reinforcement, because the fight was so heavy, that they suspected a major Al Quaida person. According to the offical news, as far as you could gather it from reuters and co. the Pakistanis had to withdraw, because the US didnt give them the reinforcements. Those only were the Reuters news, who knows what was really going on behind the scenes. As usualy after Reuters no offical word within the US about those incidents, you only could see those news in non US media. The US currently seems to really have a media problem, no wonder their bias is totally different than the rest of the world. (There is another handful of such stories, which never saw the light of the day in CNN, Fox and Co, but were readable on Reuters and other agencies)
"When the government actively works to wipe out such shortages, the government is damaging market forces."
But if the government actively works to maintain (if not sharpen) such shortages, it's "OK?"
"Allow me to explain. The USA, in isolation, is a relatively free market"
I just find it interesting how you are able to say "isolation" and "free" in the same sentence. The US is free so long as we keep our borders shut; we'll take your ideas and your money but not your people. Heck, if you want to make sure to maintain those precious labor shortages you seem so keen on, perhaps we should require workers have a government license before they're allowed to have a job.
Consider the current state of the US merchant fleet. US sailors are known as some of the most competent in the world, but also known as some of the most expensive, and as a result they can be as rare as hen's teeth. Congress' solution? Place more restrictions on who can serve on US-flagged vessels and on when US businesses can used foreign-flagged vessels (restrictions dating from the 1920's and 1930's). Result? US-flagged vessels have become as rare as US sailors, and the only time you're sure to see a US-flagged traffic is between two US ports (where they're legally required). If it were possible to get Alaskan oil and Hawaiian produce to the contiguous 48 without crossing international waters or borders, we might not have a merchant fleet at all any more. So much for what was once the largest merchant fleet in the world.
Cheap labor is out there, and closing your eyes and clicking your heels won't make it go away. Higher tariffs won't make the problem go away. Preventing outsourcing of labor is questionable for the short-term and ultimately flawed for the long-term; either US labor prices fall now as US businesses offshore, or they fall later as foreign businesses with access to those labor pools drive US businesses under. The only way you're going to solve the problem is to make the Chinese/Indian/whatever labor pools go away, and to do that you have two choices: genocide and immigration.
Don't like illegal aliens? Don't like H1-Bs? Fine. But make it easier for people to come into, live in, and work in the country so long as their intent is to stay long-term and become citizens. Heck, make it easier to achieve statehood. It will be painful (or at least distasteful) to US labor interests in the short term, but these people would be protected by US labor laws and it will ultimately benefit the US economy in the long term. The developing world cannot tempt jobs and business opportunities away from the US with cheap labor if said cheap labor is coming to the US.
However, it seems that, when confronted with the choice between immigration and genocide, many Americans would rather see the latter than the former.
Actually it cannot really be worse than Bush.
If you have the choice between a total idiot who thinks war is funny, and somebody rather unknown who at least knows that war is the worst which can happen because he fought, then better vote at the current times not for the total idiot, with a bunch of warmongers in his cabinet.
As for the war on terror, if it is fought like that, than you cannot win. Face it over here in europe we have a long tradition of terrorist groups. Spain, the UK Germany and others had to face terrorist acts in the past. Plain fightin is only the fighting of symptoms which makes things worse. Where are the causes? Lets face it it is the current neoliberalism which triggered the trend. Whereas in parts like Europe or the US lots of people are unhappy but calm because things are not that bad, but get worse very swiftly. But look at the third world, neoliberalism or generally the current monetary focus gives billions of people not a lot of perspective, add to that the usual hardliners which you can find everywhere and you run into the situation.
Now you might say, removing some dictators helps in this regard, it does not, you have to focus on raising the living standards of the average people and that is a long task which neither can be accomplished by war nor by removing one government and adding another by force. Violence only will add fuel to the warmongers who insist on killing the evil (which in their eyes is the west who is responsible for their miserable living situation - which is only partially true, but that is another issue).
You cannot kill terrorism by brute force, history has shown that over and over again. Terrorism only can be dried out by killing off the feeding grounds, which are in this case poverty, religious fanatism and hate.
But in the current climate of corporations becoming bigger and bigger and taking away local structures and livestock of average people, and governments who think they can beat a hydra by slaying off the heads, I dont see any way out.
But isn't this how free markets work? I'm not an economist and I'm not generally biased to right but isn't that just what global economy is?
Production moves to the place where it's most economical to do. This is good in overall economy since the market is global, even if it is bad for a certain part of the world. Not paying extra for producing something leaves the saved money for other investments. Raising trade barriers would distort the markets, yielding lower overall gain even if a certain part of the world would gain more now.
The problem is that there seem to be many people who want a global market with their own rules, not the rules of a free market. They want to ensure that they won't ever lose, that it's always the others that lose (developing countries, other low-economy countries with poor standard of living). But it's not a free market anymore, if such intents realize.
It *is* intentional ignorance. The information is out there. The Internet exists. We can't hide behind the whole "cut off" crap any more. Hell, phone calls to India run about 6 cents per minute. Hell some of them are free, just call a support 800 number for Sallie Mae Loan Servicing.
Case and point: Name the last 3 tropical cyclones that Mexico and the rest of Central America have had to deal with. You can't can you, without looking it up. And they are our neighbors.
The real problem is there is profit in our isolation. Ignorant people can be controlled. Look at our school systems. 12 years of teaching and you can't immediately tell me where Djibouti is.
And as for neighboring states and their relevance: Get a sheet of paper, right down your neighboring states, then write down the names of their Representatives and Senators. Governors? Counties?
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
BRAVO!
There are 10 types of cliches in this world. Those that are new, and those that aren't.
That may be true, but there's also a much simpler explanation: saying that someone working a 70 hour week will be twice as productive as someone working a 35 hour week is simply wrong. In fact, as good management has long known, most people's performance degrades fairly dramatically not much beyond those 35 hours; you can do it for a short period in a crunch, but it's not sustainable. Moreover, the diminishing returns start to become negative after a while: someone who works 70 hour weeks regularly is likely to make so many mistakes that they become counterproductive, actually eating into other people's time to fix the problems they create.
Can anybody remember the study (from Switzerland, I think) where a company dropped its work hours to 9-3 Monday-Friday and insisted its employees did not work significant overtime? Their staff were more focussed because they had limited time to get the work done, and because of the earlier finish they weren't always worrying about collecting kids from school, getting to the shops/doctor/dentist/post office, etc. Their productivity rocketed. I saw several reports about this, around the time of the tech boom when many companies were pushing for ever longer work hours, but I can't find a citation now...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Vote Democrat (Kerry). A Democrat will listen to Labor!
True, but Bill O'Reilly makes them both look like serious, thoughtful, intelligent, caring, respectful, deeply committed and upstanding individuals.
Bill O'Reilly is a sad, sad man. Not very smart and very insecure.
a. Become exceptionally skilled workers (not difficult, considering the exceptional quality of educational institutions in the U.S.)
U know that most of people in foreigner countries consider aamericans as fools?
My family worked HARD all our lives. We were taught to work HARD and good things will happen. Myself and my three siblings have a combined income of several hundred thousand dollars a year - and our grandfather worked in a coal mine.
A lot of it is due to poor sanitation, lack of education and general poverty.
It's the white man's fault! It's not my fault! Help help I'm oppressed!
Learn math. Bust your ass. Suck it up. Good things follow. This isn't the fucking 1700's anymore.
it's down 48%.
Thanks, George. You useless freakin Dork.
Why on Earth do you blame the President? What do you think a President can do that would have made anything different? Do you even know what a President does, vs. what Congress does? And do you think that from Government all blessings flow?
No, I agree with Max. It is not a matter that you may end up paying more for some (or all) products and materials. The point is that not only will it create more jobs here for our fellow Americans, it will also keep the money you spend in the U.S. (mostly). Tariffs and other protectionary measures merely help put the American worker on equal footing.
It isn't fair (or even good for the economy) that countries with no minimum wage or decent standards of living are allowed to compete directly with a country that does. Why pay someone in America $6/hr to make shoddy trinkets for the 'dollar' stores when you can pay a 12 year old in China $6-a-day do make the same thing? No reason, from the standpoint of profit. However, if there were measures in place to make the cheap labor less of an issue (i.e. tariffs that would put both products at nearly the same price-point) then there would be more jobs created here AND it would inspire innovation; If a start-up company (in the U.S.) actually believed it had a shot at a fair competition with these countries' companies they would actually try, and most likely, succeed in making reasonably cheap goods.
I'm not saying make it impossible for companies in other countries, just level the field.
P.S. I happen to like Bill O'reilly, but voting for him is just helping Bush. We can't have that.
We've seen that moving into new markets isn't necessarily changing anything. Some of our newest markets (tech) are going off shore just as quickly as old markets (manufacturing). We need to find a way to cut the cost of living, which isn't going to happen because that is controlled by corporations.
recently that outsorcing was "benefiting western economy" ???
Hum.
Where does this guy get his diploma from so my kids don't go to the same school ????
Dude, you're quoting Village Voice to someone who wants Bill O'Reilly as president? That in itself deserves the moderation: '-1 Futile' ;-)
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
Wow, with the internet and the computer, you can do your job from anywhere. So, can anyone else!
... job is not as popular as it used to be.
All the IT guys I know who are worth a damn still have good jobs.
The folks I see bitching were the foam on top of the big wave or followed a dead end path and don't have the sense to turn around and head back to the fork.
Many guys who don't have work made lots of talk and had good 'people skills' but were barely able to get any work done, even when there is work. They made big bux because anyone who could spell IT was in demand. Now the market only pays 1/3 as much, if the can even find a position, but they are 'holding out' for 'what they are worth'.
If the market changes, learn to do something new and go do it. Don't blame the economy because your; beaver hat, buggy whip, big wheel bicycle, button hook, static html 'artist', telephone support, windows rebooting, airplane propping, carburator rebuilding, monkey shaving, cat squeezing, charcoal drawing on the cave wall, termite stick peddling, codpiece stuffing, high flush toilet tank cleaning, gas lamp manufacturing, bloodletting, musket manufacturing, telephone line installation, $500K/year Delta airlines pilot, fresh water mussel gathering, paddle wheel greasing, mule skinning, horse hair plaster mixing, scribes, or
Perfect summary of why this world sucks, and where we are going to. I hate you because you say the truth.
"they cannot provide jobs for millions of underemployed persons."
Can someone explain to me exactly why it's the government's function to "provide" me with a job?
No, seriously.
You are a jackass, but the moderator's worse douchebag. Is this the "News for Nerds" site or site for assholes?!
I can't make up my mind about these Annenberg 'independent' groups. On the one hand, Walter Annenberg has a rep as a conservative, but on the other hand, you have Adam "Asshole" Clymer as Annenberg Political Director.
The other wierd thing is that you're like the third person who has sent me a 2-3 sentence recommendation of Factcheck.org. It seems like an astroturf campaign or something. For example, see here.
The best criticism I've seen of Fact check is that they don't actually point to the primary sources; they point to news articles about the primary sources.
The number of public sector jobs which have been offshored now numbers at over 6 million - that's right (those of us that can do the math and the research realize this!)!! You pay taxes today to screw yourself - please awake from your stupor!
The cost of living isn't controlled by corporations or by any other company, it's controlled by economics.
If you accept that corporations set the prices of all the things that fall under "cost of living," then you must accept that consumers will willingly pay any price for those items, something which we know isn't true. Think about it, when gasoline prices start skyrocketing, some people started buying smaller cars and driving less.
The cost of living is set by both firms and consumers at a price index that both sides are agreeable to. It's often called "supply and demand."
When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
a. Become exceptionally skilled workers (not difficult, considering the exceptional quality of educational institutions in the U.S.)
I don't think this will work. There are a lot of very intelligent and well educated people in the East. There isn't really that much that the west can do with software developemnt that people from China, India etc can't also do.
Also, it's just not possible to breed loads of amazing graduates and post grads without also creating more average ones. You'll just end up with the same ammount of software engineers and the same mix of elite, very good, good and average coders. Unless you enforce a very strict, "less than 95% average mark in your first year and you don't get to go to the next year rule." Which I doubt will be very popular.
It's the problem with a global workforce and one that requires unions to solve, not neo-liberal ecconomists.
Let it continue I say. Let it continue right up to the point where I don't have to deal with any more (or even as many) "wanna be" IT "professionals". People that read slick pimp sheets and think all the glowing reports are the whole truth. That every inane word dropped from a salesman's mouth is Truth. That systems don't need resources like power, heating/cooling, space, or admins. Who spec a server as more than "Oh, just get a medium one."
I don't consider myself an IT Ghod, but I have more snap and abillity in my fingernail clippings than any 50 of the people now "managers" in the field. And I've been doing it longer than most of those "managers" have been out of grade school. (Which could mean that I've just been wrong longer, but I don't think so.)
Had one PHB want to switch a closely integrated system from one vendor to the next, and thought "about a day" was long enough to switch over all the data feeding the old system to the new. This for something that has been years in the making. Yeah. Right. And yeah, it's going from a fault flexable platform to..... Windows. There are so many single points of failure that it boggles the mind. If a single system fails, no reports (even reports without the failed system) can be generated. Oh, that's OK. It's only the core business we're talking here.
Israel and Ireland are big software/IT exporters and have been that way for a long time. India is relatively new to the game. Manufacturing offshoring happened long back and there is very little of it that goes to India. India has opened up its economy since 1991 in a very big way and is more of a free market than not. Foreign Direct Investnment has been on the rise in India since 1991 as a consequence of the economy opening up. I can comment on telecom that the job growth in Indian market is commensurate with growing telecom demand in India. I monitor telecom very closely and the Asia Pacific region is hot in terms of demand. So the telecom jobs are being created in India and China to meet the demand there. (not all of them but a significant percentage). I think India is competing and complementing the global markets in a fair way tapping on skills that it has. What this kind of behaviour deserves is respect and not derision and hatred. Compare that to whole host of nations that either have their hand out or are breeding ground for terrorism. Indians arent only cheap labour by any stretch. The quality of Indian academic strength is established. Look at Intel talent search awards this year. Indian diaspora in US that comprises probably less than 1 % of US population had 8 kids amongst the 40 awardees; a whopping 20 %. Indians who come to the US (at least in last 7-8 years) are truly top quality professionals that can compete with the best. I think US is doing what it has done best always, provide an great magnet to attract the world's best talent. I wish India were able to create this system that would attract world's best talent. Indian salaries are already going up in the IT sector to a level where the cost advantage is levelling out. So unless there are other drivers jobs wont move out. I do think US government should take care of its citizens by making changes that benefit its population but economic changes arent typically that simple in cause and affect and economic policies do not stay in the economic arena but affect every arena. Let the chips fall where they may. just another perspective.
Are you out of your mind?
The average US citizen pays nearly 50% of their yearly earnings to government through federal, state and local taxes combined. A purely free market requires that individual participants in the market retain 100% of their wealth and 100% control of that wealth -- each individual deciding for themselves if, where, and when to spend that wealth. This is anarcho-capitalism, and it doesn't exist at this time (and never has). The opposite is communism, where government owns 100% of all wealth and property and retains 100% control over where to spend that wealth, and the individual has absolutely no ownership of the fruits of his labor.
So, do you think we're closer to a free market, or closer to communism? The answer is, of course, neither. We're just about in the middle -- you could say "half-free", or you could say "half-communist", but there's no way you can sit there with a straight face and claim "relatively little government intervention". In the US, the truth is that government is deeply entangled in the market.
You seriously think *John Kerry* is going to be against outsourcing? Hahahaha.
And you think Bill O'Reilly is pro-corporate? Have you ever even *heard* him? If you've listened to him for more than like 15 minutes you'd be bound to hear some anti-corporate blathering.
No offense, but you're pretty ignorant.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
While the IT job market has shrunk by close to 20%, how does the industry do?
You're right to point out that other issues need to be considered when looking at the statistic.
Many things are contributing to changes in the industry. The prevalent peer-group reaction of blaming job losses solely on outsourcing abroad is pretty blinkered. It may indeed be one factor, but then open source is another factor -- we will certainly be needing to employ fewer and fewer competent techies as the repository of quality reusable or easily customizable/modifiable components and applications becomes ever greater. It's still early days of course, but it's already undeniable that you longer need to hire developers to code a project from scratch.
And I think that that is a good thing, despite the ever-larger effect it will have on employment, my own included. One has to adapt.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
>To me the recession seemed to follow the election's outcome quite fittingly.
Except the recession didn't "follow" the election. Hint: Nasdaq fell from over 5000 to under 1650 during the end of the Clinton administration.
>I've lived in third-world countries enough to know that the very poor are kept in poverty by the very wealthy -- who hold, not just most of the wealth, but most of the power.
Oh I see, so if it happens in the 3rd world, then obviously the exact same thing must be happening in the USA. In spite of the fact that the USA has a completely different economic and political systems, and completely different results.
The US is not a free market. More free than China, yes, but definitely not a free market. The first prerequisite of a free market is that the individual retains 100% control over his wealth and where to invest that wealth. Today, the average US citizen pays nearly 50% of his yearly earnings to government through federal, state, and local taxes and fees combined. You do the math.
It's far worse than the picture you paint, I'm afraid. Why, it was just a few days ago here on slashdot, where they were talking about raising retirement age to fix social security... everyone that's hoping to find a job now, will be competing with 65+ yr olds for work. No retirement means less job openings.
BTW, and idea what our kids are supposed to be going to college for? We were told that when the manufacturing jobs left that we need not worry... we'd all be switching over to a service economy. Computers, management, whatever. IT and even what middle management is necessary, seems to have been exported now. Are we all supposed to be day traders or something?
"the system AS A WHOLE benefits from free market economics. This DOES NOT MEAN that EVERY NATION benefits from this situation."
Actually, the economic theory of comparative advantage suggests that every nation benefits from free trade, or to be more precise, that free trade produces a Pareto improvement. (See also the wikipedia article on comparative advantage).
The main problem with this theory is not that some nations stand to lose from free trade per se, but that, as the wikipedia article puts it "Workers and capital may not be able to be transferred painlessly from one industry to another." Now whether this warrants supporting uncompetitive domestic industries is for you the US citizens to decide. However, I have the impression that as other people here have pointed out, many have already made that decision. For example, if people have a choice of buying expensive clothes from the US or cheap clothes from South East Asia, what do they tend to choose? Most of them choose "cheap" over "made in the USA" most of the time.
If you are interested in the way modern economists (Adam Smith is great, but a bit dated) see things, have a look at e. g. Krugman and Obstfeld's International Economics.
Having had a labor union forced upon me and my current position for a year now - I'd happily throw my vote towards someone anti-Union without any hesitation.
There's no shame in being a pariah. -Marge Simpson
Can someone explain to me exactly why the government meddles in things just enough, and refuses to protect our rights just enough, to cause any potential jobs to wither on the vine?
I'm all for this "look out for yourself" libertarian bullshit, but make corporate charters temporary, renewable every 2 years, and that they can be dissolved with *no reason* whatsoever. Give me back the 14/28 years of copyright, only with providing an unencumbered version to LOC. The list goes on, but start with those, and I'll start considering that my lack of a job is solely my own fault.
The same great Japanese economy that has been in the tank for almost a decade (just starting to recover now)? The same Japanese government that is a major financier of US debt (in order to keep the exchance rate favorable to their exporters)? I think the Japan example is instructive!
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Should individuals not go into IT? If in IT, sould they look to get out? Are some IT fields safer than others?
BTW: In deference to the article, I don't consider this to be a temporary setback.
As an American I'm concerned with the welfare of myself and my fellow citizens first and foremost, and this only makes sense. If I were more concerned about Nigeria, it would behoove me to move to Nigeria and become a citizen of that country, since I'm putting Nigerian interests before that of any other country.
Frankly: I find this logic (common though it is in the US) to be totally bizarre. It makes no fscking sense. Try this analogy: "I understand that having free trade across county boundaries is good for the well-being of the entire State and even the country but as a resident of King County I put my needs above those of the rest of Washington State and those of America. If I was primiarily interested in the needs of (say) Orange County then I would move there. The job of King county's government if first and foremost to provide for King county residents: the rest of the country be damned."
There are many levels of government and at this moment at the beginning of the 21st century we've somehow deluded ourselves into theinking that the nation is somehow special. During the early 20th century it was otherwise: most people thought that their allegiance belonged to their empire (which was larger than their nation). And before the civil war, many Americans had primary allegiance to their State, not to the federation.
Each of these views was short-sighted and temporary. As yours is. Your allegiance logically belongs either to a community small enough that you can participate and influence it (i.e. municipality) or to all of humanity (based solely on the Golden rule).
In fact, the *sole reason the government of the United States exists* is to provide for the American people.
That is incorrect. The United States government exists to exercise the collective will of the American people. Sometimes this will is to "do good" elsewhere. It looks, for example, as if Americans will put George Bush back into power based on his (shaky!) argument that he is going to democratize the Middle East. It is also the case that many Americans criticize the Bush administration for doing nothing in Darfur. According to your theory, there is nothing to criticize because it would be a breach of responsibility for him to do anything. Ditto, I suppose, for the intervention in Europe in WW II.
I am unashamed about the fact that my allegiance is first and foremost to humanity. My local national government has dual roles as the local provider of laws and a tool I use to advance the needs of human beings everywhere. When I look across a border and see human beings on the other side I don't see their needs as being less important than mine by virtue of the fact that they are on the other side of the border and neither should my government. That said: for practical reasons the government must distinguish between citizens and non-citizens and treat citizens differently.
>> Those foreigners can only do a few things with their dollars. Umm nope: You forgot the big one: Most of them convert it to their local currency and send it home.
I know I'm planning on exiting IT within 5 years. I personally know a few others who have done so.
IT job = stress, long hours, lots of complaints, constant re-education, sometimes repetitive
I reset my case.
Because Americans WANT jobs to be outsourced.
This reminds me of mutual assured destruction.
Once all the workers are outsourced, we can take comfort in knowing management, where the real issues are will be next. Then with some leadership and vision the industry might once again florish.
When the USA interacts with, say, China, we have the interaction of a free market and a non-free market.
Correct.
But there a several interesting features you neglect.
First, the most important aspect of China is that they insist on pegging the yuan to the dollar. That means that our trade deficit with China does not automatically get corrected by the devaluation of the dollar relative to the yuan. It also means there is a strong tie between the two countries in fiscal and in monetary policy.
People wonder why the hell there was a "jobless recovery" in the US when the Fed took rates down to a 45 year low. Well, there wasn't a jobless recovery. It's just that all the jobs were created in a specific economic region of the US - China. This regional growth disparity is just like what happened when US companies decided they could produce more efficiently in the SunBelt a couple of decades ago. Inflation never was a big problem with the low rates, either. Why? Because it was economy in China that was in danger of overheating - not the US mainland.
The obvious non-free market aspect in China is that there is only one legal trade union and it is under the control of the Party. The corruption (where workers haven't been getting wages, etc.) puts that model under stress (and should have the so-called leaders in power embarrassed to call themselves a worker's paradise, Marxists and representatives of the proletariat). It will be interesting to see if there's political unrest because the leaders of the China don't provide a natural evolution of needed changes in workers rights.
Finally, the free market works best when there are lots of buyers and sellers. Unfortunately, the labor market doesn't always fit into this category. Some examples of why include:
IMHO, government policies worldwide will need much greater coordination in the future because both labor buyers and labor sellers will tend to take advantage of disparities in national government policies worldwide. Employ workers where their wages are the absolute lowest, accrue profits where taxes are the absolute lowest, market products where prices are the highest, etc. Whether the workers, the buyers of products and people in general benefit from this situation, or only a small minority of people that own shares in internationally mobile companies, is a matter that will inevitably cross borders.
The dramatic shift in the US fiscal landscape over the past several decades, where corporations now pay much less tax than individuals, and the shift in corporations transferring profits to overseas subsidiaries from where their business is mostly conducted, where some countries have expensive compassionate social welfare policies (health care, pensions for the old and infirm), policies to prohibit unrestrained damage to the environment (expensive to companies) show that the system needs some fixing on a larger scale than "one nation at a time".
We're all in it together and the sooner we realize it and develop coordinate policies the better we'll avoid needless stress of disparities.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Ok people say it with me, Bill O'Reilly is a POPULIST, he is neither Democrat or Republican.
If you watch or listen to him you can readily see he comes down with the majority opinion on virtually every issue.
He is not a corporate schill, but he may be anti union, and yes I believe it is bossible to be both those things.
The Iraq war didn't make a difference to the economy?!
bring it on! --- JFK
The late 90's tech boom served to employ anybody and everybody that had even looked at a computer (or knew how to spell 'computer'). This was unnatural. The money pumped into the tech market in the late 90s attracted unqualified workers motivated by greed more than anything else.
Think about how many people you looked to in the late 90s, early 2000's and thought "how have you managed to stay employed?!".
Part of the contracting phase of the business cycle involves the shake-out of the inefficient firms from the market. Those are the firms that waited for the early-adopters to get the results of their litmus test of the market, and upon seeing positive results, entered the market and tried to capitalize on their status as late early-adopters. When their particular market turns south, the early-adopters of technologies remain (mostly because they really believe in their technology) while the late early-adopters are shaken out (by the lack of demand for product) and move on to another field. This is normal!
I view the decrease of tech jobs in a positive light. I know construction workers, electricians, and even day care specialists that went into the computer industry in the last 7 or so years. They made some cash, didn't really bring much value (because they lacked expertise), and now that the market is harder, they're going back to their old jobs. This is good! What you want is a computer industry with highly skilled workers. You don't want a computer industry where every person in the US is a candidate.
Yes, jobs have decreased 18.8% since 2001. But if the job count was 2000% higher than what the market could support, 18.8% doesn't seem so large anymore.
On a side note - look what happened to NASA in the past 40 years. NASA used to be a place where only the best-of-the-best were employed (back in the 60s). Very few people could go work for NASA, and terms like "rocket science" were used as a form of respect. Nowadays, NASA is a cross-section of the US population, unmotivated, bloated, and over-weight. NASA is stupid these days, and can be looked at as a laughing stock. Why? Because NASA opened their doors to everyone (not just the elite) and the influx of stupidity forever dumbened the culture. Now we have shuttles that fall out of the sky, satellites that burn up on entry into orbit due to metric to english conversion, and 3 years worth of science "wobbling" and "tumbling" it's way back to Utah.
Do you want the computer industry to become what NASA has become?
-c
Do it for da shorties
And all this time I though it might have had something to do with my resume sucks because it doesn't look like an HR wet dream. Or maybe something to do with age bias, I'm older than 20. Or maybe that companies are reluctant to hire even when they're severely understaffed. You figure something is up there when you seen the same job posted for over a year.
Look, all the dotcommers who where cabdrivers and pizza delivery guys have long gone back to their old jobs. They have previous experience that allows them to do that. Have you ever tried to break into another trade when all you have is programming experience? I have news for you. You are considered totally unskilled and your competition for the jobs that take no skills are the dregs of the workforce and they are willing to work for a lot less than you are or even can. Ever try to live on sub minimun under the table wages?
There's some kind of psychological factor here that kicks in when bad things happen to other people, that people use to convince themselves it won't happen to them because the people it did happen to somehow deserved it or brought it upon themselves. Nope. It's pure luck. You either got laid off or did not get laid off. Getting a job again seems to be pure luck (though personal connections or having a HR wet dreame resume seems to help). Think otherwise? Go ahead and quit your job and find out.
http://agricoop.nic.in/statistics/stock2.htm
or
http://www.networkideas.org/themes/agriculture/dec 2002/ag04_Farm_Subsidies.htm
or just Google for steel tariff that Bush was forced to withdraw because of EU pressure
What you are forgetting here is that it is in the best interests of congressmen and presidents to be bought by large corporations. They get extra money that way, and can easily pass laws that stop any investigation into their activities under the guise of "national security". Any system with leaders has this problem. If we replaced Bush and Kerry by any two people from the US you would still get the same problems.
H-1B have hurt salaries for engineers.
Really? I am H-1B. Last year I took home a shade over $135 000. Which engineers did I hurt?
Japan doesn't have a free market like the US does. Compare the cost of:
food (higher, although this could partially be quality as they have better produce than we do)
gasoline (taxed above market rates, just like europe, even if it is better gas)
appliances (import duties on foreign manufactured)
electronics (even Japanese; Akihabara is more expensive for Japanese electronics than I can buy them in the US. Even Shimokitazawa seemed high....)
cars (find a Ford or GM car at anything like the price differential of a Honda or Toyota here)
andy
One key point that this doesn't cover is new IT jobs. These are going to India, not to new college grads. At least at the new VC-funded startups that I've seen.
Some guy in India also posted recently here about this.
While you can easily dismiss the job losses of the past, you can't dismiss the new trends of the present. If these continue, they'll have a longer and deeper impact.
The only way to reverse this that I see is to give companies a significant tax-break on hiring US workers for the positions that we want to keep here. It's not a question of if this will be implemented, but when. There is no other desireable alternatives.
When this happens, watch the Indian IT job ballon go "pop".
It would be far simpler to just give employers a tax credit equal to the amount of salary paid to US citizens for the jobs that we want to keep here.
Unions will screw you over even harder than your boss. Trust me, I've been in one (carpenter's). All the bad things they say about them are true. It's just another good ole boys club. No thanks, I'll take the free market over that any day!
If you modded up that idiot leftist drivel then at least m mod this parent up which debunks it.
As for distribution of wealth, before the advent of modern financial markets, only the wealthy could own a company, since only they (or a small group of relatively wealthy people) had the money to invest in such a thing. The average person now is much more likely to be a beneficiary of higher profits than before, as more people own stocks etc, compared to before. This trend will only continue.
As a note, the higher wages you talk about in your protectionism scenario would be almost entirely inflationary (no real improvement for the people earning them). One of the effects of outsourcing is to moderate inflation, reversing this would cause a rapid rise in inflation, totally eviscerating any gains you speak of for the average person.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
the only way the article misreports when the recession began is when you use bush's new revised version of the definition of recession.
You didn't read all of his comment, did you?
is explained here
So, -1 Lack of Reading Comprehension Skills.
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
On another hand, if I was chinese, I could say: The Chinese, Mexican and Indian markets are becoming more open and free because interacting with the Western open markets.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Now that overhead approaches 50-100% of an employee's salary, its still cheaper to overwork an existing employee at lower efficiency than hire a new one.
Overhead includes employers social security (7.65%), workmans comp (6.8% in California), health insurance (about $7000 employers portion for a family), 401K matching, paid vacation time, office, computers, etc.
And its even cheaper to hire abroad with zero employee overhead and same salary.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> You seriously think *John Kerry* is going to be against outsourcing? Hahahaha.
Yes, at least ostensibly. Straight from the donkey's mouth:
# John Kerry has a plan to jumpstart job growth right now. This includes a New Jobs Tax Credit which would provide a payroll tax holiday for new hires in manufacturing, other businesses affected by outsourcing, and small businesses.
# His plan would end tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas and use the savings to cut the corporate rate by 5 percent, providing a tax cut for 99 percent of taxpaying corporations.
Clicky - DNC jobs "plan" outline.
> No offense, but you're pretty ignorant.
No offense, but you're pretty unjustifiably smug for someone who also just said something ignorant.
This is just a polite way of saying he is a ratings whore.
The reason he is always contradicting himself is because he can't help but have real values, like any other person; values which are constantly getting tangled up in the incoherent mess that is the lowest common denominator of all opinions - exactly those that get you good ratings on cable news. He's a tribute to the essence of mediocrity - the bronze calf of average.
He is indeed a corporate shill - a FOX shill, and he gets paid handsomely for it.
'Convert' it? They can only do that by selling them to someone else. They can only do that because dollars have value to people selling their native currency. They only have value to such people because someone, somewhere, wants to use them to buy something from the US.
There can be lots of steps in the chain - but you can't escape the fact that dollars are only valuable because they can be used to buy US exports or US assets.
how many of these jobs are part of the figures?
This is the down-side to telecommuting - the length of the phone line is irrelevant! If they can "outsource" you to your home office, they can outsource your Job to the lowest bidder. That is why I prefer hardware/networking to strict coding. I am stuck going the the cube farm and dealing with end users at times. but it is Damn hard to swap equipment and trace cables from across the country or across the water.
You want Job Security? Get your hands dirty!
Bingo, the issue isn't a political, corporate, or economic one it's an infastructure one. Over the last 100 years we have so greatly reduced the costs of moving goods and information very long distances (containerized shipping, computerized inventory control, railroads and the internet). Think about how few things were imported (mostly luxury goods) more than 75 years ago. This has tremendous ramifications for almost all aspects of life as we have created a global market place for transactions. This investment will drive up the overall global standard of living tremendously. However, the rewards have already been captured in our location.
To add to the scale of the problem, the original investments in infastructure came from the west (US and western Europe) and as a result those areas gained a disproportionate share of the gains for most of the period. Now other areas are beginning to recognise (and invest) for their own benefit. The question becomes when will the growth in overall global standard of living offset the declines as the West "gives back" the disproportionate share of the gains and shares new gains in a manner that is more diverse than they orginally had to share.
My own conclusion is that land values in the West are likely to decline, as those have effectivly been the method by which we absorbed the gains from this infastructure. As the returns are spread along more countries the value of having land in the areas that have already recieved the benefits is likely to decline. Lower land values will reduce the amount neccessary to live in the US allowing a standard of living that can be accomplished on lower wages.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Since the beginning of the computer age people have been touting computers that maintain themselves, software that practically writes itself, and reusable software. To some degree all of these have happened. At the some time computing systems have been immensely larger and more complex; Instead of one computer per ten thousand people, each person may have several dozen computers when you count all the embedded ones.
When you balance these two factors- better computers verus bigger and more- one might predict an eventual reduction in the number of software engineers needed. It hasnt happened to a great degree yet, but might sometime.
Mostly due to the rules under "No Child Left Behind," some public schools are using a new compensation policy that gives bonuses to teachers whose students have good grades. Where do you think that's going to lead? Higher grades, of course. Nobody fails.
This would have the same problem, simply because the institution has a financial interest in students being enrolled.
-30-
These are the things that Bush* blames for the piss-poor economy. Flew right over your head.
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
First of all, the recession started under Bush*, this is a fact, look it up. The points I made (tech, 9/11, weather, iraq) are the scapegoats the Bush* administration uses for the current piss-poor economy. This is the (ir)responsibility administration. What CEO / GM / Coach would still have a job 4 years after all this? You have to open your mind up, read a little, stop watching Fox news.
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
I'm going to guess that the moderators have not even taken economics 101. The parent post is so misinformed that I don't even know where to begin.
The fact is, wealthy people (at least all of the ones that I know) do not "hoard" their money, they DO in fact invest most of it-- that's how you get it to grow into even more money!!
"Trickle down" was a derogative term coined by Democrats who opposed the economic policies of Reagan, so you are correct in that "Trickle down economics" is a myth. It was more like a flood.
The tax breaks given to corporations in the 80's allowed for increased money spent on R&D, allowed the corporations to hire more people, and contributed greatly to the economic boom in the 90's.
Furthermore, the recession was well underway before Bush took office. It started with the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 1999 and 2000.
The bubble was based on hype, it had to burst sooner or later. What we had at the time was a President who kept telling us how rosy everything was, how great the economy was, and everybody believed him-- this made investors get overconfident, dumping money into all these fancy new "internet" companies, which created an inflated high demand for tech workers, which created inflated salaries for relatively low skillsets.
Eventually even the most optimistic investors started realizing that these dot-com's were being run be geeks who had no concept of a business plan, and thus most of them never actually made money. Investors cut their losses, pulled out, dot-coms went out of business, and the market was flooded with unemployed IT people.
And then Bush took office.
There was also this little minor incident where a major financial hub in New York was destroyed, but some people don't seem to think that should have had an effect on our economy...
A similar example is natural gas, used for heat in colder climates. Consumers are forced to buy it at the set price and will adjust other spending to compensate. Generally, people can't buy significantly less natural gas because it's expensive. The consumer will merely have less cash for discretionary spending. This has no effect on the seller of the gas/petrol, but will have effects through the rest of the economy.
Some parts of the cost of living are entirely set by the corporations, at least in the short term ( 3 years).
-30-
Based on the comments I should have clarified. These are the SCAPEGOATS the bush admin uses for the poor economy. No responsibility taken by this piss-pooor administration. BTW - the recession started under Bush*, get yo' facts straight. Ask yourself, if you were at a company were the security was grossly breached, people were stealing from the company coffers, you lost your health insurance, and you didn't even know if you would have a job tomorrow, would you support the CEO? Bush* has run oil companies, a baseball team, and now a nation INTO THE GROUND. Wake UP!
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
It's almost as if you believe we big, bad Americans sit around all day trying to think of how we can make life more miserable for people in other countries.
The simple fact is that people everywhere should look out for themselves. It's not my concern how some guy in India is going to feed his family. That's his concern. I am worried about my own family.
Can you not mentally separate the two issues? Just because I don't want to lose the lifestyle that I have become accustomed to does not mean that I don't want the poor in India to have a chance at improving their life. I hope the economic situation in India improves. I hope that they all get access to education and a better life. I just don't want to pay for it. Is it really that hard to understand?
Let me put it another way. Pretend the situations were reversed, and India was the wealthy country outsourcing to the US. Do you think the Indians who were hurt by it would just accept it because 'those poor US citizens need it more'? Or, would they rather want to keep what they have?
More Bush* apologists. You are the mentally challenged one sir.
l
The recession started under Bush*. This is indisputable. No right-wing spin can change that.
Of coures, this was predicted already : http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/2/reich-r.html
If you can READ check out this evidence: http://www.retrogrouch.net/MT/archives/000259.htm
Open your mind, stop taking the bullshit directly down your throat, chew a little and wake up!
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
India and Pakistan have a 5 minute window. Not much to work with. You barely have time to contact higher ups for launch authorization let alone figure out if the threat is real or just a glitch. I'm suprised it hasn't happened already.
* It's either we go this route, or go unions...*
Computer programmers unionize? That's the equivalent of "Anarchists Unite!"
"For years in the US(and to a lesser extent elsewhere) believed that IT was a magical profit gold mine and we got all the wonderful little dot com investments when anyone who could write HTML could get a really nice paying job(even if they had to work obscene hours like everyone else)."
You know what? For a bunch of smart guys you all can be dumb sometimes. First the dot com's were proportionally a small part of the total economy, a very small part. All of you let the media influence you into making it appear larger than it actually was.
Second proportionally the influence that the dot coms had on the market was smaller than people think it was. Once again media made things appear to be larger than they were.
Maybe what you all need to do is stop trying to find one thing to blame and look at the big picture. The influence of Y2K. The influence of dot coms. The influence of 9/11. The influence of bad certification and education. The influence of IT basically working themselves out of a job, and it's shift from building mode to maintainance mode. There's plenty more. The economy is intricately bound together. Why do we insist on a monoinfluence point of view when it comes to explainations?
In a free market you are correct. That is why the big corps have used the government to try and lock US consumers out of the global markets. DVD region encoding, over-blown FDA restrictions, ridiculous IP laws, and many other government restrictions have closed many markets to the US consumer.
Corporations charge one price in the US and another over-seas because they know that they can prevent the US consumer from buying at the lower price. They want open markets when they are shoping for labor, but closed markets when they sell to consumers. And they are getting both.
XML is the best data format; unless your data needs to be read or written by a human or a computer.
..wow wow that sounds a bit arrogant. You mean it was the english speaking culture that gave us kepler, galileo, socrates, plato, hippocrates, alexander, mozart, beethoven, and the 'arab' numerals. Get your head outta ya arse...The world didn't start with England it sure as hell wouldn't end with the U.S. despite your vainglorious impetuous opinions to the contrary.
All straight things must come to a bend
There are no import tariffs
I think the US Govt will probably need to look at this as a new opportunity to tax goods and services crossing the border.
Of course one wonders how much of a hit those missing jobs have been having on tax collections...
-soup (GNUrd, Speaker to Machines) "Laugh at yourself- Why should everyone else have all the fun?" -Romanchek's 6th Ru
The tech bubble was the rancher buying 50,000 wild horses. We now live in the age of the rancher trying to build fences to keep the horses in, and keeping them fed.
Translation: Programming jobs may be down. But security jobs, DBA jobs, Data Entry jobs are still going strong.
Plus -- why keep building new stuff when they can't even figure out how to properly deal with spam, spy ware, and virus issues?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I'm not sure about that. Personally, I find Bill O'Reilly almost as biased as Michael Moore.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
A lessoning of a restriction on trade creates a "benefit" which can be shared those who participate in the trade, however, there is no guarentee of the proportion of that sharing.
I don't have any desire to defend the steel tariffs, but it is possible in the extreme case that we could have lost our steel industry and enjoyed cheap prices. Woo. This is all good until foreign suppliers of steel cartelize or disrupt the market in some other way at which time we are screwed.
Foreign trade is tricky and needs to be approached carefully, especially in critical industries.
But what I MEANT to say is that the original poster had his economic theory correct and your example simply represents one possibility in the original posters event-continuum.
Pax -- Ob
With all those idiots I had to work with that were completely unqualified for their job, it's a good thing they're being shaken out of the market. There's still far more IT jobs than competent people to fill them. Companies were hiring just to fill seats and not fill needs.
its not just that the chinese work for less, is the exchange rates. The yuan is fixed by the chinese government to a certain dollar exchange rate.
If an equal number of yuan and dollars had the same buying power, things would be a little different.
there are other factors as well, but the exchange rates do make a signifigant difference
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
case in point was someone who called me recently after working for 20 years at the same company as a coder. he's not some idiot who didn't know his stuff. but surprise, surprise, big company x has decided to close down the office and outsource everything. the sarcastic amongst you will claim he's an idiot for statying with a company for 20 years, but to me these are the kind of victims that you all are not taking into account.
to casually suggest that he just move after being in the same city and raising a family in the same place for 20 years also suggests your own shallow view of the world.
again, get over your view of only unqualified programmers or "cab drivers" (wow, what a generalization) are suffering. i hope true karma bites some of you right in the arse.
The US itself is not a free market when it comes [...] to the products of agriculture.
To be fair, I don't think that many people would support changing this. There are real national security interests in keeping food production within your borders, even if it uncompetitive.
Listening to the diatribe talking points for FOX news I am guessing? The poor are poorer, that middle class continues to get poorer. Its all around in factual data. Fewer people are covered by healthcare, more people are living below the poverty line, and more children in the United States are getting an unsatisfactory education. Minimum wage and the poverty line definition have not changed along with inflation of health care and food.
Its like the U.S. economy is getting solely based on the well being of Wallmart. Soon all products on the market will have to be cheaper in order to sell them to the majority of the population, as they're wages will not cover the bare essentials. Its the exact opposite of the well established Henry Ford style of raising wages so people can afford to buy a Ford motorcar.
On the military population. It is a well known fact that most of the enlisted men are there for one reason, to pay for college. Career military personnel may be different. I know far too many people who went into the military because they felt they simply had no choice. Its kind of funny, U.S. senate, is overwhelming well off comparatively to the population that are representing, and yet only one has a child that is serving in the military. Nations population is largely made up of poor and middle class, but the population make up is noticeably more lower class.
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
I had exactly the same reaction. This guy was making complete sense, with a well-reasoned argument, until he ran into the Bull O'Really brick wall.
you spelled nietzsche wrong dumbass
read some cioran
way less pretentious
No kidding, he built up a really compelling argument and then deflates it with this you-can't-be-serious set of candidates.
...with a nod to John Stossel (sp?)
I mean, I'm not an O'Reilly hater but c'mon...president? "Gimme a break!"
A number of points to shore up the first (good) part of the post:
1. As part of the free-market vs not-free-market equation, think about stock markets. As one example: when industrials and electronics went into Asia, inc, U.S. investors recouped the "losses" by investing in Japanese and other countries' corps that were doing well. Sure, it seemed silly at first: we sell them the raw materials and they sell us finished product back at a much higher price but...we let them do the work and made money off of their stock markets! Yay! Sort of a win-win...not that simple...but sort of.
Can't do that with China...they don't HAVE a stock market.
2. Another point that has been brought up many times but can't be repeated enough: It's not FREE TRADE unless it's FAIR TRADE. The countries we compete with simply have nothing even close to the standards and regulations that we have for working conditions, safety, liability, etc.
I don't think we should attempt to punish them with our stupid lawyer-in-every-home mentality (they'd never fall for it). But, there should be a middle ground. To make this fair trade: they need more regulations, we in the USA need far, far less....maybe the U.S. getting totally brutalized in the global economy will finally make us act on this fact...and hopefully 90% of the lawyers will find themselves out of work and retraining for something USEFUL to society after we toss out tens of thousands of pages of society-killing legal code.
If we don't round them up, first...
Final 2 points for the well-intentioned but ignorant "it's about time someone ELSE other than the USA got a piece of the pie" crowd:
3. It's not a zero sum game. No "piece" of the pie required. Bake your own damn pie! Some of the poorest countries in the world are also some of the oldest and most populated. It's not the USA's fault they can't get their act together after all these centuries! We're simply stupid if we let them have a big chunk of our home-baked pie without a fight. Oh wait, we're already doing that...we ARE dumb.
4. Even if you took every single job in the US (not just high tech) and exported them overseas to these densely populated 3rd world countries...they's still be poor. It would hardly even put a dent in the poverty levels of India, most of Africa, and parts of Asia and South America.
Teach 'em to fish, don't give them our boat, tackle, and line.
Of course, most of the above is founded on a belief in capitalism. Capitalism has worked really well for many "1st world countries" but I think it's mature (i.e., corrupt) enough now that it's pretty much broken.
I certainly don't think socialism is going to work any better (IMO, much worse) but some brilliant economist needs to figure out how that silly Star Trek "sans currency" model actually works....OK, guess we need food replicators. (On to a nanotech thread, anyone?)
Because of mass communications and a lowest-possible-price culture, capitalism has been overhunted and we're running out of prey. Consumers drive it, but consumers don't want to pay 1 cent over cost anymore (with only a very few premium name-brand exceptions, and even those ranks are thinning).
Fat cats manage it, but they aren't worth anything close to the million$ in salary and golden parachutes that they accrue.
Baby boomers worked it, but they are retiring in droves soon, and sapping the work force of some of our best people and swelling the already swollen ranks of the retired / elderly / medically expensive / crappy-driving / pollbooth-confused / life-draining segment of the population.
OK, sorry, that was really harsh. We definitely need grandma and grandpa around to help raise these stupid value-screw
Computer Systems Design and Related services
$ pr .txt
c la ra.htm
41,500 current, down 1% over last month, down 5% for the year. (August 2004)
http://www.calmis.cahwnet.gov/file/lfmonth/sanj
Computer Systems Design and Related Services
63,300 Peak in February of '01
41,500 Current, August of '04
http://www.calmis.cahwnet.gov/htmlfile/county/s
Well, at least the traffic is better.
Ed Barbar, President and General Manager, Furnit USA
Also incorrect.
The purpose of the US Federal government is "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity".
If the purpose was the exercise the collective will of the people, we wouldn't need a constitution limiting the powers of government. We would also have the "mob rule" situation that critics of democracy so frequently talk about.
I do agree that it's more important to advance the state of humanity, rather than the state of American citizens. However, while the latter is the duty of the US government, the former is not. So if you want to relieve famine in Nigeria, end genocide in the Sudan, and establish democracy in Iraq, I salute you and support you. But please leave the federal government out of it, it is not chartered for that sort of thing.
Since I don't pay taxes to the French government, and they in turn don't provide me with public services and protection, I shouldn't care what happens to them economically. But I pay taxes to my local county, my State, and my nation's federal government. That's where my economic interest is placed. As the European Union has tied its nations together economically, then yes, they have vested interest in the success of other nations.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Gimme a break. What about the upswing where everyone and their brother said 'hey! they are making bucks in the tech industry! let's go over there!!' Loss of jobs since March 2001? Why not from january 1994?
/.'s are geeks, but don't we all think that 400k pales in comparison to the numbers of boot-camp weinies that flooded in to make bank? Maybe they all just went back to digging ditches or actually doing Physics/Biology instead of programming...
I was in the tech industry before it was cool and very few people knew what the internet was or that it existed. And I am still here after the great purge of those that joined for the cash. I am here for the enjoyment (masochistic I know).
I know us
-----
"Oh my friend Homer, are you being watching the football of Monday night? The NIYEE Jets are being of winning!"
You missed what I feel is the most important one. Create jobs, start a business. Become your own boss or employ others. I know not everyone has the leadership or the ambition to do this but that's the great thing about capitalism, you can just hire someone to do that too.
"I was a couragous soldier in Vietnam!" "What do you mean everyone else that was with me says I was a coward and an idiot! SHIT the truth is out!"
All of the claims by that Swift Boat group that ran those ads have been thouroghly debunked. One of them even got the same award Kerry did from the same incident. And ask the guy Kerry pulled from the water if Kerry was a coward?
It's also been well-documented that that Swift Boat group consisted of mostly Republican activists who had, if not direct/illegal ties to the Bush campaign, at least a wink-wink-nudge-nudge ties.
The fact is that you wing-nuts can't stand it when someone who served in Vietnam criticizes the Bushes, but let's look at the record.
Bushies say: Manchurian Candidate - fathered a child with a black woman.
Bushies say: He's unpatriotic because he thinks Homeland Security workers ought to be able to unionize.
Bushies say: Didn't earn the medals. Wounds not sufficiently serious. Vietnam vets had their "feelings hurt" when Kerry testified as to the war crimes that soldiers were ordered to do.
Yeah I want a guy that cant make up his mind and lies about is service duty. And you cant say Bush lied because its all there. Even though they try and make something out of his record theres nothing there to bash him about. :) I love liberal media.
Nothing to bash Bush about? Let's look at the President's "record"
His business record is no better.
And as to the "liberal media", they have given Bush a free ride for a long time now. They held Al Gore to far tougher standards of "truth" then they've ever held Bush, and they're doing it again to Kerry. If you want to continue your delusional right-wing thinking, go ahead, but don't go crying "liberal media" whenever they bring up inconvenient facts which challenge your pre-conceived notions.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
"The report, funded by the Ford Foundation, was conducted for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a Seattle organization that wants to unionize workers at Microsoft Corp. and other technology companies."
Surprise surprise!! The researches found out what their funders wanted them to find.
In addition, their study was supposed to be about the number of jobs lost not how. Still they managed to insert a statement that the jobs were lost to outsourcing without any backup info like what percentage or how they found this out.
Typical union propoganda... pretending to use a "scientific study" to get their way.
*Not true*
I decreased the tempature in my first apartment after geting the heating bill. The problem is the price needs to change a *lot* before people change. AKA if gass cost's 5.50/gal then you might not take a trip but 1.50 vs 2.00 is not realy noticeable.
My opinion exactly - except written a lot better. :)
The IT market is like a game of musical chairs. If you wind up without a chair when the music stops you're out. It doesn't matter how good you are or what angle you have. Its just tough these days.
Me, I'm thinking of retraining for teaching math.
You have proof of Indians dancing on the street and celebrating 9/11?
Who claimed that?
Stock up on provisions, find people you can trust, and get ready for the second American revolution. Corporations are not going to fall silently.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Ahh but you could move to france if you felt it was a better deal than the US. I don't know about you but I am thinking of moveing to Canada... Just a thought.
China is only communist in the sense that there is only one political party to vote for. They're not communist in the sense that the government controls production, at least much more than many socialist companies with certain government-run industries (healthcare, power, etc).
paintball
I think part of the reason people pick the cheap products while still insisting on high pay is rooted in the same desire that day trading is: to buy low and sell high. There's a deep seated belief that somehow, if I just work the system right, *I* can get cheap goods AND a high salary. And, just like day trading, it's all those other suckers that won't manage to make it work, but somehow I will.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
I don't believe it.
The gap is the wealthy elite and the poverty line. . . the middle class (shrinking quickly, mind you) is not a part of the equation.
I'm not taking a side on any of this, or saying it's impossible to become middle class (or perhaps even wealthy) but that's not the income gap.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
After the call-centre, now the IT department is off to India
-- I don't buy it, I grow it.
To simplyfy: The guy who would have made 135k but made 125k and the guy who would have made 125k down to 115k ect ect.
Also as a market if they are paying you 135k then they may have gone up to 140k after looking for a while and not finding anyone. Forcing everyone else to raise their rates till somone else in college desides to become an engineer and fill in the gap at 45k job's. Over time price and suply go up as price goes up. Also if your sending money home the US economy is lost that capital which hirt's the US economy. Not saying go home but some people would be better off if you had stayed home. Not the person(s) who own you company but the workers lost out.
For many of us, this is an untenable compromise.
I don't love Big Brother. Call me crazy for not wanting to invite him into every aspect of my life
Finally, the process to get a clearance is expensive and difficult, and it's a rare job indeed that will fund your background check.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Ditto, I suppose, for the intervention in Europe in WW II.
I hate to be a historical nitpick, but...
The United States entered the war in Europe because Germany had declared war on the United States and not the other way around. (Mostly because Germany wanted to open up US ships to unrestriced U-Boat warfare and thought the US would not be in the war for very long).
Not because Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor nor the US Congress declared war on Germany for European liberation reasons.
It has been quite debated in the WWII Grognard community that if Germany had not declared war on the US, then it would be quite possible the US would have not declared war on Germany, because even though Congress and the US people were adament on declaring war on Japan, it was undecided on wheather or not to open a second front in Europe on a country that had not attacked the US first.
Yes, FDR wanted to intervene in Europe along with other known Interventionalist, but Isolationists still wanted a minimalized war on one front.
Unfortunately the dotcom became the dotbomb and all the smaller shops disappeared, which usually had the more qualified, experienced engineers (e.g. with a C.S. degree or similar!). Therefore, there was no competition to face for the big companies. And with tech spending being managable, customers needing complete moderization efforts, dotcom vaporware being replaced with better products (or more vaporware ;) ), the BIG companies had a HUGE advantage with outsourcing, especially with the tax breaks they got into congress during the recession to promote even more outsourcing. And rehiring former employees for 100K versus 30K just make sense to a big multi-national.
Makes you want to outsource oil.
We've been in recession for 3, approaching 4, years. Things look quite bleak for anyone that's been associated with IT, as they've lost jobs, lost wages (or at the very least, not gotten appropriate wage increases to match inflation), or any number of other financial setbacks.
It's kind of hard to start a business when you're thousands in debt, can't find a job to get out of debt, and have living bills on top of that. Particularly when starting a business will always require money to get started.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
Personal connections are indeed key. Half the people my department hired (and we grew by about 300% in the last year or so) were based on personal recommendations. You might indeed be one of the people who simply hasn't gotten a break by either having someone with a clue go over your resume or finding a job that matches your skills. In that case, all that's left to do is networking. Screw the resume, keep doing volunteer work and start networking.
So tell me: how long will it take your organization to go the same way? Or do you honestly think that unlike the doctors, the lawyers, the plumbers, the electricians, the psychiatrists, and all the others that have gone before you, you'll somehow be exempt from the same sort of greed and corruption?
Apples and Oranges.
You're referring to professional associations, I'm talking about a co-operative business model. Think about this, why are we being downsized? To save money. They cut a 60-120k job here to pay much less overseas(they're actually cutting even lower paying jobs than that though), right? Well in this case, we would be joining together cooperatively to downsize the non-techie middle managers, non-techie upper management, and shareholders/board of directors. There wouldn't be goldent parachutes in the organisation. Cutting out the real fat, we ought to be able to get decent pay out of our work while being price competitive in the market.
the devils in the details though, I see that clearly. This is an idea right now, nothing more.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
I'm not a Jesus freak, but there is a quote from the bible that has always stuck with me. "it is to you according to your ability to believe". If you believe in a certain outcome before you begin a journey, your faith will work to see that outcome come to fruition.
What do you do when you face opposition in your life? Do you lay down and give up? Do you dig a hole, hide in it, and hope to God the things you fear don't come to pass?
If we were to form a cooperative business model according to the laws of this country, they would be SOL. Any law they got passed they would be under. I'm not talking about a union, I'm not talking about invalidating their corporate charters, I'm talking about a business to compete. As for those good ole boys in the trucks, that's all FUD. You watch to much TV. Ask yourself if somone is a patriot of America to the point they have American flags on their cars, are they going to target their fellow Americans who formed a business to compete under the laws of America? Or do you think they will take the side of corporations shipping American jobs to India and China? I honestly don't know why I went this far, that whole assertion is extremely fear based and way out there. You got to face your fears and overcome them. You can't live your life like that.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
Hate to sound like an AOLer, but "me too". I've been out of college a little less than a year, and I've been doing contracting work since then. I have a little money saved up (despite college loan payments), and I'd be interested in doing something "different". I'm not sure how to go about doing any of this, but I'd like to see where this goes.
/. login name, obfuscated, or you can use my real name (Brian) at the domain of my website.
Email address is next to my
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
No, you sound like a real IT guy. Your problem is demonstrating that the fake IT people who have the jobs you want are worse economic propositions than you are. But that means convincing the manager that you're not a threat to their ignorance. The fake IT people are gumming up the works, and the managers are keeping it gummed up by failing to differentiate between real and fake IT people.
--
make install -not war
Hardly, when you factor in the number of new workers entering the work force each month. For there to be a true net gain in jobs, job growth would have to be greater than the number of new workers. Neither Bush nor Clinton caused the recession. The executive office has only a small effect on economics, and it takes time to see the effects.
However, looking at the economy and deficit over the course of Clinton's terms, we see the effect of his decisions taking hold about two years in and reversing a general downward trend caused by the fiscal irresponsibility of the previous Republican administrations.
Bush has resorted to economic policy even his own father called 'voodoo economics,' the tired 'trickle down' theory. Most of his tax cuts went to the wealthy, and he has slashed benefitsd for the poor. With a net increase in well paying jobs, you would think more people would be making it out of poverty and into the middle class, but the numbers show middle class families sinking into poverty. Bush may not have caused the recession, but he and his cronies happily capitalized on it and 9/11 to enrich themselves and their wealthy friends at the expense of the rest of us.
Nice try at pro-Bush, anti-Democrat propaganda, though. I guess the old saying, 'you see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear' is true after all.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"All of the claims by that Swift Boat group that ran those ads have been thouroghly debunked."
c les/A272 11-2004Aug23.html
0 8_august/08 2504_kerry_purple_heart.htm
v ice/military records_1.pdf
Actually many of the claims have not been debunked. In regards to the Kerry being in Cambodia during Christmas issue, the Kerry campign has acknowledged that Kerry was in fact not in Cambodia during Christmas (but was within 50 miles and covertly crossed the border at a later date).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/arti
The Kerry campaign has also acknowedged that the first purple heart was awarded in an incident where no enemy fire occured. Kerry's journal even mentions that he had not experienced any enemy fire in an entry days past this incident.
http://www.massnews.com/2004_editions/
The official After Action Report written by Kerry
after the Silver Star incident even acknowledges that Kerry chased down an injured young man and shot him while fleeing (the person did have a loaded gernade launcher).
http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilser
(see page 7)
All of the other debunking seems to be from official Navy records that were mostly written by Kerry or from Kerry's statements. Bottom line this is more of a he-said, she-said and the truth will never be known (though as in most cases it is somewhere in the middle)
Honestly, I don't care much about Kerry's medals. That was a different era and it is not suprising that people have different attitudes and beliefs now. I wish Kerry could give one speech without mentioning his Vietnam experience and instead focus on his accomplishments (or lack of) as a senator for almost 20 years. Why does he focus so much on 4 months of his life that took place 30 years ago and mostly ignore his anti-war stance after Vietnam as well as his political career?
I've concluded exactly the same thing. I see no alternative to enacting economic safeguards, ideally temporary ones.
The only way such protectionism might be adopted is if our leaders were wise enough to say, 'Look, we need to adopt a transitional policy that is protectionist. It isn't going to last forever. We still believe in free markets. But until the playing field is level, we can't afford to lose 90% of our technical workforce. And that's that.'
But unless *somebody* has the guts to say this in the White House or on the floor of the US Senate, the US economy is doomed.
Country calling John McCain...
Randy
Newsflash: there is no such thing as a free market.
There are tons and tons of restrictions in the market that keep it from being "free" (what that really means is anarchistic). From insanely high trade barriers in Japan, to slave labor in China, to even the basic rules governing property ownership in the US, the market is governed by rules. Otherwise, there'd be no need for the courts or the police - possession would be the entirety of the law, and that would be determined by who had the most and biggest guns.
So stop buying into the myth that there's such a thing as a free market.
If you mean "provide" a job with a guarentee of a specific job, no.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
-Preamble of the U. S. Constitution, emphasis added.
The parts I put in bold show why the government of the USA would be interested in ensuring there are employment oppurtunities for its citizens. It is in the best interest of the country as a whole for people seeking some form of employment to be able to find it.
Ever heard the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover"? If you don't believe what he has written in the book, you can actually look in his footnotes and verify for yourself that the information is accurate. The entire point of that book is to refute some of the lies in the books written by people such as O'Reilly. I'm not saying that Al Franken is unbiased (in fact he is biased) but that doesn't make his analytic refutations of the O'Reilly book any less accurate.
Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
Actually many of the claims have not been debunked. In regards to the Kerry being in Cambodia during Christmas issue, the Kerry campign has acknowledged that Kerry was in fact not in Cambodia during Christmas (but was within 50 miles and covertly crossed the border at a later date).
The guy who heads the swift boat folks is on record as having told Nixon in 1972 or so that he had taken his boat into Cambodia, a claim he now denies.
The official After Action Report written by Kerry after the Silver Star incident even acknowledges that Kerry chased down an injured young man and shot him while fleeing (the person did have a loaded gernade launcher).
The guy Kerry was chasing was just about to duck into cover where he could turn around and fire that grenade launcher at Kerry's boat.
All of the other debunking seems to be from official Navy records that were mostly written by Kerry or from Kerry's statements. Bottom line this is more of a he-said, she-said and the truth will never be known (though as in most cases it is somewhere in the middle)
No, most of the debunking comes from the people who were actually present with Kerry. Only one of the Swift Boat Liars served with Kerry, and he was not present during any of these incidents according to Navy records. Further, the liars sent out emails to many former swift boat vets asking if they could use their names in the anti-Kerry ads. Many said NO and yet the not-so-swifties went ahead and did so anyway.
Honestly, I don't care much about Kerry's medals. That was a different era and it is not suprising that people have different attitudes and beliefs now.
Bush supported the war and hid out in a Nat'l Guard unit and couldn't even do the time he'd agreed to do. Cheney supported the war but got 5 deferments because "He had more important things to do." Ashcroft supported the war and got 3 deferments. These folks are doing the same thing today. They have started a war but make no effort to sacrifice any of their personal honor or sacred treasure to support that war. Nope, they are going to make the rest of us pay for it.
Kerry, in contrast, volunteered to go war. That is a strong hint that he understands that all of us, even the rich, must give something to their country in time of war.
I modded you up, now tell me this country pls
Why put a title on a book? It's a marketing ploy. Franken shouldn't be surprised if sometimes it backfires, as it certainly has with me.
I mean, aside from the fact that I think Franken is a whiny prat that preaches to the choir (as opposed to Bill O'Reilly who is an obnoxious blowhard who preaches to the choir), what would possibly motivate me to care what he thinks?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You blew your credibility with that last sentence. I've never heard of any company that wanted a background check that wouldn't pay for it themselves -- would you have us believe they expect the employee to pay for it? (Most large-company sys admin jobs require a background check, although not as extensive as that required for a security clearance.) Further, you can't even apply for a clearance unless you're in a job that requires it (well, the employer applies for you).
As for what Top Secret requires, I can't say. But many of the clearance-required jobs only require Secret clearance, which is nowhere near as intrusive. (I suspect TS isn't as bad as you make it out either, although SCI may be.)
-- Alastair
Lost wife. Lost job. Lost home. Had a heart attack. On disaility. Never working again.
The homeless are a bunch of lazy slobs, so kick their ass until they get a job. So what if this produces causualties, life is tough, get real.
Whatever you say. I'm gonna take my heart pills, and go back to bed.
By the way, they're raising the age of Social Security retirement again, and laws are being passed allowing companies to pay less into their corporate retirement funds.
The game is fixed, Mr. Wage Slave. But what do I care?
To the men in the Hanoi Hilton, Kerry's testimony was a nightmare come true. Imprisoned, tortured and malnourished soldiers were put through some of the worst experiences of their lives to do what Kerry did willingly.
I don't know what *bushies* you're talking about. I think anyone who has read/watched/heard of these painful experiences can understand the Vets point of view.
I think McCain has the propper perspective (or at least he did not too long ago, politicians are so fickle) Kerry *did* serve honorably for four months. He may have committed attrocities that he felt guilt for. But what he did when he came back was a slap in the face of his compatriots.
This is a dead topic, but for some reason it's a talking point. What was done in Vietnam was shameful, what Kerry did to the PoWs in hanoi was shameful but somehow we keep arguing like someone was in the right.
Avoiding service is never a proud thing, but at least it wasn't double bad.
You know what? For all your anti-libertarian fuming (the "bullshit" comment), I think you're spot on about the undue influence government has had on helping corporations become way too powerful.
Treating a corporation as an "individual" (!! Can you imagine such a thing?!?) is the biggest problem I have with our "free market" economy.
Get government out of it completely! The fake liability stuff of corporations is just as vile as a government feeling it has to "provide" jobs.
Cheney's "more important things to do" including supporting a wife and two kids. Kerry, in contrast, went home after 3 1/2 months in Vietnam and sided with the Viet Cong.
Actually, America's exceptional poor quality of education has been a severe handicap and a major motivator of offshore outsourcing as well as H1-Bs, etc. The only reason we're still competitive at all is that the spirit of individuality allows some to rise above the educational system.
If you've got any kind of skills, I'll hire you.
I didn't mean to imply that an employer would force you to fund your own bkgrd check.
What I meant was that most jobs that require clearances aren't interested in paying for one, but getting someone who already has a clearance.
You would have to be extraordinarily qualified and a steal in terms of salary to have a company pay for a bkgrd check.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
See, you bastards in Florida didn't vote for Al so he took the internet he invented and went home.
My father is a blogger.
You forgot the line "We don't want to hire someone who is going back to the IT world the second it recovers". I haven't heard that one in a while only because I've left the IT field a while back, but back then I heard it all the time.
Bill OReilly can't keep left and right straight, much less understand how the hell to deal with pushing Fair Trade instead of Free Trade. How would an anti-Union, pro-Corporate shill for the right do jack to help the American Worker?
I can't believe this comment got graded "insightful". The reason O'Reilly "can't keep left and right straight" is that he's an independent. He keeps pointing this out but people like you keep not listening. Granted, I think he has a rightward tilt, but he takes the side of the Left sometimes. The main thing he doesn't like is ideology, particularly blind ideology that doesn't let the facts get in the way of it.
Have a sense of humor. O'Reilly isn't running for president (nor will he be), nor is Tammy Bruce. So just give it a rest.
"So remember the new number: 0118-999-88199-9119-725...3"
You're recommending we send a delusional hack, who aspires to an imaginary childhood in Levittown, NY, to the White House?
O'Reilly did grow up in Levittown, despite what Al Franken says. O'Reilly managed to dig up the old title to the house where he grew up, and displayed it a few times on his show (guess you weren't watching). Yep, he grew up there. Sorry you were misled.
If you hate what's happening to the American workforce, go to a union, and ask them how to help organize your fellow info workers. That's the only politics that's ever protected American labor. It's no accident that such a successful movement would send O'Reilly into a spasmatic fury.
And this will help the American IT workforce how? Just because a company is unionized doesn't prevent that company from outsourcing work and putting the unionized staff out of work. IMO, unions work best when they have a "captive audience". In other words, the business has limited mobility. Retail is a perfect example. There's little chance that most of the work in a store is going to be outsourced. It can't realistically be done. Though with RFID coming down the pike, we'll probably see retail stores that need fewer workers one day.
I have a liberal friend who votes consistently Democrat and he doesn't like unions. He's told me why in the past. He's seen how they set up rules to stifle creativity and productivity in the workplace, just so more union employees will be ensured they have (pointless) jobs. But hey, it's a paycheck, right? Since he likes a work environment that encourages creativity and productivity, he doesn't like the environment that unions create. I tend to agree with him.
"So remember the new number: 0118-999-88199-9119-725...3"
To the men in the Hanoi Hilton, Kerry's testimony was a nightmare come true. Imprisoned, tortured and malnourished soldiers were put through some of the worst experiences of their lives to do what Kerry did willingly.
Kerry was simply facing facts, and re-iterating what other soldiers had testified to in front of Congress. Kerry was trying to show that the war was immoral, and that the troops should be brought home as soon as possible, which would then allow the POW's in the Hanoi Hilton to be released.
I don't know what *bushies* you're talking about. I think anyone who has read/watched/heard of these painful experiences can understand the Vets point of view.
I'm talking about the so called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth." Their second ad had all these vets saying how Kerry's testimony made them "feel bad". The problem is that these vets never faced up to the fact thet they were ordered to conduct an immoral war. They should have "felt bad", and then they should have been angry that their leaders had betrayed them. But a lot of people cannot handle this fundamental assault on their belief systems, so they instead choose to blame the messenger. And as to the torture doled out at the Hanoi Hilton, if they were indeed covering up war crimes, then they should also blame the commanders who ordered them rather that the whistleblower, but I can certainly understand their anger.
The main point I was trying to make (which you totally missed or ignored) was that Bush did not serve in Vietnam (and was not going to), and used his family connections to avoid that service, thereby sending someone else to Vietnam in his place. He and his cohorts have run incredible smear campaigns against three highly decorated Vietnam veterans (McCain in 2000, Cleland on 2002, and Kerry in 2004), yet Bush says how much he respects veterans and the military. If he really respected them, he wouldn't allow those kind of campaigns to be run. but since Bush has no record to be proud of (certainly in comparison), he's got to tear down the other guy.
I can't help but wonder what kind of campaign Bush would run if he were running against Eisenhower.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
OK, Cheney had a family to support. So do many of the Reservists and Guard called up to serve in Iraq. And then stop-loss orders, and calling up former actives to further stress out these families. But Cheney's like the Soup Nazi - "No deferments for you!" even though he got them himself. And remember, a deferment for Cheney (and Ashcroft, etc.) meant that some poor schmuck without family connections or money had to serve in his place.
However, the point is not Cheney's deferments alone, it's the deferments and his hawkish stance on Iraq and other conflicts. Simply put, these neocons are a bunch of chicken-hawks. They found excuses not to serve themselves, but they seem to love wars of choice.
And that Kerry comment is just a weak troll which only highlights your historical ignorance.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
Money that leaves never supports U.S. economy and infrastructure
Actually it does support infrastructure to some extent, since foreign profits often come back, one way or another, as support for our government debt, which can then be used to finance infrastructural improvements, if our government chooses to use it for that purpose. A significant portion, though I don't think the majority, of our federal government's debt is financed by foreigners. In fact, China and India both have significant holdings in U.S. government bonds, as did Japan more than 10 years ago.
"So remember the new number: 0118-999-88199-9119-725...3"
I'm not saying slums don't exist, and everything is rosy - I appreciate your evenhanded response. I would say the majority of my friends have done well, many of them are not rich but I would say most are pretty happy. Some people just choose not to join the rat race but are otherwise doing just fine.
I'm really trying to say only two things. One is that constantly telling people that poor people have to have help to succeed, is a message with the effect of retarding success (that's the most accurate word I can think of to describe the effect, please do not take it as a negative connotation for those being effected).
My second point (which I'm not even sure I made really but I was thinking) was that I'm not sure a "gap" exists to the extent it might look like on paper. In a world where more and more credit is being offered to people, even poor people can indeed live like kings - almost indefinitely. Now I don't think that's healthy, but I do think that's affecting all levels of society, so to some extent almost everyone shares a common pain in that regard. The very original poster had a great point I thought that just about anyone really can live a life of semi-opulance with a nice TV and $49 DVD player to placate them. I'm not saying that's good either, just saying that basically the effect is like an opium for the masses. One that I'm not sure people will ever awake from, even if the gap does widen. Why would you revolt if you are going to miss Oprah? And that goes for the mdidle class too!
I also very much disagree with the middle class shrinking. I think companies everywhere are really working to make everyone "middle class" - otherwise you have no consumers. Thus the extension of credit willy-nilly to all who care to hear the siren song.
In a way, is not the giant extension of credit really far more a danger to the people on the "rich" side of the "gap"? The next revolution, if there ever is one, is going to be everyone at once saying "screw my credit card bill". Now that would have some powerful effects, all without the kind of french-revolution style beheading of aristocracy. I don't think America will every see that kind of thing happen, we've grown too weird for that.
In short I think there is not a gap like people think there is, certainly not one having the effect they imagine it does.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
face it, there's not much you can do about this trend (layoffs, no jobs, outsourcing, etc.) short of the ballot box. sure you can get training, study up, and make yourself more valuable in the field, but no guarantees. you can also do a career change (such as myself after 17 years in IT) or seek other types of work. but there's no avoiding it, outsourcing will continue to happen, competition will be tougher, layoffs will continue, and budgets will be tighter. do something about your particular situation or you will be left behind. people have to get smarter and more skilled. that's just evolution. i would suggest a solution to the government to intervene in this way: ---- Dear Corporation: For every person you lay off, the money you saved from that person for one years time, will be put into training/retraining of said person for new skill(s) of their choice. ---- What do you think? I mean I'm sure there's ways that companies can fool the government on this, but I'm sure the laid off person will keep them in check.
Funny thing is, I know for a fact that Austria has toll stations that charge German trucks going to and from Italy. Probably some of that money goes for road maintenance. And even so, whole-EU taxes will theoretically distributed to build roads where they are need.
This is mostly correct, and Autrians would like to charge a lot more, but lost in the European Court. A further problem is that the money goes to the Austrian gouvernement while those people living next to the roads in Tyrol get nothing. Quite a few people there would be quite happy, if the roads, bridges or tunnel across the Brenner pass had a big accident that made it unpassable for trucks.
If the EU would finance a 10 lane highway across the Brenner, it would only worsen the problem. Those roads bring nearly no benefit to the people living next to it while reducing their quality of life tremendously. This is one of the viles of democracy, when a majority decides to make the life of a minority miserable.
Put trade barriers, your most important commercial partners are China and Mexico.
We will all hear the US economy collapsing, unfortunately the aftermath will affect the whole world (because that little world of yours in which each nation can decide to close its borders, which are not more than a social artifact, has ceased to exist in practical economic terms around 15 years ago with the collapse of the USSR).
For all practical purposes the economy is one and its size is global, any attempts to fight that reality will be met with the relentless mindlessnes of the market.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Most US regulated companies (and in many other conutries) have many legal obligations that preclude the interests of the shareholders.
If your hypotetical CEO would brake those laws he would (theoretically of course) be legally liable and the defense "I did it for my shareholders" would mean squat.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
And you will do anything?
Man, start an outsourcing company with all that people and undercut your Indian and Chinese competitors.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Take a 101 class is economics then reply again and use something besides anonymous. It will give a little credit to you statement.
Come on pal. Sober up and get with the program. The divide increasingly is not so much between those who have and those who have not, but those who know how to use what they have and those who do not.
Does it go on forever?
The divide increasingly is not so much between those who have and those who have not, but those who know how to use what they have and those who do not.
I agree totally with that statement. Part of the reason why "the rich get richer" is they are tought how to properly work money.
But then the question is, what are the implications of this? People do realize when they need to know something, or at least that it would be good to be on the other side of that gap - witness the sucess of shows like Suze Orman and others as people try to educate themselves.
I'm not sure that kind of gap has the same kind of social downside as a true peasant/king mix, or what the negative implications are. It does allow for an industry (like credit companies) tailored to feed off such people.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
H1B hurting salaries for engineers? Last time I checked, H1Bs were paid about the same as normal developers. In fact, I've seen H1Bs making 15% more than a similarly qualified american.
The H1B program actually helps the american programmer: Without it, all of those H1Bs you see around here would be working for outsourcing compaines in their home countries, competing with you with an even smaller salary. In effect, the US can use the program to make the best foreign programmers compete with you in a more even ground, all while they are paying medicare and social security taxes, just like any American does. Given equal skill, I'd rather compete with someone that might make only 5% less than I do than with someone that makes less than half of that.
.... you prefer that your taxes are heavily raised in order to pay for the old timers' social benefits?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In your scale:
Country: % of state control
North Korea 100 Communism
Vietnam 80
China 70
Europe 60
US 50
??? 50
What about if being in the middle is absolutely the most one country could do.
Then the expression used by the original poster ("relatively" is the key word) would be preety valid IMHO.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... based in your anecdotal evidence we should generilize?
:-P
Did you also study statistics in your free time?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Thank you for pointing the exceptions to the rule.
Obivously the IT world is so easy to grasp that any person can just start working in the field without any formal preparation (funny you talk about Gates, I don't think his man talent is realted to the IT field but to marketing, for which obviously he was also completetly unprepared:-) ).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I know, trade barriers, the last hideout of the statist, isolationist, populist.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Like not wasting tax payer's money invading countries that have done nothing to yours?
Just suggesting.
How much is that going to cost you? 70 billion?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Surely you jest - but I'll bite.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Alas, this is only true of highest education, ie. post-grad studies. Before that US education system is at best mediocre. But that wouldn't be a showstopper, actually; mediocre might be good enough.
As a result what really happens is that US imports high school/college graduates from 3rd world countries, and as a result, close to half of US post-grad students are non-citizens. That's decent deal on short term -- those students got there expensive basic education elsewhere, without US tax-payers help; but somewhat risky on longer term (some may move back after degree; general amount of education "natives" get is lesser, leading to problems with uneducated masses etc).
All that would be needed, though, would be that instead of idiotic voucher pilot projects, government would actually spent significant amount of money directly funding educational system. Maybe cut half of military budget to finance that (and plenty of other things too). That's the way it works in pretty much every other western country; especially ones not so religiously tied to the laissez-faire capitalistic ideas; check out educational competency of, say, northern european countries for verification (most of which are led by social-democratic party - based govts).
If a company needs to fill a position, and they can't find someone already with a clearance, they will hire somebody and have them basically just sit at a desk until the clearance goes through.
Of course they'd prefer not to, but I know quite a few people who have gone through exactly that.
It isn't so much the "paying for the bkgnd check" that they mind, it's paying for an idle employee until the clearance comes through. But if it's between that and missed deadlines and contract penalties because they're understaffed, well...
None of which alters the fact that there is a big demand for qualified IT people, where "qualified" here includes a clearance or a high likelihood of being able to get one (eg by having previously held one).
-- Alastair
Since I don't pay taxes to the French government, and they in turn don't provide me with public services and protection, I shouldn't care what happens to them economically.
This implies that the only ties between human beings are those of the exchange of cash for goods and services. That's a sad view of life.
I can sympathize with your position. I'm in the same boat. During the 90s I wasn't even helping the "Internet Revolution" along. I got my CS degree, and wrote client/server apps. for enterprises. I can write a mean GUI-based or command-line-based database app. in C or C++, but no one wants to hire me for that. I've learned some HTML, and I've even delved quite a ways into C#, Windows Forms, ASP.Net, and ADO.Net, but I guess that disqualifies me because "I learned it on my own". I can't say that I've created an n-tier application, or an enterprise app. that uses SQL Server. Maybe that does disqualify me at this time. I've been to .Net user group meetings though with people who are actually using it for their work, and I know more about .Net than they do sometimes. Only thing is it's awfully difficult to convince an employer that I'm even minimally competent in these skills, because I can't point to a paid job where I've used them.
"So remember the new number: 0118-999-88199-9119-725...3"
That's stupid. You have 25 "years of experience" and made it clear you'll do "almost anything". Have you looked on DICE.com? I hate it when people complain about being qualified and employed yet they don't want to relocate from SmallTown, Kentucky.
If you're that motivated, how come you haven't started your own consulting business with your extensive work experience. I've seen very unqualified people get interviews (and jobs) mostly because they were MOTIVATED to learn, work, and serve the company. I haven't even graduated college yet and I've gotten job offers that I haven't even applied for. That's not because I have tons of experience, but because employers are BEGGING college students to work for them practically. It's nearly the same feel as it was back in 98/99, except they're not giving out free BMW leases.
This idea of the "post-DotCom" economy is over. The market is back and employees have the upper hand now over employers.
As a neocon, I will say this economy and world is about survival of the fittest. While it seems that you have been pampered the last 25 years of your life, I've been busy MAKING IT. I too live in a non-IT town, but there are still contract jobs in the big cities that I take.
Stop complaining already. Waiting for the government is not a good idea. I have a family to support and thats what I'll do.
Instead of giving massive amounts of money to wasteful defense contractors & other government cronies (or having it lost in the rats-mazes of bureaucracy), use all that money to hire LOTS of front-line workers. E.g., teachers, firemen, policemen, social workers, forest rangers, etc. (Note: front-line != bureaucrats.)
I did an analysis recently on the corrolation between job losses and big events that occurred at the time.
From the start of the job losses in March, 2001 to 9/11 we had lost about 1 million jobs. This is attributable to the recession. From September, 2001 to December, 2001, we lost more than 1 million jobs, most of these attributable to the 9/11 attacks. The Enron scandal broke in this time period as well, though just from what I could see of the timing of the Worldcom scandal, at the end of June, 2002, corporate scandals "sting" in the job market, but the bad effects don't last long. My best guess is we lost 111,000 jobs in July, 2002 due to the Worldcom bust. And several hundred thousand jobs were lost in the leadup to the Iraq war.
At the "bottom" of the job market in August, 2003, we had lost 2.7 million jobs. We are now down to a net "deficit" in the payroll survey of around 1 million jobs. 1.7 million net new ones have been created in the last year, and I hear that about 900,000 of the new jobs are in the public sector (ie. government).
If 9/11 had not happened, we would probably be "breaking even" today. The Iraq war might not have happened at the time that it did either (though this is pure speculation), so one can only guess where we'd be now without that.
So even though you may think all the jobs created in the defense sector are useless, national security is very important to the economy. The Iraq war cost us jobs, but in relative terms the job losses due to 9/11 were worse. Yes, there's waste in the defense structure, but where in the government is there not waste??? The budget is always in effect formed by committee, and you know what they say about committee-based efforts.
The most jobs that the economy created in the 90s was around 300,000 per month. That's what we were getting in the first quarter of this year. Granted the job creation rate slowed to a trickle during the summer, barely worth writing home about, but it's picking up again. I heard somewhere that one reason for the slowdown in the growth of the economy during the summer had something to do with Europeans taking their summer vacations, sometimes lasting as long as 6 weeks. I dunno. :)
I remember a couple years ago listening to an interview with a big technology company's CEO (I think it was Intel), who said that in the past the tech sector led the economic recovery. He said that this time it was going to trail the recovery. Other parts of the economy would recover first, and then the tech recovery would come later. Perhaps that is the pattern we are seeing. It's too soon to tell, IMO.
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So what were the causes of the crash?
- Silly business models attracting large amounts of money, which was lots of fun but obviously unsustainable. What really happened was that new technology promised radical changes in business, and it took the market a few years to determine the real values. For instance, most of the business models depended on web advertising to make money, and nobody knew what web advertising was really worth, and the number of people diving in to find out what the hype was about kept the value changing for a couple of years. Now the market has a much better idea of the value, and it's somewhere between the most optimistic believers (who got killed) and the most pessimistic (who missed opportunities.)
- Moore's Law caught up with economics - the telecom technology changes meant that for a couple of years, it looked like putting fiber in the ground was a gold mine, so lots of people invested in it (and in the companies that sold equipment to them), but DWDM has meant that any fiber out there has near-infinite capacity, and demand for bits was growing rapidly but not that rapidly, so prices went into a death spiral, and haven't pulled out yet. It's happened somewhat with CPUs as well - Microsoft and Linux keep writing bloatware to soak up any available horsepower, but the only people who've actually needed the last five years of CPU progress have been gamers and a few scientists.
- In January-February 2000, Alan Greenspan kicked up interest rates about six times, which was a major blow to a capital-intensive economic boom. You can blame this somewhat on Clintonomics, since Clinton made government spending look much better by refinancing old Reagan/Bush federal debt at much lower interest rates, especially short-term but also somewhat long-term. On the other hand, it's hard to see moves that aggressive early in an election year as other than politically-inspired manipulation, and it _was_ the economy, stupid.
- And then there's the Microsoft anti-trust suit, which is Clinton's fault. The main dot-com VC cash-out strategies for startups were to sell the company to the public in an IPO or sell it directly to a big company (usually Microsoft for software/services companies and Cisco for hardware), and the threat to break up Microsoft meant that all of a sudden, they were no longer a potential customer for a couple of years. Therefore, VCs, who'd been on a feeding frenzy since Hotmail sold for $400M, had lost one of their three main markets, and the public was already getting skeptical about IPOs for Dogfood-on-line.com, and the New DotCom Economy already assumed that you wouldn't actually make Profits, at least in the short term, and with interest rates going up they needed a much higher probability of winning to make investing in startups worthwhile.
And it all pretty much happened at once, which is why it tanked so hard.Bill Stewart
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http://www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhima nyway.com/ because most anybody is better than Bush. Even though john kerry is a douche bag, it's NOT the right time to play some social experiment and vote for a 3rd party. Because, let's face it, only free-minded people would consider voting for a 3rd party, which weakens our base as a whole against the republican lemmings. so just vote for john kerry please. god damnit...
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
Clinton did not create the .com boom, nor the layoffs which followed, have a look at Kondratiev long wave cycles if you want an answer.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
Foreign currencies in the U.S. must be exchanged too. So, it's almost equilibrium. Eh, I'm not an economics major.