Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Programmers An Endangered Species?
CommanderData writes "USA Today reports that US Programmers are an 'Endangered Species' and expects them to be 'extinct' within the next few years, replaced by offshoring and H-1B visa holders. They suggest people will manage overseas projects, become self-employed, or switch to other fields. What do my fellow code-dinosaurs plan to do before the asteroid hits?" A report on Newsforge (which is part of OSTG along with Slashdot) shows the flip side of the coin.
I have worked at too many companies where we needed coding done on the fly with proprietary systems. This usual meant sitting down the programmer with a customer waiting for a return call ASAP. How would I do that with a programmer in India? I don't think I could overcome the language issues and the proprietary nature of the software. The publishing company I worked for would be a good example of that. Print jobs required programming. The jobs often were for 1 million or more pieces so mistakes could be catastrophic. It wasn't unusual to go racing to a programmers cube at 5PM with a programming requirement that had to be finished in 30 minutes or so to go to press.
http://www.busyweather.com/
My company has already dropped all offshoring (though they still outsource to a limited extent) and I hear of others doing the same.
It turns out it's way more efficient to pay a guy sitting right there three or four (or ten) times as much as some other guy sitting way the hell across the ocean, who doesn't even really care if your project (or company) lives or dies.
It also turns out it's better to use someone who understands your core buisness and the poeple working there than some faceless channel of communication.
I guess USA Today is just a little behind the curve.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What language issue?
Indian english is not a problem to understand once you adjust to the accent.
To be fair I have worked with many immigrants from around the world, but adjusting just isn't that hard for me anymore.
I've had a job programming web applications for about 3 years now. Another part of my job is providing helpdesk support, fixing computers, network administration, and web design. If any one of these areas get outsourced, I still have a job.
In addition, I'm working on getting my teaching certification in mathematics. Like any industry, it's good to have a backup plan if everything falls apart. While I haven't noticed any of my friends' jobs being outsourced, I do know that it's always a possibility and have tried preparing myself in the ways listed about in case anything should happen.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
The day I start worrying about what's written in the press is the day I hang up my keyboard. Given that they cannot accurately report any tech story I'm meant to worry up this crap.
let the code monkeys in India have it, anyone can write code, but they will still need a good software engineer to develop a piece of quality software. Yes, because we all know Indians can't do software engineering. It's this kind of thinking that made you lose your programming job to them in the first place. :-)
I know I'm not exactly the first person to think of this, but I'm trying to get out of the IT industry. In the long run, I just don't see any way I can be competitive with offshoring. Granted, there are certain jobs that can't be outsourced that way, but it would be too much work to try to get one of the few remaining positions -- increasing competition for fewer jobs.
I don't much like agreeing with him, but I think Bush was right in the debate the other night when he said that the 21st century economy is going to necessitate job and career changes -- not just in IT but in other areas as well. Even down to more mundane things like checkout clerks at grocery stores (which isn't much of a career, admittedly, but you know what I mean). Those are on their way out, being steadily replaced by automated checkout machines, and those who currently still work as checkout clerks had better start thinking about what they're going to do next because they're either going to leave the job of their own accord, or they're going to get laid off when those checkout machines become commonplace.
This viewpoint represents the naiveté of most people when it comes to programming and software engineering, and I'm not sure what the solution is. Let me be very clear, you cannot design a program (software engineering as you seem to call it) if you have never written code.
These junior programming positions you see going to India aren't "codemonkey positions". They're junior programming positions. Why is this important? Because junior programmers go on to become intermediate, then senior programmers. Then some of them go on to be project managers, other software architects, and other business analysts.
What happens when you cut the bottom rung out of this ladder? In 10 years, India will be full of very experienced managers, architects, and analysts. In the US though, most of those jobs will be gone much like the junior positions are leaving now.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Isn't that the situation for pretty much every manufactured thing already? Products are designed in USA, Canada, Japan, UK, etc. and then produced in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea, etc. I guess software is no different after all.
But even the optimists believe that many basic programming jobs will go to foreign nations, leaving behind jobs for Americans to lead and manage software projects.
And in 2007, they will run an article about how few jobs there are for Americans looking to "lead and manage software projects".
Once you outsource the real skill needed, why wouldn't the jobs managing those workers be outsourced?
In the 50+ years that software has been a part of business procedures, how many companies have you seen give a damn about proper engineering?
I hate to be the pessimist here, but 99.9% of the time, projects succeed (and/or are properly engineered) in spite of companies' non-attention to proper engineering.
The main thing in favor of American developers is the same reason why Indian off-shoring tends to fail. The big reason why off-shoring often fails (first hand experience over here) is that the programmers take less initiative in forcing proper design and engineering.
That's not a slam against Indians (or other off-shoring cultures), but more a fact of life. They are disconnected from the project to such a degree that they have no real grasp of it other than to produce *exactly* what the specs document says. This is the same type of problem you see in using consulting firms like Anderson, nay, Accenture in developing your software.
In short, a software project can't succeed unless developers truly understand and care about what they are doing to the degree that they will *make* it succeed in spite of itself.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Even a sub-par human mind would have trouble accepting this tripe as truth. Consider the following statement:
Not everybody agrees programmers will disappear completely.
That's simply insipid. It's akin to saying, "Not everybody agrees that Dick Cheney sticks rodents up Dubya's ass" or "Not everybody agrees that Linus Torvalds secretly plans to incorporate stolen code in his operating system." This sort of statement is right at the top of the list of ways to lend creedence to a completely baseless notion.
Mr. Francis, you do not name a single expert who believes that American programmers will cease to exist in next few years. If I were feeling generous, I'd simply state that you're a mind-bogglingly lazy journalist who cannot be bothered to include one shred of evidence supporting your most alarming charge. As I'm ticked off, however, I'll say that you're lying through your fucking teeth, that you didn't speak to or read of a single expert who believes that American programmers will be extinct in a matter of years, and you just wanted something sensational and outlandish to jazz up a less-than-mediocre piece on the state of computer jobs in America.
David R. Francis, you're a hack.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I'm curious as the actual cost of outsourcing.
It's very easy to say that since an indian costs 20% of my salary, that it's 5 times cheaper. But i doubt that.
Bangalore doesn't seem to even have a reliable phone network yet, and i know it's a lot harder to communicate with my indian peers than my north american/european/japanese ones. I'm sure there are certain tasks that lend themselves to outsourcing, but my experience suggests that trying to move parts of a complex system is a bad idea.
They're making the classic mistake of thinking that programming is the same as creating software, and are making implications then that programmers are the creators of software, completely ignoring computer scientists and software engineers.
There is a clear difference between writing the code for a program and actually determining what code is needed or making a new, original algorithm. Those fields are the only ones that matter now and are the only ones that have ever really mattered.
Also, there's the field of those doing spot fixes and working in-company for major sites who can afford to have their own support staff--those are really more administrators and systems engineers.
All those fields happen to require knowledge of programming, but it is the least of their prerequisites.
For those who crave analagous examples, consider whether a sculptor is a stone cutter, an architecht is a diagrammer and builder, or a rocket hobbyist is a welder.
In the embedded software space, where real-time interaction between various interrupts means that system design and hard core debugging skills are king, outsourcing, and especially overseas, will never be a factor.
Less is more.
The way everything is being sent out of the country to 'cut costs', most major markets in the US are on the endangered species list, its not just programmers..
While products may be cheaper, no one will be able to have decent enough jobs to make the money to buy them anyway..
And since we don't have our unparalleled manufacturing base any longer, ( 'high tech jobs are the future' nonsense ) we are the mercy of everyone else in the world..
Should scare you, it scares me..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
> software engineering will still take place in the western countries
> anyone can write code
Why do you think software engineering can be separated so easily from the coding? Surely the best thing is to have one competent person who can do both?
It would make it harder for the coder and the engineer to point fingers at one another.
And anyway, according the most of the estimates I see (to be taken with a pinch of salt of course), coding only takes up 10% of the time - why take all the risks of splitting this off to a different person in a different country.
Also, in my experience, it's only when you start coding that you realise how the design could be improved, and you realise the requirements need clarifying, et cetera. I think this is the main lesson of Xtreme Programming (that's a damn stupid name, isn't it?)
I think that software should be developed by less people, but make sure those people are well educated about everything from testing and requirements gathering all the way to how processors work at a low level.
I am a republican but I had a hard time with that comment by Bush. I have been to college. I have two Masters degrees. I don't need to go to the local community college, I need a job. I have been unemployed for two months. If I could live off of a WalMart wage I'd be okay. But, I am a single dad with two kids of which I have full-time custody. I just need a decent job at a decent wage. At this point, I would flip burgers if it paid enough.
http://www.busyweather.com/
That doesn't make sense. At one point people said: sure let the bluecollar jobs go overseas but the brain jobs will (of course) stay here. But why? People in other countries have brians? What so special about USA brains.
On its surface your comment was funny, but the problem is that this seems to be all that anyone can offer when asked "now that our jobs are gone, what do we do?"
The jobs that are leaving are high-skilled programming jobs that are probably filled by someone with a degree. What is that person to do? Go back to a community college like Bush suggests? Do these people have any idea what it would be like for those of us in our 30s, 40s, or 50s who would have to go back to school and start at the bottom again? Assuming there are even positions other than Walmart greeter that would be available.
This gov't is making a critcal mistake in equating software jobs with manufacturing jobs. A manufacturing job requires little training and provides no ladder to climb. A software job requires massive training (by comparison) and provides the worker with a background that lets them eventually lead the industry.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
I agree with you completely and would even go a step further and say that the jobs of software engineering and programming are inherently intertwined. A software engineer needs to spend some time programming within their design in order to understand it, improve it, and move things along with the team of implementers. If they just sit back with pencil and don't spend a decent amount of time getting their hands dirty, they are designing with a large number of blind spots.
This is not to say that there aren't some design issues that can be addressed at a high level, but most of software engineering does not occur at that high level.
Are you serious about auto jobs? Have you seen Detroit or Flint Michigan? Auto jobs, by and large, ARE gone! Sure, there are a few plants left, but by and large, the auto industry is GONE. Jesus, watch "Roger and Me", and you'll see the desolation and poverty left when all of the auto jobs left this country. You must be living in a different US than I do, because by and large, the auto jobs are gone... just like steel, textiles, etc.
I don't respond to AC's.
Yeah, we still have great universities, but what percentage of the big universities are being filled by foreigners? (I don't mean "foreigners" in a racist sort of way). They learn here and take it home with them. Yeah, a lot of them stay, but a lot of them bring the education home.
Some of the first white colar jobs to go are programming because it is very easy to export. But once places like India get a large software industry going and have more experience, they will inevitably want to diversify into other industries. It is sad, but I think the US will cease to be a superpower in an economic and academic sense in the next few decades. We're just falling behind at an alarming rate. Our increased reliance on military might is a dead giveaway. My only hope is that we can get the hawks and war mongers out of office and make some real domestic improvements. I don't want the USA to maintain status by holding the rest of the world at gunpoint. That is not the country I have grown to love.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Division of labor is the very foundation of modern economics. What happens with free trade is that people do the jobs they're good at, other people do the jobs they're good at, and they trade.
When labor goes to India, that means Indians get richer and start buying goods. Some of those goods will be produced in America. As another example, since NAFTA passed Mexico is now outsourcing labor to China and (gasp...) South Texas because skilled Mexicans have gotten too rich to be hired for such jobs.
Economics is not a zero sum game and there is no giant sucking sound that can take all of our jobs and leave us unable to buy stuff. Just ask the people along the "American Autobahn" in the South who work in any of the many high-paying jobs that have been insourced to this country. If free trade were absolute and everywhere, we'd all be much richer - and the best educated and most productive of us, i.e. Westerners, would be richest.
Conversely, a simple thought experiment will tell you the ultimate booster to employment - ban all trade! Everyone would have to make his own clothes, catch his own food -100% employment all the time! Utopia! Sadly, most people would starve and the rest would be unable to maintain any standard of living, but, whatever yo.
Yes, this sucks for the workers who are displaced. The invention of the car sucked for buggy whip manufacteres too. I'm all for assisting these people with reeducation, but I'm not for holding everyone's standard of living back so we can save a few jobs.
Consider that all economic bills must originate in the House. Further, consider that the House is a Republican house at the moment. Thus, any bills authorizing spending would have to have strong REPUBLICAN support to pass.
Oh, and I suppose you have no good explanation why it's appropriate to simply overlook the billions upon billions that Bush has wasted in Iraq.
Yup. You know the difference? There are major import taxes on cars coming in to the country from overseas. That's why if you're driving a Honda it was built in the US. It's also why if you're driving a VW there's a 90% chance it was built in the US. The government saw a major industry that was being hurt by foreign competition and took measures to stop it.
The difference here is that the software industry is being hurt by offshoring and the government is encouraging it with tax breaks for companies moving development overseas. We are losing high paying jobs and telling highly educated people that the solution is to go back to college.
The only light at the end of this tunnel is that most companies are discovering that offshore development is more of a PITA than it's worth. I know a guy that actually has a successful business just doing damage control on software 'developed' overseas.
.technomancer
Mod this parent up!
I cannot agree with you more. As a developer I continually question the specs that I am given (so our client wants to capture customer feedback via the web. What kind of database do they have? What's the application platform? Any idea of how much traffic they expect? Why didn't YOU ask these questions?) which makes me look like I'm being difficult but in the end produces a *much* better product.
When you've been taught to simply code to specs and never ask questions you run the risk of creating flawed software.
But I've never been anyplace where the programmers weren't also the computer scientists and the software engineers.
I've never seen a room-full of drooling programmers whose job was to fill in the blanks after the software engineers spec'd it all out for them.
Maybe I've just never encountered what you call a 'programmer', but in my experience they're all one and the same. I participate in design meetings. I design the code. I write my sections. Of what value would someone be whose sole job is to type in what's already been defined for them?
What kind of environment are you guys working in that there's this lower-class of programmers who don't know anything about developing algorithms and designing?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Im really tired of the whole it's hard to find blah blah blah in the US. All the developers I've known that were outsourced were VERY competent, In fact more competent than many of the indans who replaced them. They certainly knew the business end better. It was all about money. We can hire 20 indian PHD's for what one american makes, who cares if they turn out crap. It's all about saving a buck or two so some CEO can give himself a nice bonus for cutting costs. Problem is what will all these folks do when everything is outsourced.
Accounting jobs, Programming, Call center, Engineering in same cases lower level Mgmt and I even read that some comp are outsourcing legal services......
We have to do something and make something. We can't all make a living by selling each others crap on ebay...
When the bomb does hit (figuratively) the Companies doing all the outsourcing will be screaming the loudest. Financial institutions are big on outsourcing. Well if everyone is makeing 20grand a year at star bucks or Home Depot we are'nt gonna be getting mortages on $200,000 houses or having money market accounts or any other things that middle income folks do, cause there won't be many middle income folks.
It's funny but all of this paralells nature so perfectly. You have the folks at the top of the food chain, Banks Mega Corps etc... Killing off the very people they feed off of. When they are done they will die themselves... No Indian is gonna pay some American Bank outrageous fees to manage thier money or accounts. You say well the bank will buy an Indian Co..... etc..... thats true, but again how many Indian's making 5-10grand a year are going to be taking out $200,000+ mortages ?? Loans for $30,000 ford suv's??? Nada Zilch Zip...
Just like nature, when the big predators at the top kill all the food, then they will either die off themselves or become smaller because they must now feed on smaller prey.
Welcome to the food chain, watch your head and your back ( for talons) and don't get overly worried about Ideology. A Lion is neither a Democrat nor a republican he merely wants you for lunch. Remeber that when you have to train your indian replacements. Wonder how you are gonna pay medical bills for your family and what the hell you are going to do now..
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
There will always be a need for domestic programmers, at least for defense contracts.
As far as the attrition of programmers go, it is very understandable. Programming isn't particularly rewarding in most workplaces. Also, that recent article about IT management being among the worst jobs is important, as unhappy or ineffective managers do rub off on their staff. Further, many programmers simply are not good at their jobs.
Having worked as a programmer for over five years, I'm already burnt out and training myself for a career change. The politics, the people I had to work with, the lack of funding, the lack of understanding the complexity of software, all chisled away at me until I simply had to find something else to do for my sanity's sake.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
It is almost impossible to find quality employees these days.
Perhaps if HR departments went looking for quality employees instead of warm bodies that can fill a checklist, then you'd get quality employees. It also wouldn't hurt if, when you need some hot new skill, you got your internal guys to pick it up instead of immediately looking for a new guy that has it.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I was an analog circuit designer for 15 years. I designed industrial, telecom and consumer products; mostly electronic power conversion circuitry such as power supplies, DC-DC Converters, High Voltage Transformers and DC-AC Inverters. First the manufacturing was moved overseas. Then, the writing was on the wall. All the design work went overseas too. Once they started building the stuff, it wasn't long before they figured out how to clone and modify designs. Before long, they were able to design from scratch. Today, the majority of electronics manufacturing is done abroad. It's pretty much been like that for 10 years. I saw it coming and retrained myself to write software.
Now the programming jobs are going where the labor is cheap. I have no reason to expect any different outcome than I saw with electronics. Indeed, many "knowledge" jobs can be done abroad. China and India have vast pools of highly educated workers. Their cost of living is a fraction of ours so they can and will work for a fraction of what we make. In cases were the work can't be taken to the cheap labor, the cheap labor is brought to the work. Special visas and porous borders are providing US businesses with all the inexpensive labor they want.
When the electronics industry was in decline, I saw opportunity in software. However, as the software work dries up, I see no new promising areas emerging to take it's place.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
This fallacy that US education is lackluster is the same garbage spouted by those who say we need H1-B visas. As someone who has managed people educated in the US and people educated in other countries - both H1-B holders and outsourced programmers, it is clear to me that not only are US-educated software engineers superior to those educated in places like India, but they also have a much easier time communicating, undertstanding, and getting the job done right. CEOs and the rest of management at many US companies simply look at the cost estimates for an employee or for a project, and decide that they need an "outsourcing strategy" and that is provides them a competitive advantage. Longer term, though, they suffer from a decrease in productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction. I can't wait for the first company to blame outsourcing for a product's late, buggy arrival.
No, I'm pretty sure the source of the problem goes a lot deeper than that. The fact is that childhood education in the US has been substandard for a long time now. It is about right that we start feeling the long term effects now. If HR departments are doing what you say, I'd at least partially atribute it to poor education. Early education isn't just about reading, writing, and arithmetic. It is about dicipline and teaching kids to think for themselves.. how to solve problems and make decisions. Maybe I am a little biased living in the city of Chicago where public education is particularly bad, but still..
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I spent 3+ years after exiting the service working a dead-end job. Finally got a few community courses under my belt and "bid" my way into a job in the career of my choice by asking for a low end salary.
After a few years I was where I felt I needed to be and have progressed further each year. There is work out there for those who want it, however too many overvalue themselves and thus lock themselves out of jobs.
The key is to get A job. From there it is a only a few years before your value should become evident to the people you work with. If that isn't happening either you aren't working to that perceived value or you are in the wrong place.
Blaming a President for your lack of job is about as brite as claiming one got you a job. The first rule of being successful in your career is to realize it is NOT YOUR JOB. It is your employers job and its in your damn best interest to prove you deserve to have it.
For those who hate that truth I am truly sorry as there is nothing I can do for you. You have to look at yourself and ask why you think you don't need to prove or earn your position in life. In the end you are accountable to yourself.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
There are a limited number of countries we can exploit like this, and the ones we do tend to see a bit of a brain drain as professors get lured away from teaching positions by the huge salaries we're offering. I think we'll hit an eqilibrium eventually, the question is whether that'll be sooner or later.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Parent is very insightful, but the senior positions won't move, unless entire projects are moved overseas.
The project might not be moved, but, eventually, the Indian companies will start their own projects.
They will have the junior coders turned intermediate coders turned senior coders turned management.
There is nothing about the USofA that will protect the management jobs.
At that point why not just license someone else's code?
As in EULA, as in "import".
Eccccccenomikz says that at that point, either HR will have to lower expectations (less bang for the buck from their point of view) or Pay more to get the top talent (Scarcity of resource drives price up).
You left out the option where there isn't a US company anymore so there isn't an HR department and the entire software package is imported from India.
Either way it's a long term negative for businuess in the USA, because of their short sighted goals.
It's worse than that. It's a long term negative with a very big crash coming in about 10 years. That's how long it will take for all those new Indian programmers to learn enough to move into management and such.
How can a US company compete with an Indian company where EVERYONE makes 1/10th what the US company makes.
Eventually, all the "senior" programmers in the US will either have moved to a different field or be maintaining some single system for some single company until they die (or the new CIO gets a quote from an Indian company that will migrate that system for 1/10th what that programmer is being paid).
Well put. But corporations are just tools for capital. Maybe the bank in your example will no longer have any employees or branches in America. The corporations can thrive while America dies.
Microsoft is not a healthy software company. Their desire to outsource is an indication of the larger internal problem.
If your company produces art, you cater to your artists or you fail. Microsoft has an enourmous amount of cash which has given it some economic inertia, but it is not innovating and that is killing it. What is their response to Linux, a further delayed somewhat vague OS idea? What is their response to Firefox, a 3 year old browser version?
The companies that outsource the things that they shouldn't are sowing the seeds of their future failure. Oracle's outsourcing is creating their own future competitor.
I am not "pro" outsource. I am a programmer and I obviously want to stay employed. But these doom and gloom stories are plain illogical. In the same way that we have manufacturing jobs here even though we also export many manufacturing jobs, there will always be programming jobs in this country even though we also export a lot of programming jobs. Until some technological advance makes programming unnecessary and then we will be the makers of the programs that make the programs we use.
SYS 49152
What so special about USA brains.
Well, the argument is that our society is fundamentally better than others on the planet because we support the kinds of rights that make innovation prosper. A free press, the ability to easily incorporate, easy access to loans... Couple this with our gee-whiz universities that think themselves the bastion of all knowledge and research.
The PROBLEM is that all these things are slowly disappearing. The gee-whiz universities that come up with the innovative ideas? The actual product of those ideas are produced in cheap-labor economies. Eventually the "locals" catch on -- this is what happened in Japan when we had them building our TV sets and telecommunications devices. Eventually they figure out how to do it themselves, and suddenly our domestic manufacturing goes out of business. "Oh well," we say to ourselves, "at least we've got XXXXX."
As in, "Oh well, at least we own the auto industry." Not any more. "Oh well, at least we own the manufacturing tools industry (production line machinary)." Not any more. "Oh well, at least we own the telecommunications industry." Not any more. "Oh well, at least we own the software industry..." Well, not for much longer. And what's left? The only jobs remaining are the ones that require a physical human presence.
So, you need the guy to unload the cargo shipment from China. You need the salesperson to sell you the new gee-whiz gadget (imported, of course). Or sell you your hamburgers, which, surprise, are made from imported beef because it's cheaper.
And don't get me started on the other aspects of our country that will "save us." Free press? That's gone the way of the Dodo bird, thanks to media conglomerates like FOX and relaxed FCC restrictions on local station ownership.
How about our easily incorporated companies? Good luck finding anyone to put any money it them. And good luck coming up with an idea that isn't instantly sued into oblivion thanks to our asinine intellectual property laws. Instead what you'll have is a great idea that's either bought out by a bigger fish, or simply stolen by them. But our lawyers will save us, right? Our giant army of lawyers? Don't count on it.
Just about the only thing left for our country to do is dump money into military spending. If we can't out-think you, or out-democracy you, well, we can just out-bomb your sorry ass.
If you ask me, India is looking a lot like we used to look like, back before the "American Dream" turned into a nightmare.
Discipline and problem solving are the 2 biggest problems in education today. There is no discipline, and the last thing schools want is some student questioning things. That was fine when everyone was being prepared for factory type jobs where the boss was standing over you all day, but almost all modern American jobs require a certain amount of autonomoy on the part of the worker. Public schools have never taught this well, and it's getting even worse. Home schooling is no longer just for religious nuts.
Knowledge workers (like programmers) are not interchangable commidity parts. You're paying them as much for their ability to think and solve problems moreso then you are for their mastery of specific skills. You have to invest time & money up front to get them to learn *your* business and to get them integrated into the organization so they're actually productive.
What (smart) companies are beginning to realize hiring smart & talented (hence expensive) engineers is more cost-effective in the long run than hiring cheap code monkeys to do the same work. If you have 3 uber-hackers making $100K each, they can probably produce better software in less time than a team of 10 code monkeys each making $30K. The savings of hiring a less-talented person is offset by the fact that you have to hire more of them to do the same job, and even then the quality of their work is not the same and they require more supervision.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
What you say might be the case at this point in time but it doesn't mean that this is the way it will and should always be. This is really largely caused by the fact that the software industry is young and programming has not entirely left the realm of hacking. Consider other areas of engineering (the so-called real engineering) and you will see that in these fields the engineers rarely get to lay brick, so to speak. There's nothing that requires an engineer to be a coder in the long run. In fact I think that it might be beneficial for an engineer to not be a coder because it will force them to stay away from programming hacks and rely solely on first principles and actual developed science in solving their problems.
Having had elementary school in both Taiwan and the US, I've gotten a bit of an insight into this difference in education.
In taiwan they _made_ us do more. Everyone was expected to memorize multiplication tables and recite poems and write essays and everything else. If you didn't do well, often you got your knuckles hit with a ruler. (This was many years ago - I don't think they do that anymore). And the parents were in on it too - most kids I knew didn't spend that much time running around outside or playing video games. The problem was that we were getting injected with information, but a lot of the connections simply weren't there. We did not really explore things. Also, (partly due to class size, there was something like 60 kids in my class for one teacher to deal with) there wasn't much thought given to different learning styles or learning speeds.
In contrast, when I went to elementary school in the US (this was after Taiwan) I was encouraged to explore what I learned. In part because I had learned some of it in Taiwan, I ended up well ahead of most others in my class. But instead of just blindly learning what got put in front of me I was instead allowed to explore things where they took me. I guess I could say I learned how to learn, without it being forced on me.
Of course, this was just elemenatary school. However, given the systems, if I had stayed at Taiwan, I probably would have learned more, but in the end, might not have a very good idea how to apply it, or how to explore new avenues of thought. In contrast, I feel the most important thing I got out of my education here was how to find connections between what I already know and new things, and how to incorporate those things into my "working" knowledge rather then just have an encyclopedia on call in my brain. I sometimes feel it's the difference between a computer and the person in front of the computer.
This is not to say that foreign students are necessarily worse then American ones. It just that I think the emphasis is different between the systems. I know foreign countries have consistently done better in tests and physic and math competitions and whatnot, but I don't find that to be all that good an indication of whether an educational system is "better" or not. What happens when you give those kids something which is completely unrelated to anything they've seen in a textbook? Can they start breaking down the problem and even be able to figure out what needs to be answered to solve the problem?
And the other big difference I find is the motivation of the students. In school here in the US, many of my classmates' primary goal was to play as many video games as possible, or always be watching TV, or something like that. And I feel if the student doesn't want to learn, there really isn't much we can do about it. It's something parents have to instill into their children. Here in America, I feel that if you really want to learn, the opportunities are still better then anywhere else. Elsewhere, like in Taiwan, school is set up more to make you learn no matter what.
What (smart) companies are beginning to realize hiring smart & talented (hence expensive) engineers is more cost-effective in the long run than hiring cheap code monkeys to do the same work.
Unfortunately, there are far more companies where the CEO knows he can get bigger bonuses by making a big deal out of offshoring IT even if it winds up costing more. It's all about snowing reporters and doing what's good for management in most companies.
Yep, been banging on about this myself on /. and other boards for some time.
I call it 'skills leakage' because it is rare for software to be so completely and accurately designed that it can be just sent offshore and a perfect product is returned. Moreover, modern development is iterative and incremental, the whole team: product managers, project managers, teamleaders, BAs, coders, DBAs etc. are all involved in the process on a continual basis.
Splitting the team is often inefficient, especially when time zones are 12h apart. So designers and managers are shipped over to where the work is being outsourced and they gradually transfer their skills. I know this, I have run a team in Mumbai and to increase productivity, it was entirely necessary to train and mentor coders to become designers and project leaders so that they were not so dependent on people in Europe. It was also necessary for the domain experts to be present for considerable periods, so much so that some had been in India for 18 months until they had made themselves almost redundant and were eventually shipped back to Europe only to be 'let go'.
Also when college graduates see that their future jobs are likely to be shipped offshore, they do not eagerly enter the profession. It's happening here in the UK already, a large percentage drop in people taking Computer Science.
Welcome to the massive species extinction (well in a Western habitat anyway)...
Did he inhale?
Strangely enough, that type of announcement usually makes stock price go up.
Your experiences are valid and telling. Learning things by force teaches you facts without understanding (Taiwan). Learning things by exploration (America) teaches you to think. As a result, many Taiwan trained individuals have great fact recall with very little creativity and many American trained individuals are very creative but without knowledge or motivation. A well rounded education includes both of these ingredients and a few more.
We home school. One of my children is slow on math, so we focused on her strengths, art, literature and writing. We included math, but at a slower rate to avoid burnout. As she matured, we ramped up math and she zoomed up to her age level, but with the maturity to tackle that which is more difficult. One of our children was slow on reading, so we focused on his strengths, math, history, and sports. Though he didn't crack the "reading code" until 8 1/2, he is now (at 10) reading at a high school level (and he's still great at his other subjects.) Our other child just plods along (at a very diligent and fast pace) in all subjects. We havn't been able to stump her yet! With each child, we focus on strengths, keep the weaknesses growing, and use memorization as a tool where appropriate.
To sum this up, each child must be taught as an individual, leaning to strengths to build maturity, drilled on facts to enforce brain capacity and recall, and taught to think and understand "why" on every plain. This approach has given my children a great sense of ability. It has also given them an understanding of what they are capable of and what they want to do as adults. They are confident leaders wherever they go because they learned that weaknesses in a particular subject does not mean that they are stupid. They know how to leverage their strength and improve their weaknesses (if necessary!) No, they are not perfect, but they can choose a career/college path that they CAN succeed at.
The outsourcing delimma is as much a product of the internet boom as a poor education process. The internet is the new level playing field for the world. To compete WE have to get up off of our duffs and make a difference. It's not us against them (except in war) anymore. If you see a dead end ahead of you turn off that dumb TV and PS2. Study a new market. Find something to manufacture that will make a difference in someone's life. Reeducate yourself. I have spent the last 4 1/2 years mostly unemployed because I WAS a "high-end" computer consultant. When our market started crashing in '99/'00 I didn't follow the advice that I just gave. In this time period I have learned volumes on how to develop and qualify a business idea and turn it into a viable plan. I have also learned a lot about investors and their quirks. I'm not there yet, but I should have a thriving business soon. If the light at the end of the tunnel starts blowing a train whistle, reengineer yourself before you have to do it without pay (that really stinks!)
On another note, as the "3rd world" or "developing" countries continue to grow their economies, their labor costs increase. Eventually, as the world comes up beside us in expertise and quality, our prices will look more favorable again. Jobs will eventually come back, though maybe in 20 years.
Yes, nothing generates more possitive PR than massive layoffs and offshoring.
It's a strange world where getting rid of the people who built the business and giving the keys to the business to companies in a foreign country will get you huge rewards. The Roman empire also rotted from within. Short-term bread and circuses.
The good ones come to America, get working visas, and work for half what you will. Six year later they get green cards and work for 90% of your price, but now they're the experienced ones with domain expertise and have the additional advantage of being able to speak the same language as the call center reps, testers, and code monkeys who have been outsourced.
If you can do something better that someone else, you get the job.
If the Chineese are better at some aspect of programming that us, then it's not suprising that they get some of our jobs. There are many cases when an American is needed for an American job because they understand the requirements more and are there when you need them.
I'm 14 years old, and am an advanced php programmer and web designer. Because of this, I cam write web sites for people at much lower rates than most. Does this mean that I am "Stealing jobs"? Who am I stealing them from? The people who charge more than me for web sites? Isn't this the whole point of "Free Enterprize"? And, Yes, I am an american...
Visit my website for Free Online Classifieds, Games, and More!
http://www.allthingsinteresting.com