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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.
Sweet! Now it's finally against the law to kill and eat me!
--
Free gmail invites with comments from satisfied recipients!
Sadly, programmers are particulally endangered due to their inability to mate in captivity.... or anywhere else!
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/
I figure Wal-Mart is always an option. Hmm, stock shelves or pass-out shopping carts... decisions, decisions.
No matter where you go... there you are.
This hits home for me being a programmer... but then they mention a pay difference of $52k for immigrants and $60k for americans. Yet they go on to say that people are taking jobs at a 40% pay cut. They must be using that fuzzy math.
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
Didn't Bush tell us to go to a community college and educate ourselves so we can get higher paying jobs?
Great!! So all the cool hacking goes of to india and us western programmers get the sucky work!
I am claiming asylum in india based on the fact that every nerd has the right to hack code and eat curry!
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
You know its too bad that programmers are endangered, luckily they have mostly evolved into software engineers. Its just too bad we can't pick which jobs are endangered, I think we could afford to have lawyers a little more endangered. But please don't let them be come endangered by evolving, I can't imagine what a lawyer evolves into but it probably has fangs.
Well, as a U.S. programmer, I have to say that if I can get my 15 minutes of fame on TV, I don't particularly care if it's with David Attenborough simply because I'm listed as endangered... Any TV face time is good TV face time.
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. :-)
... then I guess take-out is cheaper than home-cooked.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
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.
I'm a UK UNIX support/developer/sysadmin, and I'm being relocated to Seattle under the H1-B programme..
:)
I'm not planning on stealing anyone's job - my company is creating a new position for me here, and the experience I have with the company's products from working in the UK office is one of the main drivers for moving me, rather than hiring someone else.
I'm also not a cheaper option - my salary is on a par with US techies, and my company has to pay $$$ for the visa and relocation expenses. So, it's a sink or swim world - might be positions available in the UK or other places. It's not the third world outside, you know - this is free movement of jobs and labour
David
Certain areas of programming lend it self away from offshoring and H-1B visa holders. Here in the defense industry we have the confidence that our programing requires US citizens holding security clearances. This, however, does cement our job secturity. While we do not have to worry about offshoring, the vacillating DOD defense fund and nearing presidant election leave us a bit chary.
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?
Yes, like other posters I do not believe my career is in jeopardy, having long since moved past programming into software engineering. Still, I've recently found myself drawn to hobbies that when I look at them could potentially replace SE as a profession should I ever choose to do so. Feel free to add to this list with replies:
E lectronics (ok, this isn't too far from software, and about the same endangered status).
:-)
Automotive mechanics
Carpentry (soon to branch out and study architecture and general contracting)
Farming/survival/self-sufficiency
Anyone have others? What hobbies to computer professionals enjoy that might branch out into alternate careers? I discarded Lego building immediately
Nerd Rock In Progress
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.
That's a good idea -- if you can get a clearance. Getting a security clearance can be difficult for various reasons. For one thing, you have to find a company that will sponsor you (either that, or go to work for the government). For another, you have to meet the requirements for a clearance, and they've tightened those up since 9/11 (I should know -- when I applied for a clearance, the government told me they'd have to investigate me for well over a year, just because I had changed my name). I even know of one guy who's been cleared for a while but is now in jeopardy of losing his clearance because his wife is French.
But yes -- if you can get the clearance, that's definitely an excellent way to give yourself a good dose of career security.
The death of the American Programmer has been heralded many times before. Back before spreading terror about the eminent collapse of our non-Y2K compliant world, Ed Yourdon wrote a little book of doom called The Rise and Fall of the American Programer, in which a dim future was projected for our overpaid and underworked behinds.
He wrote this is 1993.
Some of you will remember that the booming economy of the mid to late 90s in which being able to say "internet" landed you a tech job.
It will take more years to evaluate the real impact of offshoring on the American Programmer. If programming is what you enjoy doing, you will always have work (although you will have to be flexible in what you program).
As always, don't panic.
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 ----
I am currently in the last stages of forming a new venture in which at least five coders will be hired. I have used offshore (India) coders in the past, which has worked well for some projects. This is not however my prefered working relationship. In my experience, even with advanced communication technologies, there is no substitute to 'being there' for building an intuitive, fast, team.
Arachninecronymphocranialpheliaphobiacs Anonymous
> 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.
My job won't be going overseas any time soon, because I work at a bookstore and do programming for them as part of my regular salary (which just went from 8.00 dollars an hour to about 11!!) So if everyone were as dumb as me, and were willing to work for just over minimum wage, there'd be no need to send jobs overseas.
There's a futures market that examines some of these issues: ITJOBS
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
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.
Parent is very insightful, but the senior positions won't move, unless entire projects are moved overseas. At that point why not just license someone else's code? They will just have a lot of trouble trying to fill them with people who have a resume that meets the requirement that they are looking for. 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). Either way it's a long term negative for businuess in the USA, because of their short sighted goals. Which is really rather typical of the American businuess perspective.
(Eventually, Japan might just buy the entire world, because they have long term goals and are patient about achieving them.)
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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.
From what I've seen, most people cannot design a program even if they have written code.
TZ
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
Some software companies or IT shops might have a highly compartmentalized (stratified?) software development process with senior people doing mainly design work and junior people writing the actual code and doing little else, but that really hasn't been the case in most the places I've worked during my career.
The beginning programming jobs I've been exposed to over the years have *not* been just "coding" positions -- writing code is only one of the tasks involved in the job. The person also has to do a number of other things, often including the initial requirements gathering and various follow-up tasks with the end users or customers, creating the interface/program/database design, doing the actual coding itself, writing or updating any technical documentation which might exist, doing formal unit testing before acceptance testing, doing regression testing if required, and finally providing the actual support to the customer after the code is loaded into production.
That was the case for me when I first came out of school (I was effectively put in charge of a particular set of programs and had to do it all), and it's still the case in my current place of employment.
Maybe some companies can actually afford to have dedicated design people who don't actually write the code themselves, but I guess the places I worked didn't have the resources required to have that type of functional separation. The one or two experts in each area had to do it all, since there wasn't anyone else who know each area well enough to produce an effective design.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
It's human nature to respond to put the best possible light on a negative situation that doesn't appear to be changeable.
This may be somewhat OT, but I think it's a good example of this cognitive dissonance phenomenon: I am a social conservative (strongly support the right of an armed citizenry, believe abortion should be illegal during all 9 months, for example) who is not voting for either the Republican or Democrat presidential candidate. I simply can't see myself voting for someone who has proven himself as incompetent as Bush has, even though I actually agree with him on most of the issues I find important. (The Iraq war and the environment are exceptions.) I found it at turns amusing and exasperating so see how my conservative friends tried to defend Bush's "puzzled chimp" performance in the first debate: "It was 9PM Eastern time, and that's late at night for him," "I don't think he did that bad," "He's a plain-spoken man," etc. Imagine their reaction if things had been switched and Kerry had performed that dismally. There would have been a lot of gloating and pointing out that his fate was sealed.
Now, back onto the topic: Good luck with your theory that only programming grunt work is going to be offshored. Yeah, that's what we said about manufacturing some years back, maintaining that the real "brain work" will stay in the U.S. Not a chance.
Just take a look at what Google says about the topic. I found one of the first hits, "Offshore Outsourcing World" to be particularly interesting, and chilling. Ironically, the article talks about google itself.
I actually don't see any alternative to free trade, and firmly believe that capitalism is the only way to go (conservative there, again). But with the last barriers to global competition rapidly coming down, a re-distribution of wealth is in progress on a global scale. That means painful adjustments for those who have gotten used to having more of it than most of the world's people.
I am a registered patent agent, licensed to practice law in patent matters before the U.S Patent & Trademark Office. To get to where I'm now at, I've had to get a four-year technological degree, pass a really tough exam, and learn how to write by working under some experienced patent attorneys for that past five years or so. (Self-promotional but generally informative info here.)
So, does that mean my career is safe? See for yourself.
But there's a difference between programming and software engineering...
Very true. Programming is just one part of the software development process. Programming focuses on product, software engineering focuses on process. Programming is the "what", software engineering is the "how". This leaves out one part of the equation, one part I will probably be flamed for bringing up: computer science.
I consider myself a computer scientist as opposed to a programmer or software engineer. I have a solid CS background and am working on buttressing that with mathematics education. I like CS theory, statistics, discrete mathematics, etc. I do not like being a code monkey, nor do I like being a software engineer, although I do value both and do take on both those roles at my job. I much prefer being a computer scientist. How does this fit into the scenario presented by the article?
While I think most theory and math discoveries are already made, I still think progress is possible. I want to do research, but it looks like the shrinking computer fields might have repercussions even in academia. I may have to emmigrate to the next computer nexus to keep on the bleeding edge. I hate to bring politics into this, but I think that for all the educational focus our national leadership has, I think they all need to realize that bright, intelligent workers mean nothing if India can still do the work cheaper. Then we have a shrinking working class paying taxes to support new, bright workers who spend years being educated only to collect unemployment benefits. How about a "No Worker Left Behind" law?
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
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.
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.
I'm curious as the actual cost of outsourcing.
I did some consulting for a large, software-focused company that has been trying some outsourcing. The have a standard company measure for units of functionality, and tried sending some projects to Indian programmers and measuring the cost. All things accounted for, the cost per unit was about 50% lower, not the radical 80-90% off that you hear.
But that didn't mean that they were going to do a lot of outsourcing. For the core parts of their software, they wanted in-house people to work on it; it's too risky putting the crown jewels in the hands of hired mercenaries. And the barriers to communication were large enough that many kinds of projects couldn't really be sent, because transferring the appropriate knowledge is too hard.
Well, the article is a little misleading.
It's probably true that over time fewer employees in the US will call themselves developers/programmers. If tech support can be handled in other countries, it will be.
However, in-house sysadmin jobs aren't going overseas, and the marketing/training/consulting jobs probably aren't disappearing here (esp if it involves lots of face-to-face contact).
People won't be hired to write programs; they will be hired to find solutions and to adapt commercial/open source solutions to a company's needs. To do this, programming skills will probably be helpful. But it will exist as a secondary skill (helpful but not necessary).
Compare this to my own situation. Every business book says how important writing/communication skills are for business. Does that mean I (a talented writer) will never have problems finding work as a writer? No (although I currently work as a tech writer).
You see, accountants, marketing reps, even engineers benefit from excellent writing skills. But it is not the primary skill they are being hired for. Similarly, techies won't be hired solely for programming skills. However, it will be viewed as a desirable secondary skill for the resume.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
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"
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.
Agreed! Personally, I'm not planning on getting out of the industry, but I do plan to work only on projects using agile methods like Extreme Programming. Why? Because methods like XP tightly integrate the businesspeople and the techies in a way that is impossible if you're working in different time zones.
Not only is this more efficient than a document-driven process, but it's so much more flexible that you can keep ahead of your competitors using traditional processes. For projects that need speed and flexibility, outsourcers can't compete, whether they're in an Accenture office or in Bangalore.
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
No doubt the industry is changing but I do not think it is valid to lump every different kind of programmer or job into one category and say that it is being outsourced.
The most obvious outsourcing occurs in companies that have IT departments but are not in themselves a software development company. For instance, a bank and it's IT department. These IT departments are a commodity for the non-tech company and they are looking to satisfy that commodity at the cheapest possible price. And the types of jobs being exported are very basic types of programming that could be compared to the simple manufacturing jobs that are also exported.
This is a very different situation from a software company where the programmers are not considered a commodity. This might not be true for the very large software companies but that is also an indication of their dysfunction.
The jobs are flowing to India purely because of the low cost. As India develops a large middleclass due to this influx of money, wages will rise and the value proposition will worsen for India. That's when the jobs will start flowing to China. India is not necessarily in the best position, long term.
SYS 49152
Programmers are typically well educated and mobile - they will go where the work is.
Hundreds of contract programmers are said to have left the UK to work abroad becuase of recent tax changes targeted at them. Right now in the UK I know of a number of _US_ programmers who have come here to work on major projects where apparently they can't find enough UK contractors. Probably (given it is a large multinational/US company) some of the work is also being outsourced from the UK back _in_ to the US.
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 work on projects that require US citizenship, top secret clearance, polygraphs. There's no way my job or our work will ever be outsourced.
BTW, we're hiring in the Ft Meade, MD area...cleared or uncleared. Unfortunately, business is booming and we're behind the hiring curve for the year.
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?
Would you stop it about the H1Bs? They are *NOT* "stealing" your jobs! For an H1B to be hired, the company has to *prove* that the foreign worker is better qualified than local available workforce for the position they are being hired. And the salary level *must* be approved by the local dept. of labor. In fact, many companies avoid H1Bs like a plague because it takes too much effort to do the paperwork, and they have to wait 4-5 months before getting an approval.
No US company would hire an H1B if they could have an American doing that job. Especially considering that H1Bs are limited to 6 years.
I'm an H1B and I've been one for the past 6 years. I'm leaving to go to Canada in the spring because I'm coming up on my limit and can't continue working at my current job past July. I'm good at what I do, I have excellent English skills (and Russian, and now French), and I have good references. I have paid all my taxes (including Social Security, which I won't ever see back, since I don't qualify for it), and nearly everything I earned in the past 6 years went back into your economy.
Feel free to bitch about offshoring your jobs, since the money actually leaves your economy forever, but don't blame H1Bs if you lose your job. That's not how it works.
</rant>If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
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).
You are forgetting one important point. India would already be full of experienced senior programmers and architects, if they stayed in India. A large Majority of them come to the US after a few years and get their Green Card. Many stay and become US Citizens. The company I work for was founded by 3 Indians, 2 in the US. One of the owners, my boss, agrees with me that its almost impossible to do any work from India where client interaction is required. Which to design software, client interaction and onsite work is very much required. Hence our Indian office only does website work, while we do all the consulting and custom software for clients in the US.
The previous company I worked for had a software development staff of more than 100, half of which are Indian. Most of them are still here. The ones that returned to India, still work for that company, in the Indian office, making a salary much higher than most Indians. Until salaries go up in India, the most experienced will always come to the US where they can make more money.
Lagaan?
Taxes.
Glad I could help...
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
close. I'd say Cheney is Dark Vader, and Bush is Jar Jar Binks.
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
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.
You forgot to mention the medical profession. I was just in the hospital visiting a sick aunt. It was about 10pm and they were taking a chest X-ray. Then they told me that they needed to fax the X-ray out so that it could be analyzed and they would know what to do next when the analysis came back. Given the late hour (10pm Pacific coast time), I asked if the X-ray was being faxed to Bangalore. The nurse smiled, commented it was a cogent question, and suggested I take it up with the hospital administration because she was not allowed to discuss it.
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.
"... No you stupid, smelly brahmin, all the grunt coding work goes to you coolies, the creative work remains here...."
I wonder if the comp science world is similar to the manufacturing world. That is, I work for a large commercial airline company in Seattle and at one point was an engineer in the factory. There, the design engineers pummped out the designs and the "coolies" had to build the designs. And it never ceased to amaze me how much these "coolies" could teach the engineers about designing a "buildable" design.
Maybe it works different with software... I dunno
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?
I have been wondering, though - before I got fired, after, and even now - what if I hadn't been able to find a job? The truth is, there were several possibilities (heh, had one come in from guru.com this morning that looked like it would be a cool deal as a smalltime temp contract) - but it seems like those possibilities are dwindling. Maybe it is the economy - but then again, maybe programming is going away?
I am 31, I only have a "technical associates degree" from a small school, hardly any college experience (a couple of community college classes), no real degree. I also have a mortgage, bills and a family (well, my wife and a dog - no kids yet) to take care of. My main domain of knowledge is computing, in all of its forms - and programming specifically. This is what I love, this is what I do best. Given a job having to do with computers, an employer can expect me to work very hard to make them do what they want them to do. I know there are others that feel this way to.
I can't afford to go back to school - I don't have the time, I certainly don't have the money. I am living my life now, just wanting enough to be comfortable, and have a little fun now and then. So - serious question - what happens to a person like me if all the programming/computer jobs go away?
The outcome of such a situation doesn't seem rosy. I likely would end up in a job I would hate, doing something just to keep the roof over my head. That isn't the kind of life I am willing to lead - working at a job I hate for less money than I feel I am worth. I can't think of any job I would really like, that I have the knowledge or ability to do, that doesn't involve computers. There are jobs that I wouldn't mind doing - but I don't know if they exist, nor do I have the required experience for them even if they did?
One thing my wife and I discussed when this occurred was basically "chucking it all": Liquidating *all* of our assets, except for bare basics, buying a cheap RV, sticking the rest of the money in an account somewhere (and maybe some in an IRA) - and then becoming road hippies and travelling the continent. That would be a better life than a dead end unforgiving hateful job.
But seriously - are there other options for people in mine or similar situations? People who have little money to spend to educate themselves on the "next thing" (what is that, anyhow?) - I can't even think of a career path that won't suffer the same or similar fate as programming, etc. Becoming a lawyer, or a doctor, or a "healthcare professional", or a biotechnologist (yeah, I have the time and money for any of those - right)? About the only job I might have a shot at, that can't be off-shored, and people would need - would be either an air-conditioning repairman or auto-mechanic (and I still don't have the money to pay for such education). Plus, I don't relish the thought at doing either of those jobs (harsh and hazardous working conditions - though either one sounds somewhat interesting to do).
Ideas, comments, suggestions? All I can do right now is work as hard as I can doing what I know for what it is worth while I can still get a job (and, as I stated before, I did find work) - and save my money, get rid of all of my debt - and hope there is a way out...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Here are a few tidbits I know about outsourcing to India:
1. India (I believe TATA) is home to one of the first two SEI Level 5 software organizations - the other was the NASA shuttle group.
2. Programmers in India are more like $35 per hour rather than $5.
3. The time difference can actually be a benefit as customers can test during the day things that were coded durning the night before.
4. Anyone who has changes to go to code going to production in 30 minutes with a million lines should really review their processes and standards. That sounds like an invitation to failure.
5. Programmers got spoiled just like stock market bubble surfers during the 90's. It makes completely no sense to pay a VB or HTMl guy $80 per hour. I saw even higer rates than that.
To summarize: the Indians are getting the business because they are good programmers who have a good process and charge what the work is worth. The Indian rates have been rising steadily over the past few years and will equalize soon. So I don't really believe the Ameircan programmer is going the way of the Dodo bird.
We can only hope that Marx was horribly wrong and that we won't wake up one day to find that the poor people have had enough and either violently revolt or, if they grow enough to gain a majority, elect a Socialist government to screw the wealthy and middle class out of everything they have.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Strangely enough, that type of announcement usually makes stock price go up.
That US education is getting dumber by the year has been one of my rants for a long time since I was once an architect and team lead who interviewed and recommended for hire. I could barely find recent US grads who could think let alone show up regular. I was glad to have older IT workers and HR-1Bs to get critical projects done. My best experiences have been with Taiwanese who have outshone the Chinese mainlanders by fact of better education, better life style, and greater motivation. No iron rice bowl in Taiwan.
Too lazy to create a sig...
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.
"It's good to see that President Bush's plan to stimulate the economy is working so well."
No prizes for guessing where this journalist's sympathies lie. This blatant bias makes the whole article a little harder to swallow.
Vsprint wrote:
Do you really expect an American CEO to ever admit the multi-million dollar bonuses s/he recieved were based on a mistake?
Sure CEOs won't admit that offshoring their IT was a mistake but they can't keep making those mistakes forever. Offshoring will fall out of fashion along with all other management fads.
Offshoring and outsourcing are inherently bad for business*. Anybody on the ground level knows this. And these people are tomorrow's CEOs.
* A few reasons:
-
Outsourcers don't answer to the same shareholders as their client. When
"maintenance typically consumes 40 to 80 percent (average, 60 percent) of software costs" it's not exactly in an outsourcer's interests to provide maintenance-free software.
-
Having software engineers onsite boosts productivity no end. When it is in the interest of those programmers to build the system correctly (ie, not outsourced), they can guide the customer's requirements when typically the customer does not really know what s/he wants.
-
"Given a choice between paying $1 million per year for a team of 20 average developers or paying $1 million per year for a team of three outstanding developers, I'd choose the small team every time. The added bonus is that the
hidden overhead costs are much smaller with the smaller team - another benefit of using outstanding developers." This kind of advice has been around for decades and it's still as true as it ever was.
-
Contract negotiation is expensive. Litigation is even more expensive. It's cheaper to just get programmers who are aligned to your interests.
There are dozens of other good reasons but I am starting to get hoarse shouting...--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
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...
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