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Google Lawsuit Exposes Microsoft Offshoring Deal

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the everybody-is-doing-it dept.

2old2rockNroll writes "In more news from Microsoft's Google lawsuit, it appears that Ballmer's 2003 trip to China may have had as much to do with Microsoft moving jobs as selling software. It seems that the Chinese are not pleased with the number of jobs being moved to China, and one of Lee's duties was to identify jobs for export. Although hiring in Redmond has slowed, a Microsoft spokesperson admits they are "growing their work force" in China. Is it possible that Bill Gates' recent lament over the decline of US CS graduates and research spending was merely crocodile tears?"

17 of 429 comments (clear)

  1. SM's 'duh' moment of the week... by djupedal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Is it possible that Bill Gates' recent lament over the decline of US CS graduates and research spending was merely crocodile tears?"

    How many times do people need to be reminded? Investing in MS is risking having your own money used against you in the marketplace.

  2. Apart from bad mouthing Microsoft... by BluRBD!E · · Score: 5, Insightful

    why is this significant again? Companies offshore all the time. Hell, some companies move their headquarters to different continents.

    1. Re:Apart from bad mouthing Microsoft... by blowdart · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Well I'm sure a lot of CS degree holders in here would like to be able to get work in the US. Not to have to move to China or India to get a tech job.

      I don't know about the US because I'm in the UK but having a degree doesn't mean much these days. You're sold it as proof you can perform, but frankly that's a load of toss for most degrees. You come out with some academic idea of how things should be done without any real world experience. When hiring I've never looked at anyone's qualifications, but at their experience. Even when looking to take on junior roles, those suitable for people just out of college I've asked them what they've done outside of their school work, looked for web sites they've "developed", or code they've written. I've yet to see a degree that will instil anything I've wanted from a candidate other than a rudimentary idea of OO design and some half assed attempt at lifecycle methodologies.

      University degrees do not entitle you to a job and if you're one of the people that treat them as such I suggest you get a large grip on reality. No-one owes you anything.

    2. Re:Apart from bad mouthing Microsoft... by malkavian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Take a long hard look at what kind of degree to what kind of role.
      I've done a lot of hiring work in the past, and will tell you straight that a degree gives you a huge level of credibility over someone who claims "x years of experience".
      The work market as is, those claims are almost invariably exaggerated.
      Which leaves either a work portfolio (which means you need someone with both time and qualification to audit it, and ensure it's actually their own work), or some form of accredited certification that they are capable.
      Now, I've done a degree (two actually), AND got commercial certification.
      From the two of those, I'll have to say that the commercial offering will let you push the buttons with a minimal knowledge of what is really happening behind the scenes. It leaves the person, if they're relying on this as their main source of info, woefully unprepared for the real world where things exist in heterogenous enviornments, and problems actually occur.
      Which leaves a University degree.
      Yes, it says that the person knows a lot in theory, but fresh out of Uni, they have little practical application of it yet.
      However, what is says is they understand WHY things work in their discipline, and can work it out with a book, and a very good grounding in first principles.
      In 95%+ of cases, they rapidly outstrip the 'experience only' people across a broad spectrum of understanding. Degrees train you how to learn, not spoon feed you a few lines that you quote back by rote.
      Is a degree a 'guarantee of a job'? Not at all these days. Will it give you a head and shoulders leap over someone with only experience? Absolutely.
      If someone working for me couldn't justify why they'd brought someone on board with experience only, over someone with experience plus degree, I'd want a very good reason as to why. Otherwise they'd find their ability to make any decision of responsibility removed sharpish.

    3. Re:Apart from bad mouthing Microsoft... by bladernr · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I've done a lot of hiring work in the past, and will tell you straight that a degree gives you a huge level of credibility over someone who claims "x years of experience".

      Well I do a lot of hiring now, and manage a large technical organization, and I say it depends on the field. In hiring engineers (real ones... not "software" :), a degree really, really matters. No one is going to have some guy without a degree design a bridge or a building.

      I think computer software is different because of how fast the technology has been moving. Not only is experience better than a degree (with both being ideal), but people with a degree don't need it in CS. In fact, I prefer people with math degrees who learned languages "on the job." I've also had very good luck with mechanical engineers (I think it's the same thought process in mechanical as in software... ie, chain reactions).

      If you look at the past, you'll see it's the same in all professions. When a field of study is new, experience is far more important than formal education, since the formal education rarely keeps up with a fast moving technology (in University, I learned assembler on a mainframe that hadn't been manufactured in over a decade).

      As the pace of change in a given technology slows down, as it always does, formal education catches up, and then you will see much more entry-level quality out of those who have a CS degree than either those who don't have a degree or have it in a different field.

      --
      Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
  3. Nothing new for companies as large as MS by dauthur · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is it possible that Bill Gates' recent lament over the decline of US CS graduates and research spending was merely crocodile tears?"

    That's called "marketing". Microsoft cries shortage, geeks raise their hands like an eager student with an answer in class. I sure as hell would take a job from Microsoft if given the opprotunity. I'd surely go to hell for it as well, but fact is... Microsoft is on top, and will be for a long time. With top-rung knowledge and experience, one can definitely sprint to retirement well before 99% of the people that (s)he graduated with from secondary school.

    Other thing is, China has a lot of people. And a lot of smart people. Survey says: Cheap labour and lots of it.

    1. Re:Nothing new for companies as large as MS by Raul654 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Microsoft is on top, and will be for a long time."
       
      I find this statement very questionable. Microsoft is big, rich, and entrenched. Those are pretty much their only virtues. On the other hand, when was the last time you heard anyone talking about a Microsoft product in anything but a lament? When was the last time you heard people eagerly talking about Microsoft's next move, like you hear so often with Google nowadays. Microsoft doesn't get the pick of the talent anymore, either. Microsoft only has two successful products - Windows and Office. Quite frankly, I think Microsoft is at the beginning of the same kind of decline that the industry has seen so often from the former giants like DEC and HP and IBM (before IBM re-invented itself)

      --


      To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
      --E.C. Stanton
    2. Re:Nothing new for companies as large as MS by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I find this statement very questionable. Microsoft is big, rich, and entrenched.

      Not only that, but big and rich doesn't mean you'll stay on top for a long time, at least not when you're a publicly-traded company.

      Back in 1984 or so, IBM was the big player in the PC space. IBM was, and still is, a huge company. Someone back then may have also assumed that IBM would stay on top of the PC market for a long time, but look what happened to them. It took them a long time to recover from the "attack of the clones", and even then they never regained top-dog status, and just recently gave up altogether by selling that division off to the Chinese company Lenovo.

      Big companies can go from market leader to market loser or even bankrupt in a very short time.

  4. Oh no! by AkaXakA · · Score: 5, Insightful

    OMG! A global company is hiring people globaly!

    People really, really need to put this into perspective.

  5. Oh dear. by DMouse · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Time for another round of "oh no, all our jobs are going to [insert country here]". Oh gebus. Spare me How many years of offshoring scaremongering do I have to put up with? I remember it from the 80s.

    *sigh*

  6. 1.75% of the work force by ThinkFr33ly · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft outsourcing 1000 jobs to China equates to about 1.75% of its work force. (57,000)

    In addition, it's very probable that most of those jobs are for non-critical, non-core projects. This frees up the local developers to work on more important projects.

    Could Microsoft hire more local workers to fill these positions? Sure... but it's hardly news that Microsoft outsources 1.75% of its workforce.

  7. Hah hah! by Seumas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And just a day or two ago, someone on Slashdot was telling me all about how at least Microsoft has never cut an American job for one overseas. Nyah nyah! :P

    So when all the jobs are outsourced and everyone around the world is making $8/hr in the new Global Economy, who is going to be able to afford $200 for an operating system? Or $500 for Office? Or $1500 for Adobe?

  8. What a concept... by shmlco · · Score: 4, Insightful
    If a company wanted to penetrate a market of a billion or so people, it might be... work with me here... a halfway decent idea to hire a few locals here and there to help develop and localize your products for that market. Not to mention the sales, marketing, legal, administrative, and other types one might need to service said market.

    This is news?

    --
    Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
  9. Re:Perspective? by jcr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do they owe the U.S. anything more than corporate taxes?

    They don't have any obligations beyond complying with the contracts they enter into, the laws in the countries where they operate, and their fiduciary responsibilty to their shareholders.

    I say yes, they do.

    Guess again, sport. Wishing doesn't make it so.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  10. Re:Hang on by jcr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So Windows XP was put together by the best brains that money could buy

    Well, this is true in a sense, but money can't buy the best brains.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  11. Re:I don't get it. by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It would suck to have your job taken away and moved to China or India but it probably sucks more to be Chinese or Indian and not have the opportunity to better yourself.

    The Chinese and Indians are free to open all the companies they want to employ their own people. They don't need American companies coming there to have jobs. To insinuate that Chinese and Indian people are incapable of starting their own companies, instead of merely working at the whim of Americans, seems extremely insulting to me. India has many successful native companies, such as Tata and Wipro, and China has many other successful native companies like Lenovo (which just bought out IBM's PC business).

  12. Re:I don't get it. by dslbrian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Complaining about outsourcing and how it will steal our jobs isn't going to change the fact that right now the people overseas are likely doing their job cheaper, faster, and in many cases better than the 'equivalent' US worker. Instead, get off your ass, find opportunities...

    Actually having worked with some of those overseas people I can tell you they are not doing the job cheaper, faster, or better. What they usually do is make the job take three times as long as it should, consistently foul up the most simple tasks, and hop jobs to a better "overseas" position in the middle of the project. But thats not the point I want to make.

    While the US is collectively sitting on its "ass" as you say, the government has been shipping money and expertise overseas at an unreal rate. Consider when you run enormous trade defecits, increase the unemployment level of your "skilled" workers, and in the process ship all your technical expertise over to a country which in the near future will likely be your competitor rather than your cheap slave labor, it paints a very bad long term picture. In the end, you will end up being the 3rd world country, while your technically skilled overseas counterparts will be reaping the profits of your giveaways.

    On top of that, while your sitting here in the US surrounded by hoards of unemployed workers who sat on their collective ass during the whole thing, those workers are no longer contributing to the tax base, in fact they are all on welfare - so who exactly is going to be paying for the roads your driving on, and the schools your kids go to? The small fraction of elite workers left here who still have jobs certainly aren't going to support it all.

    Isn't it interesting that we are not exporting our CEO jobs overseas? After all, by your logic those overseas CEOs should be doing the job cheaper, faster, and better, right? Or do you mean only lowly semi-skilled overseas workers do things cheaper, faster, and better?

    In any event, the US government needs to be more proactive in protecting its interests in this area. Companies run on the work done by their entire lower rank - the grunt jobs. And I would bet most such jobs have some amount of technical expertise, and more importantly experience. For many jobs if you gave me a choice of choosing someone with a PhD and little experience, versus someone with 20years experience I would tend to choose the experienced one rather than the PhD. But at the rate we are exporting our technical expertise we won't have anyone left here with long term experience (the ones with the most will retire, and no one will replace them).