Slashdot Mirror
The Future of Outsourcing in India
aaditeshwar writes "Economist has an article on the current and projected state of outsourcing IT and other business processes to India. The biggest problem seems to be that the talent pool of skilled workers will not able to keep up. Currently there are about 700,000 people working in IT and outsourcing, which is likely to grow up to 2.3 million by 2010, but only 1.05 million new graduates will qualify from local colleges in the next 5 years leading to a shortfall of 500,000 workers! All this despite the fact that almost 2.5 million students graduate in India each year." From the article: "In IT the growth in Indian exports is expected to come both from the software market, and from 'traditional IT outsourcing'--such as the remote management of whole systems, a market now dominated by the big global IT consultancies. This is expected to rise from 8% of Indian sales now to about 30% in 2010, while software-development's share will fall from 55% to 39%. In business-process-offshoring, the big industries will remain banking and insurance. But rapid expansion is also expected in other areas, like legal services."
Eastern Europe has a lot of IT/programmer types.
Since some of them aren't employed, they're part of the burgeoning spam/trojan/virus/worm market that has been growing over there. Organized crime too.
Once the Companies have run out of Indian workers to shift jobs to, they'll move to Eastern Europe sooner or later.
And by Eastern Europe I mean former Soviet Block countries & their neighbors.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It is ALL outsourcing. Why separate IT from, say back-office banking, insurance and other tasks...
Heh, or are they trying to distinguish "IT" from trivial paper-pushing.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
When they run out of people to hire in India, or when workers in India are expensive relative to workers in some other country, they'll move on to that other country - it's pretty much as simple as that. The quest for the most effective labour for the lowest price will never end.
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
In my opinion (14 years of consulting), the India craze did cause a significant dip in rates for US people but even couple years ago we already were scratching the bottom of the barrel. I think the shortage of programmers is a global thing and caused by primitive immature tools and processes and outsourcing is not a magic bullet. My typical client cannot coordinate people across the room let alone across the ocean.
that they start outsourcing journalism to india
As far as I know (from cousins, friends, and general chat from India), there is still a strong demand for the outsourced jobs. Almost tens of resumes per open position, so the prediction of "short fall" looks to be based on shaky ground. There are so many factors involved: there is a large pool of current workers, not all positions require an "IT" degree, and that many jobs may not be created (may move to other countries, or be simply automated).
The unemployment rate in India is still staggeringly high, and the couple of million jobs that *might* be created will be quickly gobbled up.
I suspect that the industry agenda is to continue to have a huge surplus of applicants (or even increase the applicants to positions ratio), so that they can put a downward pressure on the salaries. I'd call it Walmart-ization of the IT (and non-IT) outsourced industry.
S
complains about the lack of programmer graduates from the US.
Does anyone wonder why few Americans want to take up programming any more as a career? There's no jobs for them - the corporations crying about a lack of programmers refuse to look to the US to hire any.
And when BPO hits the banking sector, you can kiss the security of your identity goodbye.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I have heard that the job turnaround time in India for these jobs is very short, on the order of weeks, maybe months. Basically, the employers are slave drivers who burn out the employees very quickly. more information.
As an aside, there is no shortage of programmers in today's environment. Yeah, there may be a shortage of "Object-Oriented Perl" programmers out there, but, sheesh, do you really think it takes that long to re-train a "Scripting Perl" developer to be an Object-Oriented Perl developer--especially if the developer in question has Java or C++ on their resume.
The fact of the matter, which PHBs plain simply do not get, is this: A good programmer can become up to speed in a new language in a matter of days. You don't need five years of "Objected Oriented Perl" to be a decent OO Perl developer. Someone with two years of scripting perl, and two years of Java can learn OO Perl in under a week if they are a decent programmer.
Are there fewer and fewer students entering accredited universities in the US studying IT fields? YES. And you know what, the reason just might be because the big companies are outsourcing the jobs. There is a direct relation to the expected number of jobs available in 5 years to the number of students entering those fields of study. By saying that they will be outsourcing the positions, the companies create the very lack of qualified personnel that they cite they need to fill the positions in the first place.
Now here is what I get. Everyone wants to make a buck. The companies want to save money and still keep the same quality "product" that they have now. The people in the field who understand the science/technology want to be paid a fair wage for their work and knowledge. They have invested upwards of $100k into learning that knowledge, and want to be compensated appropriately for it. This basically turns into a "cost of living" issue when you get down to it. In the US, it costs more to gain that education, thus the people with it demand more compensation for the knowledge. In some other contries, that same education may not cost nearly as much, and as a result, the people with that education do not demand as much compensation for the knowledge.
What I do not get is why. Labor is just another commodity to be traded. As such, how much longer will it take for all non-physical labor to be traded at the lowest going rate? As a result of this, how much longer until the economic crash of the school systems in areas that charge higher then other institutions for a degree on a global scale?
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
...that current outsourcing trends slow enough due to a competent IT worker shortage in India (for what piddling amounts the US companies are currently willing to shell out for outsourced positions anyway), such that the US labor costs can drop slowly. This would allow existing US IT workers can continue to find *some* work and do nice things like FEED THEIR FAMILIES until the global economies even out. This will likely take years though, so I'm not holding my breath.
At the megacorp where I worked we tried filling a Perl/sysadmin type position to work from India for a YEAR. I know those poeple are out there, they just need to pay them more $$$.
v2sw7CUPhw5ln6pr5Pck4ma7u7LFw0m6g/l7Di5e6t5Ab6TH.
And I've recently decided that my management was too expensive so Ive outsourced it to India.
I want to say this will be the case, but it's worth noting that computers just aren't affordable for the average person. The average salary is about 15-25% of an American equivalent in the IT world, and that's astronomically high for India. That may or may not get you a car.
/. and related places there aren't more people chiming in about their experience in India. I mean, some of us have been over there to train people. Collectively the IT folks in America are getting more impressions of experiences in India. Hopefully more of those impressions will come to light as discussion continue.
My point is it's not like the US where someone can sit at home, get a computer, and learn computer skills quickly. Someone in India has to take the time to learn computer skills somewhere. I'm not sure where the qualified applicants are going to come from.
Completely offtopic, I'm astounded that after all of these India posts on
All this despite the fact that almost 2.5 million students graduate in India each year.
This leads me to one thing I've been very curious about. How are companies checking the credentials of people overseas? I know there are quite a few people (some I've had to deal with), that I can't beleive they got any more than a 'boot camp' type training. With all the movement between companies over there, I can see how people would get lost in the shuffle and keep working.
It's not quantity of IT workers I see as the problem over there, but quality.
...if you're an Indian and you graduate and go into IT, you won't have trouble finding a job in India.
We're in the process of hiring 100 Engineers from both India and Pakistan, with the plan being to bring them into Mainland China to work in the telecom industry.
:)
During our recruiting so far, we're seeing a yield of approx. 5% after all interviews and testing, but that is prior to them coming into the PRC. We've gone thru nearly 4,000 candidates since Sept.
For the record, I'd source domestically, but mgmnt. wants to curry favor with the home countries, so the burden to fit them in is on me. At least the bonus program is in my favor
I go through at least 40 or 50 resumes in the US (Metro NYC area) to find one person worth hiring. And these are resumes that have been supposedly pre-screened by headhunters. Resume counts mean nothing if those tens of resumes represent poorly skilled people.
There actually aren't that many other poor places they can go. Not in terms of number of people, anyway. India and China are about 1/3 of the world population,and 1/2 of the poor world. Once they have joined the rich world, there's only so many poor nations left.
This doesn't mean that the quest for the most effective labour for the lowest price will end, of course. It just means that that lowest price will rise.
If they cannot code it, outsource the dev work to india dude.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I dont trust these numbers, IT numbers leave out IS and other comp-sci, engineering people who also do the same programming, dba, systems/network engineering.
I think a few things will happen.
Government will have to figure out how to tax those people, the outsource loophole, the company doesnt have to pay insurance, workers comp or benefits. The biggest problem is we outsource work for one of the high end middleclass sectors and drop the pay in 1/2 to 1/3 when the cost of living stays the same in the US. While those people offshore dont pay local taxes. When enough people start feeling the money crunch, expect some laws passed.
Software programming will be cheap, you can buy custom software quickly. I know some web developers who work with a couple outsource groups who just send the specs, and the company sends the completed software. While its not perfect, its cheaper and only takes 20-30 days. Good enough for first generation software.
And last, there will be some scandles about IP issues and copyrights.
I understand there are other countries that are catching up as well in the area of skilled IT workers and solid educational facilities to prepare budding technologists for the market. Infrastructure is almost there, although cell phone capabilities aren't quite on par with the rest of the world. There are also some rolling power outage issues as well in the western corner of the country. But, it's only a matter of time before the salary dfiferential makes outsourcing to this country attractive.
They seem anxious to have a recovery in domestic employment market growth. They haven't seen significant growth in the domestic labor market for hundreds of years. The pieces seem to be almost in place for the Nacirema to start benefiting from IT outsourcing just like India and other parts of the Far East.
Is this concept so foreign to them now? These are US companies.. how about hiring US employees? Why does everything have to be freakin' outsourced?
There's plenty of geek talent in the US for the hiring. I wish these companies would hire in the US and help the US economy instead of throwing the money overseas.
Arrrgh.
-Z
Every outsourcing story I've heard has ended in disaster, overrun budgets, wasting thousands of dollars sending employees to India for months at a time, and unmaintainable code ... all the while not being cheap enough to justify any of it.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I'm the network engineer for a company considering setting up an engineering / design shop in India. I just got pricing for a DS3 Internet circuit there. HOLY SPANDEX, BATMAN!
/constantly/, so you'd better plan on two of everthing for redundancy.
A straight E1 circuit (2Mbps) to the Internet is about $4000/month, and about $3000 to install. (All prices in US dollars) Not cheap, but not bad.
A 2xE1 (4Mbps) jumps to over $10,000 per month.
Once you hit DS-3 which is scalable in the sense that once you have the circuit installed ($17,000 one-time fee), you can go from 0-3 Mbps to start all the way up to 45Mbps, your rates go from $16,000/month for the 3Mbps up to over $80,000 PER MONTH for the 45Mbps.
Depending on what you're doing there, the straight E1 isn't that bad, but you really can't pump that much data through it. The ds3 prices are through the roof. Plus, I've been told that the infrastructure there is so bad that shit fails
Now if you're truly outsourcing all of this and therefore feel that you don't eed to worry about the sunk costs, fine, but when you pick the cheapest-of-the cheap bid, that most likely means that they have a crappy DSL out to the 'net that goes down at least once a week for 24 hours at a stretch. "sorry, couldn't {manage your network | take your callcenter calls | upload those CAD files you REALLY REALLY needed by 8AM the next morning} because our local loop was down because some dude running a backhoe trying to upgrade our highway system just yanked our a thousand strands of fiber."
Oh yeah, there's also the problem that India gov't managed-monolopy telcomm says that you can't terminate out-of-country VoIP calls into the Indian PSTN. So now you need either two phones on every desk, or softphones, or ??. Again, two infrastructures for them to manage. (If, of course, they feel that their wageslaves^H^H^H^H^H employees need to be able to call locally while at work.)
My guess is that as these hidden 'costs' start to surface, and as the cost of labor increases in India, people will start to move on to the next cheap area. Lather, rinse, repeat, wait a few years, and everything balances out (or so the economists in the group would say??)
I hate it when people talk about how many cooks/gardners/servants you can afford in India for very little money as an example of the quality of life there. Upper class IT types from India are always bragging about how they live like kings when they go home.
The thing is, these servants, etc, are BARELY FEEDING THEIR FAMILES on the salary they are given. Not to mention their teeth are rotting out and they are unhealthy. True, they are grateful to not starve, but if you have money, gleaning quality of life on the backs of starving peasants is just wrong.
Upper middle class Indians who come to the US should be ashamed of themselves for exploiting their peasant brethren like that and then bragging about it. Just because you can live like a king on their backs, doesn't mean you should.
It's a different angle on the same old labor shortage song and dance. As another poster pointed out, if India can't supply the labor, another country will and they'll do it cheaper. There's still a vast supply of labor in the world.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I'm astounded that after all of these India posts on /. and related places there aren't more people chiming in about their experience in India
I've only spent a week in India myself, but I grew up in SE Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia). When I was there in the 1970's, Singapore had a rapidly expanding economy, Indonesia was just beginning to cash in on their oil resources, and Malaysia was a pretty sleepy kind of a place, where the average worker had no hope at all of sending his kids to high school, let alone college.
Today, Singapore is certainly a fully industrialized nation, Malaysia and Indonesia are pretty close, if they're not there yet, and I'm thrilled to see India following suit after about fifty years of stupidly trying to follow the Soviet model of centrally-planned squalor, while the infrastructure the Brits left behind slowly crumbled.
The people I met in Bangalore, Delhi, and Agra want a better life, and they're willing to work harder to get there than nearly anyone I've ever met in the USA or Europe. They impressed the hell out of me, and I wish them all the prosperity they can achieve.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Anyway what do you folks say? ------- Apologies for typos and bad formatting - NO TIME.
It all depends of freedom.
Everyone in the USA and Europe already buy all their stuff from China. Unless you count a second rate OS and other increasingly made abroad IP, I'm not sure what there is to buy from US anymore. I wish it were different. IP is a tenuous export at best, but it's a bogus one when it's based on imported research.
All the money in the world won't really standards of living in China because they are not free. People making goods there will continue to be abused by their owners who pocket it all.
It only takes one non free country to screw everything for everyone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I would opine about how India and China are going to become giant behemoths and own everything but I remember Japan. Remember movies about Japan in the 80s? Then remember the Japanese recession?
China and India are different. I'm just talking about India here.
Let's be brutally honest: we only outsource to India the dumb shit of life. They are like the Migrant Mexican workers, picking our vegetables or mowing or lawns or making the beds in the hotels: it's just some dumb shit we don't want to do. Calling to dink around with your account or reschedule your flight is just some other dumb shit we don't want to do, so we give it to cheapies cause, you know, what the fuck.
So, if I was India, I would be extremely scared, because one significant advance in artificial intelligence means everything in India gets re-outsourced to robots. Let's face it, there's nothing an Indian can do that you can't do yourself on a website, barring mere technical limitations.
Dig it?
In other words, a shortfall is not a product of a particular society or of outsourcing, it is a simple product of economic forces. Or, at least, those forces that lead to stable economies. Most economies are highly unstable, which means that instead of reaching a dynamic equilibrium, they are highly chaotic. Indeed, much of what is known about chaos theory comes from people studying economics, so there have been fringe benefits.
The instability largely comes from political corruption, monopolies of any kind, insufficient worker protections, price gouging, accounting fraud and other such elements, where the normal feedback mechanisms cannot work or are even actively prevented from working. What you end up with is a positive feedback loop, which leads to the whole boom/bust system that America in particular is infamous for, and which India is likely to lurch into, because it has absolutely no comprehension of the kinds of controls you need to keep the system sane.
The problem with America is that Government regulators are largely financed by the corporations they regulate. This is like having a computer virus scanner asking a virus if it is present. You think it's ever going to tell the truth?
India is in a worse mess, because bribes and back-handers are common practice on the sub-continent. That's like installing a computer virus AS the virus scanner. And sooner or later, jobs will migrate to ever more opaque, ever less accountable, ever more corrupt systems, because those are cheap - in the short-term, at least. Corruption is always expensive in the long-term, just not necessarily for the ones guilty of it.
The only way for India to build a stable economy out of the outsourcing is to have the Government conduct strict, well-defined oversight in a 100% independent fashion. However, that will drive up costs considerably. It will also drive up standards, but accountants don't include standards on the balance sheet and it's the balance sheet that matters. Stability in India will, therefore, effectively end outsourcing there. Which means that India must choose between being popular or being viable. It can't be both.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
In a company all-employee meeting last week, a director told us they could get three or four developers or scientists from India for the same cost as one of us. He then proceeded to tell us to expect 'restructuring' in the next six months. At least he was honest. Time to look for a new career...
No matter where you come from, where you were educated, if you don't have the two brain cells rubbin together to form innovative solutions to REAL problems people have, you won't get/hold a solid job.
Simple as that.
I don't care how many degrees from whatever school you have. If you can't see past the quick buck to real problems and their solutions you're just a tool in my eyes. People look down on Indians and Chinese because they're a dime a dozen [literally and figuratively] but what makes you think your neighbours in your comp.sci classes are any more competent to do productive work?
I'm all for making money but only off things of value. Otherwise you waste a lot of time trying to sell [re: market] things of substantially lower value [re: intel processors] just to make sure you can stay in business [re: partner with Dell].
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I agree with all of the points except for the 7th one. US will not be a "developing" country and Indian will not be a developed country, so to speak - in the future;
Unless Indian politicians learn to LEARN; and educated people start themselves in the politics; Unless this happens, which is very very far ahead, thanks to idolism and what not, India will not be a developed country;
I can't see how China can become a developed country, with communism as its foothold; I am not sure this is an accurate statement, but aren't all communist states that suppress free thought doomed to death?
However all of your points are great, but still you should know that American undergraduate system is one of the best in the world (at least in the university I am studying). I am a transfer student, and I know for sure if my friends over in India had this same education, India would be a super power in another 3 - 6 months.
Problem is, not many in America are willing to take up the challenges (even simple ones like SAT/GRE/GMAT - sorry to say, I am sure many will reply to this saying they are difficult). People grunt to take up challenges in math/science. However this same problem has allowed other venues: creativity, art, and free thought. This is the strength and disadvantage of the American edu system.
You would be surprised to know that the computer science demand/supply (in America) is that there is 50 times the demand than the supply. I am not talking about the people who script/hack/program a game; I mean the supply in terms of real computer scientists.
"ID theft happens far more often in the US/Australia than at some foreign call/data center."
"Internet ID theft is far more prevalent"
etc.
Just so you're well armed for these responses...
Here is the tale of two data centers, one in Australia and one in India.
In Australia, a data center manager and its employees are paid more than people overseas; consider what it would cost to bribe them a year's salary. And moreover, they are under the relatively watchful eye of law enforcement. If they steal personal information, they're within the jurisdiction of people who can arrest them and put them away for a long, long time. This makes bribing these workers a lot harder.
In India, a data center manager and its employees are paid a fraction of what Australians get paid for the same work; consider what it would for the Russian Mafia or Al Qaeda to bribe them a year's salary. And moreover, they are not under the relatively watchful eye of Australian law enforcement. If they steal personal information, they're not within the jurisdiction of people who have any reason to arrest them. This makes bribing these workers a lot easier. Plus, it is easier for a bribed worker to disappear within India, or even move out of the country, than Australia. (Aside from the water surrounding Australia, India's borders aren't exactly locked up.)
Now some people will tell you that India data center workers aren't allowed to bring in potential tools for stealing data. But here's the kicker. I can memorize your name, SSN and mother's maiden name, and tell it back to you in a day. If I can do it, others can probably remember several for a long period of time. It's nothing for the mafia or Al Qaeda to train people to do that. And again, if you're paid a year's salary to cough up so many names, and you're a low paid shill in a piece of shit job, you'll do it for that kind of money. And if the data center manager gets tapped, all security is moot. You can also bribe the security workers, considering how poorly they're paid. Once they're paid off, anyone can walk in and out of there with tools to steal data.
The problem here is, the price for owning the person who has the keys to a data center's hidden treasures, is very low.
Thus, you now not only have domestic ID theft, internet theft, and dumpster diving, but you can also add offshore theft - which is far harder for your country to prosecute - to the mix.
How many straws can a camel carry on its back?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I think that most states require those that practice law in court to have passed the state's bar, and the standards for the bar include arbitrary requirements to prevent inexpensive offshore competition. Thus only paralegal work can usefully be sent offshore.
This is a situation that really ought to be fixed. Outsourcing lawyers would likely be a tremendous boon to the US economy. It would discourage some of our most talented college graduates from pursuing a career which is of marginal (and possibly negative) benefit to society, and reduce the strength of the lawyer's lobby in the US which keeps many of our legal codes too complicated to be understood without plenty of expensive legal assistance. Finally, it would make our businesses more competitive by reducing the "lawyer tax" they pay for doing business here in the United States.
Unfortunately, the people we'd have to convince to make this happen tend to be lawyers themselves.
all the $10K/year, no-benefits programming jobs any country could every want and then some!
They were old buddies from Engg college, and they were together for a college reunion..
For no apparent reason, they went into this zoo and passed a monkey.
Being in the same business and from the same college, there was a little bit of a peer competition going on between themselves - they couldn't resist testing themselves against each other -
especially the Infosys guy said to the others: "Why don't we prove who is the best among ourselves?". Why not, said the other two.
The Infoscion said "Let's have a test. Whoever makes this monkey laugh, works for the best firm".
By mutual agreement, the Infoscion took the first turn. Being a pure logical strategist, the Infoscion tried to make the monkey laugh by telling jokes. The monkey stayed still.
As a more practical consultant, the Wipro guy tried to make funny gestures... no good, the monkey stayed put...
Now, comes the IBMer... being the practical guy he was always trained to be, he whispered something into the monkey's ear, and it burst out laughing at him.
The other two were astonished. How did this IBM guy manage to beat them?
No way they were going to accept defeat so easily. So the Wipro guy said "OK, let's take another test. Let's make this monkey cry! !"
So there they went again, applying! the same methods as before.
The Infosys guy narrated sad stories, the Wipro guy made sad gestures,and they failed again... Then, the IBMer again whispered something into the monkey's ear and lo! It started crying, patting the IBMer's shoulder!
The other two just could not believe their eyes! So the Infoscion said "OK, you've won twice. If you can win just this one, we will bow to you. Let's make this monkey run". And he barked at the monkey and ordered him to run. Of course, it stayed where it was.
The Wipro guy, true to his type, pushed and prodded the monkey - still No go.
So...here comes our IBM guy, again, and whispers into the monkey's ear. The monkey just takes off! It runs and runs as fast as it can, as if it was scared to death!
The other two surrendered. Said they: "OK, we give up.You're the best among us, and you work for the Best firm of the three.
But please, please tell us your secret," they begged him.
"Well", said the IBMer, "The first time I made it laugh, I told it I work for IBM.
The next time, I told the monkey how much I get paid...so it started crying.
And finally I told him that I was here for recruitment.
China isn't meaningfully Communist any more, and hasn't been for some time. It's totalitarian-capitalist -- and as much as those of us who live in (more or less) capitalist (more or less) democracies might like to believe otherwise, totalitarianism and capitalism can get along perfectly well together. The deal is, basically, "We'll let you make money as long as you keep your mouth shut; otherwise we'll have to kill you."
Conclusions about the convergence of China and the US are left as an exercise to the reader.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
IMHO I would like to see the US try minimum wage for other countries with companies who outsourced jobs. When a company can hire me, or someone in a less developed country for only like $1 less than I make, then we will see what happens. That might put an end to the sweat shop overseas mentality.
The people who are worth it over there, will get the job and the money they deserve with witch they can improve their home country.
Another problem that I see, is that the products that we work to produce here in the US, who can offord them outside of the top few countries with the prices that are charged?
That "director" sounds like a dork.
Everyone at that company who can will immediately find another job, and they'll be left with the dregs, probably the very people they didn't want to keep in the first place.
I wouldn't go so far as to find another career. Just find a company that values you as an employee, and doesn't rub your face in the obvious (engineers are cheaper in India).
What a clueless fuckwit that guy is.
A message from our sponsor
First things first: Your micro-rant, while cute and seemingly poignant is actually nothing but a simple troll. And while I realize it's best not to feed the trolls, not everything blatantly stupid should go unanswered.
When dealing with something as complex as economics, nothing is quite as simple as "So, how do you like it now?". Outsourcing of jobs from the United States to India doesn't just mean more money in India, period. What it actually means is less income in the United States to afford the products that many of these (outsourced) jobs in India were created to support.
Understand?
By moving a sizable portion of middle income generating positions to another country, we are not spreading any wealth; only distributing new vistas of poverty to our own people.
Do you get it?
Fewer dollars generated in the United States does not mean secure fiscal longevity for another nation. What it means is that when the United States becomes a middle classless society, India will go back to where they were before the mass corporate migration: one billion odd people struggling to find a place in the global economy.
You simply cannot build a solid economic base on cheap labour alone.
#SickNotWeak
In another news item, the Economist reports that in 2050, there will be 8 billion Indian IT workers employed.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
"2004 saw 220,000 fewer employed U.S. electrical engineers than in 2000, despite falling unemployment, according to BLS data." http://www.todaysengineer.org/2005/Sep/pulse.asp
Notible things are that the US Department of Labor statistics which are stating that there are more engineering jobs are really not tracking that. They are tracking that a person who has an engineering degree and worked as such until he/she was laid-off simply has a "job" (any job, flipping burgers, parking cars, clearing tables, etc.), so the data there can only simply state that these engineers have found a way to gain some form of income, nothing other then that.
The only area where I can say that a US engineering job is secure is in the defense sector where the engineers are required to be a US citizen to obtain a security clearance. If you are working anywhere else, well, you are replacible by a H1B or off-shoring of the department.
Now speaking about the department of labor:
"Employment of materials engineers is expected to grow more slowly than the average for all occupations through 2012." http://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos034.htm
"Employment of aerospace engineers is expected to decline over the projection period." http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos028.htm
"Employment of civil engineers is expected to increase more slowly than the average for all occupations through 2012." http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos030.htm
"Employment of electrical and electronics engineers is expected to grow more slowly than the average for all occupations through 2012." http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos031.htm
" As with other information technology jobs, employment growth of computer software engineers may be tempered somewhat by an increase in contracting out of software development abroad." http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos267.htm
"Computer hardware engineers may face competition for jobs because the number of degrees granted in this field has increased rapidly and because employment is expected grow more slowly than average." http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos266.htm
"Overall engineering employment is expected to grow more slowly than the average for all occupations over the 2002-12 period. Engineers tend to be concentrated in slow-growing manufacturing industries, a factor which tends to hold down their employment growth. Also, many employers are increasing their use of engineering services performed in other countries." http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm
Now, why don't we start this conversation again. The jobs for US engineers are simply not there. The companies that can off-shore, have been doing so, claiming that there are not enough US engineers. The IEEE charts show that there are about 120,000 EE's over the last 4 years out there who are not employed as EE's anymore. Yes, a portion of that may have died, gone to management, etc., but I would suggest that there is probably 50% of that number who would still work as an EE if the job opertunity was there... This is the reason why their salaries have not increased as "demand" increases, because the demand is false.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I was just in a meeting where we were told that India wasn't going to stay competitive cost-wise.
So, we need to find companies to outsource to in countries that won't have a lot of competition.
They didn't mention telecom costs. In India, everybody wants the stuff, so they can charge what they want. But if you go where there are no companies to compete with, you bring new jobs, the government will pay for your telecom.
My mom says I'm cool.
Disclaimer: I hate this situation with a passion. I've trained the outsourcer that replaced my friends, stuck on conference calls with people that have no interest in the product, just getting more business.
BUT
From a money-only view, the US manager's job is only to cut costs. It's where their bonuses come from.
Therefore, they COULD hire from the home country, and be expensive. OR they could get an outsourcer to do it, and get a huge bonus. AND if you're smart, you hire a middle-of-the-road outsourcer this year, and then begin pushing it to the cheaper one next year to show how good you are at cutting costs.
There is no loyalty to anybody. Their shareholders expect higher rate of return, which means more profit from lower costs.
These guys know their jobs are going to disappear at some point, so they're collecting bonuses and stock options.
My mom says I'm cool.
Resume counts mean nothing if your job requirement is 5 years experience adminstering Windows XP.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
One of the basic reasons that a US programmer is expensive is because the education is expensive.
I'd have to disagree. The basic reason that a US programmer is expensive is that the standard of living in the US is a lot higher, especially in the locations where most corporations have setup shop. This is hardly surprising, given that in the past programmers were a relatively rare commodity and so they developed rather exaggerative salaries (dotcom bubble). Further, companies had to be in larger metrapolitain areas to be take seriously or cities virtually grew around many corporations that clustured together. As a result, the communities they live in/move to have gained rather distorted salary demands due to property rates. Simply moving a corporation to the middle of nowhere would greatly reduce salary demands of the *many* people who are interested in a job. This is the basis for calls to "outsource to rural America".
It sounds like in India it is the case that many people are unwilling to move from where the live but the population density is so high that one can basically go anywhere and find enough people to form a development team. As a result, there isn't a sharp rise in salary demands because the excess spending money of these programmers ends up being distributed around the country instead of a few hotspots.
A similar idea could be constructed in the US by simply locating a broad area with programmers and setting up multiple development houses spread out across the area. Think of it as software franchising. Such places would then be capable of meeting the demands of one or more companies in projects--whether it'd be better if each franchise only served one company or was effectively a contractor isn't clear to me. This alone would greatly reduce the rates of development costs in the US. In the end, the greater wealth of India and shortage of programmers there (long-term ones, I mean) will require some means of utilizing the relatively untapped multitude of individuals who need not live in the most expensive parts of the US. I think outsourcing to both areas is a good idea.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
New US IT graduates may be able to find programming jobs in India. If the "glamour" jobs all go to the multinational firms there, then perhaps local governments etc. will have a hard time competing. If India allows reverse H1B's (B1H), then perhaps a newbie can get experience in such a shop. Sure, the pay might suck, but you gotta start somewhere.
Table-ized A.I.
I think it is a mistake to put all your economic eggs into IT. Lack of diversification has kicked many economies and many peoples many times. India should push for more accountants, legal experts, graphics specialists, etc.
Not only will that offer career diversity, but make it possible to use such skills for the home market as well if foreign markets go south.
Table-ized A.I.
I suspect that the industry agenda is to continue to have a huge surplus of applicants (or even increase the applicants to positions ratio), so that they can put a downward pressure on the salaries. I'd call it Walmart-ization of the IT (and non-IT) outsourced industry.
Just like the H1B lobby did here in the US. India, welcome to "free trade". Capitalism does NOT guarentee equality. If it happened that way in the past, it was because we were lucky.
Table-ized A.I.
I go through at least 40 or 50 resumes in the US (Metro NYC area) to find one person worth hiring. And these are resumes that have been supposedly pre-screened by headhunters....
Let me guess, you are looking for somebody who knows all your company's languages, knows all your company's methodologies, and thinks exactly like you do.
Table-ized A.I.
these folks are better than there US counterparts is because the Indian Education System is very difficult.
That is hogwash. Most software developers don't do stuff they learned in school anyhow. I learned most of my early programming writing hobby games.
I believe that once Asia and Africa are done with, the work will go back to the US - it will be the developing country then. In the next century Asia will completely outrun the US in every walk of life.
Perhaps, but at least us IT'ers won't be treated like agricultural workers anymore.
Table-ized A.I.
How long before western junk-pop influences screw up the population of India? When they start sipping from the Goblett of Globalization, the final destination may not be what they expected.
Table-ized A.I.
It is a myth that the only way out of poverty for a country is lopsided exports. Everyone's doing it because it worked for Japan and China, however, there is no evidence that it is the only way out. Encouraging (local) entraprenuers is one technique. Besides, the US has a huge trade gap that is gonna bite us one way or another. We cannot keep playing this game.
Table-ized A.I.
Honestly I am sick and tired of people ranting about '4 year degrees' from India and incompetent or unqualified programmers/workers from India. The very same people whose ideas about India are pretty much restricted to the Taj Mahal and Bangalore in spite of the fact that they could not point out both their locations on a map of India the size of the empire state building with both places marked in 2000pt arial black.
/. you only hear about programming/IT outsourcing, but if you actually watched some 'news' instead of relying on a bunch of bloggers alone, you might realize that its not just call centers and programming shops, a whole bunch of financial analytics work, medical diagnostic work, even Hollywood animation stuff gets outsourced to India. And oh btw re: the comment about paralegals and drudge work, find out how much a paralegal with your experience makes, and you will realize the futility of your chosen vocation to provide you with a reasonable income.
n tern.php0 810india.htm0 .html
/.
4 year degrees in India are _not_ like 2 year boot camps, they are quite focused, well designed and well executed programs, and I did not even go to an IIT or a tier 1 school in India! Education in India is quite difficult, simply because of the extreme competition every student faces from the 100 million other students, the fact that the coursework is tougher does play some part though. Parents are focused on education and education only, hence the complete insignificance of college/university level sports and/or other activities. The problem you guys face is that its too damn expensive here. My entire college expenses, including living away from home was approx. $1200. As a result almost anybody who can make the cut can afford it. So dont blame the Indian education system for the lack of a job inspite of your expensive education.
Regarding incompetent, inexperienced workers, well considering the large number of qualified workers produced, per the law of averages quite a few will be bad programmers, and stating that its an Indian issue, is not only unfair, its blatantly uninformed. The same statistics apply everywhere. The number of absolutely incompetent American/western programmers I have seen is quite unbelievable considering their '$100,000' education. At least Indian universities do not charge that much for a job screwed up (well some do, but they are usually reserved to educate Indians residing in the US).
Re: Only drudge work gets outsourced, of course on
I agree that quite a few outsourcing projects failed miserably. However AFAIK in most cases they fail not because of incompetent Indian workers but simply because the it being applied to the wrong fucking problem. You cant just use a tool/process willy-nilly because its inexpensive and expect it succeed. On the other hand I know of quite a few that succeeded in spite of that. Go figure!
The comment regarding the infrastructure issues are correct, however that does not seem to have stopped organizations from delivering. BPO providers have usually figured out ways to deal with government incompetence, and will continue to do so until the Indian govt. gets off their lazy asses and does something about it. Fortunately or unfortunately we have a _real_ multi-party democracy which means things get done slowly but when they get done they get done right.
Finally you might be surprised to know that there are Americans interning in India:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/10/business/i
http://www.uh.edu/ednews/2005/nytimes/200508/2005
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,47435,0
So before you go off on India and Indians take step back and actually bother to find out wtf you are talking about, even if you are posting on
For all those who think indians are fit for backoffice jobs
Find out the percentage of indians in NASA who are scientists
Im from bangalore and the social standing of these BPO workers is not very great they are seen as losers except may be by their own parents
Everything is not rosy in a BPO job,, ive seen many who got Diabetes, Blood Pressure, Mentally disturbed, Chain Smoke, Discontinue Studies, become obese etc a by-product of the Late-Night life and Stressful job
I think that you are outright lying, or are very misinformed.
I am Indian and I currently live in the US, but I visit there every 2 years. My uncles have very prestigous positions at Indian universities (BHU, IIT Bombay, IISC) and one family member is a principal of a local college that has a specialization in "IT". I am well informed and well connected.
I also have a degree in EE with several years of hardware/software design and I've worked "IT" for many years as well. This means I can tell first hand if someone knows what they're talking about or not.
I can tell you first hand that the Indian education system *IS NOT* what you make it out to be. The Indian pre-college education system is pretty rigourous, but it also HEAVILY emphasizes memorization and not learning. Indians are excellent at math, but the ratio of creative thinking Indians is low. Getting into colleges means years of "preparing" for various exams which emphasize memorized learning.
Engineering and problem solving requires out-of-box thinking, and that's why Indians frequently don't excel at anything non-theory.
I want to refute a few of your points:
#1 is just plain wrong.
I visited a few colleges that have IT progams and I saw people memorizing lines of code to recite them for exams. Some of these people were in CS programs and hadn't even written a program on their own. They could sure tell me if an algorithm was O(n) or O(n^2) but they couldn't tell me how to debug hardware or software.
When I tried to cajole them into learning things that weren't in their cirriculum (like learning Apache or Linux system administration), I got blank stares and poked fun at. Yeah, who'll be laughing when your Microsoft IIS server gets rooted? Think everyone with a paper degree gets a job? Not when 10 guys are competing for the same job.
If the Indian education system is so awesome, why do all the professors at the *TOP* Indian universities all have Masters + PhDs from *US* institutions?
#5
US programs are "expensive", because among other reasons, we don't live in a shithole, plain and simple. We have environmental laws, a sanitary standard of living, standards of business ethics and so on. It isn't acceptable for people here to just piss on the walls of our college, but you see that daily, even at IISc! (Yes, I saw this and even took pictures I was so blown away by it).
India has enormous health issues with a lot of resource scarcity (which will only get worse). In the US we can breath for the most part, in India, everytime I go, I have to wear a mask to keep out all the air pollution. Water pollution is just unspeakable, if you don't drink boiled, filtered water (or buy bottled water) you'll be sick for a week. Even when I was extra cautious, I managed to get sick several times my last visit.
#6
As far as outsourcing goes, the only people who aren't being slave driven are the ones doing the slave driving. I've seen first hand heard of how companies burn and churn (I've talked to people who run the companies and people who've left them). When you do someone else's dirty work, it's still dirty work.
With all the bribe taking that happens there, it's a miracle anything gets done.
Many of the Indians I know that have migrated from India to the US tell me they hate it when they go back, they now realize how bad the infrastructure there is. That infrastructure is only going to get worse.
In ten years I wonder what kind of life people in India will have. You may have jobs, but if you have no resources left, what kind of life will it be?
Most of what you say is true.
I've worked with indian programmers and they are decent to good.
Couple points.
1) Yes the indian system is so hard that many commit suicide. The japanese used to do this to, once their standard of living came up they got lazy like americans and said, Why are we sacrificing our children to advance- we have advanced far enough.
2) Yes the indian system is hard, so we are seeing the best and brightest- there are only so many best and brightest- as a result wage increases of 18% were observed last year.
3) At that rage, we see loss of savings in 4 years and wage PARITY in 12 years or less.
4) The u.s. will not be a 3rd world country in 12 years.
5) Asia is not going to continue advancing forward without some kind of a setback. And the last time they had a setback in China, they killed about 95% of the people with any kind of education.
So...
Wages will rise there (yea!)
India will have to deal with hyperinflation- taxes will skyrocket, the cost of kheer will go through the roof (It'll be 5 bucks a serving like it is here).
Some programmer jobs will continue to require american programmers and american business is going to have to face up to the fact that they are destroying that class of jobs- when they need them back, they'll be expensive to fill - and it won't get better because our population of workers is dropping now and will continue to drop for the next 15 years. After a mild recession next year and a harsh recession in 2010, 2011, it's going to be pretty nice for about 5 years.
6) Indian companies engage in very blatant age discrimination- so I expect they'll start dumping their guys as they approach 40 or 45 just like americans do.
---
But he is right- outsourcing works often. But it is sold as saving 50% of cost sand it is looking like it is really saving 15% as projects are being delivered- still a huge amount but very little inflation will close that gap.
And finally- business is lying it's ass off to american programmers- the line is "You be the senior and they will do the code" but any fool can see, in 3 years business things "and then you'll be gone and they'll be the senior coders.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
No, you can't keep playing this game. The problem is (as far as I can see) free markets. In a totally free economy you have to balance up between countries. Which in actual terms seems to mean that the rates of pay in richer countries have to fall until you can bring the poorer countries rates up. Then both countries business's go somewhere else with lower rates and both coutries rates drop until they can compete there, etc, etc....
But then I'm not an economist. I'm just old enough to remember my countries 40 hour week with good pay rates that became the 50 hour week. Then the other spouse had to work. Now its both people in a relationship working 50 hours. Looks good on paper I suppose. But where the hell are the kids?
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
Last year's average wage inflation in india was 18%.
I would call that a "sharp rise" if I got that on my salary.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The indian education system is still a fairly pure meritocracy.
For example, in the US, we might allow folks who make an "A" to go to a special school.
And once enough "A"'s had applied, the school would be full.
In India, you would take a test, and the top 70 scorers get to go- even if 180 of them made A's. Not first come first serve- the top.
I have been told that that concept starts early- by the end of highschool you are either going to a trade school, going to college, or ineligable for further education- all the basis of testing.
It's very harsh and a lot of high school students commit suicide when they realize their life is over before it started (they should probably come to the US instead of killing themselves- here if you have drive you can always succeed).
But that means, that the people who make it through college, are smart and exceedingly driven compared to a similar groups of americans who were not culled so severely.
But it's like a mono culture vs a sexual culture.
If the environment is well defined, they can master it. Once we are thrown back into an undefined environment, it may be different.
But do -not- under estimate indian programmers- a lot of them are competent and they are getting experience now.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Economist is wrong in one way. Chennai is not a second tier city. It is now among the same league as the first tier cities in India. Check out this http://www.tidelpark.com/index.asp
That there among 100 million East Europeans are different kinds of IT people can hardly be any surprise.
That some of them are unemployed is hardly surprising, considering that there are unemployed people all over the world. That this is the cause for a statistically higher amount of virus production is just a wild guess.
That companies would turn to Eastern European workers only when there are no Indian workers left is blatantly false. There is already outsourcing going on from Western to Eastern Europe. Besides, the Indian market is unlikely to ever run out of workers. They may temporarily run out of workers with the right skills, but as long as the skills are well defined, they have the resources to teach them to millions of new students each year.
The only interesting thing in the post is the strange definition of Eastern Europe as being former Soviet Block countries and their neighbours. This would inlcude Finland, Germany, Turkey, Afghanistan and China, just to mention a few.
>> So dont blame the Indian education system for the lack of a job inspite of your expensive education.
The question is not about blaming.The question is about the wastefulness of the Indian education system.Dont say I dont know.I have had my so called education from an IIT and I know what indian education is like.Yes,I understand there is heavy competetion -but for what.For proving yourself as the best idiot.Yes,I mean every word of it.
Regarding incompetent, inexperienced workers, well considering the large number of qualified workers produced, per the law of averages quite a few will be bad programmers,
And for outsourcing.the only reason is this - You can get indian labour at 1/50th the wages that an average american demands.And they meekly will be at your feet.This is the only reason for outsourcing to India and nothing else.
The reason the world is becoming a better place is IMHO that democracy works better than dictatorships.
Otherwise, there would be no reason for democracy to spread, since the people at the top levels of the oppressive regime would rather destroy the place than change it. Now those countries don't have a choice, since they get more and more behind.
What scares me is that China's 1984 model of political control and economic freedom works. I don't lose sleep over some religious criminals that blows up civilians, even if they should get a nuclear bomb or two.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Nope. Just looking for someone with good SQL skills in any of the 4 major platforms, and is decent in Java.
Hoprefully, Americans will someday wake up and realize that that CorpGovMedia elite betrayed them by allowing outsourcing, by encouraging it. By CorpGovMedia elite, I mean the politicians, elite media and CEOs and lobbyists, and think tankers who pushed this outsourcing treason on us.
And maybe Americans will join me in call for these CorpGovMedia traitors to be tried for high treason, and if convicted of such in a court of law, then to have all these sellouts publicly hung. All in accordance with the rule of law and due process of course.....If we need to change some laws to allow this injustice to be corrected, then let's do that.
STRETCH THE NECKS OF THE CORPGOVMEDIA OUTSOURCING TRAITORS!
There...that wasn't so hard, was it?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I asked a friend who worked in India many years his sage advice on opening a BPO:
.... Maybe 10% may work out....
--
What I may say below could be construed by some people as not politically correct or intercultural insensitive by some. This is based on facts and observations from living there and not reading about it...So, fuck them....
Hyderabad is OK but you have a much better level of people in Bangalore..
but you must never ever be talked into Calcutta, Madras, Delhi or Bombay as they are shit holes that are continually under some form of religious, political or just union strife in which they tends or riot for a few days and kill a few of the opposition off... Never enough in my opinion...
Never ever allow the boss under boss or anyone who actually has or even thinks he has power from hiring a relative as its the beginning of corruption on a grand scale... NO EXCEPTIONS...
Don't bring in anyone from out of the area to run the place... he has to be local and speak the local dialect....
Try for a few Christians in key positions as they will not be swayed by the religious horse shit that manages to pervade all levels of the workforce...
Never ever try to be smart mouthed or even think you can get around the local politicians including the police as they are vicious bastards to a man and will hold a grudge forever so just be nice but don't let your local boys get into the bribery business as it tends to take on a life of its own... I punched out the local postman early on and got amazing respect with a spot of fear from half the town. (not an advised method)
Its hard to find but a smart Indian woman is worth ten men.. Look for a good independent woman..
Try at all costs to avoid Indians returning home from the US or UK as they are looked on as "Brown Sahibs" and tend to act a bit superior
If you have any ex-pats working there tell them not to bonk any of the workforce as she WILL TELL so its best to have a favorite among girls at the local hotel... She will also tell but it wont cause a problem...
Finally because people tend to be respectful and some very deferential does not mean that they aren't trying to cheat you, steal from you and generally smile politely while they are fucking you...
The Sage words to ALWAYS remember...
Its not good for the Christian health to hustle the Asian Brown;
for the Christian riles,
and the Asian smiles
and he weareth the Christian down;
and the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
with the name of the late deceased,
and the epitaph drear,
"A fool lies here, who tried to hustle the east"............. Rudyard Kipling
Not a lot has changed from the days of the Raj
if you don't think first
if you back down to easily
if you are not seen as the boss
if you have bad manners....
I say hang 'em, hang 'em high.
All in accordance with the due process of law, of course. And if we need to change some laws to do this, then we need to do that.
But as for myself, I say, HANG the free traitors. Hang 'me publicly. Sell hotdogs, sing hymns ("shall we gather at the rivet, the beautiful, the beautiful river..."), and watch the outsouring CorpGovMedia traitors HANG. Hear the rope snap as the trap door opens, see their feet jerk and dance at the end of the journey.
THey are traitors, guilty of treason in an economic war. THey sold out their country in a time of war. And I say they should pay for this crime by having their necks stretched. And in accordance with the rule of law and due process. Of course. But Hang 'Em....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
India's problems are (to put it mildly) not IT's. While English-speaking outsources may be hard to find, the evolving clientele is less anglotaxonic. Look for the next "Indias" in Mexico and southern China.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
do the U.S. managers (I'm assuming managers, bean counters, and consultants, not techies) who recommend & execute outsourcing plans get their own jobs outsourced?
or are they doing it to save their own scrawny asses?
while Microsoft, Motorola, HP, etc openly have overseas campuses to complement their US staff, many other big co's do it to eliminate U.S. staff, and they do it secretly - you can't get them to talk about this in the open, they say it's a 'trade secret'.
the truth is, if they did admit it openly, they'd face not only the publicity but also the chance that some pissed off lonely geek will take justice into his/her own hands.
Cowards.
In your example, the hard drive costs ten times at citcuit city as wal-mart. In the case of outsourcing, the overall cost of outsourcing saves only 15% on large deployments, and much less on smaller deployments. It can even cost more to outsource than to have local workers in smaller deployments. Plus you have the headaches of trying to support a remote operation with little control over who you are dealing with.
Think about this, would you rather pay $100 for a hard drive at Circuit City, with a known support network, or $90 at Wal-mart, with nothing but a return policy?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
OMG the twonkers who wants to fire their own skilled workers, can't find replacements in India. This is a sad, sad day for profit for the CEOs/stockowners/... *cries*
Carbon based humanoid in training.
i've been writing software since Carter was president and i've noticed a subtle shift in the Indian programmers with whom I've worked. When I first started working with Indian guys they were invariably college graduates from prestige Indian universities augmented with a Masters degree from someplace like U of Mich. In other words, smarter than me. After a few years I noticed the Indian guys just had Bachelors degrees but were still plenty advanced. Today, I work with a really great Indian guy, but his skillset is entry-level.
It doesn't take a Harvard MBA to figure out the appeal of hiring an Indian guy for $400 a month over there versus hiring a guy just like him for $4000 a month here. And this appeal will remain until you run out of smart guys over there. (Or the smart guys there figure out that a big payday is only a plane-ticket away.)
as a working engineer i see outsourcing as a knife held at my throat. but i'm also a Reaganite free trader, so I don't gripe about it. (and the knife is a good thing, it helps motivate me.) the market tends to balance things out. if america is too rich and her engineering graduates too stupid, the work will go overseas until india runs out of smart guys who'll work for cheap or america runs out of money.
and this won't happen. things will balance out. rich spots like the US and Western Europe will outsource work to 3rd world hell-holes until those hell-holes are filled up with cash. After that the idealist in me hopes that whoever works smartest and hardest will win on an even playing field. yeah, i'm an idealist, but i figure it's a better form of "foreign-aid" than anything the UN or the State Department is doing.
(call me a troll for being on the right of Karl Marx.)
If there was a "simple" solution to this problem, it would have been solved by now. Nonetheless, I do believe that the problem is solvable and that the solution does involve regulation mechanisms. I suspect that the solution must involve some sort of "blind" element (a jury pool system, for example) so that it is not possible for any particular side to know who to bribe. It must also have people with the necessary knowledge but who are unlikely to have been drawn into the system so far as to have become corrupt themselves. The only way you'd get that combination is to introduce a mix of recent graduates and the self-taught. The remainder of the regulatory body should be directly elected as per any other representative, only using a proportional representation system to prevent domination.
It still wouldn't be perfect, but the randomness of one component, the youth of another and the capricious nature of PR elections would make most efforts at corruption extremely difficult and VERY expensive, and therefore probably much reduced.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
But what is the standard deviation? My point was more that there aren't hotspots with overly inflated prices, like Tokyo, Silicon Valley, or Redmond. Prices in Silicon Valley, a prime example, are insane compared to where I live (the Midwest). A simple example is that the median price of a house in Silicon Valley is around $700,000 (http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/13 422709.htm). In comparison, the price of a house in the Midwest is in the $100,000-$200,000 range as median.
With a little math (ie, assuming a 30 year morgage), it's possible to show that one has to pay 3.5x as much in Silicon Valley for the house alone (ie, ~$1400 more per month). Take into account things like property tax and higher prices for food due to high property rates or driving farther, hence using more gas, to go to stores that aren't on high cost real estate, and clearly there's a price premium for living in a specific location when there's no real sign that it's even worthwhile (if it were, India outsourcing wouldn't make sense; New Delphi outsourcing might).
Now, if a lot of businesses started hiring across the US, I'm sure wages would increase. But it'd be a more uniform increase without massive spikes over land prices; companies could just move if a county/state was trying to shaft them. And in the end, more uniform hiring across a country does end up improving the whole country, instead of hot spots (like California) having federal funds be the method of redistributing wealth. So, it's great news that average India wages are increasing. There's room to hire in the rural US as well.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Wasn't that exactly what you had asked for?
No. You see, big corporations have too much influence in politics. They get their way by contributing to politicians that see things their way. In other words, it is a partial breakdown of democracy. It is as if big corporations get about 1/3 of the vote.
Table-ized A.I.
The apparent ticking cultural time bomb in India? They're developing so rapidly, can they truly sustain themselves? So many Indians that I've met over the years have told the same story of the conflict between a very traditionalist culture and a new global paradigm. Hell, I would be worried about the social issues on the horizon over there. Gender, spirituality, religion, civil rights...India is trying to cram 500 years of 'European development' into about 50.
You would be right if my intention was to find a replacement-country for the entire outsourcing industry. However, if you look at things from the point of view of an average company that looks for additional labour-force, even Vatican would be good, as long as they offered programmers :-)
+ I am biased towards the country I love, what's wrong with that?
The saddest poem
I used to work for a company in Europe. We had 90% of the US market outsourced to us. I got 4 weeks of vacation. 16 holidays a year which I could add on to my vacation days if I worked on those days and upto 1 month of paid sick leave. My second year at the company I tore my knee ligament playing soccer and I was off for 6 weeks and when I came back I still had 4 weeks of vacation which I took to go visit Egypt. My brother works in San Jose and gets a piddling 2 weeks of vacation a year including sick leave. American society drives people too hard. It is just a myth that life is easier in the US. Its just easier for the top 5% who are fabulosly rich . The rest of the people are slogging like crazy to just afford a house and car. Most software engineers could ahve much higher standards of living by moving abroad.
**Life is too short to be serious**