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Apple Pulls Out of India
tanveer1979 writes "Barely 3 months after it commenced India operations, Apple has decided to pull out its software operations from Bangalore. The employees will be given a severance package which is equal to two months' pay. The sales and marketing operations will remain on (these consist of around 30 people) but the software and support will be completely pulled out." From the article: "Apple had set itself a hiring target of 600 by the year-end. After a gala induction ceremony on April 17, the operations team went to Transworks for training. Some of the managers were about to leave for the US for further training when they were asked to stay put."
Last paragraph of the article, from an India employee losing his (or her) job:
Yeah, there are a lot of U.S. employees familiar with that feeling. Welcome to the global market.
Personally, I find it just as offensive companies whimsically shift work forces, often at high personal and financial cost to employees caught unawares, whether it be in the U.S. or India. I'd like to say, "see how it feels?", but I find no satisfaction in that. I guess the global economy does apply globally. It really does become about money on ledger sheets, and little about the workforce and impact on people just trying to make a living. Meanwhile CEOs and other execs reap massive rewards, usually with little relationship to how well their company does because of these decisions.
(That said, the article is far too short on detail to understand exactly what prompted and triggered the change in plans for Apple.)
I guess a cheaper country was found
India and Apple obviously haven't been properly educated about the dangers of pulling out.
Two months severance pay in India = about $42 and 7 cents
The company had commenced operations in April and hired about 30 people for its subsidiary
In Silicon Valley, a one cough by a hiring manager can cause 30 people to disappear overnight. Thirty people in India represented less than a million dollars worth of pocket change to Apple. The story in really, "What were they attempting to do in the first place?"
Have you Meta Moderated t
When I first viewed the comments on this article, the quote at the bottom of the page was this:
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. -- Churchill
Do you figure that since socialism has gone bust, capitalism has had to take over the sharing of the misery?
This ain't rocket surgery.
"On May 15, Apple officials addressed us and were highly appreciative of the workforce and the task it would execute in India. I wonder why they never said anything even then," said another fired employee.
Seems pretty cold to me. In a lot of developing countries like this a job at a major multinational serves to support not just the family but the entire extended family. No doubt some of these people even had to quit other jobs to join Apple, and can't return. I worked many years for the international division of a large multinational and saw first-hand the culture of abusing foreign workers because management knew they could work them 14 hours a day and the people couldn't say or do anything about it. And since these people are all classified as "professionals" no one can swoop into the factory to blow the whistle, you have to work whatever overtime is demanded of you, for free. Pretty crummy if you ask me.
The only way 30 people could disappear overnight is if that hiring manager is a corporate officer. Speaking as one who has been in the "hiring manager" role in Silicon Valley for quite some time, it's pretty hard to get rid of people, even poor performers. Yes, California is an at-will state. California's courts, however, have proven to be very pro-employee. So, firing somebody in California usually requires lots of documentation.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Indian Giver comes to mind, it's funny, I just haven't figured out how yet. :P
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
You don't throw good money after bad when you get a losing poker hand. Perhaps they realized that their India operation was a mistake. I suspect that the beans will get spilled eventually.
With all this evil alien bacteria invading, perhaps it's a good move for the company?
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
I'm surprised the parent post got marked insightful.
It's not the Indian programmers' fault that US programmers' jobs get outsourced to them. So it's not exactly medicine they're delivering. US jobs get moved to India because US capitalists want to increase their profits by getting the same job done for less money in India.
Banu
Two methods:
1) Safari
2) www.privoxy.org
(presuming you already use adblock plus and filterset.g -- if not then try this)
try using the noscript extension and whitelisting javascript only for sites that aren't frustrating, or check out userscripts.org to see if the websites in question have greasemonkey scripts to remove the adds. if developing your own script then the firebug extension is invaluable.
good luck. to an ad-free web.
RP
ah, mod points
Despite the HR blurb at the bottom of TFA claiming the Apple India crowd were doing well and all that, I imagine that it was questions of quality that led to the firing of the workforce. Apple's recent Aperture debacle, where it was discovered that Aperture was majorly inferior to Adobe's Lightbox in performance, features and quality probably resulted in a major shakeup in Apple's software development divisions. There have been a number of stories about companies having problems with outsourced software development, and I presume this is another one. My guess is that Apple will probably either increase the size of its Ireland operations or move the development to eastern Europe where the quality is generally known to be good.
That the technology transfer was not happening as smoothly as they thought it would, and the costs became an issue too. Having worked for Apple, then NeXT, then Apple/NeXT and finally Apple again, I have seen this problem long before it became fashionable to outsource oversees. It was true stateside between regions of this country, and even more so with language/cultural barriers in this global market. The axe swings many ways, this time back to another country, possibly back to the US.
As someone who has worked in various levels of management, I've seen the dregs of outsourcing. It always results in some level of reduction of quality, a decrease in customer satisfaction, and only a moderate savings.
Everything is subject to change over time but right now, the quality of the average American IT worker is far better than those from India.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
. . .the US was too expensive and now India is as well. Time to move to an even cheaper place . . .
Thank God for Mississippi.
KFG
Has nothing to do with racism, especially since Indian people are not a "race" (which, according to modern biologists, does not really exist anyway).
The average quality of an Indian IT worker is lower than an America. Source? Practice. I've been in several different companies in the past years and I've seen what outsourcing does. Maybe in 10-20 years when things get more modernized and other factors improve it may be different but this is the true story. Outsourcing is being done to simply shave the bottom line at the cost of quality.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
Those popup ads that the Times of India link is spraying, that aren't blocked by Javascript window suppression in Firefox or Mozilla -- is there a way to get rid of them?
I've seen them elsewhere (interestingly, always on foreign newspaper sites) but web searches only turn up people complaining about them, only to have jackasses insist that they must be spyware-infected because Firefox is infallible. (As I type this I'm realizing what answer I'm likely to receive, but nonetheless...)
The details of negating Firefox's popup blocker are well known, some advertisers use/abuse this some do not yet. But there are definately a growing number of advertisers that are doing just that.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Holy fuck - that does it ... I'm going downtown and buying an Apple tomorrow.
I don't know which, maybe an Intel Mini, maybe an iPod - but something.
Good job Apple.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Most Indian CS majors (not talking about IIT grads here) come out just knowing C#/VB .NET. Its hard to train them to learn Objective-C or any other language they are used to since all of their CS skills are bound to a single language. Go to any job posting in India for .NET and you will get millions of programmers who know everythinhg about .NET. Ask for people who know Objective-C or anything non-Microsoft base, then you will get almost nobody. Its hard to find programmers in India with Mac OS x experiance, or even *nix experiance.
And I disagree with you. You may think you are hot shit worth $250,000 per year but the market does not think so. Just because you were educated in the US does not mean your skills,work ethic etc are in any way superior to anyone else.
If anything, you seem to have a highly inflated sense of your capabilities just from the comment you made. When you stop walking with your nose up in the air you will understand what I mean.
If you want to blame anyone for losing your job to outsourcing, blame your employer. Employers want to make a profit and they will always go with what is cheaper. But on the flip side, as India's economy gets stronger, it will not be so cheap anymore. And then the outsourcing will go to a different place.
Um, it's "grammar" actually, and no, English is not my first language either.
A bunch of people have been paid 5 month's salary for 3 months work. How is that 'fucking'?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Hmmm, I might buy the Russian part of this comment - but China? Are you nuts? You've clearly had no experience with the state of outsourcing in China. The current lack of skills of the average Chinese IT worker looks like India in 1981. 1,000's of bodies at extraordinarily low wages with essentially no skills.
The biggest scam going right now is onshore U.S. companies fronting for these masses of "programmers" through mergers with Chinese companies. If you think organizations have been disappointed by outsourcing to India - you haven't seen anything yet.
This will be the next big scam - unfortunately the workers and the investors will take the shaft while the dealmakers take the money. Not one of these deals goes down with a few $'s making their way to a Hong Kong "subsidiary" of the company.
Just my opinions of course.
No pop-ups with Camino under OS X... :-)
What, me worry?
As I remember, there was considerable shock when it was announced that Apple was moving some technical support operations to India.
I think this might have been in response to that backlash, which at least means Apple listens to its customers.
As you may remember this is even a mini-trend. Dell also moved much of their support operation back from India when customers complained.
I notice others feel sorry for the Indians, and I have some sympathy, but I could never understand those thick accents. So I think Apple's decision was a wise one. I was baffled as to why they would have gone in in the first place. I could have told them there would be customer hostility concerning the move.
D
Considering the low-cost, high-quality talent pool that Bangalore offers, it is unclear why Apple decided to shut shop just over a month after it commenced operations.
The person that wrote this has never dealt with Indian tech support I take it.
the BEST reply!! i don't have to read the rest.
I'd rather computers be made here at home. If it were my choice, I'd have it that way. I'm just telling you how it is. (I do tend to buy the more expensive higher quality electronics and computers that have more American made parts and assembly).
Just because I can't buy an "All American Computer" doesn't mean I am going to turn myself into a big fan of outsourcing.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
Firefox on OS X. No pop-ups on that site.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I hope they don't cry over those spilled beans. But that's what you get when you count your chickens before they cross the road.
I hear that europe is more heavily tilted towards socialism - especially France.
Actually most of the European policital forces usually mislabeled as 'Socialists' or even 'Communists' by US right wingers are actually modern Social Democrats who have become moderate to the point where they generally do not see a conflict between a democratic society with a capitalist market economy and their own goals which in turn means they have very little in common with Marxism, Communism or classical Socialism. To call political parties like the British labor party or even the German PDS/Linkspartei Socialists would actually be considered an insult by a true die-hard Socialist.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I didn't see anything here. I'm currently running Firefox under Windows.
I do have NoScript installed. That tends to kill a lot of the bother. I have no idea why NoScript isn't part of the standard install. I just won't browse the web without it anymore.
This would be less disturbing if your screen name weren't what it is.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Time to move back to the US.
Many companies are coming back to the US for Software Engineering. Especially mid size companies. The company I work for also recently canceled its dealings with its Indian outsourcing firm. They had two reasons:
1) In 2001 with benefits, a decent Software Eng:
$60/hour in USA versus $5/hour in India
In 2006 with benefits, a decent Software Eng:
$60/hour in USA versus $25/hour in India
No longer worth the hassle of communication problems and slow response time to fixing defects.
2) Quality of their work was awful. This seemed to be due to major attrition problems. The attrition rates at the firm we were using were like 50% a year. Even their manager's were job hoping. So nobody really cared about quality since they knew they would be long gone to better pastures before it caught up with them.
that the cost of outsourcing is higher than the hype tells it to be. A lot of businesses try to outsource to India, and while it might work better for some companies, I guess the cost of a = inferior customer satisfaction and b = more people needed for the same work equals c = higher costs in the long run. And since a is more important for Apple they've seen outsourcing is not a good idea.
Don't get me wrong over b, I guess there are great people out there, but first of all: they don't speak English very well (ever called an outsourced helpdesk and you know), second of all: they are not educated as we in the westerner countries, so they need to be educated more and longer on the job while we are supposed to get that education through our schools. It's not the inhabitants fault, but India is pretty close to a 3rd world country.
Next to that they also have a higher constant cost. TFA mentions shipping over some people for education in the states. They can do it 2 ways: ship someone from west -> east and pay big $$$ (250k/year) for someone willing to do that and ship over his family and belongings back and forth every 3-6 months for 30k/year and cover the costs over there for 50k/year. Or ship 20 people every month from east -> west for 2 weeks and cover their costs for 400k/year.
If you don't do it yourself and outsource your outsourcing to a "specialized" company, you'll see that the costs equal the costs you have here but without the hassle of outsourcing, keeping your customers happy only thing is that you have to keep in account the unions.
I don't know, while outsourcing could be helping keeping costs down, I think the only thing that should be outsourced is labour by hand without customer contact. This is not because the people over there don't have brains, but simply because of the differences in language and culture. They are trying to fix that too, but what do you think when you call the D-Link helpdesk and "Bob" speaks with an Indian accent and ask how the weather is down there in Ohio? Yes, they have cue sheets with different lines that people in the US would use, but it just sounds wrong, try it.
And just so I wouldn't break Godwin's law: why didn't hitler outsource his stuff to India?
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The written word has an amazing effect at conveying a person's perceived intelligence. When used well, it is to your advantage. When poorly used, it is to your detriment.
Stop! Dremel time!
What I never understand is why they don't outsource the higher paid employees? You know, management.
I've been involved in a few outsourcing projects now, which have ranged from "disappointing" to "disaster." While I can agree that the quality of the code we received back was universally "not very good," the bigger problems were on our own management side.
Like most American product companies, where our products are software or have significant software in them, our processes range from bad to nonexistant. Product managers, engineering managers, even the VP of Sales feels free to walk right into engineering cubes and ask for features willy-nilly, and they usually get them. While you can rail this isn't the right way to do software development, it has managed to create a multi-trillion dollar industry and everyone does it.
Moving to a cheaper offshoring location, or even to one with "better" programmers won't change the failure rate significantly because the failures are built into the process.
I know our last 2 contractors had to go through a two week trial period at the agencies expense and we kicked both of them back. We probably get just as many bad American contractors, but the whole point of exporting jobs or importing workers was that we gain talents that aren't available here at a lower price. If their skills and education are all suspect and have to be verified at a greater expense and difficulty than local talent why bother? Apple probably found the same thing.
I think that the grandparent post was trying to imply that in the same way that US programmers complain about jobs going to India (to save money), that those Indian programmers are complaining about the same thing happening to them as their jobs are being "re-outsourced" to even less expensive areas of the world. Unfortunately, the bitter/vengeful tone of the post obscured that meaning somewhat.
So maybe some of that factored into the decision to cut and run. I guess the true story will come out eventually.
If anything, you seem to have a highly inflated sense of your capabilities just from the comment you made.
I think you have a highly inflated sense of your own capabilities if you think you have any way to know what the GPs capabilities are.
I'm using IE with the google tool bar and all those popups I'm reading about in this thread were successfully blocked.
How about "betrayed"?
This wasn't a case of a company going belly up or a single developer having the misfortune of getting hired on at an existing branch just in time for it to get whacked. Apple came in to India, went through all of the paper work and planning to set up operations, hired a bunch of people, etc. The expectation for anyone considering this job is that all of this implies an intention to stay for longer than 5 months. That and the fact I'm sure that the jobs were posted as permanent positions. Geez, even most contract work is for periods of time longer than those people were employed! Imagine you left your company for this great opportunity or had been unemployed for some time and finally found salvation. Just when you were getting used to things BAM, "it's not you, it's me." And not just for you,but for the whole operation!
Whether you want to believe it or not, there is a minimum level of commitment inherent in creating and recruiting for open positions. Apple had gone way past the point of no return and should have stuck it out for at least a couple of years before reevaluating.
If you still don't agree, imagine your wife deciding to leave you after 5 days for some better looking or richer guy. Not that this would be fun after any length of time, but this would show the same kind of complete disrespect for others that Apple has just demonstrated.
(btw, I'm writing this on my Mac Mini, so don't assume I'm generally anti-Apple)
Non-competes are pretty much standard fair in the software biz AFAICT, or at least every job I've ever been offered required one.. The "non-compete" agreement usually indicates that you can't go to work for a competitor or steal a bunch of company talent and start your own competitor. From what I can tell this was just Apple starting up a support center in India, so it wasn't software dev.. So your "they should just leave and make something better" comment doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
It was a pretty stupid move anyway IMHO as Apple charges an arm and a leg for their stuff and people pay the premium to have a premium experience. If I want to talk to tech support in India, I'll just buy a Dell for half the cost.
apt-get install redhat please god - Me (take it easy, I love Debian)
This is slightly offtopic, but let me explain the state of affairs on Indian Software Services companies. This is not about product companies which operate here.
I guess I'll be the only Indian in the world who'd wish this outsourcing boom would settle.
Why?
Because we have contributed nothing to computing, technically or in research. This is more about the attitude of Indian software services companies. Infosys, TCS and the like, relegating writing software to a BPO styled operation. Cut and Paste mechanics, unhealthy and ugly code. 95% of coders here plain suck. I really hope software dev automation gets a breakthrough, so these guys lose their jobs (for which they are not qualified anyway).
These companies are surely helping India with jobs, but they have done _nothing_ for computing. (How many Indian Open Source products do you know!)No contribution to open source, and full scale leeching. Meanwhile, revenue is upwards of $2billion, profits $600 million plus. Yet.
Damn, I dont wanna think about it.
Btw, this is not a problem with Indian techies, there are so many of them working in research (abroad and in India) who are really good.
Obviously you made a mistake in hiring them in the first place.
Firing people is bad for morale. It means that people shouldn't trust you. It means that your remaining employees should start looking for a different job.
Whenever I was a manager, I protected my employees. If they messed up, I coverred for them and helped them fix the problem. I have their back and I expect the same in return.
I think some people feel that because India is a long way away those employees don't matter. Only a sick kind of employer would feel that way. Once you hire someone you owe it to them to make it work.
There is absolutely nothing that entitles you to get a tech job. The Indians can do the same job you do at a much lower cost. I know if I was your boss, I would probably say something like... "Thank god the racist prick is out on the street where he belongs."
So now objecting to my job moving overseas is racist? I don't care what race the guy who's doing my job is. I'm opposed to sending the job where I can't follow.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
that should have been
"I'll say it for you, then: "See how it feels?". See how it feels?"
See how it feels?
It just didn't work very well for him either.
007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
So it is only okay if your job goes to someone in Wyoming or Georgia or somewhere where Americans are or are you saying you would follow your job anywhere?
You have no idea what my qualifications are so have no factual basis for your assumption that I am not qualified. I believe I am worth quite a bit more than companies are currently paying. You also have no idea what the market really thinks I'm worth. The market has rigged it so that I must compete with an artificially inflated workforce. Is there an H1B visa equivalent for lawyers? I don't know. I might feel better about it if the lawyers and politicians had a special visa program for their fields too.
If you truly believe the free market should determine my worth then so be it! I propose we leave it to the companies to discover, just as Apple has on this occasion, the hidden costs of outsourcing.
I merely ask for no exceptions to our general immigration policy. My skills are not special per se, just in very high demand (note that industry says so every year once the H1B visas run out). Under a free market this means inflated costs for those services. If my demands get too high, let my peers compete to give me a reality check. I don't mind... really!
The key point is that I am not asking for special treatment. Quite the opposite, in fact, as I am asking for equal treatment with other professions. Eliminate the H1B program.
He didn't say as a result of, he said meanwhile. Meaning CEOs and other execs do reap massive rewards from their companies, but not necessarily as a result of outsourcing, often a cost-saving strategy of dubious effectiveness.
Mr Jobs just sold $295,000,000 worth of Apple stock.
In 1992, CEOs held 2 percent of the stock of US corporations, nowadays they own 12 percent. In less than 15 years, CEOs (not including other executives, just CEOs), have 'earned' themselves 10 whole percent of corporate America. If the division of pay were entirely fair and equitable, Steve Jobs and his fellow CEOs must be responsible for exactly one tenth of all the wealth created by anyone at all who works for a large corporation.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Let this be a lesson to anyone who thinks Apple is somehow different, hipper, or cooler than the average multinational corporation. They think with their bottom line too.
Let's hope that this is an increasing trend. The outsourcing of tech and support jobs from the US to India has been destroying the industry.
Tell that to the big-inc lobbyists who have convinced Congress and newpapers that there is a "tech skills shortage" and that your job is going to India or visa workers because you didn't get a 6.0 GPA and they did.
Table-ized A.I.
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
"You've been iSourced!"
Table-ized A.I.
If you think a big company is bad about treating you like a number, join the Army.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
There's no such thing as job security through obscurity.
It's a joke, laugh.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Someone in California or Texas could follow their job to Wyoming or Georgia. I did it moving to Cincinnati. Following that same job to Bangalore is nigh impossible, for a number of reasons.
Firefox 1.5.0.2/Linux. No pop-ups.
Here is my 2 bit theory.
Steve wanted to stay in Cupertino. If you listen to the town meeting from a month or so ago it is clear that getting the land for the new campus was not a sure thing. Estimates are that Apple paid 500 million for the land for the new campus. India was probably more of a contingency if they couldn't expand in Cupertino. Once that deal went though, then they needed to back out so as not to stretch themselves too thin.
It would look pretty silly spending 0.5 billion on a new campus and then have no one to fill it with.
These corporations sells their products for the entire world. So there is no reason for only the americans to be the only ones with the privilege to work for them. Of course, I believe you may have more talents, as there isnt much point in studying bleeding edge technologies if most of the work available here in the 3rd world (I live in Brazil), is database Java/VB/C# applications. Anything that is not local-law dependant is pirated.
Ever hear of a bluff?
... So considering in Canada $8/hr ($1280/mo)is the highest minimum wage, your $732/week is about 2x more than minimum wage.
;-)
So in short I'd say he has you beat by a factor of 4.
Let us know when you start making $2928/week, and then maybe the joke won't be on you.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
anywhere you've got poor, dumb people having lots of kids, you'll have corporations moving jobs there. If you want to improve things for the working man/woman, get the poor ones to stop breeding execesively. But it's taboo to sugest you shouldn't be allowed to have kids just because you can't afford them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Source? Anecdotal evidence. Which doesn't count for anything in a serious conversation. Try finding some published material to back up your claims.
Thank you! Come again!
-- Boycott Shell
In this case, firing foreign developers might be good
for morale in the US. Makes people feel more secure.
I agree.
I'm not from India, I'm from Pakistan. But...
There are outsourcing companies on those regions which aim just to get contracts signed, and focus much less on who they hire. The cultural and timezone differences will always exist, but I've known tonnes of worthless techies involved in the outsourcing business. The better ones just find their way out, head for the west themselves and find work.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Firefox "Bon Echo" 2.0a3, with AdBlock and auto-updated Filterset.G... No pop-ups.
What we need more of is science!
I think Apple got scared of having their software pirated in India, especially due to leakage of source code. Having on same hardware specs as Windows only aggrevates the concern. I wonder how no one else has posted this before !
Three months on the job != three months work. Think of the opportunity cost if you're not expecting the contract to last that long: these people could have, e.g, bought houses, moved cities, made long term plans (bump up your marriage date with your sweetheart, etc) with the expectation they were being employed for the long term. My last job required me to relocate to another continent, and I sold literally everything I could not fit in a suitcase to do so. I would not have been so pleased to hear after three months "Oops, sorry about that -- we'll be generous and pay you double for your time here, though".
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Yes, you are right. Innovation is the key and Indian companies have tremendously failed at it. I also agree with the point of Open Source Projects coming from Indians (I am not sure about the involvement of these techies in such projects though; in other words, it would be interesting to find out the statistics of number of Indian techies involved in open source projects). Considering that open source offers so many opportunities for everybody to work upon, its really a shame to see nada products... P.S. You are not the only Indian.
Guys you can't talk about the $ values comparisons between countries, you need to talk about cost of living, i assume making about $800 per month in india is about making 3000-4000 in USA, because i am sure you rent for an apartment in india isnt $800 a month
http://iesucks.org
Well, AC, you know what? In today's global marketplace, nothing entitles you to keep your tech job for longer than three months if your corporate benefactors have a mood swing. Welcome to the party, glad you're here, let me take your coat.
Last number of years, Americans working in tech have had the blade of Indian outsourcing dangled over their heads, customarily as blackmail to force longer hours on fixed salaries. When there's just no more blood to be squeezed from the stone, boom, time to pack up, lay off and ship.
Meanwhile - and I'm saying this from experience working for a large American telecom that fired damned near everybody a few years ago to restock with cheap Indian labor - the Indians coming in would take all this as a show of cultural and intellectual superiority over us pampered, lazy Americans. Not all Indians, but certainly more than enough to carry the stereotype. We Americans have spent the last five years being barely tolerated by Indian coworkers touting the "get used to it, global economy, cheaper and better" dogma.
Now suddenly you're starting to sound like union men! Think it's shitty that Apple changed their minds? I've read other comments in this story pointing out that folks in India have extended families to care for, that they probably had to quit jobs they couldn't get back, etc etc etc. Well, the knife cuts both ways.
You guys weren't being aggressively competitive. You guys were simply used. We know how you feel.
Thing is, as we had to explain to our families why our jobs were being sent overseas, we knew the cold truth that you guys are learning now. It was never about better, or even about as good. It was about being okay while being cheaper. A lot cheaper. Period. Corporations did it because it's easier to look competent short term by cutting costs than by increasing income, and the unfortunate truth is that the American economy right now is still pretty much driven by cost cutting. It was also inevitable that, sooner or later, the incentive would begin to evaporate as those outsourced employees started asking for more money.
A few years ago Dilbert did a strip where our boy tells PHB, "I have some disturbing news. We outsourced our customer service function to India a few years ago. Apparently, they subcontracted the job to Mexico. Then Mexico subcontracted to Vietnam, who subcontracted to the Philippines. . .. who subcontracted it to us. It turns out that we're the lowest-cost provider, because we lie about our hold times. In summary, we pay ourselves to hose ourselves. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
PHB: "We should raise prices?"
That's it in a nutshell. Again, welcome to the party - chips and dip are in the corner.
For the record, I agree that doing a three-month cocktease in India was a shitty thing for Apple to do. But then, so was bottom-dollar outsourcing it to begin with. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
I never understood why this was a racial slur towards Native Americans, I mean it was the white man that gave them a bunch of land treaties and then broke all of them...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
I don't know if American IT workers are really any better than Indian IT workers. I just know that every instance I've had first or second-hand knowledge of regarding American (and Mexican!) IT companies outsourcing to India has failed. It's come in over budget, lacking quality, and put everyone in a bad mood. In most of the cases, the outsourcing was abandoned; in on case, the company felt they had already sunk so much money in the investment that they had no choice to try to keep going and hope for the best--don't know how that one ultimately played out.
Anywy, like I said, I don't know if this means that American and Mexican IT workers are better than Indian IT workers; perhaps its an issue of communication, time zones, and culture. I just know that every case I have had first/second-hand knowledge of outsourcing to India, it's been a disaster.
I've been predicting for years that the outsourcing movement was nothing for American IT workers to be afraid of. I've been saying that companies were going to try it, get burned and/or see it just wasn't practical, and pull back. That's exactly what's happening. You can outsource manufacturing and low-skill/low-interaction jobs. But any job that requires communication and significant interaction with the customer (yes, including call centers) is not something that's going to work in an outsourced environment over the long-term. And we're starting to see the pullback I was predicting long ago.
Mod parent up. He understands economics the way anyone complaining of outsourcing doesnt.
The whole world buys American products. America doesnt buy the world's products by using certain types of laws... In time those countries would want things to be fair and implement their own laws. Thus, for the sake of trade, America has to gradually remove the laws and allow trade to flourish, only to stay in the game.
Its like I have big guns, pointing at others, asking them to buy my products. But I wont buy their products. This can only go on for so long. Microsoft sells to the world, isnt it fair for them to hire from the world too? This is probably more true with IBM.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I've noticed in the last few years you simply can't get high quality cheap talent in India. Don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of high quality talent in India, but it's expensive. And you can still get cheap, but the people you get cheap tend not to be very good at all. Things are basically evening out.
The fact that India subsidises Gas, Petrol and Kerosine; so you may get $800 per month, but a good portion of your cost of living is being subsidised.
As for the amount, one has to look at the cost of living, and the likes; in New Zealand, the minimum wage is NZ$9.50 per hour; I'm on $11.20 per hour, in the average week, I'm paid around NZ$320-370 (with tax taken off); if one converted NZ dollars to US, I would be considered 'poor' but given the low cost in living in NZ; rent being $100 per week, power, $20 per week etc. one can easily have $120-150 left at the end of each week.
A recent trend is for companies to get out of cheap engineering off shoring deals and move the jobs back to the US in rural areas--called Farm Shoring. The cultural differences are obvious to anyone who has used an India off shored help desk. The work force targeted in the US is rural non-technical people who are being trained to do low level support. Expect a small return to computer science majors at rural colleges. India and other places are countering by trying to teach their workers more of the US culture including language variations such as 'Texan', New Yorker, the South etc by holding dialect classes where their students practice sounding like different parts of the US.
I sure wish my mod points hadn't expired, because the parent hit the nail on the head. I, too, know the absolutely horrible quality that comes from the countries to which we outsource. It's costing us more than just lost productivity; it's pissing off US emplyees who have to deal with the clueless outsourcees...
Actually, I think you have it completely wrong. Firing poor bad employees shows that you know what is going on and will not tolerate BS. More often than not, the complaints I hear from people are almost always do to a boss who will not act firmly. This means protecting good employees and FIRING the ones who are not up to par. Yeah you can spin it as the managers fault for hiring the person, but if you wanted to avoid that, you'd still have an idiot working with you. I enjoy my free time and therefore do not want to have to fix all their crap. Been there, done that. People lie, cheat, and steal, but once you figure it out, FIX THE SITUATION!
Anyone making $120k/year can afford some of the nicer houses in any midwestern city.
If you don't want to be living one mortgage payment from being out on the street, DON'T! Learn to live within your means. Put 25% of your money into your retirement account. Buy a house where you can pay your mortgage payment and then some, or rent a place you can afford. Drive a late model auto. Don't spend $4,000 a year on the latest tech toys. Bring your lunch to work instead of eating out all the time.
EXCERCISE SOME FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY! If you make $120,000 a year and are one mortgage payment away from being on the street, it's because you're being stupid with your money.
paintball
Indian society is one of the most porous when considering trade secrets - information gets around. I don't see how Apple could hope to maintain any security whatsoever with Microsoft so highly invested in Bangalore. Every punjabi and his dog within 50 miles would be selling Apple confidential docs to Microsoft.
I don't know what you're talking about. All of the Indian call reps that I call in Bangalore are actually named Cindy and live in Boise.
Because employees would react. If they said "we're thinking about closing" or "things aren't working out as expected" then at least a few employees would just bail, or worse. No company wants that -- if there is a chance to salvage the situation, then they would prefer the employees never even knew how close they came to being laid off. Especially if a few employees leaving could damage the potential turnaround. And if there is no chance to salvage the situation, then they want those employees to still be around long enough to finish whatever needs finishing.
I'm not suggesting that how corporations treat employees is good. I'm just telling you what the thinking is. In fact, I hated that thinking so much that I quit my first high-level job. I'd been a manager of Web teams for most of my career. I got a job with Sabeer Bhatia (the Hotmail guy), and he brought me on as a Director. I sat in all/most of the upper-management meetings. I heard all sorts of private discussions, not meant for the rest of the employees. I knew when the product had serious issues that would hurt our funding. I knew when there was trouble with an investor. I knew when the management team was in conflict. It was never a good idea to let employees in on the issues. I learned that quickly. The first few times there were issues, I took my team to lunch and let them know. You cannot believe the fallout, swift and sure. I grew to hate it. I had to lie to employees when they would ask about rumors. I was supposed to have been doing that all along, anyway (well, maybe "lying" is too harsh because I'm bitter about it, I'm sure a more seasoned person would have simply said "none of your business" to every single rumor or TMI kind of question -- but for me, that just gets uncomfortable when you know the person has a family and will be out of work in a month). Eventually I quit. At my next job, the hiring manager was curious why I was going for a job as a manager of a small team when I was clearly moving up into Director & VP level work. I realized I'd rather be with the rest of the employees, not knowing about the sheer volumes of crap that hit the fan daily.
As I get older, I get better at things, of course. I'm self-employed now, and I have a subcontractor for the times when the work is too plentiful. If I don't have work for the subcontractor, I just say so. If he ends his business relationship with me due to it, I'll deal with that. I try not to make too big a deal out of anything. But I'm also not running a company with 10,000 employees. If things go bad for me, the impact is tiny.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
...like?
Hell, you could probably move to India and NOT work. With a few month's savings you could live like a king and maybe even buy yourself a nice wife.
paintball
In industry generally you outsource when you have a large batch of work to do and you don't want to ramp up inhouse. In the software business this generally means finding someone to churn out mountains of code.
The resulting mountains may look good on the monthly sloc metrics but its not what you want to see as an engineer. If a programmer comes back to me and says he made the required changes and produced negative 200 lines of code I would be happy.
One reason that a company like apple might decide not to proceed with something like this is that mass production is not really what they are looking for.
I don't have any problems with India specifically and I think we are going to see more of this situation where the large packages of work, which are less interesting for me anyway, going off shore.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Well, since nobody else has said it: Opera. I didn't get a single advertisement or pop-up on that page. No plugins necessary.
Maybe not
Let the immigrant IT workers jump through the same hoops the immigrant physical laborers do.
And also ensure that they get equally exploited, treated like shit and used as political pawns?
The H1B Visa program is not worth attacking here. $250K sounds like a well paid lawyer or doctor salary, engineers in the US have never earned this kind of money on average, even before H1B became a hot button topic.
Ability to feed children has nothing to do with poverty, it has to do with arable land. People with no money who have some arable land can feed themselves. We've been doing it for millions of years. And the more kids you have, the better chance you have at producing enough extra food to do something else (at least, if we westerners didn't drive down food prices so much with our nice agricultura subsidies.) Kids don't really starve in India. Kids do starve in Africa, because of widespread FAMINE, i.e., the inability to grow stuff (and in many places, warlords taking anything that does get grown.)
In most parts of the world where poor people have lots of kids, people don't have kids DESPITE not being able to afford them; they have lots of kids because they CAN'T afford NOT to have them. Procreation gets you free labor in a few years and assures there is someone to feed you when you're old. It's the poor man's social security.
If you want poor people in 3rd world countries to stop procreating all the time, give them the same agricultural subsidies we give to 1st world farmers. Then instead of having kids they'll buy tractors.
That's the funny thing about westerners - you spend a bunch of your tax dollars driving down the price of food on the world market to the point that people abroad can't make any money in agriculture, then get pissy when they find a way to do programming instead.
paintball
From a nerd in California, I have to say that you are absolutly correct. Once I hit $50k a year, life was pretty easy.
I hear all about outsourcing to India, but how do you find a (cocoa) programmer?
Bert
How's the schools for your kids? Hows the job opportunities for the wife?
What's the work visa situation like?
Not everyone is a 23 year old fresh outta school with zero ties.
A 'few months savings' might last a year or two? Then what?
Someone might be worth 250k and the market might not be willing to pay it
Who determines these rates? Hell I think I should be paid $100 per hour to do data entry because my time is worth that much to me. That doesn't make me worth that money. The market usually determines what the going salaries are in that region. And it can be for better or worse.
India's problem is that it's India. Who wants to live in India?
All the talented people I've worked with who are from India (or somewhere similar) live in the US. And I think that's the problem Apple is having - the cheap labor in India is cheap for a reason: It sucks. The people in India who are talented leave. The people they work for figure they'll get more out of them if the live in the US, or they get enough money themselves to move here, or they establish their talent with education and get accepted for US masters programs and work here after that.
If you're an Indian who can do a job as well as an American can, why work for Indian wages in India when you can work for American wages in America?
paintball
That's interesting. But to put the number in context, maybe you could tell us a bit about your cost of living? What is a flat per moth? What about cars and computers?
I might be missing your point, but it seems that you are saying that US companies are selling their products throughout the world and therefore should offer work to the people of the world because they sell to the world. But then you appear to be saying that the products sold by those companies are pirated in those countries. So, it appears that you are saying that those countries aren't really purchasing the products, they're stealing them? Then, following your logic, I believe, why should those companies offer work in those countries if they make no money there due to piracy?
I think that I may be a bit confused due to your language skills.
You are right. I have no idea what your qualifications are. Just as you have no idea about the qualifications of people working in India or China or wherever else in the world they may be. Yet you did make the statement that your skills give you an advantage over people elsewhere.
I don't know about H1B visas for lawyers, but similar visas do exist for doctors, nurses, auto mechanics (though its easier to get a green card as a specialized mechanic than a visa). I assume that its probably not as practical for lawyers as laws differ from country to country. But a human body is a human body regardless to a doctor, and a mercedes sold here can be worked on by a mechanic just as easily as a mercedes sold in Russia and a programming language in India will be the same as the same programming language in the US.
You said your skills are in high demand, so this means inflated costs. Such as the inflated $250k salary you think you deserve. Like I said, I don't know what your skills are and what kind of work you do. But from what I have seen of IT people,most like to stroke their ego and inflate their worth.
"Whether you want to believe it or not, there is a minimum level of commitment inherent in creating and recruiting for open positions. "
The same minimum level of commitment required of the employee who takes the position. How much notice do people in India have to give their employer before they quit?
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
"My last job required me to relocate to another continent,"
Well, we can be pretty sure that everyone involved was Indian. And there are plenty of jobs in Bangalore, and people job-hop all the time, apparently.
So I seriously doubt there will be any significant hardships. They basically got two months' free pay.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
There's nothing wrong with Chinese Engineers. I'd like to see Bretchel or any American company take on Engineering something like The Three Gorges Dam. China actually has a strong history in Engineering going all the way back to building the Great Wall. China's products are of low standard not because of poor engineering, but because there is no Qaulity Assurance program.
I'm not sure God is the one you should be thanking.
So now objecting to my job moving overseas is racist? I don't care what race the guy who's doing my job is. I'm opposed to sending the job where I can't follow.
Of course you are. But, you're just stupid if you think that matters.
See, companies exist to make money. There's no more or less to it than that. If you aren't the best, easiest way to make more money, than your job security is on the line. You get a certain amount of grace simply because you're local, you speak the same language, you're in the same time zone, and you're already hired.
But, if you let some foreign programmer best you in a cost/benefits analysis, your job is toast. So become the very best at what you do. Produce lots of value with your time. Make sure that XYZ megacorp is making out by keeping you on board.
And if XYZ megacorp can't see that, join the startup that will derail XYZ megacorp. Then get rich.
See? Now matter how you look at it, becoming one of the very best pays. Well. Consistently. And perhaps fantastically! So invest in yourself. Take courses, read books, challenge yourself to become the very best that you can be at... something.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I recently read an article about the latestt numbers coming out of the whole outsourcing process.
Problem is that after you take into account all the supporting factors and not just employee salaries, it is costing roughly the same to outsource as it is to host the jobs in the US.
So not only does a company get a lot of bad publicity, they don't really save any subtantial amount of money.
My belief is that this was a factor in Apple's decision. Either they plan on housing the jobs in the US for roughly the same price, or they are looking for a country where the savings would be greater. Outsourcing seems to be a fad that is falling off in popularity.
the software and support will be completely pulled out
I wonder... I am an apple service tech and we have lost our dial-in support for service assistance in leu of an ichat-like support from... you guessed it... India. I talk to Chetan quite a lot but the names are very clearly all Indian. (they don't do like some tech support places, where you get someone with a hip-deep Indian accent who introduces himself as "Greg". Ya right...) A few times I've asked them where they were located, and it was of course some city in India. They do seem to be "otherwise occupied" when I chat with them, with 3-10 minute "ping times" on their answers being common. I also asked one of them one time, how many people are you chatting with right now? He says NINE. wow. Indians apparently have one thing on me, an amazing ability to multitask to the extreme.
While the people we are chatting with are actually quite capable and do a good job, they are being pushed much too hard to offer the level of service we were used to by the US reps on the phone. I don't know if that's Apple demanding it, or the Indian phone support business offering a no-questions-asked calls-taken-per-hour rate.
I seriously wonder though if this includes the service support also. I would like to see it go back to the old ways. If they are doing it, I would not be surprised if it were based on the feedback that they are receiving on their quality of service. "Sweatshop" work is never high quality.
If it's just the customer support that's being moved back, best guess would be the customers do not like talking to someone that they clearly can tell is not even in the same country. I know it slightly irks me when I call some support/help number and get someone from India. (why is it always India? why can't it be Russia or Japan or Africa?) I think that even if the person on the line is knowledgeable and helpful, knowing it's someone from India (or any other country really) tends to put people in the mindset that they are not receiving high quality support, possibly because they know that the support person is probably receiving a very small wage compared to what it would be in the 'states.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
We're not talking civil engineering here. Pay attention to the topic; we're talking about Software Engineering. And being at a company where there's a large contingent of outsourced staff, it's been extremely difficult getting decent quality out of Chinese engineers. A ton of money was thrown at the problem, and the bottom line is most investment in hiring in China is just done so that companies can grease the wheels for doing business there (since locals will not (or are not allowed to) do business with comapnies that do not invest in China. It's ridiculous and sad, and I just wish people would stop justifying it by saying that it's cheaper or that the outsources was done because they have skills that couldn't be found locally, because both those arguments are bald-faced lies.
You can do all that and more and still be up a creek if you have a run of bad luck. Hell, you could be a VP earning 300k a year and enough money saved up for six years worth of bills and be royally screwed by the loss of your job and any of these events:
The last can be a real bitch, because states get matching funds from the federal government for the child support they collect, so they have a strong incentive to collect as much as possible. It is difficult to have payments reduced in the event of a job loss and in any case might be set based on what you "should" be making. Some of the more draconian states will even seize your car, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you have to drive to get to your job.
FWIW, in California, most non-compete clauses are difficult to enforce. Generally, a clause that prevents you from working for a competitor is invalid. Clauses that prevent you from stealing employees seem to be more enforceable (as they don't interfere with your ability to earn a living).
Nevertheless, it's cheapest just to get the unenforceable clauses excised BEFORE you sign (when you have more leverage). This process can add a couple weeks to the negotiation process but it's the company lawyers that are getting paid - you don't need one. I've never had a problem getting these clauses excised. After you leave, these clauses can cost you a little money in attorney fees to get them declared unenforceable.
(Getting these excised also makes it clear to the CEO very early on that you're not willing to put up with crap - as the ad says, this is "priceless")
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
A number of people have been commenting on how outsourcing is being scaled back after initial enthusiasm due to communication problems (language and time lag) primarily.
Really, this has been pretty obvious from the start. Outsourcing makes sense for some companies, but for companies whose bread and butter is software, like apple, it's pretty crazy to put your workers on the other side of the planet from you management. The different time zones alone make it difficult to hear back from someone on the same day for any issue
However, there's an important question that most people gloss over. If there are so many indian developers, why aren't they starting their own companies and selling us the software directly, instead of working through an intermediary. Hiring an american firm to do localization, but keeping management in india makes a lot more sense than having the software designers and the software implementers on the other side of the world.
Really, an important question is, why is software development still so centered in american, canada, and europe? Even the Japanese and Koreans seem to mostly only put out software in terms of video games.
I suspect a lot of it has to do with distribution. It might be difficult for a startup company in india to make the necessary contacts to get their product onto shelves in walmarts in america, or to get them pre-loaded on a dell OEM disk. Even so, that shouldn't apply to Japan, where many companies have a strong presence here. Why doesn't Sony have consumer software division? Why isn't there a Japanese Microsoft or IBM? Why isn't there a Microsoft or IBM in *any* country aside from America?
There's often a lot of talk about the material differences between the first and third world nations (does china still count as a 2nd world nation? how many people still remember what the 2nd world refers to?), but there is there seems to be a major economic disparity among the first world nations. This disparity isn't so much in the standard of living, but in the ability of local industries to sprout up and end up dominating in the international scene. The mcdonalds, starbucks, microsoft, coca cola phenomena.
If I stop and think about it, what foreign brands are there that are really prevalent in the US? There's quite a few japanese brands in electronics, games, and cars. There's some german car brands... hmm.. ikea? Really, you'd think there'd be a stronger showing from the historically economically powerful countries like Britain, Germany, and France. What's keeping them on the sidelines?
And attached to every story about the MPAA/RIAA, piracy, etc are comments along the lines of "we reject your outdated business model - adapt or die!".
I fail to see how it's really all that different.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Yes, this explains that Steve Jobs sold $296m worth of shares in order to pay tax on the other $300m+ worth of shares he was paid by Apple.
In other words: He sold $296m worth of shares (back to Apple) as I stated. He received a massive amount (several hundred million dollars) worth of income off Apple in the last few years, in the form of shares, as I implied.
What's your point?
my password really is 'stinkypants'
The whole outsourcing thing seems to be backwards to me. We should be using our massive base of educated and tech-literate people to become the destination of outsourcing from China and India. We've got the base. Let's add the language to create SuperGeeks. Chinese call centers should be in the USA. Same with India ones. Guy from Bangalore calls Detroit to get his PC straight and talks to some American in Hindi. Send our salesmen to India and China, not our programmers or call centers.
From what I've read here, Apple probably had problems with recruiting, training, costs, culture, general educational level, communications, troubleshooting, QUALITY, language etc. etc. You've got to be some kind of corporate moron or delusional to take that on.
Some day companies will get the idea. Then they'll all want to come home. And guess what? They will have lost the thread. I suggest there is a subtle, but very real, longterm cost to pay for spending x years out of country. Things are never as interchangeable or as reversible as they seem.
E Proelio Veritas.
Yah, but you're a girl.
Marketing mentality, which in wild attempts to get more people to view an ad fails to recognise one simple truth : Someone who has gone out of their way to avoid your advert almost certainly has no intention of buying anything in response to an advert and no amount of advertising will change that.
White lie
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
I agree, except for the bit about China being communist... they're fascists, or state capitalists, call it what you will.
A block of code, sufficiently well-written, is indistinguishable from magick.
Let me guess... You're a libertarian? There are lots of situations your overly simplistic explanation doesn't account for... For starters a bunch of programmers in the developing world cannot compete with a company like Apple at anything, period, without being bought out by a competitor or a miracle. Apple just has too much advertising, branding, infrastructure, experience, size, ability to dump produts at a loss, etc. Not to mention the case of Apple having hired them to, say, build a new trackwheel for ipods, or one of a thousand other internal projects that require coordination with the rest of Apple, in which case your suggestion doesn't make sense.
In short, take your invisible hand and shove it up the orifice of your choice :-)
What goes around comes around, as they say. I've been amused by many companies over the years who thought they could save a huge bundle of money, when in reality the staff employed in those functions they want to move makes up perhaps 20% of their organisation but makes the most impact. Do people in a foreign country answering your calls, where it is totally obvious they know not even the most basic things about where you live (and you have waste time and money repeating things twenty times), does that sound good and make you want to use that company? I'll quote Joel Spolsky and Pradeep Singh:
1 7/sr=1-2/qid=1149421474/ref=pd_bowtega_2/202-73591 57-8712641?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&v=glance
(Here's something Pradeep Singh taught me today: if only 20% of your staff is programmers, and you can save 50% on salary by outsourcing programmers to India, well, how much of a competitive advantage are you really going to get out of that 10% savings?)
You also have the additionally huge costs of training those new employees, or outsourcing organisations, up in the ways of the organisation, the products, the technology and you also spend huge amounts of wasted time and money on communication. I've known many banks who've had that experience. A poor call centre worker gets the warm ear treatment from a customer in Europe, US, Canada etc. because the website is throwing up errors and he/she can't complete a transaction. A call is logged and there is a series of frantic phone calls and e-mails to the outsourced programming company in India, who needless to say, haven't got the faintest idea what they're talking about. Also (and this happens even in outsourcing companies situated in the same country but in another part) because they are not physically located in the heat of battle, and within on-site reach, they just don't give a shit. They'll do it when they've got time.
In short, you need to have your support functions in your company with you completely, and they need to be as close to your paying customers as you can get. If there is a market in India for your products then by all means get close to your customers and open offices in India. Idiot CEOs and boards still have this ridiculously stupid fucking idea that the world is a place separated only by a common language - English. I think even British, American and Australian people can agree that that is most certainly not true. I suggest these idiot board members go and read the number one, definitive guide on running a multinational company properly:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/18619769
What happened here is difficult to tell from the article, but maybe Apple had that sneeking suspision that maybe it just wasn't going to work.
some traitor wrote" This is a moot point. The quality of an average American sweeper or construction worker might be far better than the comparable Mexican's for all I know/care, but no one cares about your quality or better sweeping skills when you demand $50 an hour to wash my sink, health insurance to take care of your diabetic fat ass, severance pay, hard working conditions allowance, and various other allowances. And on top of all this, you refuse to attend school or get trained in newer skills Aren't you a nasty little traitor to your fellow Amwerican citizen? I am assuming you are american. I can hardly that europeans have been so propagandized against the working person as to make the sort of evil comments you made. You have certainly internalized the overclass point of view by demonizing your fellow working American instead of realizing where the true evil lies--at the top. The overclass has successfully shaped the American culture to create evil little traitors like you. I sure hope nothing happens to you, like, say, getting big fat tumor in your brain, completely inoperative. Well, maybe that would be OK. After all, we do execute murderers. So maybe we should indict and try for treason little turncoats like you. But in truth, it is your overclass masters who should pay for creating you.
Homo Sapiens Americanus--A documentary in p
At least one company has the sense to pull out of the land of the incompetent at least. I've been trying to resolve an ongoing issue with Dell's worthless Indian support team for 10months now. They collected my laptop 4 times and failed to fix it every single time which took 4months total and then they offered to replace it which was great... only now they're pestering me to pick up the old laptop which I've taken 3 days off work to wait for the courier to collect and neither of the 3 times it arrived yet they're threatening to invoice me as if it's my fault they haven't arranged for the courier. Anyhow, add in a few promised phone calls that never happened +50 or so phone calls at my expense throughout the whole debacle without it being resolved still and it's left me with the conclusion that the problem with Indian support centres isn't just a language barrier issue, they're just as a whole outright incompetent with a horrifically bad work ethic.
Been a good weekend for news really:
- MPAA etc. getting it's ass kicked by TPB
- Various Al Qaeda terror busts across the world
- A company realises that outsourcing to india sucks
It's as if the world is suddenly becoming sane again!
Apu: I have come to make amends, sir. At first, I blamed you for squealing, but then I realized, it was I who wronged you. So I have come to work off my debt. I am at your service. Homer: You're selling what, now?
Apu: I am selling only the concept of karmic realignment.
Homer: You can't sell that! Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
There is a minimum level of commitment an employee makes when employed. There are social norms about workplace behavior, 2 weeks notice, etc. More closely parallel, I personally feel a commitment to a new employer strongly enough to prevent me from taking late offers from other potential employers I was interviewing even if the 2nd offer was a little better. If I accept a $50,000 job offer from one employer and the next day get a second offer for $55,000 I'm going to stay with the first employer because I made an agreement by accepting their offer.
That being said, there is a definite asymmetry between employer and employee in companies of any size, especially ones as large as Apple Computers. If one of Apple's employees quits, Apple's India operation would have lost about 3% (1/30th) of it's capacity. Contrast that to the 100% earning capacity lost by the employees Apple just stabbed in the back.
Not everyone is coming to India for cheap labour. Likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are doing research and development and not just maintenance work. So, It's cheap labour + great products which these companies are looking at. Apple has a history of screwing up once in a while, not a surprise that they would do something like this within such short span of time.
>> Techflock-flock onto the best bits of technology
As a data entry employee, you have the ability to go out and test to see if you're worth $100 per hour to a potential employer. That right has been taken from me. I ask for it back.
The H1B Visa program is not worth attacking here. $250K sounds like a well paid lawyer or doctor salary, engineers in the US have never earned this kind of money on average, even before H1B became a hot button topic.
Maybe engineers would be a lot closer to lawyers and doctors if the market had been allowed to run it's course during the dot-com boom? We will never know what engineers are truly worth until the different professions are on an even playing field again.
As I told another respondent, you have no way of knowing what my skills are. I happen to think my particular skills set me above many of my peers. I ask, however, to compete against the same potential field of employees that other professions do. Instead, my profession has been singled out and laws passed that artificially lower my potential salary.
Heck if I know what I'm really worth, there are many factors, but I sure would have liked the opportunity to find out.
You're right. Let's terminate the H1B program and simply have an open immigration policy.
I see some practical problems with this approach, but if it was applied evenly I could accept it.
I believe other professions might not see it this way.
It would be intriguing to see the backlash from the general public once they discovered that most blue-collar jobs were going to disappear overnight. I doubt they would sit still for it. Why should I? It is happening to my profession now, albeit on a smaller, more-limited scale.
Obviously they wouldnt have floated the venture w/o months of prior spadework/feasibilty - Yet to pull out in 3 months? Sucha sudden decision? Something went awry somewhere - probably just in someones head ....Wanna see whos gonna break the REAL story !!
Why does yahoo do this
and that freaked the apple brass. what, quit before we can you? how can this be?
but it makes me feel way better this morning that somebody pulled back from the Slope to Hell.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"Contrast that to the 100% earning capacity lost by the employees Apple just stabbed in the back."
Oh, bollocks. We're talking about people in Bangalore, here, not some small town where Apple is the only employer for miles. They didn't lose "100% earning capacity". In fact, if they get new jobs quickly, as is likely (some already have), they'll be at 200% earning capacity.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Senior Frac
There are "H-1Bs for lawyers". H-1Bs are for any "speciality occupation" - the US Government site (the first response you get if you Google "h-1b") has the official government definition:
A specialty occupation requires theoretical and practical application of a body of specialized knowledge along with at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent. For example, architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences, medicine and health, education, business specialties, accounting, law, theology, and the arts are specialty occupations.
So, if you kill the H-1B, you are basically preventing educated foreigners in all of these fields from entering the country to work. Of course, American lawyers, doctors, architects, etc are somewhat protected by the idiosyncrasies of American law, medical practice and building codes. Programming languages and software design methodologies are a worldwide standard. Bear in mind that it goes both ways, though - American programmers can work in europe tomorrow if they wanted to, but American lawyers would have to learn the legal system first.
At home, compared to an H-1B worker, you have immense advantages - the ability to freelance without an agency (H-1Bs cannot take on freelance gigs at will, they have to do it through a contracting company or else pay a visa transfer fee for each company they want to work at), plus the ability to start your own company. What are you waiting for? Outcompete!
In reference to your parent post, if the immigrant IT workers had to "jump through the same hoops the immigrant physical laborers do", then they wouldn't come to America. They would either stay in their own countries and start companies, or move to another competing country with a less Draconian immigration policy. If America shuts its doors to talented, hard-working immigrants, the top immigrants will just go to European countries instead. I know a very bright, hard-working programmer who can't take his US job until October (due to H-1B quota being reached), so he took a job in England until then. His American company still wants him so much that they are prepared to wait until October for him. So, what happens in the meanwhile? Uncle Sam loses out on a couple months' taxes on his $80,000+ income and my friend helps the English company expand, outperform American companies and create more jobs in England.
Of course, I hold an H-1B, so I am biased. I do know, though, that I have helped my company expand and hire more American workers. I don't think we are directly competing though - I am a music video director.
Bruce Allen
No offense to the anonymous coward there, or any other Indians, BUT:
/*cough*/ diarrhea /*cough*/.
If you're making $800 a day or whatever you should seriously consider buying Bangalore, declaring yourself Mahrajah, and giving out free DVDs on holidays.
Seriously..
If you're getting above average pay (US standards) as an entry level SE, then why did apple try to get Indian talent to develop *in* India? If it's just good engineers, they would have shipped them home (MS is doing that here in Egypt now). Money is obviously involved.
P.S We all know why Apple left India. It was the food you dorks.
Curry
...like?
Like India won't give you a work visa. Several Americans have tried and been denied.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'm not talking about people starving, I'm talking about them raising their standard of living. We're a mechanized society. We don't need kids, we've got machines to do all that back breaking labor (well, not all of it, but most. It takes about 1% of a mechanized populace's workforce to make food for the other 99%). The problem is, we don't need these kids anymore, and there's nothing really for them to do (no jobs). In Utopia, they'd all go off and become great artists and thinkers. In the real world, they've pitted against each other in economic and military wars for the benefit/amusement of the ruling class.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You know, even at the top of the heap, executives and senior managers sometimes get the boot suddenly and without pity, just like this. Look at what happeneed to Carly Fiorina. As Charles DeGaulle said once, when being begged to run for another term as President of France, "the graveyards are full of indispensable men." Everyone is a replaceable cog in a giant machine, and nobody should be surpised or discouraged because of it. If you don't like it, start your own company where you can be the undisputed kingpin.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
A mountain of beef vindaloo,...
I thought you guys didn't eat beef, you know, scared cows having the right of way in the streets and all that other stuff that we in USA get taught about India.
You wrote: "In 1992, CEOs held 2 percent of the stock of US corporations, nowadays they own 12 percent. In less than 15 years, CEOs (not including other executives, just CEOs), have 'earned' themselves 10 whole percent of corporate America."
What is your source for this data? I'm not disagreeing. I've certainly seen a great increase in C level remuneration, but I've never seen it quantified this way before. Which CEOs? All corporations; Fortune 500; all publicly traded?
In fact, if they get new jobs quickly, as is likely (some already have), they'll be at 200% earning capacity.
Well, now that you put it that way, I'm sure those employees are all jumping for joy at their new "raises". Look, Apple screwed them over. They didn't kill them or chop off their arms and prevent them from ever being employed again, that's true. But Apple's move was shitty and low class and they should know better. Who do they think they are, EA?
On top of this, it really makes one wonder what the hell is going on with the management there to have to reverse course so abruptly.
Slashdot illiteracy
...in the classic words of the Terminator.
It is not wage rates that create unstable outsourced jobs in the 'global' economy. Your corrupt Central Bank aka Fed Reserve, is a huge USA job killing machine.
FEDERAL RESERVE JOB TERMINATOR
That is what the Federal Reserve does. It kills jobs. That's all it does.
Score & Karma: SASA: Slashdot Approval Seekers Anonymous
Domestic servants, hair cuts, medical service etc would be very very cheap. He would pay higher percentage of his salary than his US counterpart for things like diapers, rubber foam inner coil mattresses, cars, electronics, etc.
If any of you find a good source of PPP conversion factors for countries, especially with historical trends and fluctuations, please do post. Most of the links make assertions like "India is the fourth largest economy after adjusting for PPP" or "China jumps from fourth to second position after adjusting for PPP", without actually specifying the number. The PPP figure seems to be mostly popular with macro economists. In US one can find the cost-of-living adjustment numbers for any city quite easily. May be once a mobile global workforce develops such numbers will be availble for all countries and cities.
[1] http://internationalecon.com/v1.0/Finance/ch30/F30 -1.html
[2] http://www.economist.com/markets/bigmac/displaySto ry.cfm?story_id=2708584
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Robert Brenner, Towards the Precipice in the London Review of Books
as to your second question, the context doesn't make it clear. i'm assuming all publicly quoted (and trying to find his original source..) hth.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
I am a CS student in India, studying in an engineering college. Over the past few years a large number of privately funded engineering institutions have mushroomed all over the country. We students, when we wrere in school, took it as the opening of oppurtunities for us to study engineering. Because all these years engineering was confined to a few prestigious state funded institutes (of which the IITs are world famous).In an overpopulated country like India competition is fierce and getting into these places is difficult. It is also the dream of most middle-class students to become an engineer or a doctor. These professions bear a lot of social prestige. So, once out of school, the path forks into either of these two fields. Doctors command a lot of respect and in a place where poverty is widespread there is always work at hand. Engineers nowadays rush to enter the IT industry. Starting salaries of Rs 20,000/month (around 450 USD) are attractive for beginners, and even more tempting is the chance to travel to the US, when the company sends them on training.
Academics here stresses on theoretical knowledge. In our college, there is no difference between the IT and the CS course. 90% of the students learnt to program in C in college. We still use the DOS Borland Turbo C++ (blue screen) IDE and know that compiling a program means clicking on the menu and finding the 'run' option. Those who have a slight inclination towards technology and computers, get sucked into the VB-.NET-Java paranoia. Though we've had papers on data structures and algorithms they have been grossly neglected by teacher and student both. It's but natural, because, spending time learning these will give us no edge over any body when we get recruited by the IT companies. For the few (there are two in my class) who resist such commercialisation of computer science education, it becomes frustrating, coping with poor quality teaching and zero exposure to innovative work.
The IT industry here is services based. Companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, CTS are into mass manufacturing and maintenance of hackneyed business software. Making money is the major motivation of Indian companies. That said, at the end of the day we Indians are chasing illusions. Our policy makers are inviting outsourcing and creating jobs, and mass-producing software professionals (from engineering institutes). In the long run we loose our identity and the foreign companies return dissatisfied.
In India you'll find geeks in litrature, music, art but since there is no generation that has been brought up on electronic gadgets, video games and the PC, the programmer community and culture is hard to find.
I don't think we want to tie tech career salaries so closely to something like the stock market which hinges on perception of value and investor emotion. Rather, how did lawyers and doctors build up their overpaid status? Have you or any of us ever worked with a lawyer or doctor and come away saying, "Wow, I sure received good value for my $6000"? I can possibly make the argument for specialists where only a few suppliers are available and the stakes are higher - say a brain or heart surgeon - I can't make the argument for any form of law interpreters though. There are many examples of professions earning salaries that don't seem commiserate with training, ability or value to society, for instance, how is it housing developers make millions producing cheap junk while holding hands with city politicians? You probably have four times the IQ of an average house developer, yet Joe Sunland Estates is driving the Lexus.
"You can outsource manufacturing and low-skill/low-interaction jobs. But any job that requires communication and significant interaction with the customer (yes, including call centers) is not something that's going to work in an outsourced environment over the long-term. And we're starting to see the pullback I was predicting long ago."
I mainly agree with this, due to experience myself.
The software life-cycle is a constantly evolving, cyclic process that require design, implementation, testing, etc over and over. Requirements constantly change in the subtlest ways but every little detail is important.
In manufacturing, a monolithic design is put into a machine and someone operates it, pumping out the same thing over and over.
In software every piece is unique and usually interacts within a larger system.
My company tried a little outsourcing and it was very late and of very poor quality. It was just not worth the time to try and convey every detail of what was needed, how current fun functionality works, etc because this is what developers are paid to figure out and document.
Outsourcing works in a software engineering course where everything is perfect. In the real world, it doesn't.
Business people don't understand that software is not anything like manufacturing. They thought it was and could be easily moved but it really cannot. It's a difficult process with so many hurdles in the simplest project and since there is no official or real method of software development (mainly ad hoc) there is no common language to design things and implements them.
I don't think there ever will because every project I've ever worked on is so unique.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
The parent is not flamebait. Sometimes modding on slashdot is strongly biased.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
For that matter, the main reason that companies outsource to India is that Indians are native English speakers. On the other hand, Japanese people who can speak English well enough to do technical support are rare and expensive. They could just as easily get a job translating technical articles at $.25 a word, which would be equally boring yet not stressful and way more lucrative.
With great power comes great fan noise.
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4515/945/
http://www.ciol.com/content/search/showarticle1.as p?artid=84773
http://services.silicon.com/offshoring/0,38000048
The company stressed it isn't cutting any US jobs, noting that its ranks are growing both in the United States and overall. The Apple representative said: "Our call centres in Austin and Sacramento also continue to grow."
Moaners can read this too :c e=NLT_MGT&nlid=23
http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/2648?sour
Why does yahoo do this
" Employers want to make a profit and they will always go with what is cheaper. But on the flip side, as India's economy gets stronger, it will not be so cheap anymore. And then the outsourcing will go to a different place."
You're subtly wrong here. A business will not always go for what's *cheaper*, but what's more *profitable*.
Many businesses are finding outsourcing may be cheaper but it isn't more profitable because of many factors, including:
Costs usually balloon far past what was estimated due to communication complications, poor quality and the resultant bug fixing which is very expensive.
It was thought that software development was like manufacturing which it is not. Software development works better when people work together with the business people. It works better when the developers handle many facets of the companies product beyond just software as it creates an understanding of the entire complex system. Manufacturing is pumping out the same thing over and over. It's simple.
One thing that bothers me, especially with Indian programmers, is you don't see much of their work in the open source community. This implies to me it is made up of a lot of people who don't care much for technology and are doing it for the money right now. I know I work with people like this and their poor quality work shows.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
It may be hard to imagine for some people, but there are those among us that willingly sacrifice some of taken-for-granted pleasures in life for a larger purpose.
So even if the military isn't your thing, or you think it's evil, fine. Use the Peace Corps or Doctors Without Borders as my example. I never hear anyone say "Boy they treat those Peace Corps volunteers like shit! I bet they don't even have cable TV!"
800$ India = 8000$ US or 16000$ California.
Believe me most Indian software programmers lead a much better life than California programmers. However they have to do it in the middle of society where rest of society is jealous of them so they have to kind of lead a life of fear as the poor might lash out at them anytime. So California is much better in that manner where the programmers are at the bottom so they dont have to be scared Rather the stockbrokers are afraid of the day programmers rise in revolution and storm the Bastille. Guess its your choice what you prefer if peace of mind come to California ; great lifestyle stay in India
**Life is too short to be serious**
For Apple, investing in India is not worth the money.
Possible problems might be:
1/ prices for software development not competitive
2/ India suppliers unable to provide sufficient skilled personnel
3/ Use of phone service for customer service or technical support not judged to meet Apple's quality standards.
4/ Negotiations with US-based [or elsewhere] suppliers successful after playing India card resulted outcome more favorable to Apple.
5/ Fully-loaded "system" costs of using India suppliers [labor, travel, logistics, management overhead, quality control] were too much to compensate for simple estimation based on cheaper labor.
6/ Inability to get legal protection in India for intellectual property [trade secrets, patents pending]. Indian laws are inadequate.
7/ Security and reliability of Indian subcontractors not up to Apple standards.
8/ India not judged to be priority market for Apple products and services [in comparison with other parts of the world].
If this was a phone support operation, good bloody riddance!!! Shame on you apple!
Here I was thoroughly impressed with Apple's phone support. After being PC-centric for 15 years, I finally purchased am Apple (Intel MacMini). When the wireless KB failed several weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to obtain a warranty replacement. The phone rang several times, no hold, and I spoke with a friendly, intelligent, and helpful (English speaking) tech. Not to mention the replacement KB arrived on Monday (call placed on Sunday morning).
Wish I could say the same for Dell. I absolutely detest Dell's new "outsourced" phone support. Being responsible for 200 PCs, I've had a handful of occasionals to contact Dell Support. In the past, it was similar to my experience with Apple. Easy, painless, and expedient. Sadly, in the last year or so, I've had the misfortunate of requiring Dell Hardware Warranty support for several systems...
Let's leave it to say that now when clients are looking for reasonably priced PCs, I still suggest Dell, but with the caveat of being prepared for infuriatingly poor support. : (
Ok I interviewed with Apple for their San Jose office and turned them down. During my interview even the interviewer from Apple said " We dont expect people to have Obbject C experience as its so obscure and we train them" So maybe the reason Indian programmers dont have Objective C experience is because it is not used widely. The other point is if you have basic understanding of programming language concepts learning a dialect of a language is not a big deal. Also whats the thing abt people who install a Linux CD which makes them think *Nix experience makes their penises longer/boobs bigger (take your pick) . I work with *nix (sic)at college but I also use Windows on my laptop. Anything which really needs to be done on *nix (sic) I just ssh in to my department servers and work from my Windows laptop so whats the big deal? In any case anyone who understands basic computer productivity rules should be productive irrespective of platform. Secondly Mac computers are toys for people with money to burn. Their market positioning is like that of BMWs and Mercs. Just like you wouldnt find a lot of Merc mechanics in a developing country you wont find a lot of Mac programmers in India. And just like a good mechanic certified to service GM cars can retrain to service Mercs a competent .net programmer can retrain for the Mac OS platform
**Life is too short to be serious**
True, you can dine out very cheaply as you said. A maid to scrub the floors with Dettol, do the dishes and wash clothes for 10 to 20$ a month. Hair cut is 1$. No body has health insurance, but doctor consultation is about 1$ and may be 2$ if you get an injection at the clinic. But on the other hand ...
If you compare how many days one has to work to earn a washing machine, a fridge, an a/c, a digital camcorder or a digital camera you would find that these things balace out the cheap maid, medical service, hair cuts etc.
As a rule, all labour intensive services/products are very very cheap. All material intensive things are high priced or down right unaffordable. Especially imported things like dental drills or digital cameras. My brother-in-law pays the full exchange price of 45 Rs/$ to import dental drills and other dental equipment. His patients pay him hardly 1$ per cleaning or 2$ per extraction. Ouch!
That is why the economists use a basket of goods and services and they hope, statistically, with a comprehensive basket, they can figure the true "purchasing power" of local currencies. Since they are economists, they argue endlessly over every component of the basket and the weightages.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Rather, how did lawyers and doctors build up their overpaid status?
They created a monopoly by requiring [justifiably] strict licensure to practice their craft in the U.S. The AMA and the bar, I would suppose? The would probably be a good technique for engineers. I can't imagine it would be easy to do until tech worker unionize and require licensure for entry.
See, companies exist to make money. There's no more or less to it than that.
See, companies operate in a country, and it's in the interest of that country to protect its workforce. That means that when a significant portion of jobs are exported abroad, it should be examined for its impact on the national level and possibly discouraged.
But, if you let some foreign programmer best you in a cost/benefits analysis, your job is toast.
Simple short term profit motive will result in bankruptcy, as the foreign programmer gains experience that he uses in his market, not ours. After a while, it becomes difficult to hire anyone locally and the wages of that foreign programmer have risen dramatically. Some cost savings, right?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
the original (Robert Brenner's) source is an interview with John C. Bogle, somewhere on the web, but I haven't been able to track it down.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Apple has never been a huge H1-B backer, but Bill Gates is MR. H1-B. He's now lobbying Congress to allow in almost unlimited numbers of foreign programmers - anyone with an American Masters degree, e.g. How they will flock! What Bill wants, Congress rushes to do, and Bill has always loved flocking American programmers!
s / (may require your sitting through a sponsor's animated ad)
...
Doc
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/05/26/visa
What's good for Bill Gates...
The Microsoft mogul says America needs more foreign engineers and programmers to compete. Critics say it's all about cheap labor.
By Rebecca Clarren
Salon Magazine
Generally, industry lobbyists are quick with statistics and reports, but in this case it appears they weren't needed. Neither Microsoft nor Intel would reveal how many Ph.D.s or master's students they hired last year, and how many they need for next year. When the companies and their lobbyists were asked what data and reports they showed Congress to convince them of the need for these new visas, they reported that they don't have any reports and statistics. Marcus Courtney, president of WashTech/CWA, a tech workers union, says as long as they have Bill Gates on their side, "they don't need to use anything to substantiate their arguments."
"William Gates was in Washington, lobbying -- a pretty high-priced lobbyist -- to come talk about the needs of Microsoft, a marvelous company, high-tech, enormous advances for America -- he wants more people with Ph.D.s and wants a larger quota of visas for those people to come in," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the bill's author, told Salon when asked what data the industry had shown him. "We have accommodated that. And we have created more opportunities for people to come in who are students."
Such ardor for Gates flows from both sides of the aisle. When asked about reports and data presented to convince Democrats on the Judiciary Committee that the U.S. didn't have the workforce it needed to fill these jobs, Tracy Schmaler, spokesperson for the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, responded: "Did you know Bill Gates has been pretty high-profile on this?"
Critics of the bill, mainly academics and those who represent American tech workers, say they have no voice on this issue; that Congress has been blinded by campaign contributions of big companies. In 2004, Microsoft alone spent $9.46 million on lobbying and hired 16 different firms; it listed immigration as one of its top issues on lobbying disclosure forms, according to data from the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. That same year, computer and Internet industries spent $70.5 million on lobbying.
"There is no greater case study to understand corporate power in politics," says Courtney of the tech workers union. "I could give you 75 reports that prove that H-1B is a horribly flawed program that hurts American workers, but it doesn't matter. As long as Bill Gates says there's a shortage, and that's it, thanks for playing, game over, try again next session."
These articles don't often mention it, but when companies move out of India it's because Indians are too expensive and Chinese are now the cost winners.
Poor choices in life are no excuse for being a failure. I mean beyond the possibility of illness the thing mentioned in the parent comment are all things you would have control over at one point.
Hardly.
If you some how thought it was resonable to purchase a little condo for $1.5 million
Of course it is, because like any card carrying elitist libertarian asshole, you busted your ass to get into Harvard's business school and graduated at the top of your class. Now all your hard work has gotten you a VP position at a corporation, you make 300k a year, have all your school loans paid off and enough money saved up for several years worth of bills. Real estate is insanely expensive in your area, but you don't want to live in a hovel with roomates, so you buy a nice little condo for $1.5 million, which is perfectly reasonable given your salary and the size of your savings.
If you can't figure out how to make a marriage work, or are a poor judge of people then once again I don't feel any sympathy. There are families in the united states that survive on just over minimum wage with little governmental assistance. If you ever pulled down $300k a year and find yourself in hard times, you pretty much fucked up and probably should be allowed to handle your personal finances anymore.
Obviously you are a card carrying elitist libertarian asshole who has never had a run of bad luck. When you do have that run of bad luck, and need a hand to get back on your feet, I hope the only people you find are also card carrying elitist libertarian assholes that slap you in the face instead.
In 2003 I moved from the UK to the US. My income is up about 2.5 times (even considering the poor exchange rate) although I've been pretty lucky. My state and federal income taxes run me somehting like 11% of income, and even after paying for healthcare, I'm way ahead.
:)
It's not hard to find good beer and imported cheese here, but the bread thing pisses me off - i end up baking my own.
Plus the weather is great and gas prices are fantastic
Thanks. I don't think that this "community" understands the ramifications of this situation.
If you don't want to be living one mortgage payment from being out on the street, DON'T! Learn to live within your means.... Buy a house where you can pay your mortgage payment and then some, or rent a place you can afford.
Out in california, if you have a family, you'll find there really isn't any affordable housing... and depending on the field you work in, there may not be job opportunities elsewhere.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
[...]you'd probably be able to afford fewer toys, but I am pretty sure you would not starve to death.
Even though this woudld seem the only reasonable long-term possibility, I'm afraid we are already too many to achieve decent living for all, even without any toys.
It is well-known that if everyone were to live like Americans and Europeans, we would need around 3 planets.
How much does the standard need to be lowered to fairly feed and provide energy to 6.5 billion people? Is it even still possible?
:..
I think some people feel that because India is a long way away those employees don't matter. Only a sick kind of employer would feel that way. Once you hire someone you owe it to them to make it work
I have seen this at at least 2 employers that I worked for. One of them was AOL. Mainly we are commidites and if you dont do your job and screw up you need to be fired and replaced with someone else as quick as possible. This is true regardless of the %60 turnover rate within 90 days. Needless to say I quit IT for now
http://saveie6.com/
Except lets keep democracy this time and NOT succumb to the Fascists of any philosophy. If we can have a world economy we MUST also give workers the same rights regardless of where they reside. The right to assemble and form unions must be undeniable. Globalization must not be just a global shell game for a wealthy Fascist aristocracy.
Great comment, well written.
Outsourcing is not a hose that funnels jobs to India - it points to the cheapest or best source of labour. Today, that means India. Tomorrow it'll mean Vietnam, Russia or China. The day after it might be Nigeria.
Anyone working in an outsourced role is living on borrowed time. The company has already shown at least once that it didn't mind dumping the old workers for new, cheaper workers. As soon as they find cheaper ones in a relatively stable country, they'll dump the current workers.
This is the IT workforce today - no security, no loyalty and no promises.
I always wonder what prompts apple to do what they do. Like writing a rude letter to a 9 year old girl who was just trying to be helpful. Come on she is 9!
THe government is cooking the books on the deficit, the debt, the CPI, GDP and unemployment statistics. For information on how this is done and estimates of the true numbers, see: John Williams' articles.
Walter J. "John" Williams was born in 1949. He received an A.B. in Economics, cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1971, and was awarded a M.B.A. from Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration in 1972, where he was named an Edward Tuck Scholar. During his career as a consulting economist, John has worked with individuals as well asFortune 500 companies.
Quotes from one of his articles:
Federal Deficit Reality
I think we need to acknowledge how far from fiscal conservatism this supposedly conservative bunch in the Congress and the Executive really are. The difference is that runn
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
From everything I've read about Steve Jobs, this makes a lot of sense.
Here you have a man who is a total perfectionist. Obsessed with quality, down to the very last detail.
My guess is that some high-up Businesshead Suit Guy whispered in his ear, "Y'know, Steve, we could save a lot of money by outsourcing...."
Steve was probably reluctant at first, but then the Businesshead Suit Guy hyped it up with a bunch of Thomas-Friedman-speak, "This mind-blowing business practice will revolutionize how the world does business, like what corned beef did to sliced bread! Everybody and their brother is doing it! You don't want to be the guy who invented the pet rock! You want to be the guy who invented the pet WORLD! Don't get left behind! Outsource, outsource, outsource!"
Steve was probably like, "Oh, alright, I'll give it a shot. We'll start small, and see how it goes."
So he commits a small amount of money to his India project. Lo and behold, what he gets back is crap, and he's like, "What is this? This is crap! The quality is terrible! There are a million little widgets that are all in the wrong place. This little graphic thing was off by a whole 5 millimeters. 5 millimeters! My customers will hate it! I can't even get anyone on the damn phone to fix it! Every time I want bring someone to task over this, all they can talk about is their damn contract! Hey Businesshead Suit Guy? Where the hell are you?"
Unfortunately, Businesshead Suit Guy is nowhere to be found. He took the big fat bonus that he got from saving the company so much money through outsourcing, and is off vacationing someplace exotic.
Possibly even in India. I've heard that money goes a lot further down there.
Steve isn't that bad (and anyone who makes a corned beef reference to him would probably get a foot in the ass).
However, the post isn't that far off from what probably happened--and this is no reflection on the quality of engineering in India. The ability to insure quality, adherence to specifications, and observance of scheduling requirements becomes much more difficult when management, engineering, marketing, and quality aren't co-located. I worked on a project where the engineering team was in Ireland and everyone else was in California. It finally made more sense--was cheaper--to pack up the engineers and the managers, fly them to our site, and finish the project. We made a bullpen for them in one of the conference rooms (they were only allowed access to the cafeteria) and got to work.
The product that resulted still works over ten years later.
There are a lot of wrong numbers floating around here... Let me set a few things right. The average Indian salary in the non-tech sector is around 80USD. This is for a guy who's got a few years of experience behind him. The average for somebody who's put in about twenty or thirty years is about twice as much (175USD). 80USD also happens to be the official minimum wage for any government employee - the guy who sweeps the streets, the people who work at government offices, post offices, utilities etc., make that in a month. The new economy brought about a lot of changes as far as salaries go - you could be young, very young indeed and earn in a month what most people do in ten. So the guy above who makes 800$ a month is actually an overpaid fish. Fish? They work in these big glass walled buildings (supposedly to reflect the buildings in Silicon Valley) with their airconditioners on while the rest of the country breathes fresh air out open windows. But that's another story. So does the guy who earns 80$ a month starve and live in penury as some other thread here seems to follow? No, not at all. Costs in India are low: food, clothing and shelter cost almost nothing. The guy on 80$ a month probably has his own house, a motorbike, eats out regularly, watches movies a lot, puts his two kids to school and still saves money for his retirement. Now the guy who's earning 800$ a month has to keep up appearances and buy a fancy overpriced apartment, overpriced car, eat at overpriced restaurants and so on until he hasn't much left to keep. So we have here the irony of the whole situation the tortoise keeps slogging away at his minimalist salary but his job goes on forever while the hare earns quick and burns quicker with his job on the line all the time. A lot has changed in Bangalore - prices have gone through the roof, property has become dear, peak hour traffic is tremendous but all have their own levels of making a life. I noticed another thread here that mentioned that the middle class guy in India lives terribly but that's according to western standards of living, hygiene and circumstance. The middle class guy with a steady job and salary in India today, is king, whatever you might think about it.
The piracy is really a big problem here. But there is a lot of software being bought honestly. And hardware, that cannot be pirated.
In Brazil, how do sales of Apple products compare to the sale of other manufacturers?
I haven't heard of any outsourcing to Brazil as of yet.
There has been a lot of outsourcing of tech support/customer service to India from the US. This has created many headaches with people in the US having to deal with people that do not speak English as their primary language and many of those tech support people speaking with very thick accents, which makes it very difficult for many Americans to understand them.
As for coding, it seems that many companies are using the "costs less takes longer" approach when they are using outsourced coders. According to recent reports there is apparently a lot of cutting'n'pasting being done and very little testing done by the vast majority of the outsourced coders. Whether this sort of thing will be causing these companies problems in the future remains to be seen. With copyright law in the US the way that it is, you never know if cutting and pasting will end up in a lawsuit over intellectual property rights anymore, the trend seems to be that it will cost the companies money in the future. It's not so much a lack of cutting edge technologies, but rather poor coding practices and carelessness. Now this might not be the case in Brazil, I don't know. I also don't know if this sort of thing will be rectified in India or operations will merely be cancelled due to cost issues.
People that are complaining about outsourcing are doind so because it affects their livelihoods, the qulaity of the work being produced in the tech industry from oustsourcing is declining and the difficulties associated with trying to communicate with people whose primary language is not English becomes very frustrating when it shouldn't be frustrating.
Macintoshes arent very common here, but they are present. The manufacterers realy get their share here with the notebooks. The unbranded desktops are almost entire from american companies components anyway. Before the merger of HP and Compaq, the netserver navigator, the software that comes with their 32-bit servers, was being mantained here. The coders were treated like animals, and had to be replaced frequently, even with a higher than our local average wage. And they didnt spent too much time in selecting people, because their contract with the american HQ was paid by worked-hours, so they wanted to replace people very fast, anyone with some C experience was enough. And some of the bad code was made by the american HQ too. So, that certainly is not the best that could be done with our workforce.
Hey, Apple, didn't we tell you that pulling out is not an effective form of birth control? Use a condom!
I currently work tech support, and I know I'm not even a number. I am simply a slot that any marble can roll into. I don't matter in any way what so ever to the company as a whole. I've haad it made evident to myself in so many ways its not funny. A higher up once told me and a class full of trainees to stop asking questions because there were a thousand people waiting for our jobs. He is now stocking shelves at the dollarama, fired for fucking an inferior in a board room. When I see him I fight the urge to spit in his face. NOw this was a few years ago, and I've since learned that those 1000 that were waiting for my job are a joke. They are running out of people to hire that arent yokels. They burned through the degreed people first (my group) then the trainables, now they have nothing left to hire from but the bottom of the barrell... anyone with any mind in their head won't work here. Its kind of funny.
Not funny if the only way to suceed in IT is start at help desk :-(
.bomb and know yoru stuff when you work for 7/hr jobs for several years. I was hoping the AOL help desk would save me. The handle time requirements were unreal and it was about talking very fast and being incorrect to get people to hang up on you. Not about solving problems which would take more than 9 minutes. Especially those with malware infested machines that take 15 minutes to boot up while you wait in fear looking at the clock ... shudder.
OR worse doing repair where your employer can rip you off. Otherwise they wont consider you for any other job. At least not in Florida where I live.
I can't wait to get my degree so I dont have to take such jobs and I can explain my worth. Its hard to prove you once worked in IT before the
http://saveie6.com/
ah the good ole days when I was on msn dielup (intentionally misspelled to use the word die) We had a 9 minute handle time, and if you went above that they would literally break into the call and tell you to get off it. We were encoureged to lie, to cheat, to basically do anything to get the customer off the phone. Password resets took 24 hours, it was always aols fault.. ah the good ole days. used to throw up blood back then. I don't actually care anymore so now, I don't.
I hear that a lot whenever anyone complains about Indian quality they are labelled racist. Usually by the Indians trying to explain any objections.
You already lost this debate because there is nothing to the universe beyond supply and demand. If it doesn't fit within that narrow equation, it's simply not valid. :)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Probe that the US middle class (if you can define it consitently for all points in space and time) is shrinking.
There is no serious economist that would back such howgash.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Wages can never ever converge up. That is an stupid and ignorant statment based on wishful thinking and not in simple common sense.
If you have a wage differential, all else being equal, the people with the lower wages will have a competitive advantage.
The people with the higher wages will need to lower them in order to compete.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=249
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!