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Globalization Decimating US I.T. Jobs
mrraven writes, "According to Ronald Reagan's former deputy secretary of the treasury in this
article in Counterpunch, globalization is destroying US I.T. jobs. From the article: 'During the past five years (January 01 – January 06), the information sector of the US economy lost 644,000 jobs, or 17.4 per cent of its work force. Computer systems design and related work lost 105,000 jobs, or 8.5 per cent of its work force. Clearly, jobs offshoring is not creating jobs in computers and information technology.'" Paul Craig Roberts quotes a number of formerly pro-globalization economists who are now seeing the light of the harrowing of the US middle class. It's not limited to I.T. Roberts quotes one recanting economist, Alan Blinder, as saying that 42–56 million American service-sector jobs are susceptible to offshoring.
Of course most folks who are actually working in IT could have told you this. I know a number of folks at companies who experienced several rounds of layoffs. They have survived the layoffs, but they are also currently doing the job of two to three employees now versus prior to the layoffs. Morale is low, pay has not kept up with the cost of living increases, the cost of health care or inflation. Productivity is still there, but burnout is likely in these individuals. Other people I know that did lose their jobs ended up going back to school and getting out of IT entirely which I suspect is not an isolated situation and would lead to skewed unemployment statistics.
The thing that worries me is that this is not an isolated employment sector, and I predict that we are in more trouble than we might know. Historically we have relied on our research and development to keep this country on top technologically, but over the last five years or so, we have been reducing the amount of funding we spend on research and development, particularly in the biosciences. For example, if you were to look at NIH grant paylines, five years ago the payline was around 33%. Next year it is predicted to be anywhere from 10-14% meaning the likelihood that a researcher will obtain funding has been cut by more than half. In fact, research and education spending on the whole is down under the current White House administration. So, if we are supposed to rely on education, technology and research and development to keep our edge as a country, we are already in trouble, especially when one considers that even if we were to turn things around tomorrow, we have likely done enough damage that it will take a decade to recover.
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You all said that globalism was a good thing, but now you can't take it?
Look at me! I'm white and American -- I shouldn't have to compete for my job!
If you find yourself sliding out of the job market, then get some more skills.
If only there were CDROM's available with fully-featured unix systems, complete with source code, that one could use to learn operating systems, compiler design, networking, graphics, and databases! If we had that, then unemployed American computer folk would have a shot at competing internationally!
No one is entitled to a job, even if you are white, American and whiny.
If the US government were to make it more difficult for companies to offshore, would the situation be any better?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Could this just be a reversal of what happened during the tech boom, where:
I'm curious if many of the competent, professional I.T. people are really losing their jobs.
http://outcampaign.org/
You can blame repubs, dems, the evolutionists, creationists, etc... But our own individual greed have all contributed to this problem. When was the last time anyone cared about looking for anything "made in the USA"? If we as individuals don't feel compelled to buy products from our own nation, on what grounds do we expect corporations to hire more expensive US labor? Especially when doing so, would put them at a price disadvantage when selling to us US consumers, who, surprise surprise, pay more attention to price than anything else? If they did that, they'd go under, thanks to us.
Something of a conundrum.
"Our morality is good, theirs is repressive."- Partisanship Rule #3
The entire movement of "globalization" is advocated solely by huge corporate interests who are seeking ways to circumvent national sovreignty, specifically the imposition of wage and labor standards.
They realize that by doing this they will be able to squeeze more profit from the exploitable masses.
Their proponents spew forth on theories of national "specialization".. which is completely specious, as illustrated by our interactions with china. We are being bled dry of our money and at the same time china is being bled dry of their labor... and who wins.. corporate owners, execs, their families, and the political elite who help them perpetrate it.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Saying that outsourcing eliminates jobs because they eliminate jobs in IT is like saying evolution is impossible because of the second law of thermodynamics. A global relation (entropy increases or jobs increase), doesn't necessarily hold locally (entropy may decrease in one system, and jobs may decrease in one sector).
Economics doesn't saw anything about whether globalization will preserve jobs in a specific sector. What it does say is that it will tend to create jobs in the economy (both economies involved) as a whole. There isn't a lot of evidence to counter this claim.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
How about all those Intel, AMD, Dell etc etc in Malaysia, Taiwan and around the world.
Didn't the lower cost of building all the components there help to decrease the prices of computing, encouraging demand. And wasn't the continuosly lowered cost of infrastructure/equipment an integral part of the computing/technological/information/internet revolution. Which incredibly benefited the US economically. Which provided jobs and increased jobs and increased pay scale during the late 90's and early 2000's.
So in other words:
globalization benificial to us: good
globalization detrimental to us: bad
news for ya: globalization works both fucking ways. You think jobs weren't decimated in third world/developing countries when they opened up their markets and have to compete with cheaper US products.
You benefited from it, now its someone else turns.
Or you can ask the US goverment to broke its own agreements and words, and strongarm it way to makes sure the deal is one sided. But don't put your hopes up. God knows it has never done that. And never will. well except maybe for that renmibi thing.. and that textilke subsidy thing..and...
waiting for Flamebait+7 and Troll+7
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
What a lying sack of shit the parent post is, it's all about reducing labor costs so a thin layer of owners and managers can make hundreds of millions if not billions a year while BOTH Americans and people in the third world suffer terribly. Hint .001% of Indians will become coders and engineers and even that elite they will be paid probably a quarter of what an American would make at the same job and the rest of India, Vietnam, China, etc will work sweatshop jobs for pennies an hour. Globalization is a bad deal for BOTH Americans and people in the third word. As corporations scour the world for the lowest wages possible it creates downward pressure on wages for all of us. Unless we wake up to this fact and reign in the corporations they will continue to bend us over and have their way with us.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
The gains from doing this are large, but very spread out. The losses are small, but concentrated. As a result, those who lose out have a big incentive to try and stop this from happening - more so than those who would gain from it. They may attempt to have the government regulate the practice. This is known to economists as rent seeking, when one group seeks the uncompensated transfer of wealth from others (people who buy IT) to themselves through government intervention. These Other People have to expend more resources to get the same things done. This is not a spectacularly noble cause, though it often is hailed in the name of "saving jobs".
But then, if our first concern should be about saving jobs, we ought to do away with computers entirely so there is more work to be done for paper-shufflers in offices. We can save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of office secretaries! Indeed, we could get rid of machines entirely and go back to simple hand tools for everything. Except, well, not.
Of course, that doesn't stop it all from happening. Take textiles. The average US family spends $160 more a year on textiles because of import quotas. Each job saved costs $221,000 a year. This is paid for by other people. Yay.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I have no problem with "globalism" PROVIDED that the country getting the jobs has the same level of regulations and protections that we have (or higher).
The problems I have with "globalism" is when companies off-shore because the other country has FEWER worker protections or environmental regulations than we do. Yeah, it's great for your CEO's bonus if you can work 10 year old kids for 12 hours a day at $5 a week making tennis shoes. But this isn't about your CEO's bonus.
We should be bringing everyone else UP to our standards rather than racing to the lowest level out there. But we are racing to the bottom. That is the problem.
Under the ideal scenario it works as you stated:
china produces at cheaper costs.. and though wages drop for those jobs in the US because of labor competition, the prices will drop at the same rate resulting in equalization of the two living standards with no real change in ours..
in reality it's quite different:
Companies see profit potential here..
china produces at cheaper costs, and wages drop for those jobs in the US because of labor competition, but because the companies are sucking up profits by not lowering prices to the marginal cost of production (like they would with US produced goods), the real cost of products rises for americans, and the standard of living goes down.
Some people will make the argument that this offshoring represents structural unemployment.. like mechanization.. but there is a huge difference here:
with previous structural shifts which caused unemployment.. the shifts were isolated, allowing the middle class worker to learn a new trade and advance back to the point where their wage is sufficient to keep their family fed.
Now different jobs are being offshored in quick succession.. the middle class worker moves from one profession to the next, but because theyre offshored so quickly theyre never able to advance beyond entry level.. their income is permanently suppressed.
This is not good.. it's very threatening to the concept of a stable middle class.
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From the perspective of someone who is not American, this is a good thing. It means that unions in rich countries are no longer able to keep the rest of the world poor. Poor people in Romania who have excellent IT skills have the freedom and opportunity to enter the capitalist system and compete on the global market.
The Americans spent 50 years trying to win the cold war so the guy in Romania would have this opportunity. Would you now turn around and say "Sorry, we're going to be implementing some socialist protectionist measures.... we didn't expect American workers to have to compete with you".
Looking at the IT landscape, it seems clear to me that the American IT industry is the most vibrant and resilient in the world. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, HP, Wikipedia, Myspace, Youtube, etc. are organisations which saw the light of day in America. Please don't react in a spastic way when the rest of the world looks at what you're doing and tries to do something similar.
The American president keeps talking about "freedom". For me, freedom includes the freedom to compete with American workers.
Walk the walk....
How do you feel if your employer shuts down your worksite and opens up a new worksite in another state that has fewer worker protections or environmental regulations? Maybe from a strong-labor state to a state with virtually no organized labor in your field, or from a state which greatly restricts youth labor to one that follows minimum federal guidelines, or one with a high minimum wage to one that uses the lower federal minimum? Maybe from one with good workers compensation insurance to one with very poor insurance?
You get the idea.
Don't laugh, such things happen all the time.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Indeed. But, look on the bright side - as those countries overseas are systematically enriched by doing business with a wealthy country like the United States, they will begin to insist on those things like clean air, health care, better infrastructure...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
In my opinion, one of the worst things to happen to the anti-globalization movement, and whole argument in general, in the past several years is its association with leftist fringe groups and sometimes-violent street protests. The first thing that many people think of today when they hear the words "anti-globalization" is a rioter, and this doesn't do very much to help it be taken seriously. Those protests, at least in the U.S., ended much real discussion about globalization by turning the whole thing into a farce. All people had to do was look on the news and see that it was the forces of rationality and authority versus the lunatic fringe, and that was it. (Granted, a lot of media outlets were only happy enough to portray it this way, with various levels of subtlety, but this should be expected.) Whatever salient points the argument might have had, evaporate when you're perceived as being mainly supported by bored college students with nothing better to do than go protest something.
If you want to garner support from blue-collar, red-state America now, you can't say "globalization," you have to say "outsourcing" or "offshoring." That's because the g-word has a strong association with protesters and radical fringe groups; no sane middle-class gainfully-employed person wants to associate themselves with anything "anti-globalization" anymore, lest they end up on some sort of FBI watch list. It's that 'blue collar' crowd who should really be the major backers of anti-globalization, but to date they have been notably absent; I think this is because of a large reluctance on many people's part to do anything that reeks of "dirty hippies." And it's tough to get deeper in hippie territory right now than "anti-globalization."
Violent protests may have been effective in the 60s but today they're cliche; I can't think of a faster way to let your opponents marginalize and demonize you in the press, and frankly to have the general public revel in watching you get tear gassed on TV. Average people don't have much tolerance or sympathy for rioters, regardless of the motivation or politics; it's no longer an acceptable mode of political discourse. This situation may be different in other countries -- it seems like riots and mass demonstrations are accepted by the public rather differently in some European countries. But here in the U.S., riots don't play in Peoria. They're counterproductive.
I tried to explain the anti-globalization position to too many people over the last few years to and have had more people pipe up "hey, aren't those the folks who were causing riots down in New York?" to think that those protests can possibly be constructive. It doesn't matter whether it's the protesters or the cops who start the escalation; if you have a protest and it turns into chaos -- particularly televised chaos -- then you and any arguments or positions that you might be associated with lose a lot of credibility.
The "rads" might think that they've won now, but really, I think that the logic that globalization might not be such a hot thing, has finally come into the light despite the efforts of fringe groups, certainly not because of them.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
jesus fucking christ NO.
"Perfect" capitalism has nothing to do with big companies making sweet heart deals with governments to ensure they get their monopoly. Globalization has nothing to do with the free market and capitalism. it is protectionism at its finest. the only "globalization" that true capitalists push for is free trade, unhindered by government. None of this trade agreement shit that hinders competition.
big fucking deal if IT gets outsourced. When that occurs it is a commodity and it shouldn't be subsidized by the gov't. sure, i'd like to keep my job and big paycheck but it is how true economics works. sure, it will suck but things will move on and humanity will progress. that is how it works, that is how innovation occurs.
What makes their patriotic self-interest in keeping jobs in their own American economy instead of overseas where workers unfairly compete without labor, environmental, political or economic protections into "racism"? The "radicals" who protest the WTO are more diverse ethnicly than either the foreign countries or America as a whole.
What kind of racism haunts your mind that you project it onto people who aren't racists?
--
make install -not war
That you are trying to convince people that various companies decided in favor of offshoring so that they could make better lives for those "little brown and yellow paupers in Asia and the Middle East...is laughable if not patently absurd. They don't give one rat's about these people - their only concern is a way to make the company's short-term balance sheet look good.
If good people in other countries can do certain things better than Americans, they ought to get the work. It's up to us to compete with them (and each other) instead of whining about the competition. Globalization is helping everyone in the long run. Competition can always be painted as nasty and brutish, but it's the way we get progress. Everyone benefits from it, even if it causes job changes in the short run.
When the Japanese auto manufacturers started sending their vehicles to the United States, nobody took them seriously at first. Then American consumers realized that the Japanese were making better cars, so they started buying them in increasing numbers. The U.S. carmakers (and their unions) simply whined about the competition instead of DOING enough about it. If they had actually competed by producing products that were better than the Japanese products (in reliability, styling and a whole range of issues), they could have fought off the competition. Instead, the unions demanded that they keep their arcane work rules that saved useless jobs in the short run, but which lost a LOT more jobs in the long run. The managements remained in denial that they were that much worse than the Japanese. Even when they DID start improving, it was too little, too late. The culture in Detroit couldn't compete with the rate of change (and improvement) given to us by Honda and Toyota. American consumers benefitted from this competition. The stockholders and employees of the U.S. companies COULD have benefitted, too, but they were both too shortsighted to learn and compete.
U.S. IT is in the position that the U.S. auto industry about 30 years ago. It leads the world, so it doesn't see the need to innovate as much as it did even 10 or 20 years ago. They're arrogant and fat and happy, it seems. Now the rest of the world is starting to catch up to us. Foreigners are learning to do the same things we've been doing, but less expensively. So what's the response? The companies and the employees whine about competition. If you can't see the continued pattern (and what to do about it), you're going to have no one to blame but yourselves.
David
That was a very poorly written article. Granted, it was an editorial, but a little more in the way of rational argument would've been nice. Instead of presenting opposing points and showing their weaknesses, the author simply writes off opposing arguments as ridiculous and baseless. How about actually showing why they are wrong.
For example, he writes this in the beginning:
Unless he is countering a specific argument made against him in the past (which I doubt, based on the language he uses) this is as far as he goes as presenting the opposition argument he is so adamantly against. This is a straw man. He uses the blanket term "economists", as if all economists believe this. As anyone who has spent any time with economists knows, it is rare to find two economists who agree exactly on a given issue. Even if they agree generally, they may dispute endlessly about small details. To claim that offshoring is a practice that all economists consider useful is just wrong. Also, notice his choice of words. "Offshoring...can only have positive benefits overall for Americans." This is very obviously an over-simplification of the argument.
Other great fallacies include the numerous ad hominem attacks (mixed well with the aforementioned straw man). Here are a few:
He also does a very good job of making himself look like an ass by making claims without any explanation or reasoning to support these claims. Here are a few examples:
I could take the time to refute these one by one, but I re
There is no balancing involved whatsoever. BOTH American and third world I.T. workers make LESS as companies scour the world for the cheapest wages they can find. And the I.T. work only benefits a tiny sliver of the billion + people in both China and India something like quite literally .001%. How can you honestly call something that benefits .001& in the third world a little bit while the rest of the world is suffering a setback a balancing? It's a disingenuous use of that word i.e. a lie. What's more I think you people who peddle these falsehoods are engaging in deliberate mendacities i.e. you are shilling to cover some ones ass in the elite. Shame on you I hope you sleep very poorly at night.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
> if you studied everything you know out of a book 5 years ago, most of that is useless now
It might be a good book, but the real question is how you think and how adaptable you are. If you drop it all and become a hermit for ten years, when you come back you might not know what the latest portable hologram generator is or where all the interesting research is or how to open the computer's cup-holder, but it won't take you long to figure it all out. (If you've got a head for tech.) If you know how to think about the problem, you'll be able to solve it. The facts that you learn from the book are less important than the though processes that you learn by discussing it.
Dumb and hardworking workers are far far cheaper elsewhere.
And in GW Bush's reign the US people in general have proven themselves to not be particularly bright.
It's ugly but it's the truth.
Maybe your only hope is to make yourselves endearing so those sociopathic CEOs/politicians keep you around as pets or for amusement.
Isn't globalization really a natural re-distribution of labour and wealth to the parts of the world where it is truly needed? Perhaps the fact that jobs are lost is merely a sign that somehting was wrong in th first place, not that there is anything wrong with globalization itself.
Wait, wasn't the dot com crash in Feburary 2001 - i.e. just after the reporting started? Wouldn't it stand to reason, then, that all of the useless dot com monkeys who did nothing but read VC monthly and talk about how they were going to make millions in stock options not selling things, they'd be included in this statistic, right?
I only ask because I'm not exactly upset to be rid of them...
Commodore 64, Loading up the dance floor!
Some of you have pointed out that one reason for the disparity in pay which makes outsourcing attractive is the disparity in living standards. I agree. As more and more high paying jobs leave the US for lower cost regions of the world, Americans will have less disposable income. They are already deep in debt. At some point, consumption must fall.
I don't think many Americans understand the extent of the wrenching adjustments that lie ahead. It will not be pleasant.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Over time jobs have continuously moved abroad.
Back in the good old days (you know, when the western world had it's colonizing hat on), we decided it was far cheaper to source raw materials abroad - so we'd say grow cotton in India and import the raw product back to the UK to be refined.
Then we twigged we might as well weave it into cloth abroad (and fired a load of mill workers). Then, realizing we might as well make something out of the cloth abroad before importing it we fired a load of the cloth workers.
Now - at the time there was lots of personal pain for some people - but the benefit was two-fold. The vast majority of people got a far cheaper product and we were forced to up-skill. Do you honestly think we'd be in a better position today if we'd spent a fortune protecting those lost industries?
Same thing is just still happening and will continue to happen - whether you like it or not. You've just got the simple choice whether you want to stand there trying to hold back the sea, or whether you should take a few steps up the beach to get out of the way.
You might get the odd law/import quota protecting your own job, but that's just at the expense of everybody else around you - The USA can't afford to buy everything 'Made in the USA' and expect to keep the same standard of living.
America has become a sad place when speaking the truth plainly without some sort of "moderate" nicey, nicey nodding in the direction of the Fox corporate blow hards is considered "lunatic fringe." Remember it was people protesting and striking that brought us the 40 hour work, that got black people the votes, that got women the vote, that helped end the Vietnam war, earth day that brought us NEPA, getting the picture? If you think the regressive forces of the world will give up their ill gotten privileges without loud protest you are kidding yourself. Moderates never got shit in history except some Uncle Tom pats on the back, it's radicals that got the goods time after time. From the founding fathers who used gasp violence against the "legitimate" British government to the current radicals like ACT UP who brought gay rights into the forefront in the late 80s the powers that be have to be pushed against if you want to gain any ground, count on it.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Look. You're both right and you're both wrong. And you should be smart enough to realize that. It's nice to see some honest dissent, but you both should learn to tone it down about four notches before you consider conversing. Fearmongering is a short-term tool. It doesn't work forever. Reality is slowly catching up to the political / economic system, and there are a lot of factors in it. All that really needs to happen at this point is a fair playing ground, so off to Black Box Voting for both of you.
Oh, and if you didn't shoot spittle at every conservative you spoke to, you would have a better chance of convincing them. I know I do.
My little site.
Offshoring does not apply to IT. No doubt geeks want their overpayed jobs, yet still want cheap labor to supply their clothing, shoes, ipods, RAM etc. Why should the IT industry get any preferential treatment?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Ah, Slashdot. I find it so ironic that the same people who are for "free software" and "free information" are also against free trade.
The idea of a nation having a comparative advantage (if you're going to talk about globalization, you might as well use the lingo) in certain markets is what this all boils down to.
Let's say you're French. The French enjoy an enormous comparative advantage in producing fine wine. The climate is right, they have the wineries already in place, they are well-known as wine producers and so on. If you own a winery in France, or work at a winery in France, or ship French wines, or even just occasionally mash grapes with your feet, you've got it made it in the shade. Your goods will find plenty of willing buyers in the global marketplace.
But here's the problem. What if you live in France and don't want to have anything to do with the wine making business? You don't know anything about wine, grapes disgust you--whatever. In fact, what if you want to just design and make automobiles? Whoops! You will have a hard time competing against the vast hordes of foreign auto makers. Your French workers will require higher wages and better benefits than their foreign counterparts. Much of the steel you need has to be imported from Germany. Your engine blocks have to come from Japan, but only after they're assembled in Canada. You're really having a hard time keeping your costs down.
Your business is going to fail, and the French government will have little choice but to see your company fall by the wayside, or else pass laws to create subsidies that explicitly favor your goods over their foreign counterparts, which is prohibited by GATT and can only be done under very specific circumstances. The French could still tax foreign goods with tariffs, but even then those are highly regulated by international authorities. No, your auto business will soon be out of business.
Globalization's answer to that French auto maker is "well, you could always make wine" and its answer to the unemployed people who worked for that auto maker is "well that's a shame, go work at a winery." Now that's pretty harsh. How do you respond to something like that? You either go work at a winery or you go riot in the streets. When companies and egghead economists alike are so gung-ho about pushing globalization, the human element seems to get lost in the shuffle.
The best argument for globalization has always been "okay then, suggest a better way." It's impossible because the alternative to the free trade system is pretty horrible: Entire industries that create goods with no useful purpose that cannot be sold overseas; a limited selection of goods for consumers; huge increases in the costs of goods for consumers due to reduced competition, and so on. If the WTO allowed for any more artificial barriers to free trade than tariffs, that is exactly what would happen. And even then, eventually getting rid of tariffs anyway, and removing the last barrier to free trade is the stated goal of WTO/GATT.
Those who embrace the trendy new rhetoric that decries our current free trade system either know nothing about it or refuse to acknowledge how much we truly benefit from it. It is far easier, I suppose, to shill the globalization issue to promote another political motive. Don't be used.
Really? Where do you get your definitions from? Because a "depression" or even a recession (a long term recession constitutes a depression) are not caused by anything like that. Oh wait, you're quoting John Maynard Keynes. Riiiight, I see. Is that what they're teaching in school now? That "hoarding" causes recessions? Good heavens.
When power is concentrated enough, the American Empire will go to war with China
Will it now. Just a quick exercise for you - try to calculate how much of the US economy depends on the Chinese economy. Then do the same calculation backwards. Now tell us about this "war". What are the justifications for it again? Why does it happen? When? How exactly? Please do elaborate. Unless you're just jumbling together "hot topic" words to get some karma like you always do...
M$ monopoly
Good old twitter. China is evil, "big dumb companies" are evil, "M$" is evil, Kermit the frog is evil and everything should be free. Same broken record but with impressive-sounding words and lotsa links. Karma every time.
For anyone that has forgotten, you could get an IT job during dot.com if you could just spell cumputer^Wcomputer. For a more realistic point of reference, choose a point before dot.com, say Jan 1999. Do that and you;ll probably notice some growth.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The article compares 2001 to 2005? Other than globalization, there were two minor events that could have a small influence the job count:
1. In 2001 the dot-com-bubble burst
2. In 2001 9/11 happened, bringing with it 2 wars
Where these events so minor that they aren't even worth mentioning in the article?
I flicked through the article and though seemingly thorough it doesn't really advocate a solution to what 'might' be a problem. So one can only assume that what is being advocated is protectionism.
Lots of statements can be made about the benefits or not of offshoring, but protectionism is usually pretty damaging for a number of reasons that many economists will agree on. The number one reason is that protectionism is almost always badly implemented, look at the many military acquisition purchases which have been for pseudo-politcal/protectionist reasons.
A famous story here in Europe is the Eurofighter project, a project which has cost billions over many year. For political and protectionist reasons the plane parts got carved up so they would be designed in different countries so as to create local jobs. The result? A 5 year late project wasting massive amounts of money recreating a clone of an existing American combat fighter. That's protectionism in action.
Imagine a company with zero engineers, and 100% managers, it cannot survive.
Now imagine a company with 100% engineers, which spend 5% of their time doing 'management' , it would
still work and turn out a product, see google and apple.
A smart engineer can learn in 6months how to be a manager, a manager though would take 10 years to be as good as an engineer.
After all there are no management 5 year degrees at unis are there.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Before taking everything in the article as fact, take a glance at the rest of the stories on the site. You will definitely see a pattern. And NO..I'm not going to suggest what that pattern is.
Is that while a lot of these jobs are lost - and people are complaining about not having a job -
there are a lot of idiots who went into IT in the first place, who should NEVER have gone into
IT to begin with.
I don't know how many idiots I've met in the IT industry that have ZERO business being in
there. They don't have a clue as to how logic works. Can't be bothered to read a frickin'
manual or just use references to figure things out.
It's sad that a lot of these people are whining and complaining, instead of realizing that
they didn't belong there in the first place!!
Yes of course 42-56 million American service job are susceptible to offshoring! I'm glad they finally realize it! Actually all of our jobs are susceptible! They will all go oversea and ALL Americans will be out of a job! 300 Million Americans will be sitting around doing nothing and when ever they try to start working an foreigner will run up and take their job!
Sorry guys it doesn't work that way. All this means is that the IT sector is overpaid and too big, just like the manufacturing in the 80s and 90s. It's backlash from the 90s glut in IT, the IT sector is growing up so don't worry we are not going to loose 50 Million jobs overseas.
Basically you either believe in the free market or you don't. You can't believe in the free market in 1998 when you're getting paid twice the salary + stock options of people in other fields (who may have similar levels of experience and education) and then 'get religion' once outsourcing hits your field.
If outsourcing comes to my field I will be scared and worried about it, I don't want my job outsourced however I also realize that it isn't something the government needs to protect me from. Transitions in the economy happen and trying to stop it is foolish, we can however do our best to make transitions less painful.
Anyway programming ability is starting to be like knowing another language. There are extremely few jobs you can get based solely on knowing how to speak Spanish and English, however there are a lot of jobs where it's a bonus. This is how programming is now IMO. You must be a knowledge worker in a specific field and then programming is your secondary ability which allows you to distinguish yourself.
If you actually read it (I know, it was longer then a digg blurb, so you probably didn't) you'd have seen that he used many dates, but the fact that many of his comparisons STARTED with 2001 (which you yourself said was a shitty time for IT workers) and compare them with TODAY (or close as he could get with the data) while showing NO growth or negative growth is scary. In other words, since the shittiest time after the .com blowout, there's been hardly any tangable IT growth.
He blames it on offshoring in general, and I agree with him. Off-shoring IT is a direct IT-job losing situation, but all off-shoring has a serious impact on our economy in general. It's the huge companies getting bigger, and being as greedy as possible while doing it.
So, imagine if he compared things to the year 2000 or 1999? It would look *completely* bleak.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Almost like clockwork, every couple of weeks we get another article about outsourcing (or global warming, or voting systems), and everyone wrings their hands about it. "The rich are seeking slavery" versus "you can't ignore the free market."
What I find most disconcerting among the con camp is the tired sense of entitlement. It is believed that corporations should pay a premium to a given employee because "it's fair". Americans fret about losing any percentage of the well-beyond survival level of wealth we enjoy. It's not that we worry about living in huts and going hungry, but that we'll have to buy a Hyundai instead of a Toyota, or maybe a smaller house, eat out less, etc. Our expectations are very high.
That's fine, as long as we're willing to do what it takes to generate that wealth. If you believe that you're so talented, but your employer doesn't appreciate it, start your own company. IT is one of the few fields with minimal startup costs. Our country was founded upon the idea of entrepreneurship, and it was those original risk-takers that lead our nation to greatness. People weren't as locked into the cycle of college > corporation meritocracy as we seem to be today. We play it safe, and have the inviolate expectation that we deserve a given salary by law because we've done what was rewarded in the past. This isn't a socialist country, though. Companies are free to pay market wages, and the market keeps getting bigger. We can either accept this, and take personal responsibility for our own success, or continue to complain that things are changing, and try to manipulate the system to mitigate the change.
I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have some measures to protect workers, and as a country we do, but we have to recognize that there is a cost for having such protections, and that is the economic disadvantage it puts us in relative to those in developing economies. We can't have the best of both worlds.
Can you imagine a football team with your attitude? The team walks out on the field, gets the ball, then just wanders around stupidly saying stupid things like "It will make the other team happy if we just give them the ball", "They have a right to our points since we already had some last year", "Sure is cost efficient to just give our jobs to the other team", "Go ! Yay!"
Regardless of how advanced our society is, it's still sink or swim, do or die, us against them. How many millions of good-hearted Americans need to die on this altar before you see the error of your ways?
Whose team are you on, anyway?
I think people are overestimating the quantity of intelligent workers. Are there great Indian and Chinese engineers? Of course. Are they enough to do all the major design work in the world? Nope. Furthermore, the very factors that makes China or India great for manufacturing, work against it for high quality engineering jobs. With such high rates of poverty and 'IT' seen as a way to make money, you get a lot of poor quality people graduating through the system. Some get by through cheating (see article about Chinese student getting surgical implants to cheat on tests...), others just lack the passion to do good work, and some just get by via the corruption. Imagine being a manager and trying to hire a good engineer in India or China. I really don't know how they'd do it on a large scale given the sheer number of applicants. As far as I'm concerned these countries are just now starting to get their fair share of high end design work. For such large countries, they deserve their fair share of highend work. But its not going to be the death of our economy. A better way to look at it is the US IT industry has been far too large. Other countries have good engineers too and they are resources to be tapped. Good engineers are too hard to find for any country to have a monopoly.
Bah, Slashdot really knows how to stoke the IT flames with an article like this. But maybe its time to stop thinking its "us vs. them" in regards to off-shoring. Perhaps we are seeing the opening stages of, what I like to call, "the grand unification" of the world. Yes, someone can do your job for less! Move on. Is it the end of the world? Are Americans all of a sudden living in slums and standing on soup lines? Hardly.
Parent actually has good points. You just insulted him "in style", but the "in style" part is of course debatable.
Wealth is always relative, and never absolute.
Thus, it's impossible for wealth to be created or for it to disappear in absolute terms. But what IS possible for a relative quantity? Aha, that's right -- concentration. Yes, in relative terms, wealth can concentrate. That's all it ever does. It either concentrates or diffuses, and it's never created or destroyed.
I'd maybe go deeper into it and explain why wealth is relative, but you're a dipshit who is not worth my time. I'm writing this for other people, not for you.
Engineering and management require different skills sets.
Sometimes the same person have them both, but on many others it just does not happen.
The best way to create a bad manager is to force a good Engineer without the necessary skills to become one.
The assumption, very common around here, that Engineers are some kind of uber human that can learn anything thrown at them is laughable, to say the least (disclaimer: I am an Engineer and at time I have had managerial responsibilities)
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Lesson number 1: "wealth" is not the same thing as "value".
I would agree that the value that is placed on manufactured goods has been declining, but that does not mean that the wealth inherent to the manufactured goods is any less.
Put another way: The price of a house does not changes its square footage, ability to store things and protect from the environment, etc. The wealth of a house (sans damage or additions) is constant, regardless of the price (value) associated with that house. Yet another example: a wrench does not lose its "wrenchness" if it only costs $5 instead of $10.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)