Slashdot Mirror
Intel Developing New Chip Designs in India
An anonymous person noted that "Intel Corporation, the $39-billion largest chip maker in the world, is developing new chip designs and processors at its India development centre to roll out the next generation of notebooks and servers, says a top company official."
One thing about the whole Indian outsourcing thing that people don't mention is that companies are increasingly going overseas not for the cheap labor, but for the talent. Remember, wage pressure in India and other outsourcing destinations is increasing, and pretty soon it won't be too much cheaper to do the work overseas.
The problem we have now is that fewer people are going into technical fields. We're a nation of CEOs, project managers, liaisons, coordinators, and other non-technical people. I've noticed a lot of people in the tech field encouraging their kids not to pursue any sort of science or engineering education. That's not a shocker. First of all, going to law school or getting an MBA guarantees you a lifetime of high income. Scientists/engineers are begging for jobs, and IT types are not finding as many entry-level positions that would get them entry into the field. Second, if you do decide to pursue something technical, the jobs are not guaranteed to be there. Why beat yourself up going for an engineering degree if someone on the other side of the world will work cheaper and do a better job than you could?
Also, the work ethic and education standard in other countries is much higher. I've worked with Indian outsourcing firms, and they make up for their lack of understanding of the problem with 14 hour work days and no complaints about how low their pay is. Compare that to workers in the US, who waste their whole day grumbling about their pay and are completely lazy.
Honestly, I don't know how to fix this. If we could somehow ensure that there would still be work available for those of us who like doing technical stuff, that would help.
So, people are not happy when foreigners get H1 visas and come to work here.
People are not happy when companies set up shop there so they (damn foreigners) don't have to come here. Obviously, if its not America or American, it has to be inferior. And obviously, why would any talented Indian chose to live and work in India?
All Indians in India are just F class engineers and the good ones are already here. Mind you, we still hate them, but still, we have the best ones.
I would thus speculate that Intel are seeking to gain some sort of political foothold in the huge developing market in India and the region.
haven't Intel also done some deals to set up design centres in China to also gain political leverage and fast-track approvals for their products there?
You have to understand no one has ever seen free trade before. Assuming it ever existed, that must have been a long time ago. Today there are taxes, tariffs, government-granted monopolies, and government regulation, which are all contrary to Free (as in freedom) trade.
So the problem isn't the free market, it's two things: First, it's not really a free market; and second, the fact that we had even less free trade for a long, long time means that there will be a period of settling out that, yes, will likely be disastrous for the US. Our economy is based on trade not being Free, because it has been that way for generations. The longer a flawed system is perpetuated, the longer it takes to correct the situation.
Add to the top of this situation the fact that the US has put a lot of effort into keeping other nations down, and you have a serious problem for this country. If those nations had been allowed to grow, they might not be such a threat today; but because people there have nothing, they will work for little more than nothing...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, keep in mind that IANAEconomist but it's not that it's suddenly flawed, it's always been flawed. The flaw is that it creates artificial imbalances which cannot be perpetuated indefinitely.
There are two reasons for this. One is simply that differentials are where the greatest energy exists. You can see this principle of nature at work everywhere you look. Energy has the property that it affects things, which I realize is an understatement but is part of the logical flow of this conversation... But anyway, what I mean by this is that there will constantly be forces working against it, so that it takes a great deal of effort to maintain it. That effort typically takes the form of regulation - but one of the effects of regulation is that it always creates imbalances of its own, which leads to more regulation. It's a self-perpetuating system, which is why trying to change the system from within is typically fruitless. Just in order to enter the system, you become a part of it. The other reason is that if we really did successfully wall ourselves in, then the rest of the world would just find a way to function without us. This is pretty much what's happening now - e.g. China's currency is no longer based on ours.
So basically, it was a doomed system from the beginning - this doesn't mean it wasn't useful then, it allowed us unparalleled economic growth. But it should have been abandoned when it was no longer useful and started to work against us, and it was not discarded only because certain individuals in power could profit from the status quo.
The attitude that you can get everything you want without helping others is a ridiculous one. The more you have, and the less others have, the more motivated they are to take away what you have. If you help yourself by helping others, then there is little reason for them to try to deprive you of anything. This has never been proven on a global scale because it has never been tried on a global scale.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"