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Indian Software Firm Outsourcing Jobs To US
phobos13013 writes "NPR is reporting Indian software maker Wipro is outsourcing positions to a development office opening in Atlanta, Georgia. Although it sounds good for US job growth, the implication is that firms outside the US appear to be dominating more and more in the global economy, even from developing and underdeveloped regions of the world. Similarly, salaries of IT professionals world-wide are projected to stagnate or possibly fall due to the large pool of qualified applicants in the market today."
This recent article discusses an interesting paradox India is in: It will have high unemployment among the educated, but only because those educated are not skilled enough to perform the required jobs (including, but not limited to, IT). The point is that India will not be able to come close to meeting the demand of an estimated workforce shortage of 40 million by 2012.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
There are a lot of cautionary tales about outsourcing and often the infrastructure necessary to successfully out source over seas almost negates the cost benefit. You need good bilingual managers, well thought out specifications, a good out sourcing firm or subsidiary, rigorous hiring practices and a "friend" in the over seas government to protect you investment. It's worth it if you need extra capacity with more flexibility (as over seas hiring/firing can be easier). From personal experience hiring an over seas firm does not guarantee any cost savings and if your only looking to shave your costs you may find out like my previous company that out sourcing can be a multi hundreds of million dollar catastrophe.
I've been part of small companies that hired a over seas company to to find out they paid a retainer for almost nothing. I've been part of a large company that spend a couple hundred million and got back a unusable piece of trash. The company was Isreali. Many heads rolled.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Listening to the audio version of the story, I found a few key points:
* US programmers are still much more expensive than programmers in other countries.
* Wipro has software houses in multiple countries around the world, their is their first Software house in the US though.
* US programmers know about the culture and idioms of this country, which is needed for some jobs.
* Any defense contracts must be worked on my US based developers.
Its not what it is, its something else.
I live in Atlanta Georgia and a lot of people are talking about how this company will be bringing jobs to Atlanta. The truth is that while they will be hiring people, this will result in a NET LOSS for Atlanta and the United States.
The way this works is that Fortune 50 companies in Atlanta like Bell South, Coca-Cola, Delta, etc. have contracts with US based firms and employ US based resources. The movement is now to outsource to India. The problem is that they realize that they have to have someone in the United States to actually talk to the customer and deal with problems. These people will be the business analysts and the technical architects that feed the people off shore. While they say that these companies are creating jobs in the United States, the truth is that most of them will be landed resources also from India under H1B visa.
The result of this is that the 50 people in Atlanta that were working in IT are now replaced by 40 off shore people, 5 landed people in Atlanta, and 5 local people. I'm not judging whether it's good or bad or right or wrong, I'm just clarifying what is really happening because most people are way off on this one.
If you will recall Wipro, Tata, InfoSys, InfoTech, Tech Mahindra, Satyam, Mphasis, Panti, and i-Flex have all been nailed for precisely this.
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http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/conte
"Moreover, you seem to think this is automatically bad. As a generally benign tax-paying and extremely low crime population"
You seem to be making a great deal of assumptions there that one might think betrays are certain corollary bias.
Well, I haven't worked for Wipro. I *have* had them working for *me* and it was an unrepeatable experience -- scared, inexperienced, homesick, basically useless Indian guys supplied on a constantly revolving system, spending about a month on the project and then either disappearing or being rotated somewhere else. The absolutely classic bad side of outsourcing.
They're probably OK to work *for*, though, if you aren't one of those guys.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I'm actually a fan of Hungarian notation. It's nice to be able to know both the scope and type of a variable just by looking at it.
Or Iraq!
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Totally off topic, but, for real: They are a huge US ally.
You are totally blocking my view of the wall. - Dogbert