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IBM Offers to Send Laid-Off Staff to Other Countries
TheAmit writes to tell us that many recently laid off IBM employees have been offered jobs if they will only move somewhere it is cheap to employ them. IBM's new Project Match program offers some financial assistance for moving and immigration help for visas. "However, the move has not gone well with the IBM staff union. Slamming the offer, a union spokesperson said that not only were jobs being shipped overseas, but Big Blue was trying to export the people for peanuts too. He added that at a time of rising unemployment IBM should be looking to keep both the work and the workers in the United States. "
I'm waiting to find out if my job will be moved to a country where the "cost of a comparable person" is 1/3 what it is in the US. Even in that situation I'm not sure how I feel about this politically and morally. How ever as the unemployment rate goes up, and more white collar high paying jobs move else where, I believe this will become a hot topic politically.
There are many ways I see this as a bad sign for the US. Innovation happens where the engineering talent is located. If the worlds best engineers are no longer heading to the US (for high paying jobs) then the US will not longer be the center of innovation it has been for the last 50 years.
Think Deeply.
I have a few tech friends from India and it's funny because one of them said that on a yearly salary in the US, they could retire comfortably back home. Fact is, a dollar goes really far in other countries and companies could probably provide an even better standard of living for their employees if they were located in other countries. Now, I'm not saying that this is the ideal situation. Just that the reality for some companies is that they cannot or will have trouble surviving/remaining competitive when another company, based in a cheaper location, can undercut them by a significant amount. It's not simply a matter of CEOs fattening their profit margins but that eventually, efficiency will take over. What I believe will happen, is that an economic homeostasis will occur (over several decades) whether we like it or not.
Ah, pay me no heed as I'm just ranting.
which they would if they could get equivalent work;which they can't.
Typically outsourcing works becasue you can get a many to one ration and still save money.
I executives I know that have done, or looking at doings outsourcing talk about being able to get 5 engineers for every single American engineers and save money.
Management needs to be there, and it needs to break the project done into several smaller projects to take advantage of i. Even after that it's still half the cost.
Personally, Corporations tax rate should be based on the percentage of people that work out of country.
100% of your work force in the US? then no corporate taxes. Base it upon work, not hired employees.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
To be fair countries that have lower wages also have lower costs of living so it balances out. This is why Polish people can come to the UK and live and send what would be considered a decent amount of cash back home.
I would consider taking on the offer. Keeping a job with a view of coming back when the economy is better and getting to see the world isn't a bad deal.
Regarding the comment above saying this proves that Americans have the skills but IBM is just being cheap. That could be but companies do have to lay off people with valuable skills sometimes like when the economy is on life support.
>>>They should just lay them off and hire new people overseas. That's a much better way to treat them.
I hope that was sarcasm. Speaking for myself, I'd rather accept a job overseas than be sitting on my ass (like I'm doing now). You can always continue the U.S. job search from India, and then when you find a U.S. job (if you find a U.S. job), you quit India and come back home.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Americans workers would like to work in America for American wages. However, are they also willing to pay the prices of American made products?
If certain employees' salaries weren't so outrageously high, would American-made products really be that much more expensive ?
ibm will be an indian company
i have spoken to an employee of ibm, who lives and works in the hudson valley (ibm's historical stomping grounds), and he is being relocated to bangalore under this exact program. he is indian anyways, so not that huge of a deal, and he even looks forward to the massive decrease in cost of living
but he's done a lot of recent improvements on his home, like installing 45K worth of solar panels (not including the 10K new york state gives him for doing that), and now he has to sell his home in the current real estate environment. ugh. i don't think this ibm program has a home value relief program?
according to him, ibm had already planned the move in semisecrecy for years, on a 10-20 year timetable. but the worldwide economic recession has meant a rapid acceleration of the process
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is the FREE MARKET doing what it does best.
Yes. Fuck people over. If this is what the free market is best at, then maybe we should rethink the idea?
... and then they built the supercollider.
If I pay the price of an American made product, will that extra expense make it back to my pocket on my paycheck? Or will it end up in the CEO's pocket?
Insightful????
I drive a vehicle that I bought new with cash. I got that cash by saving money from my paycheck that I didn't send to credit card companies as interest. I got the paycheck by going to school and, with the help of my working father and myself, I did that without incurring debt. It is possible, if not that common, to live within the confines of a paycheck.
I also use a computer with an o/s that had no EULA thanks to folks like Mr. Stallman.
My freedom is under attack, however. My job is under constant threat of being unionized. My government continues to try to help everyone by taking away from me until I become one that needs help. At that point, of course, there won't be many to help me.
To be fair countries that have lower wages also have lower costs of living so it balances out.
Bullshit. I live in Argentina, and work as a software Engineer. My salary is normal for my profession, about 1/4 of a US salary. Houses and cars are often 10% to 20% *more* expensive here than in the US. As a result, myself and most of my coworkers with 10 years of experience don't own a car or a house. I'm starving? far from it, but balances out my ass.
First of all, it's not treasonous to employ people from another country. That's just silly. Most of the countries in the world are not our enemies, particularly the ones where we do business. We have this thing called a trade embargo, you might have heard of it. We've been using it against Cuba for longer than I've been alive. No company that I know of has advocated that their employees move to Cuba, FYI.
Secondly, the reason this is an expensive place to live and work is not because we are a democracy, or because of cruft. It has more to do with our past success and the nature of currency. If we produce goods that everyone wants, it increases the value of our currency. This means that we can afford more goods and services from other countries. Do you only buy American? If not, your rant is completely hypocritical. If a company chooses to hire someone outside the country, they are being more efficient. The inefficiency doesn't come from something that Americans have done wrong, it comes from what we've done RIGHT. Do you suggest that in California we should refuse to hire people from Louisiana because they are (statistically) poorer, and will work for cheap? Somehow our economy has survived the porous intrastate border, how do you explain that in your view of the world?
You ask (paraphrasing) "why should [the companies] be able to make a profit"? The real question is why you think they shouldn't? Do you really believe it should be against the law to buy from someone outside of your town/city/state/country? I think that's the kind of provincialism that leads to cruft and corruption. I think your nationalistic fear and hate-mongering of other countries is just short-sighted.
We net benefit when companies run themselves as efficiently as possible. Protectionism is just a way to protect bad companies by passing on their expenses to everyone else in the country.
-t.
Except that a wholesale lowering of the cost of living is generally referred to as deflation. Deflation can be a huge problem, because once deflation starts it risks setting up a deflationary spiral which will continue to weaken the economy until something finally shakes it loose.
It is called competition, and there are multiple things to consider here. If the jobs are moved overseas, then we are raising the world economy and have leverage on other regions. This is one of the reasons that Microsoft has created so many job openings in China - Microsoft can now negotiate with the Chinese government regarding software license enforcement. IBM is in competition with other software and hardware vendors. They need to compete on price as well as product features. Competition generally means that they need to be concerned with what their expenses are. In terms of intellectual companies, most of the operating expense is attributed to employee wages (they don't have raw material concerns). So let's summarize: By moving jobs elsewhere, they are: +Increasing the living conditions of the region where the jobs are moved ++This in turn increases the likelihood that said regions will buy a product instead of pirating +Increasing the influence on foreign governments - which is an issue when it comes to copyright enforcement +Decreasing the "US centric" software design. By living international, more exposure is introduced to product teams regarding what other regions of the world need +Staying competitive. The cool thing about the United States is that you are free to go start your own company, and run it with higher ideals. The downside is that you cannot simply demand that a company create jobs or bow to your demands that they pay for your society.
We call ourselves a "capitalist" society where the individual has the power and the choice.
A "democracy" is one in which each individual has equal power and choice. Contrast to "capitalism" where each dollar has equal power.
He added that at a time of rising unemployment IBM should be looking to keep both the work and the workers in the United States.
This is the most basic law of capitalism. America is about creative destruction at its best. For all this daydreaming, if a job can be done elsewhere for a lower cost, it will in the long run. By IBM or someone else like with weird "Tata" names.
IBM must assure its survival; not keep inefficient jobs. If Lehman can die, so can IBM.
The USA has the best universities and the best talent in the globe--that's where IBM (and all others must concentrate, the hardest, most value-added tasks). The rest goes away, baby, like it or not, to some far away land where people talk weird and spend all day building iPods.
Let me tell you something: I'm from Brazil, a PIECE OF SHITE country (despite the awesomeness of the girls), and you know why it's a fuckup? Because our politicians and economists have always tried to protect this banana republic from Schumpeter and David Ricardo. If America goes that route, well, let me just tell you: it backfires.
There are so many tech-areas expanding and so many opportunities in the US that one wonders why the fuck so many whining protectionists don't start working on android, iphone, adobe air, palm's pre system, and other ??? profit! opportunities up for grabs.
You are absolutely right. Some of things are fault of us, citizens - for not making laws that protect a worker or citizen from corporate abuse.
An example is a company who makes record profits and lays off people, just to please analysts and maintain stock price.
In "at will" states worker have almost 0 rights. The illusion of rights comes from that workers have unique talent or skills that are not easily replaceable in a high numbers. So company "plays nice" just to keep the workers because they are irreplaceable.
This is true for every company to some degree.
American IT workers have a sense of entitlement where they believe that the quality of their work is inherently superior simply because of their origin. Truth is, there's a lot of brilliant minds in the States, but like most places it is full of mediocre people.
One of my ex-customer's IT shop was run by a bunch of 60-year-olds who didn't know how to use SSH or automate user creation on AIX machines. And this was a massive Fortune 500 corporation with operations in dozens of countries. They were quickly fired and replaced by South American kids in their mid-20s who knew UNIX from the inside out and who tripled the level of productivity while reducing head count and increasing end user customer satisfaction.
There are dozens of cases like that, but you won't hear about those simpy because they went well.
IBM's American division is absolutely, completely stuffed with deadwood and worthless project managers who couldn't distinguish a project from their ass. Believe me, most of the people they're getting rid of won't be a loss for them nor their colleagues.
We net benefit when companies run themselves as efficiently as possible.
Maybe. Maybe not. Henry Ford made the argument that he needed to pay his employees enough that they could afford to buy a Ford automobile. He probably would have been more efficient paying them less... right up till he went out of business because no one could afford his product. So there is a line somewhere that a company shouldn't cross if they want to stay in business long term. Although I suppose in this case once the US stops consuming because it can't afford it, those companies will just move on to India, China, etc. My personal feeling is that no one will care until suddenly the majority of US citizens can't afford their big screen TV and their "god given" right to watch it... then suddenly people will take an interest in this sort of thing. Heh.