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IBM Tries To Patent Offshoring
Ian Lamont writes "IBM has filed a patent application that covers offshoring employees. Application 20090083107, dated March 26, 2009, is a 'method and system for strategic global resource sourcing.' Figure 2 gives a pretty good idea of what's involved — it shows boxes labelled 'Engineer,' 'HR,' and 'Programmer' with crossing arrows pointing to cylinders labelled 'India,' 'China,' and 'Hungary.' The article speculates that IBM may apply the methodology to its own staff — it reportedly plans to lay off thousands of employees and has even started a program to have IBM workers transfer to other countries at local wages."
They are trying to patent a *technique for evaluating* offshoring.
I love reading /. for the news, but the constant need to deliberately misinterpret the news to spin it into some kind of hysteria is tiresome... This place is Fox for Nerds, News You Can Read Somewhere Between the Lines.
Thing is though is it is entirely possible to gut the first world middle class through off shoring. I mean first the manufacturer jobs now the knowledge worker jobs?
I mean we can't all work at Wal Mart as plumbers or for the government can we? Funny thing is once these short sighted companies seeking to boost the bottom line for next quarterly earnings call with Wall St. succeed they will have destroyed our economy and thus themselves.
Because hiring Indian and Hungarians at low wages is great but selling to them on the same meager wages is not so profitable.
Perhaps their standards of living will rise fast enough to offset the decline of our standard of living but that is really a big unknown. So this just seems like more MBA asshats fucking all of us including themselves. And believe it or not I am not even a protectionist this is just getting to the point of. Hey are these people even thinking this through? I mean it is the consumption of the first world middle class that props this whole shared delusion we call an economy up. It's all a really big ponzi scheme in a way and if us schmucks at the bottom don't keep buying in the whole thing collapses.
Wow, who'd have thought that employees wouldn't want to accept a transfer that locks them into a one-way move to another country? A country where IBM, a company that lays off workers in every market condition, will not be beholden to WARN-style laws? A country where the prevailing pay rate for the position would make returning to America incredibly (or impossibly) costly without people here to put you up until you get back on your feet? Yeah, I can see why few people would take up such a "great" opportunity.
Except with the little problem that it is NOT fair. One of the reasons why our standard costs so much is because you can't build smokestacks that spew cancer for 25+ miles in any direction, or dump enough toxic waste into the rivers that anything that touches that shit dies. But instead, thanks to the glories of outsourcing, we can pay an "el presidente" to poison the fuck out of HIS peasants so we can breathe clean air. And that sounds fair to you? All outsourcing does is brings miseries on third world peoples. Just see the filthy air in China, the toxic waste being dumped on China and India, the e-waste being dumped on ALL the third world, etc.
The only way outsourcing equalizes anything is equalizing money into the hands of the rich and the corrupt, while poisoning the poor and insuring a nice premature death from cancer and lots of lovely birth defects. There is a good reason why we can't compete with China. It is because we don't let factories dump poison right out the back into the rivers. And I for one thank every Deity I don't believe in for that. I say while they are outsourcing maybe they should just outsource themselves and their products out of the country. But expecting us to compete with countries that have no rules against toxic waste is frankly fucking stupid and a lie cooked up by ruthless multinationals.The poisons our little outsourcing has wreaked upon the world will end up causing more deaths than the bombs we dropped on Japan. Not really something we should be cheering about.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.