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$4,400/Yr. Coders May Work On Dept. of Labor Project
theodp writes "To power the Tools for America's Job Seekers Challenge, the US Department of Labor tapped IdeaScale, a subsidiary of Survey Analytics, which is headquartered in Seattle with satellite offices in Nasik, India and Auckland, NZ (PDF). According to the Federal Register (PDF), an Emergency OMB Review was requested to launch the joint initiative of the DOL, White House, and IdeaScale to help out unemployed US workers. A cached Monster.com ad seeks candidates to work on the development and maintenance of ideascale.com, but in India at an annual salary of Rs. 200,000 to 300,000 ($4,4000 to $6,600 US). BTW, an earlier White House-sponsored, IdeaScale-powered Open Government Brainstorm identified legalizing marijuana as one of the best ways to 'strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness.'" There's no guarantee that Indian workers recruited by that Monster.com ad would work on US Department of Labor projects.
I have this weird feeling that had they gone with American services for building these websites at 10x the cost of using IdeaScale, the Slashdot summary would have read about the absurdly high spending that the Department of Labor is wasting our tax dollars on and would have something about a cursory glance finding tons of companies willing to fullfill the work order for 1/10 what they spent. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. They picked the route that most CEOs today are picking and they saved us from more tax dollar expenditures. Pick your poison.
And don't tell anybody but I think Obama's coffee mugs are
BTW, an earlier White House-sponsored, IdeaScale-powered Open Government Brainstorm identified legalizing marijuana as one of the best ways to 'strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness.
So because IdeaScale built an application to spec for the White House (who shouldn't have paid for it if it didn't meet requirements) and a bunch of pothead hippies turned up in full force to get their message out loud and clear on it, it's IdeaScale's fault? I think you'd be better off blaming the concept of democracy or the buzzword 'crowd-sourcing' as this is just kind of evidence of a technology-based bias of the voices.
You criticize the White House for doing something we all do then you blame the wonderful effects of democracy on a web application?
My work here is dung.
Yeah, job one for creating American jobs is farming jobs out to India. Nice.
Don't worry. I'm sure they'll be billed back to the Dept. of Labor at 100k per year, +20% finder's fee.
The ______ Agenda
Rs. 200,000 or Rs. 300,000 is a very low salary in India. Junior programmers generally get paid at least Rs.500,000 to Rs.700,000
You get what you pay for.
A lot of people tend to think that just because the person is over in India they'll be willing to work for a sub-average wage. Which, given regular circumstances, is generally true. Coding is another thing all together. If you live in a poverish state, you can't be expected to know C++. In fact it might be a stretch to say you know how to operate a computer. Those people who get hired for "Tech Support" aren't guru's by any means (and I think we all knew that). But they have been trained how to handle with customers, the basics of operating a computer, and are given a good list of responses. Programming is not something you can train "on the job". You need previous knowledge on the basics of computers. Then you need to learn a bit of program theory, how it all works. Lastly you need to learn the Syntax of various languages. A lot of people drop out when they can't deal with the Syntax. Some people drop out when they can't get the theory. Some people just don't like computers. You can't hire someone off the street and think that within a short time they'll be able to pick up all of those skills.
That's not to say there aren't educated programmers that come from developing countries. Every once in a while a hard working family will be able to afford an education, and once they have that education, they usually fly stateside to make more money. They know that with their education they can be making way more money than 4400 USD a year. So they go and tack an extra digit to that paycheck, keep half and the other half is more than enough to either fly the family to the States or support them in India.
Basically what it boils down to, they're going to get some guy who can talk the talk but not walk the walk. He'll agree to $4400 a year for as long as he can hold the job since he was only make $1000 a year back at his old job. Because anyone who knows what they're doing knows they are worth more.
US Department of Labor
For some reason, I read this as Department of DAY Labor..
What's with all the anti-administration flamebait recently? Yesterday, submitted as fact, were a set very dubious allegations that turned out to be false, surprising almost no-one. Today, we're supposed to get upset because an American company that also hires workers in India gets a contract to hire workers in America, and reprise the anger we felt when fratards overwhelmed a lackluster public response to an Obama administration suggestion box with their gormless suggestion to 'save the economy' by legalizing a plant that grows like a weed. What gives?
Sure, it might be driving down wages and benefits for Americans and allowing other nations to leverage our infrastructure for their profit, but isn't that just one of the perks of being a Friedmannite economy?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Don't worry. In time, India will outsource its jobs to America.
I have friends in India. I discussed IT salary differences with them. I said "this web page says you can get software engineers for $5k/year in India. Is that for real?"
I was told that that's bullshit and that Indian professionals actually earn in excess of $20,000 per year. $5k/year would only buy interns with no education and no experience, from what my friends in Bangalore tell me.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
We have a marvellous system called Free Trade. You can tell it's good just from it's name. It promotes Freedom! All the nations of the world are joining together as one to allow free movement in goods across borders.
Unfortunately, they are all also being very careful to make sure that their citizens don't have the same freedom of movement as a toaster.
What must it be like, to work all day on an assembly line as a child, producing shoes that have more freedom than you do - they can go to America!!
We can whine for tariffs, and try to tax and regulate foreign trade. This sucks for the economy - incidentally, protectionist policies are said to have contributed to the Great Depression. Double good luck stopping trade in something like software, which can cross a border without even needing to be smuggled in a gas tank.
So many factors go into currency and cost of living differences of the kind between the US, and say, India. So, that's not changing any time soon. Unless the dollar crashes. :)
In fact, the only hope an American laborer really has in the mean time is to open their borders. Allow free movement in people. And hope that people from around the world will want to come to the US to work. While it's cheaper to make things in the 3rd world, no one really wants to live there. It kind of sucks to save money by eliminating working police, courts, fire exits, scholarships, clean streets, environmental regulations, safety rules, torts, and so forth. The current system only soldiers on because, workers just have no choice. If they had one, labor might elect to find a more favorable set of laws to live under, which would somewhat mitigate management's ability to shop for the most cheap-but-labor-unfriendly shit-where-you-sleep laws they can find.
Hardly anything could be a bigger screw than what we have now, which involves H1B programs that bring foreign skilled labor into the US to learn, get experience, and then forces them to take it back home to India, Asia, etc. But this is probably exactly why IBM, Sun, Microsoft, etc. all support H1B programs.
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Interestingly thats how british took over india some 200 years ago
BAIN http://www.devslashzero.com
In all fairness, America did intercept all the trade Europe was going to attempt with India back in Columbus' day.
or script kiddies.
4000/year is too low for getting even an average quality indian coder. i have to compete with indians in web development, i know how ridiculously low rates they pull sometimes, but these rates generally are placed in projects that can be somehow gobbled up from premade code. i dont think with 400/month you are going to get quality ppl. youll probably get some college kids in a high turnover sweat shop.
Read radical news here
I would urge US slashdotters to call or e-mail your Congress-Person. If this is really true, it is a violation of US Federal Contracting standards. Generally, Federal IT contracts specify all workers on the contract to be either US Citizens or Permanent Residents.
If I have to complete with $5K/year Indian programmers, I have a right to lower my living costs by outsourcing my yard maintenance to an $3/hour undocumented mexican gardener. Or by outsourcing my software purchases to $0/hour piratebay. I know there are good arguments about both of these pursuits, but then there are similar ones about skirting US labor laws by outsourcing. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Hey, I'm in the US, and it's obviously true. It's just inconveniently true.
Our anti-pot drug policies eliminate any possibility of salutary tax revenue from an industry that's worth billions even as a black market. In addition to that, we have to catch, try and incarcerate pot growers, sellers, and users at staggering expense (also billions, when all is said and done).
Pot is basically as harmless as alcohol, but since we force our educators and police to demonize it even while half of them use it themselves, we undercut the entire credibility of our anti-drug programs (which are important for helping kids avoid drugs that are actually dangerous). So not only do we get no tax on billions, but we spend billions, and we contribute to actual drug problems (at what additional cost I hesitate to guess).
We could still try the tired argument that pot really is dangerous. We have to hope not, since a huge portion of the population admits to using it in studies. The Netherlands notwithstanding, three of our last three presidents have admitted to using various illegal drugs and got elected anyway.
The open government brainstorming application worked perfectly. It distilled a set of great ideas directly from citizen activists with less lobbying, filtering and political BS.
Legalizing pot would be a great idea. It would cut waste, generate revenue, empty prisons, improve the health and safety of the nation's youth. It's too bad Obama absolutely cannot and will not do it. It would be political suicide. And that gets us into analyzing the particular hues that the fascinating kaleidoscope of American politics puts over reality...
Either way, you can't blame the app, or the app's developer for doing an unusually good job, just because the truth is embarrassing for the "national psyche."
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The article you quoted states:
>The average worker in Taiwan earns a monthly salary of NT$36,564, a slight increase from the same >period two years ago, a recent survey released by the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) showed.
That's $1142 USD a Month, not annually. That's comparable to the US minimum wage, but in a country you can have lunch for 1-2$ US. Compared with cost of living, it's not really a bad deal.
Oh, and for folks working at Foxconn or Taiwan Semiconductor, their annual bonus this year is expected to be 6 month of salary. Any US tech companies giving out 6 months of bonus this year?
The U.S. Government is essentially paying non-U.S. citizens to maintain a web-site for Americans seeking employment?
Sorry, but my Irony Meter (TM) just pegged and is now completely non-functional.
>>It's just a matter of time until the United States Department of Defense gets outsourced
You mean like Blackwater?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Good god, that’s hard to follow. There are so many links I can’t tell which one is the main article, there are acronyms that I don’t recognise, and it’s not tied together at all. The flow of information just jumps from one thing to another with little apparent connection between them. It’s also incorrect.
Let me see if I’m understanding this, and make it easier to follow...
Now we hit the first non sequitur... how is the development and maintenance of ideascale.com related to the Jobs for America’s Job Seekers Challenge?
The connection is – apparently – that the same people developing and maintaining the IdeaScale website will presumably also be designing the platform to “allow toolmakers and developers to present their free online job tools to workforce development experts and jobseekers for discussion, rating, and voting”. That’s a bit of a stretch, but okay. (As kdawson correctly pointed out, “There’s no guarantee that Indian workers recruited by that Monster.com ad would work on US Department of Labor projects.” Wait a second... did kdawson actually get something right? At any rate that still doesn’t make up for posting this atrocity to begin with.)
Now we hit the second non sequitur... what does IdeaScale’s other contest/survey have to do with this one, other than being hosted by the same company? Does the results of a previous survey on how to “strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness” have anything to do with this contest? They have no control over the results of the project: they’re just designing the system to take submissions and allow people to vote on them...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Obama hires Indian code-slaves to make a website to help people find jobs.
McBushcain would have given Haliburton $200 billion to maybe hire some more people, if they wanted to.
Ron Paul would have left unemployment for the market to solve and hit the snooze button on his alarm.
For great justice.
decrease government spending in the first place.
Bingo! That's exactly what this initiative represents... Outsourcing to reduce government spending. In most government projects, salaries & benefits make up the largest percentage of the 'spending' - So if you want to reduce spending you cut labour costs.
Is this a story about outsourcing or pot legalization?
Should the respective sides haul out their canned pro/anti stands for one issue, the other, or both?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
That's comparable to the US minimum wage, but in a country you can have lunch for 1-2$ US.
Here in the States, a fairly nutritious frozen dinner costs 1 to 2 USD at Walmart*.
Oh, and for folks working at Foxconn
But is there an NBCconn of opposite political persuasion to "fair and balance" them out?
Hemp is a great product, but although it is related to marijuana, it is not a drug and doesn't help your argument. Other than the US, most countries allow hemp to be cultivated, processed and sold; even countries where marijuana is illegal.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Uh, but he's wrong! From his own link, the Taiwanese workers are earning about USD1150 per MONTH (which is actually not bad in the 3rd world country I'm in[1]).
The _FIRST_ sentence says it: "The average worker in Taiwan earns a monthly salary of NT$36,564".
Google says 36564 Taiwanese dollars is about USD1150 : http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&num=100&q=36564+TWD+in+usd&btnG=Search&meta=
If the average US person can't figure out the difference between years and months, or have poor reading comprehension, or can't be bothered to check stuff properly, it's no surprise US bosses are outsourcing to other countries.
So what if those 3rd world workers are crap. No point paying far more for just as crap (or worse).
And guess what, many of these "3rd world" workers aren't that crap.
See: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=185
I've shown some kids these videos and told them that that's the sort of competition they'll be facing (more so as countries like Vietnam start getting into it as well).
[1] FWIW, I'm a cheap worker (relative to the USA) in a 3rd world country. But hey at least I can read, spell and do basic math (with help from Google :) ). I can even write some simple perl and python code...
I happen to be one of those people who hates to be in debt as a result I own my home. My property taxes on my house are more than $4,400/year. I know, I just wrote the checks for my taxes last year. Rent for a small apartment within 20 miles of here is about twice what I pay in taxes. Even at the $15,000 mentioned as the startingr salary for coders in India I can't pay my taxes, pay for water, gas, and electricity, still be able to eat. I could live here, pay my taxes, and eat if I steal wood and cook over a fire in my back yard. There is no public transport so I would have to walk everywhere until I was able to get a peddle cart. The nearest grocery store is three miles away and other stores are 5 or more miles away. There is a hospital only half a mile away :-)
What I am trying to say is that where I live in central Texas our entire society is designed around the assumption that you own a car and can pay $600++/month for housing. Just to live you need about $30,000/year. Which is about twice what a full time worker makes at minimum wage. That $30,000 doesn't get you much of a life. Central Texas is not expensive compared to a lot of place in the US.
How do we make US workers competitive in a world where there are billions of people who can live on so much less? Seriously, do you have any suggestions? Can we stop bitching dlbout the problem and start solving it? In the past Americans have been pretty good about banding together and solving problems. Where is the spirit that created credit unions as an alternative to corrupt and failed banks? Where the is the spirit that create the labor unions that gave us the standard of living we currently have? Where is the will to just say "NO MORE" and forced a corrupt racist government to end Jim Crowe. (OK, that is still ending, but from my point of view we have come a looooooooong way in the right direction.)
OK, before someone points it out... yes, I guilty of not doing anything too. At least I'm asklng the question.
Stonewolf
P.S.
I don't know how true this is but I'm hearing that families in Mexico have started sending money to their relatives in the US to help them survive the recession.
You are right. But, I think you missed a major point about the overall lack of professionalism among programmers.
I have an MSCS and have worked as a software engineer. My wife has a BSME. To graduate she had to pass the EIT. If she didn't pass the test she couldn't graduate. No matter that she earned honors at graduation. No EIT no degree. Ten years later she took and passed the Professional Engineer exam. She has a little stamp that lets her give the legal ability to approval designs. She is legally liable for what she approves. I didn't have to pass any kind of professional exam to get the job title "engineer". I have no little stamp. I can not approve designs.
What does tht mean? I can write software that is used to design a dam. Any programmer no mater what their training and experience could have been hired to write that software. Lets say my software as a bug that causes it to give wrong answers for very large dams (used float when I should have used long double...) OTOH, only a PE can legally design a dam. If my wife uses my software and the dam bursts she is legally responsible, but I am not. Why is that?
I used to work for a Canadian PE. He had this little steel ring. The steel was from a bridge that fell down. Canadian engineers are all given (and I believe they are required to wear) a ring made from the steel of that fallen bridge so that their responsibility is always in their minds. There are many examples of people dying from software bugs. The failure of the patriot missiles during the first gulf war and the hundred+ dead soldier that resulted from and idiot not knowing that there is no such thing as 0.1 (one tenth) in binary. Why aren't programmer required to carry around a bit of the combat boot taken from one of those dead soldiers? Or, at least a vial of sand from where they died?
There are no professional standards for programmers or so called software engineers. There is no code of conduct or ethics for programmers. From the point of view of real engineers we are just a bunch of amateurs being allowed to play with dangerous toys.
Stonewolf
How do we make US workers competitive in a world where there are billions of people who can live on so much less? Seriously, do you have any suggestions? Can we stop bitching dlbout [sic] the problem and start solving it?
I think you are looking at the wrong problem. The problem is our standard of living. We want to have more leisure time and/or more control of our working conditions. We need better health-care and education and secure place to live without working to death in order to earn it.
We DON't need to be competing with foreign workers. You mentioned Jim Crow. It's a racist jingoism that has convinced Americans that they deserve to profit off of the wages of those in the developing world. We can have a better standard of living when we realize that the Indian programmer has the same interests that we do, and that the Indian's boss and our boss have more in common with each other than with us.
You mentioned the high cost of taxes and of commuting. We need to start living in cities again. Suburban sprawl has cost us both in commuting costs and by atomizing us and keeping us from having a real community. It's simply more efficient to live near more people. With a real community, we wouldn't need the state to provide services. With real community, we wouldn't be duped into funding the terror war and the drug war. The suburbs tend to be the more reactionary conservative parts of the nation, while the urban areas are the more progressive.
You mentioned the labor movement. Real democratic radical unions are the only way workers can gain more power. Imagine if both you and the workers in the developing world were in the same union. International solidarity could prevent corporations from constantly moving production to whichever nation has the worst labor and human rights records. We need democratic accountable unions. Not the AFL/CIO or SEIU or the Teamsters. We need unions like the UE and the IWW.
The ultimate goal should be workers self management of all industry. Wall Street speculators and bosses are in it to make money for themselves in the short term, while workers interests are in creating sustainable jobs with good wages, benefits, and working conditions.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
how do you know? I think a lot of people might be more willing to try it if they see it sold at the local 7-11, which will result in more addicts.
Instead of talking hypotheticals, why don't we talk real world examples?
Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies
On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were "decriminalized," not "legalized." Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense. ...
More significantly, none of the nightmare scenarios touted by preenactment decriminalization opponents — from rampant increases in drug usage among the young to the transformation of Lisbon into a haven for "drug tourists" — has occurred.
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