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High-Tech Research Moving From US To China
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that American companies like Applied Materials are moving their research facilities and engineers to China as the country develops a high-tech economy that increasingly competes directly with the United States. Applied Materials set up its latest solar research labs in China after estimating that China would be producing two-thirds of the world's solar panels by the end of this year and their chief technology officer, Mark R. Pinto, is the first CTO of a major American tech company to move to China. 'We're obviously not giving up on the US,' says Pinto. 'China needs more electricity. It's as simple as that.' Western companies are also attracted to China's huge reservoirs of cheap, highly skilled engineers and the subsidies offered by many Chinese cities and regions, particularly for green energy companies. Applied Materials decided to build their new $250 million research facility in Xi'an after the city government sold them a 75-year land lease at a deep discount and is reimbursing the company for roughly a quarter of the lab complex's operating costs for five years."
This is what happens when you try to be smart ass and move all of your work load to other countries because it's supposedly cheaper. Good job.
All those "green jobs" being created are going to be great for unemployment.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
A legal and public knowledge bribe, but a bribe no less. Even illegal actions are just business decisions at that level.
But Xi'an is gonna be pissed after they leave in 6 years.
Wait until the Chinese steal your tech and the government keeps quiet about it. You'll soon discover that reimbursements and deep discounts are peanuts.
This will be a great, hot new trend until companies start running into what Google already has - their research & assets seized by the government, the company kicked out of the country, and no compensation or help forthcoming. It may not be in China's best interest to do so, but they have the track record already. If a company breaks whatever new, ultra-restrictive law that China decides to put in place, they'll lose everything. Businesses will either get out on their own (assets intact), or will be put out of business, with all their hard work going to enrich the government of China. Good luck!
Fortunately instead of a manufacturing based industry, the US will concentrate on enforcing the concept of "intellectual property" with tough new laws to keep that nation ahead of everyone else in the technology race, while outsourcing the manufacturing to cheaper offshore locations. It's a perfect system.
Er, hang on, guys - where are you going?
History repeats itself. Why the hell should American raw materials be shipped all the way to Jolly Old England to be taxed and manufactured into finished goods that are shipped all the way back to the US, for a huge mark up (and more taxes)? Not so fun when you're on the other end, is it?
I guess the last region to be exploited is Africa. Is it already too late to start buying land?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The decline of the US has already happened. But we're too arrogant or perhaps more ignorant on whats going on. Within the next 10 years, China will surpass the US in everything. The only thing the US still maintains a hold on is the Media/Entertainment industry. Wake up America otherwise we will go gently into that good night.
A lot of production and manufacturing were moved to China over the past couple of decades, and that's only been increasing. Free traders promised that high tech jobs would stay in the US, and now they're moving out too.
I wonder what the ultimate result of this will be. I know that the US will always need mechanics, plumbers, electricians, retail clerks, warehouse people, office workers, etc, but none of these jobs pay very well (though I have noticed a trend that the price of service jobs such as electricians and plumbers has increased significantly, at least here in Los Angeles, over the past decade). Heck, they've even outsourced customer service at call centers overseas. Will this mean that in the next fifty years, America will just be in the service industry and nothing else? And the kind of service industry, by the way, that's menial and requires little knowledge and effort (like being an office clerk). Will most of the highly-prized work go overseas? Does that mean that people who want to work in those fields will have to go overseas to get work? And if they do, will they be making pennies on the dollar? Would China even allow that? I'd imagine they'd want their own people to be employed, rather than incoming foreigners.
I don't know what will happen in the next few decades, but trends like this scare me. It makes me think about how, in an effort to make more profit, corporations have essentially dismantled US tech and manufacturing, which, for most of America's history, have been the backbone of this country. Heck, you can't even call farmers and ranchers that anymore; we import even our beef from other countries.
While China is busy developing technology from the last decade, America is has leapfrogged everyone with the social media revolution. We've got things like Twitter, Facebook, Gowalla, 4Square and hundreds of other innovative services which connect people so they can share their stories and do social media stuff like upload their photos and blog right from their email clients! Location-aware twitter cloud blogging! ...ok, we're fucked.
Maybe, but the trouble with China is that you can't bet on the long-term. They are quite happy to pull the rug from under your feet, take your property off your hands and smother you in unintelligible paperwork at the drop of a hat. That's why China will probably not represent much of a threat, at least for the forseeable future.
So when the Chinese inevitably steal their research (that's one of China's strengths) those companies that moved their research to China will be looking to the US government to help them cover their losses.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
China's huge reservoirs of cheap, highly skilled engineers
Okay, so we didn't manage to clear them all out of the three gorges area before flooding it. Everyone makes mistakes.
One of my firends company moved their hard drive business group to China, the reason was simple. All their customers (REAL manufacturers of hard drives) are either in China or around China.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Mandarin?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Here's a plan: set up a 'research' center in China, stock it with operatives, and feed the Chinese false leads. Maybe make one or two brilliant 'breakthroughs' that actually place back doors into sensitive components.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
the city government sold them a 75-year land lease at a deep discount and is reimbursing the company for roughly a quarter of the lab complex's operating costs for five years
When this happens in the US, it is the companies that will make out with the best deal because the US government honors their commitments to legal contracts even when they screw over their citizens. I imagine that these businesses think the same thing will happen in China.
When they are settled in China, it will be like working with Darth Vader, "Pray that I don't alter the deal any further..." and those companies will have no recourse. Once all the equipment is over there it is not like they can just pick up their toys and leave. More than likely they will steal the technology, add tariffs, change the lease agreements and in general screw them over until they come to the same conclusion as Google, it just ain't worth it.
China has taken $trillions in activity from the American economy.
It's as if there was a war, and the U.S. lost, and China won, without one person dying.
Except it wasn't a war so much as a preemptive capitulation by people with something to gain from committing treason on an epic scale.
Idiot in Suit #1 - "No one has any money in the US to buy our stuff! What should we do?"
Idiot in Suit #2 - "Uhh, lets move our production to China cuz its cheaper and get rid of all our American employees further hurting the crumby state of the economy instead of keeping them and keeping money circulating in our country."
Idiot in Suit #1 - "Dude,you're such a genius."
The NY Times reports that American companies like Applied Materials are moving their research facilities and engineers to China as the country develops a high-tech economy that increasingly competes directly with the United States.
I wonder if those companies are still getting tax breaks to move jobs overseas?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
that a company whose products require massive amounts of rare earths and whose manufacturing processes produce noxious effluent would locate in China. Good riddance, but the global effects also need to be taken into consideration.
No, this is what happens when you can afford to spend some money up front for long term benefits, something that a lot of the US has forgotten how to do. China has seen that they can lure all these high tech jobs to their country by cutting deals with the companies that are going to operate them. It is just like how Delaware has a HUGE amount of the US Corporate Headquarters located in their state because they give such good tax incentives for the company, and make it up on income/property taxes instead of corporate earnings.
But to do this, you have to be looking at the long term numbers. China obviously did the math and looked at the projections out 100+ years on some of these moves (75year lease is in this example).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The fact of the matter is that US based managers are simply overpaid and receive too many benefits.
Fixed that for you.
Yes they are. This is just the s$#T they spin to the shareholders, polititions and the sheeple so the CEOs can get their big bonuses without that much flack.
Seems a lot of people are commenting on the recent troubles Google has had in China. To be honest that was the first thing I thought of as well. But how relevant is this? Google is information technology and these guys are hardware. I find it unlikely the Chinese government will be hacking into solar panels. However the information discovered by R&D could certainly be valuable.
meep
Back in the late 80s, Applied Materials thought of Japan as the new technology epicenter, and their chairman ordered hiring managers to bring in as many Japanese speakers as possible. They even moved their HQ to Japan. I learned all this from a job fair presentation and subsequent articles about them in the tech press at the time. Clearly, Applied Materials now considers China the new epicenter.
However, AMAT is just one company and does not necessarily represent a trend; they are just a company that is particularly focused on Asia. Significant technology R&D still happens in the U.S., notably around MIT and the Research Triangle in the east, Silicon Valley in the west, and various pockets elsewhere around the country (Seattle, Atlanta--anywhere there are clusters of universities and tech companies).
Obviously, China is going to either buy or grow the talent it needs to expand technology domestically. There is a trend for top Chinese scientists trained in the U.S. to relocate back to China to help their own country develop, or at least to land a more prestigious position more quickly than in the West. It's only a matter of time before China, like Japan before it, becomes self-sufficient in technology and starts to really contribute its own inventions rather than simply copying or building on others.
The way for America (and other countries) to compete is simply to make our country as competitive an environment as possible. Make small business loans as available as possible, and otherwise stay out of the way and let businesses incubate. We Americans tend to take business for granted, but like the flowers and grass in the yard, you have to pay attention or the plants you need and want will be overrun by weeds, or die from lack of water or fertilization.
Like the other Asian players, the Chinese get this. Ever since Deng Xiaoping and the 4 Modernizations movement, business has been seen as the engine of growth and prosperity. We Americans would do well to learn from their example and get back to basics. We have a goose that lays golden eggs; let's feed it, not kill it. I would begin by upping civilian research, allowing more tax incentives for corporate R&D, and maybe push more math and science education down to the high school level.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
You can't ship a bridge overseas for repair. Not that you can't ship prefab parts here.
So you think Google is the rule, and not the exception? Most modern corporations have the will to skirt US law to sell to countries like Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and so forth, despite trade embargoes. US companies helped themselves and Hitler make a killing during WWII. (A guy named Prescott Bush even got in some trouble for it.) The US and her corporations armed Indonesia in the genocide of the East Timorese, right through the 90s. We are still responsible for 70% of the arms sales in the world, all manufactured by US corporations.
So, no. As long as the Chinese government is paying cash, corporations will ignore everything else. Just like they always do.
Hell, US investment in China skyrocketed after Tiananmen Square, because China proved they were willing to kill their own citizens to maintain order while they opened China up to "investment" in the Special Economic Zones. Meanwhile, Cuba is under an embargo because it's a communist state? I think we can all see the true value system of the American corporation. Just be glad you're on this side of the equation -- for now.
Wait, wait, wait. How is the free market winning a great thing in and of itself? The only way that is a great thing is if people benefit. You are asking people to give up all benefit, and calling that a win. Your self interest is pretty damn obvious here.
Your post in a nutshell: "You lazy, greedy bums, do more for me for less or I'm moving to China!" Sounds like YOU are the one who needs some competition. I can't wait until we start outsourcing managers and CEOs and people like you get shown that you are not, in fact, special and unique snowflakes. There's a million guys in China who can do a manager's job ten times better than you, for a tenth the pay.
As for me, I'm going to use whatever tools I have at hand, including political and social tools, to promote my own self interests. If the free market won't help me, fuck the free market. I'm in it for me, not the Free Market. All the parasites who want to make a buck off of me can go hang, you aren't as special, you aren't as smart, and you aren't as talented as you think you are.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If that serves as consolation, the US is not alone. French companies are also moving their R&D to China.
Let's hope that they won't see their research suddenly finding facsimiles patented by Chinese competitors before theirs.
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
I wish they'd take Viacom with them.
Your lame attempt at humor does not change the fact that every environmental "review" my company has to do before building a new factory pushes us closer to simply moving that factory overseas. Same thing goes with being forced to provide health care, vacations, limiting hours worked, providing paid sick leave days and statutory holidays, etc. Americans need to decide between shunning the free market (aka, the status quo) and feeding their families.
You know, a mainstream economist would say that having companies like Applied Materials in the U.S.A doesn't matter because consumer spending is 70% of the economy and Applied Materials does not produce anything that consumers buy directly! That's the problem with Keynesian economics. We think we can get ahead by stimulus and just consuming things and not producing things. People who have read and understood Friedrich Hayek's works know that the producers of goods further back in the chain of production are out competed for resources of all kinds by the consumption sectors when consumer credit is stimulated through cheap consumer credit as it has been in the USA over the previous 30 years. These firms that produce goods further from direct consumption by the consumer have to move to a less consumer oriented economy, like China to have better access to land, labor and capital.
I hear this a lot, about how the Chinese and Indians are supposedly so much smarter than Americans, Europeans, Australians and the Japanese. Having worked in industry and academia with them, I can tell you that it's a load of bunk.
The education there is very different from that of Western nations. Since they have so many people competing for comparatively few spots, they resort to various aptitude tests to try and weed out people. The people who succeed here are the ones who can memorize huge amounts of otherwise useless information, and regurgitate it at will.
Anyone who has worked in advanced R&D is aware that just knowing a huge amount of facts isn't of much use. With the Internet and computers making information retrieval trivial, memorizing huge amounts of information really isn't as beneficial as it may have been.
In R&D, the main factor to consider is how inventive and innovative a researcher is. That doesn't come from being "book smart". It comes from being able to think flexibly and creatively. This is a trait that is encouraged in the academia of the West, but denounced and suppressed in the East.
Take software development. Sure, Indians can rattle off all sorts of near-useless data about class hierarchies and method signatures and algorithm runtime complexities (you know, the sort of stuff the rest of us would just search for online or in a book). However, ask them to perform a task that requires some innovation, trial-and-error or critical thinking, and they're totally lost. That's why so many software projects developed in India by Indian-trained developers fail so horribly.
How much are you paid mr "engineering manager"? If you make more than the engineers who are ACTUALLY DOING THE WORK, then you are overpaid.
Making short sighted investment decisions like this is why our country is in such a shambles. If businesses actually looked out 5-10 years once in a while, instead of 3 months from now, then we wouldn't have all this outsourcing.
Great so you hire some chinese engineers who you can barely communicate with, and BTW, who hate you and are your sworn enemies (Yes the Chinese HATE America, with a passion!). But they make nice, and get the job cause they'll do it for 1/10th the price (per hour). Of course once you factor in all the communication errors you're going to have, it takes them 3 times as long to do anything, so that eats up some of the savings. Now, the issue is, they own your company. The engineers OWN your company. So you better be happy having the ownership of your company controlled by people who may at any minute be detained for "subversive" behavior.
But say all that works out, great wonderful. It's 5 years from now and you need another 50 engineers to support your systems and customers. You decide "we have enough money now, lets hire some americans". So you start to try to do that, but the Chinese won't share info with your new American employees. Then suddenly, a new competitor pops up in China, they have all your info, all your code, and wow, their CEO is your old head engineer. Suddenly they stop talking to you all together. You have no one in america that understands your code, you have no one that can even get the latest versions of your code (its all in China), and wow... your business is over. And good luck appealing to the Chinese government for help! The american government won't be able to do anything to help you either.
Hell, they even published a book about it 2 thousand years ago with all the instructions.
Deleted
China imposes huge exit costs on business. It's easy to get in, but you stand to lose a ton to get out. I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking China is just another country like France or Burkina Faso. It's not. Foreign ownership of anything is restricted, and even if you're properly registered you will always be audited more carefully than any comparable Chinese company. These guys are going to go in to China, set up these huge research plants, and then be driven out Google-style. I mean, come on, China broke into google.com and left their fingerprints everywhere and "China rules!" spraypainted all over the windows. What kind of contempt do you have to have to even do something like that? To Chinese, foreigners are like women workers during WWII: temporarily useful.
Oh, and I hope that they enjoy doing their research behind the Great Firewall of China (Golden Shield). I hear someone saying VPN? VPNs were blocked from Xinjiang for several months following the riots, so the technical capability to block VPNs is there, to be activated if it is in China's interest to do so.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I hear what you are saying but I don't think it works. The REALLY big innovations rarely ever get done at some big behemoth company (sure there are exceptions like PARC and Bell Labs.) Most of the time the next huge thing comes from some guy starting his OWN company. Let's not forget that Europe saw the US dominance in computers and tried their own big government subsidies and it did very little to stop Intel, Microsoft, etc.
If you really want to look long term, then you have the best universities (the US is still far and away at the top here) and provide basic funding for university research.
The American government will step in to prevent CEOs from having to deal with the consequences of their actions. Remember the uproar in the 80s over Japan on the issue of trade? Guess what, throughout the 50s,60s, and 70s lots of work was being sent to Japan, but it was the American companies sending the work over there and there was very little uproar on the political stage.
Then starting in the mid-to-late 70s the Japanese started selling things in the US directly under their own brands and thus cutting the American CEOs out of the loop. It was only then that the politicians started really crying "they took our jobs!" and the supposedly "free-trade" Reagan(one of our worst presidents ever, I have no idea why people lionize the B-actor) made Japan make some major trade concessions and forced them to strengthen their currency.
So far China hasn't really made a big push in the west with their own brands, but its really only a matter of time. Then and only then, when the rich, who own the politicians lock stock and barrel, suffer will the politicians even attempt to do anything about Chinese trade practices.
Monstar L
Yes well I agree with you to a point, however I would not bet on any of that changing. If I owned a engineering firm I would have already shipped everyones job to china. The US is not business friendly in any way shape or form. The only sort of manufacturing, engineering, software company etc I would start in the US would be simply a shell, relatively few to no US workers just a name and a sales team.
I've seen this sort of thing up close, and it always results in executives tripping over themselves for trips to Asia to "manage the team", meaning playing golf and bar hopping with local women.
Mod this guy way up. Very insightful.
I find that terms such as free trade, capitalism, etc., are thrown around a bit too loosely. Most of the strongest proponents of free trade warned long ago that developing nations will overtake the U.S. Milton Friedman said that a foreign worker can learn the job of any American worker. Peter Schiff goes into great detail in his books to explain how the trade deficit is basically the annual amount of American wealth transferred overseas every year. The 'free marketers' you are referring to are likely neocons who spew all kinds of drivel to gain popular support of conservatives.
America already is in the service industry. A Chinese factory I do sales and marketing for purchased another factory that made a similar product, but a much newer technology that is used in common electronic devices (the old products were for automobiles). When I began selling these newer products I discovered that there are pretty much zero consumer electronics companies that use this component that even do their engineering in the U.S. This was a huge wake up call when I realized that most of the companies in the U.S. only do sales, marketing, and distribution - that's a very scary position for a nation to be in.
The cause of the employment problem is that we have too many federal regulations on employment and not enough legal immigrants[pdf]. Forcing employers to pay their workers at higher rates than employers in other countries just makes the employer uncompetitive in the marketplace, thus sending the production overseas, and in many cases the rest of the company goes with it. Charging a high tax rate to pay for entitlements such as Social Security and high income taxes makes the employees even more expensive. On top of that, there are federal requirements on unemployment insurance and worker's compensation insurance, plus a tax code labyrinth of epic proportions. The reality is that when we put these requirements onto the employers, we lose the employers, thus in an effort to guarantee worker safety, the worker loses the job.
America will likely continue its transition into a 3rd world nation with very serious inflation and very high unemployment rates unless something changes dramatically, but it is not the fault of the corporations. Blaming a corporation makes as much sense as blaming a building. The issue is not with the corporations, but rather with the control that Washington D.C. exercises over our economy. If we eliminate the central control, then we would recover from this death roll and return to prosperity.
Also, I should point out that the statement "corporations have essentially dismantled US tech and manufacturing, which, for most of America's history, have been the backbone of this country" makes no sense because that backbone was corporations, so you are claiming that they are the backbone of our success and the cause of our failure, which makes no sense and is not true.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
With the Internet and computers making information retrieval trivial, memorizing huge amounts of information really isn't as beneficial as it may have been.
So you're saying we should all put links to Tiananmin on our web pages, so we get a competitive advantage from being able to look thing up easier?
It's not just cheaper labor. It's that they are doing what we did over a hundred years ago when we decided to just ignore the rest of the world's rights and patents and do our own thing. So we built and invented and took all of the credit where we could for ourselves. And it worked fine in the early days. Then lawyers and the courts got involved. And now, it's so cumbersome to even invent or create anything here in the U.S. that the only real option if you want rapid change and to stay ahead is to once again go to where there is no such idiocy.
And just like there was a giant brain-drain from Europe to the U.S. in the last century or so, there also will be once from elsewhere to China.
I know that if I wanted to start a new company, for instance, California would be the last place I'd want to start it. Or well, pretty much anyplace in the U.S., as just fighting and dealing with legal issues alone would take years and enormous amounts of money before even one item hit the shelves.
perhaps universities should charge less for an education then?
You expect someone to get a degree that cost them 30-50K or more and work for 25K a year?
you are nuts if you think that is fair.
Not only that, but the loans are almost paid off too.
I think Bush was an ass for his responses to 9/11, but TARP seems to all good.
Blar.
I have been on the receiving end (aka Pink Slip) of off shoring twice. The first time I worked for GENRAD "One of the first FM/AM Radio Manufactures in America" sold off to Taiwan, and again at GE Consumer Industrial moved IT to India, as effect I have had to move to obtain another job. The off shore effect may save the American Companies money but the effect will be the same as the Electronics, and Textile industries. NO LONGER a US industry! We complain about a bad economy and taxes but we are selling off tax payers jobs to China, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Companies can put what ever spin on off shoring, but in the end they will loose control and America will become a welfare state.
And you are *PRECISELY* what is completely wrong with 21st century management!
Firstly, you and your ilk created precisely the situation you are now running away from - you offered us the high salaries and benefits (which of course we took) to get us working for your company in the first place. You built huge industrial parks and that got new housing built around them so that we could live close to our places of work. You pocketed the profits in the good times, but now times are hard and your workers are taking home less money, you have decided to use it as an excuse to take more money by sacking us, employing cheaper workers overseas and pocketing the difference... plus you leave areas full of high unemployment because you all desert like rats leaving a sinking ship and those industrial parks you helped build.
Secondly, your corporations hold our governments in your pockets & therefore you need *MORE* regulation of private enterprise to force you to adopt the morals you are incapable of introducing on your own. The best way of doing this is very simple - if you employ people in a country then the total of their salaries and costs is money you put into the country; the stuff or services you sell in the country is money you take out from it. Therefore, subtract the former from the latter and tax the remainder *HEAVILY*, thus making it extremely expensive for you to outsource.
Thirdly, and finally, you and your CEO "Boys' Club" do not get bonuses for 5 years. That will encourage you to be more longer-term in your thinking and not just chase quick bucks - likewise you are forced to stay working in a company, and to manage it properly, rather than disappearing somewhere else when one of your golf buddies gets a new CEO post and brings in all his old friends to work with him.
I don't know if you're trolling or genuine but then it doesn't matter because there are too many people already behaving exactly in the way you describe above - and those same people need to be brought into line so they do not have the opportunity of running away as quickly as possible with huge bonuses in their pockets while leaving utter decimation behind them.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Delaware has a HUGE amount of the US Corporate Headquarters because it's business laws are VERY favorable to corporations.
But what is your point Governments should pay corporations for jobs. Who pays taxes?
Should the U.S. Government has businesses to make money like China?
Paying to get businesses is one thing, what happens if every one does it?
Why not just let you own slaves? Or some nice child labor?
More likely we need to stop allowing the import of goods made using these tactics. That would level the playing field by bring them up to our level rather than us stooping to theirs.
Don't forget pizza delivery! :)
Where did you find this info? I do not doubt it and only wish to educate myself. What was the rate on the loans?
Understand what Applied Materials does. They're a leading manufacturer of semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Your CPU was probably made in a fab equipped with Applied Materials equipment. Applied Materials itself does not make ICs or solar panels.
Until recently, most high-end ICs were designed in the US or Japan and manufactured with US or Japanese equipment. That's changing; more consumer electronics parts are being designed in China. There are some good Chinese chip design houses. Although they're not yet up to doing a state of the art superscalar CPU, they can do most smaller parts.
I've met the head of Applied Materials's solar division, who is one of the more sensible people in the solar energy field. For him, it's all about installed cost per KWh per year. He shows charts of where the cost has to be to compete with other energy sources without subsidies. (This changes with latitude; as you get closer to the equator, it gets better. Spain is competitive now.) Most of the people in "alternative energy" are asking for subsidies, but Applied Materials recognizes that to really make a success of solar, it has to compete without subsidies. So, unlike the firms making noise about getting costs down (Nanosolar, etc.) but not actually shipping much, Applied Materials is really doing it.
A point made by the Applied Materials guy is that the cost of installation needs to come way down. Right now, installation costs are about half the cost of a solar installation on a building. It's "a guy with a pickup truck", he says. That needs to come way down. Solar panels shouldn't be placed on roofs; they should be the roof. This requires roof designs where a section can be either a solar panel or a plain roof, and all the seams are weathertight. There's a big payoff for getting this right. The cost of installation goes way down, the panels are less likely to be pulled off in wind storms, and the wiring is under the roof, which simplifies connecting the panels.
By Engineer I mean mechanical, probably one of the last to have had (survived / endured) the old style apprenticeship, which is another point that won't mean anything to those younger than me, but is in fact vastly relevant to overall ability and knowledge.
For every technology that I have seen, the following is true.
1,000 guys actually manufacturing a product commercially using "x" technology push the field more in one year than 1,000 guys working in R&D do in 10 years.
Yeah, there is a bit of chicken and egg there, but the fact is that it is only when you start to make the product commercially, not prototypes, that you really learn about and master the technology.
The old engineering adage is "you have to build one, to build one".
A classic example for the US audience is the Saturn V, that was the pinnacle of 20 years of PRODUCTION effort from a team that arguably started with Von Braun's flying prototype bombs.
Even with CAD / CAM / CAE / CNC / etc, none of which we had back then, I sincerely doubt the US could build one today that actually flew to spec.
The Japanese basically fucked the British bike industry by starting out on PRODUCTION for a generation, before they were capable of designing anything even equal to what we had, not because they were stupid of rubbish engineers, but because it takes production experience to master anything.
Then the Japanese basically fucked the British car industry, exactly the same way.
Television sets? Ditto.
And the beat goes on.
You all have it 180 degrees out, worrying about R&D and IP and all that crap being outsourced, when you outsource production you are eating your own seed grain, doom is inevitable.
The next generation is based on the apprentice of today, and by far the best apprenticeship is one served in a production environment.
Mod me down as much as you like, I've got karma to burn.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
That's no troll. Competition, real competition, involves worker sacrifice. Workers must compete with each other, fight for jobs, and devil take the hindmost just as companies compete with each other for sales.
Sucks, but not avoidable. Every competing worker is an enemy just as every competing business is an enemy. Business is war.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Maybe we can even stop trying to change the primary and secondary curriculum to reflect our political goals of having everyone base their lives on fairy-tales and myths. Yeah, maybe we could actually teach science, and math, and critical thinking. Nah! Fuck it! Let's just all learn how to worship the divine creator instead!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Those are some mighty big "exceptions" when measured by their impact on our lives.
If you're talking about coming up with new brands of anti-perspirant deodorants with "time-capsule release" and "48-hour wetness protection" and "non-staining" then you can't beat big corporate R&D. I use this example because I happened to be in a Target Store today and was impressed with the incredible variety and the number of times I saw the word "IMPROVED" on the labels. There was "dry" and "gel" and "solid" and "spray" and "liquid" and even "crystal" and my favorite (no-joke) "INVISIBLE". The deodorants alone took up an entire aisle, taller than me and the length of two automobiles. We may not be able to afford health care for everyone, but motherfucker, we are protected against odor and wetness!
This is why our system is clearly the envy of the world.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...or does anyone else think that high level managers and executives are dumbest mother fuckers to ever walk the earth?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Wow. Enjoy your tasty fascism!
CNBC, first in business worldwide.
First of all China is robbing the West blind intellectually. They are breaking into computer systems left and right, stealing anything not nailed down, and bringing all that IP back home. Popsci or Popmechanics had an excellent article about how the Chinese are doing this for anything ranging from helicopter engines to night vision chips. Secondly China is drawing as much big industry to their country as possible. They want us to setup factories, show them how to do the work, and in the end they know all of the ins and outs of how we became such a production powerhouse and they will have a trained workforce. They will have the facilities on their soil, they will have the workers, and that 75year lease is worth exactly jack shit if they decide one day they would politely like you to leave NOW. Third China is buying up our debt like crazy and it won't be long before they can begin to exert all sorts of "pressure" on our country - we're mortgaging our future in more ways than one! Fourth China is undercutting big industries like telecom and networking in order to get their eqioment sown all over the place - and often managed by their employees. Lets hope they never flip the switch! Last but not least China is taking the lead in manufacturing "green" power like solar and wind. This is in many ways the future and while it's true they need power badly by taking the lead in this and drawing companies to setup shop there on their soil they effectively OWN it all should they decide to take it. China is the last place I'd want to place any sort of advanced chip fab that's for sure!
Whether we realize it or not we're mortgaging our future. CEO are worried about the next quarter's profits and not worried about building a strong company for the long term. They see short term gains by moving their IP overseas and that bumps stock prices - and in turn their bonuses. Even if they totally screw up they have ensured golden parachutes that provide them with plenty of money - scre everyone else.
Yes, this sounds awful paranoid but I do not see the Chinese as benign by any stretch. They police their citizens with draconian laws, the censure their press and internet, and they have a history of taking the long view - something we sure as hell aren't doing right now! We're building a house of cards...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
I'm a foreigner and It took me too long to properly learn to read English.
Now I'll have to start over in Chinese... and will there be a Chinese /. ?
Wait, what units system do they use there? Imperial?
What? Metric? 8-)
Ni hao!
Thank you. I'm glad to see there is at least one person on slashdot who understands the science of economics enough to give a rational response to my statements.
The elite in this country have a self of entitlement over everyone else. Look at Meg Whitman. She wants 500,000 new cheap H-1Bs each year. She thinks that the California governor race has a "buy it now" price.
The free market will in the end lead to a pretty equal cost to produce stuff around the globe. Once that's happened there wont be the quick wins that GP is dreaming about. It all comes down to globalization. Good, bad? it's up to you.
Robots, AI, better design, and limited demand are probably going to take your job eventually; see Marshall Brain's "Manna" story for what it might look like:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
You can worship the "free market" abstraction all you want, and by extension the big companies that dominate it,
"The Market as God: Living in the new dispensation"
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99mar/marketgod.htm
but enlightened self-interest (let alone morality) suggests you should be more on the side of the humans than an abstract concept about exchange, one that ignores externalities as well as the negative side of the concentration of wealth by using huge immortal amoral corporations that would treat any human like a piece of discardable machinery if it is profitable.
With a 21st century technosphere capable of producing so much abundance for all, for humanity to survive, we need fundamental change in our basic economic paradigms like a basic income (which works with the market but is a human right saying everyone has a right to some fruits of the industrial commons),
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
Or going further, we need some mix of a basic income and a gift economy, improved local subsistence, making work into play, resource based planning, and other things...
Something related I helped organize:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery
By the way, if we moved to a basic income (a check from the government that is enough to live on each month, with no means test, funded by taxes or some other means), then it might be justified to do away with some of those other employee protections you decry, because engineers would have the freedom to say "No" and walk away. That might do a lot more to make the US competitive than the race to the bottom for US engineers that you propose.
"Freedom as the Power to Say No"
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/pdf/2004Widerquist.pdf
China will be where the US is soon enough (twenty years?), with a jobless recovery with economic growth but no new jobs, as China's productivity per worker continues to grow and then demand gets saturated when people there realize there is a law of diminishing returns to more goods and services (especially as people move up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to want to do more of their own self-directed stuff). What then?
The best things in life are cheap or free, and if they were not, what kind of world would that be anyway? Someday the Chinese will realize that, hopefully before they finish trashing their environment. At least there is some good news about improvement on Chinese environmental policy lately, so I can hope the Chinese are moving up that curve...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_of_China
By the way, as for why all those US worker protections are so important in the "free market", try reading "The China Price".
http://thechinaprice.org/home.html
"The book exposes a system of unregistered factories that cut corners on safety and working conditions to meet multinational companies' demands for ever-lower prices. It documents how China's export manufacturing industry allows millions of workers to move slowly out of poverty - even as they pay a price in terms of their own health. How the country's coal mining sector continues to thrive - even as it produces a stunning 70 percent of the world's coal mining deaths. And how a growing number of younger wo
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I love how economists back in the 90's described the process of outsourcing as moving on to "bigger and better things" , to having an "information economy" where we would do the high tech research and software and yada yada yada. Now you see what's really happening.
Ponders Chinese banking system and pegging of currency.
Blar.
Depression was not dodged. The can was just kicked a bit further down the road and the problems made bigger. Wait for it, wait for it...
Torches and Pitchforks.
Blar.
You don't really believe that you can sway anyone in corporate America with the "seven fat years followed by seven lean years" sort of scenario, do you? If they can get five years of low-cost, high-profit benefits out of moving to China it will be someone else's problem after that.
The new CEO will then have inherited a huge mess while the previous one has retired with five years of huge bonuses because the company was hugely profitable. Of course, all those profits are gone and the new guy isn't going to look so good.
The days when someone thought the company was "theirs" and they needed to preserve it into the future are long gone. Consequences are best left to a successor.
You're hilarious. There are already many places with no environmental, labor, or safety regulations in the world, why don't you just go there instead of trying to make the US one of them? I know why, because those places are shitholes. Ayn Rand is precisely the same thing a communist worker's paradise - both are illogical fantasies; beyond that the differences between them hardly matter.
You know who is internationally competitive? Germany. They export more than the US does on about 1/4 the population. All by doing the opposite of everything you advocate.
Mod me as flamebait..
Suck a big fat fucking Applied Materials cancer riddled cock you fucking whale of a human behidn a keyboard... SLOB SLOB SLOB
ok i'm losing it.
hmmm happy place... happy place...
FUCK ITS GONE..
Fuck you and die of cancer clusters in your dick hole.
And now that I got that off my chest...
I feel better.
What about when consumers can buy nanotech 3D printers? :-)
http://www.reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_printing
And then print their own solar cells, 3D printers, and matter extractors and recyclers? :-)
Mainstream economics, if it ever made any sense, is on its way out...
That said, totally free global markets might not be that bad if there was a global basic income as a human right for every person to regularly claim some part of the fruits of the industrial commons:
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/papers.html
And of course some way to account for externalities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
And a way to limit the concentration of wealth and power that can destroy the free market by regulatory capture (as happens all too often in the USA...)
Note that Friedrich Hayek said he was not against government intervention if it was based on "a clear set of principles", and a basic income as a human right (which also might smooth out business cycles), as well as concerns about externalities and concentration of wealth and power, might fit that definition:
"The road to serfdom: text and documents"
http://books.google.com/books?id=qg61T_I1mwsC&pg=PA20
"... he repeatedly emphasized in his talks before business groups that he was not against government intervention per se: "I think what is needed is a clear set of principles which enables us to distinguish between the legitimate fields of government activities and the illegitimate fields of government activity.""
Otherwise, without a human right to make a claim on the fruits of the industrial commons, what are you going to do if robots, AI, better design, and saturated demand take your job? Marshall Brain painted that picture, and it is not pretty:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
And Frances Moore Lappé has already pointed out how starvation is quite possible around plenty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Moore_Lapp%C3%A9
"Throughout her works Lappé has argued that world hunger is caused not by the lack of food but rather by the inability of hungry people to gain access to the abundant amount of food that exists in the world and/or food-producing resources because they are simply too poor. She has posited that our current "thin democracy" creates a maldistribution of power and resources that inevitably creates waste and an artificial scarcity of the essentials for sustainable living."
Some other ideas about freedom, if you are interested:
"Ivan Illich: deschooling, conviviality and the possibilities for informal education and lifelong learning"
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-illic.htm
And from Ivan Illich's deschooling society, that echoes some of Hayek's points:
http://reactor-core.org/deschooling.html
"""
The choice is between two radically opposed institutional types, both of which are exemplified in certain existing institutions, although one type so characterizes the contemporary period. as to almost define it. This dominant type I would propose to call the manipulative institution. The other type also exists, but only precariously. The institutions which
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Consider the science contests from high school called science olympiads, where big scientists like Grigori Perelman and Terence Tao have competed, contests where things like the ones you mentioned (innovation, creativity, etc.) play a huge part for the results, let's say the two most relevant subjects for computer science (informatics and mathematics):
Historic results for all countries on the IMO (mathematics):
http://imo-official.org/results.aspx
Last results for gold medal on the 2009 IOI (informatics):
http://www.ioi2009.org/index.jsp?id=414&ln=2
As you can see, at least in these competitions, China DOES seem to be better than USA (than all countries in fact), while India seems a more mediocre country like you comment.
Sure. On the other hand that is pretty close to what people said about South Korea in the 80's. Nowadays Hyundai, which used to be synonymous with dispose-a-cars, has now passed Toyota and Honda to become the leaderin customer satisfaction. I suspect the Chinese took a real close look at what South Korea did - first get the foreign investment and trade connections by providing cheap labour, then increase quality to move up the food chain.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Sure. On the other hand that is pretty close to what people said about South Korea in the 80's. Nowadays Hyundai, which used to be synonymous with dispose-a-cars, has now passed Toyota and Honda to become the leaderin customer satisfaction. I suspect the Chinese took a real close look at what South Korea did - first get the foreign investment and trade connections by providing cheap labour, then increase quality to move up the food chain.
The thing is, you are the free market guy, not the troll that you are replying to.
Also the thing is, free market has hardly ever been tried in this world, people don't want free market, people just want profit for themselves.
In reality we cannot have free market because there will always be at least 2 people, who do not care about such things and only want to get ahead in front of everybody else. In fact, it's not just 2 people, it's almost everybody, under those conditions the idea of the 'ideal free market' is moot and a non starter.
--
Here is how I would go about getting ahead:
1. Go Shindler style. Befriend some people in power by being nice and slick and paying for drinks and making people laugh and give people free stuff, they like that, and then make sure to participate in various extracurricular activities with these people, play golf, buy them drugs, get them access to hookers or something, you know, the works.
2. Become an invaluable asset to the people in power, also learn their secrets in the process, gain leverage.
3. Propose something that will help them do what they do. For example pay politicians by providing corporate donations and gifts. In exchange ask for some help with becoming a preferred corporation, some special tax breaks and such. Get some government contracts and make sure that money flows back nicely from the contracts too.
4. Get a guy or two, who are close to retirement in the local government to do something for you, not extremely significant BUT visible. Once they 'retire', pay them, make them your lobbyists, get their wives and such on some 'consulting' position that pays but does not require anything to do actually. This is good publicity for the rest of the politicians, they'll know you are a player, they'll take the bait of the implied bribe: work for me now, you'll get paid when you are out.
5. Now real work starts, make your case to other politicians, work on becoming big, really big. Good tax break, new regulations making it difficult for anyone new to get into the field, remove competition, create difficulties for others in the field by special regulations, the works.
6. Get bigger and bigger, become one of the really preferred corporations, those who get free money at no interest from the Fed. Get on that tit, it's wonderful.
7. Start the real magic here: get into derivative markets, create a separate set of corporations that will take on really really really bad bets on purpose.
You can't handle the truth.
Anyone who has worked in advanced R&D is aware that just knowing a huge amount of facts isn't of much use.
I've heard many researchers say they get plenty of students (from here and overseas) that are good at knowing lots of facts/techniques/methods/etc., but fall on their face when you try to move them into original research.
The education there is very different from that of Western nations. ...they resort to various aptitude tests to try and weed out people.
Isn't that what we do here as well, though? You have a hard time getting into grad school if you can't get a good score on the (mostly) multiple-choice GRE, you have to pass a lot of classes early in grad school that can be passed solely by memorization....and we somehow expect that filtering process to produce people that are good at thinking imaginatively to solve hard problems.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Unfortunately, we are not talking of Indian and US education. We are talking of US educated PhDs in India. They cant get Green cards or H1Bs easily in such a climate - so they go back.
Lets see - the average number of caucasians in any science or technology PhD program is low - most are asians. So I guess they have the critical skills to ace the US education system without their 'critical skills'.
So lets see some of the key things you point out:
1. Software development fails due to lack of critical thinking amongst Indians - so lets see MSFT projects routinely used to fail when indians were almost rare on msft campus. Cant blame that on Indians. Software projects in general fail quite a bit not because of programming but due to lack of project management skills.
You cant compare the average programmer who comes here to do crappy ERP consulting or Java programming with 'innovative researchers' here in the US.
2. Anyways lets see - what does the average Slashdot reader do ? programming for businesses to process orders ? sell stuff on the web ? How many are actually doing anything innovative ?
Will your CIO miss you if the HTML/JS/java stuff you are doing is done by some other dork in another part of the world ? I dont think so - esp. if it is done at 1/3rd the price and with limited benefits and 6 day work weeks.
For those of you who are truly 'innovative' - there is nothing to fear.
3. 40% of NASA/MSFT/GOOG etc. are asians (chinese + indians + koreans etc.) - now remember these are from the small population of the students who happen to be chinese and indians. So I guess these chinese and indians are not 'critical thinking' challenged.
4. Superiority complex is unfortunately akin to shooting yourself in the foot. You may think you are the critical thinkers and the innovators - but remember, indians/chinese and most 3rd world people are much hungrier for success. This is the windows vs Apple model. Apple may have been cooler - but Windows takes over by sheer numbers.
2 billion to 350 million. You would need to be 3-4 times as innovative as the rest of the world to survive :) - that is assuming like 800 million of the Chindia population is a complete waste. The reason India and China did not have much to show in patents was cos they cost $3-$4k even in small countries. Now the patents from Indian research labs are piling up!
Bye bye average American programmer!
I suspect the above poster is only seeing the tip of the iceberg. The sort of developers that people are exposed to via outsourcing are usually of very poor quality.
Outsourcing to a highly profit driven company works a lot like the way the USSR rocket program used it's German staff.
Here's how it worked. The experienced German staff were put in a team with a few Russians that knew nothing but the basics. After a while the Russians in the team would be competant, and then they would suddenly be posted elsewhere and there would be new people in the team that knew nothing but the basics. After a while there was a very large pool of Russian staff that knew everything the German staff knew and it was no longer considered worthwhile to continue to feed the German staff.
I suspect the only outsourced developers the above poster met were the ones that he was training while being told that they were working for him. The answer is not to look at the bottom of the pile but instead at published papers and products. The two countries the above poster implies are full of dumb heathens of inferior race have civilian nuclear power programs twenty or thirty years ahead of what Westinghouse etc in the USA can do, and they did it with less cash.
He's forgetting that outsourcing is often about milking the client as much as possible while spending as little as possible and not about a successful software project.
Wait, so you're saying our educational system DOESN'T revolve around the memorization and regurgitation of facts?
What country did you go to school in, exactly? Because there is absolutely no way that it was the United States. They resort to aptitude tests? You mean like SOLs and SATs?
There's a lesson there.
You better start fighting for it now because you sure ain't gonna be able to later. The business world has seen what works and it sure ain't democracy or human rights.
They have eyed China's corporate state and have fallen in love. It is a dark future.
I'd like to take a 'the world is rosy' kind of world view and think capitalism is investing in communism and soon we will all stand together holding hands singing 'Kom By - yah'.
In reality Capitalism and Communism are both dead philosophies with Corporatism the new ism prepared to exploit any source of labor as cheaply as possible. Educated or not, physical or knowledge work U.S or Chinese (or any other nation) the word 'opportunity' seems to becoming less and less available to people who don't sit on a board of directors. Not everyone wants to so what should people be striving for?
Chinese people aren't gaining anything, in terms of working conditions or education, at the expense of America's wealth and opportunity. Somehow the people of both nations gain little, Chimerica, ChinAmerica it's not about us or them, it's 'WEast' - brought together so we both can lose.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to be cynical but our economic system seems so completely fucked right now even though the problems are relatively easy too fix and totally apolitical in nature. The problem is the existing establishment brings so much force to bare on maintaining the status quo they seem utterly irresistible.
Never more a time than now has the enemy been ourselves.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
At least now I won't have to get finger printed like a common criminal every time I go to China.
When you use politics, you are doing everything by waving a gun around like a deranged lunatic. The people who are moving to China are the only sane, rational people left in the US. They realise that here in the US anything can be taken from you by force if enough people are willing to vote for it.
I have 1/10 of my paycheck taken every two weeks because people voted it to themselves. That is an evil which must be stopped.
Pure capitalism says "Good job, this is wonderful and excellent for the markets". So don't stop now. The US government was damn cheerful to make individual citizens suffer at the hands of corporations, declaring "free market capitalism will solve all of this". Its the same with health care "free market capitalism will solve all of this". Hundreds of millions of unemployed Americans, a US government unable to keep with Chinese technology, Amercian companies having to pay China outrageous fees for their intellectual property (once you make rules and start clubbing others with it, they can make a similar club and start clubbing you right back). China has 1.1 million people. Not all of them are dumb. They have their fair share of engineers, doctors and Einsteins, based on their population (3 times as large as the US). And they have inertia and momentum on their side and much growth, and the US is flat footed with little to sell, a flat domestic economy, and a mountain of debt (mostly owned by China). At some point, they will call in the debts. Capitalism says 'all is well' so there better not be any dumb-ass republicans mouthing off about how Chinas rise at America's expense is a bad thing. Mind you, communist leaders have always said that capitalists will sell communists a rope that the communists will hang the capitalists with. Don't worry, the Chinese have a stock market too. You just have to be Chinese to play.
Except that many of the people you're talking about have been educated in the West before returning to their respective countries.
Its also worth noting that big corporate research may in some cases accomplish great innovation but it usually does little for the companies. PARC and Bell Labs did a lot for the world economy to this very day, but did little to help their parent companies out. Even now, look at what researchers at IBM and Microsoft do with absolutely massive budgets in terms of innovation in their key competency areas vs. smaller companies with incomparable or even no dedicated research.
Interesting. I never thought of it that way.
I managed a group that was heavily indian years back, mostly here on visas, whle the client did a more formal search for a CTO. I wasn't all that impressed with their skills. The two lead programmers, one indian and one russian, did 90% of the work, while the rest had a hard time finishing simple development tasks.
What struck me was the inability to understand a problem unless it had been broken down into formal requirements. They didn't understand anything about business needs, users needs, interface considerations, or work flow. They just knew how translate what was essentially pseudo-code into actual code.
I didn't ask them about this directly, but in talking about what education they did have, the colleges they went to only gave them classes in their main topic of study. They didn't balance things out with other mandatory classes in other areas.
It kind of gave me more of an appreciation for the liberals arts side of my degrees.
So you're saying that the best problem solvers can't solve the problem of getting into tertiary education?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Allowing corporations to play governments off against each other in terms of how much corporate welfare and favourable legislation they can squeeze out of them is nothing more than a race to the bottom.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Perhaps we just need to face the fact that tech R&D cannot be our comparative advantage. The laws of physics are the same in Asia as they are in the US. Thus, if the labor and education is cheaper there, you can simply buy more researchers per dollar there.
Consumerism-based marketing appears to be the US's strong-point (comparative advantage) for good or bad. We are the best test market of world products and thus specialize in consumer analysis and marketing.
But another issue is that China seems to be keeping their currency artificially low in order to encourage exports (although it's difficult to audit China's currency rates). They are thus cheating on their labor rates. We should tariff trade imbalances to encourage them to stop such practices. Tariffs on differences are not evil, or at least less evil than trade imbalance bubbles. It's trading slightly-more expensive plastic lawn-chairs for added economic stability, and possibly better jobs.
Table-ized A.I.
I bet the same was said of the cold war. That can in fact was a hallucination.
Americans are not allowed to pursue advanced degrees in science or engineering in U.S. universities, so it doesn't matter how good U.S. universities are. Corporations understand this and are responding to this visa driven fact.
More than half the science and engineering graduate degree (Masters, PhD, Post-Doc) positions for studnts in U.S. universities are given to foreign students, the bulk of whom come from China and India. Americans basically need not apply (although Americans do apply, by the hundreds, for each position, and are rejected.)
The elites of industries take risks, they are not interested in supporting the ne'er-do-well welfare cases of society through endless taxation (Microsoft certainly agrees with this concept *wink*).
They are not interested in a society where crime is not replied firmly with punishment.They are taking enough risks already.
They are not interested in a system so overladen with middlemen parasites picking their pockets that the risk/reward ratio is just too large.
etc...
I don't know if China is necessarily all that, but it does squawk a lot of the right signals.
"Let's not forget that Europe saw the US dominance in computers and tried their own big government subsidies and it did very little to stop Intel, Microsoft, etc."
What big subsidies for computers? You just managed to make a baseless claim and contradict yourself in a single sentence.
"If you really want to look long term, then you have the best universities (the US is still far and away at the top here) and provide basic funding for university research."
There is just that minor problem that those 'best' universities are not affordable for most potential US students... Unless they sign away their firstborn to a corrupt bank for a 'student loan' to pay the stupendously high tuition.
If you really want to look long term, then you have the best universities (the US is still far and away at the top here) and provide basic funding for university research.
Most of the graduate students at US universities are foreign, though.
No, the real reason why the American economy remains so dynamic is because people are free to start their own businesses. You didn't need a fancy degree to start, say, Wal-Mart. Few countries in the world encourage people to go out and try their crazy idea as much as the United States does. This is even a problem in a lot of rich countries in Europe, which prioritize social safety nets over risk.
Now, I think there's a lot wrong with the American system, but there's no such thing as a perfect system. And as long as China remains an authoritarian police state, there's probably not too much to fear from them on the innovation front.
jeez pal, welcome to 1958.
the world has changed.
Interstitial spaces are filled with cream.
The two countries the above poster implies are full of dumb heathens of inferior race have civilian nuclear power programs twenty or thirty years ahead of what Westinghouse etc in the USA can do, and they did it with less cash.
I would dispute that the Indians are really that far ahead in civilian nuclear power, but I mainly wanted to point out that Westinghouse Electric Company (the guys who make the nuclear reactors) has been a Japanese company since 2006. It's owned by Toshiba.
That's globalization for ya!
In finance, the ultimate arbiter of whether a thing is worth doing, is if it has a positive net present value. So the basic idea is that you project out into the future the costs and income associated with a project, and if that's a net positive you should go forward with it.
The wrinkle is that there generally isn't enough information to accurately project long term costs and incomes so any projections that depend on things out past 10 years are generally suspect and anything past 30 years is just bullshit. Anyone who advocates that a 75 year lease is either a good or bad idea is full of shit.
Those are some mighty big "exceptions" when measured by their impact on our lives.
True. But when you look at the number of companies (Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, and many, many others) that were started by visionary founders and grew to employ a hell of a lot of people ... well, it's hard to justify a politico-economic system that squelches the little guy.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"More likely we need to stop allowing the import of goods made using these tactics. "
Actually we do have a way of doing that, its called import duties and tariffs. Unfortunately our government works for corporate america and won't do their jobs protecting the country from enemies within.
All we'd have to do is lock the dollar/yuan exchange rate 7:1; that is, the complete reverse of what China has done in order to guarantee their position as low cost manufacturer.
We won't, though; too many short-sighted (or uncaring?) Americans getting fat exploiting China's exploitation of America.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
coz teh man said India was going to be the world's next super power?
Wow, I don't know whether to mod this funny or insightful!
and they did it with less cash.
Let's just clarify this point: they did it with less cash because each worker gets paid less, has a lower standard of living, each company is willing to sell their materials for less, the government orders the construction of the power plant so there's no regulation to contend with, any homes at the site of the power plant not evacuated will be bulldozed with people still inside, and any dissenters will be disconnected from the internet forever and banned from telling their story.
They paid off the loans by borrowing more money at zero from the fed, then bought bonds paying a few percent, among other schemes, that the tax payers get to pay off in the future!
THAT is supposed to be success? It's a pure 100% ripoff con job, hiding behind arcane book keeping stuff that if you aren't paying attention you'll get sucked into believing. It's an ongoing economic coup, completely crooked and corrupt, and has been since long ago. How much more crap you want to believe in? That net loss of jobs and net loss of actual and real productivity means less than some phony bid up wall street averages? You REALLY think the economy is better off with a 40% rise in stocks, but only with some extreme fudging and outright lying a 1.6% alleged rise in productivity, combined with MILLIONS of lost good paying jobs?? That taking money from one side of the till and shuffling it to the other and charging everyone else interest on that for the next few decades is a *good thing*?? Mind boggling..
Egads no wonder they keep getting away with these ripoffs. Look, they are LIARS get it? Just let that sink it. Big..fat..liars. Crooks and thieves as well, bunco artists, just for real high stakes. Just..believe that OK, because that's reality. Stop being dumbed down, stop falling for their media shills propaganda.
There's NO SUCH THING as a "jobless recovery", it's all ****ing snakeoil, designed to keep people from marching on DC and Wall Street with pitchforks and torches. This is the mother of all grand thefts. No, it isn't over, you didn't dodge any depression, it is barely started yet and it is going to get a LOT worse.
Those people are outright criminals, and they have transitioned right through the so called "change" in politics in the US, showing who really has the power and calls the shots. Big hint, it isn't those hand picked for you because they know you are dumb enough to keep falling for that dodge political actors 99% of the peeps vote for. Why the living &*&^^% people can't see this is crazy, it is as blatantly obvious as dogcrap on the sidewalk.
And what is worse is that so many people keep ARGUING that their pile of steaming dogcrap "party" is just so much better and more honest and competent than those other people's pile of steaming dogcrap.
It's two criminal gangs that both take orders from the FED and the big wall street banks and a few more selected corporate cartels. And that's it. The criminal gangs are the proxy fronts for the real crooks, they are the low level public tards that can take a little heat and keep attention diverted. That is their only purpose now, those two gangs exist to keep the people faked out.
To save money, Why? For a bump in the stock to please shareholders.
So what do we do instead? Invest.
Stock market is doing ok while unemployment in the US remains around 10%.
The only vote that counts anymore is the one with your dollar. We were afraid of Japan as well in the 80s. What American's do better than anyone else is run a business, that is the strength of our system. There are many problems contributing to the exodus of jobs, ever have to deal with unionized labor? If I were I CEO and it were either my beach house or your job. Well, it's going to be your job.
Investing or entrepreneurship is where it has always been in America and where it will be.
and what is advanced r&d? is it more advanced than r&d itself? It shows the crap and exaggeration. Its so very easy to write shit when you have not seen the type of r&d done in India!
if i bashed your skull in with a pipe it would be of more benefit to the world than anything you will ever do
I eagerly await the day when your job is outsourced and then you get another job working 18x6 with a salary of $3.50/hour.
It ain't the engineering. It's the Chinese penchance for screwing you out of a buck rather than earning it honestly that is going to bite them in the ass. The Chinese can build a good car. One of them. Then they will twiddle and pare and chisel and fuck their suppliers and build backyard factories favored by local politicians instead of qualified ones, and they will engage in foot shots until no one trusts anything that comes out of that country, and they will learn that honest value as delivered is worth more than the initial swag.
Take the Bluesky (PRC brand) toaster oven my GF bought. It came apart in three -months'- usage. We bought a deLonghi toaster oven the next time. Haier washing machines? Look at their ratings. Jinma tractors? Ditto. On and on.... The products are not badly designed, they are badly built out of materials that wouldn't pass a first article inspection, and will be until Chinese business doesn't depend on bribery at every conceivable level to function.
Until that day arrives, buy no Chinese product you have to trust.
I've heard many researchers say they get plenty of students (from here and overseas) that are good at knowing lots of facts/techniques/methods/etc., but fall on their face when you try to move them into original research.
Thus the definition of intelligence re-emerges. In fact very intelligent people are rare both in the West and China. This shouldn't surprise us.
The first step is to realize we have a problem. We keep living in this denial dreamland where the Western world is somehow smarter and we're just giving off our "low end" jobs that are mere rote, and keeping the "smart stuff" for ourselves. We're not any smarter, and those low end jobs are what built us.
Aptitude tests are different than memorization tests. Aptitude tests are what is given in the USA (SAT, GRE, GMAT etc) as standardized tests.
This is a popular belief. There are plenty of past and active Indian researchers who have published and publish good papers, or Indian researchers in large companies who work on very innovative products. So, citation needed please for your beliefs.
I hear this a lot, about how the Chinese and Indians are supposedly so much smarter than Americans, Europeans, Australians and the Japanese. Having worked in industry and academia with them, I can tell you that it's a load of bunk.
The education there is very different from that of Western nations. Since they have so many people competing for comparatively few spots, they resort to various aptitude tests to try and weed out people. The people who succeed here are the ones who can memorize huge amounts of otherwise useless information, and regurgitate it at will.
Anyone who has worked in advanced R&D is aware that just knowing a huge amount of facts isn't of much use. With the Internet and computers making information retrieval trivial, memorizing huge amounts of information really isn't as beneficial as it may have been.
In R&D, the main factor to consider is how inventive and innovative a researcher is. That doesn't come from being "book smart". It comes from being able to think flexibly and creatively. This is a trait that is encouraged in the academia of the West, but denounced and suppressed in the East.
Take software development. Sure, Indians can rattle off all sorts of near-useless data about class hierarchies and method signatures and algorithm runtime complexities (you know, the sort of stuff the rest of us would just search for online or in a book). However, ask them to perform a task that requires some innovation, trial-and-error or critical thinking, and they're totally lost. That's why so many software projects developed in India by Indian-trained developers fail so horribly.
I hear a lot about how whites are superior than other races but I am not dumb enough to beleive it ...
Let's face it, we (mainly) have no one to blame but OURSELVES.
No I don't mean our politicians, or business leaders or anyone else but US.
What do expect of a population that doesn't believe in Evolution? Something that is THE unifying principle in Biology ("Without Evolution, nothing makes sense in Biology" look it up).
What do expect of a population who are willing to dismiss the counsel of thousands of dedicated scientists and researchers for a few armchair "climate experts" typically who have no experience in their field?
What do you expect of a population who willingly listen to (and follow) a political party that regularly denigrates the "intellectual elite"? As if scholarship and achievement are something to be sneered at.
You know, if this article was entitled "large scale farming moving to China" or "majority of theater productions produced in China" or "new ice hockey champions raised in China" it wouldn't have nearly the same impact. Why? Because, sorry to say, these things are LESS important than science and technology. The Wealth, Prosperity and POWER of our nation depend on this. Those anti-intellectual "tea partiers" who seek to return us back to the 1800s (1700s)? seem to forget that we are living in the 21st Century and the world is a much much more competitive and complex place.
I can't disagree with the characterization. However I've very painfully seen and felt what the american educated management structure can do to the most amazing, talented, and hard working engineers. It is not pretty.
We as a country have dropped the ball, and have rested on our laurels for too long. The jig is largely up. The talented refugees are doomed to a life of migrant labor, wandering from one tech company to the next, eking out a living for a few years before that outfit is either shipped overseas or driven into the ground by round after round of buzzword bingo spewing MBA jerk wads.
Reagan was one of the best US presidents for three primary reasons:
1) He was not Jimmy Carter or Richard Nixon (Both of whom advocated policies that wrecked the econmy and damaged foreign relations)
2) Reagan did the one and only thing a president can do to boost the economy: he gave people confidence that the economy would improve. His treasury secretary, Paul Volker, brought "stagflation" of 12% mortgages and high unemployment under control through painful austerity measures. Business and consumers were able to believe that Reagan and Volker could and would do what they said they would do.
3) Reagan communicated a vision of a shining city on a hill. He encouraged Americans to strive and create a better country and a better world. He repudiated Carter's military strategies that couldn't rescue Iranian hostages: the helicopters crashed on the way to Iran. He communicated honestly with friends and rivals. The television appearances that Reagan negotiated so that he could communicate directly with citizens via USSR TV gave hope to millions of oppressed people. Reagan supported Solidarity in Poland and asked Gorbachiav to "tear down this wall".
Most American corporations think of time in terms of quarters. China consciously thinks long-term. Consciousness of the 19th century "humiliations" at the hands of the colonial powers (who did indeed behave extremely badly) is strong. The Chinese are immensely proud of their history as the most powerful empire in the world when the rest of the world was backward. They aim to be a world power again. Not next quarter or next year: they will take what time is required, whether it be decades or generations.
This is often captured in the quote attributed to Zhou Enlai, one of the most respected leaders of the Communist Party, when he was asked his opinion of the French Revolution. "It's too soon to say," he replied.
Individual Chinese also have a history of long-term thinking with the tremendous emphasis placed on education. Americans often have a knee-jerk response that because the government is "communist", it China is a) evil and b) hopelessly incompetent. This is foolish and wrong. China today is not communist, it is capitalist - likely more capitalist than many western countries. Even when it was communist, two of the stars on the Chinese flag represented the petty bourgeoisie and capitalists sympathetic to the Party. If anything, China today suffers from too much entrepreneurial capitalist zeal, not too little. If you think their government is incompetent, consider the sclerotic politics of the U.S. today and compare that with a government in China that can simply snap its fingers and get things done (no need to consider the interests of the electorate). When in the 1990s Beijing decided to eliminate leaded gasoline it happened virtually overnight, drivers of older taxis be damned.
With all of that said, I am skeptical of the long-term stability of Chinese society. The transition to capitalism is wrenching and destructive, just as it was in the west. But there's a lot of skepticism about American stability floating around too these days. It is foolish to respond to China's aspirations with arrogance.
Same with china. different color, same shit for Software development. But it is, oh so cheap ... The fact that you waste double the time fixing the things they half assed implemented ...
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
Oh yes - defeat those horrible Librul Commies by moving to China read up on irony Mr Coward.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
> They just knew how translate what was essentially pseudo-code into actual code.
That's why if you're one of the top programmers and designers you have nothing to worry about. In fact you should be very happy.
Since what this means is you can write programs in English, and these bunch will compile it to C/C++/Java/C#/whatever.
AND best of all, you can leave the project and let that team take care of most of the boring but necessary stuff - documentation, support, maintenance. Then you work on a new project and do all the cool "creative" and "innovative" stuff.
If you like the rest of us, are not a top programmer... Then well too bad, be ready for "3rd world" pay, or switch to a job which is hard to outsource - requires local presence: hairdresser, surgeon, nurse, masseur that sort of thing.
There are lots of crappy programmers about whether US/India/China, if the bosses want to settle for crap, there's no point paying US rates for it.
I love the way you copy/pasted the name and still got it wrong.
Quote from Fallen Kell: "China obviously did the math and looked at the projections out 100+ years on some of these moves (75year lease is in this example)."
The United States' navy is the world's largest. Its combined battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies COMBINED. The US also has loads of naval bases scattered all over the world (thanks to WWII). With these two assets, the US completely dominates international trade. This is not a trivial fact when comparing China's potential for economic growth with the US's.
But hey, don't take my word for it. Take a look at George Friedman's book The Next 100 Years, A Forecast For The Twenty-First Century sometime. In it, he also predicts that China will crumble along cultural lines between about 2020 and 2040.
What the.....?
So you're saying it's a good idea to extract wealth from the poor and middle class of your country, and give it away to rich American companies to come build on your soil, so that you can get a few jobs out of the deal?
You'd make a good politician.
What you don't factor into your Ayn Randian view of the market is that your business model requires you to sell to those same overpaid, benefit-laden US (or Western European) employees. In short, you want to sell a product to individuals who have superior incomes but you don't think it is fair for you to pay those individuals what they demand. You think that it is acceptable to build a factory that pollutes and thus levies costs on others rather than yourself; it is unfair in your world that you might have to actually pay for your environmental impact. Wages and benefits in the US are a function of US worker productivity and relative scarcity of labor vs capital. The wages are result of long fought negotiation and social contract between labor and business. Through the bypassing of that process, you are more like the child who only knows what he or she wants without knowing the price he or she has to pay. And btw, I also agree that an engineering manager with a simplistic view of the marketplace should be a position that is easily outsourced to China or India as well.
Child labor is wrong. Unless you realize that the alternative for that child is starving and being exploited on the streets.
Kid's still got a job and gets to eat. Better than the alternatives.
Oh really? Interesting world view you have there. Is it members of a global Jewish conspiracy driving those bulldozers in India or is it a different delusion?
I think you'll find instead it's because the money that should have gone into R&D in the USA got spent on PR or pissed up against the wall in other useless ways. Wages are not really that relevant as an expense in R&D as you'll find if you ask a US graduate student how much they are making. R&D in a low wage country is not going to give you more for your dollar unless something else is also cheaper.
The problem is not the Indians, it's the Indian education system and the IT bubble in India.
I've worked with plenty of Indians in the UK and they're as good as everybody else: there's plenty of true hackers types (in the good sense of the word) out there that happen to be Indian.
However, my experience with our in-house teams based in India and with developers from Indian consultancies placed at the client in the UK is that they have a very high number of mediocre developers (and even some exceptionally bad ones). Note that what's common with these two is that hiring decisions are taken by Indian companies/divisions in India.
I've recently read in The Economist (the January 31st one, I believe - paper magazine, no link, sry) that a company in India has examined the ouput of Indian universities and concluded that only 12% (not fully sure about the number, around this value though) of the engineers trained every year by Indian Universities is actually competent enough to work in technology with a Western Corporation.
I've also had discussions with a friend of mine about this (who happens to be Indian) and our conclusion is that in India too many people go into IT because it pays well (not because they're any good at it) and that most of the better ones have emigrated from India.
How can China import high-tech goods if they are all produced in their own country? iPod's are NOT an import product for the Chinese. They are an import product from America.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The Chinese government activelly encourages Chinese companies and people to steal ideas and processes from Western companies so that they can later compete with them not just in China but also outside.
Even the laws there are done in such a way that any Western company that wants to enter the Chinese market has to do so in a joint venture with a Chinese company which then can learn from said Western company. There are already cases where once a couple of Chinese companies where "trained" in this way, the laws where changed to kick out the Western companies and those Chinese companies started competing in that area outside China.
Example: Lenovo.
Sending your R&D to China is pretty much just giving it for free to the Chinese government.
[Note that I am not critical of the Chinese for doing this: they're doing what's good for them at the expense of dumb Western shareholders]
But apparently you aren't smart enough to:
edit quotes to a reasonable size,
know that "superior" goes with "to", not "than",
and spell "believe" correctly.
Have a nice day, nigger.
Trying to put a little objectivity to this comment i will add this:
Consider the science contests from high school called science olympiads, where big scientists like Grigori Perelman and Terence Tao have competed, contests where things like the ones you mentioned (innovation, creativity, etc.) play a huge part for the results, let's say the two most relevant subjects for computer science (informatics and mathematics):
Historic results for all countries on the IMO (mathematics):
http://imo-official.org/results.aspx
Last results for gold medal on the 2009 IOI (informatics):
http://www.ioi2009.org/index.jsp?id=414&ln=2
As you can see, at least in these competitions, China DOES seem to be better than USA (than all countries in fact), while India seems a more mediocre country like you comment.
Apply this to my first discipline, Mechanical Engineering. Wanna see how useful a test like that is when it comes to designing a new Axial Flow Fan? A complex HVAC system? How about a several thousand node control system for a Power Plant?
Unfortunately, we are not talking of Indian and US education. We are talking of US educated PhDs in India. They cant get Green cards or H1Bs easily in such a climate - so they go back.
Lets see - the average number of caucasians in any science or technology PhD program is low - most are asians. So I guess they have the critical skills to ace the US education system without their 'critical skills'.
So lets see some of the key things you point out: 1. Software development fails due to lack of critical thinking amongst Indians - so lets see MSFT projects routinely used to fail when indians were almost rare on msft campus. Cant blame that on Indians. Software projects in general fail quite a bit not because of programming but due to lack of project management skills.
You cant compare the average programmer who comes here to do crappy ERP consulting or Java programming with 'innovative researchers' here in the US.
2. Anyways lets see - what does the average Slashdot reader do ? programming for businesses to process orders ? sell stuff on the web ? How many are actually doing anything innovative ?
Will your CIO miss you if the HTML/JS/java stuff you are doing is done by some other dork in another part of the world ? I dont think so - esp. if it is done at 1/3rd the price and with limited benefits and 6 day work weeks.
For those of you who are truly 'innovative' - there is nothing to fear.
3. 40% of NASA/MSFT/GOOG etc. are asians (chinese + indians + koreans etc.) - now remember these are from the small population of the students who happen to be chinese and indians. So I guess these chinese and indians are not 'critical thinking' challenged.
4. Superiority complex is unfortunately akin to shooting yourself in the foot. You may think you are the critical thinkers and the innovators - but remember, indians/chinese and most 3rd world people are much hungrier for success. This is the windows vs Apple model. Apple may have been cooler - but Windows takes over by sheer numbers.
2 billion to 350 million. You would need to be 3-4 times as innovative as the rest of the world to survive :) - that is assuming like 800 million of the Chindia population is a complete waste. The reason India and China did not have much to show in patents was cos they cost $3-$4k even in small countries. Now the patents from Indian research labs are piling up!
Bye bye average American programmer!
Take a small dose of reality between the differing cultures. It's called Peer Pressure. In the United States it is highly frowned upon one becoming the ``professional student'' and best to get your degree then go to work and have the corporation pay for your advanced education. Unfortunately, most corporations have stopped that practice and want you to have that advanced education beforehand. If US Families would encourage their kids to get advanced degrees and cultivate this like we once did, we wouldn't have this perceived brain drain.
More importantly, what is with the Computer Science analogies. It's my second field, but it's not the field this article is centered around. The field(s) are Material Science Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemistry and Physics.
Here's how it worked. The experienced German staff were put in a team with a few Russians that knew nothing but the basics. After a while the Russians in the team would be competent, and then they would suddenly be posted elsewhere and there would be new people in the team that knew nothing but the basics. After a while there was a very large pool of Russian staff that knew everything the German staff knew and it was no longer considered worthwhile to continue to feed the German staff.
Your argument would have made sense if it were consistent. knew everything is not equivalent to competent. They weren't the German experts, even after they were trained. The goal for the USSR was to make themselves competent enough so they thought, and thus would make the German experts now obsolete. History proved they overestimated their competency. Unfortunately for them, they didn't have a back up plan. Starving the talent to death is not a reversible state.
I don't doubt China will crack at the seams, but your reference to the U.S. Navy is off-base. The Navy is not moving any freight except its own. It doesn't own any of the shipping companies. It has nothing to do with international trade outside of a few pesky pirates and drug runners. Controlling international trade simply isn't part of their job description and that's unlikely to change.
Please keep in mind that China (along with other countries such as the UK) allow just about everyone this side of toaster oven repairmen to called 'engineers'. Yes, most of the Engineering grad students at my US alma mater were Chinese, but I think that's why they were in the US, not back home.
Don't confuse innovation and marketingspeak! Or you wanted to be modded funny?
Don't place all your cards in this basket. Ignoring your blatant stereotyping for a moment, a lack of creative thinking isn't a hard issue to fix. You're statement is like saying that we're in a cross country race and the asians aren't going to win because, even though they have a high speed gasoline/maintenance truck following them the whole time their tires are cheap and blow out all the time, so they'll have to spend all their time changing tires. All it takes is one switch in the type of tires and all those other resources can come fully to play.
Having addressed that topic, it's funny to watch information sources trumpet the brain-drain stories so loudly. I wonder if anyone checked to make sure it isn't just that high tech is *growing* in Asia and not "going" to Asia? How can your assessment be good if it doesn't take into account the recent recession?
Maybe you are right. But in the end, they get the job done... and cheap.
Case in point, .NETCF is developed in India and it resulted in a terrible ride so far in Windows Mobile.
I could swear I heard someone (president maybe?) say America's future is in IP.
Slashdot moderation
1) My co workers don't have better social skills than me they just spend their time talking about nonsense like American Idol while I sit in the basement fiddling with a computer. The problem with the US is that hard work and education aren't respected, just bullshitting skills.
+5 Insightful
2) The Indians and Chinese aren't smart they're just book smart. They've got no idea how to apply their intelligence in a company.
+5 Insightful
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I think the problem might be the way Indian consultancy companies are run. I've had European clients who weren't much good at producing things themselves but were still much better than the average Indian consultancy company they outsourced too. What was interesting is that when they brought the Indian developers over to Europe they were effective. Put them back at the Indian office and they were dreadful again. Visiting Indian companies showed why - the people seemed to be OK individually but they had loads of problems they couldn't resolve and no one in management seemed to be interested. So their productivity was awful.
Now you need to be careful here - the world is full of fucked companies. Still it was noticeable that all the Indian outsourcing companies I went to all seemed to be more fucked than the European clients, who were perilously close to fuckedville themselves.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
On the upside all the Asian countries that managed to move up the engineering food chain from producing cheap tat for foreign companies to designing things people want also ended up with liberal political systems. And all the ones with illiberal political systems are stuck at the cheap tat phase at best.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I have been around for most of the technical revolution here in america. I saw transistors become integrated circuits. This happened around the time that it was decided we should go to the moon. The race for space caused a focus on education in america and a generation of baby boomer engineers of all disciplines came out of that time. I am sure that they hoped those careers would pay ok, but my father made about a little over twenty thousand dollars a year working for aerospace companies as a Hughes Fellow after college. As his son, I wanted to have a technical career, and I saw software as being as important as hardware in the future. After I had taken "computer programming" as far as it would go, I wanted to transcend to "Software Engineer". What happened after that was twenty-five more years of self-motivated education to become the best software engineer I could be. It wasn't about money. It was about wanting to do a good job, and to earn the opportunity to work on new and more exciting projects, again not because of the money, but because of the opportunity to continue learning. That is the critical thing. With each project comes a chance to gain experience and leverage off previous knowledge and build excellent products. That was where I feel I was let down by corporate america. When they started exporting "educational work opportunities", foreign workers walked away with the newly earned wisdom and became more qualified for subsequent opportunities. After enough of this kind of thing, I started to lose the ability to compete against less capable engineers who just happened to have had more recent experience in key technologies. I know that I was responsible for my own continued viability. But somehow I looked up and the train was moving on without me. I am trying not to be bitter, and I know that I am not alone, and that there are a huge number of american engineers of all disciplines who feel disenfranchised. When software people worked on staff, there was a constant flow of projects and opportunities to stay with the flow of technologies. Sometimes companies participated in the educational process, sharing tuition costs for previously excellent employees. What is going on now is that companies are hiring short term help with specific key skills like picking low hanging fruit, and not taking any responsibility for bringing the workers forward with them. We now seem to be entirely responsible for every last item on the skill list, and it is a buyers market. The HR people are only looking at the top surface of the skill definition, and don';t seem to care about the depth or breadth of knowledge and skills embodied in the existing engineering pool in america. I remember a time when I would accept a little less pay to have a chance to work on something with a component I still had to learn about. To get my top dollar in my expertise area, and a little less when I would have to crack the books and would produce a little more slowly. Now you have to have it all up front, employers are more impatient, and they toss you away like a spent battery when someone new comes along with the latest bit of experience needed for the next short term project. The window of opportunity for engineers working with any specific technology has become frighteningly short. This isn't helping america grow it's industrial base. Maybe it is partly because individuals are focused very tightly on their own goals and salaries, and aren't feeling like they are part of a national effort to excel at something. I didn't mean to go on so long, but this is an important topic.
As an Indian working in US for 15 years, I have seen a lot of Indian and American incapable of doing any original thinking. Also seen quite a few amazing and sharp thinkers. Intelligence and original thinking isn't a western only trait. Yes- The Asian mentality sometimes inhibits display of this trait but it doesn't mean it doesn't exits. Americans are very good at talking and using new buzz words in their vocabulary. Most Asian are not. It doesn't mean they aren't smart.
You can spend more on R&D if your budget for the actual build is 1/4 of the price because of all the other factors.
Also, don't act like the Chinese are against killing even a single person if that person is in the way of "the good of the country". That's exactly where the guy in Tianemen Square was, and look where that got him.
And the "Jewish conspiracy" strawman? Hell no, I don't believe that. It's the Chinese government using an "end justifies the means" mindset just like every other major communist power has done.
These tests are not common and are relatively unknown in India. As a student in India, I was aware of them but knew nobody who took them. Only a few kids from big cities ever took them. You can use these tests as benchmark when there is equal availability and exposure in the countries you compare with.
But I will tell you something so common and so incredible that you have to really pay close attention to notice it -
When you purchase fruits/vegis and what have you from street side vendors ..who most of them are illiterates, after haggling a price and quantity. the vendor will calculate the exact price with out a calculator or paper or pencil. the purchaser will calculate the price on his own without again without calculator or paper or pencil.
How many math Olympians do you think can do this ?
It's not the fact that the Indians aren't caucasian that's causing the problem, it's the way the education system is set up in India. Why would you infer a racist interpretation of his comment when he was clearly discussing the differing education systems?
FWIW, as a grad student in chemistry, I've noticed a stark difference between the abilities of Indians who got their BS in India and anyone who was educated in the States. While they're quite able to rattle off the names of any organic reaction you show them, they are completely baffled when told to apply an analytical approach to a problem that hasn't been solved before. The first trip for them is off to the library to find someone, anyone, who's solved this problem before so that they can just look up the answer.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
My response is simple: Ok, I will invest my money somewhere else. Good luck with your efforts!
See, what happens when you make all of these demands is that eventually, we get to a point where I take my money and I go invest someplace else that has a much better profit opportunity. Why would I want to deal with your world when I can just as easily deploy/invest money somewhere else that has a lower cost of doing business?
You seem to have some delusion that the investors and owners -- you know, the people that put up the capital to start the company in the first place -- are required to participate. Hint: they aren't. One option (that is being used more and more, btw) is to do nothing and just sit on that money. And if nobody is investing, guess what happens to your next job?
The talks about Xian facility are at least a couple of years old, nothing new here. Solar is NOT profitable, it's a money sinkhole. Applied started it because US government was subsidizing it. Now that subsidy has dried up, it does not make any sense to keep doing in US. China keeps subsidizing, this is why this new part of the company goes to China. Otherwise right, you outsource manufacturing, then you have to build engineering support there, then comes engineering development, then goes management, one level after another. Mark is at least VP level, so those screaming "let's outsource CEOs" can shut up now.
Anyone who has worked in advanced R&D is aware that just knowing a huge amount of facts isn't of much use.
Thats a nice little consolation for your weakness. But you need to ask the question, how can one possess creativity? Of course creativity comes through from learning and understanding. People can only be creative when they know many things, and understand many concepts. And what is the key to knowing and understanding? It's your memory. If you don't have the good memory to learn and understand things, how can you be creative? Think about that!
I have been waiting for a long time to hear such thing! I don't understand how Americans cannot see such facts! The US future may become dark!
Hey guys! you know that there's a continent called South America????
You mixed up some unauthorised Israeli settlement crap from a few years ago with China and India so got the obvious garbage back out.
If you really think the Chinese or Indians governments today could get away with casually bulldozing houses full of children on a regular basis then you have a very broken world view. Mao is long dead and all the Chinese I know hated him more than you or I could imagine.
What does what you are writing have to do with anything I wrote above anyway?
US Navy ships don't complete cargo runs, but that's not my point. Because the US Navy controls all of the world's oceans, it can decide who trades with whom and how much. It can dictate the nature of international trade to the benefit of the US (or to the detriment of the US's enemies).
Control of the world's oceans was the key factor that gave the British Empire its status as the dominant world power from the early 1800s to the end of WWII, and the Royal Navy didn't even control all of the oceans in those days.
The article specifically mentioned "research", and brother, it takes research to come up with an "invisible" antiperspirant.
You are welcome on my lawn.
We're not any smarter, and those low end jobs are what built us.
Thank you. No mod points for me today, but if I had any you'd get one.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
and our conclusion is that in India too many people go into IT because it pays well
My conclusion is that your conclusion is true in any field. Medicine, law, engineering, writing, politics ... there are always more people that will enter a given field for financial security rather than because they're good at it and they love what they do. It can be tough to weed those types out, but good managers usually find a way.
99% of everything is crud. Unfortunately, that applies to people as well as the rest of the Universe.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The article specifically mentioned "research", and brother, it takes research to come up with an "invisible" antiperspirant.
Damn right, and when you're walking without any clothes on it really helps, let me tell you.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I don't remember ever using an antiperspirant that wasn't invisible. Calling the standard industry practice research is exactly what marketingspeak is.
That's been my experience as well, with some exceptions. We had 25 really cheap indians working on finding Y2K problems (back in 1999) and they were very methodical and poring through loads of code and didn't cost much. But, we wrote a program which did the same thing, more exactly and much more quickly. The company finally let the Indians go. In the software world, it's innovation that wins and Americans are pretty good at that.
This is a popular belief. There are plenty of past and active Indian researchers who have published and publish good papers, or Indian researchers in large companies who work on very innovative products. So, citation needed please for your beliefs.
All of my friends from China, Vietnam, and Japan have said pretty much the same thing as the GP. Eastern schools are all about rote memorization, and any "analysis" pretty much has to be exactly what the teacher told you to say. It goes back to the civil service exams that were implemented in China over 2k years ago. I doubt India follows the Confucian system, and while I do know several Indians, I've never discussed education in their home country with any of them, so I'm not going to comment on how things are done there.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
In fact very intelligent people are rare both in the West and China.
Very true. So it seems that the advantage goes to the one whose educational system is best designed to weed out the average people and find the best. Since China has more people, that means they have more intelligent people. And since China is not afraid to label them as such, and give them scholarships, China finds those people better. Those two items put them way ahead.
This article is from 2006. I promise you that things have not changed for the better but perhaps it will help you understand some of what's going on. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/3319656.html?page=1
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
The one ignored in the name of the drug war, among other things, by our court system?
The one that allowed humans to own other humans prior to ammendment?
Yeah, that thing is perfect. Let me worship it as you do.
Blar.