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Microsoft Closing Two Phone Factories In China
randomErr writes: Microsoft is closing two factories in China by the end of March. About 9,000 people worked in these factories, and those jobs were cut a while back as part of the company's major restructuring after its Nokia purchase. Much of the equipment located in these factories from Beijing and the southeastern city of Dongguan is being shipped to Vietnam.
Just a year or so after the new Chinese president shuts down the rampant prostitution in the area, a move which made an estimated 100.000 girls unemployed.
I see what you are really after Microsoft production managers.
This shouldn't surprise anyone. If you commoditize your labor market (which means you are competing on price) you run the risk that someone else will offer a cheaper alternative. If you can't defend your position on price, you have to compete with some sort of other value add like offering skilled labor. If you can't do that, you've got a real problem.
At first I thought this was a story of Microsoft heralding a broadsword by bringing their interests home.
As it tuns out, even the repressed have it bad in the 'global economy'.
Here it is folks, the wealthy rule the earth.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It's likely a cost-play. If you build your economy on the concept of commoditized labor (where you are just competing with others on price rather than other value adds), you run this risk which is that others will offer that commodity cheaper. As China's living standards move up, the wages are moving with it and that is causing a problem for the Chinese leadership. They also have a massive real estate bubble that could wreck their own economy pretty badly and also have a pretty painful global impact.
I'm not on the Engineering team, and I don't make the Product decisions, so I'm not going to be of much help with your question. Yeah, the bugs probably should have been squashed before releasing -- but the Slashdot codebase is a monster, and there are a lot of edges cases among users, so I think the release is done under the "perfect is the enemy of good" philosophy. Hopefully we can get the big ones taken care of in short order.
This shows the danger of the Race To the Bottom concept.
US/European Manufacturing cannot have dirt cheap labor, but it still isn't dead. Western Manufacturing is value add manufacturing. While you may pay more per device, your device will have a lower refund rate, or more automation on the line, where product are more constantly completed.
However for the countries who are getting business from just being the cheapest, means once someone can be cheaper than you, then you are out of business, with a population of unskilled -semi-skilled workers out of work, and probably desperate (and that makes them dangerous) and a debt of an expensive infrastructure that hasn't been paid off yet.
Living in upstate NY, I have seen the effect of a manufacturing losses. Where in the 1970-1980's most jobs started to get shipped overseas, because they were cheaper, and the Pre-WWII buildings and infrastructure wasn't adequate. (We can discuss politics too... However that is still open to a lot of debate). Most towns economy was dependent on one large company once that company leaves the town dies. Because the old manufacturing was only about units out. That can be pushed anywhere. Now that US Manufacturing is slowly coming back, it is about more than cost per unit, but other factors as well... And these new manufacturing are no longer so vital to the economy, that the area can survive after it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Um, what?