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Fury and Fear In Ohio As IT Jobs Go To India (computerworld.com)
ErichTheRed writes: A company called Cengage Learning now joins the Toys 'R Us, Disney and Southern California Edison IT offshoring club. Apparently, even IT workers in low-cost parts of the country are too expensive and their work is being sent to Cognizant, one of the largest H-1B visa users. As a final insult, the article describes a pretty humiliating termination process was used. Is it time to think about a professional organization before IT goes the way of manufacturing?
If by that, you mean "union", then I doubt it. You'd never get enough support from the folks that are still getting paid very well (like me, who lives in Ohio), and aren't being outsourced. There's no business case to do that for anything but level 0 and 1 helpdesk jobs, and not even all of those.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
any more successful than unions at "saving American jobs"?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
If a "professional organization" means some sort of stupid union, then no. Unions did not prevent outsourcing of US jobs, and cannot. The reality is, if you want substandard work on the cheap, you're always going to get that in India. As my boss says of our products, "(software) products without revenue are built in India, products that make money are built in the US".
We do all the design work in the US, because our 250+ Indian counterparts cannot design anything correctly. They code by trial and error. You'll never have a best-in-class product that way. We just give them menial coding tasks, and even then 1 US engineer is as productive as 3 in India.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Our politicians don't care about the American worker. Our corporations and their willing yes-men lackeys don't care about the American worker.
But the American worker cares about the American worker, and together our shared interests can at least give us a "bargaining stick." Of course we need to be ready to swing the stick if need be to show that it's a real stick and all.
Holy tracking link Batman! Try this one instead:
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3002681/it-outsourcing/fury-and-fear-in-ohio-as-it-jobs-go-to-india.html
A better choice would be to cut the h1b program and start an immediate investigation of the companies involved. But what will happen instead is an expansion and our political class looking the other way.
You mean "union"? No, thanks. I can take care of myself. I don't need someone to hold my hand.
Not yet ... give it time.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
> I don't need someone to hold my hand.
Yes you do, actually.
Free markets work by encouraging competition. It makes no sense for companies to pay exuberant salaries to U.S. workers when similar results can be had for far less by outsourcing to countries whose citizens expect a standard of living far more meager than Americans. The Prophets promise to trickle upon those who worship at their alters.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
...you say until your job is off-shored, and you can't find another one because they've all been off-shored too.
Professional organization doesn't mean union. It means lobby group. Less focussed on helping individuals with their specific conditions and pay - no direct contact with an employer - but focussed on highlighting the issues, raising awareness of the benefits of a good, strong, local IT workforce, and playing the campaign donation game.
How many of them drive cars with foreign name plates? I have a friend who lost his job to someone from India a couple years ago. While we sat at his kitchen table I looked out his front windows at the two Toyota Prii that sat there. I was too polite to say anything.
I don't want to downplay the issue. But... market forces and cheap labor. There are a WHOLE lot of Americans in Vietnam, Korea, China, and South Africa tooling up their auto plants and teaching them to be competitive. Welcome to the real world. H1-B Visas are a red herring, and the sooner IT folks realize it, the better. The bigger problem is all the jobs that are going overseas - but there isn't a fix to that.
Those unions worked great for manufacturing and prevented having those jobs go overseas, didn't they.
A friend of mine who can't get recruiters to leave him alone tells me he makes a point to study weekly, constantly learning. Anyone who is concerned about the level of outsourcing and illegal H1-B usage might keep that in mind.
Will be sealed with the advent of better systems and automation technologies. Most of the jobs that go to India are menial tasks which require no or very little skill .The core stuff still happens in the west. There are extremely few kernel programmers in India. So think these layoffs as having been replaced by a robot.
If you are an American, with all the benefits that citizenship entails - education, infrastructure, living conditions, security, stable government, rule of law, material and spiritual abundance - that make you the envy of the rest of the planet... why the hell can you not compete with third-world peasants, struggling against oppressive governments, scarcity of resources, illiterate parents, crime and pollution?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I already see the posts coming in saying "No union for me, thanks, I can take care of myself." I honestly used to think that, back when companies were only outsourcing routine tasks and qualified people were still being treated well everywhere. All I can say is, just wait until you're 40 or end up at one of these places offshoring their entire IT department. I am incredibly lucky and (for now) have a great senior-level position doing systems engineering work. However, between age discrimination, the loss of entry-level work, and the relentless drive to offshore anything that costs real money, we run the risk of driving talented people away from IT.
Here's my idea -- form a profession similar to the one engineers have and a related trade guild, not a traditional labor union. Unions will never fly with the Libertarian, lone wolf, I'm-better-than-everyone-in-my-field crowd. It would have to be structured around the professional licensure model, like the AMA. The AMA and related organizations keep doctors employed and making serious money. How do they do this?
- Limiting labor supply by not allowing new medical school slots to be opened
- Paying for laws their members need passed, such as forcing recent health care reform to rely on the insurance model that keeps their reimbursement rates high
- Ensuring quality of profession members by licensing new medical school grads, and training them through residency and fellowship programs
- Requiring continuing education
I would say the biggest benefit to members of the profession would be standardizing basic education. I'm not talking about handing Microsoft or Oracle or Google the reins, I'm talking about making sure people understand the fundamentals of IT and development, not just how to feed code into the magic black box. This would mean evil tradesy things like apprenticeships and OJT for new members, but it would ensure that we wouldn't get the typical MCSE bootcamp or coder academy graduates who only know one way to solve a problem.
The first step beyond getting people to agree would be to basically do what the other professional organizations do -- take up a collection and pay for laws to be passed limiting the ability to offshore work. It's time we admit that the only way to get anything passed in Congress is to pay for it, and lobbyists are the equivalent of handing lawmakers paper bags of money.
To make this fair to employers, they would need to get something too. I would say the best approach would be to promise no union style work rules would be enforced, while quality would be maintained by self-regulation. I think it's horrible that someone can screw up a job so badly they get fired, then just clean up their resume and get another job without any repercussion -- and I've seen this happen many times. If companies could be assured that their job would get done without the need to bring it back onshore to clean it up at consulting rates, they'd be open to this possibility.
No 'professional organization' is going to stop free market forces. Many have tried, all fail eventually. What you're up against is labor arbitrage, brought about by the globalization of the workforce. It first started in blue-collar professions; with advances in technology it has moved to knowledge work as well. Instead of thinking about India being some distant country think of it like the business next door, competing for the business that your employer provides. Why would a customer pay 3x for your employer's output than they would the Indian company? Do you think passing a law that prevents the business next to yours from competing would ever work?
us citizens are the most overworked people. They have long days, work a lot, low wages and very good 'value for the money'. But you americans buy all the US corporate propaganda and sell out your rights because maybe you'll be the one getting rich by a fluke chance somewhere in the future. Egoism, everyone for themselves results in this.
The funniest thing is that taxes are pretty high in the USA, but instead of producing services and regulations helping citizens, it ends up in social services for corporations and deregulation of corporate america and laws that denies rights to citizens.
If no one in the US has a good job to earn money to buy things with, how is anyone in America going to "consume" anything?
No jobs, no money in consumers hands, no demand.
What "rest of the economy" is left after all the good jobs have gone overseas?
--PM
Nonsense. It isn't a company behaving rationally. It's executives who know that making the company bottom line look better for a few quarters means big bonuses. They can then move on with a great story about how the great job they did before the company crashes and burns.
No they make it too easy and cheap to source non american employees. American workers laws and protections are laughable at best and mostly non-existent.
Fine, as long as all C-level pay is drastically cut as well. Unless you truly think most CEOs are dozens to thousands of times more productive than a lowly employee to be getting their hugely inflated salaries.
Sorry, but it's not being greedy to actually want non-stagnant wages when CEOs are making record salaries.
Except this is bullshit. Consumers only benefit from reduced prices to a point because they have to be able to afford fixed costs such as insurance, food, and rent. Fixed costs that have skyrocketed in recent years. An iPhone being 20$ less means nothing to a family that may have 100$ a month in discretionary income after taxes.
The healthiest economies in the world are the ones that rigorously maintain the middle class because the amount of money in the global economy means precisely dick after people's fixed costs are being met. What matters most to the economy is that money is able to freely flow through as many people as possible because when money changes hands value is created. This isn't about a few hundred thousand jobs. This is about entire communities being impacted because the buying power of the average american is being undermined by cost cutting measures, and as more and more people approach their discretionary income margins the more the economy suffers as there is less capital for luxuries and investment in new technologies.
It is simply stupid to suggest that the economy losing middle class jobs is somehow a benefit.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
"Better would be to blame idiot politicians that make stupid rules"
Companies work really hard at making sure those idiot politicians get elected and quite often also write the legislation for them.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
They moved all of these IT jobs to Cognizant, which is a company made up almost entirely of H1bs. Cognizant is blatantly in violation of the H1b laws, and if they are taken down, as they should be, all of the companies that are depending on Cognizant for outsourced labor will be up a creek without a paddle.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I don't know what the situation was like at that company in particular.
But having worked for and with a few large companies, it's not that hard to imagine why they were offshored - the article mentions the company "needed a more flexible staffing model that could better serve the cyclical nature of our business". I'm pretty sure from seeing other IT departments in action, that they in fact could not handle bursting kinds of workload, nor a cyclical business that ebbed and flowed to a large degree. IT departments are typically extremely rigid, and scared of even the smallest change.
IT as a role in a company must evolve or die off altogether. It must change to a form that truly helps a business instead of shackling it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Doctor and Lawyer salaries are through the roof because those are two of very few jobs that can not be outsourced to a third world country. If Blue Cross could ship you to Haiti for a 40c an hour doctor you don't think they would?
Welcome to the "Global Economy". You have heard all about it I'm sure, and how great it is. A real Utopia where everyone benefits. Assuming of course you are already extremely wealthy, because the rest of the people are expendable. As long as a company can stay afloat using dirt cheap labor, they will. Zuckerberg won the lottery, nothing more. That is your shot to getting out of the cesspool we are creating by complacently watching the government be run by the same people profiteering.
History is cyclical, we have seen this all before. The same result will come eventually, because people never learn to learn from history.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Shipping costs and more control drive automation in US manufacturing.
We need to look at cutting full time to 32 hours a week to start with a slow slide down to say 20 from that. Just to make automation fit in better while softening the blow of people going on welfare / disability. Also need some kind of basic income system to replace disability / welfare / etc.
Now there is some abuse of disability / welfare but some times the system penalizes work in a way that people are better off not working. Or in other cases the cost of getting to work does not really cover what they make there.
The world isn't binary.
There are middle grounds between corporate capitalism and communism.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
> Secondly, they will chase you regardless of your qualifications because they are paid on commission. Third, they are not your friend.
They get paid their commission if and when they provide the best candidate, the one who gets hired. Twice, a call from a recruiter has resulted in a job offer that doubled my take-home pay - that's pretty friendly in my book. Of course my experience may be different from yours because as I said I make it a point to study my field weekly, not to bitch and moan about "the evil HR departments" who won't recommend me for an interview.
You can continue to complain because people as people continue to not hire you, or you can do something different; your choice.
It's funny how executive jobs are don' seem to be off shored.. I would think a CEO from India would be cheaper for the company.
The company usually blackmails the employee by threatening to withhold benefits, such as severance. This is exactly what should be illegal.
We need to look at cutting full time to 32 hours a week
France has a 35 hour work week and an unemployment rate that is double that of the U.S, and also France has a lower labor force participation rate overall (by about 10%).
The above scenario will never happen, because there will always be someone making a lot of money
The point being that the jobs that got outsourced are jobs that are no longer creating enough added value to keep them inside a high-wage location, such as Ohio, USA
Even at Silicon Valley there are jobs that have been outsourced, but if we examine what kind of jobs that had been outsourced and which jobs still remain we will find that the jobs still remain (and are still being created) in America are jobs that are heavy on the side of creativity
Data entry jobs, even some of those so-called 'programming' jobs have become so routine it no longer makes any sense to employ people doing this low-value jobs in America
In other words, if you are Americans and still want to work in America, find yourself a niche, a niche which add a lot of value to what you do, a niche that no one outside of America can easily duplicate, and you will get to enjoy your job as long as what you do creates more money to your employer than what they pay you every month
You guys may not like what I am saying, but we need to face the reality somehow --- this world's competitiveness has heat up tremendously. USA and Europe are no longer the only places in the world where innovations happen
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I don't give a damn about India. They can handle their own problems. If history is my guide, they'll handle them badly because lying, cheating, and resume inflating don't work on overpopulation and infrastructure problems the same way they do on American executives who are also liars and cheaters.
No, we want tax policies and tariffs that make offshoring unprofitable. One of the very first thing the founders of this nation did was engage in protectionist trade policies because they knew that having industry wad important for this country. When George Washington found out he'd been elected President he sent away to what at the time was the only fine clothing maker in the country for a new suit. You see, the British forbade the colonists from having such things because they knew that industry wad important for their nation too.
Washington wanted to send a message. It's one that's apparently lost on herp derps like you who like to yell 'communism' every time somebody purposes not letting companies do whatever they want.
The founders trade policies served this nation well all the way up until we were stupid enough to elect Ronald Reagan, an act which coincides precisely with the decline of the middle class and wages across the board. Since then we've engaged in these stupid globalist 'free trade' policies that have all but destroyed the economic power of most of the nation.
It's time to return to what works, and this free trade crap doesn't work in any way that actually matters.
As a manager I can assure you we're no more organised than the rest of the world.
You certainly look like a bunch of organs to me.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Most professional Americans have a total combined (embedded direct tax) load of over 60% - good luck trying to compete against Indians in that kind of regime. An IT-focused lobbying group is not going to be tackling the correct issues; protectionism cannot effectively compete against market pricing forces.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Surprising that this is the only post to address the issue of H1B. It's a central part of this story. The issue is not the existence of India. The issue is government policy regarding immigration in the IT sector.
Duh! We don't have a trickle-down or trickle-up economy anymore; either one would be preferred to the "trickle-out" that we have now as it least moves money in the system. No, our nation is (and has been for quite some time now) been hemorrhaging wealth overseas. Meanwhile, our national debt is growing at warp speeds and when it finally crashes, the nation, "the union" as you know it dissolves. And as for China and everyone else, they can all go fuck themselves as there won't be an dollars to collect on!
Life is not for the lazy.
I have a couple friends who are in big unions... One works for a huge auto plant... the other is in construction.
Both of these guys are constantly being forced to work overtime they dont want to... and rarely get weekends off. Well except for when they get laid off for 3 or 4 months at a stretch.
If you want to get really good at scamming the unemployment system.. go to work for a union. You'll get to know all the latest tricks on how to maximize your unemployment benefits. And then next month youll be back to those 80 hour work weeks you love so much.
I cant put my finger on when, but at some point the unions stopped giving fucks about their members.
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/15/08/18/029216/trump-targets-the-abuse-of-h-1b-visas
Microsoft: Satya Nadella
So it begins...
It's funny how after 20 years of us "IT guys" obliterating entire industries, destroying millions of jobs (and no, no new job is created when the a software replaces a department) now that we are the victim of the same thing (efficiency) we cry out loud like crazy. This is what happens, unfortunately. At some point everything will be a commodity, and the only real value will be the people with real business instincts to make the right decision for the company. Even software development that right now is considered highly creative and safe, yes, it may be, but can also be done from anywhere in the world you have a connection. The only value in the future of software development will be the people who will be able to come up with software that sells. Once they have the idea, there are thousands of technologies, frameworks, pre-made libraries that can help with that. Even now, I am working with a framework and libraries for functionalities that 2 years ago I would have needed to write myself. Now it's all done I just have to execute them. What I could bill 60 hours in the past, I now finish in 10. Yes, it's more efficient, it's also cheaper. Today all I have to do is to come up with an idea, I can probably execute it incredibly fast and cheap with no employees. Is that good, is that bad?
If you're not sure who Cengage is, they're one of the the companies that charges $300 for a college Intro Physics textbook and then locks half the content and all the problems behind a website that requires a one-time-use registration card, so that used textbooks are worthless.
Wonder what Trump and Carly think? If Carly opposes it, she'd have to explain why she presumably supported it while in HP. The Don has said that he's for all immigration that's done legally! Just b'cos he's fond of the wall and wants to end illegal immigration doesn't imply that's he's opposed to legal immigration as well
Dr Ben has talked about the need to get the entire US population productive to match the likes of India & China. Would like to see his proposals