Ask Slashdot: Why Are American Tech Workers Paid So Well?

Slashdot reader davidwr is "an American-born, American-educated mid-career IT professional." But he's still curious about why American geeks earn more than their IT counterparts overseas: If I'm a mid-career programmer looking for a job, why should I expect to be paid a whole lot more than my peer in India when applying for a job that could easily be outsourced to India? If I do get the job, why should I expect to keep it more than a year or two instead of being told "your job is being outsourced" before 2020? Is my American education and 5-25 years of experience in the American workplace really worth it to an employer?

Should we, as an industry, lower our salary expectations -- and that of students entering the field -- to make us more competitive with our peers in India and similar "much cheaper labor than first world" economies? If not, what should we be doing to make ourselves competitive in ways that our peers overseas cannot duplicate?
What's the secret ingredient that justifies those higher salaries? Leave your answers in the comments. Why are American tech workers paid so well?

Comments

Difference in work product

[sigmabody]

Obviously this is not applicable to all tech workers, but...

In many cases, there's a fairly substantial difference in expectation of work product, both in terms of quality of work produced, and in ability to execute anything more than rote work. While it's true that those qualities may not matter for those organizations who choose to outsource tech labor, there can be a very quantifiable increase in product quality from workers who are more vested in and capable of producing a higher quality product, which can be translated into demand for higher compensation.

It's kinda the same as the difference between a certified general contractor, and a guy you pick up at Home Depot to do some work for you. You don't expect to pay the general contractor a small amount of cash under the table, and he doesn't have any need to make his rate "competitive", because he'll be able to find people willing to pay for a higher quality of skill, knowledge, and ultimately work product. There's a reason that most tech companies who outsource their high-skill labor to inexpensive countries don't stay competitive long...

That's my experience, anyway.

Re:We aren't paid well

[mattwarden]

Wages are not proportional to profit you generate. The profitability question is binary. If you generate profit above your cost, you may be employed. How much you are paid depends only on supply of labor and the demand for that labor.

Re: Supply and demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Forty to fifty years ago, Japan was known for making crappy products. Then they (among other things) revolutionized how cars were built and anything made in Detroit after 1980 or so looked like absolute crap compared to Japanese cars. Only in the last fifteen years or so have the American cars caught up.

India and China has been used largely as "hired hands" for crap work in dev/IT until recently so they didn't "own" the problem. As they become owners of the concept, solution, and problem, they will adapt and learn. As more of their devs have spent 36 hours straight getting a customer around a problem that someone in their organization created, they will push quality in to their work more and more or just go out of business.

Don't be too smug. The US is tiny in population compared to China and India and there is no indication that the random melting pot in the US is genetically better suited for producing quality products. Hence, the center of international development will move to China and India -- it's inevitable just by the numbers. Additionally, many Chinese and Indians kids are striving (at their parent's insistence) to excel and learn to work hard at a very early age to get good grades etc. just as American kids are increasingly being praised for being "special snowflakes" and "the best you you can be" and getting "participation awards" just for showing up. It won't end well for Americans in HW/SW dev or IT unless we wake up (I don't think we will).

Re: Supply and demand

[KermodeBear]

I've had good experiences with development teams from China, actually, but that's just one data point. India, however...

It's like the developers out of India simply don't care. Code quality, functionality, deadlines, figuring anything out on their own, the amount of hand-holding I've had to do is extremely frustrating. So, I spent some time one night searching the 'net and looking for information on how the schools work over there.

Turns out that many of the schools in India don't actually teach you much. Their courses are geared towards rote memorization and following instructions. If you want them to do A, and only A, with no changes, they can do A very, very well. Once you deviate from A, even just a bit, they won't know what to do.

They call it "mugging" over in India (and no, not mugging as in attacking someone and stealing their cash - I have no idea how the term came to be). You memorize. You don't deviate. You do not think for yourself. You do not understand a concept and come up with a solution; you only follow the solution that's been provided.

It really does seem to explain all of the issues I've ever had with IT workers out of India. There's limited capability for problem solving because they're not taught how to solve problems in a general sense, they're simply taught the solution to a specific set of problems. Give them a step by step set of instructions and it will be done - but then why not just automate?

In contrast, American schools push students to understand concepts first and then apply them to find a solution. We're trained to solve problems and to think. That seems to be the core difference.