Why do companies do this sort of thing with their products? It would seem to me that having the interface to a particular chip would not be particularly helpful to designing a competitor
Knowing what capabilities your competitors' chips have can be extremely valuable. While your example of drawing a blue square is not particularly interesting, the implementation details of advanced 3d acceleration features might be.
The second reason is support. No matter how many times the manufacturer says that they won't provide support, there will always be some doofi (plural of "doofus") that call them up and demand that someone in engineering help them debug their software.
If Trident sees a dramatic downturn in sales because of the lack of Linux/*BSD support, then they might change their policy. I would not hold my breath waiting for that. Linux/*BSD is probably not even a blip on Trident's sales forecasts.
There are some instances of designers incorrectly implementing auto-termination schemes, and bus widths, but all in all, a good designer can get it right.
"Can" is the key word. What is a consumer to do, even a very technically savvy one, when he purchases a SCSI controller and discovers, after weeks of fighting with it, that the designer was not "a good designer"? What does he do when he buys an external chain of SCSI devices (scanner, tape drive, CD cutter, etc.), hooks everything up properly, and it either does not work or is unreliable? That's the dilemma faced by many and I think that it drove people to IDE and caused the price desparity that now exists (there used to be little difference in the price of SCSI and IDE hard drives).
1. They have been a marketing scheme. Rather than sell the devices at fair prices, the vendors have tried to sell the devices at or below cost in the hopes of making a bundle on overpriced, proprietary ISP contracts. Netpliance is the worst example in this arena.
1a. You can't sell them at a profit because they cost $400 or so to manufacture. What little-old-computer-phobic-lady is going to plunk down $600 or more for something that she doesn't really understand or know if she needs?
2. The vendors try to peddle them to people that are put-off by computers. So how do they do this? By selling them in the computer sections of Circuit City, Best Buy, etc. Yeah, that's where I expect to find computer-phobic older people shopping.
3. The computer-illiterate audience to which Internet appliances appeal means that a vendor is looking at tremendously high support costs. Sure, they dumbed down the OS, but it's still a completely mysterious thing to many older users. "Your machine broke my telephone! People call me and get a busy signal I'm not talking to anyone..."
4. Their proprietary OSs and browsers have just about guaranteed that they would perpetually be playing catch-up. Try running a copy of Netscape 1.0 and surf to some modern websites. It's basically useless. Sony was smart enough to recognize that, without active development, BeIA would be just as worthless in a few years. I think that it's unlikely that QNX (the other major player in the Internet Appliance OS market) is going to have the development budget to keep up with Apple, Realplayer, Macromedia, Microsoft, etc. when it comes to releasing browser plug-ins. Thus, many web pages will not work on these devices.
5. There is no growth path. None of the Internet appliance manufacturers have offered hard drives, word processing, spreadhsheet software, etc. for users that want to move beyond e-mail and the web. This makes many computer-savvy people hesitant to recommend these devices to family and friends.
I think that this should be about the final chapter in the history of the proprietary Internet appliance.
What's so difficult about termination anyway? Terminate both ends of the bus, nothing else.
If only it was that simple... Some controllers and devices are incredibly picky about the quality of the termination, refusing to work reliably with anything but the best quality active termination. Then you have SCSI devices of varying bus widths and you have to terminate on half of the data bus or the other. Asus made the P2B-S motherboard with built-in SCSI and it was nigh on impossible to determine how it worked. You could toggle termination in the driver and it seemed to have no effect. Automatic termination, despite being listed, apparently did not work. You could toggle the low byte single-ended termination on and off at the motherboard but there was no way to turn off the high byte termination. The list went on and on. FAQs were developed by people who tried to reverse-engineer the board. It was a mess.
Frankly, I think that termination problems with SCSI has had more to do with its demise in high-end consumer PCs than any other factor.
Bravo for you clever, witty, and well-crafted insult. Rob Malda must have been cut to the bone to discover that you, an Anonymous Coward, felt that way about him. You, sir, are a wit not to be underestimated.
Lastly I must say, if you don't love programming and you are already 40, its time to find something you DO love before too much more of your life passes you by.
Do you have any idea of how difficult it is to get an acting job in porn movies when you are 40?;-)
But seriously, I like programming and computer hardware. I don't "love" it though and I doubt that I'm going to find a job that I love. I'm pretty happy in my chosen field and don't want to change careers.
I submit that the field is anything but level. Try to find a $150/month apartment in the United States. The cost of living in other countries makes $1,000 U.S. per month really attractive. In the U.S., you would be homeless if that's what you earned. It's simply not possible to compete on a wage basis with someone that can feed, clothe, and shelter his family with a $6/hour job.
We have government-mandated regulations that cover everything from airbags in cars to USDA food safety standards to strict building codes. All of that improves our safety and standard of living, but it also drives up the cost of goods and services. That's why I believe that companies that use foreign labor should pay a fee (tax, tariff, or whatever term suits) to bring their labor costs into line with U.S. costs. You can't expect U.S. citizens to compete on a cost basis with countries where the standards of living are far below our own.
What I despise is the belief that it is right and proper to attempt to influence government to force other people to do things that benefit you, when they've used no force against you.
But it's government legislation that is largely to blame for the cost of living in the U.S. How am I supposed to compete for a job with someone who pays $150/month for rent, $50 per month for food, and has a Lada (car) that he bought used for $350?
If you don't like tariffs, let's look at what can be done to level the playing field by cutting back on regulations.
The U.S. could eliminate pollution regulations. Those drive up the cost of cars, trucks, vans, and consumer goods (due to both increased manufacturing and transportation costs).
We could eliminate 5mph bumpers.
We could get rid of safety inspections on vehicles.
Roads could be maintained to the same level that they are in third world countries, reducing taxes spent on maintenance.
We could relax building codes so that they were in line with third world countries. That would significantly reduce the cost of housing and office space.
We could eliminate the minimum wage. This would reduce the costs for fast-food, janitorial services, and goods produced by low-skill workers.
We could relax or eliminate health regulations as related to food, drinking water, and medicines.
...
Great! We can turn the U.S. into a third-world country and then we can be labor cost competitive with war-ravaged countries full of starving people.
We are a lot better off telling some multi-millionaire CEO that he will have to hire American workers and make up for it by purchasing a yacht that's "only" 50 feet long instead of the 67 foot yacht he had his eye on. You can come back and cry on my shoulder when Microsoft, Lotus, Borland, and the other software manufacturers have been forced to cut back to the point that their CEOs make less than a million dollars per year. Until then, they can afford to pay American software engineers to produce their products.
Anyway almost everyone in any job thinks they are worth more than they are getting paid.
I do not think that I am worth more than I am getting paid. I think that I am being paid fairly -- which I guess completely shoots down your claim. But I'm worth a lot more than the $60K/year figure that the other person mentioned.
So you want the government to subsidize your industry so you can continue to have a "comfortable" salary? Instead of standing on your own two feet you want a government handout in the form of a tariff in your favor?
Put it a different way: Do I want to play "let's see who starves first" with someone who lives in a rented apartment the size of my kitchen? Hell no. I want a level playing field. If my house costs me $1700 per month for the mortgage, I don't want to compete with some guy living in a $150 per month apartment that would be condemned in the U.S.
No I mean find another way to make the amount of money you need other than from your day job. If you love programming to the extent you don't want to leave it even when it can't support you anymore you'll need to find something on the side to keep you afloat.
You are on drugs. I don't "love programming." I'm a 40 year old man and it's where my training and skills are. Listen to yourself. You are telling people who program to take second jobs just so a bunch of greedy business owners can line their pockets by paying low wages to overseas programmers.
Either the "sweatshop" is the best option availble for the employees or it is not.
That's always the rationalization given for sweatshops. Just because someone has no other option does not mean that the wages and working conditions are fair or should be tolerated under the law.
Just because it is not a pittance to the local workers does not mean that it is a fair wage. It is a pittance relative to what the company would pay for American workers who are not desparate for employment. Companies should not be scouring the globe for the most economically disadvantaged workers so that they can avoid paying them much money (from the company's viewpoint of "much").
You and Cathie Lee Gifford would get along well.
Or is it that you believe that the workers in question are special because they are "American"? Frankly, who cares? Are they more worthy of consideration because they happened to be born in an American hospital? Why?
Yes, they are more worthy of consideration because of their nationality. That's called "patriotism". If you are really so far out of step with reality that you don't understand patriotism, there is little that I can do to enlighten you.
hire American programmers at some inflated wage.
How dare you call the wages "inflated"? Compare those wages to the wages paid to lawyers, doctors, CEOs, and other professionals. What makes the wages earned by programmers "inflated"? Programming takes intelligence, education, and a constant investment of time and money to keep ones skills current.
Why should some programers that are half ass get paid 60K when you can get top coders for 1/3 of the price.
Because you, as an American, feel a responsibility to your countrymen. Because you are patriotic and would rather see an American getting a decent wage than to see American jobs go overseas.
Yeah, right. Like you are motivated by anything other than greed.
But if you are only paying $60K for a U.S. citizen who's a programmer, it's no wonder he's "half ass." The going rate for good programmers is way over that figure in most parts of the U.S.
Since you feel so comfortable telling us how much we (software engineers) should make, tell us how much you make.
By the way, if you despise me for wanting to be able to provide a good living for myself and my family, that's okay. I'd much rather have a decent standard of living than your approval.
Well free trade works both ways. Like it or not you have to compete with programmers all over the world.
Where did you get the idea that we had "free trade"? Have you ever examined the import tariffs on foreign goods? Try checking out this web page and maybe you'll have a better understanding of our "free trade" policies.
You can try to fight it all you want. It didn't work for the 80's auto-workers and it won't work for you.
There are many auto-workers employed in the U.S. Many foreign manufacturers, including Honda and Nissan, now have plants here that employ U.S. auto-workers. The reason for this is import tariffs on foreign cars and components made it more attractive to pay Americans a good wage than to pay a lower wage to foreign workers. And Japan has horrendous tariffs on American goods, so please don't portray America as the big bully in all of this.
Adapt and survive, adapt or die.
So by "adapt", do you mean "lower your standard of living, take a demeaningly low wage, and accept that it's too late for you to change professions"?
If Microsoft decided to use Russian programmers, and the government enforced some economic penalty on them for it, do you think it would be difficult for them to relocate to Canada or Mexico (or Russia, for that matter)? Unlike companies that make "real" goods, software companies can relocate very easily, and in history even companies that produced "real" goods relocated to avoid such sanctions (which is the driving force behind Ford (or GM, I don't recall which) building most of its engines in Brazil).
By putting tariffs in place on imported software, you could take away the economic incentive for software companies to move operations to other countries. The idea is to make it an economic wash to move jobs out of the country. You don't want there to be some kind of tremendous financial reward for employing foreign labor over American labor.
We have import tariffs on many goods and it's not destroying us. There is not the free trade that so many would believe.
Why do you think that GM, Chrysler, and Ford aren't all having their cars produced at a fraction of the cost overseas? One reason is that there are protective tariffs in place.
What is despicable is your belief that American companies should be allowed to pay a pittance to foreign workers while leaving American workers hanging out to dry. You remind me of the sweatshop owners all over the world that argue that they should be allowed to exploit poor workers in impoverished countries "for their own good."
So should Russian companies operating in the US be forced to pay Russian wages?
Companies should pay fair wages for the country they operate in. Would you like to lose your job because your company discovered that they could pay Pakistani programmers a fraction of what you earn? Of course you would not.
The US is already the richest country in the world with the richest population by far, and it's engineers are among the very top of professions in it in terms of pay. Still that is not enough. You only want more.
No, I just want to keep it that way. I don't want my wages to be slashed because of U.S. companies hiring overseas workers for a fraction of what I make. Why is my desire to maintain my standard of living so hard to comprehend?
If the U.S. government forces U.S. companies to use U.S. talent only, they're going to have to charge more for the finished product.
The products sold by Plesk are priced at what the U.S. economy will bear, not at the measly sum that they pay their engineers.
Firstly, to compare apples to apples (we'll use year 2000-value apples), you'd have to say, "you have to work 55 hours per week for $134,000 a year in purchasing power, or we'll give this job to some guy in Kiev" which is the equivalent earning power.
The purchasing power in Kiev is irrelevent. Corporations do not care about the cost of living here or overseas. Their sole concern appears to be the cost of labor. They aren't about to pay me $134,000 to do the same job that some guy in Kiev would do for $12,000.
What will end up happening is that prices for good programmers outside the U.S. will rise as local demand exceeds local supply.
Let's not oversimplify. The following will also happen:
1. More people in those countries will start majoring in computer science, increasing the labor pool.
2. Software engineers in the U.S., displaced by overseas competition, will start taking jobs at lower wages, driving down the standard of living here.
3. As the wages for software engineering jobs in the U.S. go down, fewer U.S. citizens will major in computer science.
The end result will be that there will be a world-wage for software engineers -- minus the minor costs associated with telecommuting inefficiencies. Poor countries will see their wages increase while those living in wealthy countries like the U.S. will see their pay slashed.
While economic isolationism does not work for commodity goods like textiles and grains, it can work very well for software. The vast majority of software is purchased by "first world" companies and individuals. If, for example, Microsoft discovered that they could cut their engineering expenses in half by hiring Russian programmers, it is highly unlikely that the price of Office would drop. Bill Gates and the other Microsoft executives would just pocket a higher percentage of each sale.
Software is a vast sea of mini-monopolies. It doesn't matter that Software 602, StarOffice, WordPerfect Office and other office suites exist. Even though some of them are totally free, Microsoft still enjoys the highest user base with its expensive Office product and that's largely unaffected by price. Believing that S/W engineering costs savings will drive the price down is naive.
If we don't take action, we will find that our standard of living will plummet -- excluding those of us who are corporate executives -- as the world economy sets a price for software engineering.
I am crushed. I live for the approval of illiterate, anonymous cowards on Slashdot.
O wait, you have one, making fun of people that enjoy what they like to do.
I also like making fun of people that dislike doing what they like to do. And let's not forget making fun of those who enjoy doing what they dislike doing.
Who the hell are you to judge what people like to do and how they do it.
I'm someone qualified to do it in this case. I understand RF emissions, PC hardware, and the legislative process. It doesn't take a genius to see that pollution, whether automotive exhaust, noise, or RF, invariably leads to restrictive regulations. When someone else's "hobby" looks like it may lead to restrictive laws that will limit my ability to enjoy my hobby, it becomes my business.
You sound pissed those jobs didn't go to US programmers/enginners... Well, get a look around you. US is not the centre of the universe, there are qualified people outside...
You are absolutely right on both counts. I am pissed that the jobs did not go to U.S. programmers and engineers and, yes, of course there are qualified people outside of the United States. So why should a U.S. company not pay them a U.S. wage? I would have no complaint if all of the H1B and foreign national workers were paid on the same scale as U.S. workers. Instead, it's just a ploy so that companies can keep costs down by hiring from economically deprived countries.
Why should I be happy when 60 jobs in my area are unavailable to me because the firm has decided to only hire young, Russian, male programmers for slave wages?
The only winners in a system like that are the bigwigs that own the company. They probably drive around in BMWs and Mercedes while paying the people doing the work under $6/hour.
I'm sick of the fools on here claiming that this company should be praised for paying about 1/8th of the going U.S. rate for software engineers. The people running Plesk are simply a bunch of greedy f**ks who are making out like bandits by taking advantage of the poor standard of living in Russia while selling products at a high price to U.S. companies.
It's companies like the one mentioned in the article that make me think that we need more, not fewer, labor laws. There is something wrong when a "U.S. company" can actively discriminate against Americans in its hiring practices (how many of those jobs were offered to U.S. citizens?) while circumventing OSHA, FLSA, and other labor regulations. The U.S. needs to make U.S. firms hire U.S. workers or pay a stiff penalty so that there is no monetary incentive to engage in the practice described in the article.
How would you like to go to a job interview and be told "you have to work 55 hours per week for $12,000 per year or we'll give this job to some guy in Kiev"? Sure, it's annoying if it occurs once, but what happens if the majority of high-tech firms start doing this to "remain competitive"?
If we stick with IPv4, the argument will be made that we are running out of IP address space. Residential Internet connections will switch over to NAT or PPPOE "to conserve valuable IP address space." When that occurs, it will break just about everything from peer-to-peer networking to home FTP and web servers.
So who would be in favor of that? Just the RIAA, MPAA, SPA (Software Publishers' Association), BSA (Business Software Alliance), and every other organization that believes that elimination of peer-to-peer and residential FTP and web servers would reduce piracy. ISPs would love it because servers on residential connections sometimes use an inordinate amount of bandwidth. Law enforcement would be happy because ISPs would have to process the packets, meaning that they had an easy way to monitor which user connected to which IP addresses. And ISPs could more easily perform content filtering if, say, Adobe's lawyers wrote a letter and said "IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx has a downloadable program that decrypts our e-books. Please assure that your users cannot access that IP address."
So this takes a chunk out of the proprietary Unix market, sure, but if we were to consider this a Zero Sum game, Unix loses, Linux gains, Microsoft doesn't change a thing.
This definitely changes things. No one with a three-digit IQ would ever claim that Solaris, for example, is not robust enough for commercial work. Even Microsoft, in all of its arrogance, has not said that (though they have tried to proclaim that NT was superior). But there have been many naysayers when it comes to Linux as a viable option for commercial deployment.
If this is successful, it will show that Microsoft's portrayal of Linux as a toy for geeks was both unfounded and unfair. If the NYSE relies on Linux, the pro-Microsoft factions in corporate IS departments will be unable to make convincing arguments that Linux poses a threat to network security or stability. It will show beyond any reasonable doubt that Linux scales, implements robust security, and can be deployed and maintained in a demanding environment.
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Why do companies do this sort of thing with their products? It would seem to me that having the interface to a particular chip would not be particularly helpful to designing a competitor
Knowing what capabilities your competitors' chips have can be extremely valuable. While your example of drawing a blue square is not particularly interesting, the implementation details of advanced 3d acceleration features might be.
The second reason is support. No matter how many times the manufacturer says that they won't provide support, there will always be some doofi (plural of "doofus") that call them up and demand that someone in engineering help them debug their software.
If Trident sees a dramatic downturn in sales because of the lack of Linux/*BSD support, then they might change their policy. I would not hold my breath waiting for that. Linux/*BSD is probably not even a blip on Trident's sales forecasts.
There are some instances of designers incorrectly implementing auto-termination schemes, and bus widths, but all in all, a good designer can get it right.
"Can" is the key word. What is a consumer to do, even a very technically savvy one, when he purchases a SCSI controller and discovers, after weeks of fighting with it, that the designer was not "a good designer"? What does he do when he buys an external chain of SCSI devices (scanner, tape drive, CD cutter, etc.), hooks everything up properly, and it either does not work or is unreliable? That's the dilemma faced by many and I think that it drove people to IDE and caused the price desparity that now exists (there used to be little difference in the price of SCSI and IDE hard drives).
Web appliances are wrong on so many counts.
1. They have been a marketing scheme. Rather than sell the devices at fair prices, the vendors have tried to sell the devices at or below cost in the hopes of making a bundle on overpriced, proprietary ISP contracts. Netpliance is the worst example in this arena.
1a. You can't sell them at a profit because they cost $400 or so to manufacture. What little-old-computer-phobic-lady is going to plunk down $600 or more for something that she doesn't really understand or know if she needs?
2. The vendors try to peddle them to people that are put-off by computers. So how do they do this? By selling them in the computer sections of Circuit City, Best Buy, etc. Yeah, that's where I expect to find computer-phobic older people shopping.
3. The computer-illiterate audience to which Internet appliances appeal means that a vendor is looking at tremendously high support costs. Sure, they dumbed down the OS, but it's still a completely mysterious thing to many older users. "Your machine broke my telephone! People call me and get a busy signal I'm not talking to anyone..."
4. Their proprietary OSs and browsers have just about guaranteed that they would perpetually be playing catch-up. Try running a copy of Netscape 1.0 and surf to some modern websites. It's basically useless. Sony was smart enough to recognize that, without active development, BeIA would be just as worthless in a few years. I think that it's unlikely that QNX (the other major player in the Internet Appliance OS market) is going to have the development budget to keep up with Apple, Realplayer, Macromedia, Microsoft, etc. when it comes to releasing browser plug-ins. Thus, many web pages will not work on these devices.
5. There is no growth path. None of the Internet appliance manufacturers have offered hard drives, word processing, spreadhsheet software, etc. for users that want to move beyond e-mail and the web. This makes many computer-savvy people hesitant to recommend these devices to family and friends.
I think that this should be about the final chapter in the history of the proprietary Internet appliance.
What's so difficult about termination anyway? Terminate both ends of the bus, nothing else.
If only it was that simple... Some controllers and devices are incredibly picky about the quality of the termination, refusing to work reliably with anything but the best quality active termination. Then you have SCSI devices of varying bus widths and you have to terminate on half of the data bus or the other. Asus made the P2B-S motherboard with built-in SCSI and it was nigh on impossible to determine how it worked. You could toggle termination in the driver and it seemed to have no effect. Automatic termination, despite being listed, apparently did not work. You could toggle the low byte single-ended termination on and off at the motherboard but there was no way to turn off the high byte termination. The list went on and on. FAQs were developed by people who tried to reverse-engineer the board. It was a mess.
Frankly, I think that termination problems with SCSI has had more to do with its demise in high-end consumer PCs than any other factor.
Bravo for you clever, witty, and well-crafted insult. Rob Malda must have been cut to the bone to discover that you, an Anonymous Coward, felt that way about him. You, sir, are a wit not to be underestimated.
Lastly I must say, if you don't love programming and you are already 40, its time to find something you DO love before too much more of your life passes you by.
;-)
Do you have any idea of how difficult it is to get an acting job in porn movies when you are 40?
But seriously, I like programming and computer hardware. I don't "love" it though and I doubt that I'm going to find a job that I love. I'm pretty happy in my chosen field and don't want to change careers.
I submit that the field is anything but level. Try to find a $150/month apartment in the United States. The cost of living in other countries makes $1,000 U.S. per month really attractive. In the U.S., you would be homeless if that's what you earned. It's simply not possible to compete on a wage basis with someone that can feed, clothe, and shelter his family with a $6/hour job.
We have government-mandated regulations that cover everything from airbags in cars to USDA food safety standards to strict building codes. All of that improves our safety and standard of living, but it also drives up the cost of goods and services. That's why I believe that companies that use foreign labor should pay a fee (tax, tariff, or whatever term suits) to bring their labor costs into line with U.S. costs. You can't expect U.S. citizens to compete on a cost basis with countries where the standards of living are far below our own.
What I despise is the belief that it is right and proper to attempt to influence government to force other people to do things that benefit you, when they've used no force against you.
But it's government legislation that is largely to blame for the cost of living in the U.S. How am I supposed to compete for a job with someone who pays $150/month for rent, $50 per month for food, and has a Lada (car) that he bought used for $350?
If you don't like tariffs, let's look at what can be done to level the playing field by cutting back on regulations.
The U.S. could eliminate pollution regulations. Those drive up the cost of cars, trucks, vans, and consumer goods (due to both increased manufacturing and transportation costs).
We could eliminate 5mph bumpers.
We could get rid of safety inspections on vehicles.
Roads could be maintained to the same level that they are in third world countries, reducing taxes spent on maintenance.
We could relax building codes so that they were in line with third world countries. That would significantly reduce the cost of housing and office space.
We could eliminate the minimum wage. This would reduce the costs for fast-food, janitorial services, and goods produced by low-skill workers.
We could relax or eliminate health regulations as related to food, drinking water, and medicines.
...
Great! We can turn the U.S. into a third-world country and then we can be labor cost competitive with war-ravaged countries full of starving people.
We are a lot better off telling some multi-millionaire CEO that he will have to hire American workers and make up for it by purchasing a yacht that's "only" 50 feet long instead of the 67 foot yacht he had his eye on. You can come back and cry on my shoulder when Microsoft, Lotus, Borland, and the other software manufacturers have been forced to cut back to the point that their CEOs make less than a million dollars per year. Until then, they can afford to pay American software engineers to produce their products.
About the only thing they could do is charge me a tax on using a foreign company for contract work, which is already done, with little effect.
Then I submit to you that the tax is not high enough.
Good point. We would be much better off with software written by the people that brought us the Lada.
Anyway almost everyone in any job thinks they are worth more than they are getting paid.
I do not think that I am worth more than I am getting paid. I think that I am being paid fairly -- which I guess completely shoots down your claim. But I'm worth a lot more than the $60K/year figure that the other person mentioned.
So you want the government to subsidize your industry so you can continue to have a "comfortable" salary? Instead of standing on your own two feet you want a government handout in the form of a tariff in your favor?
Put it a different way: Do I want to play "let's see who starves first" with someone who lives in a rented apartment the size of my kitchen? Hell no. I want a level playing field. If my house costs me $1700 per month for the mortgage, I don't want to compete with some guy living in a $150 per month apartment that would be condemned in the U.S.
No I mean find another way to make the amount of money you need other than from your day job. If you love programming to the extent you don't want to leave it even when it can't support you anymore you'll need to find something on the side to keep you afloat.
You are on drugs. I don't "love programming." I'm a 40 year old man and it's where my training and skills are. Listen to yourself. You are telling people who program to take second jobs just so a bunch of greedy business owners can line their pockets by paying low wages to overseas programmers.
Either the "sweatshop" is the best option availble for the employees or it is not.
That's always the rationalization given for sweatshops. Just because someone has no other option does not mean that the wages and working conditions are fair or should be tolerated under the law.
Just because it is not a pittance to the local workers does not mean that it is a fair wage. It is a pittance relative to what the company would pay for American workers who are not desparate for employment. Companies should not be scouring the globe for the most economically disadvantaged workers so that they can avoid paying them much money (from the company's viewpoint of "much").
You and Cathie Lee Gifford would get along well.
Or is it that you believe that the workers in question are special because they are "American"? Frankly, who cares? Are they more worthy of consideration because they happened to be born in an American hospital? Why?
Yes, they are more worthy of consideration because of their nationality. That's called "patriotism". If you are really so far out of step with reality that you don't understand patriotism, there is little that I can do to enlighten you.
hire American programmers at some inflated wage.
How dare you call the wages "inflated"? Compare those wages to the wages paid to lawyers, doctors, CEOs, and other professionals. What makes the wages earned by programmers "inflated"? Programming takes intelligence, education, and a constant investment of time and money to keep ones skills current.
Why should some programers that are half ass get paid 60K when you can get top coders for 1/3 of the price.
Because you, as an American, feel a responsibility to your countrymen. Because you are patriotic and would rather see an American getting a decent wage than to see American jobs go overseas.
Yeah, right. Like you are motivated by anything other than greed.
But if you are only paying $60K for a U.S. citizen who's a programmer, it's no wonder he's "half ass." The going rate for good programmers is way over that figure in most parts of the U.S.
Since you feel so comfortable telling us how much we (software engineers) should make, tell us how much you make.
It's just despicable.
By the way, if you despise me for wanting to be able to provide a good living for myself and my family, that's okay. I'd much rather have a decent standard of living than your approval.
Well free trade works both ways. Like it or not you have to compete with programmers all over the world.
Where did you get the idea that we had "free trade"? Have you ever examined the import tariffs on foreign goods? Try checking out this web page and maybe you'll have a better understanding of our "free trade" policies.
You can try to fight it all you want. It didn't work for the 80's auto-workers and it won't work for you.
There are many auto-workers employed in the U.S. Many foreign manufacturers, including Honda and Nissan, now have plants here that employ U.S. auto-workers. The reason for this is import tariffs on foreign cars and components made it more attractive to pay Americans a good wage than to pay a lower wage to foreign workers. And Japan has horrendous tariffs on American goods, so please don't portray America as the big bully in all of this.
Adapt and survive, adapt or die.
So by "adapt", do you mean "lower your standard of living, take a demeaningly low wage, and accept that it's too late for you to change professions"?
If Microsoft decided to use Russian programmers, and the government enforced some economic penalty on them for it, do you think it would be difficult for them to relocate to Canada or Mexico (or Russia, for that matter)? Unlike companies that make "real" goods, software companies can relocate very easily, and in history even companies that produced "real" goods relocated to avoid such sanctions (which is the driving force behind Ford (or GM, I don't recall which) building most of its engines in Brazil).
By putting tariffs in place on imported software, you could take away the economic incentive for software companies to move operations to other countries. The idea is to make it an economic wash to move jobs out of the country. You don't want there to be some kind of tremendous financial reward for employing foreign labor over American labor.
We have import tariffs on many goods and it's not destroying us. There is not the free trade that so many would believe.
Why do you think that GM, Chrysler, and Ford aren't all having their cars produced at a fraction of the cost overseas? One reason is that there are protective tariffs in place.
It's just despicable.
What is despicable is your belief that American companies should be allowed to pay a pittance to foreign workers while leaving American workers hanging out to dry. You remind me of the sweatshop owners all over the world that argue that they should be allowed to exploit poor workers in impoverished countries "for their own good."
So should Russian companies operating in the US be forced to pay Russian wages?
Companies should pay fair wages for the country they operate in. Would you like to lose your job because your company discovered that they could pay Pakistani programmers a fraction of what you earn? Of course you would not.
The US is already the richest country in the world with the richest population by far, and it's engineers are among the very top of professions in it in terms of pay. Still that is not enough. You only want more.
No, I just want to keep it that way. I don't want my wages to be slashed because of U.S. companies hiring overseas workers for a fraction of what I make. Why is my desire to maintain my standard of living so hard to comprehend?
If the U.S. government forces U.S. companies to use U.S. talent only, they're going to have to charge more for the finished product.
The products sold by Plesk are priced at what the U.S. economy will bear, not at the measly sum that they pay their engineers.
Firstly, to compare apples to apples (we'll use year 2000-value apples), you'd have to say, "you have to work 55 hours per week for $134,000 a year in purchasing power, or we'll give this job to some guy in Kiev" which is the equivalent earning power.
The purchasing power in Kiev is irrelevent. Corporations do not care about the cost of living here or overseas. Their sole concern appears to be the cost of labor. They aren't about to pay me $134,000 to do the same job that some guy in Kiev would do for $12,000.
What will end up happening is that prices for good programmers outside the U.S. will rise as local demand exceeds local supply.
Let's not oversimplify. The following will also happen:
1. More people in those countries will start majoring in computer science, increasing the labor pool.
2. Software engineers in the U.S., displaced by overseas competition, will start taking jobs at lower wages, driving down the standard of living here.
3. As the wages for software engineering jobs in the U.S. go down, fewer U.S. citizens will major in computer science.
The end result will be that there will be a world-wage for software engineers -- minus the minor costs associated with telecommuting inefficiencies. Poor countries will see their wages increase while those living in wealthy countries like the U.S. will see their pay slashed.
While economic isolationism does not work for commodity goods like textiles and grains, it can work very well for software. The vast majority of software is purchased by "first world" companies and individuals. If, for example, Microsoft discovered that they could cut their engineering expenses in half by hiring Russian programmers, it is highly unlikely that the price of Office would drop. Bill Gates and the other Microsoft executives would just pocket a higher percentage of each sale.
Software is a vast sea of mini-monopolies. It doesn't matter that Software 602, StarOffice, WordPerfect Office and other office suites exist. Even though some of them are totally free, Microsoft still enjoys the highest user base with its expensive Office product and that's largely unaffected by price. Believing that S/W engineering costs savings will drive the price down is naive.
If we don't take action, we will find that our standard of living will plummet -- excluding those of us who are corporate executives -- as the world economy sets a price for software engineering.
I think your[sic] the loser.
I am crushed. I live for the approval of illiterate, anonymous cowards on Slashdot.
O wait, you have one, making fun of people that enjoy what they like to do.
I also like making fun of people that dislike doing what they like to do. And let's not forget making fun of those who enjoy doing what they dislike doing.
Who the hell are you to judge what people like to do and how they do it.
I'm someone qualified to do it in this case. I understand RF emissions, PC hardware, and the legislative process. It doesn't take a genius to see that pollution, whether automotive exhaust, noise, or RF, invariably leads to restrictive regulations. When someone else's "hobby" looks like it may lead to restrictive laws that will limit my ability to enjoy my hobby, it becomes my business.
You are absolutely right on both counts. I am pissed that the jobs did not go to U.S. programmers and engineers and, yes, of course there are qualified people outside of the United States. So why should a U.S. company not pay them a U.S. wage? I would have no complaint if all of the H1B and foreign national workers were paid on the same scale as U.S. workers. Instead, it's just a ploy so that companies can keep costs down by hiring from economically deprived countries.
Why should I be happy when 60 jobs in my area are unavailable to me because the firm has decided to only hire young, Russian, male programmers for slave wages?
The only winners in a system like that are the bigwigs that own the company. They probably drive around in BMWs and Mercedes while paying the people doing the work under $6/hour.
I'm sick of the fools on here claiming that this company should be praised for paying about 1/8th of the going U.S. rate for software engineers. The people running Plesk are simply a bunch of greedy f**ks who are making out like bandits by taking advantage of the poor standard of living in Russia while selling products at a high price to U.S. companies.
How would you like to go to a job interview and be told "you have to work 55 hours per week for $12,000 per year or we'll give this job to some guy in Kiev"? Sure, it's annoying if it occurs once, but what happens if the majority of high-tech firms start doing this to "remain competitive"?
So who would be in favor of that? Just the RIAA, MPAA, SPA (Software Publishers' Association), BSA (Business Software Alliance), and every other organization that believes that elimination of peer-to-peer and residential FTP and web servers would reduce piracy. ISPs would love it because servers on residential connections sometimes use an inordinate amount of bandwidth. Law enforcement would be happy because ISPs would have to process the packets, meaning that they had an easy way to monitor which user connected to which IP addresses. And ISPs could more easily perform content filtering if, say, Adobe's lawyers wrote a letter and said "IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx has a downloadable program that decrypts our e-books. Please assure that your users cannot access that IP address."
This definitely changes things. No one with a three-digit IQ would ever claim that Solaris, for example, is not robust enough for commercial work. Even Microsoft, in all of its arrogance, has not said that (though they have tried to proclaim that NT was superior). But there have been many naysayers when it comes to Linux as a viable option for commercial deployment.
If this is successful, it will show that Microsoft's portrayal of Linux as a toy for geeks was both unfounded and unfair. If the NYSE relies on Linux, the pro-Microsoft factions in corporate IS departments will be unable to make convincing arguments that Linux poses a threat to network security or stability. It will show beyond any reasonable doubt that Linux scales, implements robust security, and can be deployed and maintained in a demanding environment.