I agree. And further to your point, when I first went to Amsterdam I was shocked by the very explicit porn magazines available in every local store - we're talking a woman sucking two penises on the front cover of a magazine at about a child's head height.
When I asked my Dutch friends what they felt about exposing their children to this hard-core porn, they replied: "What porn?".
When you are brought up in a society like that and constantly exposed to porn, you don't really notice it. It takes a stupid, repressed Anglo-Saxon to be amazed at such behaviour.
Interestingly, in the league table you present, the Netherlands also does well in curbing teen pregnancy. It has the third lowest teenage pregnancies in the World, only betterd by Switzerland and Japan.
Actually, Queen Liz of England has a lot of executive powers in Australia in her position as as "Queen of Australia".
The most notable recent event was in 1975 during the constitutional crisis. Her proxy, The Govenor General, Sir John Kerr, took power from the government and gave it to the opposition (on the understanding they would immediately call a new election). Read about it here.
Interestingly, the Australians I've spoke to about this actually regarded it as a good thing as the
incumbent government were being "bloody arses".
If you are using Java and Eclipse, try the CodeSugar plug-in. It's free, open-source and extremely easy to use. You can write an equals method with one mouse click (and hashCode method etc).
I think most Java IDEs (eg, IntelliJ) allow you to do something similar.
There's a difference between price and worth. The price of Enron stock was riding high the week before the scandal hit - but its worth was zero.
Similarly, a CEO who presides over a long decline in stock valuation charges a high price for his services but the shareholders will probably not consider him worth much.
On a more prosaic level, while hiring Java programmers, I have found that there was little difference in ability between high-paid contractors and relatively low-paid staff. The only striking difference was in their self-perception. (And, no, I am not a PHB. I've been programming Java for 8 years and have had to sit through many interviews where high priced candidates didn't know how to implement an equals method...).
The price somebody charges (not their worth) is based partly on their self-perception but also on how able they are in convincing their employer of their high worth. This may or may not be closely linked to reality.
Are you seriously comparing tech-skills to construction work? Then you must not have seriously worked in either.
Unfortunately, IT workers think that just because they wasted time in college...
[SNIP]
I worked damned hard at one of the finest Universities in the World, actually.
This bigoted comment is extremely offensive. Are these people skills you are demonstrating here indicative that you work in something management-related, perchance...?
If you are unable to provide value.. DO SOMETHING ELSE THAT YOU CAN PROVIDE REAL VALUE IN
But why is it that it's only my profession being affected?
Why are they not giving H1B visa's to the really expensive and easily replaced people like management? Oh, I know why! Because the people making these decisions are in management. Well, gee, there's a surprise. Come on, dude. They're hardly going to erode their own incomes.
They want low cost labor.. why is this a problem?...
Wouldnt you complain if gas prices were very high?
Are you comparing a corporation's costs with an individual's? Big fact, my friend: I place more importance on being a citizen than a consumer.
In relative terms, prices are rising for me because my wage is being driven down. So, yes I will complain. But the corporations can look after themselves.
...inflated market value of a software engineer...
Why is the cost of a software engineer "inflated"? I think what is going on is simply supply-and-demand curves at work.
I've heard of offshoring but - shock! horror! - you may not have heared that India also produces some pretty good managers, too, if multi-billion dollar corporations like Wipro are anything to go by...
One of my tasks as Lead Developer is advising my company which sh1tty consultants to avoid. Why has this task fallen to me? Because the suits recognise they don't have the skills to distinguish between smooth-talking shysters and truly competent people.
The people skills required to politely inform the suits that they shouldn't make vendor decisions while at the same time stroking their egos and assuring them of how valuable they are is an essential part of software engineering that is (alas) not taught at University.
Just as a lawyer does not spend all day practising law (a lot of it is negotiation and just plain bluffing) so, as Software Engineering matures, not all the time of a programmer will be spent programing. For instance, even though I spend 80-90% of my time programming, I am saving my company hundreds of thousands of dollars cutting through vendor FUD in the remainder.
This alone justifies my position (and many others like me). Why should I worry about my future?
Americans should realize that they need to compete in this new world economy by either working for fewer wages and benefits, or by offering much higher skills and capabilities.
We're still waiting for American CEOs to lead the way on this one...
You're right. I used the figures from The Economist's World in 2004. The figures you quote are the correct ones. However, they prove my point a little more as Sweden's GDP in even higher than America's in the 2005 edition. I think this is to do with currency exchange rates.
And I wouldn't trust the CIA's figures since I don't trust the CIA. Any organisation that has overthrown so many democratic countries (Iran 1953, Guatemala 1957, Greece 1967, Chile 1973 etc etc) is not to be trusted.
I appreciate what you say about Milton Friedman but he is still just a man (and a man with an idealogical axe to grind as his re-writting of FDR's history suggests to me). Instead, I believe Joseph Stiglitz's view of economics. He points out in his excellent book how the process of capitalism in poor countries tends to follow this pattern:
Poor country is forced to open markets
Foreign multinationals enter
Prices are driven down. This it the point where many economists praise the free market model and move on.
Local competition goes bust
Foreign competition jack-up their prices
Our difference in views boils down to which Nobel Prize winning economist we believe - Friedman or Stiglitz. And for that reason, we have to accept that there is a lot of subjectivity going on here and nobody has the monopoly on reality.
BTW, I'm not sure your definition of socialism is correct. That seems to me more like Marxism - a subtype of socialism. Wikipedia defines socialism thus:
In modern socialist theory, it is in the pursuit of the goal of creating a democratic society that has a responsible people and a sympathetic government that would form the backbone of an ideal welfare state.
Though the definition has changed over the years. Also, there may be a difference in interpretation depending on which side of the Atlantic you live. France is often called a socialist country by the British press though it is clearly not Marxist. And France is rich. "GDP per head in the USA is about 20 per cent higher than France, but French working hours are 20 per cent shorter than in the USA, so that hourly output is much the same in the two countries" (Prof. John Kay, The Truth About Markets).
I guess what I am saying is that you put forward a good argument but we will have to agree to disagree.
I've not been to Monticello but I have been to some former plantations in the South. I found it interesting that the black curators gave me different stories to those of the (presumably white) creators of the multi-media presentations. I assume this was because I am not a white American.
For instance, when I was in Savannah, the video presentation had an actor pretending to be its founder, James Edward Oglethorpe. The real Oglethorpe was a slave trader and showed no signs of contrition during his life. Yet the actor pronounced the hilarious line: "I now see that what I did was wrong. Savannah is much better as a free, multi-cultural town". This kind of revisionism would make Chairman Mao proud. White Americans may like to sugar-coat their history but the rest of us prefer to confront ours no matter how bad.
I digress.
Jefferson allegedly had children with his slave, Sally Hemings - an allegation that is largely supported by DNA analysis of their descendants. Now, bearing in mind that she was a slave and he a rich, white "mas'er", I'm not convinced of her acquiescence.
"That was the environment in which he lived (and after all, people *are* affected by the environments in which they live, are they not?)."
The sign of a truly great man is one who rises above his environment.
Why didn't Jefferson free his slaves and allow them to move to the slave-free Northern states? Why did some of his slaves try to escape if their conditions were so favourable?
"Look around: even the "socialist" nations of Sweden, etc. have significant market (i.e. capitalist) elements to them; those nations simply round off the harder edges of capitalism with large welfare systems."
Sweden is quite socialist and is richer per capita than the US ($38 760 in Sweden to $36 620 in the US according to The Economist's World in 2005).
I also think you may be confusing the modern day definition of socialism with Marxism. I wouldn't break the original poster's balls just because there is some disagreement in the use of words.
BTW, America did awfully well under "socialist" Roosevelt in the 1930s. FDR's New Deal dragged America out of the Depression.
"That said, those nations are facing fiscal distress because even *they* have too much socialist influence."
I don't think Sweden is facing any more distress than the States. Judging by America's trade and budget deficit and the massive debt the American Government is running up to finance those tax cuts (you didn't really think they came for free, did you?) I would say Sweden is in a much better state than America. Professor Paul Krugman has an excellent and accessible book on the subject.
BTW, have you ever been to Sweden? It's beautiful and there is little sign of poverty that I saw. I've lived in the States for a couple of years and saw some shameful deprivation.
One way or another, there is a lot of propaganda going on.
I have three Russian friends (ok, so one is Ukrainian;-) and they all tell me the same thing about their University education. The final mark for the degree is based on a viva and the typical opening lines of your professor goes something like this:
"You're not an A+ sudent but I can't decide whether you are a B or a C. I guess it depends on what kind of mood I am in today."
[The guy extends his supine palm ready for the bribe].
Now, I know you can buy an education in the West but I have never heared of anything so egregious as this.
When I was working in Moscow as a Java programmer for a UK oil company, the guys I worked with were less than impressive. They were just relatively bright young kids trying to make a reasonable living in an otherwise messed-up country by jumping on the bandwagon of some silly Western businessmen. And good luck to them. We all had a blast.
Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer
Perhaps you miss the point. As I see it, a nation voted a geek as their greatest. Which country this was is irrelevent.
I've been dealing with outsourced relationships for the last 4 years. Invariably, the projects I saw were:
more expensive and
of lower quality
than in-house work. So, why do people outsource?
Outsourcing is not an excercise in cost-cutting. It's an excercise in risk management.
The risk in question being mainly to an exec's career. If an in-house project fails, the exec's head is on the block. If the outsourced project fails, the exec is safe in the knowledge there is somebody else he can blame.
BTW, I'm amazed that it seems nobody has ever done a study into why outsourcing IT is a flawed business model (Ok, it's not exactly in Gartner's interest to do so...). It's blindingly obvious to the poeple on the ground that a company that has to maintain a huge management overhead is going to cut corners on developlment work and/or charge extremely high fees.
In contrast, by far the cheapest and effective way of doing development is to hire contractors (total cost of additional management overhead: $0).
I think people are starting to see this. That's why the software development market is doing well in my part of the World (yup, not all Slashdot readers are American...)
Outsourcing [sic] is all about economic rationalism. What has patriotism to do with it?
Because if you offshore tech jobs, your country will inevitably have less home-grown technology.
The thought of an aggressive, communist country like China becoming more technologically advanced than America (with all its faults) scares me. It also scares people like Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's second in command.
And, by the way, I'm not an American.
If The US is ''exporting jobs'' at an alarming rate, how come than the US has actually a far lower unemployment rate than that of the ''more patriotic'' countries, like Italy and France [...] ?
Because America will always need burger-flippers;-) You are ignoring the quality of the jobs in these countries.
A report commissioned by the OECD back in 2000 showed that although the Eurozone created less jobs than America, the quality of the jobs it created was much higher. (I forget the reference for this report but Will Hutton covers it a lot in his excellent book The World We're In).
What happens to the U.S. when we are dependent on other countries...
I will tell you what will happen: absolutely nothing.
... except an ever-shrinking dollar. I don't know of any country that has ever devalued its way to prosperity.
The US is already dependent on oil from not-so-friendly countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela.
And this is a good thing? The US supports an oppressive regime in Saudi and tried to topple the democratically elected president of Venezuala in 2002 because the Bush administration didn't like his oil policies.
white-collar jobs are going the way of manufacturing jobs, it's inevitable, and the US won't descend into misery because of that -- Americans have always found a way to adapt.
Are you forgetting history? Think about the Great Depression (widespread poverty, civil unrest, a plot to topple the President etc etc). Sure, if by "adapt" you mean "well, not everybody starved to death", I'll grant you, Americans "adapted". But I'd rather avoid that situation than "adapt".
I've never seen a project fail because of perfectionism.
I've seen lots fail because of sloppines.
I don't wish to start a flameware. I'm genuinely curious as to whether people have ever seen a software project that was too well engineered*.
* I don't call something like analysing the problem to the N-th degree in UML class diagrams before writing a single line of code perfectionism. That's clearly being silly. I mean projects where people said "Whoa! But that's just a hack! We can't do that!" and had the guts to tell management "Give us a little time in the short-term and we'll save you much more time in the long-run".
Re:A Bit on the Racist Side
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It was not an ad hominem attack. You stated something as fact without any argument or evidence. This suggests doltish thinking.
But I'm willing to you could easily name five industries in which Japan is a superpower...
Ok, bad grammar aside, most of Japanese business process has been to take a Western idea and improve it. You just need to see how Japan revolutionised the auotmotive, consumer electronics and optics industries in the '70s for examples. But I am struggling to think of one industry they created.
But this was not my point. IT is a very different industry to cars, cameras and VCRs. Most IT jobs are service oriented rather than manufacturing. Eg, I write bespoke software for a customer not shrink-wrapped products. The shrink-wrapped software market can be compared to manufacturing, I guess and this would probably be better off in India. But that is only a small proportion of IT jobs.
Research into those [Japanese] industries will reveal story after story of leaders forming teams that are given a problem and told, "solve it."
This may be true. I'm not agreeing it's true, I'm just stipulating. But withough links, evidence, argument etc etc we're just guys on Slashdot expressing views, not authoritative sources.
Re:Let's stop it with all this racism, okay?
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Automobile manufacturing used to be a highly skilled craft.
And your point is...? Although I agree with you, I don't see where you are going. So what if automobiles used to be a highly skilled craft? How does this relate to IT?
How many IT workers meet the customer? Not many.
And their jobs are in jeopardy. See my post.
Where are Japanese and German cars put together? Hint, not Japan or Germany.
Er, well, actually yes. Sure they have plants all over the World but a lot of German cars are built in Germany. The reason being that German productivity in car making beats the World.
If you're doing fine, that's good for you, but the rest of the industry isn't quite so lively.
[my emphasis]
You can't speak for the industry as a whole. I am assuming you are American because the market in North Europe in general is good.
Re:Let's stop it with all this racism, okay?
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Can we please stop comparing IT to the American car industry?
Anybody who compares assembly-line manufacturing to IT knows nothing about IT.
How many car plant workers meet the customer? I meet mine everyday.
Which countries dominate car manufacturing? Japan and German. Say, aren't they rich countries? So, how come we're all not driving Indian cars?
If you want to just code all day and not talk to the business, yeah, you're screwed. But that's just code masturbation anyway. Half the fun of software engineering is building something the customer wants even when they don't know exactly what it is.
Business is starting to realise this. You can see it with the advent of Agile Methodologies.
And the market is bad? That's news to me. I'm having the best time since the late nineties.
Just sell yourself as a business consultant who happens to do IT rather than an IT dude who has to talk to the business.
Re:A Bit on the Racist Side
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engineering and other technical tasks are culture-independent
Of course they aren't, you dolt.
Why has Japan never become a software super-power?
It has a well-educated population who are committed and hard working.
The reason is simple. In Japanese business culture, you cannot suggest the boss-man is wrong.
On the otherhand, anybody practising IT in the West knows that you are constantly telling your boss he is barking up the wrong tree.
If you want more proof that technical thinking is culture-dependent, look at the number of Nobel prizes in science per capita for the World. Do you see an even distribution? I think not.
Re:Strategic offshoring
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and apparently the code quality is not as bad as some people might think.
[my emphasis]
I think this sentence says it all.
Re:Outsourcing made simple
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Two parties will not willingly engage in a trade unless both parties are better off afterwords than they were before.
Man, this is an incredibly naive statement.
This describes how the World should work not how the World does work. It is called "adaptive behaviour" as opposed to the "rational behaviour" that most people assume best describes markets. (See Prof John Kay's excellent book here).
Two parties will only engage in trade when it is advantageous to individuals in those companies. This explains why so much software has been offshored despite the fact it is often no cheaper to do so (management and communication overheads etc etc). Execs make a short-term saving (good for bonuses) with long-term costs (when they have left the company).
The most expensive people in companies are managers.
<heavy irony>
Although I am told those brown and tanned-skinned people have finally mastered Gantt Charts, there is not a large amount of management work being offshored to them...
</heavy irony>
Slashdot Mirror
Homer is a hit in England because we are laughing at you, too!
When I asked my Dutch friends what they felt about exposing their children to this hard-core porn, they replied: "What porn?".
When you are brought up in a society like that and constantly exposed to porn, you don't really notice it. It takes a stupid, repressed Anglo-Saxon to be amazed at such behaviour.
Interestingly, in the league table you present, the Netherlands also does well in curbing teen pregnancy. It has the third lowest teenage pregnancies in the World, only betterd by Switzerland and Japan.
The most notable recent event was in 1975 during the constitutional crisis. Her proxy, The Govenor General, Sir John Kerr, took power from the government and gave it to the opposition (on the understanding they would immediately call a new election). Read about it here.
Interestingly, the Australians I've spoke to about this actually regarded it as a good thing as the incumbent government were being "bloody arses".
I think most Java IDEs (eg, IntelliJ) allow you to do something similar.
Similarly, a CEO who presides over a long decline in stock valuation charges a high price for his services but the shareholders will probably not consider him worth much.
On a more prosaic level, while hiring Java programmers, I have found that there was little difference in ability between high-paid contractors and relatively low-paid staff. The only striking difference was in their self-perception. (And, no, I am not a PHB. I've been programming Java for 8 years and have had to sit through many interviews where high priced candidates didn't know how to implement an equals method...).
The price somebody charges (not their worth) is based partly on their self-perception but also on how able they are in convincing their employer of their high worth. This may or may not be closely linked to reality.
Are you seriously comparing tech-skills to construction work? Then you must not have seriously worked in either.
Unfortunately, IT workers think that just because they wasted time in college ...
[SNIP]
I worked damned hard at one of the finest Universities in the World, actually.
This bigoted comment is extremely offensive. Are these people skills you are demonstrating here indicative that you work in something management-related, perchance...?
If you are unable to provide value .. DO SOMETHING ELSE THAT YOU CAN PROVIDE REAL VALUE IN
But why is it that it's only my profession being affected? Why are they not giving H1B visa's to the really expensive and easily replaced people like management? Oh, I know why! Because the people making these decisions are in management. Well, gee, there's a surprise. Come on, dude. They're hardly going to erode their own incomes.
They want low cost labor .. why is this a problem? ...
Wouldnt you complain if gas prices were very high?
Are you comparing a corporation's costs with an individual's? Big fact, my friend: I place more importance on being a citizen than a consumer.
In relative terms, prices are rising for me because my wage is being driven down. So, yes I will complain. But the corporations can look after themselves.
It's interesting to note that Gibbon in his seminal text "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" claimed that "outsourcing their duties to defend their Empire to barbarian mercenaries" was a major factor in Rome's downfall. For those of us who care about the country we live in, we consider outsourcing to be pernicious.
Why is the cost of a software engineer "inflated"? I think what is going on is simply supply-and-demand curves at work.
I've heard of offshoring but - shock! horror! - you may not have heared that India also produces some pretty good managers, too, if multi-billion dollar corporations like Wipro are anything to go by...
The people skills required to politely inform the suits that they shouldn't make vendor decisions while at the same time stroking their egos and assuring them of how valuable they are is an essential part of software engineering that is (alas) not taught at University.
Just as a lawyer does not spend all day practising law (a lot of it is negotiation and just plain bluffing) so, as Software Engineering matures, not all the time of a programmer will be spent programing. For instance, even though I spend 80-90% of my time programming, I am saving my company hundreds of thousands of dollars cutting through vendor FUD in the remainder.
This alone justifies my position (and many others like me). Why should I worry about my future?
We're still waiting for American CEOs to lead the way on this one...
And I wouldn't trust the CIA's figures since I don't trust the CIA. Any organisation that has overthrown so many democratic countries (Iran 1953, Guatemala 1957, Greece 1967, Chile 1973 etc etc) is not to be trusted.
I appreciate what you say about Milton Friedman but he is still just a man (and a man with an idealogical axe to grind as his re-writting of FDR's history suggests to me). Instead, I believe Joseph Stiglitz's view of economics. He points out in his excellent book how the process of capitalism in poor countries tends to follow this pattern:
Our difference in views boils down to which Nobel Prize winning economist we believe - Friedman or Stiglitz. And for that reason, we have to accept that there is a lot of subjectivity going on here and nobody has the monopoly on reality.
BTW, I'm not sure your definition of socialism is correct. That seems to me more like Marxism - a subtype of socialism. Wikipedia defines socialism thus:
Though the definition has changed over the years. Also, there may be a difference in interpretation depending on which side of the Atlantic you live. France is often called a socialist country by the British press though it is clearly not Marxist. And France is rich. "GDP per head in the USA is about 20 per cent higher than France, but French working hours are 20 per cent shorter than in the USA, so that hourly output is much the same in the two countries" (Prof. John Kay, The Truth About Markets).I guess what I am saying is that you put forward a good argument but we will have to agree to disagree.
For instance, when I was in Savannah, the video presentation had an actor pretending to be its founder, James Edward Oglethorpe. The real Oglethorpe was a slave trader and showed no signs of contrition during his life. Yet the actor pronounced the hilarious line: "I now see that what I did was wrong. Savannah is much better as a free, multi-cultural town". This kind of revisionism would make Chairman Mao proud. White Americans may like to sugar-coat their history but the rest of us prefer to confront ours no matter how bad.
I digress.
Jefferson allegedly had children with his slave, Sally Hemings - an allegation that is largely supported by DNA analysis of their descendants. Now, bearing in mind that she was a slave and he a rich, white "mas'er", I'm not convinced of her acquiescence.
"That was the environment in which he lived (and after all, people *are* affected by the environments in which they live, are they not?)."
The sign of a truly great man is one who rises above his environment.
Why didn't Jefferson free his slaves and allow them to move to the slave-free Northern states? Why did some of his slaves try to escape if their conditions were so favourable?
I'm sorry, but I cannot apologise for my sig.
Sweden is quite socialist and is richer per capita than the US ($38 760 in Sweden to $36 620 in the US according to The Economist's World in 2005).
I also think you may be confusing the modern day definition of socialism with Marxism. I wouldn't break the original poster's balls just because there is some disagreement in the use of words.
BTW, America did awfully well under "socialist" Roosevelt in the 1930s. FDR's New Deal dragged America out of the Depression.
"That said, those nations are facing fiscal distress because even *they* have too much socialist influence."
I don't think Sweden is facing any more distress than the States. Judging by America's trade and budget deficit and the massive debt the American Government is running up to finance those tax cuts (you didn't really think they came for free, did you?) I would say Sweden is in a much better state than America. Professor Paul Krugman has an excellent and accessible book on the subject.
BTW, have you ever been to Sweden? It's beautiful and there is little sign of poverty that I saw. I've lived in the States for a couple of years and saw some shameful deprivation.
I have three Russian friends (ok, so one is Ukrainian ;-) and they all tell me the same thing about their University education. The final mark for the degree is based on a viva and the typical opening lines of your professor goes something like this:
"You're not an A+ sudent but I can't decide whether you are a B or a C. I guess it depends on what kind of mood I am in today." [The guy extends his supine palm ready for the bribe].
Now, I know you can buy an education in the West but I have never heared of anything so egregious as this.
When I was working in Moscow as a Java programmer for a UK oil company, the guys I worked with were less than impressive. They were just relatively bright young kids trying to make a reasonable living in an otherwise messed-up country by jumping on the bandwagon of some silly Western businessmen. And good luck to them. We all had a blast.
Perhaps you miss the point. As I see it, a nation voted a geek as their greatest. Which country this was is irrelevent.
Don't say you're an IT guy. Sell yourself as a business person who specialises in IT solutions.
Outcome: you do exactly the same work but for much more money.
I did this in my current position (software developer). I'm doing the same work as my last job but for a lot more money. I even get more respect.
Remember that business people look after their own.
- more expensive and
- of lower quality
than in-house work. So, why do people outsource?Outsourcing is not an excercise in cost-cutting. It's an excercise in risk management.
The risk in question being mainly to an exec's career. If an in-house project fails, the exec's head is on the block. If the outsourced project fails, the exec is safe in the knowledge there is somebody else he can blame.
BTW, I'm amazed that it seems nobody has ever done a study into why outsourcing IT is a flawed business model (Ok, it's not exactly in Gartner's interest to do so...). It's blindingly obvious to the poeple on the ground that a company that has to maintain a huge management overhead is going to cut corners on developlment work and/or charge extremely high fees.
In contrast, by far the cheapest and effective way of doing development is to hire contractors (total cost of additional management overhead: $0).
I think people are starting to see this. That's why the software development market is doing well in my part of the World (yup, not all Slashdot readers are American...)
The World needs better programmers.
Because if you offshore tech jobs, your country will inevitably have less home-grown technology.
The thought of an aggressive, communist country like China becoming more technologically advanced than America (with all its faults) scares me. It also scares people like Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's second in command.
And, by the way, I'm not an American.
Because America will always need burger-flippers ;-) You are ignoring the quality of the jobs in these countries.
A report commissioned by the OECD back in 2000 showed that although the Eurozone created less jobs than America, the quality of the jobs it created was much higher. (I forget the reference for this report but Will Hutton covers it a lot in his excellent book The World We're In).
And this is a good thing? The US supports an oppressive regime in Saudi and tried to topple the democratically elected president of Venezuala in 2002 because the Bush administration didn't like his oil policies.
Are you forgetting history? Think about the Great Depression (widespread poverty, civil unrest, a plot to topple the President etc etc). Sure, if by "adapt" you mean "well, not everybody starved to death", I'll grant you, Americans "adapted". But I'd rather avoid that situation than "adapt".
I've seen lots fail because of sloppines.
I don't wish to start a flameware. I'm genuinely curious as to whether people have ever seen a software project that was too well engineered*.
* I don't call something like analysing the problem to the N-th degree in UML class diagrams before writing a single line of code perfectionism. That's clearly being silly. I mean projects where people said "Whoa! But that's just a hack! We can't do that!" and had the guts to tell management "Give us a little time in the short-term and we'll save you much more time in the long-run".
But I'm willing to you could easily name five industries in which Japan is a superpower...
Ok, bad grammar aside, most of Japanese business process has been to take a Western idea and improve it. You just need to see how Japan revolutionised the auotmotive, consumer electronics and optics industries in the '70s for examples. But I am struggling to think of one industry they created.
But this was not my point. IT is a very different industry to cars, cameras and VCRs. Most IT jobs are service oriented rather than manufacturing. Eg, I write bespoke software for a customer not shrink-wrapped products. The shrink-wrapped software market can be compared to manufacturing, I guess and this would probably be better off in India. But that is only a small proportion of IT jobs.
Research into those [Japanese] industries will reveal story after story of leaders forming teams that are given a problem and told, "solve it."
This may be true. I'm not agreeing it's true, I'm just stipulating. But withough links, evidence, argument etc etc we're just guys on Slashdot expressing views, not authoritative sources.
And your point is...? Although I agree with you, I don't see where you are going. So what if automobiles used to be a highly skilled craft? How does this relate to IT?
How many IT workers meet the customer? Not many.
And their jobs are in jeopardy. See my post.
Where are Japanese and German cars put together? Hint, not Japan or Germany.
Er, well, actually yes. Sure they have plants all over the World but a lot of German cars are built in Germany. The reason being that German productivity in car making beats the World.
If you're doing fine, that's good for you, but the rest of the industry isn't quite so lively. [my emphasis]
You can't speak for the industry as a whole. I am assuming you are American because the market in North Europe in general is good.
If you want to just code all day and not talk to the business, yeah, you're screwed. But that's just code masturbation anyway. Half the fun of software engineering is building something the customer wants even when they don't know exactly what it is.
Business is starting to realise this. You can see it with the advent of Agile Methodologies.
And the market is bad? That's news to me. I'm having the best time since the late nineties.
Just sell yourself as a business consultant who happens to do IT rather than an IT dude who has to talk to the business.
Of course they aren't, you dolt.
Why has Japan never become a software super-power? It has a well-educated population who are committed and hard working.
The reason is simple. In Japanese business culture, you cannot suggest the boss-man is wrong.
On the otherhand, anybody practising IT in the West knows that you are constantly telling your boss he is barking up the wrong tree.
If you want more proof that technical thinking is culture-dependent, look at the number of Nobel prizes in science per capita for the World. Do you see an even distribution? I think not.
I think this sentence says it all.
Man, this is an incredibly naive statement.
This describes how the World should work not how the World does work. It is called "adaptive behaviour" as opposed to the "rational behaviour" that most people assume best describes markets. (See Prof John Kay's excellent book here).
Two parties will only engage in trade when it is advantageous to individuals in those companies. This explains why so much software has been offshored despite the fact it is often no cheaper to do so (management and communication overheads etc etc). Execs make a short-term saving (good for bonuses) with long-term costs (when they have left the company).
The most expensive people in companies are managers. <heavy irony> Although I am told those brown and tanned-skinned people have finally mastered Gantt Charts, there is not a large amount of management work being offshored to them... </heavy irony>