If there is one thing I can say for certain, it is that the female IT stigma is definately non-existant.
That's because you are a guy and you don't see the stigma because it doesn't affect you.
As a woman in IT, I deal with:
Working via email on a problem with someone male, going with a male team mate to implement the solution, and having the someone male direct all of his comments to my male team mate
Going to conferences, and having to put up with being ignored by the vendors because I am wearing girl clothes and makeup. I can stand at a booth patiently waiting my turn and the vendor will ignore me but same vendor will initiate conversations with every man that comes near.
People will walk thru our dept looking for help (MAKE A TICKET) and walk away frustrated if none of the male team mates are in their cube
Not all guys do this...I actually work with a bunch of guys who see me as one of them. Not "one of the guys", but as a techie who has something to contribute.
But they act suprised when I point out other people's behavior...they don't notice because it doesn't happen to them.
The way to get more women in the field is to get the message out that you don't have to have a certain set of sexual organs to do this sort of work. This message needs to go to young girls as well as the stupid boys that already work in IT.
My daughter is a freshman in an out-of-state college. The long-distance plan attached to her dorm-room service was quite simply outrageous.
She doesn't use the phone service, which is included in her room charge, to call us. She either calls us on her cell and has us call her back on the landline, or IMs us and we call her back. She uses the cell for true emergencies.
Maybe less students would see the need to have cell phones if the long distance plans offered with their phone service were more affordable.
On-campus college costs are a HUGE ripoff. Don't even get me started on the meal plans!
This article outlines how this joint venture re-vamped Delta's IT systems (again remember, this is 1995):
During 1995 and 1996, TransQuest reengineered Delta's systems to migrate them from Hitachi mainframes running Natural, Adabas, and DB2 to an open systems environment. The new systems are written in C++ and access Sybase databases of reusable and distributed objects. The systems run primarily on Sun, HP and AT&T servers under UNIX with clients running under UNIX, MS-DOS, and Windows. The clients are connected to the servers over high bandwidth TCP/IP frame relay networks.
Job titles for the company's 1,100 computer professionals include Systems Engineer and Software Engineer 1 through 8. Staff members recently developed an aircraft weight balance system that can be accessed by pilots to determine how luggage and fuel have been distributed within the aircraft for balance during a flight. This system was developed in C++ on AT&T and HP UNIX servers and will be available on 40,000 devices to 2,000 users.
The trail runs dry here, job postings stopped around 2001.
Which really raises suspicions that all the code is written and maintained offshore. The question now becomes who is handling this for Delta.
"an example of an external service provider that handles a wide range of back-office functions for the airlines. AFS handles sales, refund, traffic and cargo; performs fare audits; manages yields and revenues by performing departure and post-departure processing checks; books crews; deals with overbooked flights and wait-lists; adminsters frequent flyer programs; draws up flight navigation charts; such as landing or route facility charts; and provides customer care." This according to ebstrategy.com
So, how about data from Massachusetts (my state)....we have a very high standard of living and supposedly high wages. Here are a few entries from the LCAs issued in MA:
Accountant, 27K (Monster says entry level is 38K)
Database Manager, 37K (Monster says entry level is 45K)
Sys Admin, 42K (Monster says 60K)
I could go on and on. The fact is that there ARE bodyshops that pay their techies too little (even if they charge the company they contract with top dollar). These bodyshops are usually headquartered in other countries, where the labor laws are lax. They take advantage of US immigration laws, and ALL techies, domestic and foreign, are screwed over.
If you are making a good wage on an H1B, great, but there alot of your countrymen who are not faring as well as you are.
And there are Americans who are being displaced by the misuse of this visa category.
These are facts.
There used to be a restrictions on the H1 category to protect American techies, but those went away when the H1B visa cap reverted to 65,000 a couple of years ago.
The actual regulation says that the H1B worker must be paid at least 95% of the prevailing wage. The company can provide any prevailing wage information....even their own data.
If you think H-1B visa workers being underpaid is an urban legend, peruse the LCA database at your leisure. Look at some of the huge Indian bodyshops (they are the worst offenders at misusing US visa regulations), and decide for yourself if they are underpaying their workers ($38K for a programmer?)
The reason the cap was hit by the first day is these bodyshop hoarde the visas, which flaunts the spirit of the visa regulations. The idea behind the H1B visas were to give employers access to specialized workers, not to allow foreign companies the ability to import their own workers while putting our domestic technical workers out to pasture.
Oh yeah, some Congressmen are trying to attach legislation to the Omnibus spending bill that would effectively double the H1B visa cap. Read more about that at Techsunite
The laws against outsourcing are primarily coming from the states. The states are facing bigger and bigger budget deficits every year, in part due to higher unemployment. The states have started to realize that using tax money to create jobs in another country is only making their deficits grow at an accelerated rate.
Companies win bids for state contracts by massively underbidding small local companies, and send the labor offshore. They do not pass the savings they get by employing cheaper labor back to the state, the companies pocket those as profits. Only one group of people wins here, and it the companies.
It does matter where people are located. It isn't right that entire towns in the US die because the company headquartered there is allowed to up and move to a place where the labor is cheaper, and where they do not have to abide by stricter labor and environmental laws.
In the US, companies are allowed to exist by the will of the people (they must get incorporation papers from the government, the government [supposedly] is for, by, and of the people. That means that in the US, corporations have a responsibility to the communities that allow them to exist.
It is hard for geeky women to make it in IT. You have to prove your abilities much more than men. A co-worker and I had AWFUL experiences on the exhibit floor of Linux World in NYC that really brought that point home....we couldn't get vendors to even talk to us (although alot of that was sales guys).
It's even worse if you want to act "like a woman" (yes I know, gross generalization here). What I mean is if you don't stick to a dress code of baggy t-shirts and jeans, you have to fight the sterotypes even more.
Maybe there are less women getting into CS programs now because enrollment has fallen off in CS programs in general. I would think that has more to do with the lack of opportunity for anyone in the West to do high tech work. Why get a degree in a field where there is no work? If you really love technology, you can get a different major and still do the techie stuff on the side.
If you don't like school, but you like to learn, figure out why you didn't like school.
If you have learning disabilities, you need to find out how to deal with them so you can deal with college
Also, realize that you will go through stages of really doubting if you should even go to college. This is normal and you have to learn to deal with the feelings. At least that is what I keep telling my daughter who is starting college in the fall.
No, I think it is wrong to create businesses on tax breaks designed to bring industries to economically distressed areas, build up your company based on this, and then leave when you find a way to exploit cheap labor in another part of the globe.
Why do you think that poor Americans are less deserving than people in India?
For the record, I was one of those poor moms on foodstamps who believed the lie that you could go to college and learn IT as a trade as way to support your family. I know what poverty is, because I have lived it. It isn't right for anyone anywhere to have to live without electricity, heat and water because they can't afford it, to not know how they will be able to get food for thier babies because they have no money (yes, I have done all of those!) but it is absolutely evil (imo) to say that it is ok for corporations to continue to reap huge rewards by exploiting labor.
There are so many levels to this outsourcing issue, it really is pointless to say we should always outsource or we should never ever outsource.
As anyone who has looked into this issue can tell you, there is not in most cases a one-to-one correlation between an American losing their job, and the job going offshore.
Also, how many jobs are being lost to "American" companys like Cognizant, who do not hire permanant US residents or citizens to work for them, only people on H-1B visas? 30% of Cognizant's 9K headcount work in the US (per the June 7th issue of Newsweek), and according to the Dept of Labor's LCA database the company has 2719 immigrants here on H1-B visas (you do the math).
This issue is not simply them bad us good. American IT workers are getting shut out of the IT labor market, even in our own country. This is not good for anyone. We are wasting our own intellectual capital, which we should be sharing with other countries so IT can be used to bridge cultural and economic divides. People should not have to pretend to be from another country as part of their job requirement. People should not be brought here on temporary visas and be paid less and worked harder than the Americans that work in the next cubicle.
This black and white thinking about this issue is pitting the workers on both sides against each other. The only people who win in that situation are the big guys making millions and millions of dollars to come up with these schemes. We (all IT workers worldwide) created these technologies, and historically we have openly shared and taught everyone so that the technology would thrive. That cooperative spirit needs to come through when thinking about this issue.
The attrition rate at call centers in India is at least the same, if not higher than it was in the US.
Many of the call centers were built in poor regions of the US precisly so that Americans with only high school diplomas would have access to jobs after manufacturing industries folded.
So, you are proud that people in India who hold masters degrees have the grand opportunity to work 3rd shift to handle calls from the West? You are excited that people in India have to assume a different identity, to pretend to be Americans just to do their jobs?
It's a good thing that food stamp and welfare recipients must deal with haughty Indians (per your comments) when they need the most help?
I am a sys admin in a university setting, so the pay is on the low side but I have alot of flexibility with my kids.
I am a single mom. I went to college to learn to do something that would allow me to work one job and be able to pay the bills, and to get a job where I didn't have to work nights and weekends. I wanted to be able to do that before my kids were teenagers.
So now my daughter is graduating high school this weekend, and my son is a freshman in high school. My daughter has Asperger's and my son is 14 going on 15 which has to be the WORST age of all!!!, so I miss alot of work. But my boss is pretty flexible.
I worry about it sometimes, and think about how nice it would be to work in the commercial world again and make twice the salary I do now.....
But to be honest with you my kids come first. If I had to go back to waiting tables because that schedule would work better for me taking care of them, that's what I would do.
You can get another job, but your kid can never replace you. I am the only mama my kids will ever have, and that makes the parenting job the most important one of all.
And if you write the software in-house, you have to hire locally. If you hire locally, you put people whose jobs were sent to cheaper labor markets, or people whose jobs are now being done in the US by temporary foreign workers, back to work.
Taxation is one way that the auto industry was saved in the US. The auto industry outsourced everything (engineering, manufacturing, support jobs,etc), so finally Congress had enough and auto imports were taxed. The overseas companies decided it was in their own financial interests (if they wanted access to the US markets) to open factories in the US.
Would the "management software" used by foreign firms (like Tata and Wipro) be taxed under this sort of program? If so, maybe this could be one way of protecting American workers and small companies who can't even afford to outsource. Maybe this would also be an encouragement for these foreign software firms to hire more Americans if they also want unlimited acces to the American markets.
Harris Miller is doing what he gets paid to do
on
Evoting in the News
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· Score: 2, Informative
If it comes out in the press, then his organization will not be able to act like they are the only organization that can speak with authority on any issue that affects the IT space.
Instead, Miller falls back on the tried and true tactic of
discrediting experts and critics of the companies that he is paid to represent.
I would bet all I have that if you took the 1,000 people they used for this very scientific survey and let them know how insecure these electronic voting machines are, they may answer the survey questions very differently.
The electronic voting industry turned to ITAA to protect their images as activists started to expose how insecure the systems are.
ITAA has "gone on the e-voting offensive" to protect the industry.
If Diebold is so concerned about producing voting accuracy, why did they go and hire a lobbyist like Harris Miller to protect their image?
And the services aren't cheap...." annual dues are calculated (they range from $600-$44K, depending on a company's sales. "Deliverables" will cost up to $200,000+". Why not pour that cash into securing their systems instead of their image?
The people in other countries will work for less...right now. But doesn't capitalism also teach that as workers become more specialized (trained) they will demand more in payment?
That's what is happening right now in India...people that are doing the software jobs that were sent over there to take advantage of the cheap labor are wanting raises, because their skill level is going up with experience. But, the companies have contracts based on the fact that they are paid less. So, should these people who are becoming more skilled have to stay at the same unskilled pay level? Should the companies send all the now skilled labor packing and start with a fresh crowd?
People in other countries do not need these outsourced jobs more than Americans, that is a logically flawed argument. When the US is at a point that there are no homeless, and no one on public assistance, maybe then we can make those sorts of arguments.
displacedtechies.com
customers of call centres are sometimes zenophobic
I don't want my bank data offshored. period. I like the protection US law affords me.
Also, as a Southern woman with a Southern drawl, it annoys me to no end that my heritage and upbringing automatically makes me stupid or too cute to handle tough technical questions. I would imagine folks in India must feel this even more, how insulting to spend your nights pretending to be American! I hate talking like a yankee to avoid being teased...I can't imagine that being a job requirement.
My point is this...is outsourcing is so great for the world, why shouldn't companies say, "Look, these guys in India are great and they are cheap and we are going to pass that savings on to you the customer"...instead of pretending the Asian call centers are in Arizona or Texas and pocketing the savings.
It costs money to provide services to the poor who can't find jobs or the unemployed whose jobs are snatched away. It seems to me to be quite immoral to use cheap overseas labor to provide safety net services to people who are willing to work. We live in an economy that thinks paying minumum wage is too steep of a price of doing business, and should be scary to ALL.
My complaint is that the basis for outsourcing is chasing cheap compliant labor, not looking for the most productive labor. Linux works across borders because people are working towards a common goal, and everyone reaps the benefits. I don't think that companies are using outsourcing as a way to benefit everyone...themselves, the stockholders, the employees (wherever they may be), the customers and yes, even the community...and that is why outsourcing as it stands today is not a good thing.
They are most likely abusing the H1B and/or the L1 category of temporary visas.
There are NO RESTRICTIONS on the L1 visas as far as making sure that there is not a qualified American to do the job. There is NO WAGE REQUIREMENT, so it may be these people are working in the US and making Indian wages.
These visas are snapped up by the big Indian consulting companies as a way to market their cheap labor in the US.
For fun, notice the age and sexes of these imported workers. The big Indian consulting firms that import labor are NOT bound to US hiring laws, and frequently advertise age limits in the job postings in India for these positions.
If outsourcing is something that will make the entire world better, why is it done is secrecy?
Why are call center workers who handle the private information of US citizens (banks, credit cards, etc) in foreign countries trained to sound like Americans? If outsourcing is so great, why are foreign workers forced to pretend that they are American?
Why are US workers forced to train their replacements, all the while being told that their job is being eliminated because it's the only way for the company to remain profitable?
Why are groups that are obviously lobbying groups for corporate interests being allowed to dictate our nation's policy on everything IT?
What effect does outsourcing have on innovation? The skilled workers in the US are not allowed to compete for jobs because American workers are too costly. The marginally skilled workers in countries where costs are lower are making the same types of technical mistakes that US workers made years ago. If outsourcing had been done for reasons other than pure price, would technology be on a different level now?
Why isn't the connection between the misuse of H1B and L1 visas and business access to cheap labor in other countries ever discussed?
I read lots of posts fretting that keeping jobs from India is selfish, yet at the same time the tormented Western worker can't see how [s]he will get by on less.
Have you stopped to think what will happen to the poor in this country if the white collar wages decrease dramatically?
There are people in the US that don't have air conditioning, can't afford indoor plumbing or electricity. There are alot of people who cannot afford food. Don't even get me started about being able to afford to go the doctor or the dentist. If your wage gets cut by 2/3rds, does it follow that someone eeking out a living on minumum wage will also see a decrease in their wage?
It frustrates me to no end that as Americans we are so quick to feel pity and sorrow for people in some distant land when there is real suffering here in the US.
ITAA is the lobbying arm of high tech corporations.
For insight on how ITAA sets up these "blue ribbon panels", read this article about a meeting of electronic voting manufacturers. They brought in Harris Miller, ITAA's president, to see how he could help them.
Highlights from the article:
ITAA felt the industry should help create its own credebility by setting high standards.
ITAA suggested "re-engineering" the certification process to make the industry the "gold standard" so they can eliminate "side attacks you are subject to now from people who are not credible as well as people who are somewhat credible
Harris Miller offers the following comments on how ITAA company partnerships would handle the public debate about electronic voting:
"Similarly, when we get press calls and the press says 'Joe Academic says your industry's full of crap and doesn't know what it is doing.' What do you say Harris? The reporters always want to know what are the companies saying?.. And there can be two scenarios there: The companies may want to hide behind me, they don't want to say anything... frequently that happens in a trade association, you don't want to talk about the issues as individual companies....I take all the heat for them."
How is any of that related to the topic at hand? These panels we see approaching the government are coalitions formed by a lobbying firm that is paid to protect the interests of its clients. The panels are made to look as if they are unbiased experts that are only looking out for the good of all Americans. The truth is they want to control the conversation so it seems as if they are the only ones with relevant information on the subject at hand.
Harris Miller and the ITAA have been doing this for many years, and their MO is always the same. This The National Cyber Security Partnership is nothing more than an extension of ITAA's lobbying efforts.
One thing that is never addressed is that many of the jobs that are created in the US are filled with temporary immigrant labor (yes, I am talking about the much-abused H-1B and L-1 visas categories).
It would be one thing to share global knowledge about processes in order to lift the entire world's standard of living, but it is quite another to move jobs out of one country, and then fill the remaining jobs with temporary foreign labor.
I think many of us just want a chance to participate in the global market, and Americans are being denied that right even in our own country.
Workers from all countries need to work together, not against each other. That article talked about the obscene hours the people in India had to keep to work with their American counterparts. If this guy is truly following a "follow-the-sun" model, why is that necessary?
It is also interesting to note that Brian Behlendorf not only "stumps" in front of college kids in India, he seems to be a speaker for ITAA.
Indians are not being reimbursed from attrocities committed in the past (not enough money in the world).
The monies are from the tribes charging money for companies...mostly mining companies...for using their tribal lands.
The lands are not owned by the Indian tribes, but are held in trust for them by the US govt (sorta like how we are doing now for the Iraquis...) so the tribes cannot contract directly with the mining companies. The govt holds onto the royalties made off these lucrative contracts and redistributes them to enrolled tribal members.
Except their bookkeeping sucks. Just like it always had. We are talking about millions of dollars owed to the poorest people in America that just disappeared.
The money that is lost was owed via contracts. No one was watching out for these people is the whole point.
Slashdot Mirror
That's because you are a guy and you don't see the stigma because it doesn't affect you.
As a woman in IT, I deal with:
Not all guys do this...I actually work with a bunch of guys who see me as one of them. Not "one of the guys", but as a techie who has something to contribute.
But they act suprised when I point out other people's behavior...they don't notice because it doesn't happen to them.
The way to get more women in the field is to get the message out that you don't have to have a certain set of sexual organs to do this sort of work. This message needs to go to young girls as well as the stupid boys that already work in IT.
My daughter is a freshman in an out-of-state college. The long-distance plan attached to her dorm-room service was quite simply outrageous.
She doesn't use the phone service, which is included in her room charge, to call us. She either calls us on her cell and has us call her back on the landline, or IMs us and we call her back. She uses the cell for true emergencies.
Maybe less students would see the need to have cell phones if the long distance plans offered with their phone service were more affordable.
On-campus college costs are a HUGE ripoff. Don't even get me started on the meal plans!
This article outlines how this joint venture re-vamped Delta's IT systems (again remember, this is 1995):
The trail runs dry here, job postings stopped around 2001.
Which really raises suspicions that all the code is written and maintained offshore. The question now becomes who is handling this for Delta.
One of Tata's spinoffs, Airline Financial Support Services, is described as
Wipro handles some of Delta's inbound reservation calls in India and the Phillipines.
In conclusion, it would appear that either Tata's AFS arm or Wipro do the IT for Delta airlines.
- Accountant, 27K (Monster says entry level is 38K)
- Database Manager, 37K (Monster says entry level is 45K)
- Sys Admin, 42K (Monster says 60K)
I could go on and on. The fact is that there ARE bodyshops that pay their techies too little (even if they charge the company they contract with top dollar). These bodyshops are usually headquartered in other countries, where the labor laws are lax. They take advantage of US immigration laws, and ALL techies, domestic and foreign, are screwed over.If you are making a good wage on an H1B, great, but there alot of your countrymen who are not faring as well as you are.
And there are Americans who are being displaced by the misuse of this visa category.
These are facts.
The actual regulation says that the H1B worker must be paid at least 95% of the prevailing wage. The company can provide any prevailing wage information....even their own data.
If you think H-1B visa workers being underpaid is an urban legend, peruse the LCA database at your leisure. Look at some of the huge Indian bodyshops (they are the worst offenders at misusing US visa regulations), and decide for yourself if they are underpaying their workers ($38K for a programmer?)
The reason the cap was hit by the first day is these bodyshop hoarde the visas, which flaunts the spirit of the visa regulations. The idea behind the H1B visas were to give employers access to specialized workers, not to allow foreign companies the ability to import their own workers while putting our domestic technical workers out to pasture.
Oh yeah, some Congressmen are trying to attach legislation to the Omnibus spending bill that would effectively double the H1B visa cap. Read more about that at Techsunite
Companies win bids for state contracts by massively underbidding small local companies, and send the labor offshore. They do not pass the savings they get by employing cheaper labor back to the state, the companies pocket those as profits. Only one group of people wins here, and it the companies.
It does matter where people are located. It isn't right that entire towns in the US die because the company headquartered there is allowed to up and move to a place where the labor is cheaper, and where they do not have to abide by stricter labor and environmental laws.
In the US, companies are allowed to exist by the will of the people (they must get incorporation papers from the government, the government [supposedly] is for, by, and of the people. That means that in the US, corporations have a responsibility to the communities that allow them to exist.
It's even worse if you want to act "like a woman" (yes I know, gross generalization here). What I mean is if you don't stick to a dress code of baggy t-shirts and jeans, you have to fight the sterotypes even more.
Maybe there are less women getting into CS programs now because enrollment has fallen off in CS programs in general. I would think that has more to do with the lack of opportunity for anyone in the West to do high tech work. Why get a degree in a field where there is no work? If you really love technology, you can get a different major and still do the techie stuff on the side.
If you have learning disabilities, you need to find out how to deal with them so you can deal with college
Also, realize that you will go through stages of really doubting if you should even go to college. This is normal and you have to learn to deal with the feelings. At least that is what I keep telling my daughter who is starting college in the fall.
Why do you think that poor Americans are less deserving than people in India?
For the record, I was one of those poor moms on foodstamps who believed the lie that you could go to college and learn IT as a trade as way to support your family. I know what poverty is, because I have lived it. It isn't right for anyone anywhere to have to live without electricity, heat and water because they can't afford it, to not know how they will be able to get food for thier babies because they have no money (yes, I have done all of those!) but it is absolutely evil (imo) to say that it is ok for corporations to continue to reap huge rewards by exploiting labor.
As anyone who has looked into this issue can tell you, there is not in most cases a one-to-one correlation between an American losing their job, and the job going offshore.
For instance, Microsoft is shutting down a major facility in the US. They are also hiring in India. Will the Microsoft jobs lost in the US be counted as jobs lost to outsourcing? Probably not. That is why the new buzz words are "global sourcing" and "insourcing".
Also, how many jobs are being lost to "American" companys like Cognizant, who do not hire permanant US residents or citizens to work for them, only people on H-1B visas? 30% of Cognizant's 9K headcount work in the US (per the June 7th issue of Newsweek), and according to the Dept of Labor's LCA database the company has 2719 immigrants here on H1-B visas (you do the math).
This issue is not simply them bad us good. American IT workers are getting shut out of the IT labor market, even in our own country. This is not good for anyone. We are wasting our own intellectual capital, which we should be sharing with other countries so IT can be used to bridge cultural and economic divides. People should not have to pretend to be from another country as part of their job requirement. People should not be brought here on temporary visas and be paid less and worked harder than the Americans that work in the next cubicle.
This black and white thinking about this issue is pitting the workers on both sides against each other. The only people who win in that situation are the big guys making millions and millions of dollars to come up with these schemes. We (all IT workers worldwide) created these technologies, and historically we have openly shared and taught everyone so that the technology would thrive. That cooperative spirit needs to come through when thinking about this issue.
www.displacedtechies.com
Many of the call centers were built in poor regions of the US precisly so that Americans with only high school diplomas would have access to jobs after manufacturing industries folded.
So, you are proud that people in India who hold masters degrees have the grand opportunity to work 3rd shift to handle calls from the West? You are excited that people in India have to assume a different identity, to pretend to be Americans just to do their jobs?
It's a good thing that food stamp and welfare recipients must deal with haughty Indians (per your comments) when they need the most help?
I am a sys admin in a university setting, so the pay is on the low side but I have alot of flexibility with my kids.
I am a single mom. I went to college to learn to do something that would allow me to work one job and be able to pay the bills, and to get a job where I didn't have to work nights and weekends. I wanted to be able to do that before my kids were teenagers.
So now my daughter is graduating high school this weekend, and my son is a freshman in high school. My daughter has Asperger's and my son is 14 going on 15 which has to be the WORST age of all!!!, so I miss alot of work. But my boss is pretty flexible.
I worry about it sometimes, and think about how nice it would be to work in the commercial world again and make twice the salary I do now.....
But to be honest with you my kids come first. If I had to go back to waiting tables because that schedule would work better for me taking care of them, that's what I would do.
You can get another job, but your kid can never replace you. I am the only mama my kids will ever have, and that makes the parenting job the most important one of all.
The US grants 160,000 eningeering degrees a year per 260M people
It is just another argument to bolster support for unlimited outsourcing.
Obviously the industry is growing, but industry leaders are using every trick in the book to manipulate labor costs.
Sure, there are thousands of new jobs being created in the US, but Americans are not even given a shot at filling many of these positions.
I agree, it's not as bad as one may think, it's actually alot worse!
www.displacedtechies.com
Taxation is one way that the auto industry was saved in the US. The auto industry outsourced everything (engineering, manufacturing, support jobs,etc), so finally Congress had enough and auto imports were taxed. The overseas companies decided it was in their own financial interests (if they wanted access to the US markets) to open factories in the US.
Would the "management software" used by foreign firms (like Tata and Wipro) be taxed under this sort of program? If so, maybe this could be one way of protecting American workers and small companies who can't even afford to outsource. Maybe this would also be an encouragement for these foreign software firms to hire more Americans if they also want unlimited acces to the American markets.
In a conference call with electronic voting industry officials, Harris says:
I just don't like to put it in writing because if this thing winds up in the press somewhere inadvertently, I don't want the story saying the e[lectronic] voting industry is in trouble and decided to hire a lobbying firm to take care of their problem for them,"
If it comes out in the press, then his organization will not be able to act like they are the only organization that can speak with authority on any issue that affects the IT space.
Instead, Miller falls back on the tried and true tactic of discrediting experts and critics of the companies that he is paid to represent. I would bet all I have that if you took the 1,000 people they used for this very scientific survey and let them know how insecure these electronic voting machines are, they may answer the survey questions very differently.
www.displacedtechies.com
ITAA has "gone on the e-voting offensive" to protect the industry. If Diebold is so concerned about producing voting accuracy, why did they go and hire a lobbyist like Harris Miller to protect their image?
And the services aren't cheap...." annual dues are calculated (they range from $600-$44K, depending on a company's sales. "Deliverables" will cost up to $200,000+". Why not pour that cash into securing their systems instead of their image?
That's what is happening right now in India...people that are doing the software jobs that were sent over there to take advantage of the cheap labor are wanting raises, because their skill level is going up with experience. But, the companies have contracts based on the fact that they are paid less. So, should these people who are becoming more skilled have to stay at the same unskilled pay level? Should the companies send all the now skilled labor packing and start with a fresh crowd?
People in other countries do not need these outsourced jobs more than Americans, that is a logically flawed argument. When the US is at a point that there are no homeless, and no one on public assistance, maybe then we can make those sorts of arguments. displacedtechies.com
- customers of call centres are sometimes zenophobic
- It costs money to provide services to the poor who can't find jobs or the unemployed whose jobs are snatched away. It seems to me to be quite immoral to use cheap overseas labor to provide safety net services to people who are willing to work. We live in an economy that thinks paying minumum wage is too steep of a price of doing business, and should be scary to ALL.
My complaint is that the basis for outsourcing is chasing cheap compliant labor, not looking for the most productive labor. Linux works across borders because people are working towards a common goal, and everyone reaps the benefits. I don't think that companies are using outsourcing as a way to benefit everyone...themselves, the stockholders, the employees (wherever they may be), the customers and yes, even the community...and that is why outsourcing as it stands today is not a good thing.I don't want my bank data offshored. period. I like the protection US law affords me.
Also, as a Southern woman with a Southern drawl, it annoys me to no end that my heritage and upbringing automatically makes me stupid or too cute to handle tough technical questions. I would imagine folks in India must feel this even more, how insulting to spend your nights pretending to be American! I hate talking like a yankee to avoid being teased...I can't imagine that being a job requirement.
My point is this...is outsourcing is so great for the world, why shouldn't companies say, "Look, these guys in India are great and they are cheap and we are going to pass that savings on to you the customer"...instead of pretending the Asian call centers are in Arizona or Texas and pocketing the savings.
www.displacedtechies.com
There are NO RESTRICTIONS on the L1 visas as far as making sure that there is not a qualified American to do the job. There is NO WAGE REQUIREMENT, so it may be these people are working in the US and making Indian wages.
These visas are snapped up by the big Indian consulting companies as a way to market their cheap labor in the US.
For fun, notice the age and sexes of these imported workers. The big Indian consulting firms that import labor are NOT bound to US hiring laws, and frequently advertise age limits in the job postings in India for these positions.
Why are call center workers who handle the private information of US citizens (banks, credit cards, etc) in foreign countries trained to sound like Americans? If outsourcing is so great, why are foreign workers forced to pretend that they are American?
Why are US workers forced to train their replacements, all the while being told that their job is being eliminated because it's the only way for the company to remain profitable?
Is it moral to outsource government services such as upgrading the system that provides aid to unemployed workers or customer service to food stamp receipients to workers who make one fourth of what an American worker would make?
Why are groups that are obviously lobbying groups for corporate interests being allowed to dictate our nation's policy on everything IT?
What effect does outsourcing have on innovation? The skilled workers in the US are not allowed to compete for jobs because American workers are too costly. The marginally skilled workers in countries where costs are lower are making the same types of technical mistakes that US workers made years ago. If outsourcing had been done for reasons other than pure price, would technology be on a different level now?
Why isn't the connection between the misuse of H1B and L1 visas and business access to cheap labor in other countries ever discussed?
Have you stopped to think what will happen to the poor in this country if the white collar wages decrease dramatically?
There are people in the US that don't have air conditioning, can't afford indoor plumbing or electricity. There are alot of people who cannot afford food. Don't even get me started about being able to afford to go the doctor or the dentist. If your wage gets cut by 2/3rds, does it follow that someone eeking out a living on minumum wage will also see a decrease in their wage?
It frustrates me to no end that as Americans we are so quick to feel pity and sorrow for people in some distant land when there is real suffering here in the US.
Many of these call center jobs that have been outsourced were located in the US in low income areas, some of the call centers that have since closed made the decision to open in these low income areas to take advantage of the tax breaks offered by local officials who wanted to provide some sort of economic boost to their cities and towns. When the call centers realized they could get workers overseas for much, much less than minimum wage earner in the US, the call centers closed. What became of these people?
It is very important to think globally, but we honestly need to clean our own house first before we start trying to clean up the neighborhood.
www.displacedtechies.com
ITAA is the lobbying arm of high tech corporations.
For insight on how ITAA sets up these "blue ribbon panels", read this article about a meeting of electronic voting manufacturers. They brought in Harris Miller, ITAA's president, to see how he could help them.
Highlights from the article:
"Similarly, when we get press calls and the press says 'Joe Academic says your industry's full of crap and doesn't know what it is doing.' What do you say Harris? The reporters always want to know what are the companies saying?.. And there can be two scenarios there: The companies may want to hide behind me, they don't want to say anything... frequently that happens in a trade association, you don't want to talk about the issues as individual companies.
How is any of that related to the topic at hand? These panels we see approaching the government are coalitions formed by a lobbying firm that is paid to protect the interests of its clients. The panels are made to look as if they are unbiased experts that are only looking out for the good of all Americans. The truth is they want to control the conversation so it seems as if they are the only ones with relevant information on the subject at hand.
Harris Miller and the ITAA have been doing this for many years, and their MO is always the same. This The National Cyber Security Partnership is nothing more than an extension of ITAA's lobbying efforts.
displacedtechies.com
It would be one thing to share global knowledge about processes in order to lift the entire world's standard of living, but it is quite another to move jobs out of one country, and then fill the remaining jobs with temporary foreign labor.
I think many of us just want a chance to participate in the global market, and Americans are being denied that right even in our own country.
Workers from all countries need to work together, not against each other. That article talked about the obscene hours the people in India had to keep to work with their American counterparts. If this guy is truly following a "follow-the-sun" model, why is that necessary?
It is also interesting to note that Brian Behlendorf not only "stumps" in front of college kids in India, he seems to be a speaker for ITAA.
displacedtechies.com
Indians are not being reimbursed from attrocities committed in the past (not enough money in the world). The monies are from the tribes charging money for companies...mostly mining companies...for using their tribal lands. The lands are not owned by the Indian tribes, but are held in trust for them by the US govt (sorta like how we are doing now for the Iraquis...) so the tribes cannot contract directly with the mining companies. The govt holds onto the royalties made off these lucrative contracts and redistributes them to enrolled tribal members. Except their bookkeeping sucks. Just like it always had. We are talking about millions of dollars owed to the poorest people in America that just disappeared. The money that is lost was owed via contracts. No one was watching out for these people is the whole point.