http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/2003-06-01-jobs-overseas_x.htm
If I don’t get accepted into development for the USAF this Friday I will be wiping my ass with my BSEE.
Fuck the tech market blows.
Concerning the people that send jobs overseas:
I’d run a mile naked just to whack 'em upside the head with a whiffle ball bat.
Not the simplistic argument about people who send jobs overseas again! Please! We just did it.
There is hope. The company I work for sent a lot of its development to India. They are bringing a lot of it back. The company my husband works for is coming to the same conclusion. Its cheaper in the short term, but its not necessarily cheaper in the long term. Its difficult for the business side to deal with the developers on a 12 hour time zone difference - the US managers quickly get tired of 2am phone calls. Although many Indians speak excellent English, it isn’t universal, especially amongst the coders doing the work - and frequently things get lost in translation - which means the development cycle gets dragged out. In otherwords, it isn’t a clear win situation for the businesses - although for some things its is a good alternative - but all companies need to discover the downsides for themselves.
It’s happening everywhere. I think we techies need to unionize or something… When it happens in other industries there’s at least some political fall-out and the occasional bone of placation thrown to the aggrieved (as with the US steel industry, for example, a few months back). With us geeks there’s barely a whimper.
Of particular annoyance is that because those harvesting stupiditys bounty happen to be, generally, non-white non-Westerners, the countless legions of the politically correct will be up in arms against you if you dare to voice complaint. I’d be surprised if pc’s cold dead hand didn’t show up in this very thread. The way they seem to see it, losing your job to continually-oppressed foreigners is just what you personally deserve. Just so long as it’s not them staring career death and welfare-dependancy in the face I suppose.
:: after preview ::
Wow Dangerosa, that’s the most positive story on this topic that I’ve yet heard! Maybe there is hope after all.
Lemme see. I hire development staff in India, Moscow and Indonesia, and try to keep my dev teams in the US and UK to a minimum. Something wrong with that?
Ah fuck the whingers man, although I fail to grasp the PC usage in the prior post. As typically used, and apparently here as well, thsi is something describing the Left. As far as I can tell, that’s exactely who’s protesting such things. In full economic illiteracy of course.
We just recently discussed this in GD: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=185390
The people who think they are owed a job by the rest of American people are just trying to extort money from them. Why should the rest of the contry be forced to buy your goods or services rather than what they freely elect to buy? What kind of freedom is that?
I agree about a tech union.
I also think that the flaws in the indian solution will show up more and more often. Not much wrong with it, objectively, it’s the social and cultural… and I’m not talking india, I’m talking about the problems in maintaining a corporate culture over a distributed area… flaws that’ll kill it. Coders are… rarely the most well adjusted people in the world, it takes a specific mindset… and I’m not surprised at all at the percentage of high-functioning autistic sorts found in the field. And you need someone good to ride herd on them, who can protect them from the bosses, and also translate back and forth. And I don’t think that translation goes well across a cultural barrier.
I’m curious. How do you think multinational companies operate in other industries?
As opposed to the actual illiteracy of your post…
By having corporate presence in the other countries, Gary. I’m talking about cases where some VP or CEO hires out his programming staff to a company in India who says they’ll do it for him, cheaper.
They won’t get what they want.
If a company builds a presence across two countries, that’s different. For one thing, interfaces are at a management level, which is how it should be handled, or at a techie-to-techie level, which also works. It’s when you go cross-border and cross the management to techie line at the same time you’re going to fail miserably.
A union? A union? WTF? Start your own company and have whatever hiring practices you want. Unbelievable.
FTR, I am an engineer. I was laid off in 1998 and was out of work for four months. Instead of whining about how unfaiiiiiir it was, I learned a few new skills in the profession and found a new job.
Haj
I think somebody either has a too-broad definition of a “technical job,” or somebody’s done the math wrong.
NYC’s population, according to its own Department of City Planning, is a little more than 8,000,000. I find it kinda hard to believe that 1/16 of the entire population works in the technical sector, even if you broaden that definition to include clerical jobs such as “data entry” (which the article in the OP does). Even if that were the case, it would mean technical jobs would cease to exist in NYC, which is patently false.
From the aforementioned article: “According to a study by management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, financial services companies are planning to move more than 500,000 jobs overseas in order to reduce operating costs by $30 billion annually.”
Taken in context, it would seem that these jobs are all leaving New York. I think it actually means 500,000 jobs from across the nation are being moved overseas.
Still not great, exactly, but at least it doesn’t mean that NYC is being gutted of tech jobs.
hajario, that’s great but tell me what happens when you get laid off again in 2008 and there are no jobs, for which you have spent your career training, because it has become standard practice to ‘offshore’ all software work.
The essence of my problem with this is not jingoism, as asserted in the linked thread, but because it is unfair competition. There is nothing - nothing! - that I can do to compete with someone whose cost of living, through no fault of either of us, is vastly less than mine. The Indian guy (for sake of example) can do the same work, to the same competance and at the same speed, but he doesn’t have to find $300,000 for a one-bedroom flat in some London shithole. Maybe there isn’t actual parity of technical ability today, but you can count on them improving every year - while we stagnate through lost opportunities - and they’re certain to match us before we know it. I find it all absolutely terrifying.
It makes me more than a little angry that large corporations are falling over themselves in their rush to sack loyal domestic staff in favour of cheap foreigners. I can scarcely credit the shamelessness of it, the total disregard for their natural responsibilities to their employees and to the pride and abilities of the nation.
As to the argument that this ongoing outsourcing orgy is keeping the price of goods low - bollocks. The increase in profits, you can be sure, goes straight into the bosses pockets. And if, by chance, there’s a few pence/cents knocked off the price of Widget X, will it really add up to anything approaching the enormous increase in welfare that taxpayers will have to fork out to cover the sacked domestic workers?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Reuben *
**hajario, that’s great but tell me what happens when you get laid off again in 2008 and there are no jobs, for which you have spent your career training, because it has become standard practice to ‘offshore’ all software work.
[quote]
**
I highly, highly doubt there will be no techical jobs in the West in 2008 or any other time in my life. I’m not a software guy but you could possibly start your own company. Come up with a unique product and hire everyone from the U.K. or get a bunch of Indian guys. Try to consult to the Indian facilities. It’s up to you. Unions sure as hell won’t solve this issue and corporations aren’t charities.
The catastrophists have been talking about this “issue” on and off since the 1970’s. I think we’ll be just fine. NAFTA is nearly 10 years old and the massive loss of jobs to Mexico hasn’t happened either.
Haj
This is an over-simplification.
Let’s look take look at Fritz, the hypothetical skilled worker with an associate’s in engineering technology. Fritz lives in MA, where a skilled widget technician makes $50k per year. It’s not a huge sum, but nor is it small. In fact, it can’t be small, because Fritz lives in MA, and the standard of living for a skilled technician requires about that much.
Chen has a master’s degree in engineering science and lives in SE China. Chen commands the lordly sum of $6k per year – though his housing and other needs are subsidized. When Fritz’s company decides the time is right to have the Chens of the world do the jobs of the Fritzes of the world, his company moves production to China.
Fritz isn’t guilty of extortion, he’s the victim of an un-level playing field. Ironically, Fritz is still part of the problem. You see, Fritz’s spending habits favor cheaply made imports, and it’s trends like this that forced his company to move. The company is guilty to pandering to a ‘price is all that counts’ mentality, and the government hasn’t done enough to ensure a level playing field.
No one should be forced to buy any particular good or service, but it’s more complicated than US workers feeling they are owed something for nothing. On a global scale, it doesn’t ‘balance out’ like you would expect. Some economies are hyper-competitive using tactics that aren’t allowable domestically.
In other words, would Widgetco still have moved if their China plant had to abide by strict environmental laws, pay tax at a US rate, use western accounting practices, abide by western labor laws, do without government subsidies, and respect intellectual property?
Because someone is willing to provide the same service as you at less cost it isn’t fair? Have it your way then, lets say you get some kind of protectionist legislation passed that saves your job. How is that any more fair to the people you would be screwing out of a job? Or is it OK since they live on the other side of the planet?
Nice to see a post that actually deals with some of the complexities. Good job, Waverly.
I’d like to see all workers have access to unions, including high-tech workers. But I don’t think that will block the flow of jobs overseas when workers in Gondwanaland 
or wherever think a fraction of a US worker’s wages is princely. Unions simply can’t hold back what amounts to water trying to flow downhill, though they can do a lot of good in other areas and other situations.
Funny thing about the link in the OP: when I clicked on it, next to the article was an ad saying:
Yeah - software piracy caused all them job losses. Suuuuuure… :rolleyes:
Waverly, can you explain to me why it would be OK for a company in NYC to outsource labor to Arkansas where the cost of labor and cost of living is cheaper? Why is Arkansas OK and China is not OK?
You can call it anything you want but buyers should be free to buy whatever they want where ever they want. Some people want to take away that freedom and I disagree. If a Chinese guy will do what I want better and cheaper then it is my choice to buy from him and nobody should extort my money from me.