I'm feeling xenophobic...

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by wannaJD, Apr 2, 2003.

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  1. wannaJD

    wannaJD New Member

    This is just a follow-up to my posts about my fear of significant loss of jobs in the IT sector. Most people are unaware of this trend, except perhaps, the unemployed in the US. I am currently working but one or two here have poo-poo'd my concerns.
    No, I'm not chicken little..

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6456-2003Apr1.html

    "The white-collar work is expanding beyond the customer-service call centers that many U.S. companies have moved to developing countries. In India, for example, radiologists now interpret CT scans for hospitals in the United States, and accountants assess risks on loan applications for homes halfway around the globe. U.S. architectural work is being farmed out to the Philippines, Poland and India, as well as China. Microsoft Corp. operates a sophisticated computer research center in Beijing. By 2015, according to a report by Forrester Research Inc., more than 3 million white-collar jobs and nearly $140 billion in wages will have shifted from the United States to other nations."
     
  2. roysavia

    roysavia New Member

    WannaJD,
    Please allow me to add a few of my own comments.

    Large organizations such as G.E.Capital, A.T.& T., and Comspec operate their support groups out of India and Indonesia (I know this for a fact). So if it happens that you are working for a corporation that has a contract with one of these firms for I.T. and helpdesk support, you most likely will need to use their trunk-line which links directly to their support services network in India or Indonesia.
    This is only a small example of what has been happening to the I.T. industry in recent years. I would have to agree with you that by 2015 more than 23% of white collar jobs will be contracted out to foreign countries. :rolleyes:
     
  3. alexn

    alexn New Member

    I don't have any links to back up my claim... That said, there's a strong sense among my circle of IT professionals that it's mostly the lower level IT work that is being off-sourced.

    Tech support and basic web design & programming are indeed prime candidates for unloading onto lower cost workers in India.

    However, larger, more complex projects invariably require American talent to be successful, particularly if it is intricately connected to American institutions such as retirement plans. Microsoft is perhaps the only notable exception to this 'rule', but that's only because they essentially have their own Indian subsidiary due to the investments they have made in India.

    There will always been a need for good, highly skilled IT professionals. Will salaries be as out of scale as they were during the dot-com days? No, but if you're good, you'll find a spot somewhere with more than respectable compensation. Many of the people unable to find *anything* even after months and months of searching are probably marginally skilled or experienced to begin with.

    Just my 2 cents worth.
     
  4. wannaJD

    wannaJD New Member

    That's what I thought, too.

    I am looking for links to specific citings concerning high level software engineer work being offshored...these are ones I found right off the bat...I'll post more later.

    http://www.washtech.org/wt/news/industry/display.php?ID_Content=452

    "“Our local economy is in crisis, and that crisis is partly being caused by corporations sending good living wage jobs to other parts of the world, where workers will do them for a quarter of the cost,” said Jake Carton, an organizer for Jobs With Justice who was among those who demonstrated outside the building on Wednesday."

    Cast says that more than half of Fortune 500 companies outsourced some software development to India in 1999 and 2000, that more than 60 percent are doing so this year, and that the percentage will only rise in coming years.


    http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/mar2003/sb20030324_4031.htm

    "As a commercial developer I've received hundreds of solicitations from overseas programming shops offering cheap labor and fast service. A number of my larger clients outsource projects overseas, and I've worked with teams from India, Ukraine, Thailand, even a couple of programmers from Ghana. But as overseas technical outsourcing hits the big time, with companies like Oracle and Dell shifting large blocks of technical jobs offshore, technical day labor is emerging in its shadow. "

    "One of my business partners -- a role model for anyone who dreams of more than a live-to-work life -- spends three months of every year in an isolated Costa Rican village, surfing in the mornings and coding in the afternoon on a veranda overlooking the beach. If your work is intellectual and you have a lifeline to the Internet, it doesn't matter where you are. But with the rest of the world catching up to our technology skills -- China is expected to graduate 500,000 engineers this year -- my partner may be forced to move to Costa Rica permanently in order to keep his costs down"
     
  5. wannaJD

    wannaJD New Member

    here's another...

    http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/10862_2118191

    "On a weekly basis, Junjua receives hundreds of resumes from desperate high-tech workers, many of them with masters degrees from Stanford and Berkeley who have been laid off because of what Janjua says is the direct result of too many companies turning their outsourcing needs away from the U.S. and hiring oversees. "
     
  6. alexn

    alexn New Member

    I read both links with interest. I can't say that either article addressed my opinion, though, that it's mainly the lower level work that is being offsourced.

    The Washington Tech article was more of a general informational article, and the Businessweek link specifically mentioned shopping carts and 'web services'. A lot can fall under web services, but I think it is safe to say that the type of work the article references is the superficial kind, precisely the kind that makes sense to offsource if you can. Anyone can integrate a pre-fashioned shopping cart into a website. It takes considerably more savvy and technical knowlege to write a large commerical application that can support thousands and thousands of power users while maintaining transactional integrity, whether it is on the web or not.

    I've seen anecdotal examples of the work you get from sites like elance.com that is mentioned in the Businessweek article. Templates and bolt-on code is the rule of thumb. You *CAN* get good quality, original work through sites like that, but you have to make sure to work with a reputable person. And that's easier said than done. At the same time, the type of requests you see on Elance.com are decidedly small, perhaps because the buyers understand precisely the limitations of the medium they are working with.

    Good coding requires an intimate understanding of business processes and practices. It's precisely this kind of knowledge that an offshore programmer would likely find hard to obtain or provide.

    Frankly, I'd be more concerned about hb1 visa programmers 'taking' good jobs away from Americans than off-sourcing. But that's another topic, albeit related.
     
  7. alexn

    alexn New Member

    IT services is a vague term but the first two are definitely what I would call 'lower level'.

    I bet many of those talented Silicon Valley workers would find employment if they would only move elsewhere. There's no doubt heavy high tech cities like SF, Seattle, and Austin were heavily hit by the dot-com burst.

    Besides, I wonder how many of those advanced degrees were in Computer Science and how many were MBA's...
     
  8. wannaJD

    wannaJD New Member

     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 2, 2003
  9. Gary Rients

    Gary Rients New Member

    I haven't seen anything to change my opinion on the matter. The sky has fallen on many other industries in the past, only to find out later that it hadn't fallen at all, but rather changed its hue a bit. Chicken Little's cry does not gain validity just because he is joined by a hoarde of friends in agreement with him.

    I've stated my opinion, and I don't see that there's anything to be gained by debating it further. Honestly, I'm not sure why you're so intent on trying to convince everyone that your perspective is correct. If you're confident that you're seeing the situation clearly then by all means use that to guide your decisions. However, unless you're hoping that someone will change your mind, the motivation behind continuing to bring up this topic is unclear to me. Is it really so hard to agree to disagree?
     
  10. wannaJD

    wannaJD New Member

    Just thought I'd rather end the discussion with some links to support my perspective. You didn't come up in the conversation at all, as far as I can see.

    Your tone in previous posts motivated me to post again. Perhaps if you weren't so condescending, I might not have persevered.
     
  11. Gary Rients

    Gary Rients New Member

    I wasn't under the impression that I had come up in the conversation, and I'm sorry I gave the impression that this is about me in any way.

    I didn't intend to be condescending, and I apologize that you perceived it that way. You were being very vocal about your opinion on this issue, and I happen to disagree, so I just wanted to offer another perspective. The only reason I offered my opinion is that I felt it would be a disservice to those considering an education in this field to let them think that everyone in the industry feels the long-term outlook (in the US) is bleak.

    Again, good luck in whatever you decide to pursue. I hope you can find something that is the right fit for you.
     
  12. wannaJD

    wannaJD New Member


    Oh, I see. I sometimes do not realize the tone of my posts.

    Perhaps I am also overcome by the weight of what I perceive as crisis, and anyone who disagrees that a crisis exists must certainly be from another planet! My apologies. I am not the only one whose perspective counts. :)


    Cheers to you.
     

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