From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I have to side against the Fool in this case. His point was that his job was
threatened by the outsourcing scourge. I work in IT, and I do not see the
threat. But then I am an analyst and not principally a programmer. It is the
I don't know any good solutions, but I am concerned about the problem.
heads down programmers, web developers, and phone support that is being threatened by outsourcing. It is clear that programming is difficult, but its rather technical work (like fabrication or assembly), meaning that large scale innovation is no
Most factory workers do not have a 4 year college degree or need one to do their job.
Any way, for your industry, maybe you are correct, but not all programming is like that, and it's not just the rote "technician" stuff that's getting transferred offshore: Example:
A few years back, I was offered a software job at GE Medical Systems out near Milwaukee. This division designs/builds stuff like MRI and CAT scan equipment. They had a split set up, using programmers in India for some of the system coding, along with some programmers in Milwaukee. I can assure you that though the software architecture was chiefly done in the US, the work the Indian programmers were doing was not by any means "fabrication/assembly" work, it was real engineering work.
longer driven by the programmers. It is the architects and analysts that provide the innovation. What has to happen is these same programmers need to shift their careers to analysis.
Easy to say, but how many positions are available for analysts and architects,
versus how many programmer jobs are open to being displaced? I'm guessing
there's a 1:10 to 1:20 ratio of analysts/architects to programmers.
What do you suggest the other 9-19 programmers do?
Are the jobs lost overseas being replaced at all by alternate, equivalent-quality
jobs? If not, who'd going to be able to buy all those cheap DVD players and
TV's?
No off-shore worker can provide business requirements or delve deep into legacy systems to solve business problems. The focus of IT is business. This fundamental belief is lost with those who are bothered by outsourcing. The days are gone of the Mainframe programmer/analyst, who did it all with respect to creating mainframe apps. No one person can write a large program any more. The technology is too sophisticated, and the business requirements are too massive for one person. The programming has become the easy part of the technical solution. It's the analysis of determining the business behind the bits that's important.
So your vision is companies consisting of small groups of management and lead
analysts/architects, while all the actual body of technical work is done offshore?
And then when the offshore developers learn the business better, and canned software packages simplify the analysis tasks, the analyst jobs can be moved offshore, too, right?
And what about those little manuals that come with most Asian computer components. Ever read one that did not have some significant English spelling or syntax error? We are the Masters of English. It is this mastery that will keep us on top.
Keep a small select few on top, perhaps. My (high-tech) company of about
800 people currently has two tech writers on staff, and that is only part of their
role. Tech writing is not going to save many people's jobs.
And about those outsourcing companies... Rumor has it that the Indians are
now not satisfied with the rates being offered by American companies for the
work, so they are now doing offshore outsourcing to countries like Russia
and Viet Nam. This tells me that the American programmer is going the way of
the punch card operator, and that things will shift world-wide.
Back when people started worrying about the loss of US blue-collar, manufacturing
jobs overseas, the standard reply was that we needed to transistion to a high-tech
economy, and we needed to prepare/retrain workers to deal with it and transition over.
Now, high-tech, white collar jobs are also migrating away. Where are the
replacement jobs going to come from? They can't all become analysts and architects.
I hear stories about phone support people off-shore, who place marbles in
their mouth while speaking to straighten out their accents. Phone support
people here complain if they have to be nice to customers. How hungry are
you to do this job? Try putting a marble in your mouth the next time you put
a headset on. This is what you are up against. Those foreign workers are
hungrier than you, and they are kicking your ass! I don't think Americans
are wanting to compete, they just want to complain about foreigners taking
their jobs, asking for special protections so they can maintain their lazy
lifestyle
Compete how?
US workers are up against workers that make a quarter or fifth (or less!) the hourly
rate US workers do. Maybe you'd consider that fat and lazy, but those same
wages here would leave someone squarely at the poverty level.
In grad school in 1992, one of my fellow students, from India, worked as an engineer
there for several years after getting her B.S.EE before coming to the US. She told me that
she was getting paid more money working as a part-time teaching assistant (10 hrs/week,
approx $8-10k/year) than she got paid as a full-time engineer in India. So again, I ask, if the engineering jobs are moving there, how do US engineers compete?
I do hope they see the writing on the wall. Its time to move on.
Move on to what?
Again, I don't have any answers, but I am concerned, and I'm not buying arguments
about whining "lazy Americans" just needing to "compete harder".
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