The New Face of the Silicon Age

Wired Magazine ^ | February 2004 | Daniel H. Pink

[optik_b]

Meet the pissed-off programmer. If you've picked up a newspaper in the last six months, watched CNN, or even glanced at Slashdot, you've already heard his anguished cry.

From top: Aparna Jairam, project manager; Kavita Samudra, senior software engineer; Aditya Deshmukh, project manager; Srividya Kanan, technical architect; Lalit Suryawanshi, senior software engineer.

[dennisw]

bttttttttt

[A. Pole]

After a week in India, it seems clear that the white-collar jobs with any lasting potential in the US won't be classically high tech. Instead, they'll be high concept and high touch.

How do you develop "high concept and high touch" without experience and entry level jobs? How many Americans can get this "high concept and high touch"?

[dennisw]

The experience did more than capsize his work life. It battered his belief system. He's long espoused the virtues of free trade. He says that he supported Nafta and that for 12 years he's subscribed to The Economist, a hymnal in the free trade church. But now he's questioning core beliefs. "These are theories that have really not been tested and proven," he says. "We're using people's lives to do this experiment - to find out what happens."

Welcome to the Jungle. Welcome to the zero sum game known as economic reality

[Incorrigible]

What can you say? Success breeds more success...

:-(

[gipper81]

Welcome to the zero sum game known as economic reality

Zero sum doesn't exist in the United States. There is absolutely no data support for this at all. This is economic-buzzword-phraseology from Lester Thurow (MIT) who wrote Zero-Sum Society and has been wrong about so much macroeconomics it is laughable. Zero sum talk is for protectionists who want to feel sorry for themselves.

[dennisw]

The more you talk, the more I like my zero sum theories. Deporting hi tech jobs to India only bolsters these theories.

[gipper81]

Define zero-sum, then. Is there a generally accepted definition here or is this kind of like one of those floating point concepts?

[Consort]

Back in the '70s, Indian IT reps were giving sales pitches at US companies and military bases for software and programming services. They were also bying old US computers back then.

[dennisw]

My crude definition of zero sum for the USA: Since women usually have to work to have enough money to raise 2-4 children and educate them through college, we are doing no better than we did 40 years ago. When women could stay at home and raise the kids.

I see less and real wealth being created in the United States via agriculture, mining and manufacturing. More and more illusory wealth being created by paper shuffling, Wall Street schemes and incurring mountains of foreign and domestic debts. We are sliding backwards into the muck despite the veneer of hi tech flash that blinds and seduces us. Actually we are doing worse than zero sum here.

[dennisw]

Almost all flat screens made, of any size, use Corning Made in USA product....

HUH??? Maybe Samsung?

[gipper81]

D, we are not sliding backwards. The macroeconomic data doesn't support your general impressions in your second paragraph.

There continues to be pricing adjustments in the global labor market in addition to cyclical lags from the 2001 recession. Shouldn't be a problem if we don't sit around bitching about it and then vote jfk2004.

So, would you suggest congress enact "anti-Deporting hi tech jobs to India legislation" ASAP?

[Happy2BMe]

"I put some money into Vanguard Emerging Markets Index Fund. They have racked up gains of 50% and 60% in the last year."

How does that compare to returns on American companies?

:~)

[Happy2BMe]

"Hopefully I never find myself on the recieving end, and have to train a replacement. Although, I fully expect lawyers to be in trouble with Indians doing their work (Nevermind I know quite a few)."

You may not have to wait long.

I know of a company that just shut completely down in the Unted States to reopen in India. Companie's product: Archiving U.S. Law, Legal Cases, and Legal Precedent cases onto CD ROM for use by the legal industry in the United States.

The entire company (over 150 employees) were laid off except for the few that relocated to India.

This story is being repeated hundreds of times across the country, and all too often.

[Happy2BMe]

"So, would you suggest congress enact "anti-Deporting hi tech jobs to India legislation" ASAP?"

And what exactly would be wrong with that?

[gipper81]

Everything. Simply, everything.

[Happy2BMe]

Very well said. Our per captia gross incomes are much larger today than they were 40 years ago, but our quality of life being as good is very debateable.

One only has to look around at the prison populations, gangs, vagrants, broken homes, single parents, increase in rapes, homosexuality, divorces and chlde molestations to see it.

Not only are our jobs leaving us, so is our traditional values of God, Home, and Family.

It all adds up.

[Happy2BMe]

"Everything. Simply, everything."

Did you type that from New Delhi?

[gipper81]

Good one.

Let's get back to your proposed economic legislation. But, before we do, let's determine some of your other ideas.

Are you in favor of increasing the minimum wage to, say, $12-15 an hour?

Are you in favor of doubling the labor union participation rate in this country?

[dixie sass]

So what's new? Jobs, both blue and white collar, have been outsourced for years. I mean why pay high dollar, when you can have the same quality and quanity for less. Good business!