[A. Pole]

Jairam's annual salary is about $11,000 - more than 22 times the per capita annual income in India. Aparna Jairam isn't trying to steal your job. That's what she tells me, and I believe her. But if Jairam does end up taking it - and, let's face facts, she could do your $70,000-a-year job for the wages of a Taco Bell counter jockey - she won't lose any sleep over your plight.

Of course she "isn't trying to steal your job". This is not the point. The point is that it is very hard to survive in America for $11,000 a year (unless you get government assistance). And this $70,000 is red herring, most of engineers do or will work for much less.

[neutrino]

And this $70,000 is red herring, most of engineers do or will work for much less.

You're so right. I know experienced PhD's in the tech fields that would commit serious mayhem for that kind of bucks. California wages are a tad different than the rest of the country....

[Wolfie]

He's the guy telling tales - many of them true, a few of them urban legends - about American programmers being forced to train their Indian replacements.

This is happening at my company right now. A few people turned down the offer, but finally somebdoy agreed to fly over to India and do the training.

[Paul Ross]

I am rather perturbed that more is not challenged about this particular assertion recited as gospel by the Indians at Hexaware:

Jessica Wynne Scott Kirwin was laid off after nine months training three Indian programmers – his replacements. "It’s not just IT people facing this," he says. "It’s going to be anybody." Ritesh Maniar reminds me that Hexaware has scored a Level 5 rating from Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute, the highest international standard a software company can achieve. The others are quick to note that, of the 70 or so companies in the world that have earned this designation, half are from India. Over several days, here and at other companies, I hear this factoid repeated like a campaign talking point. Translation: We're not just cheaper, we're better.

We have heard countless anecdotal debunkings of these kinds of claims, but we need a systemmic debunking of the Carnegie Mellon groups claim. A hardcore study challenging their findings.

[Regulator]

Here's a comment that a friend of mine sent me this morning:

I was talking yesterday to a pal who works in Development at UC-Santa Cruz. He told me UC-SC hosted a conference on the "Future of Undergraduate Education" a few months ago. The Pres or VP from Adobe spoke, and said, in no uncertain terms, that they won't be hiring Bachelors Degree - level people in the US anymore. Only overseas. Only very very specific people will be hired in the US.

We both had the same feeling about this guy: why does he feel it's okay for him to think this way, when Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq? Why should they protect him and his "business" when it is quite obvious that it is now a foreign business, and he and his fellow managers are merely using their "citizenship" as a way to gain access to the United States?

Deport all of them to India and make them live in the country that their hearts belong to.

[angkor]

most of engineers do or will work for much less.

Not where I live.