Siemens to move most software jobs to Asia, Eastern Europe

sfgate ^ | 02/16/2004 | by S. SRINIVASAN, Associated Press Writer

[J. L. Chamberlain]

Take it from this CS grad with some twenty odd years experience, look into the culinary arts.

Peoples always gots to eat...always!

J

[txzman]

"Lots of people with some training think they are actually educated."

LOL! Boy ain't that the truth.

[BobS]

"Hey; all the Phd from MIT engineers without a job?"

Boeing needs engineers. As long as they're not basketweaving engineers:):)

[ryanjb2]

"Take it from this CS grad with some twenty odd years experience, look into the culinary arts.

Peoples always gots to eat...always! "

I already work with food for my part-time job, and I hate it. The hate I have for it is a deep, disturbing loathing that is slowly eating away at what's left of my sanity.

I actually enjoy working with computers, so I am going to continue with this path. If it doesn't work out, I am young enough to do something else.

[Swanks]

I am more familiar with the Bell-head engineering types.

[Andrewksu]

The main problem is that they have the worst commercial music ever. It is really cheesy and cheaply done, you would think it was for a local carpet wholesaler. It's something about the world going round, terrible.

[Myrddin]

I guess I should change my MIS major and CompSci minor to something that will be useful in the future.

If I was in your position today, I would be seriously considering pharmacy school. There is a shortage of pharmacists and you have to be physically present to do the job.

[RockyMtnMan]

According to the Economic Times of India the number is $1.2 trillion not $12 billion. Perhaps they got the decimal in the wrong place?

US may ban financial outsourcing

[searchandrecovery]

There ain't gonna be one programming or software job left in America or Europe soon.

And for good reason - these are jobs that Americans don't want to do; also, no qualified h1b/l1 candidates could be found. Every illegal Mexican immigrant asked said: "no way, jose", as did a number of folks in Costa Rica and Brazil. Sweatshops in the Phillipines that were contacted had prior commitments. Siemans had no choice but to move these jobs to India & China.

Every single (soon to be former) Siemans software developer said they would rather be on some form of public assistance than doing work programming, and all looked forward to government retraining for the new jobs in the new industries of the future.

[Mr. Jeeves]

I guess I should change my MIS major and CompSci minor to something that will be useful in the future.

Keep the minor, switch your major to business, and follow up by getting an MBA. Somebody who knows something about computer science has to coordinate and supervise all the offshore work with the US business units, and this change shouldn't be too disruptive for you - most of the classes you've already taken will still count.

[Southack]

Man, I have never heard so much uneducated, childish whining on any one thread before.

You people don't even know what is happening. You think that you do, but you don't.

For instance, how many of the people who have *already* posted to this thread have ever used a single piece of software written by Siemens, much less by the people that Siemens is currently employing in those jobs that are about to go to India?

None of you can name even one such program.

And why can't you name one of those Siemen's programs?

Because those are all "consultants" (read: warm bodies) that Siemens has placed at other firms, such as working inside BellSouth, but on Siemen's payroll.

And what the Market has figured out is that there is a whole lot of waste and inefficiency in having so many bodies on site at so many other companies. Most of those "consultants" know even less than the posters to this thread. They typically have an extra Degree and precious little real world experience.

What's happening is that many managers are simply starting small and saying "don't completely eliminate those positions at first, just move them over to a low-cost nation and see how much we miss them or if we even notice that they are gone." Notice that the "consultants" didn't just get summarily fired. No, the jobs aren't being eliminated in the first step, but moved (i.e. this is a trial).

Thus, they move several thousand jobs over to India.

But you know what, those "consultants" aren't going to be missed. Most of them ought to be pumping gas, if only gas pumps hadn't already automated them out of even those jobs.

I mean sheesh...a German firm moves its 3rd party "consultants" to India and you get more whining on this thread from a bunch of unemployed techies here in the U.S. than if you were in a room full of pregnant women watching a tear-jerker on the tube.

Get a grip, people.

These "consultants" are in internal positions knocking out internal programs, or more likely, merely performing maintenance at clients of Siemens. This sort of internal work by 3rd parties is viewed by Management as a "cost" rather than as a "producer."

Costs get cut. Producers get rewarded. Such as it is, such as it was, such as it ever shall be. So goeth the corporate world.

[searchandrecovery]

But you know what, those "consultants" aren't going to be missed.

Southack opens up a new argument for outsourcing, going from: a)these are jobs that Americans won't do -> b)these are jobs that no one should be doing. That's funny.

[AubreyHerbert]

And why isn't the us government doing anything about the high cost of doing business in the us and the burdensome regulation that is providing the impetus for these jobs going overseas in the first place?

[Lazamataz]

For instance, how many of the people who have *already* posted to this thread have ever used a single piece of software written by Siemens, much less by the people that Siemens is currently employing in those jobs that are about to go to India? None of you can name even one such program.

Wrong.

Envision, produced by Shared Medical Systems, a division of Siemans.

I not only programmed Envision, I happen to know for a fact that if you have been in nearly any major Birmingham hospital -- and many in NYC, Atlanta, Chicago, Phildelphia, Pittsburg, LA, and many dozens of other major cities -- you have used it indirectly. You would be coded as a Universial Patient Record, and all your ICD-9 diags and CDM/CPT procedure codes would be placed therein for every symptom and procedure you have ever had.

Sometimes people DO know what we're talking about, bud.

I believe the rest of your post can be safely disregarded, as your primary premise has been disproven.

[Gekko The Great]

Costs get cut. Producers get rewarded. Such as it is, such as it was, such as it ever shall be. So goeth the corporate world.

Right. Greed is good. Devil take the hindmost. Only The Strong Shall Survive. It's all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation.

[Lazamataz]

These "consultants" are in internal positions knocking out internal programs, or more likely, merely performing maintenance at clients of Siemens. This sort of internal work by 3rd parties is viewed by Management as a "cost" rather than as a "producer."

BTW, Envision is a revenue-creating program for Siemens. SMS's Envision is why SMS was bought by Seimans.

[Merdoug]

You forgot the old "Start their own business" phrase; that's my favorite! :)

[Merdoug]

You forgot the old "Start your own business" phrase; that's my favorite! :)

[Lazamataz]

Spelling error. INvision. Not ENvision.

Its been a few years. ;^) My RA-Census and Care Plan system was integrated into Invision back in, what, 1996 I think?

[Southack]

"Southack opens up a new argument for outsourcing, going from: a)these are jobs that Americans won't do -> b)these are jobs that no one should be doing. That's funny."

Funny, until you realize that the whole *Re-Engineering* wave of restructuring and corporate layoffs was/were all about finding and cutting the bloated fat of comfortable white collar desk jobs.

Does AT&T really *need* 1 manager for every 2 employees?! I don't think so! Ditto for the masses of "consultants" who occupy desks throughout the land.

There is still plenty of fat left to be cut, and we're all better off for it being cut.

Consider, if you will, that General Motors makes more than 5 million cars per year with 188,000 employees today. Ten years ago, however, General Motors made roughly the same amount of cars but employed more than half a million people.

By cutting *unneeded* job positions (as you unnecessarily deride above), GM has been able to become profitable *and* improve its quality, all with fewer people.

Contrary to popular belief, most companies can do without quite a few people.

One of my large clients, BellSouth, could technically fire 30,000 people tonight...with no notice, and not one customer would notice a thing. Everyone would still have dial tone in the morning.