IBM to hire 14,000 in India

Sify ^ | 24 June , 2005,

[phoenix_004]

US tech giant IBM plans to increase its payroll in India this year by 14,000 workers, even as it cuts 13,000 jobs in Europe and the United States, a labor group said on Friday.

The shift, first reported by The New York Times, highlights the transfer of some skilled jobs to low-wage countries such as India by a number of companies including IBM, the world's largest information technology company.

The moves in India were indicated in what was claimed to be an internal company document posted on the website of the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, of Washtech, which seeks to unionize high-tech workers.

It indicated IBM's Indian workforce would rise to 38,196 in 2005 from 24,150 in 2004.

IBM declined to comment on the document or specific workforce levels. But company spokesman Edward Barbini said IBM is increasing its staff in high-growth countries such as India to meet increasing demands.

"IBM India has seen double-digit growth in the last five years," Barbini told AFP. "In 2004, IBM India recorded revenue growth of 45 percent. We ended December 31 with roughly 23,000 employees in India making IBM India's sixth largest IT employer."

Barbini offered no specifics on increases in Indian hiring, but noted that the company has announced it would hire 1,000 programmers for a new software center in Hyderabad.

"India, China and Brazil are high-growth markets for IBM and we are hiring to support our local growth in those markets," he said. "There is a rapidly growing demand for business transformation services."

Washtech said the moves were hurting workers in the US and elsewhere.

"IBM is really pushing this offshore outsourcing to relentlessly cut costs and to export skilled jobs abroad," Marcus Courtney, president of Washtech, told the Times.

"The winners are the richest corporations in the world, and American workers lose."

[RobbyS]

Probably the truest thing written today.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Patriotism is a mere sentiment?

Wow.

[ColoCdn]

"Today ... IBM seeks to increase its Indian "foot-print" - but why?"

Money. If you think it's because of a lack of educated workers, you're eating more mushrooms than are good for you.

[RobbyS]

Johny and Suzi have no interest in math ans science, in part because the schools don't hire teachers who know the subjects; in part because these subjects threaten the self-esteem of so many students.

[ordinaryguy]

Fast-food restaurants are experimenting with placing their drive-through order-takers in a central location. That is, they communicate with the drivers over a phone line from a remote call-center. At that point, it doesn't matter whether the call-center is in Kansas or Bangalore.

Don't assume a career in fast-food service is safe from outsourcing.

[Fritzy]

We just do not understand a global economy... we have operations in the states from Japan, Germany etc... all employing American workers... but we have to clearly see that where any nation moves.. so moves the world.. keep your eye on China, India and Africa... they are carefully and with strategy moving, with force, into global trade.. we are too busy spiting at each other to actually appreciate what we must to to compete on a new trade platform.. for instance... Florida and Brazil compete in the citrus industry.. Brazil exports 99% of it products globally.. Florida keeps almost 95% of its products in the US.. if Florida Citrus gurus expanded their growth and exported their expertise under current branding.. say in Morocco.. developing new groves/production for the emerging EU/African market.. it would not only match Brazil but within a decade over ride the Brazilian market.. Fla. Citrus has superior products.. but shrinking groves... but we just do not think this way..
Note: this morning China would like to purchase a huge hunk of our oil industry.. ouch!
We are now known as the chief "cash giver" of the world.. what we need to be known as is the Global Trade platform ... we just don't get it is no longer gifts to developing countries.. but jobs and opportunities.. all helping to build viable organic democracies upon strong economic platform..
Just my two cents...on a Friday afternoon..

[oceanview]

total nonsense. this is not the fault of the US education system. that same education system created the engineers which developed the telecommunications and internet revolutions in the late 90s. what happened, everyone "got dumb" in the last 5 years?

this is corporate greed, pure and simple, and a political class that has been bought off to allow it under the banner of "free trade".

[A Ruckus of Dogs]

The winners are the richest corporations in the world, and American workers lose."

The American consumer wants cheap tech and cheap software. If it comes down to a $50 software program made in India or a $150 program made here, which one are you going to choose?

You can't complain that your jobs are going overseas and then buy the overseas product.

[austinite]

The free-market economy doesn't know "patrotism" or any other sentamentalism

Spoken like a true free-traitor trader.

[familyop]

"I work for a company that outsources, and I see it all the time. In-house workers manage to duck management's best efforts to stymie them and get something done. Outsourced projects come back, time after time, with huge performance and quality issues. Management then wants in-house people to tidy it up for release.

They always wind up spending a lot more to get the product ready to market, but pointing that out is forbidden. I have even caught management in outright lies about the resources they devoted to projects. They were lying because to disparage outsourcing is a career-ender for a manager."

There's a lot of truth in your words. The problem is more of an issue of vanity in our "elite" than one of profit. Here's another example.

Mexican nationals were getting about $15 per hour as laborers in concrete work in Denver (~ year 2000). There's a large pool of US citizens who will do the work for that pay, but they insist on acting like US citizens (will not grovel, act like slaves or serve certain kinds of personal demands).

Corporate officers and managers don't like being subject to technical considerations of software developers at all. Corporates continue to try through some universities to train people with management degrees in a little of the technical work without real success (time constraint, even for software development programs). Even software developers must train themselves, for the most part, by working in projects after they finish programs in their field.

As the US dollar falls relative to other currencies, foreign labor and products will be more expensive for US corporates. Then new domestic competition will happen.

Let's form consulting/project teams and get to work. Let's use some of our visiting foreign national friends (thereby taking them out of the market for established corporates) in our new teams and teach them how to be sassy to bosses.

[A Ruckus of Dogs]

total nonsense. this is not the fault of the US education system. that same education system created the engineers which developed the telecommunications and internet revolutions in the late 90s. what happened, everyone "got dumb" in the last 5 years?

A good part of those engineers were H1-bs. Americans aren't dumber, just less interested in studying tech. When I went to engineering school, over half the class was foreigners.

[Doohickey]

Two big companies I know of here in Richmond, Capital One and Philip Morris have outsource many of their IT operations to IBM. Guess we know where those jobs are going.

[oceanview]

except that there are no cost savings with IT offshoring. amex offshored their customer service, did they send me a check? every US bank is doing it, are they raising my interest rate? they read XRAYs in India, see the cost of getting an XRAY going down anywhere?

no, they are just pocketing the profits. the only people benefitting are executives who raise their compensation as they offshore more workers.

[oceanview]

and its going to be 100% soon. any american going to college for IT/CS/EE should have their head examined right now. every kid I talk to wants to be a lawyer or a teacher.

[A Ruckus of Dogs]

they read XRAYs in India, see the cost of getting an XRAY going down anywhere?

Is it going up? It's entirely sensible that outsourcing is preventing X-ray costs from going up.

[A Ruckus of Dogs]

every kid I talk to wants to be a lawyer or a teacher.

Just what we need, more lawyers.

[superiorslots]

Quote: And the hits just keep coming.


The Kiplinger Newsletter is very conservative on their forecast and they are usually 99% right most of the time. Been around for a bazillion years.

They said the floodgates to outsourcing/offshoring have not yet even been opened other than a small amount. Many companies were weary to do so and were waiting to see what their compeittion was going to do and some were unsure how to proceed. They said the next few years will really kick off.

[ordinaryguy]

There are cost savings associated with IT offshoring. It is just that, as you point out, the savings are not passed on to the customer. Corporate profits are up, partly as a result of those savings.

Of course, the Chinese and Indians are looking at this, and deciding that it would be nice to have that margin for themselves. The solution is to buy the US corporations reaping the profits.

[superiorslots]

Quote: In other news, McDonald's, Home Depot, and 7-11 Stores announced they will be hiring more employess in the foreseeable future, but they will all be minimum wage, without annual pay increases.



There is alot to be said of a nations economy when their largest private employer is Wal Mart.

[familyop]

"Johny and Suzi have no interest in math ans science, in part because the schools don't hire teachers who know the subjects; in part because these subjects threaten the self-esteem of so many students."

That is very true. Also, men are driven out of our universities by feminists/socialists while doing their general requirements ("liberal arts") as a multitude of programs exist to push hardly willing women into the hard sciences.

It's likely that I'll have my 12-and-15-year-olds in calculus at home by October (and more after) while finishing C++, Python, calculus and physics myself (doing what we can't do in school--much repetition and problem solving). ...only started last semester. By necessity, some businesses rely much more on tests for recruiting than on degrees, and there's more money in consulting, anyway.