[Willie Green]

Related threads:

State jobs move offshore as firms continue to economize

Small manufacturers blame woes on foreign competition

Export Illusions: Most International Trade Agreements are about Investment, Not Exports

[1stFreedom]

This is going to cost Bush and possibly the Pubbies the next election.

People are not spending in a way to spur the economy. IT and EE fields are experiencing an unemployment rate higher then the national average. IT people have been out of work for months at a time, and some even over a year.

The companies may indeed be saving themselves money by outsourcing overseas, but they are directly harming the economy.

The pubbies need to understand that the economy won't get better if new jobs are offshore and not here. It takes people spending money to get companies to hire and produce more goods. The companies are waiting for this spending to happen before taking financial risks. But shipping jobs offshore is helping to keep peoples spending at bay.

Basically, we are seeing "Trickle Down Economics" work -- but the trickle down happens to be overseas.

[YankeeReb]

Within the next 15 years, U.S. companies will send abroad an estimated 3.3 million U.S. service industry jobs, or $136 billion in U.S. wages, according to Forrester Research.

This is why it's pointless to pursue a career in I.T. It isn't that these companys can't find Americans with the talent to do the work, it's that Americans aren't willing to go through the time and expense, not to mention the stress of keeping up with the latest technology, only to be told they're overpaid and their job is being outsourced. After 15 years I'm done with this field.

Look for this trend to spread to the financial industry.

[proxy_user]

Having lived through many changes, I predict that outsourcing will not be as successful as hoped. The interests of the offshore companies are not necessarily aligned with those of the US companies, meaning that they will have to have many people in this country watching and supervising their outsourcers. Either that, or they will be totally screwed and ripped off.

Eventually, many companies will decide that it would actually be cheaper to do the work themselves in this country. This does not even take into account the changes in currency valuations that will inevitably come as the standards of living rise in places like India, making their workers that much more expensive. I really think that the big advantage they have now is not cost, but that they have so many well-educated young people who are willing to work hard.

[StoneColdTaxHater]

I work for MCI and we service data circuits for GE. Their Network Ops center is in Bombay India. I can tell you that while GE saves money from this arrangement, it is difficult to deal with the techs from India. First, there is the language barrier. The techs are also hard to deal with because they do not understand the workings of the US telecomm networks and use a very cut & dried script when dealing with issues. They are inflexible when pursuing issues thus making it hard to work with them effectively.

[Wolfie]

Maybe they should just pass out the paper hats and fast food smocks at U.S. high school graduations and be done with it.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[Voltage]

A good friend is pres. of a company in So Calif that designs computer perpherial cards, such as VME devices for those of you who know your industrial control systems. About 5 years ago he found it was getting more and more difficult to get circuit boards produced. The reason...etching circuit boards is a messy chemical business, and one that the California EPA frowned upon. Many circuit board companies could not comply with the rules they were burdned with and have disappeared.

One day a salesman who used to work for one of the companies that had folded called on him and offered to get the job done with his new employer in Taiwan. And easy too...just e-mail the circiut board design files. The results..excellent boards and cheaper too!

After a while the same company in Taiwan said they could also do the component installation and soldering. It's that damn dangerous lead you know! Cheaper and better quality than he could do it himself in So. California.

Then they offered to do the compoents purchasing too...also cheaper.

So now the company has no assembly operation at all in So. Calif, just design and sales. Half the employees and double the sales.

Those who lost their jobs of course can thank for California EPA for the improved environment in the unemployment lines.

[MelBelle]

Oh how relevant..I'm sitting here at work with a couple of Indian folks learning our programs so they can take our work to India. I recieved my layoff date of May 30th just last week. My 14 year computer career at ARCO/BP is just about over. Anyone know of any companies wanting to hire a GREAT employee? My resume is all ready, I'm just still in denial and don't want to send it out....

[A. Pole]

An increasing number of noncore services are also being exported to educated offshore work forces, including IT services, product and software development, call centers, human resources, bookkeeping and even entire financial departments, he said.

Whom will they hire?

[BJungNan]

The U.S. is definately late in coming to the party (no pun intended) in China but inquiries are definately up with our company.

Keep in mind that not all companies looking to source in China will succeed. Many will ignore all advise, checking their business sense at home when they check their bags for the overseas flight. Many will lose plenty.

[FoxPro]

I have been writing computer systems for 20 years. I worked 5 months out of the last 18. Computer programming is redundant/repetitive, boring and intellectually uninteresting. Basically as interesting as cleaning a toilet or digging a ditch. Gathering requirements and writing specifications for the programmers in Moscow is where the future is. Being able to write and communicate technical matters is going to be the coin of the realm. Within the next 10 years, no Americans will be writing computer programs. The world is changing, change with it. Momma never told me there would be days like these, strange days indeed.

[Im Your Huckleberry]

So, ummm, what exactly is going to be left in America?

So, ummm, we've outsourced every conceiveable thing in our country, our manufacturing base, our service base, our IT base...

What exactly is left, besides a drive up window and a greeter at Wal-Mart?

Hmmmmm...government jobs, lawyers, doctors....hmmmmm....

[Last Visible Dog]

This is NOT a new concept. The book, “The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer” (written in 1992) describes this very problem. I know of at least one company that stopped using Indian programmers because they were producing crap. A close friend of mind oversaw software development for a New York company that outsourced programming work to India - the language barrier and quality control issues made them rethink their move. Outsourcing is a big issue – but not the silver bullet many companies hope it would be. Meaning this could lead to unemployed programmers AND companies with screwed up products – a lose/lose situation.

[jriemer]

Willie,

Have you ever thought that the Japanese and German auto companies that have built car assembly plants in the US are doing the same thing except we're the outsourcees?

Very little of the "big brain" thinking regarding engineering is done at the local plant level for the new plants - all that is kept back in the mothership. The Americans working in the foreign-owned auto plants are there solely for their relatively cheap labor compared to those in the owner's countries. A majority of the car componets are shipped in from the mothership and assembled here. These companies wouldn't have built these plants from scratch unless it was significantly more cost effective (for them) in the long run than continuing to ship fully assembled cars.

The auto plant jobs are just there to make us locals feel better about our international trade gap.

American corporations have finally jumped on the outsourcing bandwagon that started abroad long ago...

[Brian S]

They said, as the manufacturing jobs were decreasing in the US that "it's ok, we don't want those "type" jobs", we are going to be a "service economy".

Now they are sending the "service type" jobs overseas.

I wonder...what type of an economy are we to be now? I suggest, if the trend continues, the 'welfare economy'.

[Centurion2000]

bump

[Havoc]

Anyone still wonder where our jobs and economy have gone? Hear that tremendous sucking sound...

[frosty snowman]

As an unemployed former computer programmer I figured I'd throw my $0.02 in here. This trend of offshoring is eating up US jobs and shrinking up the tax base in many states. I have only been unemployed for a few weeks, but know of senior programmers formerly with 100K salaries unemployed for 8 or 10 months. I believe that soon, only "service sector" computer/IT jobs will be available in the US, since all software will be written overseas where you can hire three foreign programmers for the price of one American programmer. During the dot-com boom, tech companies were frustrated at the lack of available, qualified applicants and were always looking for ways to expand the labor pool. Now the big companies that are left see their salvation in offshoring, at a time when there is a qualified labor pool in the US looking for work. I earned a computer science bachelors degree about six years ago. Like many of my peers, I drank the dot-com kool aid believing the internet was a radical new way of life that would make us millionaires, or at least grant us a permanent upper-middle class status in life. Now I see those perceptions were all a mirage. Had I not been so naive I would've made much different choices. At one point, I likely could've had a more secure Gov't job but I went after the dollar signs instead. But everything in life is temporary, especially in the IT world. Frankly, I wish I could find some reasons for optimism but the way I see it there just aren't any right now.

[Ciexyz]

Western PA (my area) and our tri-state area (Ohio and West VA) suffered when the steel industry declined and American steel companies acquired steel mills overseas. American companies refused to reinvest in American steel mills.

Now it's happening to other industries. And it's happening to white collar professionals, not just blue collar workers.

Welcome to Modern America. That's the way it is, folks.

[tm22721]

If you can't explain it to people thousands of miles away, you're not going to have a satisfactory outcome"

Fortunately for software engineers, their trade is one of the most complex and difficult on earth.

There are enough bugs in today's feature-bloated products without the additional barrier of language to stymy the close cooperation required on a medium to large sized team.

Except for the most mundane of functions utilizing scripting languages or VB, most American software professionals have nothing to fear from Bangalore.

BUMP