Posted on 05/26/2003 3:51:30 PM PDT by Lessismore
WASHINGTON: On a recent April afternoon in Silicon Valley, moments after he was told he had been laid off from his computer programming job at a Bank of America training centre, Kevin Flanagan stepped into the parking lot and shot himself dead.
Some of America's technology workers, who like Flanagan have also had to collect pink slips over the last several months, think they know why Flanagan took his life: Bank of America not only outsourced his job to India, but forced him to train Indian workers to do the job he had to give up.
In the weeks since his death, the techies have used the incident as fuel to fire a campaign against outsourcing to India, an issue that now seems poised to become a major sticking point between the two countries. Several US states are already considering legislation to ban or limit outsourcing.
Bank of America is one of several major US corporations – General Electric, Microsoft, Intel are among others - under scrutiny for outsourcing jobs to India. The Bank created what is called a "Global Delivery centre" in 2000 to identify projects that could be sent offshore.
Since then it has signed agreements with Infosys and Tata Consulting Services (TCS) to provide solutions and services.
In an e-mail exchange with this correspondent, Kevin's father Tom Flanagan said "a significant reason for which my son took his life was indeed as a result of his job being outsourced."
"Did he blame India for his job loss? No. He blamed the "system." He couldn't understand why Americans are losing jobs. Rather I should say he understood it economically, but not emotionally," Flanagan said.
Bank officials, who did not return calls relating to Flanagan's death, have said in the past that the deal with Indian companies would effect no more than 5 per cent of the bank's 21,000 employees, or about 1,100 jobs, in its technology and operations division.
According to some surveys, the US has lost at least 800,000 jobs in the past year and some 3.3 million jobs will move overseas over the next few years because of outsourcing, mostly to India.
The Bank has also acknowledged that it had asked local workers to train foreigners because such knowledge transfer was essential. According to Tom Flanagan, his son was "totally disgusted" with the fact that he and his fellow-workers had to train foreigners to do his job so they could take over. "That sir is a travesty," he said in one e-mail.
US tech workers are challenging the corporate world's claim that it is outsourcing work to improve bottomlines and efficiency. Some analysts have also pointed out that US corporations were being forced to tighten up by the same people who are moaning about outsourcing, and who, heavily invested in the stock market, demand better performance.
But on one website that discussed the Flanagan case, a tech worker pointed out that data processing consumed only a small per cent of revenues and was hardly a drain on the Bank's profit.
"(It is) a prosperous bank which has let greed trump any sense of patriotism or social responsibility," he fumed.
The problem with "big business" is that the managers aren't the owners. This means that their motivation for proper "stewardship" is next to nonexistant. Their job depends on this years or worse this quarter's results, which are not necessarily reflective of the overall health of the company.
Contrary to what many might think, the whole reason we have the faux "persons" that corporations represent is that they can do "good" things, take more risks, invest in more R&D or new markets (the original motivation back when the Dutch were a major economic power was the investment in "new markets") than individuals who would be personally liable. If the rules governing corporations fail to produce that such public good, then the rules need to be changed. Corporations are run by a managerial class (not the same sort of "class" as the Indian caste system or even the British class system, but a class nontheless) whose primary motivation is their own enrichment, which is OK as far as that goes, not the health and growth of the business itself, nor the economic welfare of the real owners, let alone the hired help. Boards of directors are usually very week relative to management. That's even true of many non-business organizations with professional managers and elected or appointed boards.
We've seen too that managers lie to both boards and "regulators", when they can no longer make this quarters results run counter to the long term trend. That sort of manager will outsource, either at home or abroad, to make this quarter's results "look good" even if in the long term what he has really done is eat the corporations seed corn, so to speek.
I don't propose to know what the solution is. Some of it may require governmental action, such as tarrifs on imports of goods from countries who refuse to open their markets to our goods and services, in those areas where we computer as well as those areas where we supply something they don't or can't make themselves, something along the lines of what was done in Clancy's "Debt of Honor" ( although that had some unfortunate side effects. ) Some of it may require changing those rules by which corporations are governed so as to return some personal liabilty to managers and boards.
Indeed we did, in fact they made up the majority of the revenues of the federal government, along with a few exise taxes, such as on cigarets, booze, and so forth, until WW-II and at a few other times, the civil war period and WW-I for example, when we had an unconstitutionally imposed income tax.
While I do agree with your basic premise, the difference today is that the rate of change is much higher, the half-life of knowledge grows steadily less and less, until it will get to the point that by the time you master a skill, the skill has been rendered obsolete.
What is the source or your data. Please post statistics or links to statistics. Thanks.
Don't hold your breath, although the F-14D did finally get engines appropriate to the airframe.
Right now, Squadrons are screaming bloody murder at how crappy the Super Hornet performed in Iraq, and you may yet see a Super Tomcat proposed very shortly with FBW and Strike Eagle electronics.
That would be nice, although the Strike Eagle itself is getting a little long in the tooth, technologically speaking. An Su-35 with a decent drier (hard to come by admittedly) would eat it for lunch) I developed some ot Terrain Following algorithms in part of the LANTIRN navigation pod, used both on the Strike Eagle (F-15E and export versions) and the F-16.
But you also said: The most powerful miltary power in the world by far going facist
And you also said: ...how can you tax the outsourcing?
Fascist? Do you actually believe the Leftists are losing ground? Interesting. Have you forgotten that the left controls the schools, the most respected daily publications (Wash. Times excepted), the mainstream movie productions, most local governments and the Arts?
Your real question is, though, "How can you tax outsourcing?" Simple. Don't allow corporations to list it as an expense. I'll probably regret telling you that till the day I die.
On the subject of your political leanings, nobody really is "in the middle". You can tell which side of the fence someone in America is on with a little question: Are you looking for ways to increase government revenue?
A "yes" answer = left. A "no" answer = right.
I work for large tech firm in the DC area (not government related - we are in the financial industry). We have 19 openings WE CAN NOT FILL! For programmers! I am guessing you are into FoxPro by your moniker - that could be the problem - old dBase-based languages have been dead for almost 10 years (despite the fact Microsoft bought FoxPro and still ships it with their suit of development tools).
If you have C++, .NET, C#, Visual Basic, SQL Server or Oracle skills - there is work in the DC area.
I was part of a small 12 person company that got bought by a very large company - one of my co-worker/friends did not like the big company environment and left (just last month) and got a .NET-related consulting job and 30% increase (to the tune of $130,000)
I have a friend that is a tech recruiter - he says there are plenty of jobs in the DC area - if you have up-to-date skills - mainly .NET (NOTE: HTML and JavaScript hacks are not programmers – this skews the numbers because these people call themselves programmers and they can’t find work)
I have a friend that is part of a small start-up (still in business) - they sent their programming work to India - it sorta worked but the language barrier made the code nearly impossible to support - so now they have taken back the code and are trying to fix it. India is not producing better code - just cheaper code.
Out sources to India works if the work is mindless - meaning you give them instructions and they follow. The problem is most programming work is NOT mindless so the results from India are mixed at best. The life-cycle of software involves many non-mindless jobs - out sourcing programming work has limited application (but this should be a wake-up call)
In the economy. Wherever it goes, it benefits everyone.
American Express just closed up it's Finance department here in the Phoenix home office. 300 jobs lost. Accountants, AP, AR, customer service, analysts.
It was all moved to...India.
That is a very scary thought. You think things are bad enough now, then brace yourself for. . . more lawsuits!
I can do better thann that. Three days ago, I had to call my cell provider, T-Mobile, for help on setting up a complex new service they are offering. I actually got a 'twofer' on the same call: l was initially handled by someone in (I found out later) Jamaica. When she determined that my question was a little too technical for her, I was handed off to someone in India. He was certainly nice enough, and diligently thumbed through several books while I was on the line. His accent was, however, very difficult to make out, so when I later discovered that his solution was in fact wrong, it may have been my misunderstanding of what he said that was to blame. Fortunately, as a long-term geek, I was able to query online newsgroups to find out where the advice I had been given was off.
Now imagine how some little old lady without a technical background might have reacted to this!
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