Lawmakers Can't Arrest U.S. Job Shift to India to Lower Costs

Bloomberg ^ | 12/31/03 | Bloomberg

[Pikamax]

Lawmakers Can't Arrest U.S. Job Shift to India to Lower Costs Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Bob Thibodeau founded Financial Systems Architects in 1998 to help companies such as Citigroup Inc. handle electronic transactions. By 2001, he was driven out of business. Lower-cost Indian competitors undercut his bids on two straight contracts, he said.

[nmh]

"Here is a business of a totally different sort started by a former techie I know."

He's smart. He's getting on with things. Probably grows some dope as well ... . In any event he's taken charge of his life and doing something about the lack of tech jobs now and getting worse.

An acquaintance as telling me that PC Expo was about 1/4 the space. It used to take up all of Jacob Javitz. Also there was a small booth for "jobs". Programmers were offered $5.00 to $7.00 per hour for contract programming jobs. There is no future in this in the U.S.. All the belly aching in the world won't change that.

[oceanview]

they will be tech managers for the most part, or the top people in research. no rank and file.

[nmh]

"Here is a business of a totally different sort started by a former techie I know."

He's smart. He's getting on with things. Probably grows some dope as well ... . In any event he's taken charge of his life and doing something about the lack of tech jobs now and getting worse.

An acquaintance was telling me that PC Expo was about 1/4 the space. It used to take up all of Jacob Javitz. Also there was a small booth for "jobs". Programmers were offered $5.00 to $7.00 per hour for contract programming jobs. There is no future in this in the U.S.. All the belly aching in the world won't change that.

[nmh]

You're right.

I hope folks get over their hissy fits over this and don't get caught with their pants down. It couldn't be any clearer.

[superloser]

SUNW is busy reinventing themselves as a leader in the Linux business, strangely enough. They got the PRC as a customer for the Java Desktop and are busy working on getting other governments who are annoyed with MSFT to sign on as well.

It is a very interesting time in the tech industry.

[nmh]

You're right.

I hope folks get over their hissy fits over this and don't get caught with their pants down. It couldn't be any clearer.

Oh there will be some offshore project management positions available and later those positions will be absorbed locally. Again though, they will be very selective in who they send for that. They'll most likely be over qualified for project management - maybe some middle management will be sent since it will be an employers market in this profession.

[oceanview]

many of the tech people here on FR have done the responsible thing and warned freepers with college age children to stay out of this field. for those people, its not too late. for people in their 40s and 50s, it likely is too late to change careers in a meaningful way.

[superloser]

who needs a masters degree in mathematics to teach public school algebra or geometry or the basic sciences

Many states require a Masters' degree to get a teaching certificate. Oregon is one per relatives who are high school teachers.

I doubt the requirement for "higher education" to get a teaching certificate will ever go away due to the public wanting their educators to be "qualified" in some bizzare meaningless way.

[Lord_Baltar]

I hear ya Race. I'm in 3D Graphic Design, and so many of those jobs are being exported, it's gotten really dismal.

My feeling is, Companies that export jobs should be taking it in the shorts in Taxes they pay. This whole notion of "Tinkle Down" is supposedly predicated on the idea that if we unleash these good,pure, angelic Corporations from the evil bonds of Taxation and regulation that they will create jobs that will benefit Americans.


OK, so now they get the Tax breaks, but they are non-American workers.

Sorry, but from what I've seen, those "good, pure, angelic Corporations" need to be bent over and spanked hard.

Maybe a reverse Tax Cut for them? ie Every Job exported to India = $xxxxx.xx ammount of additional Taxes levied.

Also, how about a Dollar for Dollar Loss of Foriegn Aid to Countries recieving those exported jobs? If Microsoft is spending 20 Million a year employing Indian Workers, just deduct 20 Million from any Foriegn aid going to India.

[oceanview]

its the teachers unions that do it, as a barrier to entry into the field. they know how to protect their jobs.

[superloser]

Absolutely, the unions know how to protect their jobs.

I've got more relatives in the classroom or working for the teachers' unions than I can count. It all comes down to protection, except for the really right-wing teachers in the family who want the unions to go away, but that is more because the NEA is too looney-left for them than anything else. Their big beef is in the crap being pushed as curriculum.

[Cronos]

Thanks to our wonderful Government Indoctrination Centers, uh, I mean skools......

Yeah, with it's feel good ed policy -- don't fail anyone, it may hurt them. DOn't encourage the smart kids -- it'll 'hurt' the dumb ones. SO, a general dumbing down occurs. oh and also, make the lib media potray smart folks as nerds and useless, unpopular geeks and show that the only 'liberation' is being a jock or a cheerleader (with the caveat that even if these folks had brains, they must leave them at the door).

Kids today are just plain stupid, because that's what the schools encourage. They should be challenged instead of mollycoddling.

[Cronos]

You forget Russia, Israel and Ireland. Now the latter two are already powerhouses in IT and Russian techs are pretty good too.

[Cronos]

Robots may well replace humans in some routine medical procedures.

[MissAmericanPie]

So far, and only temporarily, we have a weapon. We are the worlds largest consumers. If we refuse and boycott products from overseas we can force them back to the USofA.

The horse feathers we have been sold for decades under the pretense of compassion, is that we should raise the boats of the rest of the world. They left out the little detail that to do that we must sink beneath the waves in suicidal self sacrifice.

It's time to put a padlock on the old pocket book.

[Cronos]

I think the reason why they haven't started world beating comapnies so far is that they've both just had 50 years of independence, like the US in the 1830s or so, pretty fresh. Many Chinese and Indians ahve been at the core of our tech companies here in the US and also in NASA and other science foundations (wasn't the third fastest supercompauter built by a team under an Indian prof?). Their countries had and still have too much regulation to set up a company there. The problem is that they are reducing these hinderances while we are actually increasing them, with additional regulations, taxes, tariffs, laws, enviromental wacko regulations etc.

[Cronos]

well, at least we agree on that, if US corporate executives weren't so hell bent on sending these jobs out of the US and filling their own pockets with the cost savings, these countries would not on their own be able to develop these same industries which would compete with the US ones a lower cost profileThey probably would, but not in the short time it has taken them. Check out Malaysia's car industry or Korea's electronics. The only way out for us is the way we managed to hit back at Japan -- by being more innovative, by not resting on our accomplishments and expecting everything to fall in our laps. The dot com era created too much of expectations, folks who called themselves tech 'experts' as they could code in HTML.

[FreedomPoster]

>>I honestly do however expect hyphenated groups here to start screaming "Racism!" Maybe it'll become a hate crime to be upset with a call center employee "over there." Wherever.

"Whatever" is right. Jesse, Al, and the rest are teaching more and more to ignore bogus cries of racism. That problem is starting to solve itself.

[Feldkurat_Katz]

Nothing that I learned in physics, math, electircal engineering, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering or "computer science" has ever become obsolete. There is new stuff, sure. But a new language or a revsion or Oracle does not obsolete the basic stuff one learns if at a decent school.

Yet the market -- the buyers, the filterers of resumes -- they have a faddish view of what they need.

Morons are in charge. An HR woman once asked me if I know C, after seeing C++ on my resume. Then there is the "you have to have rev 5.4 in your skill set and if you have 5.3 then you are useless" mindset.

Ballmer and his ilk want the government to graduate more fresh engineers, even though retraining the ones who already have 80% of skills needed could be done at a fraction of the cost of training a new engineer.

[Ed_in_NJ]

Time for the US workforce to 'stop spending, start saving.'

Instead of a new car every 3-5 years, drive the current one into the ground; no new technology/convenience items - make do with what is already there; learn skills to fix things (car and home) - it makes sense when you're earning $12 an hour and the fix-it outfit is charging $75.