Chip maker shifts design to India (another one bites the dust)

BBC ^ | 22 April, 2004

[traumer]

Californian chip maker AMD is to set up a design centre in India, the first of its kind outside the United States. The centre to initially employ 50 engineers will be located in the technology hub of Bangalore. AMD has said its plan is part of an expansion and would not involve laying off American engineers.

A row is raging in the US over whether the outsourcing of work to the developing world where costs are lower is costing US citizens their jobs.

"We are expanding engineering operations at all of our design locations," AMD's Randy Allen said.

AMD says it will invest $5m in the centre over three years. AMD's rival, Intel, and chip makers such as Texas Instruments, Silicon Laboratories and Flextronics have already shifted part of their design work to India.

[ETERNAL WARMING]

Did you catch this beauty?

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., unveiled legislation Tuesday to increase funding for education in developing countries from $300 million to $2.5 billion by 2009. The bill, proposed in an address to the New York City-based Council on Foreign Relations, is designed to help provide basic education for all children throughout the world

[oceanview]

and salaries and retirement compensation for government workers is SOARING everywhere.

[ETERNAL WARMING]

65% of US corporations pay ZERO taxes. It's a myth.

[ETERNAL WARMING]

65% of US corporations pay ZERO taxes. It's a myth. Mostly it's small businesses that pay any taxes.

[ETERNAL WARMING]

is solidly republican

They used to be. Many of us have left the Republican Party because of it.

[ETERNAL WARMING]

Government is mostly only a leach on productivity.

That is true.

As for being mistaken about government creating jobs, I'm merely commenting on their rhetoric. THEY think they create jobs and take the credit for it.

[DB]

There are endless regulations on small and large businesses alike. From tax and employee to environmental... Each is a tax on business as it costs productivity to satisfy the government's demands. Here in California Workmen's comp is paid by both large and small business. Chemicals used in manufacturing have become very expensive to manage due to heavy government regulation. To the point that many business' that require the use of significant quantities of chemicals leave the state if not the country. Try painting something and meeting all the EPA regulations...

[DB]

And if that's true many of those companies will fail in the long run. That provides opportunities for business that manage differently.

The market will punish those who think short sighted regardless of government intervention.

[Doctor Stochastic]

...americans aren't going into engineering now because they know there are no jobs to get when they graduate ...

If so, that's been the case for 30 years. Americans weren't going into engineering years ago (when I was teaching) because it was too hard. Barbie had it right: "Math is tough."

[oceanview]

well, obviously enough people did - since it was American engineering who made most of the major advances in the field. Let's see if the same is true over the next 30 years.

[FR_addict]

Indians are very difficult to work with. They say, "Yes, yes, I understand, I understand." Then go off and do what they darn well please, regardless of what you've told them to do, all the while smiling and telling you "Of course, of course, we'll do it your way." They AREN'T westerners and they DON'T think like we do.

That is so true!

I was working for a company that had about 80% Indians. They would promise unrealistic deadlines to satisfy the managers. I always tried to give a heads up, when I felt the schedule slipping. This was never appreciated in this schedule-driven world. The Indians would never make the schedule and then the company would wonder why the project slipped year after year. The quality would be terrible and the bulk of the time was spent on debugging rather than designing.

[FR_addict]

What kind of engineer? It's hard to believe you are a software engineer and don't know what is going on in this industry.

I have articles, and books published in the software field and consider myself a good software engineer. Yet, I'm unemployed at this time. Some engineers have had to take minimum wage jobs to support their familes. If you haven't gone through any hard times in the past few years, consider yourself lucky.

[FR_addict]

Oh, I believe you. I worked in the steel industry. Re-educated myself and went to work in software development. Re-educated myself again and went into adult education. Hopefully, I won't have to reinvent myself again. At 55, I'm kind of tired of having to do that every few years. If only the free-traitors would tell me what this great, new industry they keep preaching about was, I could re-educate myself once and for all. lol

Like you I've changed fields a couple of times already. Our age starts working against us after awhile. I'm just trying to figure out how to make it to retirement age and have something to retire on.

It's funny when I interview and they ask a question like where do you want to be in 5 years. I just want to have a job I love to do.

[FR_addict]

Did you catch this beauty?

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., unveiled legislation Tuesday to increase funding for education in developing countries from $300 million to $2.5 billion by 2009. The bill, proposed in an address to the New York City-based Council on Foreign Relations, is designed to help provide basic education for all children throughout the world

This deserves a thread of its own. So now we are paying for the education of our replacements. Talk about rubbing salt on the wounds.

[DB]

Electrical. I also write a significant amount of code for embedded processors and DSPs along with manufacturing test and quality control. I mainly use assembly for the embedded processors and DSPs to get the most out of the hardware vs. cost.

Back during the dot-com bubble the demand for software engineers caused an over supply that is still correcting itself today. That oversupply also drew a lot of people into the business that weren't very capable leaving a lot of burnt businesses in their wake. Burnt as in unwilling to easily hire people in the field again.

I have a close friend that is a programmer here away from any major cities. He does very well for himself. He's started several businesses where the last sold to a much larger company that allowed him to basically retire.

There are opportunities out there. But you have to go out on a limb to give them a chance to develop.

When I started my business it took years before it was paying much more than the taxes. For a business that manufactures, growing capital equipment and inventory is very difficult because the taxes are due even though you take virtually nothing home.

It takes time, dedication and hard work. Yet millions do it and succeed as I did. And no it may not last. Those are the challenges...

[DB]

"The quality would be terrible and the bulk of the time was spent on debugging rather than designing."

And that is why this "problem" will correct itself without government intervention.

[Euro-American Scum]

Sometimes I wonder if we are the new Roman Empire where we are doomed to fall at some point

I was thinking the same thing. The wheel of global power has been moving steadily westward over the centuries. Which would be consistent with the rise of Asian economic -- and soon military and political -- power in the coming years.

It was a nice run while it lasted.

[gg188]

I guess the siren song of short-term profits is too strong to resist?

Worrying about what happens to the firm five years from now or even one year from now won't keep a corporate officer employeed.

It's this quarter, this half. Meet your goals and meet or exceed Wall Street's and shareholders' earnings expectations. If you don't make the nut this fiscal period, you may not be around to benefit from anything you did for the long-term good of the enterprise. Besides, within a year or two you can move on to other companies, especially if you show a good year this year.

[gg188]

"The quality would be terrible and the bulk of the time was spent on debugging rather than designing." And that is why this "problem" will correct itself without government intervention.

At the cost of a buck an hour or less for wages, you can afford to spend a LOT of money on debugging and still come out way ahead. That's what companies have realized about offshoring: the negatives of distance, control, communications, culture and other difficulties are offset 100 fold by the savings on labor. If you have to hire TEN times as many people, you still are far ahead.

For example, if a Bangalore call center agent angers a customer of a computer company---say the customer is mad at the difficulty in communicating, or at the agent's intransigence in sticking to a script that may not apply, or the agent's arrogance---and the customer doesn't buy a computer from them again, the loss of that customer's business is offset many times over by the savings in using the Indian call center. The computer company saved more on the labor of that one call center agent in one day than their typical margin on the sales of the several computers the caller may have purchased from them the rest of his lifetime!

And as far into the future as one can imagine, there is a never ending supply of workers willing to work for pennies a day. An endless tide of cheap labor that can do every job in America that is done on a computer, at a desk, or basically just sitting down. Anything that can be packaged and shipped can be purchsed from, returned to, repaired by, and maintained by someone who will work for 1/20th or less of what an average American earns.

[DB]

I don't know where you work, but that time spent on debugging (quality control) the product here costs as much or more than simply doing it right the first time. If you have the offshore people do the quality control then you will get the same quality (or lack thereof) as you did the initial programming.

In the end it will be your customer finding many of the bugs (quality control issues) and that will cost you a fortune in time and resources correcting much less the cost of losing those customers and trying to woo them back again.

As far as offshore call centers, look at Dell. They’ve basically given up on the idea because it was ruining there reputation and ultimately costing them business.