Techies see jobs go overseas - Opposition to offshore outsourcing beginning to grow

I actually wrote to our Sr. corporate officers, copied FAA, cooperated with an investigation and made sure a lot of things got fixed. Supervisors told me if they did the same, they would have lost their jobs.

What you've done is commendable. I can't believe your Supervisors would have lost their jobs if they did so.

I work for Northrop Grumman which as you probably knows is the second largest US military contractor. NG not only builds military aircraft but also supplies components for Lockheed Martin, Boeing and others.
NG has Hot-Line for reporting these sorts of things anonymously.

There is a case of Northrop Grumman resorting to a cheap supplier of Gyros..and getting burnt.

This supplier knew their test equipment was not designed to test gyros to the G forces required, so somebody adjusted some pots and software to make it appear it was testing to the required G forces.
Incredible>

They also subsituted a cheaper lubricant that was not rated for the -65 degree requirement...because they figured that in the real world the unit would never experience -65 degrees.

So instead of negotiating the contract to make the lubricant they used acceptable to the customer, they just tool it upon themselves to violate the contract. Of course the gyros froze up and didn't work when tested at -65 degrees.

But what ended up catching them was really stupid.

When their test equipment broke down and they were under pressure to ship the product..they just used data from other test results and shipped this documentation with the gyros.

Of course the duplicate test data raised the red flags whcih eventually brought everything to light.

And in this case people got fired, people went to jail and Northrop Grumman paid a $17 million fine, and lost the right to bid on certain contracts for several years.

This was before I worked for NG...but as a QA inspector it's my job to catch these kinds of things, and there is no way I would sign off anything that I know doesn't meet the specs and requirements of our customer's contracts.

Anytime an aircraft goes down, they are investigating every suspect component...every bit of inspection and test data we have..all documentation providing tracability for the parts used to build it, the material certifications, process certs etc. etc.

My point was, it is these checks and balances and oversight which ultimately are designed to prevent the use of inferior sources you refered to.

The bigger problem we have in this industry, is that more and more of these cheap overseas sources are providing services and products of comparable quality to those made here.
That's scarey!

If Soong is an oriental and the programming jobs are going to orientals, what's the difference? He came here for a job and now finds they are elsewhere? Two wrongs don't make a right.

This statement is kind of like the moron who said that Michelle Malkin should go back to where she came from... He meant the Phillipines, but she's from Phillidelphia!

Do you know if this guy Soong is "Oriental?" Maybe... But then, some "Orientals" are American citizens, born right here in the USA... So how do you know he came "here" for a job? Maybe he's been here all his life. A college roommate was named Steve Chin. Both of his parents were born in the USA... Does his being an "Asian American" mean that it shouldn't matter if his job goes overseas, since "another Oriental's" going to get the job, "what's the difference?"

Mark

"If a decade ago we discovered that manufacturing can be done anywhere, in this decade we are learning that knowledge can be learned anywhere."
Instead of taking this fact to heart; there are Freepers who would stand on the same side as ZOE LOFGREN? Has anyone forgotten that this woman is probably the second greatest socialist in Congress?

So much for those core-conservative values, when it comes to keeping a high-paying job, eh? The term "Fair-weather Conservatives" comes to mind.

I honestly believe that there may be some backlash against this in the IT field, but I also think that it will be too little too late.

I work for a company that sells and services IBM, HP, Compaq, Dell, and other brands as well. If a customer who doesn't have "Dell Premium Service" needs help, he calls an 800 number, and gets people in India. I don't remember the last time that I've heard SO MANY irate calls. Even though we service Dell, we are limited to only providing service to a few, select (read BIG) clients. In most cases, we can't get help or warranty reimbursals from Dell on home or SOHO customers (we can't do it, due to contractual obligations with Dell). I even had to call Dell once to get some help for my own laptop, and had to call back three different times before I got someone who I felt I could communicate with! This would definately stop me from buying another Dell in the future, but due to competition, I would bet that within the next 2 years, all manufacturers move their help desks overseas.

Another thing I've seen is what happens when software development moves overseas. I've got a client who upgraded to a new version of software. He didn't know it at the time, but while the original software was written by the guy who owns the company, the "new, upgraded" software was written by people in India. Since the owner didn't do any of the coding, he really doesn't know exactly how it works, and neither it seems to the rest of his employees. And when a bug is found, or a feature has to be added, there doesn't seem to be a big rush to get it done by the developers in India. It can take weeks to fix a bug in the application. The client is VERY upset by this, and is thinking of suing the client for misrepresenting the software. But given EULAs these days, I doubt if there's any way they can win.

All in all, outsourcing our technology is a really bad idea... After all, that's what everyone who lost their jobs in manufacturing was supposed to be doing: Going into the IT industry... Now the IT industry is being shipped overseas too... I wonder where all the ex-manufacturing and ex-IT employees will find jobs...

Mark

I work for a very large TX based airline. The M&E department now participates in a program called Aviation Safety Action Partnership (ASAP), where reports sent in by an employee are collated by NASA, which sends the info out to regulators for follow-up as needed. I think we have the best Maintenance & Engineering department in the industry in terms of overall capability.

However, without oversight and active programs such as ASAP; without mechanics having spine enough to report and follow up on problems; ~bad things will happen. This will be likely as heavy overhaul goes overseas, where career pressure of getting the plane out of the hanger on time will override correction of problems found on the inspection phase of an overhaul.

Ha Ha, I get your sarcasm. Oh well, I always wanted to be a nurse. /sarcasm off/

Yes ... I was only joking ... I wanted to call you a whiner in jest before some idiot free "traitor" called you one for real.

I wanted to remind everyone out here that the problem has infected far more than the IT industry. It has infected the entire electronics industry ... from programming thru circuit design. It has also effected all the sattelite industries that used to service the electronics companies as far reaching as coffee service to linen.

As a for instance ... I have a friend who is a 40ish lady who bought a mobile coffee trailer and opened her own business in my area a few years ago. She parks the trailer in a spot easily accessable from the major local commuter corridor. She was saying that she may have to close her business because (in her words) "there are so many people out of work that hardly anyone stops to buy her coffee anymore". She went on to say that even people who still have jobs are being very tight with their money and aren't buy her coffee. She also said that because business is so bad that she had to cancel her deck renovations.

Well my friend Dave is the guy who was going to re-do her deck for her. Dave started his own decks and docks repair business in the area ten years ago. Over a couple of beers he said that the only business he is getting right now is repairs to homes that are being sold. He says people can't afford much though because the house values have dropped so much that people are only fixing the absolute necessaties in order to sell their homes.

There are a lot of "free traitors" out here that will say .. "well that's capitalism" right after they have told some laid off IT worker to "open their own business" in the same business environment...

If a great many self owned businesses are failing ...what ever gave these "free traitors" the idea that 1 million new businesses opened by laid off IT workers, most of whom have no capital, and no experience in running a self owned business would have any chance of succeeding.

The bottomline in this post is that it is NOT just the IT industry that's being hurt. This ubsurd H-1B program and offshoring fad is going to have repercussions thru out all of the businesses in the area. Just because one persons industry/business has not been hit by the high tech industry depression shockwave today does not mean that it won't be slammed by it tomarrow ... and it probably will.

"What about making a penalty for any company that goes off shore. You can go off shore but once a company leaves this country they are banned from selling their product back to us."

It's not that easy: Company A is a 100% US company. They sell out to company B in Indochina. They lay everyone off in the states they would use for production. They sell stuff under the old brand name. Which step should they not be able to do?"

The company can sell itself to the company in Indochina but the company in Indochina knows it cannot sell back to us under the old brand name or for that matter the same product under any name. The Indochinese may very well then not want to buy the company and it will have to stay here or fold up. I think most likely they would rather not fold up unless operating badly in the red. If they do sell the company to Indochina then it will leave the opening for another company here to make the product to be sold at least here. Something must be done. Also more tax breaks and incentives to excell and invent. It doesn't do us good to see them leave.

The company can sell itself to the company in Indochina but the company in Indochina knows it cannot sell back to us under the old brand name or for that matter the same product under any name.
Wrong, if two companies merge they can produce products under any trademark of the previous companies. You are right there are laws regulating imports they would have to deal with when moving items around between AB Indochina and AB US. It is of coarse difficult to put a "fair" tariff on such items since there is no market value without a market for the items.

Example: AB Indochina makes widgets which are shiped over to the AB US to be put in refridgerators. What's a widget worth? How much tariff has to be paid on a widget? How much more of a refridgerator can be produced in IndoChina while keeping the "made in America" on the side? Arbitrary decisions about widget imports will be made in congress. On one side will be a lobby funded by AB and it's investors, and on the other side might be a lesser funded lobby from some union from the widget factory AB is planning on closing in the US. The general public won't give d*mn. This is of coarse a perfect recipe for crappy hypocrtical politics based on optimising "swing votes" and campain contributions.

The point as related to this article: if it was crappy when we were tring to deal with widgets moving around inside international corporations, it will be hell tring to do anything regarding lines of code or phone calls beaming back and forth.

Also more tax breaks and incentives to excell and invent.
Sure if you run the government more efficiently, avoid costly wars, and pay off the debt, taxes could be reduced across the board benifiting everything in the private sector. However targeted tax breaks or subsidies (which you can think of as negative taxation) designed for a particular company or industry lead to the same yucky politics. If there something AB and it's unions agree on, it's that they shouldn't have to pay any taxes or regard any enviromental laws, and if possible should be heavily subsidised by tax payers. This hurts inovation because the little guys with the ideas cann't lobby as well as the powers that be.

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