Posted on 08/03/2003 7:42:08 AM PDT by RockyMtnMan
Michael Emmons thought he knew how to keep a job as a software programmer.
"You have to continue to keep yourself up to speed," he said. "If you don't, you'll get washed out."
Up to speed or not, Emmons wound up being "washed out" anyway. Last summer, he moved his family from California to Florida for the Siemens Co., makers of electronics and equipment for industries. Not long after, Emmons and 19 other programmers were replaced by cheaper foreign workers.
Adding insult to injury, Emmons and the others had to train their replacements.
"It was the most demoralizing thing I've ever been through," he told ABCNEWS. "After spending all this time in this industry and working to keep my skills up-to-date, I had to now teach foreign workers how to do my job so they could lay me off."
Just as millions of American manufacturing jobs were lost in the 1980s and 1990s, today white-collar American jobs are disappearing. Foreign nationals on special work visas are filling some positions but most jobs are simply contracted out overseas.
"The train has left the station, the cows have left the barn, the toothpaste is out of the tube," said John McCarthy, director of research at Forrester Research, who has studied the exodus of white-collar jobs overseas. "However you want to talk about it, you're not going to turn the tide on this in the same way we couldn't turn the tide on the manufacturing shift."
India Calling
Almost 500,000 white-collar American jobs have already found their way offshore, to the Philippines, Malaysia and China. Russia and Eastern Europe are expected to be next. But no country has captured more American jobs than India.
In Bangalore, India, reservation agents are booking flights for Delta; Indian accountants are preparing tax returns for Ernst & Young; and Indian software engineers are developing new products for Oracle.
They are all working at a fraction of the cost these companies would pay American workers.
For example, American computer programmers earn about $60,000, while their Indian counterparts only make $6,000.
"It's about cost savings," said Atul Vashistha, CEO of NeoIT, a California-based consulting company that advises American firms interested in "offshoring" jobs previously held by Americans. "They need to significantly reduce their cost of doing business and that's why they're coming to us right now."
Vivek Pal, an Indian contractor for technology consulting group Wipro, whose clients include Microsoft, GE, JP Morgan Chase, and Best Buy, is hiring 2,000 Indian workers quarterly to keep up with demand. Pal knows American workers resent the "offshoring" trend but says all Americans will benefit in the long run.
"Globalization — whether it's for products or services — may feel like it hurts, but at the end of the day, it creates economic value all around," said Pal.
At the end of the day, Emmons has a different view: "If you sit at a desk, beware," he said. "Your job is going overseas."
The viewpoint IS useful, however. It serves to get people to get off their butts and try their hardest to become successful, to demonstrate that they are of the "elect" rather than the damned.
Getting somebody to develop an attitude of "You tellin' me I'm a loser? Well [bleep] you, MoFo! I'LL show YOU who's the loser!" can be the most productive approach you can take to kick somebody out of a depressive funk.
Nahhh...I was thinking more of residential and small business work.
Looks like we both know what it means to start at the bottom. The difference between you and me is that I don't still feel the need to put it on my resume.
You guys would love it if your vision of me was somebody that just had everything handed to him, but all you're left with is trying to compete on the plane of who started in a grittier job. While that's all certainly well and good, what have you done for yourself lately? How far past that steel mill mentality have you advanced?
What you need to do is to tame your envy just long enough to develop the mental maturity necessary to recognize that arrogance and accomplishment aren't the same thing.
Arrogance is "look what I did, but you can't." Most of you guys point at me and call me "arrogant" when all you are really doing is pointing at yourselves and saying, "look what he did, but I CAN'T." You are your own worst enemy. I believe YOU CAN, if YOU TRY.
Most of you tussling with me on this thread, however, are content to take the lazy man's way out, be a typical "9-5-er," make your wage, and sniff at those who tried to do something more and succeeded.
Whatever you did in the gritty past is meaningless unless unless you learned something from it and you're producing something of greater value to someone now. Anything else is just feeling sorry for yourself.
Go back to post #230. You started off by bragging about what you did at the "start of my career".
Honestly, I am neither jealous nor envious of you or your career. What we have all been trying to tell you is that not everyone is capable of owning a company nor does everyone want to. I bet I can speak for the rest of us when I say "Congratulations!!!" you got what you wanted. To most of us our careers are not the most important thing in life. We are happy doing an honest days labor for honest pay. The injustice of losing one's job to a foreign national should grate on everyone. I can't understand why it doesn't you?
No one here is going to change you. All I can do is pray for you. I hope you truly are happy.
That was "bragging?"
And maybe you considered your own litany of early two-bit jobs to be a form of "bragging" too?
I took it just as a couple of people (not including you at that point) speaking matter of factly about where they began in life. It was only later that you chose to draw attention to yourself for some reason.
If your resume still contains such things, however, I'd find a few more substantive things to "brag" about.
What we have all been trying to tell you is that not everyone is capable of owning a company nor does everyone want to.
Whether or not you realize it yet, YOU are the "company," YOU are the "product" and you'll have to change and adapt to meet your customers' and employers' needs and wants, if you ever hope to be successful in your career. That, afterall, is what makes you valuable or employable at all to them.
To most of us our careers are not the most important thing in life.
Nor should it be. No excuse for sitting back and not becoming everything you have been blessed with talent to become either. Too many sell themselves short and are persuaded to quit trying too soon.
We are happy doing an honest days labor for honest pay.
As one should be. And your point is?
The injustice of losing one's job to a foreign national should grate on everyone. I can't understand why it doesn't you.
Then don't get complacent about your career, and think your boss ought to be grateful just because you happen to show up. You are paid what you are worth. If you disagree, go convince somebody you are worth getting paid what you think you're worth. Be ready to accept that what ever you are doing might not be worth what you think it's worth. You can't make somebody buy you.
There's no "injustice" in that any more than there's injustice in your shopping for the cheapest gas in town. You do it too, whether you realize it or not.
You waste your time letting it "grate" on you, and throwing an "injustice" pity party. Channel your energies into something more productive and in your own life's interest. Grousing about it all will get you nowhere fast.
Wonder whatever you like. I just don't happen to suffer whiners gladly and I save a particularly pointed pen to return the barbs of those crybabies that think they need to take the "big guy" down in order to boost their standing in their own minds.
Charm snakes if you like. Don't be surprised if they continue to bite, since "charm and tact" are meaningless to those who are the tactless and envious in a discussion like this. I'll continue to reserve "charm" for those whom I deem worthy of it and reserve distain for detractors who deserve nothing more.
Maybe instead of going to electrian's school you can figure out a way to make yourself billable while spending time posting to FR like I do.
It won't work. What needs to happen is to fix those things that make the US a less-competitive environment for business:
For somebody exiting nursing, would you advise them to put in a few days a year as an agency nurse, just to keep their license current, or is there a certain minimum number of hours/year you have to have put in?
You aren't very religious, are you?
Stepping back into the pool again are you?
Mine is a strong Christian faith. What "religion" is your standard of measurement?
I suspect from your insinuating inquiry that you think I must be cheating somebody. You obviously don't understand how general contracting works.
Let me explain it to you. A client has a job, and I know someone who is affiliated with me who can do the job. I arrange for his/her talent to accomplish that job at a specified rate. I negotiate a rate with my sub-contractee and with my client. I'm billable for the mark up for every hour my subcontratee is working.
I get to work from home, pick and choose the contracts I want to service directly and subcontract the others.
My subcontractee is working and billable (he's happy), I sit back and sip iced tea or work on post to Free Republic or do something for a direct client, if I want to (I'm happy AND billable), and the client is getting his job done by people with very tailored and accomplished skills-sets, that his typical 9-5-ers and/or hangers-on don't have (client is happy).
So, your point about religion was what?
Am I permitted to?
Mine is a strong Christian faith.
Interesting.
Say, what does Christianity say about boastful braggarts, those who are insensitive to the plight of others, and those who are intolerant of others with lesser levels of ability?
D'ya think that's because of my lesser ability, or because of your ability to boast how much more you know than everyone else?
Or maybe I know all about general contracting? Golly, who knows.
Very true. I personally, all by my little old lonesome have had more than one opportunity to "shut down" or severely disrupt several less than honorable ventures I have come across, and I'm not even that good. I just didn't have the desire and/or had second thoughts about the righteousness of the actions I would have taken.
I think many people and organizations are unaware of the power they hand over to someone when they give them control over their technology. Thank God most of us are ethical, as the onset of technology is sort of like the discovery of fire or nuclear energy.
Someone said a while back that techs are going to have the power in the future, as lawyers have now. I believe it. Some webmasters are the equivilent of those who owned the printing press 250 years ago.
We think about it a lot, but knowing we'll have to take all the support calls to put the world back together stays our hand.
You are confused in your rhetoric. You either can't or simply refuse to discern what is confidence from what is boastfulness. You're a whiner, and a loser not because I have to call you one. You're a loser because you're a quitter, and have convinced yourself that you have "lesser" abilities. If anything, I have told you the exactly the opposite.
That is a "plight" of your own choosing and you reside in it, because the requirement for developing and diversifying your abilities means more work on your part. You need to resent somebody other than yourself for the reason that you're simply too lazy to take charge of your life and your employment security.
If you think you know anything about Chritianity you might want to consult the Proverbs on the perils of laziness and the the ten commandments themselves on the subject of envy. The Israelites historically were at their worst when they resorted to whining.
You are welcome to impress us with your knowledge of Christianity.
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