Indian Techies Answer About 'Onshore Insourcing'

This is an unusual Slashdot Interview, since instead of using email I asked all the questions in person last week either at LinuxAsia2004 or in casual meetings with local LUG members and other techies I met during the conference. Some of your questions were answered quite well by other Slashdot readers in the original post. (Slashdot has many readers both in and from India.) I also inserted a number of personal observations, which I usually don't do in these interviews, because it seemed to be the best way to answer some of the questions. And some questions were nearly unanswerable, as you'll see when you read the rest of this article.

Before outsourcing, "hardship" visas, by RobertB-DC

Long before outsourcing to India became an issue, large IT companies like American Airlines [aa.com] were virtual H1-B "hardship" visa factories, importing large numbers of technical experts from India and other countries during the dot-com boom.

But when the boom went bust, and the layoffs came, H1-B visa holders were left out in the cold, unable to even look for a new job due to the terms of their visas.

Do the IT professionals you've met feel that US companies and the US government used bait-and-switch tactics to take advantage of cheaper non-US workers? Or did those applying for H1-B visas know what they were in for?

And a follow-up question: does anyone think that US companies will hesitate to leave their outsourcing partners high and dry as soon as they (again) find a cheaper alternative?

A:

Network administrator Manpeet Nemra says, "No, it was their choice to go. They always knew what the situation was. If you leave out the first few, the rest had contacts there and knew.

Others echoed his reply, and a few thought the questioner wasn't "thinking very clearly." One Perl programmer asked, "Does he think we don't have email lists and Web sites? We are techies. We stay in touch all over the world. We know what's going on everywhere, same as you."

On re-outsourcing: Ashvini Vishvakasarma, a consultant with Techspan, feels that American and European companies currently outsourcing work to India won't hesitate for a second to move their work elsewhere if they find a cheaper alternative. "They will move in a flash," he says. "They're leaving for the Philippines already. It's very disturbing for Indian programmers."

Average experience? - by El

How much experience do most Indian programmers have? It seems to me that in ramping up from a few hundred to thousands of programmers over the past few years, most of these people must be fresh out of school... how much training do people need before they start producing reliable results?

A:

It's common here for new grads (slang term: "freshers") to spend up to six months in a low-paid or even unpaid internship before they get a "'real" job. This is true not only of programmers and other IT people, but in almost all white collar positions. One of the desk clerks at the hotel I'm in is a new-grad management trainee who earns what she calls "a stipend that buys my clothes," and won't start earning her full starting salary -- about $330 per month -- for another four months.

Another factor (see other answers further down) is that some Indian programmers, like some American programmers, may be recent college grads, but have been messing with computers since their early teens or even before. The Delhi LUG's youngest current member is 13, and is dipping his toes into programming waters. Some of the college student members take on programming or Web projects for friends and family. In other words, many Indian new-grad IT people -- just like many new-grad IT people elsewhere -- may already have quite a bit of real-world experience when they get their "first" job.

Code Monkeys v. Architect? - by yintercept

Related to the experience question: Many US business pundits claim that the US is only outsourcing the low end code monkey and support jobs, and is keeping the higher end, more prestigious "project management" and architect jobs in the US?

First, is this the case? or is India also excelling in architectural and design work?

If it is the case, is there a resentment for the imperialistic attitude in only giving India the low end projects?

Finally, in a land where there are real monkeys am I making a big cultural blunder by calling people "code monkeys"?

A:

I got hit with a chorus on this one. The consensus was that in a poor country like India a job is a job, and one takes what one can get. If U.S. and European firms want to have Indians do only "low end" projects, fine. Meanwhile, home-grown companies are doing their own architecture and research, working desperately to build an India-based software industry that can survive after the "low end" outsourced projects move to China or wherever.

Response to the "code monkeys" comment, loosely translated into American English from Hindi-accented New Delhi English: "Ha, ha, ha, ha. It is the same everywhere. Some of us are good at this work, but many aren't. There are code monkeys everywhere. Real programmers, too, and real programmers here call code monkeys 'code monkeys' here same as anywhere else. Pass me another beer, will you?"

Quality of life - by Scott Lockwood

American workers have certain legal protections that drive up the cost of our wages. Do Indians have similar protections in the workplace? Are you allowed to organize into unions? How long is your work week? What are your working conditions like? What kind of benefits do you have? Vacation? Medical? Dental? Profit sharing? Stock options? I find myself wondering, if the playing field were truly level, would your labor still be so inexpensive?

A:

At least five people said a comment attached to this question in the original interview post summed up the situation nicely. Here's that post (from "Anonymous Coward"), repeated:

I work for a large Multinational Tech Co.

Do Indians have similar protections in the workplace? -- Yes. The rules are the same.

Are you allowed to organize into unions? -- Unions are definitely allowed by law. But as in the U.S there are no Unions of Software Professional. BTW, India is probably the only place in the world where there is a democratically elected communist state govt. In fact, the labor laws are stricter here. Its nearly impossible to fire Blue Collared Workers or Declare Bankruptcy.

How long is your work week? -- I put in the usual 40 hrs a week over 5 days.

What are your working conditions like? -- The food in the cafeteria is better here than what I had when I was in U.S :-)

What kind of benefits do you have? Vacation? Medical? Dental? Profit sharing? Stock options? -- Folks in India probably get more vacation than in the U.S. As per Indian Law there has to be at least 14 days of earned leave and 7 days of sick leave. This is excluding the 3 national holidays (Republic Day, Independence Day, Gandhi Jayanti); 3 Hindu Holidays, 2 Muslim Holidays and 2 Christian Holidays, Plus 1 State holiday; Unless they fall on the weekend. As far as Medical goes, Govt of India Rules specify that a group Medical Insurance Policy be taken out by the Co. Usually this works out to a coverage of about $10000 for about $40 a month. Profit Sharing, Stock Options and Employee Stock Purchase Plans all exist. In fact one of the biggest stories used to be the Infosys Stock Plan. Also, the Govt Specifies that 12% of your Salary be paid by the Company towards Pension each month. This earns about 9.5% interest.

I find myself wondering, if the playing field were truly level, would your labor still be so inexpensive? -- Thats because cost of living is far cheaper here. Food - about $50 a month, Rent about $175 a month, Entertainment, Eating out etc.. about $100 a month. So in all about $350 a month is more than enough. Whatever remaining usually goes into buying a car or a house.

Population vs. population with jobs? - by bc90021

With one billion people in India, what is being done to increase the number of employable people? Granted, while we in the US may not like our jobs leaving, it must be helpful to Indians. What is being done to increase the employability of the average Indian?

A:

This is a touchy subject. Less than 15% of the Indian population is what Americans would call "middle class." Many Indian workers live on between $35 and $100 per month, and one of the first sights a foreign visitor notices when walking out of the terminal building at the Delhi airport at midnight is people sleeping on the ground, right on the airport grounds. Begging is common almost everywhere except in communities and office complexes that have gates and guards to maintain control on who can and can't enter. I'll post several stories, with photos, on NewsForge later this week that will go into more depth about economic conditions in India and how the software industry does -- and doesn't affect them, but for now let's confine ourselves to a couple of quotes from Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay, who grew up in comparative poverty and is now a programmer/consultant who makes his living doing outsourced work for U.S. companies:

I grew up in a very poor village. My father made $10 per month as a schoolteacher. One bicycle was our only family transport. I went to college as a scholarship student. I did well in my exams, so the government paid for my education. Now I own two houses, and the workers I hired to build both of them had no other work, so that helped bring money into my village. My father and mother live in a house I built, too. I rent out one of the houses I own now and live in the other one. The money I earn spreads through the economy. Fathers work at better jobs because of my spending and can keep their children in school instead of having them go out to work early.

Mukhopadhyay believes that in the long run, to help technology benefit more of the population and raise living standards for all, India needs more of a "bootstrap economy. We need acceptance of the fact that innovation can come out of India."

He is not alone in this belief. Although the LinuxAsia2004 conference was heavily weighted toward speakers selling systems (i.e. Sun, IBM, and their giant brethren -- the "usual suspects") there were many small, quiet sessions that revolved around using computers and the Internet to distribute information to people in neighborhoods and villages where books are now rare and expensive.

The government talks constantly about uplifting all of India, not just the current rich and "middle class," but when you look at that one billion population figure and see the amount of money available, things still look bleak -- although India's economy is now increasing at a much faster rate than the population, so things are less bleak now than they were a generation ago.

But there is a long way to go. India's problems aren't going to be solved in a few years or even a few decades. This is an old country; Delhi has been continuously inhabited since about 1000 B.C., and in many ways life for some residents hasn't changed a great deal since then. India has only had an elected government since its independence from Great Britain in 1947, and politics since then have more tumultuous than not. While I was visiting, for the first time ever plans were being made for Cricket matches between the Indian and Pakistani national teams, with constant back-and-forth waffling by government people in both countries about whether the terrorism risk was acceptable. Last I heard, the match was going to happen.

So look for improvements in India overall, not just for the top 10% or 20% of the population. Just don't hold your breath waiting for all one billion Indians to become literate, well-dressed, and own motorcycles or cars (or even to have electricity and good plumbing), because even if every software job in the U.S. ends up there, and none later evaporate to even poorer countries, India's "modernization" could easily take a century or more.

Education Costs - by dachshund

How much does an Indian college education cost the typical student? Is it government subsidized, or are students expected to pick up the entire cost? And how does that cost compare to the average yearly salary of a college-educated technology worker (ie, how long does it take you to pay of college debt?)

A:

There's a big "it depends" attached to this answer. As noted above, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay got a government-supported scholarship because of his high entrance exam test scores. Students with lower test scores but prosperous parents can also get into college. And now, according to one educator I met at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), banks are starting to loan money to cover student fees at what she called "favourable interest rates."

According to CDAC students Vikas Gupta and Loveleen Choudray, it takes three to four years of work for most loan-supported students to pay off college debts. They told me 20% of university seats are reserved for free (scholarship) students, while the cost of a "paid seat" can range from 22,000 rupees (about $486 US) up to 72,000 rupees (about $1600 US), depending on the school.

This is eminently affordable for middle class Indian families (both Gupta and Choudray are going through college on their parents' tab) -- but don't forget that "middle class" is not a high percentage of the population. (See the next question and answer.)

Cost of living? - by demigod

What does a decent 2 bedroom apartment cost per month?

How about food for 1 month?

Utilities, etc?

A:

I was asking this question in New Delhi, India's capital city, and living costs in India vary as much as they do anywhere else depending on where you live. I met programmers who lived in apartments and houses that cost anywhere between $200 and $500 per month, and a few who lived in compounds their families had owned for generations. The consensus was that $11,000 or $12,000 (US) per year was plenty to support a middle class lifestyle. But "middle class" there is not the same as in the U.S. Some differences:

• Indians drive tiny cars by U.S. (or even European) standards
• The motor scooter or motorbike is common transport for young people -- and a 100cc bike is about as big as most get, with 150cc to 200cc considered powerful speed machines.
• If you don't own a car, you can hire one -- including chauffeur -- for about $10 per day.
• Forget public transportation. Buses are filthy and overcrowded. You're probably better off taking one of the seemingly millions of green, three-wheeled auto-rickshaws that are on every street in the city. (They are limited by law to three passengers, but I saw seven people get out of one...)
• Servants cost about $35 month to hire in New Delhi. Every "middle class" Indian household seems to have at least one live-in servant -- but few have dishwashers or other "household convenience" appliances.
• Food and clothing are amazingly cheap by Western standards. I mean seriously cheap, like less than 1/10 as much. On the other hand, programmers in India are professional workers who are expected to wear suits and ties for most business events (although most wear the same basic "jeans and t shirt" fashions as their U.S. counterparts when not required to dress up).

It's hard to put a one-to-one comparison on cost of living between countries with different cultures and economic imperatives. Medical care (and health insurance) are much lower in India than in the U.S., but then you can bring up the example of Canada and its national health insurance, for which Canadians pay higher taxes than U.S. residents.

Bottom line: You can have a decent life in New Delhi for around $12,000 US per year -- but to earn that much you'll probably need to have source of income from another country -- like programming outsourced from the U.S. or Europe -- because most white-collar jobs there pay $6000 US or less, and burger-flipping there is likely to net you more like $2000, which may not be enough to afford an apartment with electricity and running water. (And yes, plenty of people in New Delhi live without running water or electricity.)

Distorting the Economy - by BigBadBri

Not specifically about IT outsourcing, but more about call centre outsourcing - does the drain of educated people to call centres have any implications for the rest of the economy?

Call centre staff can earn more than teachers, police, nurses, etc - are those professions suffering as a result of the call centres picking out the English speakers?

Is this storing up problems for India's public sector in the future?

A:

I had a long conversation with a guy who works as a hiring manager for Prudential's customer service operation in New Delhi.

Let's note, from the start, that Prudential does not "outsource" to India. They own their own call center (or centre, depending on your spelling heritage) there. When you speak to someone in their New Delhi office, she -- and it is usually "she" -- is just as much a Prudential employee as someone working in one of their U.S. offices.

This call center woman is probably earning around $300 month (US), and without that job she'd be working in a shop for $100 per month. She works nights (so she can deal with calls from the U.S. during the U.S. business day), and one of her benefits is rides to and from work, so there is a whole transportation business sector that has developed to do nothing but take call center employees to and from work, not to mention cafeterias to feed her at work, Starbucks and other foreign chains (including McDonald s) where she spends her paychecks, cell phone companies that take her money because no techno-hip young Indian woman can be caught dead without a cell phone, at least from the examples I saw all around me.

Call center work is not necessarily permanent. It is a burnout job in India just as phone "customer service" work is in the U.S. It is also not that great on the pay scale. The breakfast waiter in the "American Diner" in my hotel said he made more waiting tables than he'd make in a call center; that he had friends who did call center work to help them get through college or whatever, but that no one expects to do it for life -- and besides, all those jobs will go to the Philippines sooner or later, anyway, so why bother?

So our Prudential guy is a good company man (who is not being quoted by name because he was not authorized to speak for the company, and the Pru gets tight about such things all over the world) and earns a nice salary, right up there with a programmer if not slightly higher. He's single, so he lives well, and friends say he has access to many potential girlfriends since he's in charge of hiring and training a workforce composed primarily of young women, which he acknowledges is a major fringe benefit.

Now the other side: There is no shortage of people in New Delhi to fill all the call center jobs -- and all the police, nursing, and teaching positions. and if all the people in New Delhi were suddenly employed, people from other parts of the country would flock there like mad, and if they don't know English they are willing to learn (including an American accent) if it will get them a decent job, and there are plenty of schools that will teach them either for an upfront fee or by taking some of their call center earnings after they get a job.

There is no shortage of people to do any kind of decent-paying work in India, period. The Army turns down at least 19 out of 20 applicants who want to be enlisted soldiers, and turns down 49 out of every 50 officer candidates, who must have college degrees even to apply in most cases.

This goes back to that whole "one billion people" thing. If a million of them work in "offshore" positions, that's only one out of thousand. Make it 10 million, and it's still only one percent of the population, and as the prosperity created by the 10 million working for offshore companies wends its way through the economy, more children will be able to go to school longer, which will make the workforce progressively more educated, which will increase the supply of potential employees for "first world" companies.

But don't forget: China, The Philippines, Vietnam, and other countries lurk in the wings, not to mention African countries that are still at the very beginning of the industrialization curve and have people more desperate by far than India has had for several decades now.

What about the long-term? - by The Night Watchman

This point has already been mentioned a bit by previous articles, but I'd like to hear an insider's take on it. The Indian tech economy is booming now, but like in the US, it's an unstable boom. Sooner or later, the US will look to other countries for their tech work, leaving India high and dry. What measures are being taken in India to maintain a strong internal tech economy, in the event that the US is no longer a serious customer?

A:

I got many answers to this question, and they all boiled down to, "We must build a domestic IT market."

But then, how can you do that in a country where a clerk costs less than a computer, and you have -- as one person put it -- "government officials out in the villages who are afraid to use a computer because they think the keyboards might give them an electric shock"?

Most people I talked to believe government is the only hope; that egovernment and other government projects are the only way to develop a sustainable local IT sector.

Next question (asked by Indians I spoke to): "Where is the government going to get the money?"

I was asked to pose this one to Slashdot readers. Consider it posed. Plenty of Indians would like to know the answer.

New Indian Startup Companies - by blueZhiftb

I'd like to know how long it will be before Indian tech professionals start forming startup companies to compete directly with their American corporate masters using what they have learned from them.

A:

It's already happening. Like mad. Half the people I met through the Delhi LUG are either self-employed or thinking about starting their own businesses. This could be a whole separate article, possibly even a whole series of articles.

Geek culture in India? - by Experiment 626

In the U.S., there is something of a geek subculture which Slashdot in particular caters to. Obviously, not all programmers are true geeks at heart, but among the people in America who are really fascinated by computers, you have a greatly disproportionate number who are into science fiction, RPGs/LARPs, Lord of the Rings, Legos, Anime, etc.

Does this apply in India as well? Would, say, a Unix systems programmer there typically have such things as interests? If not, are there analogous hobbies that distinguish the Indian geek from everyone else?

A:

After a few evenings hanging out with Delhi LUG guys (and yes, it's almost entirely guys), I realized that you could hold a joint meeting of the Delhi LUG and the Suncoast LUG here in Florida, and the only major differences would be the brands of beer ordered for the first round. The biggest argument would be over whose beer is better, followed by the ever-popular vi vs. emacs and KDE vs. Gnome controversies. Raj, from the Delhi LUG, and Logan, from the Suncoast LUG, would probably become huge buddies in about two seconds. I swear, if I closed my eyes while listening to Raj's bad jokes, sometimes I thought he was Logan -- and I mean this as a compliment to both of them.

All the Delhi LUG crowd reads Slashdot. For the most part, they read the same science fiction books and watch the same movies as their U.S. counterparts. The ones who play guitar know pretty much the same songs -- and generally (*ahem*) play with the same great skill -- as Rob Malda.

And the unmarried ones had the same complaints about never meeting appropriate girls, too.

Geek culture is worldwide. It's not exactly the same everywhere, but (so far) I've observed it first-hand in Mexico, Trinidad, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and now India, and I assure you, there are many more points of similarity than differences between its various "branches," at least in my (limited) experience.

whoa

[fjordboy]

I learn something new every day:

BTW, India is probably the only place in the world where there is a democratically elected communist state govt.

I always thought the two things were mutually exclusive...I had no idea it was possible. I'm gonna have to look this up online...that's really interesting.

My question is....

[Creepy Crawler]

Why dont we see more Eastern (China, Japan, India....) Open Source software projects when they're soo good at computers?

Do they not like the idea of free knowledge exchange?

(Asked seriously, not as flamebait...)

Re:My question is....

[bobthemuse]

Why dont we see more Eastern (China, Japan, India....) Open Source software projects when they're soo good at computers? Do they not like the idea of free knowledge exchange?

If the US was as competitive as India is, do you think open source would be where it is today?

important question...

[wankledot]

Which beer Is better? I like beer, and I know quite a bit about Belgian and German beers, but not very many Indian ones. I do eat a lot of indian food, and see a few "domestic" Indian beers around the restaurants, but I don't know which is any good, or if there are some I should look for at local stores that might not be so common.

Which one would any of you folks back in Indian recommend?

Maybe we can get a flame^H^H^H^H^H beer war going here.

Caste?

[dr_dank]

I would love to know where the Caste system comes into play in modern India. Would lower caste members (the $35/month servants) have any shot at these tech jobs?

Quality of Medical Care

[dotsbir]

Wow, was that medical care comment a blunder. If you've got money (and in the same vein as the food comments, having money really only means having 5-10% of the equivalent in US dollars) then the medical care is superb and includes ICU care and hospital day stays that are UNHEARD OF in the USA nowadays. The valve hardware itself would cost $10k more in the US to cover litigation / malpractice costs.

A friend of mine's aunt ended up having open heart surgery for a valve replacement in Baroda India. She had it at a private surgicenter with excellent Indian U.S. trained physicians with follow-up and post-op ICU care for less than $8000. The equivalent cost in the USA would have been $50k minimum with ICU days costing another $9k-$15k per DAY, with additional costs for the anesthesiologists and for the surgeons.

Have you noticed how many Indian doctors there are in the USA? A lot of them were fully trained and board certified in India before even coming to the united states. A lot of Indians who go to the US for medical training (medical school, residency, fellowships) often come back to India to open their own hospitals and clinics.

Their is very little insurance hassle in India because there is very little insurance. Major med procedures are often paid for with cash. I don't know about the mortgage situation currently but more than ten years ago, mortgages were unheard of. You'd buy houses when you had the cash to afford one and most often had them built to your own specifications.

All About the Cost of Living

[kisrael]

$11,000 = a decent middle class life in India.

That's really what it all comes down to. I got that from the recent Wired article [wired.com] and this pretty interesting set of responses confirms it.

That's 1/4 of what I was making fresh out of school in 1996.

I guess I don't understand how in a "global economy", that kind of difference in the cost of living survives, and how it ties in with things like inflation and other economic factors.

Is it basically that there are SO many poor people in India, that that somehow keeps the costs of the basics down? And that the USA couldn't have a similar situation without that level of poverty?

Amazing. I wonder what the future of global living standards is going to look like.

Re:My question is....

[sskang]

The main reason is poor discretionary net access. Its is incredibly hard to be, say, a KDE developer when you have very unreliable, expensive and slow dialup net access. Most FLOSS developers start with fast connections from the universities, and then supplement their home net connections (fast or slow, whatever) with their net access at work.

When you don't have fast net access even at university (let alone the ability to host huge, high-bandwidth CVS servers like KDE did for a long time), it becomes really hard to even access free software and updates, let alone become an always-on developer.

Don't underestimate the Internet as the collaborative device that allows free software to happen. As net access becomes better here, you'll see more Indian FLOSS developers.

See? Trickle down works

[dreamchaser]

I grew up in a very poor village. My father made $10 per month as a schoolteacher. One bicycle was our only family transport. I went to college as a scholarship student. I did well in my exams, so the government paid for my education. Now I own two houses, and the workers I hired to build both of them had no other work, so that helped bring money into my village. My father and mother live in a house I built, too. I rent out one of the houses I own now and live in the other one. The money I earn spreads through the economy. Fathers work at better jobs because of my spending and can keep their children in school instead of having them go out to work early

And that is exactly how supply side ('trickle down') economics worked. It worked in the 80's and it's starting to work now, too.

It is good to see that some good is coming out of off shore outsourcing, at least.

Of course, this will get modded down because libertarian or conservative views get an automatic -1 (Not Liberal) here most of the time ;)

Re:important question...

[psycho_tinman]

I've tried Kingfisher beer. Light, not bad. Has to be better than Bud and Coors light *blech* Also something that might be called "Taj Mahal", but I am not sure.

For a real flameout though, try "Old Monk" whiskey (if that's what it is). Has a kick like a mule, and a little goes a very very long way :)

As an Indian

[Srividya]

I have doubts. Would you come to me to work with me in Tirupathi? Many of my assosciates are unpaid. Forgive me but I do not get the impression that Americans would choose to work for no pay unless they are found to be excellent. And there are many other differences here, we have no wide open forests, mainly just people.

However we would of course welcome you!

Re:important question...

[Sarvagya]

Try Kingfisher, in US its not technically an Indian beer as the one that you normally get in the US is brewed in UK (see, India outsourced beer brewing to UK :o)), however its an Indian beer in the sense that that brand and the brewing company is Indian and its brewed in India for the Indian market under the same brand name. Most Indian beers are pale ale's, pilsners or lagers. You will not find any dark beers in India (by that I mean dark beers brewed in India). Although not available here in the US, but some of the so called "strong" beers in India have an alcohol content as high as 14%.

Re:My question is....

[Telastyn]

I've seen a bit of NetBSD code submitted by Japanese programmer(s).

Though more likely is the fact that their 'itch' is likely internationalization/localization issues which we [dumb Westerners] don't care about.

Re:My question is....

[maxbang]

... when they're soo good at computers?

Are you kidding that this isn't flamebait? Did you not read the part about code-monkeys? I guess this is Slashdot, so I shouldn't expect so much. The percentage of people over there who are "soo good at computers" is equal to the percentage over here who are "soo good at computers." If you're going to stereotype, at least use a funny one, like Apu.

Keep in mind the statistics...

[cavemanf16]

I noticed the interview kept mentioning that the 'middle class' in India constituted only 10-15% of the entire population of India. Well at 1 billion people +, that equates to 100,000,000 - 150,000,000 middle class Indians. When the US only has a population of 350,000,000 (a guesstimate) TOTAL, that Indian middle-class appears quite large in comparison. With the college tuition rates, government subsidies, and other factors in effect in India, it appears to me that they are primed to quickly over-take the U.S. as the premier investment opportunity for the world within the next 10 years or less. Those of us in America had better not become too comfortable with our posh standards of living as they currently are. I fear they will not last much longer.

Chills up my spine

[Tablizer]

There is no shortage of people to do any kind of decent-paying work in India, period. The Army turns down at least 19 out of 20 applicants who want to be enlisted soldiers, and turns down 49 out of every 50 officer candidates, who must have college degrees even to apply in most cases....This goes back to that whole "one billion people" thing.

Scary. Very very scary. Brains are indeed becomming a very cheap commodity. Whatsa nerd going to do in the future? Or even now? Our skills have no value in the marketplace anymore.

Re:important question...

[spaceman harris]

Cobra: the less fizzy lager, low carbonation is an asset when eating spicy stuff. www.cobrabeer.com

Kingfisher: low cal, and good in hot weather.

Re:My question is....

[andy1307]

Most Indians, even those in engineering schools, don't have unmilited access to computers. Most people who start in open source do so because they have access to a computer and take up open source as a hobby. Indian students don't have that luxury yet. However, computer penetration is increasing and you should expect to see more contributions to open source from Indians and Chinese. Remember: Individual users in India and China don't really pay for software and most people aren't hooked onto Microsoft products. These markets are ripe for open source. Sun even sold a 10k license for it's office alternative to an Indian insurance company.

In short: give it time..just 10 years ago(1994) most people in India had never worked on computer.

Re:whoa

[Creepy Crawler]

I was trying to be subtle with the nuances of "Organized Peaceful Anarchy".

Working anarchies such as the Ikung people (search anarchy on everything2.com) are no good over about 20 people. Also, if a group of people come together (organize) and plan for rules for everyone to follow, that would be government, albeit a small one. The Ikung have rules where banishment is allowed only under extreme circumstances, which would say there's some sort of loose government to define "extreme"...

I admit "Peaceful" was a jab at the common thinking of "Mad Max" type of anarchy. Murder, Rape, Arson: what normal people think about anarchy.

Re:Dupe?

[WIAKywbfatw]

You're either a troll or an ignorant fool or both.

The cost of living is significantly cheaper in India, by at least an order of magnitude. Everything, from food, to housing, to transport, to you name it is cheaper there. Most white collar workers not only earn a comfortable living, but they can afford to employ other people (ie, servants) to do all the menial stuff, like cooking and cleaning.

If you think that you can achieve the same level of comfort (eg, a household where you do little more than eat, sleep and enjoy yourself) in the US in the equivalent job then you're deluding yourself.

I've bet you've never even left the US let alone been to India. I have, and I can tell you that most white collar Indians live relatively stress-free lives compared to those of us in the West. You were saying something about quality of life?

My true anecdote...

[rilister]

I visited Madras in 1997. While I was there I walked up to a temple overlooking the city - you had to climb up a 1000 steps or whatever to get there, so by the time you reach the top, you're a fair way out of the city. Sorry, but I don't remember the specific names.

Anyway, over the other side of this hill, facing away from the city is what you might call 'the ghetto' - low quality ad-hoc housing built from metal sheeting. Kind of the place you don't feel totally comfortable wandering around.

A kid approaches us (probably 12-14yrs old) and asks us who we are, where we're from. He speaks good english and is chatty. He points out his house below us - it's basic living. We make small talk.

After I while I ask him - '...so - what do you want to do when you grow up?'

'I'm going to be a C++ programmer'

I'm shocked and impressed. 'Wow. You have a computer?' I look at his house again. It may have electricity.

'No, I have a book. But I'm learning.'

-with that kind of enterprise and foresight, I can never begrudge an out-sourced Indian programmer his living.

Re:Good read, but whats the point?

[DAldredge]

Please reference that law.

A message to India

[Pee-Wee]

I just wanted to take a moment and say nice job you guys. This is very impressive to me. Each one of you are working hard to improve your lives and your country. I have a huge amount of respect for that. Very nice work!

Brian

Re:"expensive" books?!?

[lordpixel]

Many recent computer books run $50-60. You can get a cheap PC for $300. So that's 5 books to one computer.

Of course, the PC may cost more in India, and the books may cost less each.

And of course, people may have much more need for books other than computer books, and these might have lower prices due to more copies being printed (and the amount the market is willing to pay).

But your example of "hundreds" of books to one computer is way off base if you're assuming up to date technical books is what people would want.

Sure, you can probably get lots of copies of 'To Kill a Mocking Bird' for the price of a PC in India. However, I doubt that's what people in an Indian village would want to read online, had they access to the Internet.

Who's the Brian Lehrer fan?

[PollGuy]

One of you slashdotters called WNYC's Brian Lehrer show this morning as he was talking about outsourcing. You said that you have been a programmer for 22 years and are now expensive to hire. You said that this issue has been a hot topic on Slashdot for years and you were glad that it was finally getting some mainstream press (especially now with the Mankiw debacle).

Just wanted to say thanks. I totally concur on your last point -- I've been waiting years for this to hit a critical mass on a non-geek forum. Funny it waited until an election year.

Re:Caste?

[gokulpod]

Generally speaking, the lower classes in India are poorer and less educated than higher classes. This has lead to a situation where the middle and upper classes are the oringinal high-class people (brahmins, kshatriyas etc), while the poorer people are from the lower classes (the shudras).

Therefore it is very rare to see a lower class person take up a white collar job since their education levels are much lower. The government on India does reserve certain seats in colleges etc for these classes (analogous to affirmative action in US), but the quality of such graduates is questionable.

I have a few friends from "lower classes", and among the younger educated folks, there isnt as much discrimination as before. But overall, the situation for the lower classes is not heart warming.

Huge Problem

[DRue]

Most people I talked to believe government is the only hope; that egovernment and other government projects are the only way to develop a sustainable local IT sector.

With that attitude, things will never change. They need to be entrepenuers (sp?) and build their own market from the ground up. It won't work top down style sitting around waiting for the gov't to start ordering technology. Computers are cheap (even there) - start using them.

Re:Enjoy it while you can..

[swb]

This is not entirely a trollish statement. A friend of mine with a PhD in history says that the US is setting the stage for either a Balkan-style civil war over cultural values clashes caused by non-integrating cultures and language gaps, or a neofascist government brought to power for economic and social reasons.

He's rather convinced that blacks and whites will align due to their closer shared history than any other group, although he said that a large muslim immigration would favor a white/black/mexican alliance on religious grounds.

While I think he's largely crazy, look closely at the areas of the world where divergent cultures and geogrpahy match up -- the Balkans, the Middle East, Southern Russia. It's easy to dismiss these conflicts as the products of recent history, but the historical reality is a massive back and forth for centuries.

I doubt that our capitalist spirit, where making a buck is our strongest value, will allow us to have that kind of situation, but its not entirely out of the question.

Re:All About the Cost of Living

[__aanebg9627]

How does it survive? It doesn't! The work goes where there is a 'comparitive advantage', if the economic system is working correctly. Right now, India oddly enough has a 'comparative advantage' in educated work; its educated people have been severely under-employed compared to educated people in the U.S.. The reason things are shifting *now* is that the cost of transporting their work from one market to another has dropped immensely because of the internet. On the other hand, the work of the uneducated is largely manual labor, and the transportation costs of moving that work between markets has changed a lot less. (Besides, the products of the manual work have been protected in the U.S. for most of the last century. The U.S. *still* has trade restrictions on textiles!) A third thing is also going on -- the U.S. is being lent a lot of money from the rest of the world (esp. China and Japan). For this reason, the U.S. dollar is far, far higher than it should be. So you can adjust that cost-of-living figure somewhat for an overvalued dollar. Don't be surprised if, in a few years, the dollar has dropped so much that you see more like "$22,000 = a decent middle class life in India"

Re:distribution of wealth

[blighter]

That might be a problem in India or other places where the modern economy hasn't fully penetrated, but not so much in the U.S.

Bill Gates doesn't keep all his money in a stack of mattresses or in a giant money-bin a la Scrooge McDuck, most of his wealth is in the form of Microsoft stock, which money is being used by Microsoft. You might disagree with how it's being used, but it is not sitting around doing nothing.

And this is generally true of the very, very wealthy. The amount of money that they keep "out of circulation" is usually a very small percentage of their total worth. This is because they don't hoard gold or physical money, their wealth is invested; investment allows for growth and economic development. Even money that they are keeping as "cash" is usually in the form of bank deposits where it is re-lent out to finance other opportunities.

At any rate. I don't want to get off into a whole rant about the capitalist system being mis-understood and mis-interpreted, but know that it is there! ; )

slashdot feature

[moojin]

this was a really interesting post and response. could we do something like this for other countries like China, Philippines, Korea, Russia, Ireland, England, etc. it would be very interesting to learn about other IT professionals / slashdot geeks all over the world and their perspective of certain tech issues like off shore outsourcing, open source movement, etc.

Re:Good read, but whats the point?

[The Night Watchman]

Just wait. Our tax system can not survive a large influx of people who pay next to no taxes and most of the new jobs in the US don't pay enought to require those working at them to pay federal income tax. Something will have to change

Exactly, along with the simple notion that IBM's American dollars are fueling the Indian economy instead of our own. You can't pour water out of one glass into another without the water level in the first glass going down quite a bit.

Proponents of offshoring claim that it will help to create jobs, but they fail to mention exactly what kinds of jobs will be created. The US doesn't produce anything anymore. Even retail and service providers are being swallowed up by large franchises. It's not just software people getting offshored. It's anything that doesn't require actual physical presence here in the US. It's getting harder and harder to find a line of work that *won't* be offshored, but it's in my best interest to start looking now.

Back to my original point... offshoring is opening up all the valves, and American resources are now spreading to fill a much larger container. A considerable bulge in the pipes is sitting in India right now, but it's just a matter of time before India gets too demanding and the US looks elsewhere. Globalization will raise quality of life for developing countries, and lower quality of life in first-world countries. As long as the economic standards are different in each country (e.g., middle class == $10k/year), this will continue to be the case. It's as if you have thousands of people winning the same lottery and each person ends up only getting a couple grand. Resources will spread themselves out so thinly that it might require a redefinition of the monetary system itself if we don't want to live in poverty.

I don't really know where I was going in all this :-) All I know is, the world is changing. Maybe I'll just become a hermit, buy me a couple of llamas and go live in the mountains. Technology is overrated anyway...

---

Re:whoa

[nanojath]

It raises the interesting distinction between communism as a political philosophy and communism as it has generally been practiced. At it's most basic level, all communism means the direct and communal control of a society towards the common benefits of all members. So in fact democracy isn't mutually exclusive with this principle - a democratic decision-making process would seem to be the most sensible way for a society dedicated to direct and communal control to run things.

In the major examples of communist governments, the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx were abused to promote the imposition of communism by force - and to the surprise of nobody with a brain and a sense of history, absolute power was found to corrupt absolutely. The leaders, who claimed to be managing the developing the communistic societies for the good of the people and the revolutionary principle, became simple despots taking advantage of their power for material gain. This demonstrates some of the inherent pitfalls of communism. If you decide that communal ownership of all property is necessary for an ideal communist society, well then somebody has to "repossess" all that property and redistribute it. As many have discovered, things don't always work out so well in that transfer.

You may not know that the Communist Party USA has been active continuously since 1919 - not a bad trick when you consider how deep anti-communist sentiments have been at times in the intervening period. They've even gotten the occasional candidate elected.

You couldn't say that India has a communist government. In fact, better minds than mine would have to explain how India is governed, because it's complicated. It is unquestionably true that world's first elected Communist government was in the Indian state of Kerala in 1957, and communist parties in India still play a role in politics today. It is interesting, and will stretch your ideas about what communism is and isn't, if nothing else (I'm not a communist, by the way, but I find the varieties of ways we try to govern ourselves interesting...)

What realy puzzles me...

[Qbertino]

..is that in general, people (geeks and non-geeks) don't seem to see that massive IT work on a beehive scale probably isn't going to last very long in india either.
99% of software related work I do today I do with software that I get for free of the net. It's called OSS.

What's still missing in the OSS dept?

Feasable ERP and usable Multimedia (video NLE/Compositing, animation, 3D). And games maybe.
What else? Niche stuff at most.

That being said, wouldn't it be cool for western geeks to collect something like the 100 000 $ for Blender to have a large team in india do some grunt work on XFree, GNU Enterprise or something else? Or maybe the base for the blender 3.0 redoo, with NLE, NLA, crystal space engine integration and all that?

Some 50 programmers or so could actually make a living over there and we'd all be on the winning side. I personally would LOVE to call myself a sharehoplder of the 'Indian Team OSS Group' or so. What do other slashdotters think about this? Am I making sense?

Price Dumping?

[khrustalicious]

Very interesting article.

My question would have been what about price dumping? We (the US) don't allow government-supported industries to dump product here for many reasons.

Isn't this the same thing?

It was pointed out in the article how difficult it is to find work in India. So these outsourcing companies can exploit their workers, making them work for free for the first few months, and pay them relatively low wages, then advertise with US companies how much cheaper and better their product is.

How is this not price dumping? And if it is, maybe the other debate is, should we not care? Global economy, yada yada, if they want to dump, let 'em?

Re:See? Trickle down works

[spaceman harris]

I'm not sure that that story illustrates Trickle Down economics, or any sort of macroeconomic theory.

Trickle Down is also known as "supply side", money is spent by the government to give to industry or investors so that the economy will grow, either through tax-cuts, spending or subsidy. The instance that is alluded to here is fiscal policy under Reagan in the 80s, where money was spent on weapons, tax cuts for investors. The goal is to increase the supply of production

The flip side is "demand side economics", this is classic Keynesian policy where money is put in the hands of consumers through pension payments, government services, entitlements or by creating state companies to give out jobs (ie the Hoover Dam). This is used in lots of places, but Keynes' theories were based on Roosevelt in the 30s.

This story actually seems more indicative of demand side economics, or "trickle up" economics.

But let me guess... you don't care.

India needs a little of both these policies, but promarily it needs to focus on reducing corruption, encouraging fair Foreign Direct Investment and a good education system. All of which are aided through the outsourcing described in the article.

Orthogonal in Theory

[Catskul]

They are orthogonal in theory only. In practice the requirements to bring people into the system makes the economic systems dependent on the governmental system.

It is extremely difficult for a free market economy under strict control since by definition its not a free market if it is tightly controled.

Communism on the other hand requires strict control as people will default to free market economic behavior when not constrained. It therefore requires more governmental control through its need for economical control. In my opinion, that is why it failed. The idea is great, but its like the environment, attempts to control throw it out of balance.

Re:whoa

[Anonymous Coward]

>Chile elected a pretty far left on the socialist scale government, in a fair election, and things went well until the US had had enough of communisim in the Americas and toppled him.
No things didn't go well at all, Allende completly destroyed the Chillian economy. The coup was American backed but Chillians welcomed it, seeing it was the only way to end chaos caused by Allende's economic policies.
BTW Chile is now one of the richest countries in South America, comparable to European countries. Unlike Cuba or even neighbouring Argentina.

I'm afraid you don't really care about all this and just wanted to post a clever comment not knowing some one will point out your wrong.

Re:whoa

[Anonymous Coward]

Communisim isn't a philosophy, it's a political system in which the state takes away your property and gives it to others.

And whether or not you would belive it, the US is turning about as RED as Russia ever was, especilly in this regard.

Check it out: most cities (and even the government of the US) have the power to take land away from one person, and give it to another (or keep it for themselves.) This is called Eminent Domain, and it's often used by Urban Renewal Authorities.

We're fighting about this right now. Our city wants to take away a lake (a very nice lake, that is near-pristine, and is the home for many animals) that belongs to a private individual, and give it to Wal-Mart. How fucked up is that?

First they have their city counsil label it "blighted". Then they condemn it, and take it away, even if there is no justification for it.

Hammer and sickle, pal. Hammer and sickle.

Re:Good read, but whats the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, let me say that I have no problem with people in other countries trying to inprove themselves. That is cool, everybody deserves a good life. Furthermore I have nothing against the Indian programmer(or call center worker etc...) either. Outsourcing(offshoring, or whatever euphemism you want to call it) is all about corporate greed. I am a CS major in college and we had a nice discussion in my world politics class yesterday, it started out with Bush's proposal about immigrant workers and then went from there to the outsourcing of high-tech jobs. Well my professor decided to shed some light on the subject by telling us that corporations receive tax breaks for sending jobs overseas. AND if any loss is incurred it is guaranteed by the US government. If they lose $30 million the government says "OK here ya go! Here's your $30 million!". If that doesn't smack of greed I don't know what does. I lay it all at the feet of all the CEO's and CFO's etc.. who want another house in Malibu and another Bentley in the garage.

Re:My true anecdote...

[stuffduff]

When I became interested in computers, all I had was a book. And even that book was way out of date. This was the spring of 1967; a time before ic's and dip's. I have an adder board that was state of the art at the time, there were pairs of transistors as big as pencil erasers stuck in plastic blocks on the daughter boards that went to the main that pluged into a Philco-Ford computer's backplane. Both the board and the book fascinated me, and I never looked back. Within 3 months I had a different book: The IBM giude to the WATFOR Compiler, and the Fortran IV code I scribbled out on notebook paper actually got punched out on cards and run through an early IBM 360.

Now when I see someone like that it makes me feel good!

Geek girls?

[phorm]

And the unmarried ones had the same complaints about never meeting appropriate girls, too.

How is the proliferation of geek females. It seems that from some of the comments there is at least a "trendy" female technoculture. How many are true geeks, the type that like video games, linux, or other such things?

I know that it's hard to meet true geek girls around here... and I don't mean date I mean meet - I meet lots of people and even dating isn't too much an issue. Does such a population and the current tech boom mean an increase in female geekculture?

Beware, if the answer is yes... you may just get a whole hoard of US geeks "insourcing" themselves to India

Free Trade vs. Job Outsourcing

[tabdelgawad]

'Job outsourcing' has become the buzzword of every one who is, or claims to be, concerned with the US employment picture. Last week, N. Gregory Mankiw, the chairman of the US council of economic advisers, committed a cardinal sin by declaring that "Outsourcing is a growing phenomenon, but it's something that we should realize is probably a plus for the economy in the long run". Both republican and democratic politicians asked for his head (just do a search on 'mankiw' in google news).

But Mankiw is right (notwithstanding the old adage that in the long run, we are all dead!). There's not one dime's worth of difference in principle between 'outsourcing', which many hate, and 'free trade' which seems to have become the acceptable norm in American politics. Outsourcing is simply the extension of free trade from the goods markets to the service markets. It represents a shrinking of what economists call the 'nontradable sector', goods and services that are by nature are difficult/impossible to trade. Any defense of free trade policies (and there are many convincing ones) applies equally well to job outsourcing.

I don't mean to be callous about job losses. It was regrettable when the buggywhip makers lost their jobs to technological advances. It was regrettable when auto workers lost their jobs in the 80s to the Japanese carmakers. And it is regrettable when US programmers lose jobs to their Indian counterparts. But life goes on, the US employment picture will improve, and the complaints about 'outsourcing' will disappear until the next spike in US unemployment a few (hopefully many!) years from now. It's the way free trade works.

Re:Good read, but whats the point?

[skifreak87]

I'm currently a college sophomore and when choosing my major, the advice given to me was pretty much stay away from the IT sector. Basic economics, pay reflects supply and demand, not skill-level/education required to do the job. There's supposedly (and this does hold in many cases) a direct correlation between supply and the skill-level/education level needed for a job which is why there are statistics that the average college grad earns a lot more than the average high school grad. However, there's currently a huge supply of people who want to do programming/IT work and who are skilled enough to do it, and not nearly enough demand to support that supply. Consequently, pay will be low and many people wont find work in this sector.

Until the industry starts valuing skill more highly, which in my experience it does not*, pay will remain low because there's not much desire to attract real talent to most of these programmer/tech support/sys admin positions.

* Basic competency is all that's desired because the average person generally uses nowhere near the full capabilities of their technology. My parents were impressed when I showed them how to feed our Christmas cards into the printer and print them out instead of writing them by hand/having them professionally done. I still have friends who are in shock that it's possible, using an audio cable and an s-video cable, I can use the dvd player on my laptop to play a dvd on the TV. I also worked at a company two summers ago where they still had paperwork faxed to them instead of emailed (other companies wanted them to switch) because the owner of the company didn't understand "that tech stuff" and didn't want to deal with email.

Furthermore, a mildly-competent IT person still knows insanely more about their field than the average businessman. While skill is still recognized and appreciated, it's often not considered necessary and it's absence isn't even always recognized.

Dumb Westerners?

[GCP]

Feel free to speak for yourself, then close your mouth.

The overwhelming majority of internationalization is done by smart Westerners, most of it by Americans (though Europeans have made huge contributions).

I've worked in Japan and Korea. They couldn't care less about internationalization when designing their own code. Of course they want Western code to be internationalized so they can use it, too, but that's just more pressure on Westerners to internationalize. If the Japanese decide to modify the code themselves, they'll simply add support for Japanese rather than trying to internationalize it.

And even Europeans don't usually have much interest in real internationalization. They've thought of "international" and "European" as synonyms for so long that as soon as it works in the major markets in their neighborhood, they declare it "internationalized" and quit. (Trying to talk to them about really internationalizing is then likely to result in perplexed looks and comments like, "unlike you Americans, we think internationally, so we've already internationalized yadda, yadda....")

It's the multinational US companies that have driven most real internationalization because as soon as they decide to leave their domestic nest, US companies are just as interested in Asia as in Europe. Developers at IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Apple, for example, have the importance of things like Unicode drummed into them. Not so for developers that I've seen at NEC, Fujitsu, Samsung, Siemens, Bull, or Ericsson.

Interestingly, though, the governments of India and Pakistan have both recently joined the Unicode Consortium as full members.

Re:whoa

[Abcd1234]

Thank you for making my point:

...this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

This stage is NOT communism! This is an intermediate state which Marx felt was necessary during the transition *to* Communism. Thus, no truly communist country has ever existed... they've all stalled out in this intermediate state and subsequently devolved into socialist dictatorships.

Re:What realy puzzles me...

[Qbertino]

Who is going to be writing open source software when where all unemployed and unable to purchase computers when our current ones breakdown?

IT Unemlployment isn't going to grow indefinitely.
IT jobs are shifting to service rather than coding and selling closed source.This will also bring back jobs to where the customers are. And it will even strengthen OSS.
Closed source and large proprietary software families are a thing of the past. That's the big thing that's changing. And that's the only reason it's actually feasable to outsource big time. Whenever an industry does that it's about to change big time anyway. That doesn't mean we're all going unemployed for the rest of our life. I lost a job as a developer and now do freelance stuff with lot's of OSS and a strong service orientation, close to the people in other fields of business. That 40 hrs. keypunching on proprietary stuff is _never_ going to come back. Not for me it is anyway.
And in the end, I thank God for it. Now i sit at my desk or laptop for half the time at most. The rest of the time I go out, talk to customers and am much closer in touch with reality than any coder could ever be. I know I'll get my customers top-range software for nearly all their need for zero money and they'll gladly pay me to custom design and programm their supply chain management, rich media framework, web-cms or whatnot. And in the end I get to GPL the code!
Dig it: My customers _pay_ me to do _real_ fun computer stuff, they are thankfull for me doing it and in the end I can publish it as OSS. I got layed off and I adapted and I'll _never_ look back!

Once again, to all coders out there:
8.5 hrs a day keypunching proprietary software along with selling closed source is deader than a doornail and is done with.
- - - IT IS OVER! - -
The last stuff that proprietary can do to make money is so measyly IT HAS TO BE DONE BY SUPER CHEAP LABOR.
And that, my dear geek friends IS A GOOD THING for the _global_ economy!
Coding has become a service and custom craftmanship and ceased being a assembly line mass production. Get that into your skull and fucking adapt. The earlyer, the better.
I thought /. was a place of future and OSS aware geeks...

Cheez, coming to think of it, I guess I should consider myseld lucky being layed off early enough.

Big enough pool for everyone to play in

[raider_red]

I got laid off last year like several million other U.S. tech workers. I was able to find a new job in about four months. Nearly all of my co-workers who got laid off also found jobs within three to six months. Talking to others I've met this year, I've seen stories very similar to mine and my former co-workers.

The moral of the story: Yes, there is short term displacement and pain, partly attributed to off-shoring, but in an economy as innovative and dynamic as ours, those who want to work can almost always find work. It may take some personal adjustment, and you may have to make some dramatic changes in lifestyle, but in the end that's all just stuff, and you can live without most of it. There's a lot of work to be done, and in the end, there's probably enough to employ almost all of us, and a couple of million overseas.

Re:Good read, but whats the point?

[tropicflite]

Basic economics, pay reflects supply and demand, not skill-level/education required to do the job.

Ain't THAT the truth, and it's not just IT either. I'm an airline pilot. Without trying to sound like an a**hole, we're among the most proficiently trained (and mercilessly monitored) workgroups in the world.. and like IT people, almost everyone who does this job can't imagine doing anything else. But since 9/11 and the massive layoffs across the industry, we've found out the hard way that our labor is a commodity, subject to the same ruthless rules of supply and demand.

There was a time when pilots suffered through many years of low pay in order to reap a few years of high pay [fool.com], but with the glut of laid-off pilots on the market, the future's been cancelled and instead there's been a race to the bottom [pittsburghlive.com] as we realize we're just another oversupplied labor pool that better take what it can get. And by the way, a great pilot doesn't make any more than a mediocre one... never has and (probably) never will.

So we have a choice, it seems... either do what we love, and accept that it may not pay what we want, or go for the money, and spend our lives working at something that doesn't ignite our passion.

Oh, I guess there's a 3rd choice.. we can do something that neither pays well NOR is gratifying. Most people fall into that category anyway.

Re:Pinochet [was Re:whoa] (OT)

[IgnoramusMaximus]

he penultimate paragraph (starting with the letter BTW a commonly accepted acronym for "by the way") was remark indicating that the ECONOMIC policies Pinochet introduced were beneficial for Chile, it did not in any way express aproval of his person.

Let me clarify it for you since you are having difficulty with history and present economic situation in Chile: Allende came to power because Chile's economy was screwed up beyond belief with huge masses of dispossessed and starving poor working in near-slavery conditions and most of the country was being owned by US based cartels. Pinochet was a response of those who want to own everything on the planet. His job was to set an example as to what happens should the unwashed masses get uppity and try to get a better deal. He did his job splendidly. In the process he restored the "natural" order of things to Chile, and even improved it so that the new flashy "economicly viable" elite is the only thing visible to uneducated doofuses who use the FOX channel as their news source. In the meantime the disparity between the elite and the huge numbers of the working poor has grown. Overall the rich got very rich and everyone else got double-screwed under Pinochet. And thats his economic legacy that you claim was beneficial to Chile. Dont get me wrong, I fully understand where you stand. If it is good for the few rich up top it must be good for the country, right? After all only the rich count when one speaks of persons, the rest are merely wage-slaves, no? This is the very same way of thinking these darlings of "conservative thinking" like Regan and Bush embodify.

The fact for Pinochet is responsible for the death of other 3000 people (how of them were really communists who came from around the world to establish communism is our country, how many were just misguided brats or completly innocent bystanders, will never know becouse they didn't get a trail), does not magicly make Allende a good ruler

I was reading this with total astonishment, until I realised I am talking to a Bible-thumping troglodite who would gladly take part in Crusades if he were born in middle ages. I can almost hear that madman with a torch: "The communists are Evil and the Spawn Of Satan to be tortured and and burned on the stake so that the purifying fires can clense their souls!". Right. So it is quite all-right to murder, rape and pillage as long as the victims are "communists" or "misguided brats". To most foreigners in the world it is quite astonishing that a country professing so loudly the rule of law and democracy is on one hand supporting vicious thugs and on the other invading other countries "pre-emptively" on made-up pretexts. Not so to me, if there are people in the world like you who are inane enough to think the way you do. If there is something to be ever wished for by all sane people on this planet is that the likes of you never, ever, manage to take charge of the US completely for they would end the humanity with an uspeakable bloodbath trying to purge it of what your indoctrination tells you is "evil".

I wasn't justifing atrocities commited by Pinochets regime...

This thin veneer of civility was completelly torn off by your statement above.

.. only pointing out to that the greatgrandparents argument about a good democraticly elected communist government was absurd.

Which happened to be completely correct as what is a "good" or a "bad" government was for the Chilean majority to decide in a democratic process and not for US based corporations, a hired thug and a bunch of greedy land owners in Chile who conspired to destroy that government when it didnt suit them instead of waiting for next election where their notion of "good" could have been defeated again. By your insane thinking, "good" is what YOU believe to be good, measured by your own yardstick (capitalist wealth, the stock exchange index, private hospitals, 60% of people with no healthcare, etc) and any other measurement (as

Philippines call centers

[foo12]

Call center work is not necessarily permanent. It is a burnout job in India just as phone "customer service" work is in the U.S. [...] and besides, all those jobs will go to the Philippines sooner or later, anyway, so why bother? [emphasis added]

I read this as I'm sitting in my company's customer service center in the Philippines. Our customer service reps here already have a loyal following amongst our customers. It's largely cultural: Filipinos place great emphasis on compromise and tactful, mutually face-saving resolution of any conflict. That cultural predilection goes a long way in handling customers, no matter what the issue. Plus the reps here are always smiling and singing; it seems silly but it's repesentative of the general attitude in this office.The customer senses it, and eats it up.

Re:Dumb Westerners?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amrericans do most internl. jobs !!! I'm flabbergasted, apart from IBM no American company and/or project leader that I have had contact with cares at all about internationalisation, but to add insult to injury they quite often explicitly refuse to help or allow such work to be performed/contributed to their source or whatever and quite often sabotage such work. Anyone remember the dork that "corrected" the English used in the linux source code a few months back, not quite the same thing but it shuld be rembered that more people use standard English than the USA version.

I worked for Unisys, one of the "clued up" American conglomerates that you mentioned, you could not even print out ISO characters using OS2200 (or OTR or whatever it's called these day's) much less anything else except by changing the firmware in every I/O hardware part in the line.

I would very much like to see anyone actually point me to a real internationalisation tool desinged in the USA, again outside of IBM. (kudos and appreciation to Big Blue for the great work they have done in that arena ever since 1977, they have stood up against other "more progressive" American companies time and time again, the basic Western ISO charset standard would not exist today if IBM had not firmly put their foot down in 1981)

And it's not just a historical issue, last time I had the usual argument about allowing for more than ASCII in a program text parsing was in December 2003!

Re:Good read, but whats the point?

[bwcbwc]

Globalization will raise quality of life for developing countries, and lower quality of life in first-world countries. As long as the economic standards are different in each country (e.g., middle class == $10k/year), this will continue to be the case.

Exactly! We have to face the fact that wages for US white collar jobs are going to seriously drop over the next couple of decades. The only question is how many of these jobs will migrate to Asia.

Since (barring new technology or an economic paradigm shift) wages are going to drop anyway, I propose a policy that will at least keep a larger percentage of the jobs in the US: Liberalize high tech worker visas for foreign workers, particularly India and China. This liberalization could take the form of allowing transfers of H1Bs between employers, renewals of H1Bs or conversion into green cards, or simply allowing a grace period to find a new sponsor before having to leave.

The downside of this is that it will accelerate the decline of wages in the US and could accelerate negative environmental impacts, but there are multiple upsides:

• Wages will increase more quickly in India and China because the supply of available programmers will shrink (or grow more slowly). This will more quickly decrease the motivation for businesses to outsource to India and China and reduce the number of jobs that actually leave.
• The equilibrium point for wages in the US will be reached more quickly and may be higher. The liberalized immigration will accelerate the convergence of the wage/price conditions in the US and India by opening the labor market here. By acquiring Indian developers before the Indian middle class grows any larger, we can introduce greater scarcity in the Indian labor market than by a slower approach where more middle class Indians will have the chance to put their children through college. Workers that emigrate to the US would have their children here, rather than in India, so we would have the benefit of those resources.
• It will help resolve the Social Security and other budget deficits by increasing the number of US taxpayers and reducing the average age of the workforce.
• Combined with tax disincentives for moving work offshore, we actually could come out ahead in the long run.