How India is Saving Capitalism 1174
alphakappa writes "Salon goes onsite to Chennai (Madras) in India to investigate the whole offshoring phenemenon (free daypass) and comes up with an interesting series of stories. Katharine Mieszkowski starts with a company CollabNet which creates collaboration software for teams to work together on projects from locations all over the globe, and has centers in Brisbane (CA,US) and Chennai (India) - a company that would not exist if they didn't have access to engineers from India. She makes the case that in most cases, it is the necessity to survive, rather than greed that has fed the offshoring process. As Behlendorf from CollabNet puts it - 'We saved the jobs of the people who are employed in San Francisco by hiring people here [in India],' he says. 'I don't know that we would be around as a company if we hadn't done that. What was the right thing to do, morally?'"
Great... (Score:3, Interesting)
When will the middle class realize that the upper 2% is screwing us in the ass daily, and actually do something about it???? We are the *majority* afterall...
--Ryan
Oh please. (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats why its been called "A race to the bottom". Once your competitors start hiring offshore, you're forced to do it to compete on price.
sure. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds a lot like justification to me. Whatever helps him sleep at night.
We couldn't save all the jobs, so we saved half.
If companies refused to go off shore, then everyone would be able to survive and we wouldn't lose any jobs.
The Bottom Line (Score:4, Interesting)
Now add in health insurance for the family, dental insurance, minumum wages, retirement matching, etc etc that a company has to setup for its labor in American, and you'll see that goods and services cannot be inexpensive if made in America. The cost of labor is too high here if we are to guarantee cheap goods and services.
It's an interesting paradox: In order to keep prices reasonable for a middle class, a majority of the labor needs to be paid at or just above the poverty line...which would theoretically remove the middle class.
So what should we do? In my eyes you either make wages worth more to the people (ie lower taxes) so you can offer less, or you cut down the overhead cost of labor (ie have the government install laws against frivolous malpractice lawsuits to reduce health insurance costs).
What do you think?
Re:sure. (Score:2, Interesting)
Chennai's _Dune_ connection (Score:5, Interesting)
(Taking tongue away from cheek) Ha ha only serious. On a more positive note, it's also India's Bandwidth Capital because of all those transpacific cables landing here via Singapore. And electricity is very cheap here, probably the cheapest among all of India's major cities.
Re:Great... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats the stupidist thing I've ever heard... (Score:4, Interesting)
I really dont understand how companies can layoff people, send their jobs overseas, and expect their profits to rise. They layoff people, their customers... WHO will buy their products? with no one having enough money to buy them.
There is only ONE reason for outsourcing. Only one reason: to make the CEOs and execs of these companies more money.
These stories of how outsourcing is better in the end are a complete farse. There is NO benefit for the average american worker.
Re:One must remember (Score:3, Interesting)
The whole thing's turning into a nasty slipperly slope, and I wonder where it'll all end.
Re:Morally? (Score:3, Interesting)
From purely capitalistic point of view, the moral thing to do is to maximize profits in short term, while ensuring the survival and profitability of the company in the long term. These are often the same thing (long term survival probably being more important if there's a conflict between these), as not trying to maximize short-term profits can easily lead to going bankrupt unless long-term prospects are good enough to attract risk capital anyway...
So actually it would be immoral (towards shareholders etc) to *not* do things the most profitable way. Demanding companies to be patriotic is just another form of communism, and inevitably leads to same kind of inefficiency.
It's quite ok to vote with your money and buy from companies that are patriotic even if their products are more expensive, but it's entirely different (and quite uncapitalistic and anti-free market) thing to criticize companies that do offshore outsourcing to get competitive advantage.
Moral right (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not saying that the cases compare at all - the difference in scale is huge - it's just a good example. So, your company needs to employ 20 people but only has the resources for 15. Do you
a) Outsource 10 jobs to somewhere where you can pay half the wage, thereby keeping the business afloat
b) Fold
c) Try to limp on on 15, provide a substandard service and end up folding
d) Ramp up your prices to pay for the extra 5, lose your customers and fold.
Option a loses the country 10 jobs, options b-d lose all of them. So, the answer is easy, yes?
Question 2: What happens to your competitor who you just managed to undercut...
Re:One must remember (Score:3, Interesting)
When the bottom rung into IT is halfway around the world, we are going towake up one day and ask why there are no skilled people here.
If the goal is good, homegrown talent that you train yourself is the only answer. If you want cheap you generally get what you pay for. If speed is the issue see 1 and 2.
Buy American (Score:5, Interesting)
Detroit was faced with the same problem in the 70's. The Japanese were whipping us six ways to Sunday. The unions wanted us to support American-made cars even though they were utter crap. You could go into a showroom and see that the doors were mis-aligned, switches were poorly installed, etc. And that's just what you could see doing a casual inspection. American public said, "I don't think so" and purchased Hondas, Toyotas and Datsuns (now Nissan) They were simply far better products.
Detroit bitched bellered and bawled about it but finally got their act together and started producing a much better product. For Detroit, it was a stark reminder that they couldn't just throw up barriers and hope to have a captive market. It was painful but they came around and are able to compete globally now where in the 70's they were getting creamed.
Same thing is happening to us - we simply have to be able to compete. Whining about unfair competition just makes us look like whiners.
You might ask how you can compete with a $5/hour worker. What I've done is started a small business that uses software I wrote. The business is large enough to support me and a couple of other people but small enough that it doesn't attract competition. Niches abound if you're willing to go look for them. Just don't sit around waiting for someone to hand you a job - get out and create your own job.
Re:The real question (Score:2, Interesting)
You, as in an American at risk of having your job moved overseas, can't compete. You'd be somewhere around the poverty line if you were living on the salaries paid to, say, Indian programmers.
Those who shortsightedly argue that demand for IT people in India will drive up the salaries there and make employing in the US more attractive neglect the obvious. Once India becomes too expensive, the jobs will be moved to the next developing country with a reasonably well educated workforce. Rinse and repeat until half the world is complaining that country Foo stole their jobs.
It's a little low of the article author to suggest that the engineers responsible for the development of the current Internet technologies are responsible for the offshoring of jobs. Did they take the decision to do so? No. They made it possible. That's actually one of the major points of being an engineer, particularly a software engineer. You are either working to make someone else redundant, or to make yourself redundant.
Re:Great... (Score:1, Interesting)
Perhaps it's because we're lazy? If I had the ideas and the drive to do it I'd be starting my own business, but I don't so I'm content being a wage slave for the rest of my life. Personally I don't feel money is that important to me as long as I have just enough to live comfortably.
When will the middle class realize that the upper 2% is screwing us in the ass daily, and actually do something about it???? We are the *majority* afterall..
So quit complaining and go start your own business doing what you like and being your own boss. Everyone expects to be handed money on a silver platter in these days of government entitlements. The majority of us on this site have no idea what it's like to wake up on a daily basis and work at a real job where we come home at night smelling like shit with every bone and muscle in our body aching. You sit in your office chairs in your cubicles staring at your 21" monitors and bitch and gripe to Slashdot about how the world owes you something. Get over yourself. There are people in far worse shape than your average tech nerd is.
The Cure for Outsourcing (Score:4, Interesting)
If you are a developer in the US and you are worried about outsourcing, get a job that requires a security clearance. That job must always be done by a US citizen, in the US, and therefore can never be moved offshore.
In the Washington DC area there is a huge, huge demand for IT people with clearance, and there are also lots of companies that will hire you and help you get a clearance.
What could she have done? (Score:5, Interesting)
Quit paying you and the top executives and senior management team filthy, unreasonable salaries. Not only are they inappropriate in most cases, the fact you failed (repeat that over and over again a few times to let it sink in) means the top brass should take it, not the producers in your company.
This is not the rant of some 20-something employee just out of college. I've run two companies I founded and grew, and don't see that I should fleece my customers or shareholders for obscene personal benefit (yes, $100K individually and over in this economy is obscene - you need to be living with less, providing good jobs for people, and investing in rebuilding your company!)
I see this over and over again. Wharten, Harvard, Yale types born on third base (thinking they hit a triple), that are slaughtering company after company for short term protection of their fat income. I own and run a tech company in the midwest that employs twenty people, and I'm the lowest paid. And no, it doesn't produce amazing profits I pocket as dividends. Someday it will be a nice company but I haven't earned that yet.
I get those silver spoon types all the time telling me how I should outsource my labor - which would be possible for us. Put all the tech oversees, along with support call center. I'd be making over $300K annually. The funny thing? They simply cannot understand why I would want to make less and employ people, because (you may have guessed), THAT IS WORK! Outsource it and collect the checks is the new Harvard MBA strategy, apparently.
Seems I saw the movie Wall Street. I've seen people pursue short term profit through slaughter. But you know, someone's gonna have to be around to buy your product, and if you get rid of the middle class, you might not have many customers. And don't forget, as long as you're expensive overhead (and not producing hard, tangible results towards the bottom line), you're expendible too.
Re:Morally? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Management" may have a moral obligation to "shareholders" (or stakeholders) but that pales in comparison to the moral obligation of individual managers to their real, actual people who work for them!
The truth is, that we live in a society based on reciprocity: I will give you my loyalty and labor, and in return you will give me trust and physical security. (Where physical security=money.)
I doubt you really believe that your first obligation is not to the people who depend on you for their daily bread.
Thank you for listening to my rant.
--Rhandir
p.s. I think that network security mavens would probably agree that if you violate the expectation of reciprocity of concern, (that you trust your employees and fail to show concern for their lives), then you are screwed, no matter how l33t your security policies are.
p.p.s. The one logical consequence of this line of reasoning is, however, if you do choose to outsource, you now have a moral obligation to look out for them too...which is somewhat tricky.
Re:The real question (Score:2, Interesting)
Brazil (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately 95% of the people are quite poor but for the rest it's an excellent place.
Once the USA had it's middle-class destroyed, too, it will definitely resemble Brazil.
So theres this guy... (Score:1, Interesting)
Ya see, there's this guy, names Joe. He was a good kid in school, tried to do his ABCs, got good grades. Other kids from rougher neighborhoods teased him and took the piss, and overtime he began to change. Over the years he stopped doing his homework, and his grades went from A's to F's. A teacher told him once, he could get a scholarship, go to to university, and not just on a football scholarship. He stared at the floor, wishing he could go home and play on his Sega - he hates school and knows he will hate work. After trying once, teacher couldnt care less - she underpaid and overworked she had 30 other kids just like him. Faced with a school that has no trust in him and friends who smoke weeed, Joe drops out.
10 years later Joe's got a job; its not much but its enough for the essentials - a beer with the guys, weed on the weekends. Governemnt pays for his sloppy joes and the council's given him a nice phat three bedroom house for his wife and his son. By day Joe works as a telephone operator, by night he spends it all away on dope.
A year later and we're in 2004, and the company's outsourcing to india. Joe loses his job, but he doenst care - the government takes care of him, only change to his lifestyle is can afford less dope. The next day his son breaks his leg, they go to County, and medicaid pays for it, its no big deal. The sun shines down on Rover, the family dog, and for Joe, life is good. He knows another job will be comming his way soon - he can jsut sense it.
There's another person in this story, her name's Maya. Her mum died during childbirth in the streets of Calcutta, the only animal to comfort her during her labour-pains a mangy, flea-bitten ally dog. Alone except for her older sister, the two girls stand outside of the airport begging for money from rich foreign tourists, every day prayign they will be able to afford rice. Wanting to provide a future for her baby sister, the elder girl becomes a prostitute, selling her body for sex three times a night. If she's lucky, she can seduce a rich white man - they pay better. She hopes of better things for her sister.
Suddenly, Maya's luck changes. Her sister's boyfriend is a line-manager for a telecoms agency - he teaches new employees English and tells them about Sheapard's Pie. He agrees to take Maya on, and pay her. Maya cant believe her luck - now she can afford to eat everyday and she can even afford a modest appartment for her and her sister; but the best thing of all, is she's learnign English, she knows the company has a high turnover, and maybe she can get a job as a secretary or an assistant in a few years time. She's already started saving money - although she has no boyfriend, she wants her kids to have an opportunity to go to University. Maybe, if they study hard and get good grades, they could move to the States and send her money every month to tide her over in her old age. The time is 7:00, and her sister has just started applying her makeup...
In Calcutta, the rain is ending, and the sun is peaking round the clouds. In Counciltown, UK (or Suburbia, US), Joe is looking up at the clouds, a spliff in his hand, and a dog at his feet, and is smiling.
Re:Morally? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not going to go so far as to say that this is immoral, but surely you can concede that morality has nothing to do with capitalism (as your question, does, in effect, relate to morality).
To All the Complainers (Score:2, Interesting)
Hint: There *is* no difference. It's all trade. The slashdot crowd is just having the same reaction US auto makers had to imports 10 or 20 years ago (and that steel manufacturers were having a year or two ago).
Everybody's a protectionist when their job is on the line, and that's perfectly reasonable. But please don't think there's anything *special* about outsourcing jobs that doesn't apply to every other sector of the economy.
I want to start an open source project (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this seem stupid at all levels? If it does than outsourcing should be viewed the same way. If not than maybe this is a massive shift by society and I'll have to keep the idea for my future management move...
Re:Chennai's _Dune_ connection (Score:2, Interesting)
An interesting fact not known to many is that Texas Instruments, the first non-Indian company to start software operations in India, originally considered setting up shop in Chennai. This was back in 1987 or so. They later on plonked for Bangalore because they didn't find the political climate in Chennai (Madras as it was called then) very positive. TI set a precedent and all the other American and European companies followed suit and set up shop in Bangalore. So Chennai's loss led to Bangalore's prominence.
Re:Morally? (Score:1, Interesting)
Because that person didn't go to school here for 7 years while working and raising children and rack up $30,000 in student loans like I did. I have no problem with outsourcing. What pisses me off is that our government did absolutly nothing to take care of it's citizens in the process. They talk about retraining and the Next Big Thing, but it's all bull shit. As long as the big corporations are happy, that's all that matters. People have 5 year car loans and 30 year mortgages. A little warning would have been nice. But instead, fuck the middle class.
Re:Capitalism Sux (Score:2, Interesting)
There's no "New Economy" on the horizon (Score:4, Interesting)
What I have a problem with is the fact that I'm in my mid-40's and high up in the payscale for my particular niche. If my job got outsourced, I'd like to know what these profitable companies expect me to do for a living?
So far -- as the article points out -- all the executives can tell us is "Uh, think of something."
So forgive me if I don't cheer for India's (current) good fortune. Twenty years ago, when the manufacturing jobs began leaving the US, at least The Information Economy was on the rise, and most people managed to change gears.
Today there's nothing on the horizon unless you count flipping burgers. Uncool.
Re:Morally? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Morally? (Score:3, Interesting)
The other moral question is, what are US businesses (and the government) doing to help people in the short term? If we assume that the economy will recover, and the jobs will recover.... We still need to help people until that happens.
Is it immoral for China works to do all our cheap labor, but to artifically close the country to US products (by manipulating the monetary value)?
It's fine to have a global economy, but everyone must agree to participate at the same level, the same playing field. The US job market doesn't need to be the sacrefic to building a job market in other countries.
Re:Morally? (Score:5, Interesting)
When programmers start giving away their time, and effort, it makes their time and effort worth less.
So if the programming community does not value itself enough to charge a good rate- then our business community can send our 'custom' jobs overseas, while getting the other stuff for free. Sounds like a good deal for businesses, and a crappy deal for programmers. Because in EVERY business, the final price of a product comes from PERCEIVED VALUE not the real cost of goods. So, by giving stuff away for the past few years, the percieved value of software has been going down.
I still go back to the analogy of plumbers. If I know that I can get someone to fix my plumbing for free- I will resist paying a regular plumber a few hundred bucks to come out. But as it is now, I know that I can expect to pay about $150 minimum to have some work done. And I'm happy to pay it.
Yes of course there is a difference, because plumbing cannot be outsourced to India. But when people run around shouting 'software should be free' and telling their bosses to use the 'free version' then the general feeling is that software *should* be free, or at least cheap.
I've never seen any other industry where there was such a push towards devaluing its own product. And then people get upset when the money flows somewhere else?
Re:Morally? (Score:3, Interesting)
What I would be more interested in viewing is a study that analyzed the outcomes of IT outsourcing in general, whether some domestic IT services firm or some overseas firm based in Asia or elsewhere. I want to read about the outcomes for that company and find out if outsourcing actually worked for them.
Of course, I'm leading up to this, but I would bet that most outsourcing decisions have led to a higher cost for less productivity in the IT space. You only need to talk with employees of companies that have outsourced to find out that this occurs more often than not. In my experience, this is what typically happens.
First, the outsourcing firm comes in, promises the world, shows the company how they would actually save dollars (keying on the different pools of money that salary comes from vs. vendor expenditures and the tax benefits therein). Then the deal is signed, the outsourcing company starts moving in, analyzing the environment and looks to be making great strides.
Then year two hits and the outsourcing company brings up the topic of scope wrt the contract. Suddenly, that $/server figure you did doubles, and then triples. By year three, you're realizing that even though you've signed a deal to outsource the IT work to another company, your own employees are still doing the bulk of the IT work since the majority of your IT is deemed out of scope.
By this time, your own employees are getting stressed out and pissed off because the money that could be going to their salaries are going to an external company that isn't doing squat anymore, while their duties have increased greatly. But you still have a few years left on the contract, unless you execute some termination clause and bite the bullet one more time, sending further funds into that outsourcing company. But maybe, you'll finally realize at this point that farming out the talent for little return makes little sense and that keeping the talent in-house can be much more cost-efficient in the long run, even if it seems like it costs you more in salary right now.
History Repeats itself (Score:3, Interesting)
An answer, improve ourselves and make ourselves indespensible. This doesn't guarentee anything, but it helps to hedge out bets. When it comes down to it, skills and competency will always be needed, at whatever cost. Also, we need to make it obvious why our "local" work is necessary. Increasing personal interaction in a productive way can make a huge difference in overall productivity. This is something that can't be felt with workers around the world.
I think the offshoring is good. The only moral issue is whether you are doing what you need to do to secure your job in the face of supporting a family or that BMW. The work makes us sharper, and the exposure makes our lives richer.
open source hypocracy (Score:5, Interesting)
If open source is good for programmers, than outsourcing is also good for programmers.
Re:Morally? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Morally? (Score:4, Interesting)
First off India isn't "saving capitalism". Capitalism is using India to satiate its voracious appetite for cheap labor. In the complete absence of any checks on it there is zero chance of Capitalism failing. It will take care of itself, it always does. It will destroy a lot of people en route, like it always does. The people being destroyed are just changing. Capitalism is about picking winners and losers.
As for facing global competition, there isn't really any competition to it. You can live like a prince in China or India for ten dollars an hour. In the U.S. you are living in poverty at that wage.
What you're seeing here is all of the barriers to globalization have been removed. As is the way of capitalism, it rushes to the cheapest labor that can do the job. With globalization a labor pool of a couple billion new workers has come on line in China and India. There were also huge imbalances in the cost of labor between developed and developing countries. In China in particular there is no minimum wage, no pollution controls, no workplace safety regulation, health care costs aren't spiraling out of control like they are in the U.S. and there are no out of control taxes, especially payroll taxes, draining a workers income. There is a near inevitably that globalization is going to devastate workers in developed countries whether it be the U.S. or Western Europe. At the same time its going to continue to make multinational corporations and their share holders richer. If the government in the U.S. cared about working people it would have left enough barriers in place so they wouldn't be broadsided by the imbalances in global labor markets. Instead corporations are actually being given tax incentives to move jobs off shore. The fact is both Republicans and Democrats are so in the pockets of multinational corporations now abandoning U.S. workers is inevitable until working people get a clue, realize they are in the majority in the U.S. and start voting out any politician who is screwing them in favor of multinationals.
Indians should note that if Indian labor becomes wildly successful wages and cost of living will start to inflate. In the new world order, as soon as it does the jobs will just move to China or Vietnam and Indians will be carping about off shoring. The one thing in their favor is it will be a near impossibility to achieve full employment for the billions of workers in China and India. If you were to do it you would proably decimate increasingly scarce world resources like oil.
What you're seeing here is a godsend to multinational corporations and a death knell to workers. Workers in India and China should rejoice now for their rising prosperity but they should appreciate that they are just as expendable as workers in the U.S., its just a matter of time and inflation. With globalization we have reached a market that is entirely in the favor of employers and entirely against employees.
Its no accident the Bush administration is all for outsourcing because its entirely pro business and anti labor. You see the writing on the wall when you read a bio of Elaine Chow, Bush's labor secretary. Her father and her family make their fortune in container ships, shipping goods from China to the U.S.
http://www.counterpunch.org/flanders04012004.ht
Our labor secretary is decidedly anti labor as evidenced by her departments effort to strip U.S. workers of overtime pay last year.
Re:No, Patriots believe Americans are better (Score:3, Interesting)
So, we're at that part of the cycle again are we? Didn't this all happen before?
Re:sure. (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, the programmer that gets laid off due to outsourcing isn't going to just sit on his butt (at least once his unemployment runs out). He's going to find something else to do. He'll gain some new skills, repackage himself, take some more classes, get some certs, etc., but he'll do something to get back into the workplace. At that point, we'll have his productivity back in our economy, plus the productivity of the Indian worker who replaced him at his old job. And what's the cost to the economy at this point? His salary, and the salary of the Indian worker, which totals to maybe 120% of his original salary, and the productivity input into the economy has doubled or more. It's all about productivity.
Re:Morally? (Score:1, Interesting)
Good, Fast, Cheap - Pick Two (Score:5, Interesting)
In the economy, you are the following 3 things:
1) a consumer
2) a investor
3) a worker
Now pick two. What's good for those 2 choices may not be good for the remaining one.
Currently, it's number 1 and number 2.
Taxes, not jobs, at issue (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a losing proposition for American workers. I know some web designers who would have accepted $20k/yr to do work, if they could work from home. THey had broadband, there was no functional difference between them and the Indian worker. The problem is, corporations can hide profits made my Indian workers and skirt paying taxes, and all the other hassles American workers have with them, such as employment benefits, the paperwork associated with W2s. You can write a single check to an outsourcing firm overseas. Anyhow, read the Yahoo article.
Bush doesn't care, he'll give US corporations anything they want, any tax loophole they can find he will support. The middle class is destroyed, and so you will need business skills and the ability to create an LLC and be an indepedant IT consultant to make it, because nobody will hire you.
But should markets be so open? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Morally? (Score:3, Interesting)
Point here is, managers shifted their loyalty a long time ago from their workers to the allmighty doller. Sure, if they get a good compeditive group of people they aren't going to give that up, but for everyone else getting fired every 4 or 5 years and switching careers every 10 is becoming the norm in corperate america. The idea is if you fire a guy who's worked for 5 years, you can find someone who can do the same job (like a out-of-college preppy type) for less. Do this on a massive enough scale and the guys who have 10, 15, 20 years experience also get paid less.
This doesn't work. There's a reason job security is important in japan. The japanese believe that by keeping your workers for a lifetime, your workers will be productive because if the company does well, they do well. They know if they work hard and everybody else works hard, there'll be plenty to go around. There is no playing BS with the worker.
It used to be that way with america. Everyone used to work hard because it was a moral thing to do. Then managers began playing BS with us. Then the mantra became not "I'm going to work harder" but "How little can I work and not get fired?" (as you're not going to see the fruit of your labor, the shareholders will).
It's mostly middle-sized companies that outsource. Fortune 500 companies don't do that because companies that fsck the worker don't usually last long.
Re:Lower cost of living (Score:1, Interesting)
Few communities in the U.S. have this model. A few big cities like New York ans some experimenal attempts to recreate this type of communities in suburban areas. But, overall, these communities are few and far between.
There is definitely a demand though, just look at al the inner city communities that are being revitalized today and the attempts to build traditional city living in the centers of spread out cities like Houston.
Re:The real answer to outsourcing (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure there is. It's irresponsible. It's unfair, and it is destroying careers, educations and communities.
If you are unemployed, stop reading Slashdot and find a way to be valuable to the economy.
There are hundreds of thousands of people who are "valuable to the economy" who get fired anyway. It isn't up to the employee whether they keep their job. It's up to some liar cheat fuck manager, which explains why everyone I know is either:
a) Unemployed
b) Recently laid off and working 60 hour days trying to start a business
c) Working, but earning just enough to accumulate debt
It also explains why HALF of the eligible workers in this country are:
a) Unemployed
b) Out of the work force completely
c) A temp
d) Working part-time
That means that only half of the workers are in permanent full-time jobs. Only HALF.
It's saving industrial-age capitalism for sure! (Score:4, Interesting)
People who didn't buck up got laid off and replaced with people willing to work 80-100 hours per week.
I'm sure my friend would have something to say on the matter, but s/he doesn't have time to read or write to /.
Names and genders have been obfuscated to protect the already tenuously employed.
Re:Morally? (Score:3, Interesting)
When manufacturers started moving their factories out of places like Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco and moved them overseas, the job losses were temporary - those workers are not still out of work. It allowed newer, higher-paid and higher-skilled jobs to be created HERE -- while providing newer, higher-paid and higher-skilled jobs to people overseas.
Re:The Sky is Always Falling (Score:3, Interesting)
But I'm glad you care about the quality of your work.
When I offshored a chunk of work from the US to India -- mostly because the group I inherited had (a) fucked up by the numbers, blown $15M, and produced nothing; and (b) couldn't code their way out of a paper bag even when properly managed -- quality went up, not down.
No outsourcing would have occurred had this group been able to produce. We threw out hundreds of thousands of lines of code. All worthless. We didn't have time to recruit locally, and we couldn't get the $15M back. Offshoring saved the company.
Your boss should care -- very much -- about the quality of your work. I would seriously think about changing jobs if s/he doesn't.
Re:Thats the stupidist thing I've ever heard... (Score:3, Interesting)
If so, then the fact is we have no choice but to be poor. It's a poor planet. There is no way we're getting twelve billion cars out of this rock. Or enough for two televisions for every family around the globe.
We cannot all be wealthy. It simply doesn't work. Even if capitalism did raise the standard of living for everyone, equally, there simply is not enough of anything (food, land, etc.) for each one of six billion people to live in sixty rooms on two hundred acres with a classic corvette, a ferarri, and a diet of caviar. Not possible.
And more to the point, not needed. I live in one room, with no television, no car, very few appliances (outside of my PC and camera) and very little in the way of material goods. But am I poor? Hell no. There's a library that I can visit that's packed full of more knowledge than I can ever hope to gather in a lifetime, I can take walks with my girlfriend whenever I want, and the sunshine and air (no longer fresh air, but at least there's air) are free.
Americans are terrified of poverty, but they see a false dichotomy: either you own a suburban parcel of land with two cars, two televisions, washer, dryer, fridge, range, microwave, XBox, wide-screen TV and barbecue grill or you are "poor" and "poor" is somehow terrifying.
Well, most of the world's population lives without any of that stuff. And if you think that nobody in the former Soviet Union ever smiled once in their miserable, horrible lives or that the people in sub-saharan Africa all really wish they could just commit suicide and end it now, only they can't afford even a thread of string to do it with so they're trapped in this miserable existence, then you have another thing coming.
Population as a factor. (Score:4, Interesting)
America has a large share of the world's land with a much smaller proportion of the population. The benefits of this agriculture, natural resources, are the first order advantages enjoyed by the US. The mechanism of free-enterprise, and the risk-taking mentality in the have created second-order benefits which the US is enjoying today. Also, the vast separation from the rest of the world, kept the US industries standing after WWII, allowing th US to supply the rest of the world.
Now the massive population in the rest of the world has finally become a market that is worth serving, and is clamoring for resources proportional to their numbers. The US having used an enormously large proportion of the world's resources so far, is going to find itself using a smaller and smaller proportion of these resources and going back to the first-order advantages.
India and China, with their huge populations, will be able to do any service jobs that don't require actual physical presence at a much cheaper cost. The only platform on which americans can compete is their incredible efficiency, learnt over many decades. However, IT provides much of this efficiency, and can quite easily be transported anywhere in the world.
As trade between the rest of the world increases, trade between the US and the rest of the world will become proportionally smaller - except in key IP areas, where the US still enjoys a large knowledge monopoly, and agriculture, where the US has the advantage of area.
This is different from the previous scares (Japan, China etc.) as it represents for the first time, the benefits of a countries huge population, as opposed to the benefits of a small population.
The US should try to compete by growing R&D, getting and keeping knowledge workers, using NASA etc., as a springboard to newer techs, which the developing nations can only dream of.
Sorry for the long ramble... I hope some of the comments will be able to get some clarity from this..
Re:Morally? (Score:3, Interesting)
From what I see, many open-source projects are either in areas where nobody could get paid (such as emulators for old game consoles), or areas where Microsoft has driven all competitors out of business (such as word-processors). I made a good living through most of the 80's developing word-processors, but my chances of getting paid to do the same nowadays are close to 0.
Re:Morally? (Score:3, Interesting)
As a programmer who owns a small software development firm, (there's two of us), our customers care about the percieved value of an inventory system. They do not care about operating systems, databases, web servers, or any of that stuff, they care about keeping track of their inventory. In the past, we have had to "educate" the customer that if they wanted to have an inventory system, they had to pay $$ for an operating system, and then $$$$ for a database, and $$ for a web server, and then they could spend $$$$ for our inventory software. Lots of that money went to people besides me, but the customer percieved they were buying an inventory system, and these other components were necessary expenditures to get what they really wanted.
In the open source era, I can go to the customer and say, "Here is an inventory solution for $$$$$$$$". The perceived value is the same to the customer, but I don't have to pay Sun for the OS licence, and Oracle for the database license, etc. I use open source alternatives like Linux, PostgreSQL, and tomcat instead.
If you look at the big picture, the open source software movement is doing for software what the IBM compatible PC did for hardware. Commoditization. I shudder to think that during the course of my career I wrote two application development frameworks. Why? Because I needed one, and it was cheaper to build one myself than it was to buy one of the three commercially available ones, which may or may not have met my needs. Now there are a dozen robust, mature open source application development frameworks for me to choose from. I can select one that closely meets my needs, and modify it, if necessary.
The end result is that when programmers "give away their time, and effort" it makes thier time and effort worth more, not less, as you assert. By sharing the work for common functionality, my time becomes more valuable because I can spend it doing the thing I know well, inventory, not the thing that I don't, like application frameworks. My contributions to open source projects may be small, but when you combine the efforts of many people, those small contributions provide great benefit for all.
In time, open source inventory systems will be far better than the one we have developed, and people will be saying "I can't believe that I once wrote an inventory system, what a waste when there are so many good was available." I will then have to move up the software food chain to the Next Big Thing, as will everyone else.