$4,400/Yr. Coders May Work On Dept. of Labor Project 418
theodp writes "To power the Tools for America's Job Seekers Challenge, the US Department of Labor tapped IdeaScale, a subsidiary of Survey Analytics, which is headquartered in Seattle with satellite offices in Nasik, India and Auckland, NZ (PDF). According to the Federal Register (PDF), an Emergency OMB Review was requested to launch the joint initiative of the DOL, White House, and IdeaScale to help out unemployed US workers. A cached Monster.com ad seeks candidates to work on the development and maintenance of ideascale.com, but in India at an annual salary of Rs. 200,000 to 300,000 ($4,4000 to $6,600 US). BTW, an earlier White House-sponsored, IdeaScale-powered Open Government Brainstorm identified legalizing marijuana as one of the best ways to 'strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness.'" There's no guarantee that Indian workers recruited by that Monster.com ad would work on US Department of Labor projects.
200000 or 300000 in India is very low (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's Worse Than You think! (Score:5, Informative)
Personally I'm in it if only for hemp jeans, those things are freakin indestructible compared to cotton.
Re:It's Worse Than You think! (Score:5, Informative)
Right on - awesome post.
However the official white house coffee is Kona coffee grown and processed in Kona Hawaii. I've had some and it is amazingly good. At least something is still made in America.
full-time? really? (Score:5, Informative)
I have friends in India. I discussed IT salary differences with them. I said "this web page says you can get software engineers for $5k/year in India. Is that for real?"
I was told that that's bullshit and that Indian professionals actually earn in excess of $20,000 per year. $5k/year would only buy interns with no education and no experience, from what my friends in Bangalore tell me.
Re:outsourcing (Score:1, Informative)
Don't laugh. The U.S. DoD is already largely outsourced.
Re:It's Worse Than You think! (Score:5, Informative)
Given Taiwan's status as almost a developed country $1150 annually seemed like a rather suspicious figure. So I read your linked article. It doesn't give a figure for factory workers but it puts the average worker at NT$36,564 per _month_. Or according to the first currency conversion site that came up on google about USD$1200 per month which is a hell of a lot higher than $1150 annually.
4000/year ? youll only get college kids (Score:5, Informative)
or script kiddies.
4000/year is too low for getting even an average quality indian coder. i have to compete with indians in web development, i know how ridiculously low rates they pull sometimes, but these rates generally are placed in projects that can be somehow gobbled up from premade code. i dont think with 400/month you are going to get quality ppl. youll probably get some college kids in a high turnover sweat shop.
Call or e-mail your Congress-Person (Score:5, Informative)
I would urge US slashdotters to call or e-mail your Congress-Person. If this is really true, it is a violation of US Federal Contracting standards. Generally, Federal IT contracts specify all workers on the contract to be either US Citizens or Permanent Residents.
You are off by a factor of 12 (Score:5, Informative)
>The average worker in Taiwan earns a monthly salary of NT$36,564, a slight increase from the same >period two years ago, a recent survey released by the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) showed.
That's $1142 USD a Month, not annually. That's comparable to the US minimum wage, but in a country you can have lunch for 1-2$ US. Compared with cost of living, it's not really a bad deal.
Oh, and for folks working at Foxconn or Taiwan Semiconductor, their annual bonus this year is expected to be 6 month of salary. Any US tech companies giving out 6 months of bonus this year?
Re:But, it's the Free Market, right? (Score:1, Informative)
Frozen dinner (Score:3, Informative)
That's comparable to the US minimum wage, but in a country you can have lunch for 1-2$ US.
Here in the States, a fairly nutritious frozen dinner costs 1 to 2 USD at Walmart*.
Oh, and for folks working at Foxconn
But is there an NBCconn of opposite political persuasion to "fair and balance" them out?
hemp != marijuana (Score:3, Informative)
Hemp is a great product, but although it is related to marijuana, it is not a drug and doesn't help your argument. Other than the US, most countries [wikipedia.org] allow hemp to be cultivated, processed and sold; even countries where marijuana is illegal.
Good job? But he's wrong! (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, but he's wrong! From his own link, the Taiwanese workers are earning about USD1150 per MONTH (which is actually not bad in the 3rd world country I'm in[1]).
The _FIRST_ sentence says it: "The average worker in Taiwan earns a monthly salary of NT$36,564".
Google says 36564 Taiwanese dollars is about USD1150 : http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&num=100&q=36564+TWD+in+usd&btnG=Search&meta= [google.com]
If the average US person can't figure out the difference between years and months, or have poor reading comprehension, or can't be bothered to check stuff properly, it's no surprise US bosses are outsourcing to other countries.
So what if those 3rd world workers are crap. No point paying far more for just as crap (or worse).
And guess what, many of these "3rd world" workers aren't that crap.
See: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=185 [bunniestudios.com]
I've shown some kids these videos and told them that that's the sort of competition they'll be facing (more so as countries like Vietnam start getting into it as well).
[1] FWIW, I'm a cheap worker (relative to the USA) in a 3rd world country. But hey at least I can read, spell and do basic math (with help from Google :) ). I can even write some simple perl and python code...
Re:Not already? (Score:3, Informative)
Blackwater was contracted to the State Department, not the DoD.
Re:Not already? (Score:3, Informative)
Not to be confused with the entirely different XE [xe.com].
Re:The Inconvenient Truth (Score:5, Informative)
People always lump in users with sellers that are "thrown in jail" and I just don't believe it. I haven't heard of a person in the US going to Jail for just having a small amount of pot or smoking a joint. Unless you are a dealer, the cops and the feds don't even bother.
First google result:
"BJS officials also estimated that 42% of state "marijuana only" prisoners and 23% of federal "marijuana only" prisoners were incarcerated for possession, not "trafficking."[7] ("Trafficking" includes "possession with intent to distribute.") Applied to the previously calculated estimates, as adjusted for the June 1998 prisoner counts, there would be 7,400 state prisoners and 2,300 federal prisoners incarcerated for marijuana possession only, for a total of 9,700 prisoners."
BJS is "Bureau of Justice Statistics." I found this at the first link in a Google search, something I presume you are capable of doing yourself.
I'll skip the rest... unless you'd rather we go on?
Try harder next time.
Re:Sigh and you think it solves all problems (Score:3, Informative)
how do you know? I think a lot of people might be more willing to try it if they see it sold at the local 7-11, which will result in more addicts.
Instead of talking hypotheticals, why don't we talk real world examples?
Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies [cato.org]
On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were "decriminalized," not "legalized." Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense. ...
More significantly, none of the nightmare scenarios touted by preenactment decriminalization opponents — from rampant increases in drug usage among the young to the transformation of Lisbon into a haven for "drug tourists" — has occurred.