Bangalore Beats Silicon Valley 779
An anonymous reader writes "The inevitable has happened. Bangalore, which grew under the shadow of America 's Silicon Valley over the last two decades, has finally overtaken its parent. Today, Bangalore stands ahead of Bay Area, San Francisco and California, with a lead of 20,000 techies, while employing a total number of 1.5 lakh engineers."
Lakh? (Score:2, Interesting)
What's a lakh, and why do they need engineers?
Re:Lakh? (Score:5, Informative)
Main Entry: lakh
Pronunciation: 'lak, 'lak
Function: noun
Etymology: Hindi lAkh
Date: 1599
1 : one hundred thousand
2 : a great number
- lakh adjective
Re:Lakh? (Score:3, Funny)
It can mean either?
Oh, great; precison engineering.
Re:Lakh? (Score:3)
Re:Lakh? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Lakh? (Score:4, Informative)
3 definitions found
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Lac \Lac\, Lakh \Lakh\, n. [Hind. lak, l[=a]kh, l[=a]ksh, Skr.
laksha a mark, sign, lakh.]
One hundred thousand; also, a vaguely great number; as, a lac
of rupees. [Written also {lack}.] [East Indies]
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Lakh \Lakh\, n.
Same as {Lac}, one hundred thousand.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
lakh
n : the cardinal number that is the fifth power of ten [syn: {hundred
thousand}, {100000}]
Re:Lakh? (Score:3, Funny)
those lakhy engineers !!!
Swinging back to a balance (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly think that a lot of the current commentators are dead on when they say that this is a "fad" and this will eventually balance itself out. Wait until some corporations get a gut full of having their code halfway across the globe. Most companies aren't willing to let you work at home and yet they're willing to hire hoards of people they'll never meet to write their code? Heh. This will right itself eventually.
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah - they'll move to India too. You can get a seriously big house there, great food, and your kitchen staff won't be a: Expensive, or b: Illegal.
I'm guessing the tax advantages are pretty significant too. And you get to watch elephant polo!!!
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:3, Informative)
Hello, where did you pull that out of? India has over a billion people with far less the area of the US. There aren't any big houses here except for 100 year old bungalows. Few people have houses with more than 2 or 3 rooms with barely enough space to put a couple of beds.
great food,
I'm with you :)
and your kitchen staff won't be a: Expensive, or b: Illegal.
Aren't you forgetting c: Unethical?
I'm guessing the tax adv
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I think it is elephant soccer, not polo.
But the elephant soccer is in Thailand. At least, some elephant soccer is played in Thailand.
There was an article about this a few years ago in a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
A google search for elephant soccer also produces some hits.
For example, from The Surin elephant roundup [worldkidmag.com]:
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:3, Informative)
Elephant Polo [elephantpolo.com] is now played in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand (and in India in colonial times). The players ride on elephants (directed my mahouts) and hit the ball with a (very long) mallet.
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:4, Informative)
And therefore the money required to make big budget movies is often put in by underworld mafia. Ofcourse this is all covered up and the money is shown as comming from big time industrialists and stock brokers, but even a kid in india knows the real truth.
And when you involve underworld, they want a hugh piece of the pie, and sometimes entire pie. Whenever there is a financial dispute between the producers and director/actors etc. it is often setteled by mafia. Mafia in turn gets (demands) hugh amount of money from the big shots for what it calls protection money.
There have been incidents where rival direcots/actors/music composers have hired the mafia to threaten/beatup or even kill their counter parts.
The history of mafia's association with bollywood is not older than 30 years. Around the 70s time, when bombay (the core of indian movie industry), was the hottest thing for real estate development. There was a lot of money to be had in urbanization and construction builders often used local mafia (small time crooks) for dirty works , such as forecd labour, evicting tenants , suppressing any kind of opposition. etc.
But the maifa was very disorganised back then, and the construction company owners were the ones who called the shots. But soon the indian maifa much like the turn of the century american mafia , organised and turned crime in to a syndicate. This gave rise to some really notorious gangs in bombay and some fierce gang wars.
By mid 80s the , crime syndicate turned their attention to the movie industry (Although they were always associated with bollywood since the 70s). Initially the relationship between the movie industry and maifa was a win-win situation for both, but soon maifa wanted more and more . It got progressively worse in 90s, where there were a lot of incidents of movie people being threatend/shot at by maifa. By then the mafia had shifted its base from bombay to outside of india. But a large supply of unemployed youths in the country ment a continuing domination of the maifa , even when the strings were pulled from outside the country.
Bombay police which were once considered second best only to scotland yard, earned a lot of bad reputaion in this time for their incapability to stop the crime waves. This led to the encounter era, where the police were on a city cleansing mission. Lots of small time gangsters and gang members were arrested, and then shot by the police in a staged escape. Police claimed the culprits were trying to escape while the human rights organisation screamed murder.
Currently it looks like there has been some equilibrium between the maifa , the film industry and the police. Also lot of film makers are shifting away from bombay to other places.
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:5, Insightful)
Tax incentives? You want other people to be forced to subsidize your paycheck?
In what way is that better than the utterly immoral subsidies some other industries (steel, textile etc) get? I'm talking about the specialty steel tariffs and so on.
If you can't compete with the indians, tough luck, get another job. That's how capitalism works. That's how it's supposed to work. That means better prices on the products for everyone.
Lowering the overall tax rate is the only good tax incentive, I've had it up to here with whining special interest whom are all uniquely deserving of other people's money in their own heads.
Re:Yeah, Tax incentives (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong.
Corporations are not required to pay labor/payroll tax on workers who are nationals of other countries.
Corporations are allowed to deduct the cost of outsourcing off of their reported earned income, thereby reducing their tax liability.
These are very strong, cost-saving incentives for a company to outsource to another country. The loss in tax revenue is made up by the rest of the citizenry.
No bullshit with unions
There are no IT unions in the US.
no messy healthcare
While the healthcare system in the US might need some work, an employers relationship is limited to paying the premiums.
no worries about ADA, OSHA, EEOC, Afirmitave action
Yes, protecting the rights of an indivudual from discrimination and harrassment is just plain wrong. Until you become that individual. Perhaps you're too young to remember such agencies as TaTa and others and the disgusting manner in which they treated their employees, sent to the US and elsewhere as endentured servants. If you think that regulatory agencies are the primary motivating factors for outsourcing, you really are not understanding how corporations work.
And OSHA?? What does the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have to do with IT?
Why just stop Corporate Welfare, when you can stop ALL Welfare!
This is an asinine statement, to be sure. But just in case you truly don't understand the reason for welfare, just know that there are still some people in this world that feel they have a responsibility to help their fellow man. Beyond that, there are very compelling reasons for providing public assistance in any society.
Without "Corporate Welfare" of reasonable taxation, the Corps will go overseas.
Again, nonsense. Companies have been operating in the US for over 300 years. While there have always been deals, favors, and preferential treatment afforded to corporations, I cannot think of a single instance where a major corporation packed up their operations and moved overseas. I'm sure there has to have been a couple, but they obviously did not have much of an impact. Ford might be making cars in Mexico, but the bulk of their operations is in the US.
The "working class" and the poor will finaly have to start paying thier fair share of taxes to support their way of life
Let me assure you, they already do. They may not pay the same dollar amount but, percentage-wise, they pay the same, if not more. In fact, most poor people do not have the financial means to obtain the majority of tax deductions that higher income families do. But if you insist on sticking with your ill-conceived opinion that they are not "paying their fair share", consider the fact that its the poorer people who are doing the jobs that you don't want to.
There will be no more greedy capitalists left to subsidize your welfare way of life.
Wow, you really do have a lot of disdain for lower-income people, don't you?
What makes YOUR work worth more than the same quality work from India? The fact that you are an American?
Historically? American corporate history is rife with examples of the failures of outsourcing. Many industry watchers regard outsourcing as a bad idea. Not just for the displaced workers but for the companyies themselves. Maybe someday people will learn that cheaper does not equal better.
No one owes you a living. No one owes you a living wage. The accident of your birth does not grant you a right to the fruits of my labor. Nor does the fact that you are my neighbor require me to buy your products.
No one is "owed" anything and no one is claiming that here. While American IT workers are affected by outsourcing, it is a short-term problem. Some salary adjustments have to be made, it's more difficult to find work, might have to move, but it can be done.
The bigger concern is the shortsidedness of cor
No way. (Score:5, Insightful)
Those jobs aren't ever coming back and neither will these.
Re:No way. (Score:5, Insightful)
--Joey
Re:No way. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the IT industry is no longer about doing cool things with computers. It's no longer about understanding the customer's business needs and making the computers do what he needs them to do. It's all about the money and too many people are in it just for the money, bringing no understanding of the industry with them. Oh they make noises like they know what they're doing, but they don't.
Start a company that avoids all this management masturbation, gives its people the power to solve problems without having to go through 14 layers of buerocracy and that actually understands its customers business needs and you'll end up owning the market, whether or not you're operating from the USA, India or from East Outer Mongolia. And incidentally you might make a buck or two at it.
What's stopping you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anybody can start a storefront white box operation... but making it scale to a national level can't be done without external funding and may not be possible even with it.
While I labeled outsourcing as a management fad, there is no reason to believe that the fad won't last long enough to destroy most technology industry in the USA or persuade kids going into college now
Re:No way. (Score:4, Insightful)
You are misinformed. The people hurting the most from mill closures are older men and women who have been in textiles all their lives from getting a job in the mill at age 18 to help the family out. In many cases college wasn't even an option, let alone a viable choice because it would require not only cutting a source of income but also putting out massive amounts of money for several years.
If you think working in a mill requires no skills, I'd love to see YOU go do it. There is no college degree required because on-site-training is the name of the game.
Re:No way. (Score:3, Informative)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Re:No way. (Score:3, Informative)
It is indicitive of where the problems with US companies lay that many of the same auto workers seem to be able to produce much better (more reliable) cosumer cars with nothing more than a change of management.
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget that for many of the very largest companies, their home market - no matter which country they reside in - is not their largest. If push comes to shove, IBM would likely rather lose US contracts than all non-US ones.
Oh, and workers rights? What will the US do when Europe insists
Republicans have struck deals to postpone layoffs (Score:5, Interesting)
There was an article in the WSJ last month about exactly this. Apparantly, huge companies like IBM and Microsoft are keeping a low profile in India. MS has gone so far as to remove their names from the buses that they use in India to ferry programmers back and forth to work.
Magnus.
Re:Republicans have struck deals to postpone layof (Score:3, Informative)
Now I don't follow the WSJ, so I would probably not have seen it if it were there. OTOH my default assumption would be that some reference would have shown up in Google. So an appropriate link to the story would be appreciated. (And no, lexis doesn't count as an appropriate link.)
Re:link (Score:3)
No that would be NOW and the democrats...
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, this appears to fall into the "globalization" groupthink. It's a "free market economy" therefore it must be good...right?
Since we've lost all kinds of other industries overseas (for instance, steel production) this latest trend is taken as simply the latest incarnation. No one seems to be thinking "gee, we were supposed to lose the manufacturing jobs while the high tech jobs stayed here".
There are many stupid things about outsourcing IT jobs. First of all, 50% of all software projects failed before outsourcing became prevalent. I'm personally sure that percentage will be significantly higher with outsourced work. Second, U.S. companies are paying to train large foreign workforces to compete with them down the road. Third, the lack of high-paying tech jobs here in America will ultimately hurt the economy, as well as causing many skilled tech workers to move to non-tech positions. One wonders if this new "lack of tech workers" will be used to justify new H1-B visa bills as the economy heats up again.
In my opinion, the whole debacle arose from executives being annoyed over the high cost of tech labor - they didn't understand that tech is hard, requires lots of education, and should be compensated accordingly. It's sad that contract software rates have fallen to about 50% of their level of a few years ago. It also looks like permanent position salaries have been impacted.
I'd like to see a few executive teams outsourced to India...then we'd see some real screaming about the practice.
This will right itself eventually.
I'd like to think so, but we'll have to see...
In the meantime, classified government work looks like the best bet as far as job security goes - that will never be outsourced.
Re:Perhaps you should practice what you preach... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The rewarding of crap production ends here. (Score:5, Insightful)
The analogy sucks.
The reason the analogy doesn't work is mainly because engineering deals with real-life physical problems. Also, engineering takes place in a realm of (generally) fixed possibilities.
You don't have to design a building to withstand 1,000 mi/h of wind because you know that will never happen. However, your program, to be anywhere near 'bug-free' (which can rarely be proven, of course) must be hardened against every combination of inputs. The effects of wind, and the behaviors of steel, etc. are very well known. You simply don't have this kind of data in programming, because you are almost always designing one-of-a-kind logic.
You make the implication that engineers don't make mistakes. That is far from the truth. The main reason why you don't hear about engineering mistakes is because of the massive QC effort that goes on. Most projects have at least 3 milestone levels, where plans are reviewed by the engineer's internal QC process, and then reviewed by the client's QC process. When you submit for jobs, part of your submission must document your QC process. No QC, no job.
If software companies put in anywhere near the same amount of effort on QC, you would see a definite improvement in software quality. However, it would be very difficult for software companies to achieve this. This is because the use of standards in engineering saves QC time by minimizing the amount of work that the reviewer must actually check. While many software companies do have internal standards and practices, the lack of industry-wide standards hinders the QC process. Libraries can assist here, but there is still a lot of unique logic being written for programs that simply isn't checked well enough.
People bitch about the costs of engineering (like the Big Dig), but fail to realize that more than 50% of the time is spent checking the work. A lot of money is spent to ensure that these things are safe. If you want a Mozilla or a Real Player that doesn't crash, I hope you're prepared to pay for it.
I don't know where your bitterness against programmers comes from, but you need to chill out (and it sounds like you could stand to learn a lot from a software engineering course).
Note: Many of my comments are in the context of public engineering projects. For private projects, plans are reviewed (in New Jersey) by the local Planning Board, as well as the Department of Community Affairs, a state agency.
CS isn't really engineering (Score:3, Interesting)
However, one could make the point that both engineering and CS require extensive project management and time ma
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:4, Insightful)
Balance will be when much of the wealth in America is shifted to India and the like. I know this is the right thing to do. However, the problem is the wealth shift will be removed from the middle class in the US, and as usual the Rich have well protected themselves and will still grow richer...
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:4, Informative)
Your falling into the trap of thinking that wealth is finite, or at least constrained at its current levels. This is simply not true. The amount of wealth in the world can (and does) grow. In terms of overall 'wealth' (see a good economics text for a description of what exactly wealth is:) ) there is many many times more wealth today than just 100 years ago. The same will likely hold true moving forward (there is likely some limit to how far this can grow, but no economists can even begin to agree on what that limit is).
The point of this is that as India becomes more wealthy, they will begin to contribute more and more in terms of innovation and products back into the overall economy. This will do two very important things. 1) Create new markets for companies (including those in the US). After all, the workers in India will have more wealth and will begin buying more products. 2)Create demand for more services within India itself (once again, more wealth to spread around) which will drive the costs of employment up towards U.S. levels. In the end, the amount of overall wealth has increased, and the amount of wealth within the United States is at worst basically unaffected and more likely actually increased because of the new markets that have been opened up.
There are ways to defeat this. Closed trade policies are the quickest. By adopting protectionist policies the U.S. can effectively isolate itself from these new markets, likewise India could do the same in an effort to protect it's new found wealth. The governments role SHOULD be to protect equal OPPORTUNITIES for trade between India and the U.S. (thus encouraging growth in both countries), rather than attempting to protect the RESULTS of that trade.
This is one case where everyone can hope to win, rather than having exactly 1 winner and a bunch of losers.
Re:Swinging back to a balance (Score:4, Informative)
I honestly think that a lot of the current commentators are dead on when they say that this is a "fad" and this will eventually balance itself out. Wait until some corporations get a gut full of having their code halfway across the globe. Most companies aren't willing to let you work at home and yet they're willing to hire hoards of people they'll never meet to write their code? Heh. This will right itself eventually.
You'd better hope so, buddy. Personally I am pretty worried; perhaps I should brush up on my Hindi. Bollywood just beat Hollywood in production and also has announced that it will allow people online to market their products for free whereas Jack Valenti has decided he does not want such help. Now Bangalore has surpassed Silicon Valley in number of jobs but NEVER in cost of living. With even US firms shipping jobs to India like mad, all that is left to light this match is a batch of new Indian software products to compete with US products.
Meanwhile our IP laws mean that it is very undesirable to work on new tech in the US because it will either be shelved, owned by a corporation, or some other company with a patent will make sure you can never do it. But these problems do not exist in India. Neither do they put people in jail for developing crypto software and revere engineering for interoperability. Free Software has no stigma in India and is used where practical unlike in the US where we would rather waste money than do it right.
India is a mixed economy and I've never known an Indian to be afraid of being called a Communist, or for that matter to use the term as a pejorative. Again, collective or community economy is used where practical and private industry is used where it makes more sense. None of this business of endangering the electric power infrastructure in the name of corporate profits.
If there is anything holding India back now, it is government corruption, civil strife, and the struggle with Pakistan. But who knows, maybe they will get that all down to a low simmer so it does not disrupt their blossoming economy. Remember, they only won their independance less than 60 years ago. These things take time.
It will swing back to balance... (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's face it will swing back to balance over time.
Right now, there is an incredible head-count cost advantage to moving a project to India, with many companies doing. The drive to offshore to India is driving demand there heavily. It is difficult to hire quality people, wages are going up quickly, people are jumping between companies, and it is much like things were in Silicon Valley during the bubble years.
What we will see, is that the head-count cost advantage, over time, will narrow and the other costs of going off-shore will come into play (coordination, latency, frequent travel, etc.). As this happens people will become more and more selective about what goes and what stays.
In the long-term, I think "offshore outsourcing" will fade to a degree, while "internal offshoring" (building distributed development teams within your company. I believe that the trend towards distributed deveopment organizations that take advantage of cost differntials and cherry pick the best talent in various geographies (as hard as it might be to believe, not everyone wants to live in Silicon Valley or the US for that matter, I have an excellent manager, with US Citizenship, orginally from India who moved back) will continue and accelerate.
What does this mean for us in the US? It means that we will have to go up the "software value stack" and work at a higher level. If a task can be done somewhere else for less cost, it wll be. This mans that we have to be constantly working to be at the cutting edge and have the breadth and depth to add significant value and coordinate project in these distributed teams. In a sense we each have to take the role in our projects that Linus has in driving the development of Linux.
If it is any comfort, realize that we aren't the only ones feeling threatened. My friends in India are all worried and looking over their shoulders at places like China, Vietnam, Ukraine, etc. wondering how they will move to higher and higher value-add activities over time.
Bush has already commented (Score:3, Interesting)
Bush falsely offered protection for the steel workers knowing full well that EU/Japan/UN would force him to obey our agreements from the 80's. He had nothing to lose.
I would guess that Dean will not comment until he realizes that he has to say something. That may be interesting to hear. Do you argue for an overall world economy that will ultimatly help you or do you try to protect local high-end jobs?
I strikes me that our leaders will
But will it last? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But will it last? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But will it last? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:But will it last? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But will it last? (Score:3, Informative)
Slavery [anti-slavery.org], India does much to keep their wages low.
Last? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Last? (Score:5, Interesting)
Name five great software products that you're sure haven't come out of Bangalore.
The companies aren't based there, but enough of the work is actually done there that you need to put some actual thought into answering that question...
On the other hand, I don't have a high opinion of Bangalore-as-Silicon-Valley, either. I just don't think you'll get anything really remarkable out of people under those conditions. And if there's one thing the world doesn't need, it's more mediocre programming...
I know one (Score:5, Insightful)
At least it was an indian guy who created it. Sold it to microsoft for $400 million..
Bash it all you want, hotmail was pretty revolutionary and is probably used by hundreds of millions of people..
Hotmail was a typical Silicon Valley product (Score:3, Informative)
It was a typical Valley product with people from the entire planet working on it. In my expereience the teams are about equal parts Indian, Chinese, European and American.
Re:But will it last? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But will it last? (Score:3, Interesting)
That attitude is part of the reason America is so much better at creating wealth than the rest of the world. Non-Americans love to point at our crashes and failures, but we have so much energy and try so many things (and plenty of the things we try are extremely stupid) that we almost can't help but have a lar
Re:But will it last? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are 250 Million people living in the US. There are a limited number of IT people. Hence, higher wages and the extensive use of H1B Visas.
There are over 1 Billion people living in India. And, according to my Indian-born Co-workers, they have more college educated IT workers than any other Country in the world. Hence, the supply of skilled workers is much higher. Althoug
For those who are too lazy to search... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:For those who are too lazy to search... (Score:5, Funny)
You see, this is why they are beating us. For us to say "One hundred Thousand" it takes five syllables, for them at most two.
Efficiancy, Folks, Efficiancy.
Uh, no, it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm posting on Slashdot instead of working.
Re:For those who are too lazy to search... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:For those who are too lazy to search... (Score:2)
1.5 Engineers (Score:3, Funny)
1.5 engineers hey. Always wondered where that 0.5 kid from the average 2.5 family got to. Engineering.
Show of hands: Language Barrier? (Score:2, Insightful)
Rather Frustrating!
Maybe there's a learning curve, but if I had my druthers, I wouldn't put up with it.
show of hands.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Show of hands: Language Barrier? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which puts you in exactly what position complaining about other peoples foreign language skills?
Re:Show of hands: Language Barrier? (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting point that keeps cropping up in my meetings with Americans: tabling something in a meeting means exactly the opposite there. I guess we all have to learn how to communicate better with each other.
Sand Hill Road (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see the folks on Sand Hill Road moving to India very soon.
Also, the article is from India Times, so expect some bias.
What an irony! (Score:2)
With the result that Bangalore took off with a bang. Y2K went out with a whimper.
Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of years ago on a train journey to Mumbai I had a long conversation with an Indian software engineer. Once he'd got his University degree he got a job in Silicon Valley, but only stayed a couple of years because he realised that although salaries are lower in India he would actually be a lot better off in India because your dollar goes a lot further there. In India he could actually afford servants - a maid, cook etc. as well as a big house with a swimming pool and car. So if you read this type of story and think of hundreds of poorly paid Indians in sweatshops hacking out code, think again.
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, it would be interesting to see average income in both areas because it would shed a lot of light. Not your friend's pay or some millionaire in Silicon valley but the county's average income.
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Informative)
1. Wages range from $5 to $10 per hour for developers, senior developers, and architects.
2. Stuff from India is cheap (e.g. maid = $100/month) but foreign stuff is just as expensive as elsewhere. For example, a Compaq computer is still about $1,000. A low-end Toyota is still over $10,000. There is however an India made car that's around $5,000. (Based
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Informative)
But do you know how much the maid/cook will get paid? In a big city, where wages are higher, you would pay them Rs 500 to 1000
So while the dollar does go further, it doesent do the vast majority of Indians who are farmers, labourers, servants, etc. ANY good.
When w
so what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not an American (Norwegian if you must know), but I have worked in Silicon Valley. Like the saying goes, it's not the size, but the quality. Yes, the best engineers in India is probably comparable to the best in the US and the rest of the world, but I find that the average engineer in India is worse than the average in the US.
I'm afraid I don't care (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm afraid I don't care (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not trying to flame anyone, as I have worked with a number of skilled American and Indian programmers and engineers. I'm not t
Re:I'm afraid I don't care (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm afraid I don't care (Score:3, Insightful)
Education matters, degrees don't. Please don't confuse the two. An education is something that can be obtained at a school or with other resources (such as industry research). A degree is someone else certifying that you supposedly know something. I have an education. I know and understand more than 90% of the CS PhDs you'll find. If you want to ask how did I do that, you should ask how did the founders of the computer science fi
Great news for the economy (Score:3, Insightful)
This will allow the average consumer to spend more of their money on other items, including entertainment, debt reduction, maybe even more money towards a mortgage or a new car. Jobs moving to other countries is only good news -- I can only hope we see more of it as it will allow people here in the States to find new things to do with their overpriced labor.
Maybe we'll even see that we don't deserve as much as we earn, and that we're not so special.
Tibor Machan [lewrockwell.com] has a great article on Job Security and why this phrase is false. If you can not produce a desired product at a price that the buyers are willing to pay, you are not really producing anything but waste. American techs are paid way too much for what really has become a blue collar job in many cases.
Just like tariffs on imported steel and imported sugar have destroyed jobs in this country (by making cars here too expensive, and even Fannie Mae chocolates has closed down today because sugar is too expensive), putting tariffs on imported tech software will do the same. Allow consumers of technology to decide what they are willing to pay. U.S. firms can even promote a "Buy American" program if people really care.
I know I don't. I want to see prices fall on technology so I can focus my spending on other areas -- more dinners are local restaurants, maybe more concerts or theatre.
Remember, the Living Wage [mises.org] is a MYTH.
Re:Great news for the economy (Score:3, Insightful)
You're wrongly assuming that the price of goods is in any way dependant on the manufacturing cost. Price is dictated by market -- supply and demand. The only constraint is: if your manufacturing costs exceed the price, your profit margin is negative and your product is dead.
There are a whole lot of produ
Re:Great news for the economy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great news for the economy (Score:3, Insightful)
-russ
Get rid of the minimum wage laws... RIIIGHT. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a pretty sight, really.
Now they're exporting that misery to the third world countries because they can and it nets a profit short-term for the businesses.
It amazes me how many "get a job" people are so clueless- because they're NOT IN THE SITUATION AND NEVER HAVE BEEN IN THE FIRST PLACE. They don't understand that many of these people that are "too good to work a real job" (By the way, define "real job" for me... If it's manual labor, then you don't understand what many actually did in the Tech fields- not all of them were "web developers" that got laid off, etc. Many of the people that got laid off had "real" jobs that were worth what they were getting paid for them until the Great Downsizing...) actually have obligations like houses and the such that many of what you'd consider "real" jobs won't even pay for an efficiency, let alone the obligations like car payments, insurance, etc.
If you've not been there, PLEASE do everyone a favor and shut the fuck up.
Economist article (Score:5, Interesting)
What I find most curious is the incredibly rapid turnaround in opinion seen on Slashdot. During the dot-com boom, everyone was happy to see Open Source, a truly global phenomenon, bloooming. But now I see this strange bifurcation of views. Open Source software created by people from all over the globe is still good. On the other hand global commerce, in which the lowest-cost providers of goods and services win, is being villified.
So when a Chinese company (operating in non-democratic government) manufactures the inexpensive hardware that powers your gaming PC, that's fine. But when Indian programmers (operating in a democratic society) start beating out American programmers for jobs, there are some sort of insidious forces at work?
When principals butt up against pocketbooks is the time when you see what people truly believe.
Re:Economist article (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Economist article (Score:5, Interesting)
By the way, if you're of the opinion that Slashdot readers are fine with what makes Chinese hardware inexpensive, then you haven't paid attention to the articles on the failure of cheap parts, the hidden costs of poor labor practices, and the environmental impact of computing articles on Slashdot. I'd buy non-Second/Third World goods if I could, but there's honestly many place where you simply can't get an alternative.
(Thanks for the article, though.)
Re:Economist article (Score:3, Insightful)
The current fad is to ship off the core innovative work to people with absolutely no stake in company. It would be like Ford and GM outsou
Won't somebody think of our future (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, a disclaimer: good on India. I hold nothing against them for accepting, with open arms, North American tech jobs as fast as CEOs rush to send them over.
That being said, I believe we (ie. North Americans) are being fucking morons about this. We are willingly shipping them high skilled jobs so Mr. CEO can report a quick profit the next quarter. In the mean time, we are losing an entire generation of "junior" positions. I believe that will spell the end of software development in North America.
My current job is that of a software architect. It is a high-skill job requiring very specialised knowledge in the area where we make software. I got to my current job by starting as a junior programmer at this company. After 3 years I was bumped up to "intermediate" developer. After 3 more it was a bump to "senior" developer. Now they think I know enough to design the systems I build.
Two years ago my company opened an office in Bangalore (we have offices across the globe). All new hiring has been through that office, and they ship the programmers from India to various other offices for training on projects. In another years time, programmers in that India office will have performed enough implimentations to be considered "intermediate" developers. In a few more years they'll be senior, and in a few more they'll be in my position.
As this is going on in India, all our own new grads will be working at Starbucks serving lattes, and will be left out of the loop.
All for the sake of a quick stock boost. Good on India, shame on us!
I don't know if (Score:5, Funny)
"Attractive Women: Stay away. Nerd Crossing"
The real winners in globalization (Score:4, Insightful)
When we no longer produce anything of value here, what do we have to trade? One thing we can do is educate people, foriegn students continue to come to the US in greater numbers to learn. Another is tourism. How many Indian's want to vacation in Detroit? Our college costs keep rising to the point that it is becoming more and more difficult for the middle and lower middle class to get an education here. The middle and lower middle classes make up almost 70 percent of our population. Another thing we have is money lots of it. Not you or I, but the ones really pushing for globalization. The 1 percent of are population that controls most of the worlds wealth and now wants more. These people find a service economy great for them, the lower classes have and always will bow to their every need. In fact, if the cost of service employees gets to high, then they can always push for more immigration, it is especially easy to get haitian or mexican labor to replace those high priced citizenry. It helps to give them a california drivers license. Most of these individuals were born into their position. Do not think for a minute Bill Gates was born into a low or middle class family in the suburbs.
By moving to a service economy where most of everything is imported, the middle class is left to struggle to maintain their status. More and more that is done with debt, easy credit for a good life now. Pay the rich forever.
Globalization is great for up and coming economies, it was great for Japan, but they are now losing to Korea, Indonesia, India etc.
The rich 1 percent would have you believe that this is all for the benefit of poor countries, ignoring the fact that when the labor costs and living standards rise in those countries, they'll be in the same boat. It will be a long time till we see programmers whose native language is Tutsi. But eventually they'll be a source of cheap labor too.
So what we have in effect is the very rich deciding the middle class is not dependant enough so they have decided to take from the middle and give to the poor.
Not exactly what Robin Hood advocated.
My experience in Bangalore... (Score:5, Interesting)
Firstly, the big tech titans over there are ALL dependent upon the US economy. WiPro, TCS, Zensar, Infosys, etc. are all oriented towards the export market. The managers over there pay way more attention to the health of the US economy than to the economy there in India.
India has an amazing infrastructure for developing engineers. The IIT system, for example, is easily comparable to the best universities in the United States or elsewhere in the west.
My colleagues in India make significantly less than I do, yet they do live in quite comfortable middle-class-land. Yes, they do have servants, but in India, this is pretty common and not limited to techies.
The eagerness, drive and overall "geekness" of the technical people I worked with would be instantly recognized on
Currently, the average work experience of the Indian engineers I'd been working with was pretty low - they were all in their early-to-mid twenties. What this meant was that most of the architecture and design work (and hence the "innovation") was created in the States, and then shipped overseas for the implementation. But they're very hungry, and very driven (as I said earlier) - I suspect that we'll start to see a lot more original development and design in the next 5-10 years as the tech base matures and gets some experience under its belt.
This is why those export companies (like Infosys) are now eager to not just position themselves as implementors but designers and innovators as well - they want to move up the tech "food chain" because there are about a dozen countries (in Eastern Europe, China, etc) that want to occupy that place in the Food Chain where India now sits.
The thing is that this offshoring business is actually possible because of the success of the Internet. I often work from my local coffeehouse when I'm not in the office, or telecommuting from home. If all I'm doing is slinging bits, does it really matter where I am? Often the answer is no...my saving grace (thus far) is that I don't work in an easily commoditized discipline.
Re:My experience in Bangalore... (Score:3, Insightful)
An excellent post in a sea of xenophobia. I for one would like to congratulate Bangalore on this triumph. I think this kind of thing should be spread to other places around the world, to raise the standard of living and make the more empoverished peoples of the world self-sufficient. It doesn't matter where you are from as long as you do good work. We are all humans, perhaps we should be happy that our brothers and sisters in India (and China and Russia) have been able to find this kind of econom
Students going thru grinder too fast (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not sure if this is a wonderful thing. As it is there are too many sub-standard colleges, and basic equipment and teaching staff is lacking in many. Such hypergrowth, in my opinion can cause nothing but trouble. I don't think the basic systems and infrastructure are there to support such an endeavor. Yes there are currently very good institutions but they are very few in the top tier. Most just dispatch their students with a "token" degree.
Frankly, I think this insane growth in the engineering colleges, is just too much of herd mentality. - not unlike the dot com mania. And instead of treating a college as a social cause or obligation, most of the "engineering" and "medical" colleges are nothing but commercial enterprises. They are run purely as businesses, even to the extent, that many are called "donation colleges." You pay a huge huge amount of money and you get in - even in medical colleges !! Just imagine one of those doctors operating on you. It happens in India all the time !
Election issue (Score:4, Insightful)
There was a good article on this topic in the Sunday L.A. Times pointing out it isn't only the Tech industry losing jobs overseas. All job levels and industries are sending services jobs overseas.
The Corporate CEO's and politicians they have in their back pockets only see improved operating costs, what they aren't seeing is they U.S. customers losing their jobs and won't be able to afford their products as time goes on.
Back when Alvin Tofler wrote _The Third Wave_ and said losing our manufactuing industry overseas isn't a problem, because America will become a Services based economy. Now we are losing our Services economy, but their isn't anything to replace it. The CEOs and politicians that cater to them need to open there eyes.
Outsourcing jobs overseas NEEDS to become a major issue in the upcoming elections. Every canidate needs to be informed of the issues and asked how they stand on it.
Bangalore outsourcing (Score:4, Interesting)
Do the company savings on salary and benefits make up for having to redraw a set of design prints five or six times? I don't know. I do know it runs the American engineers ragged and frustrates our customers when there's a schedule delay. The interface between the US and India is the real rough spot, I think. I know that purely internal work in both countries goes smoothly, but not being able to use our huge labor pool in India is hurting the American side of the business. Maybe I'm able to look at things dispassionately because my job isn't going overseas, but I *want* international outsourcing to work...and it's a rough start for my company. We need to overcome language and cultural barriers (any American who thinks Indian English and American English are the same dialect has never spoken to an Indian) and establish some actual communication between the continents, instead of throwing a set of design requirements into the ether and expecting the Magic Overseas Engineers to sprinkle some pixie dust and suddenly have a working set of engineering drawings.
Is it different for IT work? I don't think coming up with design requirements for a program and then implementing them is a fundamentally different process than for a jet engine.
On the other hand, the broken English of the company newsletter is occasionally hilarious.
-Carolyn
General Motors didn't worry about Japan until '80s (Score:3, Interesting)
They almost didn't survive. The result was A Good Thing for the consumer.
Now Japan has to worry about China, Korea and Taiwan doing the same thing to them.
It pays to go to work every day thinking it may be your last day there.
Legislation and other forms of protectionism (Score:3, Insightful)
a)American companies can be better off without any offshore development... No.
Reason 1... Not enough americans are getting into the engineering disciplines, and those that are do not get the grad degrees etc. Have you seen the university graduate school departments for Masters/Phd. lately? How many americans do you see? India already produces vastly larger number of Engineers/computer science degrees then USA. It had at the last count about 1200-1500 engineering schools.
Reason 2: Offshore/onshore combination development is a model that Indian companies have perfected as an art form, with the result that companies like Wipro, Infosys etc. are directly bidding for the contracts that US companies were outsourcing to them, because of lower costs. In fact IBM lists the Indian company Wipro as one of its most formidable competiters in future for its core services business. So, either US companies need to perfect the model, or start loosing contracts especially internationally
b) Stoping outsourcing for govt. contracts using legislation will help. False It would probably slow things down, but it would only mean taxing the common citizen more to pay another US citizen, i.e. redistribution of wealth, and not any creation of wealth. On the other hand outsourcing means more dollars in the hands of Indians, and what do they do with those dollars? they can do only one of the 2 things, i.e. either buy US products or invest back in US, and they do both. At the same time more wealth is created in US, because some customers save money,and the money that went out, came back again and bought more products creating even more jobs.
c) Indian companies are not creating any products.
False. Subsidiaries of US companies in India are creating complete products. See previous stories in slashdot. But even besides that India has been getting the largest amount of VC capital in Asia for last couple of years, and you will se products out soon. Some products are already there. For e.g. iflex [equitymaster.com] In FY03, International Banking Systems (IBS) has ranked Flexcube as the number one selling universal banking solution in the world. Represented in over 50 countries through more than 30 corporate business partners, i-flex has gained the recognition of the first company in the world to cross the 100-installations mark for its product in less than 5 years. And there are other success stories.
It's time to outsource executives (Score:3, Insightful)
Good riddance to Silicon Valley! (Score:5, Interesting)
As a Very Large Company(tm), we outsourced our help desk a few years back. It was a painful running joke in the office that if you wanted to do no work done, you'd "phone India" with a problem.
The joke stopped justover half a year ago. Our India helpdesk is incredibly efficient at fixing problems, the staff are polite, and there's no bad attitude. I don't care how much money the company has saved--they have improved the quality of their internal support, and that's something pretty damned valuable.
So before everyone whines about 'cheap but crappy outsourcing,' make sure that it really is crappy. I'd wager that for all but the most highly skilled jobs, the overseas work is as good as anything locally.
Let's get real (Score:3, Insightful)
The answer to that statement is "That's just silly. To a manager cost cutting means cutting YOUR job, not his. Havn't you been paying attention?"
It's amazing that during an election year that I've yet to hear one thing from Dean or Bush about this. Is everyone bought and paid for?
The answer to that question is "Of course they are, havn't you been paying attention?"
Sadly, this appears to fall into the "globalization" groupthink. It's a "free market economy" therefore it must be good...right?
The answer to the last statement is more complex. The plain truth is that our government has done this to us on purpose. Rather than cutting back on spending they simply spend more and more and more. How do we pay for that? Well, last week Greenspan printed another $5 Billion in fiat money that has no gold or assets to back it up. In the same week the Fed issued an addition $17 Billion in debt. And that's just one week! How about a month of $17 billion weeks? Think about a year of $17 billion weeks. How about a decade of $17 billion weeks. What will that do to our economy? Throw in ridiculusly low interest rates and it's a recipie for disaster. Allow me to elaborate:
Here in Southern California we have 15% of the jobs and 10% of the nation's population. If you count Southern California and the San Fransisco/San Jose are we have nearly 15% of the population of the entire country AND a bit more than 20% of the jobs. (This data comes from Claritas, a demographics company that I use to work for)
People need to live where the jobs are. Yes, you can say "Go live in Indiana where you can buy a house on 2 acres of land for $200k" but then reality sets in and you realize that in general, you must live where the jobs are. People need to buy houses where they live. The artificially low interest rates have made it far too easy to get cheap money in the form of home loans. This access to easy money has artificially increased the price (not the value, but the price) of homes. In Mission Viejo in Orange County a house next door to my niece sold for $440k 4 years ago. It sold last month for $1.2 million. In my area of San Diego our home prices have doubled in 5 years.
So how do people pay for that house? They need higher wages. Now follow along because this is an important concept: To purchase the same house they could have had 4 years ago they need almost twice as much money. In other words It takes more money to purchase the same amount of stuff That ladies and gentlemen is the very definition of inflation. That is the inflation that Allan Greenspan says does not exist
So our government has made it far too easy to get money which has caused housing prices in the areas where the jobs exist to skyrocket. In the mean time they are printing money like maniacs which also deflats the value of all the existing dollars AND they're going deeper and deeper into debt at a such a rate that they seem determined to utterly destroy the country and it's entire economy at the fastest rate possible.
Our government does not represent us, the middle class. Republicans, Democrats, it doesn't matter. We don't need an election, we need a revolution.
Now are you paying attention?
Exporting knowledge and skills (Score:3, Insightful)
One way to look at this is that we Americans are just lazy compared to Indians, Chinese, etc (and there is probably some truth to that). But from another perspective, why should we Americans bother to get advanced degrees in Math and Sciences when we're constantly bombarded with the message that we won't be doing the sorts of jobs here which require those degrees?
This gets me to my main point: we're not only witnessing the export of good paying jobs from the US to various 3rd world countries (and the associated economic effects), we're also witnessing a huge transfer of skills and knowlege out of the US.
As there are fewer tech jobs in the US it means that fewer engineers will be employed. When an engineer has no work for a year or two their skills will stagnate. Most engineers pick up new skills 'on the job' and without a job, they won't be picking up newer, in-demand skills.
Of course this has a ripple effect: your nephew Johnny who is in highschool wanted to follow in your footsteps and get into engineering, but now he sees that you've been out of work for a couple of years and you're considering a different field altogether. You sit down with him at Thanksgiving and tell him to go into dentistry or auto repair so that he can have a steady, decent-paying profession... Well, you get the picture. Whereas math and science education is already pretty poor in many parts of the US, this trend will not encourage it to get any better. No, we'll be offering pre-law classes in highschool instead of calculus soon.
The answer to why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I thought Bangalores (Score:2)
Re:Lakh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that would be wrong!
1.5 * 100,000 = 150,000...
Re:Petition (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck. Unless you accompany your petition with big sacks full of money, don't expect any results (other than a polite letter -- maybe). Those same candidates/elected officals didn't act when manufacturing jobs went offshore, why would they act now?
Re:Japan beats detroit (Score:3, Insightful)
The Deliverator says... (Score:3, Insightful)
"This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it--we're talking trade balances here--once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwaves in Tadzhikistan and selli