Pros and Cons of Tech Offshoring? 120
An anonymous reader asks: "There's an interesting analysis of tech offshoring at the moment posted on Membox. It looks at the pros and cons of the practice in two separate articles. Since this is a big issue in tech at the moment, it's good to see the arguments on each side given so clearly. What effect do Slashdot readers think offshoring is having on the industry?"
fear, mostly (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:fear, mostly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:fear, mostly (Score:2)
Re:fear, mostly (Score:2)
Re:fear, mostly (Score:1)
Re:fear, mostly (Score:2)
I'd still have to say that by asking for specialization in a FILE FORMAT you've painted your box a bit narrow.
How much does one *need* to know to be effective? (Score:2)
The WORLDFLIGHT flight operations system I worked on at NWA for the better part of a decade was a very complex online transaction system. Over 1000 discrete transaction codes, 2 million LOC (Fortran) even with very heavy use of the external subroutine library, roughly 30 feet of paper *programmer* documentation, additional end-user docs, vendor docs, language and platform manuals, etc.
I could probably bring someone up to speed so they'd be effective in a bug hun
Some folks seek such specific skillsets... (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember that not everyone has formal experience using the same set of specific products or tools that you have, and that many things (like file formats) are relatively easy for almost anyone to pick up and work with if they're even remotely competent.
Re:Some folks seek such specific skillsets... (Score:2)
Re:Some folks seek such specific skillsets... (Score:2)
But it's not just DICOM. We're finding it hard filling most development positions. Just finding an experienced Windows drivers developer proved to be a nightmare. People had taken classes, but no one was experienced. After six months we gave up. Do NOT tell me that's too specialized!
On specialization... (Score:2)
Maybe it's a more specialized skill than you think?
What would a typical company need specialized Windows drivers for?
Unless they actually create hardware devices that are used on Windows systems (and that don't use a reference driver from someone else), that isn't going to be part of their problem domain.
Re:On specialization... (Score:2)
I think that's your problem, you're assuming all companies fit the profile of the mythical "typical".
We wanted a Windows device driver developer because we produce embedded medical imaging systems. Our systems have from two to ten specialized boards. One of our platforms uses WinXP Embedded. Thus the need. While I personally think the choice of Windows a very poor one for this application, the fact remains that we would have needed device dri
Re:On specialization... (Score:2)
And you do realize that if you just advertised for a good general purpose Windows Assembly Langua
Hey, I'm not questioning your specific needs. (Score:2)
When it comes to internal software development, I suspect there is no "typical" company.
I'm only questioning the (apparent) high level of specificity in your stated requirements for the Windows device driver developer position.
(I've not seen the actual job posting -- all I have to go by is your comments here on Slas
Heh. Okay, I know one person. :-) (Score:2)
Common in your specific industry, perhaps. (Score:3, Insightful)
We use a lot of specific technology in the airline industry, also, but over the years we learned that the probability of finding someone who knows those formats, languages, or systems/environments was just about zero unless they'd actually worked in the airline industry before.
Because of this, we decided that some level of basic technical training was going to be a fact of life regardless of who we hired,
Re:fear, mostly (Score:2)
I'd rather not say where I work.
Re:fear, mostly (Score:2)
If it wasn't for your competitors outsourcing, you wouldn't need to reorganize and have continuous product changes- because you'd still be playing the game on a level field.
I'd rather not say where I work.
Why? Are you ashamed of working there? Still, doesn't matter- if you can't escape the downsizings, then you haven't truly escaped the
Re:Heh (Score:2)
In this climate of job scarcity (and despite everything everybody is telling you, jobs are scarce) anything is better than nothing.
Here's a hint, Sparky: companies that aren't running ads on Monster or your local paper are hiring right now; they're looking for the right can
Re:Heh (Score:2)
Re:Heh (Score:2)
Re:Heh (Score:2)
Wrong question (Score:3, Insightful)
From the pro article. I've seen this a lot- but there is at least one economic theory, distributism, that claims that human wants are just the mortal sin of greed and human NEEDS are what we should be focused on satisfying- and human needs are indeed finite.
Doesn't make sense (Score:2)
Re:Doesn't make sense (Score:2)
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
Whenever you reallocate resources, you're playing a zero sum game, which means when you give resources to the more productive you're stealing from the tables of the poor. And when y
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
The economy is not- but resources ARE. The earth is finite, it's impossible to have infinite resources in it.
In order for me to become rich, I do not have to make someone else poor.
Prove it- do it. I've yet to see anybody become rich without making somebody else poor.
Economic activity generates wealth.
True enough- if by "wealth" you mean the useless digits in federal reserve computers and not actual physical goods.
There is not a fixed-size "pie" that must be
Re:Wrong question (Score:1)
Not infinite, no, but as plentiful as they have always been on the earth, and as plentiful as they are likely to be for a long time yet. Check out the Law of Conservation of Mass/Energy. What we consider a "resource" and what we consider "waste" fluctuates in response to supply and demand.
Prove it- do it. I've yet to see anybody become rich without making somebody else poor.
We'd have to define
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
And thus, when you have more people, the per capita share of resources goes DOWN, not up. Thus you can't increase your personal share of resources without taking those resources from somebody else.
We'd have to define
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
But the real price of the goods needed for survival, as a fraction of income, has been going down for all of recorded history (with some local bumps around depressions, recessions, revolutions, wars, etc.). Which means that the amount of effort needed to obtain the same minimal standard of living has been decreasing over the centuries, at the same time that the population has been going up and up (and UP). So somethin
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
And it also means that a parasite class has arisen t
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
Prove it- do it. I've yet to see anybody become rich without making somebody else poor.
I suggest you try to understand where the value behind money comes from. When I say "the value behind money", I'm referring to everyone's ability to make consistent (but not identical) pricing decisions ($3 can be exchanged for a gallon of milk most places in the continental US). Why is $3 worth about the same as a gallon of milk? It is clear from
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
That's because there is no reality behind this economic process- it's a myth. I
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
Whoops. All the gold standard did was tie the dollar to a quantity of a somewhat rare mineral.
If we were on a gold standard and all of the people died tomorrow, how much gold would a gallon of milk be worth? The gold standard doesn't change the answer to your question.
Economics is always about an agreed upon valuation. Which you're calling a myth because you think that gold has intrinsic value. But it doesn't, so that theory's kinda kaput.
And whew! Talk abo
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
And so is the insinuation, originally, that the human "sense of value" is reality.
2nd reply- the labor theory of money (Score:2)
I agree with you and with Marx that the value of money comes from the labor of the people. But in the last 150 years, a small minority of peo
Re:2nd reply- the labor theory of money (Score:2)
Not exactly, though you're a lot closer than the other poster. I hate to disappoint you, and though I do really like much of what Marx wrote, I'm not a Marxist.
I assert that the value of money comes from the value added to resources and products, expressed through the differences in the costs that go into the product and the revenues captured when the product is sold. The difference is measured as profit, which is aggregated into the
Re:2nd reply- the labor theory of money (Score:2)
In other words- for the employees and the consumers, there is no value to money at all- it's something reserved entirely for the investor class.
If there are 1000 investors who e
Re:2nd reply- the labor theory of money (Score:2)
Here's hoping you can find a way to get out from wage-slavery (that's what it really is, even for well-paid wage-slaves) and to a state of independence.
I'm trying to do that very thing, and I'm doing my honest personal best not to screw anyone over in the process of achieving independence. The day to day r
Re:2nd reply- the labor theory of money (Score:2)
Actually, to me, the worst thing about it is that near as I can tell, back during the civil war the Republicans used their emergency war powers to start this cycle. Back then of course, they were trading wage slavery for chattel slavery- which is a bad deal for the slave, since he goes from being provided
Re:2nd reply- the labor theory of money (Score:2)
The biggest factor is the bargaining power on all sides of the equation. This is why a union worker and a non-union worker doing the exact same thing are paid differently.
Re:2nd reply- the labor theory of money (Score:2)
The majority of America has no real bargaining power- union or no union. If bargaining power is the majority of the value of money to you- you're sunk. The oligarchy sets the prices and if you don't follow that pricing structure, you will be put out of business one way or another.
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
BZZZZZZTTTT!!! Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
Centuries of historical evidence suggest otherwise. If you want to offer people the choice between being a 21st century "wage slave" (interesting oxymoron) and a 13th century peasant, by all means do so, but the growth of goods and services production in the 1st world countries over the last 15
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
Yeah, right- like we're allowed to offer people that choice. Every time it's been done, the IRS and the local government steps in and confiscates the land for back taxes on income that was never actually created.
but the growth of goods and services production in the 1st world countries over the last 150
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
I was kinda hoping you'd make that idiotic argument. Global per-capita GDP has grown 2.1% [wikipedia.org] annually from 1950-2003, which tells you right away that something more than a zero-sum game is at work.
And the gap
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
Really? And where did they get the additional atoms for that GDP? GDP is as much a fake number as anything else- for instance the American GDP fails to take into account our trade deficit.
In a dynamic economy, of course the gap between rich and poor will increase.
Which should be a signal that
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
(hint: GDP does take the trade deficit into account)
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
Wikipedia is a big part of the problem- it's just a shill for people with an agenda. If you redefine the language you can prove anything.
(hint: GDP does take the trade deficit into account)
If GDP took the real trade deficit into acc
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
Where you might be confused is the difference between GNP and GDP. GNP, which doesn't back out the trade deficit, used to be cited as the main indicator of economic growth, but was dropped in favor of G
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
No- we've actually swtiched in the last decade or so to creating far less (in real, physical goods) than we import. Most of the Made In America stuff is really just Chinese and Mexican parts assembled he
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
The difference being that when I test gravity, by dropping say, a pencil on the floor, it always works. When I test the GDP by going down to my local department store and counting the items stamped "Made in China" vs the number of items claimed to be "Made in America", the GDP always loses out.
And don't go
2nd reply (Score:2)
Re:Wrong question (Score:1)
When you figure out how to get six billion people to agree on exactly what qualifies as a need, let me know.
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
Re:Wrong question (Score:1)
Oh! Well then, as a representative of the world's 7-year-olds, perhaps you can be a bit more precise.
It turns out that each one of those allegedly obvious needs comes in a variety of forms. If we're going to optimize the economy for needs only, we'll need to know exactly where to draw the dividing line between needs and wa
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
How more precise do you need to be to say that every human being needs to have food, clothing, shelter, clean water, and medical care for basic survival?
It turns out that each one of those allegedly obvious needs comes in a variety of forms.
So what? We care about the people who have NO form of that obvious need, not SOME form of that obvious need.
If we're going to optimize the economy for needs only
Re:Wrong question (Score:1)
Funny, I missed where I said that.
Look, I think your apparent goals (e.g., that nobody should live in obvious want) are laudable. And it turns out, I share them. But I think your proposals are ludicrously simple-minded.
The world already produces enough food. This is not because we've devoted a large portion of our labor to that. Instead, it depends upon a lot of advanced technology, careful research, and strong e
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
You said that you deserve a broadband connection to the net and a computer- I'm just asking what makes you think you deserve those things while there are people starving in the world.
The world already produces enough food. This is not because we've devoted a large portion of our labor to that.
Tell that to the people of Niger- they certainly don't think that the world already produces enough food. Or to the Mexicans forced to come here as illegal immigrants because th
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
And yet- if they had more food they wouldn't be starving- which makes US selfish for wanting our computers and educations and broadband connections and whatnot while there are still people starving.
I can't quite follow you here. You're telling me the reason developed-world population growth is flat or negative is because they have free trade? Then wouldn't it follow that we should g
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
Why did we change?
We made a dire mistake- three actually. During the chaos of the Civil War, Virgina's state house was burned to the ground. This gave the parasites the opening they needed. They started by getting the original 13t Amendment nullified [frii.com] due to an accident of history (the ratification from Virgina was never actually delivered to Washington DC, and records of it didn't exist outside of the Virginia State House). This allowed lawyers to become judges- someth
Re:Wrong question (Score:2)
What I want to know... (Score:1)
Think about it...
Re:What I want to know... (Score:2)
Re:What I want to know... (Score:2)
Can't see that being a bad thing, but too bad it'll never happen.
The balance of wealth may be flipped some day, but most companies will always be about making more money by spending less. Someone will get more wealth at the expense of someone else getting less.
Long term... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Long term... (Score:4, Informative)
Previously cars were expensive enough that the rich bought them. Now with Fords, anyone could buy them, and the number sold skyrocketed.
--dave
Re:Long term... (Score:2)
It's too bad computer companies haven't discovered this secret yet.
Re:Long term... (Score:2)
With software, the cost of creation is high and the cost of replication is negligible. There is no economy of scale for production, but there is for distribution.
If the cost of creating software can be lowered significantly, it is possible for the cost of software itself to go down. Oh, and those Indians will be buying software too. And there are a lot more of them.
So your economy of scale theo
Re:Long term... (Score:2)
On top of that, no one really *wants* to make shirts in the US. People want jobs, but not thoes kinds of jobs.
Offshoring is a way to make sure that the US will continue to get better. We look at the shittiest jobs out there and find a way to send them overseas. Then our workforce trains for better jobs.
Re:Long term... (Score:4, Insightful)
About $15- the price did not go down significantly when the manufacture went overseas. The real difference is that the retailer now makes a 200% profit instead of a 10% profit on the same shirt.
On top of that, no one really *wants* to make shirts in the US. People want jobs, but not thoes kinds of jobs.
Tell that to the textiles union- which has been testifying in Congress for the last 40 years to try to protect the jobs of the 500,000 Americans who used to make shirts. They failed because of people like you.
Offshoring is a way to make sure that the US will continue to get better. We look at the shittiest jobs out there and find a way to send them overseas. Then our workforce trains for better jobs.
At which point the better jobs leave before they can even finish training.
Picking fruit, makinf shoes, and writing code are all in the same bucket; no one wants to do it at the price customers are willing to pay. So we offshore it.
And what is left?
Retrain for something better and stop bitching already.
What's better? I want to know what the next target for offshoring is- I've got a bunch of Indians who are perfectly willing to train to do it....
A conspicous downside (Score:5, Interesting)
My former employer succeeded in outsourcing their operations to EDS, and are still a happy EDS customer.
They then tried a second cost-reduction step, offshoring their development to a well-respected firm on the opposite side of the planet. The timezone problem was a nuisance, but not a serious problem except when doing maintenance, so they offshored maintenance to the same company.
This seemed to work, but on looking at the financial results a few quarters later, they realized they'd done a very brave thing: they'd inadvertently offshored their software budgeting decisions. With both maintenance and new development in the hands of a supplier, the supplier was the only person who could make credible decisions about how much to spend. And the spending was growing.
So they turned around and started onshoring, hiring some of the folks who had been the offshoring team and moving them back to Canada, co-locating them with the user groups and the budgeting managers, and go control of their own budget back.
They're now genuinely reluctant to allow anything to be done remotely, including having me dial in from home. They want my body withing shouting distance of my manager!
Losing cost control can make you a little nervous if you're a big company, because it can rapidly make you a small company(;-))
MORE OFFSHORING NEEDED, PLEASE! (Score:3, Funny)
So, offshore more, please!!!eleventyone
the real problem (Score:1)
Some of the code I've had to work with/modify might as well have been written in india. I often wind up looking at
Re:the real problem (Score:1)
I think you just described the state of the entire IT industry.
s/programmers/people in IT jobs/g
Re:the real problem (Score:1)
You said it. I've had code come back from offshore developers that was just horrid. My company had decided to outsource work for a conversion filter to a firm in India (who was a connection of the CEO). The gist of the conversion was to take a token-based structured file format and convert it to an XML format.
Companies lose sales as a result (Score:1)
I hang up on them, every time. And as was recently the case with HP, I vow to never purchase products from that company again. Why should I want to support a company if
Some informed opinion (Score:4, Informative)
Daniel Drezner [danieldrezner.com] has some interesting analysis on his site. His linked articles, especially the Foreign Affairs one, are also good.
I, by the way, am pretty agnostic on this issue, and linked to only one side because it's the only good discussion I've seen. (As opposed to, say, Lou Dobbs using an hour of CNN every night to rant about evil Mexicans.) I'd welcome similar links on the anti- side.
Re:Some informed opinion (Score:2)
My personal recomendation- any company that offshores deserves to have it's C-level executives arrested and exiled from the United States, their mansions and sala
Re:Some informed opinion (Score:2)
Poof. It's now *more* expensive to move the work overseas.
Re:Some informed opinion (Score:2)
Re:Some informed opinion (Score:2)
I don't object to that per se (the benefits part, anyway) -- it's a matter of proportion. There are 24 hours in a day and CNN gives three of them to Lou Dobbs. Yeah, the border needs to be tightened. Is that such a problem that 12.5% of the day needs to be devoted to complaining about Mexicans?
Re:Some informed opinion (Score:2)
According to Border Patrol statistics, only 7.5% of the time is spent complaining about Mexicans. Dobbs spends the other 5% complaining about OTMs- illegal immigrants that come across the Southern Border that aren'
I'm hopeful! (Score:4, Interesting)
My company was using TCS for a while, then opened their own office in Hyderabad to cut down on the middleman-costs.
According to several reports from Indians here and dealings with some of the managers there, Hyderabad is getting like Silicon Valley in the late '90s. People can simply walk out whenever they want, they'll find a new job the next day. There's a lot of turnover because of that.
Also, wages are going up. A couple of our test guys (who are dealing with hordes of Indian colleagues, of course) have noted that the wages are coming up to where it's not that much less expensive to hire in India. (It's still cheaper than the U.S. of course).
I had always predicted / feared that once this wage parity started happening, companies would start offshoring all their jobs to other places (China? Romania? the Congo?) but that does not seem to be happening, probably because few other countries are teeming with English-speaking programmers as India is.
This means that there's some hope for the trade equilibrium predicted by classical economics / big-business apologists, rather than the "race to the bottom" where every country becomes Third World, predicted by me and some fellow paranoids.
Re:I'm hopeful! (Score:2)
Re:I'm hopeful! (Score:2)
This is certainly not as much as a programmer with equivalent experience might make in the U.S., but it's not so much cheaper as to make offshoring work to him a "no brainer".
Re:I'm hopeful! (Score:2)
I was thinking about this the other day (Score:2)
Peronally, I though this was a bit overblown. It's not like there are no tech jobs left in the US not filled by H1s. At present offshoring is soemthing we should be concerned with, but it's
Re:I was thinking about this the other day (Score:2)
Only because India wants $3 million in bribes for their equivalent of the H-1b visa. If we did that too, you'd see a lot fewer Indians here.
What effect? (Score:4, Interesting)
About the same effect that Dutch Elm Disease had on Elm trees.
Between H1B's and outsourcing, the industry has decimated the software engineering profession. Many of my former co-workers have bailed out after months and even years of unemployment. And these were not "Learn Web Programming in 21 Days" people - these were people with Masters degrees (or higher) in CS or EE and years of experience. In many cases they've gone back to school and have started new careers and they're not coming back. A the same time US college students and high school students do not regard software development as a good career. Enrollment is CS / EE degree programs in the US have dropped dramatically.
I'm already seeing articles about 'problems' with outsourcing in trade journals. I'm also seeing articles from industry groups about lomming 'shortages'; which always end up blaming the US 'educational system'. Makes me want to whack these people with a large clue-by-four.
Re:What effect? (Score:2)
My Morning Walk (Score:2)
On my walk I see the same faces most mornings. Four of those faces belong to people like me. All of us are over 50 years old. All of us have graduate degrees. (Some CS, some EE, all technical graduate degrees.) None of us has a full time job. In fact, I am the only one who even has a part time job. We were all working
Re:My Morning Walk (Score:2)
Unfortunately I graduated from college in May, 2001 - worst possible time - when things were crashing, and as such I have no professional experience with computers. I looked into getting an internship or coop, but my college's placement center was absolutely worthless.
So if it's any consolation, things aren't very good for young people either.
Re:My Morning Walk (Score:2)
In many ways I think people like you, the ones who graduated during the bottom and could not find jobs, are being hurt the worst. I've lived through 3 of these crashes so far and the folks who graduated during the bottom often never did get jobs in their chosen field. They didn't get jobs because by the time the jobs came back, they were seen as having out of date skills.
The best suggestion I can make to you is to survive anyway you can and when jobs start to become available jump back into school and get a
Re:My Morning Walk (Score:2)
My biggest concern right now is health insurance. I did manage to ger a full time job a few years back, before the company was bought out and my division was moved to Canada. My COBRA insurance runs out at the end of the month, and I've been rejected for individual health insurance twice already. It's a scary prospect to be without health insurance entirel
Re:My Morning Walk (Score:2)
No health insurance: Ain't it grand to live in the Capitalist Paradise.
I have health insurance through my wife's job. Without it, I may well be dead, or bankrupt. I had an appendectomy just about the time my Corba would have expired. Not to mention the cost of medicines and supplies needed to treat the type 2 diabetes I developed after infection I got from the surgery. BTW, I know how very very lucky I am. I have health insurance.
I have a friend, a young man in his mid-twenties. He to is a college graduate
Re:My Morning Walk (Score:2)