IBM Moving Developer Jobs Overseas 1346
helixcode123 writes "According to the New York Times (also on Yahoo News), IBM is planning on moving a substantial number of high level jobs overseas to 'India and other countries.' IBM argues, in essence, that they need to do this to stay competitive. The article
quotes that Forrester Research '...estimated that 450,000 computer industry jobs could be transferred abroad in the next 12 years, representing 8 percent of the nation's computer jobs.'"
Re:I guess... (Score:2, Informative)
Not with India. Being a former British colony, English is an official language and widely spoken. We do some of this at my company and it works fairly well. Hardest thing to deal with is the timezone difference.
Re:I guess... (Score:5, Informative)
English is the international language for software development. Most companies that have overseas work, or open operations will have business-level English speakers at hand for this stuff. We have 3 Indians here, all of whom speak excellent English (although one has an accent exactly like Apu) just for that reason.
And what's a network function variable?
Re:I'm going to go down for this. (Score:5, Informative)
The solution isn't to weep and wail and whinge, but to innovate. That's how the US got where it is in the first place. But you should understand it never stops. Free your mind and get rich!
Re:I guess... (Score:3, Informative)
IBM isn't hiring these guys; instead, IBM would be paying some sort of Indian-Middleman-Company(TM) to.
Actually, IBM India [ibm.com] is large and growing very quickly. I can't find any information on the number of employees there, but I'll bet it's close to 10,000.
Re:I have a plan... (Score:3, Informative)
Um, they wouldn't get hired. Hate to be the one to break it to you, but affirmative action doesn't let you demand triple salary here; it's something you can sue for when the company shows a pattern of hiring against a group when there are equivalent workers available. That's why, even though PA had 1-1-1-1 laws for a while, if it was in the middle of the state where there just weren't any black people, they weren't forced to hire completely inappropriate individuals.
If a company moves jobs overseas to reduce salary costs, you aren't going to be able to follow them and get your old salary. Work harder and become indispensible, or face the fact that you're living in a tremendous pay bubble, and it's not going to last.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Get off your ass and learn. (Score:2, Informative)
Like you, I refuse to believe that Americans are different than any other industrialized nation or citizen. I refuse to believe American coders or engineers are better than European or Asian ones.
The main thing that makes a country's workers able to develop new things are the wealth of material at their fingertips. IE - given the same textbooks and teachers, almost any two people can achieve the same end.
What I'm getting at is... IS there anything we can do that others cannot? Is there anything that I can make, that with the proper education couldn't be coppied by someone else and outsourced to a foreign nation where they pay less? Or perhaps even independently developed by the third world nation at a much lower cost?
Secretary systems - easily outsourced
Pay-roll systems - easily outsourced
Programming systems - easily outsourced
Construction - easily accomplished by immigrants
What's to stop a company from setting up camp and eventually housing 5000 people in cramped 'offices', in other countries or here at home, locking the doors, and having them pump out code much the same way we've done in the textile [yale.edu] and toy [angkor.com] industries, with only a manager or two on the floor or in the building to make sure the peasantry keeps working?
Well, it won't happen in America. We've been good at stopping accidents like that here at home recently. But this is the stuff capitalism brings. If it doesn't happen HERE, it doesn't mean it won't happen AT ALL... it'll just happen elsewhere. Out of sight, out of mind.
Think to yourself... what really makes India and China able to push out code cheaper? Maybe they have smaller cubicles? Maybe they don't air-condition their buildings for their workers. Yes... obviously the low standard of living down there makes it a bit easier... but just think of every way owners cut costs by moving textiles to third world nations, and you'll see some of the ways they'll cut costs by sending IT jobs there too.
If IT gets outsourced from all over America, and payroll gets outsourced, and designing via autocad gets outsourced, what's left for Americans except marketing to the peasantry, managing the peasantry, or running the product over a barcode FOR the peasantry?
Re:Time zone difference seen as an advantage? (Score:3, Informative)
Hell yeah!
I work for a small (~120 employees, two divisions - software development and infrastructure) and we have an office in Pune, India to do software dev.
The software people here talk to the client all day, have meetings, and write specs. Then you know what they do at the end of the day?
They send an email with the specs to the guys in India. Then they go home for dinner, hang out with their families, and crash.
When they come in the next morning, they have an email from the coder slaves (sorry, I mean, "folks at the India office") that has the code. Done.
They spend the day demoing it to the client, having meetings, firming up the spec, and the cycle repeats. But only for about half as long as it would if the product were being developed here. And for 25% of the price.
Our India office wasn't very utilized when it first started up. Now I think the utilization in the first quarter of this year was above 90%.
That is a big reason this is so attractive, and India in particular.
Re:I have a plan... (Score:0, Informative)
The first signs of a pussy defending someone else on the internet. The guy was being a real asshole, and using retarded logic like "Unemployed people should just invest in the companies that fired them". So, I called him an idiot. Can't take the heat? Then fuck off.
Because clearly, the entire billion-strong population of India are computer programmers. Also, because Visual C++ has such wonderful Hindi support, as well as the other 17 languages recognized by their constitution.
Also, there's such a strong tech sector there, and they've all got such easy access to PCs.
Two paragraphs of sarcasm make you look like a pretentious jackass. Say what you mean, or shut up. India has a very, very strong tech sector, jackass. In this very thread there was mention of IBM India employing 10,000 people. As early as 1998, there was already a white-collar tech middle-class forming in tech cities such as Bangalore and Bangladesh. These cities are now overrun with Mercedes-Benzes. Well, relatively speaking, anyway. So, there is an exploding tech sector in central Asia. I know this, you do not. You are wrong, and you lose.
He didn't say they'd go up to American salaries, but he's right, they certainly will go up; this is just how supply and demand works.
Ooh, really? Got any other Frosh Economics tidbits to sprinkle on us from above, Professor? No shit there's going to be increased wages in India. However, it would take hundreds of millions of tech jobs to create a dent in the Indian workforce, 60% of which is agricultural. SIXTY percent. The tech industry is booming, for India. Enough to take away our jobs, but not enough to bring the lifestyle of an immigrating American to even close to what he expects here. Waiting for our jobs to move to India, and then moving there ourselves is a rotten, poorly-thought-out idea with no basis in fact or reality. Congrats on defending it. You're awesome.
Do some research before calling bullshit.
I'm going to let that little gem just hang out and stew in the middle of the page, because the longer it sits there, the smarter I feel.
Please stop jumping on posts you clearly don't grok.
Read his response to me, and then hang your head in shame for a while. Tee hee!
Corporations pay taxes. (Score:3, Informative)
You aren't aware that corporations pay income taxes at a scale of something like 40% of their income?
ASA
Re:I have a plan... (Score:2, Informative)
For example: a Chinese graduate student that I'm working with always hems and haws whenever anyone wants him to work with FORTRAN.
I agree with him that working with FORTRAN is unpleasant, especially if you've been brought up on Java or C++. But the most enjoyable way is not always the best or most efficient way to get a particular piece of work done. And if you consistently try to avoid 'soiling your hands' with work that you don't really enjoy, it can hold back your career and make it less possible in the future for you to get grants (etc.) to help you do the work that you do enjoy.
Some history & background on H1B & offshor (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe your grandkids will be lucky and get into the India's future version of the H1B program to encourage tech workers to move and work there.
Seriously, there will always be a need for a highly skilled and highly educated workforce.
In case you're interested, here are some more links about this and other related issues that we have seen before.
Leaked: IBM Execs Urge Moving Jobs Offshore in Internal Teleconference
An internal recording of an IBM teleconference about moving jobs offshore was leaked [nytimes.com] (Google [nytimes.com]) to the New York Times by an upset employee. From the article: '...under increasing pressure to cut costs and build global supply networks... I.B.M. needed to accelerate its efforts to move white-collar, often high-paying, jobs overseas even though that might create a backlash among politicians and its own employees. "Our competitors are doing it and we have to do it," said Tom Lynch, I.B.M.'s director for global employee relations. He also said that 3 million service jobs were expected to shift to foreign workers by 2015 (based on a Forrester Research [slashdot.org] report, which represents about 2 percent of all American jobs) and that I.B.M. should move some of its jobs now done in the United States, including software design jobs, to India and other countries. Oracle plans to increase its jobs in India to 6,000 from 3,200, while Microsoft plans to double the size of its software development operation in India to 500 by late this year. Accenture has 4,400 workers in India, China, Russia and the Philippines.' Critics say 'schools will stop producing the computer engineers and programmers we need for the future' as a result of these moves. Listen to the IBM recording in Real format [nytimes.com] (direct link at pnm://audio.nytimes.com/audiosrc/2003/07/21/busine ss/20030722jobs.audio.rm [pnm]). More at the SJMN [siliconvalley.com], Inquirer [theinquirer.net], and CNN/Reuters [cnn.com]. Slashdot has discussed [slashdot.org] Global competition [fastcompany.com], offshore outsourcing [slashdot.org], lower cost replacement workers and the ensuing legal turmoil [slashdot.org] before.
To paraphrase from the movie Jerry Maguire:
It's not technology friends, It's technology business.
Re:I have a plan... (Score:4, Informative)
With unemployment higher than it's been in decades and companies sending thousands of jobs overseas, this is a bad thing.
Dell starting sending jobs overseas this year too and my department was the very first to go. It was my early Christmas present.
I'm just spending my time off learning more *nix flavors & learning c++ & Perl.
Re:Corporate tax rate (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft, for instance, doesn't pay federal taxes. 45 billion in cash reserves, and they don't show a profit.
I'm tired of the "poor little rich people" line of the neocons. Rich people barely pay taxes. Rich corporations barely pay taxes, and as a matter of fact, can get rebates on taxes they never paid in the first place.
Only poor suckers pay taxes on their income.
Re:Paid $10,000/yr? I think not! (Score:3, Informative)