The New Face of Global Competition 410
Valluvan writes "Here is an article in Fast Company on "The New Face of Global Competition". The article is focused on Wipro, a big IT company in India, but applies to many other companies in India that have been highly successful. A long article with some stupid errors like saying developers code with UML, but brings out the business facts well enough."
There's Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:4, Insightful)
Other industries will follow as the necessary skills and infrastructure become more wide-spread.
The rich world will continue to specialise in those industries which require the latest cutting edge infrastructure and skills, and slowly discard the rest.
Maybe, maybe not (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't be so quick to cede entire industries, writing them off as "discards". India's getting the business for TWO reasons, cheap labor and EDUCATED labor. It's no secret that the American education system is, shall we say, lacking in almost every regard except being flush with funding. We may be losing the industry simply because they are better at it, not just cheaper.
Re:Maybe, maybe not (Score:3, Insightful)
No. We shall not say that.
The United States is home to more elite colleges and universities than any other country in the world. Is that a sign of a lacking educational system?
If you were referring to primary and secondary schooling, public schools in particular, yeah the US school system cranks out a lot of idiots. But this is because most people ARE idiots. While we may not have the best scores of all the first-world nations, we're not THAT far below the rest either.
I also object to your 'flush with funding' comment. Have you ever met a public school teacher who was sufficiently compensated for the work they do?
Re:There's Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the point here, though, is not so much that coding is leaving the "Developed" world to go to some sweatshops in India, but rather that Bangalore has become a sort of First world island: They have the infrastructure and the education, so why couldn't they compete? There is a huge danger in all of these articles, though: The United States (I'm personally a Canadian, and I laugh a bit because in some ways Canada is a mini India: We've always attracted this sort of work because of our low dollar. Indeed when this article claimed that software development in India was 40% less than the US...well that actually puts it right on par with Canada then. I think we need to advertise our sweatshops more!) could truly fall behind not because India has shot ahead (and VB type coding that they're doing now is NOT shooting ahead despite this absurd article), but rather because everyone stops going into computer science because of articles like this. Already I've seen a lot of bright minds leave computer science for "management" pathed careers, all because they've bought into the notion that the field is dead here. Of course it isn't, and this article certainly doesn't forbode any new threat that didn't already exist, and of course the mad rush to India will cease, costs will equalize, and then they'll be consumers of the big worldwide information field.
Ironic, though: It'll be interesting to see what happens when developer pay skyrockets as new shops are set up.
Re:There's Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
And by doing so, the "rich world" will eventually give away so much work that they will be poor.
Think about it - if the United States economy continues to send good-paying jobs overseas, what's left for the people in the U.S.? Yes, some "rich" people will get even richer, but a LOT of us will get poorer. Is that what we want?
I'm a developer with over 20 years experience. Cobol, SQL, VB, C, Java, HTML, UML, XML - I can do them all pretty well. My old company fired me after nine years claiming I couldn't do my job. Why? Because they can send my job to India and find someone with 2 years of experience who will work for $6 an hour...
Multiply that by the number of people who earn a living here in the U.S. by writing code, and where does that leave us? Claiming to be a 'Java developer' because we write some code at home, while earning a living working fast-food?
Anyone looking for a skilled developer?
Re:There's Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
The specific sector (in this case IT) that is being squeezed certainly loses some in competition. For the economy as a whole, though, the money freed by getting cheaper IT solutions won't be stuffed into mattresses, but will enable more investment in other sectors (including up and coming areas). The economy as a whole doesn't get poorer; depending on the situation it may get richer at a somewhat slower pace.
Meanwhile, the poor countries get a _lot_ wealthier; each transferred unit of fund is a far larger fraction of total wealth in the poorer country receiving the payment than it is in the richer country paying it. The net result is that the difference in wealth between the countries are asymptotically diminishing - and at the same time, both the wealthier economy and the world economy increases its wealth.
Yes, it sucks to be a 'line programmer' or general consultant in our industry right now. It sucked to be a textile worker in europe or north america for most of the twentieth century, it sucked (and still sucks) to be a high-volume parts supplier to major manufacturing corporations. One day, it will suck to be a human bioengineer or nanotech designer.
However, if you have specialized skills, or work for a niche or speciality company, things are different. Being a cloth designer or speciality weaver does not suck. Being a nimble small-volume and/or speciality parts integrated designer and manufacturer is good eating. And being a highly skilled specialist (VLSI designer, for example) in our industry is still viable and likely to remain so.
Churning out app code or designing yet another business database bridge app is the equivalent to sowing slacks for off-the-rack or molding ten million stereo volume control knobs. They are the equivalent of sowing Nike's. Those jobs will leave - and will leave India as well as even more low-cost countries develop the population skills and infrastructure to take them.
Re:There's Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:2)
Re:There's Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:3, Interesting)
Historically, that's a fallacy. How many farmers are there in the US now as a percentage of the population compared to a century ago? Is the country richer or poorer now? Standards of living have gone up over the last 50 years, despite the auto industry moving overseas. Did you know that textiles was once a high-tech industry, and textile manufacturing technology was a jealously guarded secret? Where are all the textile workers now, and is the country richer or poorer since they left?
Multiply that by the number of people who earn a living here in the U.S. by writing code, and where does that leave us?
What about all the people who earned a living cleaning out stables? The country is wealthier now that those people's jobs were obsoleted by the car - and funnily, there weren't hordes of unemployed stablehands, they just went to do something else.
Re:There's Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:2)
Re:There's Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
You could read up on economics while you work at Burger King, as a matter of fact I would reccomend it. While it sounds cruel, 'developed' nations actually benefit from this kind of displacement in many ways. Experience has shown that 'shipping jobs overseas' actually CREATES more jobs here at home. It allows the developed nations to develop a competitive advantage in areas that require the education and high-skill manpower that a nation like the U.S. has.
Software development isn't an incredibly difficult skill.. in particular the types of software development that is being shipped overseas. I have made it a strong point to become an expert in system architecture and design, and that has kept me very comfortably employed no matter the economic conditions. In economic terms, I have given myself a strong competitive advantage over low-skill programmers by becoming an expert in a high-skill area of software engineering.
It's time that we all realize that programming is not difficult. People are willing to work for $6 an hour to do it simply because a LOT of people have learned how to do it well. Yet their remain certain parts of the development process that are extremely difficult to master. Types of projects that require expertise above and beyond anything the low-skill 'labor programmer' can do. If you have those skills, then you will have no trouble finding gainful employment no matter what the economic conditions are.
Wake up and smell the chai (Score:3, Interesting)
And what kind of jobs might those be this time? Starbucks? Burger King?
I can kind of see your point when it comes to manufacturing jobs, but now that the 'thinking' jobs are leaving I'm not sure what'll be left for us to do . In the 80's as manufacturing jobs left the US many of those displaced workers were encouraged to get into software engineering since it paid better anyway. What should software engineers be studying now? Dentistry? Auto Mechanics? (at least those jobs can't be sent overseas)
Software development isn't an incredibly difficult skill.. in particular the types of software development that is being shipped overseas.
You're deluding yourself if you think that it's only the lower-end development jobs that are being sent overseas. Check this article [portlandtribune.com]
. It's an interview with a venture capitalist about his take on where the Oregon economy is headed. Towards the end he talks about the impact of outsourcing engineering jobs and how that will slow the recovery in the high-tech sector. He talks about how Mentor Graphics [mentorgraphics.com] is opening a $40million R&D center in India. When he asked them why, they told him: "they said they can't hire anyone graduating from engineering schools here because they're just not prepared, they're just not ready to go into that sophisticated end of the business." Now personally, I don't think that's the real reason (the real reason is that they can pay Indian engineers about 1/3 of what they pay their American counterparts) but that quote should be sending chills down the spine of every US developer who reads it.
I have made it a strong point to become an expert in system architecture and design, and that has kept me very comfortably employed no matter the economic conditions.
I would suggest checking that condescension. (Score:4, Interesting)
In addition, due to other unrelated macroeconomic and political factors, it's getting much harder to "start over" here. Conservative politics and rising higher-educational costs might seem unimportant now, but people always find themselves thinking differently when they land back down at the bottom of the ladder.
As for America as a whole, when in a few more years we find ourselves really on the rocks and try to turn to our vaunted "education and high-skill manpower," we will discover we have neither - the price of the broom-fucking we've given public education (at all levels) over the past 3 decades.
Good luck.
Re:There's Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:2)
Re:There's Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
As a professional software engineer in the US, I sympathize. I certainly want the US to keep all of its software development in the US. But it's worth keeping in mind that the cheaper software engineers in other countries want those jobs just as badly as we do. While I'm certainly against exporting jobs to countries were the employees will be threatened, abused, and subjected to inhuman working conditions, my understanding is that software engineers in say, India, enjoy very good working conditions by their standards. Also, these low wage industries have been the foundation for growth for a number of countries in Asia, creating many jobs and generally increasing the technological level of the countries, changing them from "a cheap place to get labor" to "high tech competitors." So my selfish side says, "We should keep all programming jobs in the US", but I have to balance it against "Why should my job opportunities be given more weight than the job opportunities of people in other countries."
Re:There's Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:2)
2. Leave the attitude home. No one owes you anything.
Good Luck.
Re:There's Nothing New Under the Sun (Score:2)
Many will, but I don't think this one need go.
To keep development work here, we must exploit the one advantage we have over people 10,000 miles away: we're closer. Sure, that sounds too simple. But hear me out.
The traditional dominant development process, the Waterfall, assumes that you can put every important fact about a piece of software into a requirements document. That document is then turned over to the geeks, who could be kept in a sealed room, for construction. N months later, perfect software comes out.
We all know this is bunk. And not just from practical experience; if the requirements document really had all the needed information, then you could just write a requirements document compiler and dispense with the programmers completely. But it's the bunk that allows outsourced development companies to work. Not just because it allows them to pretend a development center on the other side of the planet is just as good. Even worse, because we believe this bunk, their development centers are just as good as keeping the engineers in the building (or city, or state) next door, as is common practice here.
So what should we do instead? We should pick development methods that take advantage of the highest-bandwidth, lowest-latency communication available to us: physical presence. If we put the engineers in the same room as the domain experts and the product managers, then we can build software more quickly and more efficiently than before.
But we get more than that. If you put everybody together, then you get unmatched ability to respond to change, change in the market, in your customer needs, in your competitor's products. A bunch of people in a room can turn on a dime compared with the difficulty of changing specs, changing contracts, and updating people who are asleep when you are awake. Even better, you can create change, forcing your competitors to try to keep pace with you.
So for those interested in keeping at least a few develoment jobs in the US, check out the book Agile Software Development Ecosystems [aw.com] (prices [isbn.nu]). Or look at one of the many Agile methods directly:
And for the record, I think world trade is great. If somebody in India can really do my job for 1/10th as much; then I should find something new to do, something that provides matchable value to my clients.
More than just tech jobs, sustainable medicare (Score:2, Insightful)
If all high paying jobs are shipped over then the cost of what the high paying jobs were providing software, medicare, etc falls to the point where you don't need a high paying job to cover it. Just think, the biggest expense is medicare, if that is cut by not paying doctors $300K year then why do you need a high paying job.
There are of course times when patients can't be flown to have an operation but in generally the most expensive procedure could be taken care of in an Indian medical facility with doctors trained at a North American level but costing a fraction.
Re:More than just tech jobs, sustainable medicare (Score:3, Insightful)
They can't ship doctor jobs to India for the same reason they can't pick up my local McDonald's and ship it to India and expect to get the same clientelle. As much as I like McDonald's french fries I am not going to Bangalore to get them. Most of the really expensive medical stuff is stuff you do in an emergency, and flying me to India when I need a triple bypass (due to massive french fry consumption, do doubt) is not likely to solve the problem for anyone but the insurance company. I will almost certainly die in transit and then the insurance company can save themselves the cost of the operation.
On the other hand, I already know plenty of people that have gone to Canada for their laser eye surgery. However, with a little searching my wife was able to find a nearby U.S. doctor that had even better prices than were available in Canada.
Creative Labs (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Creative Labs (Score:3, Insightful)
This type of article sounds familiar... (Score:2, Funny)
Is that you??
I live in Bangalore (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I live in Bangalore (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure you don't realise how ironical that statement is.
the word "global" (Score:5, Interesting)
Whats worse, the BOD has been seeded with European managers. Now, dont get me wrong, I have nothing against europeans, but you cannot take a company that has been doing NE Corridor style work processes for 20+ years and suddenly kick it over to the "european" business model. Things apparently get done a lot more slowly over there.
You wouldnt think there would be much of a difference, but its subtle, yet huge. Just the minute changes in our response contracts are huge.
Going from a 4x8 SLA to a proposed 8x36 on a hardware repair? (Which might sound great.. but it means less money, and once you have been 4x8 for five years, its REALLY hard to switch gears).
Our "accident prevention" issues are now tied to India, Sri Lanka, Korea, and europe. And we _all_ pay when some plant in some third world country where emissions arent an issue suffers some injury. I am all for "safety in the workplace".. but you should really be only tied to that which you have some influence or control over.
Its a completely different business culture, and some cultures just shouldnt mix like that.
YMMV, of course.
Re:the word "global" (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't help but feel that the USA is in danger of losing its global dominance because of the general attitude of Americans that "We're just better". Your insight above has prompted me to say this, but some of the other responses to this article also make me think it.
It is true that the USAs economic success is in part down to the intelligence, innovation and hard work of its natives. But it is also down to its unique historical position of being a very young country with a single unified people. (In other words, a huge homogenous market - a startup company in the USA has a massive easily accessible market on its doorstep. That's not so true in the rest of the world.)
Don't sit on your laurels, Americans. The rest of the world isn't as stupid, or as lazy, as many of you seem to think.
Re:the word "global" (Score:3, Insightful)
That has _nothing_ whatsoever to do with what I am talking about.
I could give a rats ass about color, creed, religion, or national origin on a personal or professional level. Im talking about business cultures.. like the difference between mom-and-pop shop where you call and get a live person, and CorpCo where you get a 12 minute "press or say 1 to listen to our menu, which has changed" and eventually end up on the voice mail of some drone who doesnt want to answer it and sits and watches it ring.
Im talking about the fact that you take a company that a _lot_ of people have worked their butts off to make a success here in the US, and suddenly tie its success and/or operations to some fledgeling endeavor in europe somewhere, run by people who have no clue how we do business here. Its a true cultural gap, and its not about what color people are, its about how they learned to work.
EG: I used to work in a nursery (trees) and the guy who owned it would bring in cambodian and honduran laborers on a work visa, set them up with a soc. sec. number, and taxes and everything. These guys worked CIRCLES around us and went from sunup to sundown, no matter how much you told em to take it a little easier. They loved the ability to do so.. because they were actually making pretty good money (compared to what they were used to) and were making inroads into bringing themselves and their familys to america.
Now.. he didnt do this because he hated the US, or because their labor was cheaper.. he did it because after years of putting ads in the paper, and using the two other kids he had working for him as word of mouth, he couldnt get anyone here to DO the work for what he was paying. (which wasnt bad wages, I might add). Its a cultural difference..
Compare that to companies which are now expanding into other countries, and discovering that people will work 14 hour days for 7.95 an hour to do the same job you are getting 30 bucks an hour to do, and they wont bitch about it, and wonder why "global" is such a buzzword suddenly?
Maeryk
Wipro and UML (Score:5, Interesting)
Another issue many companies haven't yet realized, is that the majority good engineers in India, have left India. Those remaining for the most part are not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
Re:Wipro and UML (Score:2)
S
80s hysterics? (Score:5, Insightful)
India is certainly becoming a force in the global IT industry, but let's not get swept away by Fast Company's muscular prose and usual hyperbole.
Also, I think it's important to remember that real economic growth comes more from innovation than from cheap labor. Companies are willing to pay developers $150K a year if the products they're creating will cover those costs and return a large profit to boot. A lot of the work being offloaded to India (or at least the work that my previous employer shipped there) was maintenanced release testing, legacy OS ports, code cleanup, etc. Nobody was asking them to design the next killer app.
Of course, maybe it's good that these waves of paranoia wash ashore every few years. They prevent us from getting complacent.
Re:80s hysterics? (Score:3, Insightful)
This WOULD all blow over if our companies weren't taking advantage of the cheap labor over there. As it stands, it will continue to rack us in the nuts until our salaries match the ones in India.
Globalization = cheap shirts, fewer jobs, and a fast-paced race to the bottom.
Re:80s hysterics? (Score:2)
Can you back that up with something other than mere nostalgia?
In general employers are as loyal to employees as employees are to employers. If someone gets a better offer (more money, fewer hours, shorter commute, whatever) they will happily resign and go take up the offer - effectively sacking their employer and getting a new one. That's as it should be, because it forces companies to compete for the best employees. And similarly, there is competition for the best employers, which happens whenever more than one person applies for a job.
This WOULD all blow over if our companies weren't taking advantage of the cheap labor over there. As it stands, it will continue to rack us in the nuts until our salaries match the ones in India.
Or until their salaries match yours, which is far more likely.
Globalization = cheap shirts, fewer jobs, and a fast-paced race to the bottom.
Bad news for shirt makers, good news for shirt wearers.
Do you believe what you type? (Score:2)
In the 80's? Are you for real?
The myth of the loyal company seems to die hard. People believe it stopped sometime right around when they were born.
It has never existed; or I should say, if it did, ir probably existed through the 40's and part of the 50's, but that was more out of necessity than any great moral force.
When I was a kid (in the north), the battle cry was "they're moving all the good jobs to the south!". Who knows if it was true, but certainly, there was never any qualms about moving factories to the cheapest place.
Nothing new here at all, except a new generation grows up and finds out the world is a little bit harder than it looked when you were a kid.
Re:Do you believe what you type? (Score:2)
As far as the $8,000 salary you think you're competing against, read the article again and think a bit.
The $8,000 salary only works as long as the the situation doesn't change. But as these companies get more market share, unless there is an unlimited supply of $8,000 programmers, then the price has to rise. Also, as companies fully comprehend the cost of this outsourced costs, things will begin to fall into place. In any IT project, programming costs are expensive, but not the majority of the cost. Its a portion of the cost and economics say the job of coding will probably change so that programmers will become more effective. The days of teams of 100's of programmers in some major corporation in upstate new york has passed. But the days of programmers who know the business and can make effective decisions to help the business are at hand. You can't do that from across the globe. This is just an example, but guys who only code have been an endangered species for almost 20 years. Guys who can code, understand systems, understand the business and can communicate well will always be in demand and probably for a decent wage.
Does the trend concern me? Yes, just as the "Cheap/smart Japanese" of the 80's concerned me, or as any number of economic forces concern me. But I don't think its the death of the US or the IT industry in the US. I think it bears watching, but not the kind of hysteria that's going on right now.
Re:80s hysterics? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does anyone born here in the US have an entitlement to a lifestyle while someone in Bangalore doesn't? If they are putting out quality work at half the price, then too fricking bad. Being in the US doesn't mean a lifetime entitlement to a lifestyle far exceeding that found in other countries just by the virtue of the accident of your birth.
If the US wants to stay on top, you'd better stop crying when you find out that someone overseas can do your job just as well you can only for a bowl of rice and a fish a day (or a bowl of rice and curry a day) instead of $75,000. Get used to it. Textile workers, assembly plant workers, etc., have all had to deal with that for years. Why are tech jobs so different?
You want paid well? You earn it in the marketplace. And guess what -- competition is global, and your fat paycheck is a fat target. Remember that each day you go to work.
Re:80s hysterics? (Score:2)
Because India sucks if you're really rich. No shit, Sherlock.
It's not about competition. It's about people at the top relentlessly trying to force the people at the bottom further and further down the standard of living scale.
It's never about making someone else poorer. It's about becoming relatively richer. That is an extremely important difference.
Why are CEO wages still rising while everyone else's are falling right now? Have you stopped to think about this?
Are their companies making money? CEO skills are not as transferrable as are line worker skills. Not many people can run GE like Jack Welch did. Many people can program in C.
I think that in today's society, you have a couple of choices.
The first is to own the means of production and lay claim to a share of corporate profits. This means spending less than you earn and saving your ass off.
The second is to innovate and have skills that make you relatively more valuable than your neighbor. If you can't justify why your salary is higher than someone with the same skills, you've answered any question about whether you are replaceable.
This is a free agent world. You are competing against everybody. The winners are going to take more and more of the earnings as jobs and skills in the middle and at the bottom become more and more interchangeable.
Is this fair? Maybe not. Is it "good"? Maybe not. Is it the real world? You bet your ass it is.
This is the real world that steel workers and auto workers and textile workers have dealt with for the past couple of generations. The IT business had better look at that and decide how to avoid a similar fate.
GF.
Re:80s hysterics? (Score:2)
Actually, a major factor in derailing Japan's world domination was their economic collapse in the early 90's. (They're still in a bit of a recession from it.)
Of course, that crash was largely due to the overly close and trusting relationships between businessmen (bankers giving huge loans at good rates to friends who promised to repay them, but later couldn't).
That was the Japanese achilles heel, America's might have been unions, or company loyalty; what remains to be seen is where or if India will falter.
Of course, with companies so internationally diversified, they won't hurt too much either way, now their employees...
Re:80s hysterics? (Score:2, Insightful)
Japan did steal autos, consumer electronics (Score:2)
One quick question (Score:5, Interesting)
They are as good at doing all of that as anyone in the world. Perhaps better. And they are cheaper -- on average about 40% cheaper -- than comparable American companies.
By what metrics are they "As good or better than anyone else in the world"? What ridiculous verbal spewage from someone throwing together a ridiculous little article. The Indian IT industry has gotten attention for one reason and one reason alone: They are very cheap (though the percentage cheaper is steadily declining to the point that it'll be a moot factor), however claiming that they are as good or better than anyone? I'm not being arrogant, but I find that there's a stunning lack of Indian software in the commercial software arena: which would be TRUE proof of homebrew abilities in an arena. Instead the industry is relegated to throwing together post-design highly-redundant type apps for countless life and bank organizations.
I'm not blindly claiming that India isn't a credible force in the software development force, but so are many other countries: This doomsdayish end-of-the-world attitude of this article just strike me as ridiculous.
ergo98
Re:One quick question (Score:2)
An the Indians are as good as anybody in the world at making cheap software.
Thats pretty easy to explain (Score:2)
Key Point - 'Other American Companies'.. (Score:2)
These companies have too many MBA's with nice haircuts.. Nothing ever gets done, except for more analyses and ass covering.
When one of them finally starts to attempt actual implementation, they try to fill your building with more of the parasites.
If this is WIPRO's model, we have little to fear.
Also, 40% cheaper than Accenture or EDS still leaves us with some FAT profits, IF we can get our proposals heard by upper management.
I thought they were a technology news site? (Score:2)
Is it any wonder Pud used Fastcompany as the parody basis for his better site? [fuckedcompany.com]
Good.. (Score:5, Funny)
Better they appear in Fast Company [fastcompany.com] than Fucked Company [fuckedcompany.com]
UML (Score:5, Insightful)
These days you can "program" in UML. The actual underlying code is C++ or Java generated by the CASE tool from your UML diagrams, but it's still programming, just at a higher level. For example, instead of programmatically declaring a member variable of a class, you click on the UML class diagram and add a property, instead of typing class Z extends X you drag a line.
You usually have to go to real code to actually implement methods, but using a RAD tool to layout your GUI, a CASE tool to do all the object defintions and database connectivity, only writing code by hand when you have to, is a very productive way to work. Programming Swing or Motif or MFC is very repetitive and can be highly automated, as can writing wrapper code for database tables to present them cleanly to objects.
You'll get a lot of geeks sneering that a text editor is the only way to write code, but that is an obsolete way of working. Computers are built to automate repetitive tasks, and once you've written one form or report by hand to show that you can, doing it again is just a waste of time.
Re:UML (Score:2)
But CASE tools are so bloated when they setup your classes, I mean, I can hand code them so much better. Don't you know that we still need to optimise our classes? Take a look at this example:
UML generated (C#):
public class Foo : Bar
{
public class Foo()
{
}
public override string ToString()
{
}
}
Now, the hand coded version of Foo:
public class Foo : Bar {
public class Foo() {
}
public override string ToString() {
}
}
Even in this small example the CASE tool generated 50% more lines of code!!!
Obsolete my ass (Score:4, Insightful)
For anything but GUI drawing, good old text editors still beat all these point-and-click thingy.
Writing and adjusting your code is faster with text editor (unless you type with two fingers).
Non-boilerplate coding can't be done with point-and-click interface, be it UML, RAD or whatelse. Programming is not about changing superclasses and adding member variables: at some point you have to implement actual algorithms. At this point you have to resort to text editor and all the glory of CASE tools fades, since when you actually do want to change superclass you have to move your hands off the keyboard to mouse, swith to different window, and often you are not allowed to change CASE-tool-controlled parts of code by hand. I've yet to see any evidence that a CASE user beats competent developer with editor in terms of performance.
Those thinking of pointy-clicky interfaces being a magic wand should go and try writing bubblesort with mouse.
Re:Obsolete my ass (Score:2)
Why would you want to? No-one in the real world ever writes a sorting algorithm. If you want it sorted, add ORDER BY to your SQL and you're done. 90% of software development is about getting data into and out of databases in different ways, and doing some processing on it along the way. The complexity is not in the code itself, it's in the real-world problem the code is written to solve.
You're right that non-boilerplate code can't be automated, but the amount of work that is non-boilerplate is relatively small, particularly in terms of lines of code. I've written apps that maybe 60% were pure GUI code, just creating widgets and adding them to forms, etc. Maybe 30% more is just the initialization, connect to DB, open files stuff that's the same between most apps, just calls to libraries. That leaves 10% new code. Using RAD and CASE and c'n'p reduces development time to a fraction.
Re:UML (Score:2)
Graphical languages are highly overated. Just look at what you are reading. It's letters, not pictures.
The demise of "programmers" have been predicted since there were computers. One of the early cries was:
Re:UML (Score:2)
Indeed. Where I work, we use an in-house code generation tool to generate database access code based on the schema definition. This generates a complete set of model objects, able to save themselves to and load themselves from a database.
You have no idea how much time it's saved us in the past, and will continue to save us on future projects. Even assuming the project starts with a fixed set of well defined requirements and the schema can be finalised up front, just saving the time required to write all that code is a God-send. Should the schema change, for whatever reason, adapting to the change (at the model level, at least) is as simple as rerunning the tool to generate a new set of classes.
It's not perfect, of course - there is the question of how to handle adding functionality to the classes by hand, then needing to regenerate them, amongst others. It's definitely well worth the effort that was put into it, mostly by one programmer who spent less time on it than would have been required for a single project's set of model classes.
Another boring trend piece (Score:5, Insightful)
So the question that I would like to be answered is what will India, the US, etc. look like in 25 years due to this trend. (OK 10 years even.) Most of these folks writing these articles can't extrapolate more than a couple weeks.
So rather than right puff pieces about some new and insidious trend, tell me what it really will mean. Does it mean that US companies will need to stay sharp? Does it mean that the US is dambed to a life of living off of greatness like the UK as its empire fell?
Here is the answer - wealth is created when inputs are moved from a lower value use to a higher value use! So what does that mean? Well it means when we buy something and put it to better use than what we paid for it, we are making wealth. And nobody does it quite like the big economies of US and Western Europe. But what about all those Indian programmers? Well they had better hope that every other country in the world does not get into their business too! The globablization of everything will continue and thank god for that.
You can't stop the future, you can only pretend by stopping progress.
Re:Another boring trend piece (Score:3, Funny)
No, globalization is EVIL. Third-world workers would much rather be sustenance farming than coding software or making sneakers. I mean haven't you heard? Didn't that trash can I just threw through the Starbucks window make that abundantly clear? Capitalist pig!
YES, America to go way of British, Dutch (Score:2)
There is ample data to show that the US is in the midst of a long term permanent decline:
- Massive overfinancialization
- Declining standards in public education
- Wages too high with respect to competing nations
- Massive public and private debts
- High degree of foreign ownership of economy
- Over militarization
Many of these same indicators plagued previous economic empires.There is no avoiding the base truth of globalization: foreign nations can now produce adequate goods and services for a much lower cost. When I say "much lower", I mean it is cheaper to manufacture something in China and have it shipped to and stored in North America than it is for a North American company to sell products at cost in their own factory parking lots. There is simply no way American workers can produce competitve goods with the current wage disparity.
Re:Another boring trend piece (Score:2)
You don't get it, do you? The article is an obvious plant; notice how it mentions only Wipro and no other Indian IT company doing similar work.
But to answer your question politically, I'll hazard a guess. The nitwits in power in India will continue to fight among themselves and with the Great Enemy Neighbour (tm) before figuring out some other way to attract attention to themselves. In the meantime, those in the software industry will continue to earn millions and be better off than the others. This will make the right-wing jealous and they'll start theories about how computing is un-Indian and all that, never mind the fact that, by then, nobody would listen to them anyway.
Extrapolating for the US is left as an exercise to the reader.
hmm (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe they farmed out the editing of the article to India...
That's a good company . . . (Score:2)
Even if this article is spot-on about everything, its about one company. And it sounds so fantastic that frankly I'm not sure how much of this I buy.
The good tactics mentioned here are things ANY GOOD PROGRAMMER uses. Study. Work. Learn about your client. Develop people skills. Think ahead. These are not "Indian" or "American" or "Japanese" traits or whatever, these are traits for a good programmer. Period.
Taken with a grain of salt, the article tells me there's a company in India that has good people and good tactics. That's about it.
Great. (Score:3, Funny)
The Cost of Global Competition (Score:5, Interesting)
What ever happened to distance independent work / telecommuting, and so on? That was the Next Big Thing(tm) in the 1990's. Instead, part of this globalization trend seems to be to turn the best farmland into the best business parks. In the U.S., the asphalt of Chicago covers some of the richest farm land in the nation. Places like Sweden have be enthusiasticly paving the Mälar river valley and the plains of Scania. Germany and most other countries are doing the same? It's not possible for every country to import food and certainly not economically feasible (yet) for India to think about it.
It would be more effective to knock down the Indian variants of the late Cabrini Green -- urban renewal would be good for the people living in the city, and it would keep the programmers closer to the cafés.
If Wipro is the competition, (Score:2)
By the time we get the Wipro stuff into marketable form, we've spent more time and effort on it than it would have taken to do the job ourselves from scratch.
Our people in Bangalore are similar: good people, but pretty much turn-the-crank implementors. I'm glad we have them because so much of our work really is turn-the-crank work, but I'm quite happy making periodic trips to Bangalore to train them while spending most of my time doing Kewl Stuff at home.
Something I've wondered . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd figure foreign outsourcing would bring in a hell of a lot of variables one would have to work with.
Re:Something I've wondered . . . (Score:2)
You know, one of the very interesting things about last year's brinkmanship was what it did to the value of the Indian rupee and to India's forex reserves. Usually, in times of political or economic uncertainity in a certain country, you'd expect a dip in the currency's value; the US dollar, for example, dipped (primarily in relation to the Euro and Swiss franc) after Enron and Worldcom broke out.
I honestly was expecting the rupee's value to dip in mid-2002; the Monsoons had failed, agricultural produce in a largely agarian economy had taken a plunge, manufacturing was in a largely self-inflicted slump and then there was that dickheaded brinkmanship with Pakistan (dickheaded because it acheived absolutely nothing; Islamist terrorists still attack Indian targets with impunity, people still die in Kashmir and what's more, there seems to be no end in sight to all this violence.)
But the fact of the matter is, the rupee is still going strong (bad for exports, good for people like me), and, while nowhere near China's, forex levels are at an all time high. Most believe that it's largely due to software exports and by bank remittances by Non Resident Indians.
Now, it's important to remember the political clout that the software industry has in India's corridors of power. A power that have, on earlier occassions, not shied from wielding; IT companies, for instance, get fabulous tax breaks, get allocated prime land and in general, have direct access to state chief ministers and central (ie federal) ministers. One of the bigger things that affected me a long time back was the IT industry's silence over most central ministers' biligerent statements, statements that would be populist within India but would definitely be seen as provocative in the international community (and hence detrimental to business interests).
I guess we now know the reason more or less; the IT industry hasn't really been affected by the stand-off. In fact, I'll extend it even further:- tech (whether Indian, American or Tristan-da-Cunha-ian) will flourish despite irresponsible politicians.
I'd figure foreign outsourcing would bring in a hell of a lot of variables one would have to work with.
Hope I answered your question.
Like a plane flying into your office tower??? (Score:2)
Re:Something I've wondered . . . (Score:2)
My figuring is that, in general, "The Devil You Know" is preferable if only for predictability.
Conflicts with Canada? Damn, we're gonna hear MORE South Park jokes now . . .
Business 101 (Score:4, Interesting)
This recent love of Indian software companies strikes me like the love affair businesses had with the Internet in the late 90s. "We can run our businesses so much cheaper on the Internet!" "Banner ads will pay for all our expenses and then some!" Of course, no one bothered to really ask the question whether or not the Internet was profitable. All they saw were dollar signs and were more than happy to ignore the negative aspects of this new business paradigm. I don't think we're going to have a software "crash" like we did with the dot com bust, but anyone who thinks they can pay a little bit of money and magically get high quality code from the underpants gnomes...er, I mean India, they're going to be disappointed.
Re:Business 101 (Score:4, Informative)
I only wished that were true. From the article:
At the same time, Wipro has embraced quality. In six years, it has trained 7,000 employees in Six Sigma and completed 1,000 quality projects. Six years ago, Fast Company proled a team at Lockheed-Martin that wrote nearly perfect code ( "They Write the Right Stuff," Dec : Jan 1997 ). The team's claim to fame: It was one of only four outts in the world to achieve Level 5 certication from the Software Engineering Institute. Wipro has Level 5 certication in three different categories. It's eye-glazing stuff, but an amazing achievement.
Re:Business 101 (Score:2)
I find it impossible to believe that every one of Wipro's 15,000 developers is capable of writing code to this standard.
Maybe Wipro have 3 teams of a few dozen or so elite programmers who work on very well-defined long term projects, where the software has one specific job to do and everyone on the team has a decade's worth of familiarity with the codebase. But the rank and file are likely to be about as talented as the rank and file at EDS or CSC.
Wake up call (Score:2)
Oh, c'mon. The writing's been on the wall for over 20 years now. So much 'knowledge' and 'innovation' has originated from Europe and the Far East since then & it's beginning to be noticed in mainstream journals like Fast Company. Those of us in the industry have already known this for years ....
no long-term worries (Score:2)
Within two years, Wipro says, three-quarters of the employees its customers see will be local nationals: American, European, or Asian.
This means that any advantage the Indian's have had by being able to compete on price is going to be erased. Then they will just be another EDS or IBM Global Services division.
Not surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
Meanwhile they pull down the salaries of professionals working in america, and those lower salaries combined with the ever increasing fear of losing one's job (which is another result of global competition), so professionals decrease their spending and their standard of living and the result is a recession, we may not be able to get out of.
I am not racist and really like the fact that India is breeding smart hardworking engineers, but wish they were payed decent salaries for their sake and our own sake.
At least there is one thing that never changes. Fast Company is as always willing to give blowjobs to large corporations. I wonder what the folks at fast company received for thisd article. And i wonder if they are under pressure from third world journalist with no ethical standards.
Re:Not surprising (Score:2)
But they are paid decent salaries. Currency works like anything else, supply and demand. Lots of people want dollars, so dollars go up in value relative to other currencies. Or Euros, Sterling, Swiss Francs, Yen, etc. These are the "hard" currencies, because you can use them to do cross border business (among other reasons). You can't use Rupees for this, so the value of Rupees relative to dollars goes down (because Indians are converting Rupees to hard currencies so they can import stuff).
The effect of this is that in dollar terms, India is very cheap - an Indian on $4/hr doesn't need to work a whole hour to afford a cup of coffee, like an American on the same dollar salary would! The Indians are getting paid in, and spending, their local currency.
Anyone who claims Indians on $4/hr are getting exploited doesn't know what they are talking about and should be dismissed out of hand.
Re:Not surprising (Score:2)
The article was written by a certain (first-world sounding) Keith H. Hammonds. But yes, I agree; the article is basically advertising for Wipro and yes, corporate-planted stories of this sort are increasing these days.
Economics at work (Score:4, Interesting)
stupid errors? (Score:2, Insightful)
Uninformed errors, maybe. Or blatant, significant, major errors. Whatever. But why stupid? Do you really need to be arrogant and insulting? Yet another "1337" syndrom, I guess. Sigh...
Repeat after me 50 times, I'll put it in a language you can understand
Knowledge!=Intelligence
Ignorance!=Stupidity
Old story: remember Ed Yourdon? (Score:2)
SPREAD THE WORD, DON'T MAJOR IN CS, JOBS - INDIA (Score:2, Funny)
Can Anyone Point To Any Success With This? (Score:2)
I've been watching companies outsource to India and elsewhere for years. Every single episode has been a flaming catastrophe, yielding unusable product and hideous code.
The funniest instance was when a friend's team at Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) outsourced to India -- outsourcee outsourcing to an outsourcee, 2 layers of bad abstraction Total mess, complete garbage delivered, even by Anderson's standards it had to be rewritten.
The problem is not, I think, that people overseas are dumber than people in the US. The problem is that outsourcing is bad, for many reasons, including differences in motivation between outsourcer and outsourcee, and loss of control. Overseas outsourcing can mean an astonishing lack of control, and a long, long link between the ultimate customers and the coders, which invites mayhem.
Comparing to Japan (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, apply that model to India. What we'll see is a mad rush where everyone tries to save money by outsourcing projects to India. The US companies will see huge savings (I disagree, but that's a different argument) and the Indians will see huge profits (again taking the exchange rate into consideration). However as the Indian rupee gains in value, the economic attraction of other countries to outsource to India will fall.
Hence, the economy is constantly balancing itself.
This lesson brought to you by Travis
Finally (Score:2)
No more latte sipping, all black wearing "consultants" pulling in $300/hour. And never again for that matter. The profits shall now go back to the shareholders and executives where they belong!
Now all we have to do is repeat the process for the BioTech industry and enjoy the next boom it will bring us! Then we get to watch as THOSE jobs are exported to Indians who played with chemistry sets all day after school while they were growing up.
After the BioTech Boom/Bust cycle there will be a prolonged global recession that will only be ended when the world's final Boom/Bust scenario begins, the Second Space Race.
USCM (freaking out) "That's IT, man, Game OVER!" (Score:2)
Here is what I think is going to happen:
First, the outsourcing trend is going to worsen. Corporate America is going to increasingly ship its IT work overseas to companies like Wipro. Mostly this is because corporate America is greedy, short-sighted, and fairly stupid, and has absolutely no problem with skewering the economy and destroying the middle class if they can squeeze a little more profit out of the system in the short term. India, which seems fairly pragmatic and which wants to improve its position, will capitalize on this and take all the work given it. This doesn't make India evil; the SITUATION is pretty rotten for the US though.
The result of this is that the U.S. IT industry is going to be gutted. As companies discover that outsourcing works, they'll outsource other jobs as well, including that of the managers who fired all the IT staff. Why have IT staff in India and not managers? Move everyone offshore except the executive, sales, and client-service staff. Hell, even some of those can go -- India is already the site of several call centers.
As a result of this trend, which will accelerate over time, the only jobs available in the US that pay well will be for executives and support staff. The only corporate IT that's going to be done in the US is going to be low-level tech support (for the executives) and some consulting (for network setup at a new location, etc). The consulting will mostly be done by -- you guessed it -- Indian representiatives of consulting firms. There may be a few Americans left, who suck it up and take the low salaries. Who knows?
There will still be a middle class, it'll just be a lot smaller. They'll be people who do things that you just can't outsource. Mechanics. Plumbers. Electricians and carpenters. Cops and Firemen. They'll be local, and they'll serve their communities. Computer repairmen might make a living doing house calls. You might be able to make some money setting up home networks and such. Government will still be strong, and lots of programmers (and a whole variety of other white-collar workers) will work at the county, state, or federal level. And, of course there's always academia, if you can stand all the backstabbing and infighting. The middle class will get a lot smaller, but it'll still be there.
The majority of people will be working class, either in retail or some sort of support function, like security or building maintenance. The economy will shrink, possibly a lot, and prices will fall because of this. Some communities will be hit harder than others.
I don't think it'll be a total disaster, it'll just be a change. Local economies will be more visible, people will be more connected to their community as a result (because jobs won't be for companies anymore, but local businesses).
I'm still not sure how I feel about all this, but I'm pretty sure this is what's going to happen. As for me, I'm staying in government, and I'm going to try and build some kind of side business doing consulting for regular joes and small businesses. Local, small, and comfortable. No worry about outsourcing there...
Just my $.02...
Re:USCM (freaking out) "That's IT, man, Game OVER! (Score:2)
I've just thought of one more thing: some sectors which might have trouble outsourcing could be the utilities, telephone and cable companies, regional ISPs, etc... So a clever IT professional might be able to find good work in such an industry. Actually, a range of jobs will probably survive in all sectors like this. So that's cool too.
It might not work out all that badly for us overall... It won't be the Great Depression again, maybe just depressing.
Interesting note: the article mentioned that as education becomes more widespread in India and conditions there improve, companies like Wipro will probably end up outsourcing to even less expensive countries like Thailand because wages in India won't be cheap anymore! How's that for irony? Work for American companies will be handled by Indian companies which contract out to, say, Cambodian companies (which may in turn subcontract elsewhere). Amazing.
According to this article..... (Score:2)
That means they are high quality developers at bargain prices. Not just dollar an hour coders who don't know what they are doing.
Does anyone have a clue as to how American or other Western programmers are supposed to compete with this?
Re:lol... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll take the bait posed by your cultural ignorance.
In India, the concept of a nuclear family hsan't taken hold among the masses.
Why ?
1) A billion people in that much land.
2) Taking care of elders is a vital edict of the culture. You don't send them off to "elderly nursing homes."
3) Just because he lives them with them doesn't mean he's financially dependent on them. Likely the other way around.
Re:Not too comprehensive (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Not too comprehensive (Score:2, Offtopic)
You misspelled Fred Brooks [yourdon.com].
Although I do think that Mel Brooks [imdb.com] could do something fun with the topic...
Quality on the Cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
[blockquote]Six years ago, Fast Company proled a team at Lockheed-Martin that wrote nearly perfect code ( "They Write the Right Stuff," Dec : Jan 1997 ). The team's claim to fame: It was one of only four outts in the world to achieve Level 5 certication from the Software Engineering Institute. Wipro has Level 5 certication in three different categories. It's eye-glazing stuff, but an amazing achievement.
Such accomplishments conrmed that Wipro's developers weren't just cheap: They were cheap and very, very good. [/quality]
Trust me, these folks are VERY concerned about their careers and their industry. They are also very concerned about quality.
Which is why we should be worried. It's why we should strive to produce better code and strive to do it quicker. It's why we should stop reading Slashdot so much and work more.
Outfits like this are not fly by night charlies that churn out crap, they are some of the best in the world. We (software professionals) will either step up to the plate and hit a home run and prove our worth or we will get run over like textiles and electronic manufacturing.
Re:Quality on the Cheap (Score:3, Insightful)
Consulting firms (I used to work for one) have a technique called the bait-and-switch. Here's how it works. You send a team packed with your most experienced technologists and best-dressed MBAs to do the pitch. It's never actually written down anywhere, but you try to convince the mark that these are the people that will be working for them. Then once the deal is signed, you send in a bunch of 22-year-olds on their first real project to do the work, in fact to learn how to do the work, on the mark's dime.
That's how it is here. Do you seriously think everyone of Wipro's 15,000 developers is as good as the shuttle team, who are no more than a few dozen, handpicked and rigorously trained? No... the CMM5 types will be wheeled out for pitches and soundbites, then quickly shuttled off to the next prospective client.
Re:Quality on the Cheap (Score:2)
Wipro may be. I have been hired to review three Indian outsourcing efforts; they produced garbage. My sample size is small, and I'm sure there are good Indian outsourcing companies. But there sure are bad ones.
Which is why we should be worried. It's why we should strive to produce better code and strive to do it quicker.
For those actually serious about this, consider trying the practice of Test-Driven Development. The basic notion is that you write a few lines of test code, and then write the production code that makes it pass. Then do that over and over again, running your whole test suite regularly.
This improves quality immensely. That's not just because you get a test suite with 100% coverage. It also forces you to design things more simply and carefully, resulting in much better design.
In my experience, it takes no longer than regular development, as you cut out a lot of debugging time. And you end up with a comprehensive test suite for free.
Re:Quality on the Cheap (Score:2)
WHY CAN'T YOU PEOPLE REMEMBER THAT?!
CMM has nothing to do with code quality and everything to do with process maturity and improvement.
Re:Not too comprehensive (Score:2)
Also worth pointing out is that there are high tech applications which will never be outsourced: Government ones.
Of course, there's the "National Security" projects which can't be outsourced (that would be about the only way to make Total Information Awareness [darpa.mil] look worse); and most high-tech research projects at NASA, etc. (even if they work with Universities) are secured. In fact, few IT contracts the Fed authors will allow foreign nationals (H1B or no) to work on them).
Re:Not too comprehensive (Score:2, Insightful)
So they said when Jpaneese started importing cars , and then when samsung shipped hard disks and
Essentially there is nothing stopping indians or anybody else from doing quality work.
Classic xenophobic argument (Score:2)
Classic xenophobia cannot deflect the brutal truth: foreign companies are producing equal quality for less cost.
Re:Not too comprehensive (Score:2)
Uh... That's Fred Brooks. He's the technological genius.
As for Mel, his forte was business genius, as anyone who watched "The Producers" or saw the monster "dog and pony show" in "Young Frankenstein" well knows.
Wipro Has a Reputation for Quality (Score:2)
Over the past few decades, the life insurance business has lost nearly 10% of its companies and 3% of its headcount each year on account of corporate mergers, acquisitions, and consolidations. But the potential gains from technology and consolidation are harder to obtain now, so the headcount reduction will now be jobs shipped overseas, including software jobs. Most of the headcount for US insurance company 'home office' (ie neither sales nor claims work in the field) jobs will be offshore in about 10-15 years.
Re:What about code auditing (Score:2)
Just how partonising and ill-informed can you get! Just because it's not from the US doesn't make it 'a fly-by-night software house'. There are plenty of US companies that fit this image. Credit where it's due; Indian companies are capable of churning out excellent software & guess what - they can even peer-audit and maintain it themselves! Who'd a thunk, eh?
That's why they have so many SEI Level 5 compliant organisations. Take a look at this [cmu.edu] report & count the Indian companies (and, hey, this was compiled in 1999. What's it like now??). Oh, look - Wipro is on the list. Surpriiise!
Re:What about code auditing (Score:2)
Ewwwww... let's not confuse the two, pleeeez.
An architect (a real one) is light years ahead of what even the best analyst can do.
Re:Why are US IT workers considered slackers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why are US IT workers considered slackers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Having a job is better than not having one. Someday when your social programs are bankrupted due to not enough people having jobs that can create a sustainable tax-base you Europeans will learn that.
Re:Coding with UML (Score:2)
I love double-speak (Score:2)
That's the #1 weasle-phrase in the world. It doesn't mean anything. Its inherently dishonest. What is "value"? Value is time, leisure, well-being, a feeling that you're doing well for the community...
No! Value in this context means "money".
I'd rather people be honest and say "we're trying to make money for the owners of the company, and everything else is secondary".
Re:Slightly Offtopic (Score:2)