Open Source Globalization? 76
Carl Rosenberger asks: "In this article at IT Managers Journal [which is another part of OSTG, Slashdot's parent publishing company], db4objects CEO Christof Wittig speculates about the future effect of open source globalization on organizations and individuals. According to his opinion 'Engineers like globalization', although it may mean tougher worldwide competition for jobs. What is the opinion of Slashdot readers on this article? Is open source globalization going to happen? Will it make our jobs better or worse?" As the referenced article puts it, open source globalization is the ability to hire programmers from all over the globe to collaborate together on a single project with low overhead. Heck if it works for open source projects, why not for corporate software? Do you see the corporations you are familiar with embracing or fighting this concept?
Who cares ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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explain to me again what is good about driving wages and working conditions down to third world levels.
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You are mixing globalization and imigration here. We are not talking about moving workers to local markets, but moving jobs to other places. Amount of workers isn't rising in 3rd world countries, amount of work is. When there isn't enough skilled people in 3rd world countries to meet the needs of globalizatiolized jobs, companies have to start fighting fot the best. And I'm not talking about Guantamo like coding camps
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This is exactly the problem. In a globalized market, jobs can get up and move anywhere in the world at essentially no cost, but employees are still restricted by the high costs and difficulty of relocating themselves. This gives employers a tremendous upper hand, and reduces job-security to almost 0.
In 1997, Billy worked as a programmer in Austin, Texas. He worked for a local company, and they paid him enough t
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(1) Workers in the west are already benefiting from the low costs of imported products, and there is still room for prices to fall in many areas. Wage adjustments in the west are simply lagging behind adjustments to consumer prices. This doesn't mean that falling product costs are unconnected with changing job stability. You can't have one without the other.
(2) The factors which make American employees uncompetitive wage-wise ar
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I also agree that for the most part, globalization harms workers in poorer countries more than it harms those in developed countries. This is Slashdot, though, so I figure people ar
low wages (Score:2)
I also agree that for the most part, globalization harms workers in poorer countries more than it harms those in developed countries.
Not quite, globalization helps poorer countries. Take a look at either China or India. The income of average workers is much higher in both countries now than they were even just 5 years ago.
In 1997, Billy worked as a programmer in Austin, Texas. He worked for a local company, and they paid him enough to survive relatively comfortably in Austin. In 2006, the company rea
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Maybe the term was confusing, but when I was talking about diverse local markets, I wasn't talking about "a bunch of diverse companies within a region", I was referring to how the many different regions in the world have different economic conditions and needs, and are therefore "diverse". The point was that if one region has a lower cost of living, companies will gravitate there, however the moment another region
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the more diverse a local market is the less businesses can play one region against another
Maybe the term was confusing, but when I was talking about diverse local markets, I wasn't talking about "a bunch of diverse companies within a region", I was referring to how the many different regions in the world have different economic conditions and needs, and are therefore "diverse". The point was that if one region has a lower cost of living, companies will gravitate there, however the moment another region
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A company may not have to be concerned with whether it's workers can afford the product or service but they still had to be concerned about whether any anywhere can afford them.
This really is the position of many "pro-business" globalization advocates. They believe that even though irresponsible and exploitive behavior in poor countries doesn't affect their customers or their bottom line, companies will refrain from
faith in business (Score:2)
If you choose to put faith in the wisdom of giant organizations whose sole objective is profit-making to preserve a reasonable society, I guess that's your call. But to me, that's just as naive as trusting a power-hungry government to do the same.
I don't put my faith in anything, I don't have any faith, not even religious faith. The closest I get is in science, however science requires verification of results and peer reviews. Sceince can be and is constantly tested. So it's not real faith, it doesn't
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Wages will rise in whichever, currently, 'Third World' country the jobs move to until such time as another region has the combination of a skilled population and low standard (and therefore cost) of living who can be employed for less. At that point the jobs will move on again and the cycle starts over. Eventually the, currently,. 'First World' countries will be the new 'Third World'. In all likelyhood the rate of job migration will increase and the period of time jobs spend in one particular location wi
job migration (Score:2)
Wages will rise in whichever, currently, 'Third World' country the jobs move to until such time as another region has the combination of a skilled population and low standard (and therefore cost) of living who can be employed for less. At that point the jobs will move on again and the cycle starts over.
That's what Mexico found out. NAFTA created some jobs in Mexico at first because of lower employment costs, but then they saw jobs outsourced to China with even lower employment costs.
Falcon
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It gores both ways (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, the wages are low compared to here. Sure, the employment standards are lower. But change does not happen overnight - the amount of improvements seen over the last 25 years are more than were seen in the first 50 years of the industrial revolution in the first world.
Eventually, what will happen is the wages and employment standards of the entire world will meet somewhere in the middle. Then, they will only go up, as competition for skilled labour drives them that way.
You have to think long term - like on the 50-100 year scale.
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You have to think long term - like on the 50-100 year scale."
That still doesn't make the transition period for those who lost their jobs, or just wasted years in college into a (now) lower wage field with massive 1st world debt any easier.
And I doubt the world will really meet in the middle, corporations
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In the best case (50 years), I hopefully won't be working. But if I'm working low-paying jobs because the ones that I studied for are movi
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Me, I don't really care about how much I make as long as I can do what I love and have enough to live on.
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A lot of people mention that you can just move if you can't afford to live where you currently are, but that costs money. It's hard to get up in move when you've got debts accrued and you're jus
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In the appropriate world, we all are properly educated to higher levels. Our dirty or repetitive jobs get shipped to the third world and we get better jobs. 200 year ago we were selling agrarian and textile goods to the world. We industrialized and made better products. 100 years ago we were selling manufactured goods to the world.
And today? Our current account deficit grows every day. Instead of coming up with new products and ideas, we buy them from Japan, Ch
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US Trade Deficit will never die (Score:2)
What they buy is US stuff made in factories abroad.
That means no matter how much East India's or Africa's income rises, it will never create a rise in any jobs in the US - not until our wages are rock bottom - in which case even US citizens will be unable to buy much.
I for one do not support making everyone else rich while my country's working class withers at the vine of globalism.
outsourcing (Score:2)
explain to me again what is good about driving wages and working conditions down to third world levels.
Some domestic wages may go down but third world wages go up, they then are able to spend more there which has a positive effect on their local economy which further improves because others will benefit as well. The trick is knowing what fields are good to be in, that won't get outsourced, or what domestic jobs will be created.
FalconRe: (Score:1)
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You get what you pay for?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
They got into a bind, their developer didn't know what he should know (or, rather, needed to know for this project, possibly not his fault) and ended up contacting me. First wanting my help/advise for free, because, well, the website is based on an open source project I participate in. At first a few questions here or there is fine, but after a while, finding out it's a for-profit venture, enough is enough. I balked at the continued "free help".
First they complained they're only making $10/hr. Later, they begrudgingly offered me half my going rate. Again, I baulked. Eventually they antied up the full rate, and I worked with them till they had a hardware disaster and gave up.
Moral of the story? Globalization of IT is difficult; The language barriers and the difference in time-zones can be frustrating and complex. The difference in pay can be astounding.
However, Globalization rather scares me more then not. Looking at what happened to me, the company seemingly purposefully went out and hired a developer, in Africa, just to save money so they didn't have to pay an American, who'd require more pay. My only saving grace was that this developer they hired didn't know as much as me (and especially didn't know as much related to the open source project's code they were using).
But one day, he may (or will)! Then what? Any US company can hire him, at a far lower wage then what I require (to feed/cloth my family as they currently are, etc etc). Where does that leave me? Scrambling for a job/career that has steady employment from which I can sustain this lifestyle.
I don't relate this experience to complain about the un-named company that hired me, nor the across the globe developer. I bring this up to tell my story of a project which was global in nature and which, after experiencing it, leaves me skeptical regarding IT's future in higher cost of living countries.
Re:You get what you pay for?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
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What this means is that all (say) DBAs with a certain level of proficiency, all over the world, are worth the same. This may seem neat and clean, but it's actually a real problem. Although multinational corps may see the world as one big market, the world is not a vast homogenous pool of workers/consumers. There are many differences between regions, both econonic and cultural, that restrict who can work where, and for how much.
If, fo
Re:You get what you pay for?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are exceptions, I understand that.
But my company outsources some of it's programming work to India, and it's been nothing but headaches on anything larger than a simple script. It's gotten to the point that, like you saw, they ask me for help on their problems instead of trying to figure them out on their own.
I have to wonder, though... Did they REALLY have a 'hardware crash', or did they realize they had spent more on the project than they had earned, and saw no way to fix it? It's not that they are stupid, it's just that they try to do jobs they aren't qualified for because the pay is so good. The same thing happens here in the US, but the market is fairly stable, and they don't last long. IT is booming overseas, and there's many more jobs than qualified people to fill them.
I see this getting worse before it gets better.
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I completely agree. Right now the situation in India is that the companies are almost hiring anyone that can read and write as 'programmers' because a lot of work is being outsourced to them. Although what you are being paid is quite low even by Indian standards(somewhere around Rs 200,000 i.e around $4.5K a year). I don't see how long can this continue, these people aren't magically going to turn super intelligent and
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Actually, no, I didn't. I'm skeptical about the future of IT labor in countries which are established and have a much higher cost of living. When a US company can hire someone (with equivalent skills, knowledge, experience) across the globe at half my rate, and they can only do this because this person's cost of living isn't even half that of mine, that scares me.
you get someone that doesn't know what they are doing and needs to be helped constantly. The same
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Can they really, though? Reliably? I mean, it's -possible- to hire someone like that here in the US. It just isn't likely. I think the same is true there. For a while, the US managed to underpay overseas people for their work. They have now 'advertised' themselves by allowing th
Re:You get what you pay for?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any US company can hire him, at a far lower wage then what I require
I must admit, I see this attitude so often here on Slashdot, sometimes it really astounds me. I live in France, where we also have problems with this kind of attitude.
What do you do when no companies will hire you at a price you find reasonable??? There are a couple of options:
Really, people, globalization is not the end of the world. Not only that, but people in open source are poised to reap the greatest advantages of globalization. People living in lesser economies simply can't afford the prices of proprietary software from G8 countries. This leaves them with three options: 1) Build it themselves, 2) Pirate it, 3) Open Source.
This means more users, more coders, and eventually, more money . It's quite simple, folks. If you wanna give out free advice, that's your choice, but until localized support is in place, it's up to them to learn from the source, at your rates.
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There's no attitude in what I wrote - it was a statement of fact. His cost of living is far lower then mine.
Whine and complain on Slashdot
I'd say you're the one whining.
Do something about it: Move, Start your own company
Yes, both of those are doable, for most people. For me, moving isn't an option (kids, schools, sick parent). But I did do your 2nd suggestion there, a few years ago. It's of that where my story originates.
but until localized support is in place, it's up to them to learn
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Usually what happens when people learn skill to do their job, their market value increases. They get more work that they can handle with their original rate. Usually smart people understand that t
You're an idiot (Score:2)
Every single last person working for IT's corporate America today - from the programmer to the CEO - can be outsourced and replaced by lower paid counterparts.
Every
single
last
person.
Then America will no longer have an IT workforce and our skillset will descend into 3rd world status.
That is, if we follow your advice.
Hugely simplified overview (Score:2)
Globalisation can be a good or a bad thing - if you can hire from anywhere in the world, then everywhere in the world is competing for the same jobs.
Initially, thanks to the vast disparity in economies, engineers from the developing world can generally undercut their western equivalents. However, thanks to shared cultural values, better education, easier communication and easier contact/oversight western (well, in-country) engineers can generally offer better service and/or solutio
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We had/have a team of engineers working in India on WAS CE and many of them also contributed to Apache Geronimo. I don't remember a situation that was caused by a
Please don't feel sorry for yourself (Score:2)
So today we, educated people, buy Chinese made affordable clothes, gadgets and doodads at very low prices, and we have an incredibly high standard of living as a result: our income buys us far more luxury than
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Cooperation more than competition (Score:1)
People always compete with each other individually and in teams. What the global open source movement does is expand opportunity. Lowering barriers to entry is key to being able to quickly and effectively set up teams large and skilled enough to take on genuinely challenging objectives. There is a vast supply of business opportunities even if one restricts possible domains arbitrarily, for example to focus on humanitarian crises.
This is a case where slicing the pie differently causes it to grow, thereb
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Re:This guy seems to make several unreal assumptio (Score:1)
"the leading open source object database db4o"
db4o is the database which the least amount of people have heard of. We lead in small market share!
It's great to lead and I love it when engineers try marketing
Globalization in IT is the 'better' Globalization (Score:2)
It's like I said earlier this year: I wouldn't panic to much. Globalisation is allmost once aro
not why open source works... (Score:2)
While I'm sure most of these people would love to get paid to do what they do for free, there are a lot of bad coders out there who just code for the money. (Yes, I'm sure there are also good programmers who just code for money as well but that's not my point.)
Now third world countries will be d
What about immigration? (Score:2, Insightful)
Three letters. (Score:2)
I
B
M
I think you just described about a third their corporate vision.
Opposites (Score:1)
Open Source is just a path to Free Software (libre).
Like major shifts in science, this will be generational. Expect it to take a couple of lifetimes.
Globalization - Short Term Pain, Long Term Gain (Score:3, Insightful)
However, there are problems that I think people are only now beginning to see. For a start in India in general now that a small percentage of the populous has suddenly become relatively well paid, the cost of items in the economy is going up. This either forces the majority of the population to get increases in pay relative to the increasing cost or they run the risk of destroying the economy of their own country. Increase in wealth must be managed or it risks the entire economy. India is starting to learn this.
Now, so long as it's all managed properly then India will be bought up to the level of the US in terms of quality of life, cost of living and so forth (well, maybe a little lower), then their jobs will all be offshored to some other country and so the cycle begins again. Over time this will have a generally levelling effect and will result in a world that is better placed to actually improve the lives of those living on the Earth rather than in-fighting and bickering. This is generally a good thing.
The utopia envisioned by science fiction writers for years will not come about without a great deal of pain. There's going to be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the economies of the first world countries will crumble. The high-horse that the West has ridden for centuries has finally run itself out, and we're all going to feel the pinch.
There are ways to make sure you survive through this; be flexible. Be ready to work where and doing whatever it takes to make ends meet and support your own families. Don't get too attached to the "everything on credit" lifestyle to which we in the West have become accustomed, that lifestyle is going to end in a huge and extremely ugly crash. The foundation of this crash was founded in the early 1970's when the dollar value was seperated from gold. Then with the additional weight of the effect of networking and decentralization on top of that it will lead to a complete crash of our lifestyle. I don't know if it will happen in our lifetimes, but I really believe it will happen.
We're in a new market now where our jobs can be done anywhere. This is going to lead to a short term situation where jobs will migrate away from the West. We can't prevent it. We can complain about it, and we can whine about it but the best we're going to do is delay it and in doing so make the crash that much worse when it comes.
Yes, I've been hit by globalization myself but even I have to realize that the future is going to change radically. Many are going to hate it, I don't claim to like the short term picture myself... but I have to accept it. In fact, as one of the drivers in the dot-com boom and the decentralization projects of large companies I also have to claim a certain amount of responsibility. Many of us on Slash do. We wanted this brave new world where the Internet made things possible like improving the lot of others in the world. Well, now our visions are becoming a reality... but the utopian vision we had has a down side that we're all feeling.
Get used to it, or complain about it... but we can't prevent it. Not now. Not ever.
Consulting (Score:2)
Engineers do NOT like globalization (Score:1)
Ohhhhh. He meant programmers like globalization. Yeah. Thats different. I guess it's possible.
I'll say it so you don't have to: (Score:1)
Open Source is better for the world-at-large. Make no mistake about it. The world-at-large is more productive for getting software for free. They can spend the money they would have spent on software on other things.
But how could you think that this is better for *programmers*? I *always* ask this of my fellow IT professionals and they *always* respond w
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In many cases, software and programmers are complements, not substitutes. What would the demand for web developers be if Apache and PHP cost $1000 per server?
How "open source" benefits me... (Score:2)
Altruism..... really? (Score:2)