Donald Sensing links to a post on CalPundit in which a commenter writes:
But in this same vein, I have friends in the Silicon Valley -- highly-trained computer programmers -- who've been unemployed for two years. The San Jose Mercury News Sunday employment insert I saw a month ago was a mere 6 or so pages ... mostly filled with ads for health care workers (nurses, yes, but also LOTS of low-paid CNAs and the like). There were essentially NO ads for high-tech workers. Everybody says, "Well, it's cyclical, it'll come back." But my friends are all pretty nervous right now, knowing as they do that India is cranking out programmers -- GREAT programmers -- like bottle caps ... and they can, ALL of them, as easily work from Bangladore as from Scotts Valley. And that, of course, is precisely what's happening: companies are beginning to hire their software needs from subcontractors in India, or opening their own offices there.This is a common misconception. I have no doubt that computer programmers in Silicon Valley are having problems finding work -- the dot-com boom is gone, and there are probably far too many programmers in that region for the remaining tech companies to support. However, almost every anecdote I've heard about outsourced, foreign programmers has been negative.
Far from being "GREAT" programmers, most of the code that I've seen come back from Indian chop-shops and the like has been rather mediocre. Even worse, the management of the Indian outsorucing companies is generally considered to be spectacularly poor -- even corrupt -- and it can be a nightmare trying to communicate technical ideas and problems with non-technical, non-native English speakers located half-way around the world.
Here's a thread on Fog Creek's forum that tells a similar story. This is not to say that non-American programmers are each individually poor, but the good ones usually move to America where the pay is higher. The costs of organization and the logistics of distant communication often end up outweighing whatever money is saved by hiring cheap labor.
Furthermore, it's important to consider what type of technical work you're talking about. If you're interested in dealing with the federal government in any significant capacity, you're pretty much going to have to be US-based for security reasons. This means that Microsoft, for instance, couldn't outsource much work to foreign companies, even if they wanted to.
There's no doubt that foreign programmers are competition for programmers in America, but they fill a specific niche in the market. Just as some manufacturing has moved out of the country, some services will move out of the country as well. As that happens, American wages will drop, and more jobs will be retained. It's the nature of the world, and Americans are always on the cutting edge. Keep ahead of the technology curve and you won't have problems finding work.
But if you're an unemployed computer programmer, I'd bail out of Silicon Valley ASAP.
My experiences with foreign programming shops have been uniformly and dramatically negative. But I expected it; management above my head overrode my recommendations in engaging those shops. They'd fallen prey to the fatuous notion that a programmer is a programmer is a programmer -- identical cogs that can be interchanged without consequences.
Eventually, managements will realize that what a programmer sells for his salary is not expertise in some trivial computer language -- they're all trivial, really -- but rather domain knowledge about some application area and the ability to translate that knowledge into:
1. designs derived from the domain's requirements that he can explain coherently to the customer (and modify from customer input);
2. programs that instantiate his domain knowledge in a fashion compatible with the existing practices prevailing in the customer's application area;
3. instruction of the customer's personnel in how to use his programs to their advantage.
Clearly, intimacy with the customer and facility in communicating with him far outweigh all other considerations. Managements that fail to understand this will pursue an elusive savings in programmer labor costs to their destruction.
I'm only tangentally a programmer, working on databases and the like. I'm in the middle of a job hunt presently and since I do know Visual Basic have looked at opportunities there. Truth be told, I really haven't noticed much of a decline in that area as compared to IT support (where I'm also looking and which can't be farmed out to India). Truth be told, they all stink right now and are all suffering a serious downturn.
Also, this: "Keep ahead of the technology curve and you won't have problems finding work." is exactly why I plan to get out of the IT sector :).
Hello folks,
I posted the original comment at Calpundit, so I suppose it's appropriate to weigh in here a bit.
We're talking trends here, not full-blown reality yet. India and other countries have loads of programmers who are thoroughly incompetent, and a lot of shops are being set up by subcontractors -- middle of the night sorts of things -- that pose little threat to any American programming jobs. All agreed, and I'm sorry if I implied otherwise. (And, yes, whenever one is working here on government work, there is a built-in level of protection).
BUT ... I believe that Microsoft, among others, now has a campus in India. LOTS of companies do. When they set up their own over there, they can control quality. They frequently hire Indian programmers who've worked in the U.S. but wanted to return home. Such folks understand our needs, and have decent-to-excellent language fluency. (English is widely spoken in India anyhow, thanks to nearly two centuries of British imperialism. Certainly my Indian friends all seem entirely fluent).
Plus, there are several first-rate universities in India cranking out world-class programmers. (Blanking on the name of the largest and most prestigious one, but a 60 Minutes segment showed how it has entry and curriculum standards indisputably tougher than M.I.T. and Caltech). Graduates of these colleges used to ALL move to the U.S. or Europe, but not anymore. Many no longer see the need.
Sure, wages are better here. But the cost of living is far higher here, too. A programmer in India, earning anywhere from $6,000 to $18,000 a year, feels like a millionaire ... and lives pretty much like one. Western style house ... nice furniture ... new car ... full-time maid and chef ... the works! And at least one American corporation (I forget which) has built an entire contained "mini-city" attached to its campus. Within it, the standard of living is strictly western.
So ... pretend it isn't happening if you wish. Snort about the low quality of the work. Imagine that they can't get any better, that we will ALWAYS be ahead of them.
That's EXAXTLY what an entire generation of U.S. auto executives did when those tinwad wannabe auto companies -- Toyota, Datsun, Honda -- had the audacity to imagine that they could EVER compete in the U.S. market. Maybe you're not old enough to remember when a Toyota could NOT be successfully driven across America, but I do. And I KNEW some of those U.S. mid-level executives. Really, they sounded JUST LIKE YOU, back when the Big Four (GM, Ford, Chrysler, American Motors) controlled 92% of the U.S. market.
Better to learn from history than to repeat it, as they say. Japan -- with under half our population, on a piece of rock the size of California -- was the ONLY one chewing at us that way, and they were focused on only a couple of industries. Sure, we survived it. But that transition was unbelievably costly and painful. What I am warning about is that we're now facing a NUMBER of countries ... countries collectively with a HALF-DOZEN TIMES our population ... countries that are eating into not just a few select industries, but across the board into virtually ALL our industries ... and countries doing it with far fewer trade barriers than existed back when Japan made its assault on our markets.
Hang onto your certitudes, dogmas and arrogance if you want. I prefer not to. I haven't got a crystal ball, and can't tell you exactly what the future holds. But I can say that under-estimating our national competitors, and the challenges we face from them, is a pretty reliable way of ending up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop stick.
Good points, Marsman, and a lot hinges on the time scale we're talking about. 5 years, 25 years, 100 years? There are different challenges at all those ranges.
I agree that the trend is more significant than its current instantiation.
Still, if we keep on our toes and don't strangle ourselves with regulations, we can stay ahead of the pack. The brain drain from the rest of the world to America is still hugely in our favor, and we can take advantage of that for the forseeable future.
We've "outsourced" a lot of manufacturing jobs, and new jobs have taken their place. It would certain be foolish to say that these new jobs are here to stay forever -- as you point out history shows that it's not likely. But new nes jobs will arise to replace the ones that leave, probably jobs we can't even think of now.
Outsourcing from what I have heard, in several
industries, has been nothing short of a disaster.
I know companies like to trumpet their savings,
but at the same time this is amazingly short sighted. American Express is a prime example of this, they actually spent more bringing back their work to the US then the original outsourcing cost. The point of this is not that
wether outsourcing works, its the perceived savings in labor costs. This is why American firms will seek foreign workers, its not important if the projects actually succeed,
but the estimated(if not faked or cooked)
cost savings.
The good part of all of this is that if it keeps going and other industries are farmed out to India,Russia, China etc..
The tax base will just collapse and then these executives who are perpetrating this will be just as out in cold as the American workers they so blantantly disgarded. A Economic depression
does not discriminate, specifically at the executive level(or moon level..take your pick).