OT- interesting article in the NY Times

java-programmer, OT- interesting article in the NY Times New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/26/opinion/26HERB.html
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January 26, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Education Is No Protection
By BOB HERBERT

The conference was held discreetly in the Westin New York hotel in
Times Square last week, and by most accounts it was a great success.

The main objections came from a handful of protesters who stood
outside in a brutally cold wind waving signs that said things
like "Stop Sending Jobs Overseas" and "Put America Back to Work." No
one paid them much attention.

The conference was titled "Offshore Outsourcing: Making the Journey
Work for Your Corporation." Its goal was to bring executives up to
speed on the hot new thing in corporate America, the shipment of
higher-paying white-collar jobs to countries with eager, well-
educated and much lower-paid workers.

"We basically help companies figure out how to offshore I.T.
[information technology] and B.P. [business process functions]," said
Atul Vashistha, the chief executive of NeoIT, a California consulting
firm that co-hosted the conference.

Several big-name corporations had representatives at the conference,
including Procter & Gamble, Motorola, Cisco Systems and Gateway.

Because the outsourcing of white-collar jobs is so controversial and
politically charged (especially in a presidential election year),
there was a marked reluctance among many of the participants to speak
publicly about it. But Mr. Vashistha showed no reluctance. He was
quick to proselytize.

"These companies understand very clearly that this is a very painful
process for their employees and for American jobs in the short term,"
he said. "But they also recognize that if they don't do this, they
will lose more jobs in the future and they won't have an ability to
grow in the future."

He said his firm had helped clients ship about a billion dollars'
worth of projects offshore last year.

Noting that he is an American citizen who was born in India, Mr.
Vashistha said he is convinced that outsourcing will prove to be a
long-term boon to the U.S. economy as well as the economies of the
countries acquiring the exported jobs.

Whether it becomes a boon to the U.S. economy or not, the trend
toward upscale outsourcing is a fact, and it is accelerating. In an
important interview with The San Jose Mercury News last month, the
chief executive of Intel, Craig Barrett, talked about the integration
of India, China and Russia ?with a combined population approaching
three billion ?into the world's economic infrastructure.

"I don't think this has been fully understood by the United States,"
said Mr. Barrett. "If you look at India, China and Russia, they all
have strong education heritages. Even if you discount 90 percent of
the people there as uneducated farmers, you still end up with about
300 million people who are educated. That's bigger than the U.S. work
force."

He said: "The big change today from what's happened over the last 30
years is that it's no longer just low-cost labor that you are looking
at. It's well-educated labor that can do effectively any job that can
be done in the United States."

In Mr. Barrett's view, "Unless you are a plumber, or perhaps a
newspaper reporter, or one of these jobs which is geographically
situated, you can be anywhere in the world and do just about any job."

You want a national security issue? Trust me, this threat to the long-
term U.S. economy is a big one. Why it's not a thunderous issue in
the presidential campaign is beyond me.

Intel has its headquarters in Silicon Valley. A Mercury News
interviewer asked Mr. Barrett what the Valley will look like in three
years. Mr. Barrett said the prospects for job growth were not
good. "Companies can still form in Silicon Valley and be competitive
around the world," he said. "It's just that they are not going to
create jobs in Silicon Valley."

He was then asked, "Aren't we talking about an entire generation of
lowered expectations in the United States for what an individual
entering the job market will be facing?"

"It's tough to come to another conclusion than that," said Mr.
Barrett. "If you see this increased competition for jobs, the
immediate response to competition is lower prices and that's lower
wage rates."

We can grapple with this problem now, and try to develop workable
solutions. Or we can ignore this fire in the basement of the national
economy until it rages out of our control.

E-mail: email***@***.com

java-programmer >> OT- interesting article in the NY Times some years ago a big name in the computer world, Ed Yourdon, wrote a
book "the decline and fall of the american programmer." Part of his
reasoning for this decline and fall was and will be outsourcing.

A few years after that Mr. Yourdon wrote another book "the rise and
resurrection of the american programmer." In it he basically said he was
wrong in his first book. Wrong in part because outsourcing doesn't work.
The big problem is the language barrier. Communicating needs,
requirements, functioning w/in a programming team... when all or part of
that programming team cannot speak and write english sufficiently well,
outsourcing is all of a sudden a problem.

Sol wrote:
> New York Times
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/26/opinion/26HERB.html
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
>
> January 26, 2004
> OP-ED COLUMNIST
> Education Is No Protection
> By BOB HERBERT
>
> The conference was held discreetly in the Westin New York hotel in
> Times Square last week, and by most accounts it was a great success.
>
> The main objections came from a handful of protesters who stood
> outside in a brutally cold wind waving signs that said things
> like "Stop Sending Jobs Overseas" and "Put America Back to Work." No
> one paid them much attention.
>
> The conference was titled "Offshore Outsourcing: Making the Journey
> Work for Your Corporation." Its goal was to bring executives up to
> speed on the hot new thing in corporate America, the shipment of
> higher-paying white-collar jobs to countries with eager, well-
> educated and much lower-paid workers.
>
> "We basically help companies figure out how to offshore I.T.
> [information technology] and B.P. [business process functions]," said
> Atul Vashistha, the chief executive of NeoIT, a California consulting
> firm that co-hosted the conference.
>
> Several big-name corporations had representatives at the conference,
> including Procter & Gamble, Motorola, Cisco Systems and Gateway.
>
> Because the outsourcing of white-collar jobs is so controversial and
> politically charged (especially in a presidential election year),
> there was a marked reluctance among many of the participants to speak
> publicly about it. But Mr. Vashistha showed no reluctance. He was
> quick to proselytize.
>
> "These companies understand very clearly that this is a very painful
> process for their employees and for American jobs in the short term,"
> he said. "But they also recognize that if they don't do this, they
> will lose more jobs in the future and they won't have an ability to
> grow in the future."
>
> He said his firm had helped clients ship about a billion dollars'
> worth of projects offshore last year.
>
> Noting that he is an American citizen who was born in India, Mr.
> Vashistha said he is convinced that outsourcing will prove to be a
> long-term boon to the U.S. economy as well as the economies of the
> countries acquiring the exported jobs.
>
> Whether it becomes a boon to the U.S. economy or not, the trend
> toward upscale outsourcing is a fact, and it is accelerating. In an
> important interview with The San Jose Mercury News last month, the
> chief executive of Intel, Craig Barrett, talked about the integration
> of India, China and Russia ?with a combined population approaching
> three billion ?into the world's economic infrastructure.
>
> "I don't think this has been fully understood by the United States,"
> said Mr. Barrett. "If you look at India, China and Russia, they all
> have strong education heritages. Even if you discount 90 percent of
> the people there as uneducated farmers, you still end up with about
> 300 million people who are educated. That's bigger than the U.S. work
> force."
>
> He said: "The big change today from what's happened over the last 30
> years is that it's no longer just low-cost labor that you are looking
> at. It's well-educated labor that can do effectively any job that can
> be done in the United States."
>
> In Mr. Barrett's view, "Unless you are a plumber, or perhaps a
> newspaper reporter, or one of these jobs which is geographically
> situated, you can be anywhere in the world and do just about any job."
>
> You want a national security issue? Trust me, this threat to the long-
> term U.S. economy is a big one. Why it's not a thunderous issue in
> the presidential campaign is beyond me.
>
> Intel has its headquarters in Silicon Valley. A Mercury News
> interviewer asked Mr. Barrett what the Valley will look like in three
> years. Mr. Barrett said the prospects for job growth were not
> good. "Companies can still form in Silicon Valley and be competitive
> around the world," he said. "It's just that they are not going to
> create jobs in Silicon Valley."
>
> He was then asked, "Aren't we talking about an entire generation of
> lowered expectations in the United States for what an individual
> entering the job market will be facing?"
>
> "It's tough to come to another conclusion than that," said Mr.
> Barrett. "If you see this increased competition for jobs, the
> immediate response to competition is lower prices and that's lower
> wage rates."
>
> We can grapple with this problem now, and try to develop workable
> solutions. Or we can ignore this fire in the basement of the national
> economy until it rages out of our control.
>
>
> E-mail: email***@***.com