WA State Government Ships IT Work Offshore

[Pale_Rider]

WA State Government Ships IT Work Offshore
IBM helps spearhead state's outsourcing efforts

http://www.techsunite.org/news/techind/031216_wa_offshoring.cfm

OLYMPIA, Wash. — For 12 years, Dario Giraldo developed information technology systems for the Washington state government. Eighteen months ago the veteran programmer and software architect was laid off -- and then replaced with a less-expensive Indian programmer brought to the United States on a work visa.

"'We love them,'" Giraldo says his former manager at the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services told him. Giraldo says he even offered to cut his standard $65 an hour rate in half to get the job. He said the manager bragged he could hire the foreign workers for "almost nothing, and they work 60 hours a week" without overtime pay, and without complaints.

Faced with ever tightening IT budgets, a growing number of state agencies are scrambling either to import cheaper foreign workers or to outsource the work offshore to countries such as Canada or India. The bottom line: millions of dollars in Washington state's shrinking tax revenues are leaving the country rather than circulating within the local economy.

So while Giraldo, 50, beats the streets looking for a job, the state sends him a check for just under $500 a week in unemployment benefits.

Giraldo, a former aerospace worker who earned a computer science degree from Evergreen State College in 1989, says writing code is as much craft as it is a science. The inexpensive foreign workers may have impressive resumes, but most have logged little work experience.

"These technologies take time to master," he says. "I've seen their work—it is garbage."

[bluestateguy]

1. The Economic Recovery plows ahead

Full Steam!!

[Pale_Rider]

4. We really need the Feds to do ...

... a macro economic study of off-shoring and then develop a strategy for keeping high paying jobs in the US.

[markus]

5. It's called Banning

Simply declare matters of code which *might* inpact the health, safety or national security of the United States covered by import controls.

Or, we wouldn't ban it. We'd just require a line-by-line code review by, oh, say, two or three different federal departments. Just to maximize efficiency.

Last I heard, I thought dumping an actual employee for someone coming in on a visa was illegal, but I'm not a lawyer (altho' I did work as a secretary for some immigration lawyers beween campaigns a bunch of years ago).

[ramapo]

2. Simply amazing

If I haven't been seeing this first-hand over the past few years then I wouldn't believe it.

This is what is wrong with America. This story must rise above the Sadaam-hysteria.

[JailBush]

3. With Governor Gary GridLocke and Bill Gates in charge, how could

Washington State go wrong?!

[Just Me]

6. Bleeding, bleeding, everywhere,...

[barbaraann]

7. This makes my blood boil.

Microsoft is also outsourcing as much as they can to India.