Job Exports Imperil US Programmers

[phgnome]

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Peter Kerrigan encouraged friends to move to Silicon Valley throughout the 1980s and '90s, wooing them with tales of lucrative jobs in a burgeoning industry.

But he lost his network engineering job at a major telecommunications company in August 2001 and remains unemployed. Now 43, the veteran programmer is urging his 18-year-old nephew to stay in suburban Chicago and is discouraging him from pursuing degrees in computer science or engineering.

"I told him, 'Unless you're planning to do this as a path to technical sales, don't do it,'" said Mr. Kerrigan, who lives in Oakland. "He won't be able to have a career designing and building stuff because all those jobs have moved to India."

Like many unemployed programmers, Kerrigan blames the sour labour market on offshore outsourcing - the migration of tech jobs to relatively low-paid contractors or locally hired employees in India, China, Russia and other developing countries... http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030714.gtprogjuly15/BNStory/Technology/">more

[meegbear]

1. great ....

I'm a software engineer with 3 weeks of unemployment left and that's it.

[phgnome]

3. The government's obligation

The government ought to have an obligation to re-train you for something else in the workforce, free of charge because it wasn't your fault -- it was their incompetence at implementing policies to protect you from this.

[demnan]

4. Check out the DC area

there are still some jobs available for contractors working for the U.S. government and usually a clearance and U.S. citizenship is required.

[Virginian]

27. The security jobs require you already have your clearance.

There aren't too many that will pay to get you cleared. I live here and I only have a few more weeks of Unemployment.

[displacedtexan]

5. lots of IT jobs...

in baltimore/dc corridor.

[Rainydaze]

7. I feel you brother.

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I happen to live in Arizona, land of the unending sun. Job markets here are completely saturated. I went from 60k a year in the Clinton years to scrounging for 10 dollar per hour jobs doing phone support. It doesn't matter if you have degrees or certifications, education doesn't matter when all of the jobs are gone. I recently applied to an interview against 100 people applying for 6 openings in a local cable company doing grunt level support. I have no unemployment left, and was up til' recently planning a wedding. Now my fiancee' and I are surviving on her income while I look for any available employment. All the jobs I've had in the last year were temp to hire, with the option of the employer to terminate the contract at the end of 90 days. In every instance the employer has terminated all contract employees then gone on a hiring binge, forcing a sort of brownian motion inside the technical community. The techs come in and the techs go out...Kind of like the tide, or the current stock market. College graduates making less than McDonalds employees. I didn't vote for the DimSon, but I'm certainly paying the price for his crony capitalism. I'll vote for anyone who will get rid of these crooks and has the highest likelyhood of success.

-Rainydaze
(Though I personally favor Dean)

[phgnome]

2. Unpatriotic Corporations

I don't believe what the tech companies say in this article -- that exporting all these jobs would not hurt technological development in the US.

Once you start exporting skilled technical jobs, people you are exporting to will have the opportunity to learn the details of whatever it is they're doing.

Meanwhile, your own country will not be cutting-edge and US corporations, while contributing to unemployment in their own country, will not be working with the technology closely enough and they won't have the latest knowledge. It becomes a vicious cycle after that.

Shame on these corporations that do this. Shame on the shareholders, who don't understand diminishing returns on profit and the opportunity costs associated with surpassing the optimal level of profit with their greed. Exporting this many tech jobs en masses will destroy the whole economy and the future of the economy.

[OrdinaryTa]

6. Meaning of Patriotism

Patriotism is flying the flag outside your car window. It doesn't mean Buy American. </sarcasm>

I see these yahoos in their foreign cars flying a Chinese-made flag. It makes me wonder whether they were born stupid or did television rot their brains.

[Nay]

8. And now that tuitions to colleges are skyrocketing everywhere,

there is even less reason to get a degree in anything that is going to pay well. As soon as a group of workers starts making too much money, they'll ship all the jobs overseas or import foreign workers to do the work.

And face it, after several decades, the companies won't care that we can't afford to buy their stuff -- after all, they'll have foreign markets to sell to. Who needs us for anything??

[acerbic]

9. Getting closer to real reasons, good...

Now everyone please consider this: if by some miracle practically free college education became available in USA and anyone who wants and has any talent could get an education as a programmer, it would naturally greatly increase the supply of workforce and therefore push the salaries down.
So, are all those whining about foreign workers pushing the salaries down also against free college education? :think:

Hint: in most European countries college education is practically free, programmer salaries are only somewhat higher than an average worker's just because not everyone has the talent, not because they can't afford the education, and programmers are usually not whining that their salaries are being pushed down.

[phgnome]

10. good one!

Damn fine plan. They shoud even go beyond that -- that you could be a healthcare professional for free, too. Increase the supply of doctors and nurses -- a healthcare system would then be more affordable for the taxpayer.

[acerbic]

11. Naturally...

They shoud even go beyond that -- that you could be a healthcare professional for free, too.

Of course you could get any kind of education the same way, not just programming. Where it is the system, doctors still are paid better though than e.g. programmers since the supply of people able to become doctors (disregarding the cost of education) is smaller than that of people able to become programmers.

[Rainydaze]

12. About the doctors:

I worked as a manager for a tech firm that was servicing most of the major drug companies. (we won't discuss skeletons) But a user list of the doctors had almost 72% Indian surnames. It's not just programing jobs being exported by the bushel full, but we're importing cheap professional labor as well. Many of the Doctors I know still are paying off their student loans, while the importee's benefit from a free education. Good that they're benefiting, but exceedingly bad that they are lowering the salaries of new graduates. Seems like the only way to make it now is being the C.E.O of a major conglomerate. Can I get an adoption when I'm thirty? Is that legal.

Rainydaze.

[phgnome]

13. One of my cousins

lived in Switzerland when she was growing up. I couldn't believe it when she told me that everyone gets a free college education there -- as much education as they want. You could get several degrees for free because all school is public.

What a good place to live. I wish we could do that -- less stress for everyone -- if someone burns out of their current job, they can just go back to school for a while and do something else. Less murder, suicides, crime, unemployment. The people are healthier and have better lives, although each person has less expendable income.

[ikojo]

22. Taxes

Posted by phgnome:
"The people are healthier and have better lives, although each person has less expendable income."

While Americans, especially conservative Dems and Repukes, like to say that Europeans pay more in taxes what most people fail to mention is that there are services provided by the European governments that are not provided by the American government. Most Europeans do not have as much out of pocket expenses for education, medical care and insurance that Americans have.

Britain is now introducing tuition fees for university and it is meeting with opposition because it may keep many middle class Brits from attending university or cause them to take on heavy debt burdens which have previously been unheard of in England.

Israel is also dismantling much of its previously socialistic oriented economy in favor of a more "market" economy. As a result the gap between the more relatively well off Ashkenazic (European) Jews and their Sephardic (Middle Eastern) brothers and sisters is growing exponentially.

[phgnome]

26. Quality of Life

There should be a some sort of way to quantitatively measure quality of life.

[Code_Name_D]

14. An extremly good point.

One worthy of follow up. Their is the reverse action at work here too. The more you pay for a degree, the higher your asking price for emplyment is going to be in order to offset the student loans.

This places new light on vocationl traning as well. though not expensive as collage, it has always puzeld me why their are such shortages of high skill blue collor work such as Mecanics, carpinters, and plumers?

Unlike the IT feild, these jobs are portable. their is work in these fields in just about any city or town. But these feilds are under staffed. perhaps its becase tuistion is still more than expected wages.

[German-Lefty]

16. Germany - vocational traning

There are three ways a student can go in the German school system:

1) Blue Colar: School till 8th grade. 2-4 years apprenticeship. Then he's a professional baker, mechanic, plummer, butcher, candlestick maker. After that they can start a buisness or study to become a master in 2-4 more years.

2) Profesional: School till 10th grade. Then 2-3 years internship/school where they spend 50% working for a company like a bank and 50% inside a class learning about banking. When that's over he's a banker and he's got a bank were he's worked for a year, that'll probably hire him.

3) Gynasium: School till 13th grade, learn 2-3 languages, calculus, biochem, basically what a freshman/sophmore in a US college gets. There's a big test at the end and then you apply to University programs. Basically the decide what thier major is and then go to college.

Thier school system is way more aggessive. Look closely at 1 & 2. Why don't we have those? Here's the American version:

1) drop out of school and try to learn on the job.
2) get a GED and apply to a bank, or go through college learning a bunch of profesionaly irelvant stuff then apply to the bank and expect them to pay you more for it.

Here's why I think that the US doesn't have these things. The political class went to college. They don't think about other walks of life. They don't care.

The end result is that you have few master cooks (chiefs), and more guys working at McDonalds.

[phgnome]

19. The influence of parents on the labor market in 20 years

Have you noticed the number of people going to college instead of taking on a trade because, back in the day, it paid more. My dad insisted I go to college with good intentions because, in his day, people with college degrees got paid more -- there were less people with degrees.

But now, everyone wants a piece of that action. The masses have degrees but don't know what to do with them. There's no one left to do the vocational jobs like plumbing, electrical, etc. because they all believe they're "too qualified" to do that -- it was what their parents threatened would happen to them if they didn't go to college and they see it as a bad thing.

A plumber ought to have as much social respect as a doctor. Without plumbers, there wouldn't be hospitals where the doctors could work but the 2 aren't treated equally in the media. On TV, lawyers lead a glamorous life ... a plumber or a "garbage man" is treated as a person who commands less social respect because he didn't work hard in school and is, therefore, lazy. This is so far from reality, it isn't even funny.

Has anyone read "The Foundation" series by Isaac Asimov? In short, it's about how the fall of a galactic empire -- or any empire, for that matter. Anyway, one of the things that lead to the fall of the empire was that the whole social system became too top-heavy. All their infrastructure was breaking down piece by piece and, as the generations progressed, there was a shortage in people knowing HOW to fix them. They experienced a shortage in "blue collar" labor for so long that no one fixed anything and the whole system started falling apart.

Same thing is happening to us. The problem begins to spiral out of control because plumbers who are getting wealthy from the skilled labor shortage are sending their kids to college getting degrees in things like philosophy, English, etc. Not that liberal arts are anything to shake a stick at, because these skills are valuable as well BUT, we need balance.

Same thing with the IT field -- parents began hearing that "IT makes a lot of money" so they push their kids a little too late into the field, the kid walks out with a degree in computer science and finds himself in a vast sea of other IT professionals and find that it's not true, you can't really "write your own paycheck", his parents had promised. Yes, I've heard parents say this to their 22-year old kid before -- become an IT professional and you get to "write your own paycheck". This was 3 or 4 years ago and I wondered what kind of crack they were on at the time -- I didn't think there was that kind of shortage in IT professionals. (They've also encouraged this kid to go into debt to run his business now, "take out a loan," they tell him -- when he's doing fine with his existing cash flow and isn't carrying any debt; "buy a NEW car", they tell him -- "you don't want people thinking you're poor..."). I stopped him when his parents left the room and told him not to listen to his parents about the debt thing -- that not being in debt will make him a happier person. Poor advice from parents who watch too much tv and don't watch market conditions will result in labor surplus and unemployment in different sectors down the line. A lot of kids do listen to their parents, assuming that their parents know best.

The same thing can happen to any industry/discipline and, perhaps, parents should not have a fixed notion in their heads of what the high-paying jobs will be in 20 years and stop encouraging kids to pursue careers with the intent of earning the highest wage humanly possible. If everyone just pursued his/her talents, the distribution may even off a little more.

And, maybe we should drop the labels "blue collar" and "white collar". It reeks of classism and plutocracy. Just by calling them "blue collar" jobs, we are suggesting that this group will be the group that is ruled instead of having some say in how society is run. No one wants this for their child. Everyone dreams of glamorous futures for their children -- a doctor, a lawyer, the president (well, I don't know about this one anymore). The school system needs to encourage parents to encourage their children to pursue a spectrum of careers that are different from their peers.

Look at a second grade class. They're asked to draw pictures of what they want to be when they grow up. Have you noticed that all the pictures on a wall are all the same job more or less? It shows that children do not know about all the things they can do when they grow up. Perhaps money should be invested into the school system to expose kids to more jobs that are not glamorized by the media but will aim to serve society and avoid shortages. With a more even distribution, everyone will be paid better overall, less shortage in essential services. And for heaven's sake, stop making med school so expensive.

[German-Lefty]

15. I program in Germany

I make considerably more money than most 26 year old Germans. Many of them are still in college. Funding college educations seem to go a bit too far here. There are "profesional students" that have been in college 20 years here.

Lots of countries complain about America sucking away thier work force. The UK and Canada's doctors often go the US for higher salaries. This costs Canada money for to educate them and the US doctors jobs.

As far as subsidising education you don't want to over do it or under do it. Otherwise your labor market may wind up distorted relative to the others.

[ramapo]

17. Domestic competition different than foreign

What Acerbic outlined is what should've happened. There was a very real shortage in the tech field, especially with MS-experienced admins and programmers. That's what got the H1B-visa program going. This was in the mid-90s or so.

This was suppossed to be a short program while we developed our own expertise. I think some of the fees go to some kind of training/education fund.

What the H1B, and now the L1, visa programs became are methods to cut out the domestic employee pool in order to use the "temporary" help from visa holders who just happen to be willing to work for lower wages.

Now corporations have discovered it's even cheaper to send as much as possible offshore where programming expertise can be had for $15-$20/an hour.

Programming used to be a great field. That's where you learned the IT business (I started as one 20+ years ago). Forget about it now and especially for your kids.

[Virginian]

28. They pay Indian Programmers less than the US minimum wage!

I don't think a glut of US programmers would push the wages that low.
(Read this week's TIME Magazine.)

[dflprincess]

18. I've been wondering

If corporations can get tax credits for hiring people with disabilities or Vietnam era vets, why can't the be penalized for shipping jobs overseas, either directly or through a contracting house?

Not that this would have a chance in hell of passing with the current Congress.

[German-Lefty]

21. How's that gona work.

If corporations can get tax credits for hiring people with disabilities or Vietnam era vets, why can't the be penalized for shipping jobs overseas, either directly or through a contracting house?

You can't make guys in India pay US taxes.

Sounds like what you'd like is a protective tariff. The problem is that since these are "soft" goods like code or tech support there is no defined market value when they're transfered inside a conglomerate. If I ship 40 tons worth of equipment to the US I at least pay the tariff on 40 tons of steal. What's the tariff on a phone call to New Deli?

I think the only way to do this is to break up international corporations. Then a US company could contract an India one and based on the trade deals they may have to pay a tariff.

[sadiesmom]

25. I work for a company offshoring and they get a tax credit for the project

It is considered a capitalization project - or long term project where they get to write off the costs as an investment in the companies future.

I have worked with many wonderful bright people from many different companies over the years, but I do not see offshoring helping a company in the future. Yes the company retains ownership of the software, but they will not have enough people to maintain such software, should there be a break with their software partner.

I know for a fact that the programmers working for Infosys make 3K a year and the upper management reels in the money just like US CEOs. I also know that the upper management of this company is without a clue on how to make this business profitable, yet that does not keep them from raking in lots of money as the company continues to lose moeny.

[Virginian]

29. Code Maintenance?

>I have worked with many wonderful bright people from many different companies over the years, but I do not see offshoring helping a company in the future. Yes the company retains ownership of the software, but they will not have enough people to maintain such software, should there be a break with their software partner.

How is the Documentation? I have never seen decent Documentation on code that was outsourced offshore. Inhouse code maintenance would be more expensive than to outsource a rewrite.

(I think it should be a crime that the company gets a tax break for offshore outsourcing)

[acerbic]

30. Blah.

I have never seen decent Documentation on code that was outsourced offshore.

I have never seen decent documentation on code that was in-or-outsourced off-or-onshore. :-(

[Virginian]

33. You haven't read mine.

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ikojo]

23. Exporting jobs and knowledge

I am surprised that in the era of heightened terror alerts the government would allow the exporting of programming jobs and such. I would think they would be concerned about the possibility of a malicious programmer doing something to sabotage a company or the government.

Another thought that comes to mind is this: During WWII the US was able to convert many factories from producing autos to producing tanks and such in short order. I doubt this could happen as easily today because the technical knowledge would not exist.

People do not realize the sensitive data processing that is being done overseas: mortgage payments, credit card payments and even income tax preparation is being done overseas. Whose to say that the information contained in those documents could not or would not be sold to the highest bidder by an unscrupulous employee?

[lookingforwork]

24. Are Illegal Immigration and Lax non-temporary visas a progressive issue?

I have been involved in working against expanding temporary visa regulations to protect American jobs. I feel that open door policies on our boarders are also problematic. I was sure I heard both Kucinich and Dean say they would secure the boarders in addition to abolishing or revising NAFTA/GATT and bring jobs back to America that have been sent overseas.

I know Ralph Nader is concerned about open door/revolving door boarder policies and the absence of illegal immigration control. I can't find specific commentary on Kucunich's or Dean's web site on illegal immigration or opposing the new ID cards for illegal immigrants.

Some other liberal's and progressives have said that this is not a left-wing agenda. Some have gone so far as to say I'm a racist. I would not support eliminating immigration, only enforcing existing laws. What do some of you think? Does this go against a progressive platform or is it in line with the liberal and progressive agenda? Remember that prior to 1965 we had a cap on yearly immigration of 60,000. Then it was raised to 300,000 per year. If we include illegal immigration the numbers are closer to 1.5 million. The Census Bureau projects an America of 400 million residents by the middle of this century.

[Virginian]

31. Xenophobe? Not really.

Pat Buchannan was labeled an xenophobe for stating that we need to slow down immigration because the newer immigrants were not assimilating. I don't know which group he was talking about, it could have been any. People tend to stay around those with whom they are more comfortable.

I like just about all the immigrants I have met. I wouldn't want to send any of them back, (well, OK one or two for being chauvinists) but can we slow down the numbers until our economy picks up? There have to be enough jobs for the people who are already here before we bring in more.

We have two basic groups in this region; the Indian skilled and the Hispanic unskilled. The skilled workers are able to buy cars and houses almost as soon as they get to this country. The unskilled are struggling to live in this society. They don't understand that they can't live 20 people to a house. They think we must not get along with our relatives because we don't live with them.

[cprise]

32. Buchannon's clock is right twice a day

The rest of the time, he's merely xenophobic.

He differs from other conservatives today in that he clearly resents having to hide cultural and racial bias.

[phgnome]

34. 20 people to a house

Why can't 20 people live in the same house?

I've heard some racist comments about people who live 20 people in a house and by-laws that forbid more than a "nuclear family" living in one house. It really bugs me a lot. I mean, it almost seems like society would rather have those 20 people living on the street rather than having them live in one house altogether until each family in the house can save up enough to afford to buy their own home.

Why we are so "individualistic", I don't know. It makes economical sense for families sometimes (plus, if you were an immigrant living in a new environment, of course you're going to want live with people you can rely on until you are more familiar with the terrain).

Posted by Virginian:
"People tend to stay around those with whom they are more comfortable."

This is natural in the early adaptation phase. Immigration is one of the most difficult periods of a person's life -- they leave behind their whole lives...everything. Their friends, family, jobs (or lack thereof), and way of life. People usually emigrate out of necessity, not out of the desire to take jobs away from Americans. I feel that Buchanan overlooks this very important point when he says some of the insensitive things he says that makes the population see immigrants negatively.