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Indian Software Firm Outsourcing Jobs To US
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Sep 07, 2007 12:23 PM
from the turnabout-is-fair-play dept.
from the turnabout-is-fair-play dept.
phobos13013 writes "NPR is reporting Indian software maker Wipro is outsourcing positions to a development office opening in Atlanta, Georgia. Although it sounds good for US job growth, the implication is that firms outside the US appear to be dominating more and more in the global economy, even from developing and underdeveloped regions of the world. Similarly, salaries of IT professionals world-wide are projected to stagnate or possibly fall due to the large pool of qualified applicants in the market today."
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qualified applicants? (Score:5, Funny)
qualified. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means
Re:qualified applicants? (Score:5, Funny)
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Swedish code is still legible (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:qualified applicants? (Score:5, Interesting)
Experienced: Has solid proof of abilities, usually lack certifications as Experienced professionals look down upon the certifications as most are nothing more than proof you can memorize and take a test. Very few certifications hold merit with seasoned and experienced professionals. The ones that do are held in high regard.
Basically to tell the difference, the more certifications a person has the greater the possibility that they are simply a useless tool. Yes I have tested this in real life. when looking for a outsourced programming company the ones that all the clients have the MOST trouble with are the ones that touted all kinds of certifications the employees need. ALSO many times these companies will violate your terms on the contract. I have had to inform clients on several occasions to pay for the removal of OSS code or not release their product or release the source code in order to be compliant with the law. The Outsourced firm used GPL libraries and snippets, even left the original headers and comments in there. That was 3 years ago though when I was a Code Monkey in Corporate America. I am certain it has not gotten any better.
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Hey, its not like.... (Score:5, Interesting)
We freely sent off our manufacturing, then our IT, and a good bit of agriculture. But thankfully, we still have a great service industry, lots of restaurants, etc. That'll keep us safe in times of financial/world troubles.
Re:Hey, its not like.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Hey, its not like.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, some are able to put away their pickaxe or lathe, take up Game Theory or Biochemistry books and courses, and grow into their new high-tech workplace. The others (in America) were better off before globalization moved in.
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Re:Hey, its not like.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're too expensive because the petrodollar tends to deflate. There's high demand for dollars to pay for oil, the world over. It makes Americans expensive.
The current world troubles are caused by the US interest in preventing the dollar from losing it's reserve status. Iraq, Iran, Saudi etc.
The current financial problems are caused by the dollar being a debt based currency. Debt increases exponentially, it requires exponentially increasing economy and additional loans to service the debt and continue growing. So liquidity is piled in exponentially, the debts grow accordingly. Eventually you have to get even those unable to pay involved, in order to continue the growth. The crash is inevitable, nothing can grow exponentially forever. However the longer the growth period the bigger the bump. In the past few years the central banks have piled in cash in order to glide over some of the smaller bumps, basically just lining up for a bigger crash later. It's more of an issue right now because the dollar has become less desirable internationally forcing up interest rates.
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I love this game! (Score:5, Funny)
Foreign companies outsourcing jobs to the U.S.: bad for the U.S.
We need more Engineers! (Score:5, Funny)
This week on Slashdot: Too many engineers! Salaries are falling!
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Re:We need more Engineers! (Score:5, Funny)
Or at least it will say that by the time you read this post.
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Why is this so surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, isn't this exactly what everyone was telling us would eventually happen 8 years ago? So shouldn't we have been expecting it?
Re:Why is this so surprising? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a natve US citizen, Caucasian male. I worked for Wipro [wipro.com] recently, and they are a very good company. They paid me competitive rates to what I would get from a US company, and had excellent benefits. Their US home office is in Sunnyvale California about two blocks from Google. If it wasn't for the fact that I was ready to get out of a job that had me living in airports and hotels, I would still be there today.
Most of what I did was to put an American face on what is basically an Indian company. Any major development was handed off to my counterparts in India where skilled labor is cheaper. I spent an enormous amount of time acting as an interpreter on conference calls for customers who could not understand English with an Indian accent. I also did a lot of requirements gathering because the language barrier made it a painful process for many of our customers. It really was a good job, and if you have the personality that will let you be a good traveling consultant I highly recommended Wipro.
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Re:Why is this so surprising? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, I haven't worked for Wipro. I *have* had them working for *me* and it was an unrepeatable experience -- scared, inexperienced, homesick, basically useless Indian guys supplied on a constantly revolving system, spending about a month on the project and then either disappearing or being rotated somewhere else. The absolutely classic bad side of outsourcing.
They're probably OK to work *for*, though, if you aren't one of those guys.
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Here we go again (Score:5, Funny)
So does this mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Misleading summary (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA only mentions the Indian tech industry. I'm sure you could make a case for a world-wide effect from this, but the article doesn't mention it.
Reasons for this (Score:5, Informative)
* US programmers are still much more expensive than programmers in other countries.
* Wipro has software houses in multiple countries around the world, their is their first Software house in the US though.
* US programmers know about the culture and idioms of this country, which is needed for some jobs.
* Any defense contracts must be worked on my US based developers.
LIES LIES LIES!!! (Score:5, Informative)
The way this works is that Fortune 50 companies in Atlanta like Bell South, Coca-Cola, Delta, etc. have contracts with US based firms and employ US based resources. The movement is now to outsource to India. The problem is that they realize that they have to have someone in the United States to actually talk to the customer and deal with problems. These people will be the business analysts and the technical architects that feed the people off shore. While they say that these companies are creating jobs in the United States, the truth is that most of them will be landed resources also from India under H1B visa.
The result of this is that the 50 people in Atlanta that were working in IT are now replaced by 40 off shore people, 5 landed people in Atlanta, and 5 local people. I'm not judging whether it's good or bad or right or wrong, I'm just clarifying what is really happening because most people are way off on this one.
I'm a consultant and he's right! - Mod parent up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of all the points I have seen on this thread, the above quote is the most legitimate. I'm a business IT consultant with a focus on custom application development. I'm one of those "technical architects" he speaks of. Our local teams are rather small with our full-time consultants to build the foundation of the applications and we then tap into a pool of contractors to do fill in the implementations as provided by the design me, my fellow consultants and business analysts construct.
One of the things the parent does overlook is that aside from experience and technical skill, clear communication skills are essential. I remember being told back in college in the late 90s I would need strong communication skills (granted English is my first language). I am not referring to only plain English but also an understanding of "International" English (to speak to our Indian associates and any other people who aren't familiar with localized metaphors) and business-speak. In addition, it takes a level of being assertive and proactive.
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USA has low cost of living areas also (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly, I can not understand why so many people trade both their time and preference to work on interesting projects for material stuff like frequently buying new cars, homes that are much larger than they really need, etc. I believe that this odd behavior is caused by a lifetime of subjecting oneself to advertising, but that is just a theory
whatever happened to training? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever happened to hiring someone who was inexperienced, but still sharp, and developing that person? This is how I got my start in 1990: someone who had seen my work took a chance that I'd do a good job supporting the company's LAN, even though I lacked experience, and hired me. With the exception of a few months during the bust years of 2001 and 2002, I've been working in the field ever since (in a variety of different positions, most recently QA testing).
One thing I noticed around the turn of the century was that there weren't any 20-somethings at work anymore. At age 34, I was far and away the youngest person at work. Where will the next generation of experienced old hands come from if not from within? At some point, all the experienced people will be too old to work any more, and then what will we do? The worst part of outsourcing is that we're outsourcing not just today's jobs, but the future of our talent pool.
((Let me cynically answer my first question ("Whatever happened to hiring
Or, as Scott Adams has put it.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Theories vs Facts (Score:5, Insightful)
You must be joking. Models in market theory are mostly oversimplified. Often to the extent that the results are useless for practical purposes.
Why do you think investments in stock markets are still a risky business? Because all the investors do not listen to the academia? If models and theory in physics would be that unreliable nuclear power plants would regularly go boom!
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It reminds me of the dumb things people say (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality is that quality in cars is engineered from the earliest drawings. It goes into the manufacturing process to ensure there is only one correct way to assemble something. It comes about because management is committed to a quality product. Not just the words, but they take concrete steps to ensure what goes out the door is the best that they know how to build.
So the Japanese really were building better cars simply because the management of the company committed to building good cars. The proof was when Honda and Toyota moved manufacturing to the United States with no loss in quality. Nobody cares if their Accord is built in the U.S. or Japan, the cars are simply quality products.
To this day, the myth of the lazy American work persists, I assume partly because American cars for the most part still fall below Japanese standards. Now somehow the Union makes line workers stupid and lazy, which is ridiculous.
A large part of the reason unions arose in heavy industries was because management treated workers so poorly. That culture still exists in American automobile plants and leads to workers understand that the company will cheat them blind without a good contract. So the company treats people poorly and suffers the consequence in the factory.
It's like you punch somebody in the face, and then complain when they punch you back.
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