Small Town USA Competing With India 496
William Hood writes "According to a news article at ABC, companies are sometimes opting to outsource to rural USA rather than foreign countries. Although it still achieves the same result of lowering the value of a job, I think the idea of moving to a larger house that costs less in a town with no traffic is a much better option than flying to Bangalore to train your replacement." From the article: "Sebeka is 14 miles from the closest traffic light, hours from the nearest Starbucks coffee shop and a far cry from the Chicago suburb he left. 'There is no traffic,' said technical consultant Clayton Seal, who also works in Sebeka. 'Anytime, day or night, you can cross Main Street -- almost don't have to look 'cause there's nobody there.' Seal also lost his job to outsourcing."
It wasn't HIS job (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah, yes. Them dang foreigners are stealin' our jobs.
Wake up. It was never Seal's job in the first place. No-one owns a job or has a right to a job.
Sounds like a change for the better. (Score:5, Insightful)
Although it still achieves the same result of lowering the value of a job
We are still a capitalist society. If someone is willing to do a job just as well (or better) than the guy currently doing it, and for less money, what do you think will happen?
For the guy that is accepting the job out in the country this may be an good thing idea because the cost of living is often much less out in the country than in the burbs or in a big city. I'm sure there are also people out there that like both working with computers and living on farms, all with the added benefit of having little to no commute to worry about.
Another good side effect of this would be bringing money into smaller, rural communities without bringing in Walmart (I live in Kentucky and there are many such areas neighboring the town that I live).
Regardless, I agree with Hood, I would very much prefer to hear that jobs are being outsourced more and more to Americans rather than being sent overseas to India.
Evil quote from article (Score:3, Insightful)
Translation: "We can treat these people like complete shit if we choose, and most of them will just roll over and take it due to the hassle of relocating to find alternate employment."
Re:Larger house on smaller salary, huh? (Score:1, Insightful)
Good things about rural areas (Score:5, Insightful)
Your kids can graduate as Valedictorian or top 10% with relative ease
You can turn your TV/music way up and no neighbor cares.
Because it takes longer to get from A to B, you get a lot less visitors, particularly annoying visitors.
You actually take grass for granted (note: When I went to college, people were surprised at how I would cut across a grassy area without even thinking about it--apparently grass was respected if it was next to a sidewalk).
More space for personal projects.
Less traffic (as pointed out in the article).
No "Homeowners Association"...if you want to do home improvements or park cars in the yard, have at it.
An excellent view of the night sky.
Those are just a few of the things I miss about living in a rural area...
Re:Sounds like a change for the better. (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't a good thing. If we weren't so lax about allowing offshoring like there was no tomorrow, people would not be accepting these jobs for pennies on the dollar in the states.
This is nothing more than the result of corporate strong-arming. And capitalism is all about free enterprise and pursuit, yes? Yet I only see the free part being attributed to the corporations.
And as some whiney bitch posted elsewhere in this thread about "people need to find another line of work then" -- the fucking point is today it's tech jobs. Tomorrow, it might be your job. Or your mom's job. Again - find me a job that couldn't be outsourced? Pretty much all of them eventually could be. And if we don't stand up, check for our own nuts and stop buying the whole "but this is the way a free society works!" bullshit, we're going to send all of our jobs offshore. Then we're going to be stuck importing everything. All of our money will (and already is) going out... and not coming back in... We are reducing our own country's value for the same of a few lame ass CEOs and a small echelon of the investor-class.
Outsourcing should be illegal. (Score:2, Insightful)
Outsourcing of our jobs should be made illegal. You're doing nothing more than hurting your fellow countrymen..
Oh, hell, what am I saying. It's not like *ANY* big company truly cares.
Outlaw Outsourcing.
Re:It wasn't HIS job (Score:5, Insightful)
How is the economy going to work out when the only jobs in this country are service jobs and everything that is consumed is produced overseas? Including knowledge and intellectual property.
No, nobody has a "right" to a job - but that doesn't mean anyone has the right to sell the entire country short, either. There is a serious difference between the freedom of the employer and the freedom of the employee in this country. You probably couldn't even live on the street for what they're paying in a lot of cases overseas. Are you suggesting that people in this country are just whiney and lazy because they can't compete with a position that requires 10 years of experience and a 4 year university degree on $6/hr?
Wake up and stop buying the Fox News Channel business-line hook and sinker. Not everything big business does is glorious and representative of democracy and freedom. A lot of it is underhanded, backstabbing and unpatriotic. Like using offshoring as a forceful threat to induce Americans to accept lower wages and worse working conditions.
Re:Larger house on smaller salary, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy they cut your salary by 20% and homes cost 1/5 what they do where your from.
I am thinking of doing this with our current tech support center. The difference is that we are planning on paying the same as we currently do. We are in South FL and frankly we can not FIND anyone that will work for $12-$15 an hour to do tech support. Home prices have gone up over 100% in the last 4 years. The average home costs over 200k now. The schools are over crowded and traffic is out of control.
Depending on what is important to you small towns can offer a better standard of living than a big city for a fraction of the cost.
If you want.
Clean air.
Good primary schools
little traffic.
Outdoor activities like, cycling, hiking, camping, hunting, and fishing.
Then a small town might just be perfect for you.
If you want
clubbing.
bars.
Chinese food that will melt your eyeballs at 2:00 am
Art galleries.
Live Theater.
then yea a big city is a good choice.
Yea you do sound bitter. My customers do not care that that a home is going to cost 300k here soon. They do not care that gas is almost $3 a gallon. They do not want to pay twice what they are paying now for technical support. I do care that the people that work for me can not afford a home and that the schools that they have to send their kids too suck.
We will give them a choice. They can stay hear of move at the same pay.
Protectionism (Score:4, Insightful)
You will notice a distinct lack of protectionism when it comes to outsourcing jobs. When our industries are being undermined by cheaper foreign imports, the government starts introducing tariff barriers and/or quotas. This is because the rich people at the top of the chain are being affected. In contrast, job outsourcing benefits these same rich people, so there is no reason for the government to introduce protective measures. The government only protects its direct paymasters, not the little fish.
Re:Outsourcing should be illegal. (Score:1, Insightful)
If you really believed that, you'd be doing everything in your power to support Microsoft to help extend the American hegemony over world computer technology and bring foreign wealth into the United States.
Whatever happened to "the right tool for the right job"?
Re:Outsourcing should be illegal. (Score:2, Insightful)
If all of our high-paying jobs are going elsewhere (say, manufacturing to China) then US residents will be working for much lower wages in service industries. We won't be able to afford the very goods that we USED to make, causing US companies to fail, cycling us into a depression, until we become the cheap labor again. In the long term, outsourcing hurts corporations as much as us lowly workers.
That being said, we need to stop corporate tax breaks for outsourcing and understand that US corporations are nothing without US consumers and US workers. A global economy can only work if we grow in such a way to bring standards and wages up around the world...Corporate-dominated market-economics destroys the very consumers needed to sustain capitalist growth.
Outsourcing work to people's homes... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It wasn't HIS job (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the thing I don't understand - by all means have a laissez-faire approach if you really think that works better, but that should work both ways, in the employee's favour as well and not just the employer's.
Re:Larger house on smaller salary, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, offshore outsourcing in computer science appears to be grinding to a halt, according to a few sources, mainly because overall it doesn't really save money. Slashdot won't report it because their parent company, VA Software actively supports outsourcing. OSTG has plenty of adverts on it (not here though obviously - two-faced bastards).
Secondly, no manager wants to get too carried away with outsourcing, because inevitably their job is next, especially seeing as they will have an enormous salary.
Finally, as even Slashdot will report, India is becoming too expensive(!!) for outsourcing. However, not many countries have as many English speakers as India, so it isn't as easy to achieve.
There's a good joelonsoftare article on why it makes sense to hire programmers based on skill, rather than salary.
Re:Sounds like a change for the better. (Score:4, Insightful)
But I would think that this can't go on forever. Once all the jobs are outsourced, we'll hit the point where we can't consume the products India and China are exporting, at any price. Then it will be a wake-up call for them, because it sucks to be a business when your biggest customer is gone. Eventually we'll see Indian and Chinese companies outsourcing to the US, because we're so poor we're willing to work for less.
But in the long run what I see happening, the final effect of the global economy, will be a sort of equalizing effect when it comes to wealth across the world. Indians and Afghanis and Mexicans become more wealthy, and Americans less. The humanitarian in me cannot help but see that as a good thing. Of course, the American in me thinks it freakin' sucks.
That, and it wouldn't happen overnight, and the process wouldn't be pretty. I'm talking "Gee, doesn't the Great Depression look like it might have been a fun thing to live through" not pretty.
Re:From the blurb (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Larger house on smaller salary, huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Then screw them. This is the crux of the issue. No one wants to pay. Well tough. Your custoomers didn't care about the 300k house and the $3 a gallon gas so forgive me if I could give a rat's ass about them having to pay for what people are worth. If they think it should be so bloody cheap then it should be trivial for them to learn to do it themselves, right?
Been there, done that (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, I didn't move to "Bumfuck, Noplace, U.S.A" -- I moved to a place which had a fair amount of local high tech biz taking advantage of the lower cost of living, not quite the rural extreme depicted dependent on a single remote employer.
What tends to happen is that the high-tech people in a rural area with traditional low-tech employment opportunities tend to be the local "rich folk" that stimulate and reinvigurate the local economy.
Re:It wasn't HIS job (Score:4, Insightful)
Remarkably, people tend to work better if they have some reasonable expectation that their jobs are their jobs, and good employers understand this. Attitudes like the one you express, while all too common, are ultimately destructive to employers and employees alike.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like a change for the better. (Score:5, Insightful)
This point will come when oil stops being traded in US dollars. Right now your currency is grossly overvalued because anyone who wants to buy oi has to pay in greenbacks. This creates an artificial demand for US dollars. If it weren't for that US dollar would carry little more respect than a peso.
Now, your govt isn't stupid and knows this prety well, so they invaded Iraq as soon as Saddam announced that they'd trade Iraqi oil in Euros. Now, that Iran is trying to do the same thing (and even start their own oil Bourse traded in Euros) your president is throwing a hissy fit. Except this time he's way too weak to do anything about it.
Soon enough the chinese plasticware at Walmart is going to get verrry expensive for ya.
Re:It wasn't HIS job (Score:5, Insightful)
The same goes for your example of labor outsourcing. Corporations are not doing this to provide running water, etc. to third world countries. Only a small minority in India are benefitting from any of this outsourcing, the rest are just as poor as they ever were. It would be nice if corporations were actually installing infrastructure, but that's not reality. The reality is that they are doing the bare minimum, like making sure that the warehouses that the employees work in have electricity, and running water, but when those employees go home, they still live in the same 3rd world standards that they had before. Again, this is a small minority, the rest are living in poverty. The net effect of outsourcing has been to lower the standard of living, not to raise it. As soon as the standard of living gets to high, the corporations will move. The goal is to drive wages down to the lowest level. Small miniorities of rich people will benefit, both in the US and in the 3rd world, but everyone else will suffer.
You keep describing this as a process of wealth redistribution to the 3rd world, when the reality is that the wealth is being distributed to the rich. The way markets have worked, and the way that they have always worked, is that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. The net effect of free trade is not redistribution of wealth to 3rd world countries, but is in fact to redistribute wealth out of the hands of the middle class and in to the hands of the upper class. I would quit thinking about this in terms of nationality, that only confuses the issue. Free trade's goal is not the redistribution of wealth between nations, but is in fact a policy that redistributes wealth between class. Making "India" or "China" richer means absolutely nothing. Nationalism no longer has meaning in this world of globalization. The proper way to view this and to gain understanding into why free trade proponents love it so much, is to view it in terms of class. When one does a class based analysis, and looks at what this policy is doing to each class (middle vs upper vs lower), it becomes obvious that around the world, free trade has taken money away from the middle and lower classes, and put it in the hands of the upper classes. The rich in India, China, US, etc. have gotten quite a bit richer treating and trading middle class labor as if they were commodities, and the poor have gotten quite a bit poorer as a result.
Re:Larger house on smaller salary, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
As for moving your kids so what, I know more then a dozen IT workers who moved over 500 miles to get a better position. Sorry you didn't get to enjoy the dot-com boom but I did and still had the life style of a rural area. I flew to either the west coast or east coast every week and loved it. At this point in my life I want to make a change and I am back in school full-time as is my wife something I would never be able to afford if I still lived back east.
In rural areas of South Dakota you can buy houses for $7.5k - $20k that are the equivalent of the older homes that are rental property in most larger cities. Want a lake front home that is $150k to $350k. It is a small lake and you can only drive your jet ski for 60 miles one way and have to turn back.
Spend the rest of your life trying to find a job where you can't be replaced is a dream. When you grow up and want to join the big boy's world come back and talk to the rest of us. You remind me of the whiners on my first job after I finished my engineering degree they pissed and moaned that I was paid a lot more then them. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to achieve something. You want your cake and eat it to. Sometimes you have to make changes in life you don't want for the benefit of your family or career and relocating is one of them. You think you will ever find a position where you are indispensable you are nuts. Virtually anything and anyone can be outsourced over seas.
The point of the article is that while you can hire a moron 10 time zones away that has no idea what a vertical producer of something does for $5 an hour you can also hire an American in a rural area $20 an hour who does understand your company and market. In a rural area that person can live better on $20 an hour then you can on $40 an hour in most big cities because of a lower cost of living. I am willing to bet a lot of IT workers are paid a bit below $40 an hour. The midwestern work ethic is something you most likely wouldn't understand either. If I was going to open any kind of manufacturing or high tech company it would be in a rural midwestern area because people out here tend to be less likely to job hop because of limited opportunities and they tend to stay with the same companies for many years because most people here never move away. Where did it say in TFA that they are tr
Re:Get a clue about what "rural" is - and isn't (Score:3, Insightful)
All you need is 1.
Re:Larger house on smaller salary, huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
And in South Carolina, you run less of a risk of idiot anarchist protestors trashing your favorite coffee shop, and eco-terrorist burning the SUV you use to haul around your kids. What, the stereotype's not fair? How about that.
Re:Sounds like a change for the better. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm all for capitalism, but while my employer has a global work force to choose from, I do not have a global pool of employers to choose from.
Why not? Do you think that there are no employees of Japanese companies in America? IIRC, Honda just opened a big plant in my old home town. And I know people in America who work for German software companies (e.g. SAP).
Re:Larger house on smaller salary, huh? (Score:1, Insightful)
(Lots more bitching deleted)
Dude, let me offer you some advice. Nobody OWES you a job. Guess what? In a global economy, you are competing with people who will work for $4.00/hr. You have several choices. You can bitch, which doesn't accomplish jack, although you seem to be good at it. You can do what it takes to compete, even if that means moving to a place with a lower cost of living. Or you can stick you head in the sand until you lose your job because it went to China.
You don't have some divine right to a job just because your a High Payed 'Merikan. Wake up and smell the coffee.
Why don't companies creativly keep jobs in US? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It wasn't HIS job (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally I think this outsourcing thing is a bit of a corporate fad which will, if not disappear at least become more rational as companies realize that it isn't as *universally* a good idea as it might seem at first blush.
The true costs of outsourcing are often higher than the financial savings, which in turn are often less than they seem at first.
My brother-in-law is responsible for helping set up IT centers for Bank of America in India and now China, and he emphatically agrees. The communication issues are huge, and largely because of that, you often don't get the kind/quality of of product out that you do with domestic IT groups. It is *not* because the foreign groups are less technically competent, educated, smart or industrious, but the intangible aspects of getting a team to be effectively productive make it a lot less effective than it seems on paper.
Also, since saving money is a prime motivator for going overseeas, they often try to save money over there by getting the cheapest people (least trained/educated) available abroad. It's not like they go and recruit the top 10% of IIT's graduating class.
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly because the dollar is pegged to oil, which is the real currency of the modern world, you need dollars to buy oil. This makes everything cheaper for Americans vs the rest of the world. The only problem is that dollars in the hands of foreigners aren't worth as much as when they are in American hands. The Chinese found out about it the hard way when they tried to buy Unocal. So much for their paper wealth in US bucks when they can't buy with it what really matters ie. energy.
As for your other point, not all oil is traded in dollars. Only like 90% of it.
Re:Outsourcing work to people's homes... (Score:1, Insightful)
How depressing for you; you might want to get that autism looked at. The human contact of face to face meetings is extremely valuable for building relationships with your colleagues and clients. Ditto for chatting around the water cooler for building professional and social relationships, networking, and departmental gossip over the water cooler.
Assuming an equal quantity and quality of work, who is the boss going to remember when selecting people for assignments or at promotion time, the guy who waves to him every morning in the hallway or some blurry face on a monitor?
Re:Sounds like a change for the better. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it was all about Iraqi Freedom, silly me! Or is it Weapons of Mass Destruction? Which one is it this month?
Believe your government's propaganda all you want but ask yourself this question. If Iraq had been sitting on massive reserves of figs or bananas would they have been invaded by the USA?
There are brutal regimes all over the world, African ones seemingly the most vicious of them, there are WMD in former Soviet republics that can be had for a few crates of vodka. Why doesn't your government interven there if the WMD threat is its true motivation?
Re:Larger house on smaller salary, huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
The 'liberal anarchists' of Seattle don't set fire to crosses in your yard? But, maybe they threaten you if you sit at the front of the bus? Or maybe drinking from a different fountain? Or maybe you dated a liberal and now a few of them took you out to a field and beat the shit out of you? No? Well, of course there's all those Republicans who mysteriously disappeared. Or, maybe a few staunch 'Ditto-heads' who were found swinging from a tree?
No. I wonder why.
Or right, because it's completely fucking different. Get of your "Help, I'm being prosecuted" perch and start paying attention.
Come join me! (Score:3, Insightful)
1) work in the IT world (check)
2) Have a great place in a vibrant area (check)
3) have 3MB DSL to my house (check)
4) 20 minute commute to work...walking (check)
5) Classical music concerts every day (check)
6) Uncountable book stores. (check)
7) Several big parks to unwind and relax. (check).
8) Amazing selection of any goods imaginable. (check)
9) Meeting people from all around the worl. (check)
10) Cinemas showing movies from all around the world. (check).
11) Art galleries with blockbuster exhibitions regularly. (check).
12) Easy access to the rest of the worl.(check)
13) Tolerable levels of criminality (hint, no guns allowed). (check).
Yup...I love it here. Outsource from these regions will be a real tragedy.
Got any questions about big cities and IT works? Feel free to ask.
Re:It wasn't HIS job (Score:3, Insightful)
You keep describing this as a process of wealth redistribution to the 3rd world, when the reality is that the wealth is being distributed to the rich. The way markets have worked, and the way that they have always worked, is that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.
This seems to be the key sentence in your post. According to this view, market-driven countries like America, Britain and the rest of Western Europe have seen their poor grow poorer over the last 300 years of capitalism. And yet, by any measure you care to mention, this is not true. Nutrition is better than the pre-capitalist period and better than that in communist countries. Education is better. Working days are shorter. Health is better.
Furthermore, this is true not just in "rich" countries but also in most poor countries that have adopted global capitalism. With the exception of war-torn and AIDs-ravagead sub-saharan africa (which is hardly a key part of the globalized economy), people's health and and other development indicators have been trending steadily and rapidly higher. In other words, the facts are starkly at odd with your "opinion" that the world's poor are getting poorer. These findings are summarized in an easily digestible form at the UN site. http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/flash.html [undp.org]
Among other things you can see there, the average Chinese life expectency has increased from around 43 to around 70 over the last 50 years. GDP is about 10 times what it was in 1950. Even the poorest regions of China are better off today than they were 20 years ago.
The poorest countries of the world are not those that have embraced globalism most warmly (your poor get poorer theory) but rather those that have been fighting wars that prevent their economies from participating meaningfully in the global economy.
My question for you is: do you hate the rich so much that you would ignore the the demonwtrated benefits of globalization for the poor?. Or are you willing to look the facts in the face? http://www.undp.org/hdr2003/flash.html [undp.org]