Competing with the global market 1

[ponetguy2]

My company released a memo informing us that our jobs might or will be shipped overseas. I'm a UNIX System Admin for a financial company, and my job is one of them. I'm sick and tired of hearing this. I think it's time for a career change. Maybe in health care.

Competing with techies overseas is impossible to beat. They have the same or better skill set and will work for a lot less money than me or my pears. The only thing I have over them is people skills and a better understanding of American English.

Please provide your take on this rant. I'm frustrated and scared for the future. I have a family to support and I need to figure out a plan B.

"Not all OSs suck, it's just that some OSs suck worse than others"

 

[jrbarnett]

Update your CV, confirm your references and get your details out to the recruiters.
That's all you can do at the moment, until the "may be" can be confirmed as "will".

John

 

[Glenn9999]

This is the reason I never suggest anyone to get into IT, and that most people who have the ability and aptitude wouldn't these days. Can't say this is very much solace for those of us already in this mess (I've been out of a job and looking for quite some time). Let's just say I don't have much of a taste for doing it anymore, and want to change careers as soon as I figure out where the money is going to come from and how to do it.

 

[ponetguy2]

Done that already, jrbarnett.

I can sympathize with you Glenn9999. I might be in the same situation as you in the future. For now, I have the luxury of time. I don't think they'll do anything for a couple more years.

I'm thinking of going back to school this Fall and try to get in to nursing. There should be a boom in health care, due to the baby boomers. They are not young any more Problem, I'll take a big pay cut when I get out of nursing school

"Not all OSs suck, it's just that some OSs suck worse than others"

 

[Sympology]

We are ssing many jobs going. In fact you have to remember that American English isn't the only language going.
In fact our new call centre in in Eastern Europe...why?
They can get people fluent in English, French and Itallian, so one call centre covers far many countries than most other places (maybe switzerland can top this).

My concern is I'm so specialised now, that if we drop the system I work on, I could be high and dry, but I have changed many times, so I'm sure I can again.

Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[dilettante]

We'll only see a change after it's too late for any of us.

At some point these low wage countries will have startups who take the process cradle-to-grave, cutting out the fatcats and the Wall Streeters on this side of the Globalist equation. You can bet they'll have regulations against foreign ownership and only offer limited forms of foreign investment. For a while the market for software and related support will still be here, at least until they've drained domestic economies dry in present day net consumer nations.

Those profiting from the scenario today know this well, and don't care. They suspect we'll be desperate to pick cotton or do whatever else their children have going on their inherited plantations.

 

[philhege]

One of my former colleagues became a long-haul truck driver. It's really, really difficult to outsource domestic goods transportation (excepting the NAFTA corridor).

He doesn't see his family a tenth as often as he did before, but there's a paycheck and food on the table.
At this point in the game, and perhaps sooner than we like to think, that's all that's really going to matter. Nobody will care about your ninja admin practices and mad coding skills if they're doing it for peanut shells and beetle dung over there.

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

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Pity the insomniac dyslexic agnostic. He stays up all night, wondering if there really is a dog.

 

[kHz]

Keep in mind though that IT permeates society and is entrenched in almost every company regardless of size. The companies that will outsource are the largest of them, namely Fortune 500 or 1000 companies that have very large IT staffs. But the small to medium size companies are not (well, not very likely) going to ship their work overseas.

My first job in IT was for a company that had a total of maybe 300 people and had revenue of $120 million per year. Today they have grown through acquisitions and probably have 500 employees and are surely in the $250 million per year revenue. They are not large enough and never would send jobs overseas but they are dependent upon technologies. And the pay, although not what I make with my Fortune 50 company, is very good for the area where the company is located and those in the IT department are probably better off than most people pay-wise.

So don't think it is all doom and gloom because not every company will send jobs overseas and people will still be needed here in IT. But keep yourself available for different opportunities. You might be a Unix admin today, but in 3 years you might need to be doing something else in IT. If a mechanic could only work on Model T's and didn't want to learn today's diagnostics, he wouldn't have a job. If all you know is Unix (or don't want to learn something else) then you will become the Model T mechanic.

 

[Sympology]

Of course no one is seeing the benifits. China is adding millions every day to mobile networks, the internet etc etc. Yes they may use a lot of home grown stuff, but that's no different any western nation.
Most of us are a bunch of hypocrytes. We often choose the cheaper goods, when faced with what look identical, we want the DVD players, the flat screen tv's and the computers, but whinge when we loose jobs. If people actually paid extra for home grown goods, then they may actually save jobs, but we don't.
Given the choice between one pc made in China and an identical one for twice the price made and home, which one would you choose, honestly?

Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[philhege]

And that's exactly the thinking that drives jobs to cheaper labor markets, Stu. Why would you pay caviar prices for a skill set that can be had for bottom dollar?

Agreed, kHz, that not every job will end up in the ghetto markets, but the percentage of jobs vulnerable to that possibility grows every day.

 

[dilettante]

They are not large enough and never would send jobs overseas but they are dependent upon technologies. And the pay, although not what I make with my Fortune 50 company, is very good for the area where the company is located and those in the IT department are probably better off than most people pay-wise.

I think this misses the point.

As skills are driven out of the local labor pool the small companies who can't afford the support structure to send these jobs to low-cost labor pools will be forced to close their doors or accept a takeover by a bigger outfit.

The endgame of "globalism" as it's being practiced is much like the "all restaurants are Taco Bell" scenario of the awful movie Demolition Man where all but the elites have died off, accepted a sheeplike existance, or gone underground.

 

[chiph]

Off-shoring will never truly end, but it will be cut sharply as soon as the Wall Street Journal and/or Business 2.0 publish stories about how India is out of talent.

Something which the people actually doing the work have known for a year now.

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[burtsbees]

Off-shoring a lot of times is utilized by giant companies wanting an easy way to get people to program databases and such. There is still a great need for people to be physically on location wherever you may be. I say this because within the next few years I have a plan to launch my own business---home and small business networking set up.
Recently, a friend of mine approached me and asked if I was still planning to do this, as a friend of his and him were wanting to get in on it. He is a hardware guy, mainly, and I am a hardware guy myself. I am also a router and switch guy, as I am a CCNP. His friend is a database programmer.
What I am saying is that it may not be a bad idea to get a few friends together, pool your skills together, and start your own business. Then outbid everyone---one could still make a very comfortable living like this with 3 or 4 people involved.

Burt

 

[jimbojimbo]

Unfortunately, nobody has noticed the obvious. The US is not prepared for Global Economics. Until we force the government to migrate from an income tax to a sales and VAT tax like most foreign nations, there will be no possible way that the US labor market will be able to compete. I agree that the cost of labor overseas is in fact cheaper. There are also less environmental concerns for companies who manufacture items that have more toxic residuals. These tides will eventually turn.

Conversion from an income tax to a sales and VAT tax kills two birds with one stone. You make imports more costly thereby increasing the value of domestic products while making them more economical for export. The second is that you migrate all the IRS agents over as corporate auditors. Maybe there wouldn't have been an Enron fiasco.

Write your congressman and senators. Tell them you want support for tax conversion.

James Middleton
ACSCI/ACSCD/MCSE
Xeta Technologies

http://www.xeta.com

 

[jsteph]

I'll say what I always say about this--globalization won't stop, but the good news is that it *will* stabilize.

What that simply means is that the labor rates overseas (from a USA perspective) will go up (and are going up) due to simple economics--demand there is getting higher than talent supply. Talent supply here is growing at a slower rate than during the 90's when everyone with a pulse was jumping into IT as if it were one of those game-show glass boxes with money flying around inside. As we've seen in this thread and many others, people are getting out of IT here and fewer people choose it as a major in college.

So we may not see the day's when a pimply-faced 19-year-old could brazenly charge $150 an hour to build websites by clicking 3 wizard buttons in Visual Interdev and billing 40 hours, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because that was the bubble--it wasn't reality.

If you're talented and speak good english, you should not have a problem getting work here (usa) but you may get paid less than the regional salaries used to be in the bubble days. But it's still a decent living. Our company (around $1 Bil revenue) refuses to hire offshore anymore because we've been burned by three things that are what I've seen as the major downsides of offshoring in our case:

1. Severe language barrier--they may speak english, but thick accents and no understanding of nuances of our language cause huge misunderstandings of specs.
2. Vague or no control/verification of actual hours worked.
3. Accountability. If there's a major problem and any legal action is necessary, trying a case internationally may be prohibitively expensive. And we came close to that.

--Jim

 

[dilettante]

I can see how eliminating labor taxes and increasing consumption taxes reduces production costs. I don't see how this makes imported goods and services more expensive than those created domestically.

Isn't this just a further shift of the tax burden from corporate operations onto the labor force, for whom consumption costs are a far greater fraction of income than for those who receive production profits?

As far as auditing goes, I know people who are audting one of the largest European based multinationals. Enron pales in comparison, corruption is institutionalized there. It just hasn't hit the fan yet. I cringe to think about what goes on in other parts of the world.


The problem is not 19 year olds making $150/hr for simple work. It is people doing honest jobs who have seen their pay drop from $15-$20/hr to $10/hr and lost all benefits. Labor force compensation always rises or floats from the bottom up.

 

[dilettante]

Maybe I'm missing the obvious. I'd be interested in seeing how those sorts of tax shifts might help adjust the trade balance.

 

[j4606]

Some jobs are going over seas but there are jobs here. I've noticed that the overwhelming majority of people working w/ me at every IT job I've held are from overseas and immigrated here to work in IT. I think we have it pretty good here, most people I work with tell me it's easier to find a good paying job here than in their native countries. I've discussed the subject with many people who came here to work from countries such as the Phillipines, India, China, Russia ect...
They all agree that in the US you are paid alot better and have more opportunities and less compititon. So even though jobs may be leaving, there are still good opportunities here and many people taking advantage of them.

 

[kmcferrin]

ponetguy2, your company may be going the outsourcing way, but there are still a lot of tech jobs here in the US. I've also seen articles recently about the cost of outsourcing being higher than most companies anticipate, especially in terms of customer good will (see Dell for an example). At the same time, wages are rising in developing countries, making it less financially attractive. The pendulum is beginning to swing back the other way.

Still, healthcare is one area that will continue to boom for the foreseeable future. Baby boomers are aging, and populations are living longer. About the only thing that's more of a sure thing that healthcare is Healthcare IT. If you are a nurse or doctor with solid IT skills, there is a ridiculous amount of money to be made consulting for Healthcare IT firms or implementing Healthcare IT systems. And I do mean ridiculous money.

Of course, if you're looking to get out of IT altogether I'd recommend something other than nursing. Sure, there's a shortage of nurses, but the hours are long, the pay isn't THAT great (we're talking $50k-$65k a year out of school), and you've got to do a lot of nasty things dealing with really sick people. If I were going to go into healthcare, I'd go into Pharmacy. Most people with an R.Ph. or PharmD can pull down almost $100k right out of college.

 

[aarenot]

Find a new job as soon as possible.

If you are good at what you do, look for clients outside your firm for your services, and start doing it on the side. Once that is somewhat stable(30% of your current income), offer to be outsourced labor yourself at your current firm at about 5 times your current hourly rate. You will end up working less hours, and making the same amount of money.

I started doing contract work this year, and I work half as much with no decrease in income at this point. I am doing a little more variety of work, and some less gravy work than previously, but I work half the time, and when I want. If I do not like a project, I just turn it down if I do not want the money.