Someone would eventually comment on how americans are whining about this topic, it has occured in the last couple forms of this discussion. Figured I would beat them to the punch.
"Shoot Me! Shoot Me NOW!!!"
- Daffy Duck
I used to live in South Korea. I suppose I could always return.
What bothers me about the whole "get competitive or get out" attitude is, the American educational system doesn't prepare us for being competitive and marketable in today's job market.
Also, I read articles claiming that the Indian's in I.T. are approaching the dicipline in an almost boot camp fashion, similar to the Japanese in the auto industry a few decades ago. In other words, they live, breath, and eat I.T., and are willing to put in 14 hour days.
I'm a firm believer in continuous learning and self-education. I'm also a very hard worker. However, if staying competitive means having nothing in my life other than work, I may as well retire and become a beach bum.
I of course can understand working non-stop in certain situations, such as during the approach of an important deadline, attempting to jump into a career, or trying to get a new business off the ground. However, as a former Army mechanic I know what working 14-18 hour days non-stop for months does to your psyche. It's not too hard to become burned out.
I have had 2 experiences, currently involved in another, with shipping project to offsore development companies and know a number of others who have as well. Through our talks I have noticed one thing in common in all of our experiences, which is the need to redo the work. If your a large company like IBM where you can afford to establish your own shop or have some degree of control with the offshore group then issues may be less, but from my experience is smaller companies looking to save a buck end up spending more. None of our projects were completed on time, and we always had to redo some of the work, and the work that was redone was typically the more comlex pieces of the application.
The developers in India may show dedication as far as time invested and the ability to write code, but in my opinion they fail to understand exactly what they are developing. I don't really see how a good product can be developed if the developers don't understand what they are developing.
"Shoot Me! Shoot Me NOW!!!"
- Daffy Duck
Our US government doesn't understand where our tax base has gone. If you don't work in the US, you don't pay taxes here. All the jobs are leaving or have left. Who will be left to pay the taxes??
IBM and other large consulting/vendor service companies have downsized, just like every other company out there. What most people do not know is they downsized their Professional Services departments. This is the department that actually performed the work. The consultant that showed up to your door with his laptop in hand and ready to code.
These large companies (i.e. IBM, CA, PeopleSoft, ....) outsource their work to the smaller consulting companies. My company augments staffing for these contracts.
Just last month, I was asked to visit a client’s site. They wanted a bid for some work. I was bidding against one of these larger vendor/consulting companies. I informed the client that my company augmented staffing for several contracts awarded to the vendor/consulting company. By bidding directly on the contract we could eliminate the middleman and save them some money.
My bid was several thousand dollars cheaper than the vendor/consulting services company. I am talking six figures cheaper.
(Just a side note, because of my business relationship with the vendor/consulting company, I informed them bidding on the work, prior to bidding.)
The contract was awarded to the vendor/consulting company. The client stated many reasons for this decision. The major reason was to go with the Big Name.
The next day the vendor/consulting company called me to staff the project. The only restriction was I could not personally work on the project.
This happens more often than most people think. Companies do not want to pay the prices being charge by "Big Name" companies. And they do not accept bids from smaller companies. But awards work to someone overseas...
Still in business after 10 years, augmenting projects for “Big Name” companies.
I am from India (living and working there, an old man and don't need to migrate) and now joining this discussion.
You folks must have known that most hardware is made in Korea, Taiwan etc. Under the hood, large manufacturers have always had a good portion of imported (to US) components. Wouldn't surprise me if Dell also did that. so what's new? Outsourcing TECH support (ie taking jobs away from US persons) was alsways there. It's just spread from hardware to call centres.
Some large companies aren't wholly blameless. Running sweat shops in these countries and paying lower wages.
MDXer's post of 8/8 raises a valid point about how the deliverables from outsourced comanies aren't always correct and on time. So how was good was the FRS and contract?
There are 3 levels of companies in India.
(1) Good Indian companies - someimes with a presence on NASDAQ - who earn a part of their revenue from taking assignments from large (usually F500) companies .. Eg. TCS, Infosys (INFY), WIPRO, i-Flex ..
(2) IBM, Oracle-Development Centre, Mcrosoft, Adobe, TI ..
(3) The Programmer's shop in India with a representative in US who works out of an apartment.
I am thinking MDXer's experience is only with the third type.
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