Talk:CSE590TU
590TU Discussion
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Talk on Electronic Voting for MS Employees
There is going to be a talk given on electronic voting by a Microsoft researcher for Microsoft employees on October 18th. You can register for the talk through MSTE. [jameswelle]
IT Worker Demand and Outsourcing
[Damon May] This topic has come up in the last two lectures, hence the main page post.
A couple times so far in class, we've seen some very optimistic projections of IT job growth, particularly for "Software Analysts", over the next 10-20 years. There are a number of inferences that can be made from the projection; it would be easy, for instance, to come away with a warm and fuzzy feeling that we're all in a field that will be booming for quite some time.
However, as we discussed in last night's (10/14) class, an increasing trend is to fill this talent vacuum with overseas resources. I myself manage a team with one developer in the US and three in India. This situation presents communication and other issues, but there's no denying the fact that companies are turning to outsourcing in great numbers. In the last three years, my department at my company has gone from roughly 5% of new development performed overseas to roughly 30%.
Along these lines, USA Today has an interesting article along these designs. It's a rather alarmist piece, describing US IT workers as an endangered species (here's the slashdot reference that led me there).
There are a number of policy issues related to outsourcing. As was discussed in last night's class, the US has a high standard of living and high wages relative to India, China, and other traditional outsourcing societies. What can the US do to make its workers productive enough to justify keeping the jobs here?
In a more protectionist vein, the article above mentions the idea of tightening the caps on H-1B visas or imposing additional restrictions on them.
How big a threat do people see to the US IT industry (and the larger US economy) from outsourcing? How much does it counterbalance the projected growth in IT jobs? Left unchecked, will the trend continue, stabilize, or reverse itself? What can government or industry do, economically and ethically, to slow or reverse the trend?
I think this might make an interesting project idea.
[Andrew Pardoe] That's a very alarmist article. Note that the only quotes were from the "Programmer's Guild" and the "National Hire American Citizens Society". It's pretty well accepted that the dot-com boom was wildly overstaffed--after all, money was free. 25% unemployment sounds low: a lot of the people who never should have been hired must have learned something while on the job.
There's a lot of paranoia about outsourcing which I haven't seen supported with relevant fact. Do you remember when Japan was going to take over the world? In 1983 a song called "Mr Roboto" was all over the disco floors. It was about a robot (Japanese made, of course) who was going to replace the American worker. Detroit was shaken by Datsun/Nissan, Honda, Toyota and Suzuki. Americans had invented TVs and VCRs but you couldn't even buy an American-made model. Even the Empire State Building was sold to a Japanese businessman in 1991. There weren't going to be any jobs left and in a decade or so all Americans were going to be doing low-paying service jobs (probably rolling sushi for export!) Worse yet, we weren't going to own any of our own nation. We'd beaten the Japanese is a bitter world war and they'd come back to beat us by buying us out with our money that we paid them for stuff we had invented!
What happened? Why is Ford still in business? (Why is Chrysler a German company?) Why are they building Hondas in Marietta, Ohio? And who put all the Hummers in the supermall parking lots? It looks like the Japanese didn't take over the America after all.
I believe that the national fear of Japanese competition was very racially driven. We were afraid of computers and afraid of people with different-colored skin. At the time when the Empire State Building was sold to Hideki Yokoi the British owned 5% of American business (I don't have a reference and my memory of this fact is fading...) Why weren't we afraid of the British? In 1987 they bought out Standard Oil of Ohio (Rockefeller's company) and started sticking their foreign-owned petrol stations all over our American soil.
I'll grant that the per-capita GDP of America is 13 times higher than that of India. But it's only 36% higher than the UK's and 37% higher than France's [ http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html]. But we aren't discussing European worker efficiency. In France they're working a 35-hour week. And yet they manage to sell (roughly) as many airplanes as Boeing.
It takes money a long time to make it from one place to another. The Rockefellers are still pretty rich, even without Standard Oil. The first world is wealthy and will stay that way for a long time. And when India becomes a rich nation we'll start selling more of our stuff to them.
"What happened? Why is Ford still in business?"
Note that Ford was recently overtaken by Toyota as the #2 auto producer in the world.
"Why are they building Hondas in Marietta, Ohio?"
For one there is a substantial duty placed on cars directly imported from Japan. Also, foreign car companies are typically given very generous tax breaks and subsidies to set up shop in the United States. This factory might be in Ohio, but foreign manufacturers are mostly clustered in the southern United States, where they can expect the most generous breaks from local governments, and very little union presence with the associated hassle and high wages. Much of the component parts and materials, which face smaller to non-existent duties, still come from Japan. Japanese car companies in general have been concentrating more on car parts and components, supplying many Korean and American auto manufacturers as well.
"It looks like the Japanese didn't take over the America after all."
There's still time :-) For one Japan is purchasing U.S. assets at a higher rate now than it ever was in the 80's -- mostly in the form of U.S. government bonds.
