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 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 (6,500 people) has gone from roughly 5% of new development performed overseas to roughly 30%.
Along these lines, USA Today has an interesting article. 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 imported automobiles, especially trucks. 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.
"I believe that the national fear of Japanese competition was very racially driven"
Of course there was some of that, but it is important to separate out legitimate causes for dispute from the racism. The British and Dutch were indeed more heavily invested in the U.S. than the Japanese at that time, but fueled by an asset bubble the Japanese were making up that gap quickly. Only when the Japanese real estate bubble finally collapsed did the torrid pace of the purchases subside a bit. The other thing to remember is that the Netherlands and Britain were open to U.S. investment and the U.S. had substantial assets in both countries; in contrast, Japan was (and is) more closed to foreign investment.
Interestingly, the term "Japan-Bashing" was coined by Robert Angel, a prominent scholar formerly under the employ of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to this article http://archives.cjr.org/year/92/6/trade.asp he was inspired by the PR effectiveness of the term "anti- Semitism" and had first tried out "anti-Japanism" but that term did not stick.
David Dorwin: One interesting thing about outsouricing programmers and other "tech jobs" is the question of what industry these people are supposed to move to. In the 80s and 90s, all the people that were losing their auto industry, manufacturing, and timber jobs were told to "re-train" for "high-tech" jobs. (If "The Graduate" had been made in the 1990s, it would have said "just one word - software".) Now that they've been retrained, those jobs may no longer be the answer. And for those currently in the software or high-tech industry, what industry will they be retrained for when they get down-sized in favor of foreign labor? The answer might be bio-tech since it's the "next great thing", but it's not easy to retrain someone for bio-tech, and as far as I know, there aren't that many jobs available. The only true constant is the service industry, but those are often lower paying. (We could start an entirely different thread on the pressures on service industry wages.)
Sure Ford is still in business, but as stated above, they're losing ground. The Big 3 automakers appear to continually struggle to make a profit.
The reason for Honda plants in the US is the same reason that US companies put factories in other countries. It's marketing and money. (Ask yourself, "Why does Intel have a fab in Ireland?" Hint: European Union) It sounds good to the US public if they can say they "build cars in the US" even if most of the cost (parts, etc.) comes from Japan or elsewhere in Asia. And as already mentioned, they get tax breaks and avoid tarriffs. Even BMW has a plant in the US. From their webiste: "BMW Manufacturing Corp. in South Carolina ... is the exclusive manufacturing plant for all Z4 roadster and X5 Sports Activity Vehicles."
France is apparently reconsidering its 35-hour work week because it is hurting their economy (here and more background here). If we were all willing to lower our standard of living, we could keep jobs in the US or have 6-8 weeks of vacation like much of Europe. (Although one might consider more vacation as a higher standard of living.) As we've heard over the last 2 weeks, productivity is key to the economy. So if Americans start working less, our productivity may suffer. Here's an article on vacations in Europe. According to this article Europeans are even being forced to give up these "perks" in order to avoid losing their jobs to other countries. Also check out the nice chart of work hours and vacation/holidays. This page has also has some tables with minimum vacation days around the world and vacation time for US companies. The DoD looks like a nice place to be; your tax dollars at work.
Hmm, it looks like you might be able to work this Europe/work hours/vacation/unemployment/productivity topic into a term paper topic, though it's not specific to IT.
P.S.
If you think you work to much and want a longer vacation, go to the Take Back Your Time website.
