Outsourcing to usurp more U.S. jobs (1 of every 10 IT Jobs)

[RamboLiberal]

http://msnbc-cnet.com.com/2100-1022_3-5057087.html?part=msnbc-cnet&tag=alert&form=feed&subj=cnetnews

More U.S. jobs at American technology and services companies will flow to developing countries, as offshore outsourcing becomes an attractive financial option, according to Gartner.
A study released by the research firm on Tuesday states that one out of every 10 jobs at information technology companies and at companies that provide IT services will move to emerging markets. It also forecast that one out of every 20 jobs within internal IT departments will shift overseas by the end of 2004.

"Offshore outsourcing is becoming a tool for improving service delivery and a source of highly qualified talent in greater numbers," Diane Morello, a research director at Gartner, said in a statement.

American technology companies are increasingly shifting part of their research efforts to countries such as India, Ireland and China. They are lured there by large numbers of highly trained software and hardware engineers and by lower development costs.

But the migration of technology jobs to countries like India has raised the hackles of many workers and politicians in the United States.

[w4rma]

1. Good bye American tech sector

Good bye to American programmers.
Good bye to American technological dominance.
Good bye "new" economy.

This crap needed to be stopped *now*. Right now.

[Frederic Bastiat]

2. Why?

There are equally qualified people across the globe, we won't let them immigrate so why deny them labor? What's your rationale?

[ramapo]

4. Why?????

Do you want to see what has happened to our manufacturing sector happen to the IT/Tech sector?

This is all about $$$$. A Java programmer here in the NY metro might go for $35-$40/hr. Maybe less even. Odds are it would be filled by a visa holder. Offshore costs for same are a fraction. I've heard everything from $5-$15/hr.

Programming is your start to an IT career. Guess how you get started with your position sent offshore? You don't. Maybe you can get yourself a landscaping truck.

Where will everyone work if this keeps up? Wal-Mart?? Doing what exactly?

These are American companies doing this to improve the bottom line. Sure globalization is wonderful until your job goes to India.

So we should do something to keep the jobs here other than knocking the going rate for a programmer down to India-competitive levels.

[MaraJade]

15. Well said!!

:toast:

While most of the labor market "sat and stared", the textile industry,
the shoe/apparel manufacturing industry and the steel manufacturing industry found corporate legs and walked away. Now we have a massive
"rust belt" that stretches from coast to coast complete with attendant ghost towns and empty tax bases.

Currently, the automotive industry is being "outsourced to death".
Michael Moore's documentary "Flint" tells all about this. Pretty
soon, it will be rare to find cars made here.

People who think that tech outsourcing is a good thing really
need to talk to some of our local laid-off/retired/fired
steelworkers who not only lost their jobs and their salaries, but
also their retirement income due to outsourcing. If this doesn't
stop, there will be nothing but lower sector minimum wage jobs
left over here.

And when that happens, only depression is left.

But again, maybe that is what the corporate outsourcers want. To
bring the entire world economy down to third world status.

[bpilgrim]

7. yeah, we got PLENTY of job openings in the military

right exCav

peace

[ramapo]

3. Should be a political issue

Seems like there's one of these articles every few days.

Working in IT, I've seen this coming. Bad enough we had the H1B visa debacle.

That line of crap from Gartner about this being a way to improve service delivery is so outrageous.

It'll be interesting to see which candidate (if any) latches onto this issue. I don't think Dems have anything to brag about on this one so far.

Should be a good issue for Dean. There are a lot of Rethug ITers who might get pissed as the Corpocracy sends their jobs away.

[Mari333]

5. This is called GOP/corporate whoring

the tax cut goes to the wealthy, they take their extra money, and go overseas and offshore...short term profit whores...
same thing happened when Raygun was in office.

[Frederic Bastiat]

6. There is nothing short term

about this phenomenon, the jobs ain't comin' back.

[bpilgrim]

8. short term in the sense of motivation (greed)

long term in the sense of destruction

peace

[Bandit]

13. At the rate America is being dumbed down I don't blame them

It is getting harder and harder all the time to find qualified people educated here in America. We deliberately keep people dumbed down so they will follow meekly but pretty soon there won't be enough money left among the masses to buy what these corporations are creating. We need to get back to the job of educating our people and turn off Fox news, Rush Limbaugh, and the like. These Conservatives are cutting off their nose to spite their face and when it becomes apparent to all it will be too late.

[moondust]

9. Outsource the CEO.

At some point it will surely become the optimal business decision for shareholders to hire executive officers in India and elsewhere who are as well or better trained than a U.S. CEO and will do the job for a fraction of cost.

Lost tax revenues, lost Social Security support, lost hope for college grads, lost new home sales, ...

[Walt Starr]

10. There is a solution

Tax the hell out of any company doing this so that it costs twice as much to have that IT position in India or wherever than it would to keep it in the U.S.A.

[JohnyCanuck]

11. Remember when they told the laid off factory workers

They should retrain as computer programmers to take advantage of the new economy? I wonder what the laid off programmers are supposed to retrain for this time? Whatever it is, you can be sure that in a couple years the Asians will be doing it cheaper anyway (if they're not doing it cheaper already). I've heard talk that McDonalds is experimenting with McRobots to flip the burgers and dispense the Freedom Fries, so pretty soon burger flipping isn't even going to be an option either.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

14. bwa ha ha ha - I remember

All we needed was more job training. riiiight... Well, Kerry, Dean, and Lieberman all support NAFTA and outsourcing jobs, so what are you gonna do?

[Nottingham]

12. This is majorly gonna kill Bush on the West coast Majorly!

And what of our National Security

Missile Defense systems done over in India.

This is very Bad :bounce:

[yolatengo]

16. good!

About 90% of 'techies' I know (and I am one) are little sh*t libertarians
who went into CompSci and thought they were immune to ANY
economic downturns. Basking in the glory of the Bubble, they thought
they were GODS.

Whiny little 'bootstrappers', they were 'sick and tired' of all the freeloaders
and mooches and they wanted Their Tax Cuts and Their Stock Options and
Their Retirement At 40. Anyone not as successful as them, living in the
burbs in split level homes, 2 cars (one SUV, one Minivan) and Season
Tickets were 'suspect'. And anyone who was altruistic or forward thinking
was just a 'loser' who couldn't do as well as they.

And BOY do some of them LOVE the Boy King! Big on Defense, big
on Tax Cuts, big on gutting social security (who needs to feed a
bunch of mooching old grandmas when you have Stock Options?).

If only EVERYONE could be as 'independent', as 'tech savvy', as
'permanently employable', as they, so sayeth the Oracle of Wired
Magazine. We could ALL ride the bubble to 60, 80, 100% returns
in the market forever! Why not buy a THIRD car?

Screw 'em. I'm just sick and tired of these fake ass Republican-
libertarian techies basking in the glory and calling people losers
who disagree with shipping all our manufacturing, then our service
and finance, and now our tech jobs overseas. Who do
these idiots think will pay their six-figure salaries if 99.999% of
US workers are working minimum wage (until THAT's recinded!)
jobs and the 0.001% remaining are investing in multinationals that
are shifting jobs overseas and shifting corporate offices to the Caymans
to avoid any US taxes?

No tax base; no manufacturing; no finance; no tech. What a Libertopia
THAT will be! I'll be in Europe with a pocketful of Kruggerands then...

And the techie Moron-Americans can keep voting for the GOP to
send their job overseas. Until the cold, cold fist of reality plays
a little chin music on them, they just won't give a sh*t about anyone
but themselves and their pocketbooks. These articles about IT won't
even phase them until they personally get a pink slip. No, even THEN
it won't sink in until about a year's unemployment settles it. Maybe
just in time to vote Not Bush next year!

Bigby

[ramapo]

18. Techies get their just desserts

Can't argue with Bigby. I'm a techie also and Bigby nails the majority techie attitude quite well.

But some of us older techies didn't quite get that arrogance,having grown up in the industry.

I know many who are getting a very rude awakening.

[VeniceDude]

17. Broken Promises to America’s Next Generation

This in an aritcle I wrote last week after the lastest manufacturing statics. Anyone who can see beyond next quarters earnings report, must be able to grasp the long term implications. I agree with some of the other posts. This is a national security issue! We will rot the country from the inside out if we are not careful.

Broken Promises to America’s Next Generation

In regards to ‘Outsourcing the American Dream’ recent statistics couldn't concur more with Glick's position in regard to the devastating decline of America’s manufacturing sector. But just to turn the heat up on this simmering disaster, one must also consider the 3 million hi-tech jobs gradually being outsourced to emerging countries like India and the Philippines. Many of these jobs were IT customer service positions that laid-off manufacturing workers were retrained for after being let go from their blue-collar jobs in the early 90's. After bravely tackling the daunting transition from sweat labor to brain labor, they once again face being made redundant, but the question is, what will they retrain for now?

And it is not just the beleaguered information technology sector for whom the Reaper looms. In a recently leaked conference call among top level IBM officials, Tom Lynch, IBM’s Director of Global Employee Relations indicated that accounting and financial services are next in line to be shipped overseas.1 Russia and China being the leading contenders. Once again the question emerges of where these Americans will find work in our ever-tightening job market.

The only immediate suggestion put forth so far is that perhaps these displaced workers could be temporarily employed to train their foreign replacements. Now if being tossed on the chopping block yet again wasn’t enough, management it seems has the audacity to ask the condemned to sharpen their executioner’s blade as well as provide instruction on how best to wield it.

If these trends continue it seems quite possible that there will soon be no jobs left at all in our country except those servicing the gilded CEO's who have reaped so much from their 'robust cost-cutting measures'.

Based on a May 28th, ABC News Report, the prospects for recent college graduates are even grimmer, for not only will 1.2 million new grads be competing against each other, but they will also be competing with nearly 9 million experienced workers who comprise the swelling ranks of unemployed Americans. One could righteously conclude from all this, that the American Dream is indeed being outsourced, and that the promise to future generations of their own opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is in jeopardy of being broken beyond repair.

That ‘generational promise’ as James Carvill warned in an address to the American Trial Lawyers Association, is, ‘today like no other time in our lifetime, under attack… We have a president that is no longer interested in what happens to the next generation. We have a president that is no longer interested in what happens to the promise of America. “3

Hunter S. Thompson, writing in his Page 2 column, at least made an effort at contrition for his cohorts’ complicity in this fleecing of America’s future, confessing, “I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it.”4

It seems the only check America’s next generation can count on receiving is the $6 trillion dollar bill for our ballooning national debt.


1) WINS radio broadcast July 23, 2003 – leaked to Washington Alliance of Technology Workers

2) ABC News, ‘Grim Outlook for Grads’, Melody Hobson, May 28th, 2003

3) TomPaine.org, ‘James Carville's Rx For Democrats’, Steven Rosenfeld – July 23rd 2003

4) ESPN Page 2. ‘Welcome to the Big Darkness”, Hunter S. Thompson July 2003



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[sam sarrha]

19. my wife and i have been layed off 8 months i have $32 in the bank..

our jobs are in china and arent comming home. we could be moving into the Ford Escort with 2 dogs an the cat. but we will re-register at a friends house so we can vote.