Another offshoring report

[ramapo]

Here's a well researched report on the impact of offshoring with a specific emphasis on NJ.

http://www.njpp.org/offshoring.html

There's a lot written about jobs lost but nothing said about the jobs that will now never be created. I believe that this will be the most significant impact of offshoring and it is very visible in the IT shops in the NY metro area.

Every major corporation that I'm aware of (and I've been in this business for 20 years) is sending large software development projects offshore. So programmers are never hired. Programming is the entry point in the software world, serving as a training ground for professionals who might later advance to better paying analyst, design, and management positions. It is difficult to design software if you haven't done the grunt work.

So who are we training? Workers in India, Russia, et.al. Add in the thousands of jobs lost to H1B/L1 visa holders. The H1B fiasco laid the foundation for offshoring. Now the walls have been built and each brick is a job never created.

The argument that offshoring will create new jobs is technically true. It takes a sales/marketing person or two to create and sell the proposal and a project manager or two to keep track of the work done offshore. A few "new" jobs to replace perhaps a dozen never created. Sounds like fuzzy math to me.

Not long ago my consulting company would've had the opportunity to place many programmers for any one of these projects. Today we get nothing as it is all but impossible to compete with the firms having a "direct" offshore connection.

[Robert Oak]

1. organize organize organize

There are grassroots organizations out there but yes you're dead on
and we need to organize.

Right now I realized there is no website listing candidates who
will take action on offshoring/h-1b, L-1 and trying to dig out info
on Senate and house. Even if Kerry does something (and he's not
promising to do enough IMHO) it doesn't matter if the house
and senate are "purchased" by corporate lobbyists.

[ramapo]

2. Some websites

Check out the links at the H1b.info site...

http://h1b.info/bookmarks.php

Both FAIR and Americans for Better Immigration have scorecards. You have to sift through the information for the H1B/L1 specific legislation.

ABI has a very anti-immigration bias. You'll find Republicans high on their list and Democrats generally scoring much lower. In regards to the H1B fiasco, there is plenty of blame to spread around, even to many of our "favorite" legislators.

I am by no means against immigration per se but rather against targeted visas such as H1B which puts a certain segment of imported worker in direct competition with citizens.

The visa problem can be controlled through legislation. Offshoring is much more difficult because it can't be stopped. Incentives can be removed but to a certain, perhaps large, extent, the genie is out of the bottle.

Our economy needs a new "new thing" to reinvigorate employment opportunities. There are so many possibilities from all types of alternative energy to infrastructure replacement to truly rebuilding our cities. I believe the federal government's role is to provide a hugh jumpstart, just like it did during the '30s through the many New Deal programs, the'40s and the war effort, and the '60s and the space program.

For all the emphasis on science and math education, I do not see that associated careers are really valued. There are many people who achieve superior levels of education and then have no place to go.