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Why offshore IT outsourcing can’t be stopped
I have many friends who have lost high IT industry paychecks and are struggling financially because their jobs are now being done in lower-cost countries. But none of the legal remedies currently proposed are going to stop this problem — assuming it really is a problem in the long run.
First of all, I want to point out that American programmers and other IT people were outstandingly unsympathetic when factory workers’ jobs started going overseas 30 or 40 years ago, and I don’t recall a single peep out of anyone in the IT industry when taxi companies in many American cities managed to get regulations requiring cabbies to pass local knowledge tests removed so that they could hire new-immigrant drivers instead of treating their “American” drivers well enough that at least some of them would stick with the business and make it a career.
Like it or not, programmers and others in the IT industry are considered overpaid and underworked by many Americans who work in less-glorious industries. Few restaurant workers or hotel employees are going to get worked up by $60,000-a-year IT guys losing their jobs. Plumbers and auto mechanics, along with many other skilled tradespeople, tend to be slightly scornful of white collar workers in general, and may have trouble seeing why a programmer should earn any more than an accountant — and many skilled tradespeople consider accountants overpaid, too.
At the other end of the scale, corporate biggies outside of software companies tend to consider their IT people as somewhat … strange … more often than not. This is not a new phenomenon. I remember a guy who worked as a mainframe tech for a bank back in the late ’60s who went by the name “Paul the Prophet,” and had a dyed-green mustache. He was the only employee of that bank other than janitors and loading dock people who didn’t wear a tie to work, but he had unique skills his bosses needed, so they put up with him.
full story:
http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/08/27/132243&mode=thread&tid=3
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1 Comment Add your own
1. royalusa | September 1st, 2003 at 5:09 am
Well put. I agree whole heartedly. Most only care about what happens to themselves and their families, some just themselves.
This country isn’t prepared for outsourcing everything we have been. The bottom line is the bottom line. We’ve all been sired to believe money is the most important thing in our lives, and it will bring this country down. But, everything goes in circles. Nothing lasts forever, and I think the mentality of those in power on both the public and private side is simply to accumulate as much as they can without any true thought to the consequences. The quick buck. The concept of this country, and many before it, is based on some good principles. However, the principals of the human is less than what it should be. Those who have made it to a position of influence are like a cancer in the country, eating away at its very foundation, and will eventually kill the very machine making them “powerful”. That doesn’t matter though, since they are feeding on the power of today, and are making the future pretty secure for themselves, no matter what happens to you and me. Cut jobs, send it overseas, move the company over there so as not to pay taxes, etc., etc., all the while salaries and perks for those at the top continue to skyrocket. And what is the government of the people doing? Well, just a few slaps on the wrist, maybe make a point with a few lower down pawns - why do any more, as long as they get their pockets stuffed?
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