Hot damn, "US economic growth hits 8.2 percent in third

[Fallanthas]

You make gizmos instead.


Or, in this day and age, you open a call center and sell extended warranties on widgets.

[masteen]

Masteen, I really don't understand why you have such an elitist attitude towards this. Why do you think that anyone who loses their job as a result of either the economy or foreign competition is somehow incompetent? I'm sure it is much easier to talk like you are the cream of the crop when you have job security, but I assure you that there are people who work much harder than you and are much smarter than you who are losing their jobs daily in the U.S. Though it may not affect you directly, it is definitely a detriment to the U.S.

It's not elitestism that drives my contempt. It's the fact that these people with no specialized job skills or advanced education are bitching because their jobs evaporated. I know there were honest, hardworking people who lost their jobs, but for every one of them there were 4 LIFERs (Lazy Innefficient Fucker Expecting Retirement) doing just enough to not get fired. In a field that moves as quickly as IT, that will kill your business.

[Keverian FireCry]

Sneakers with air pumps! (And yes I had a pair )

Me too! And I also had British Knights with light up soles too!

[Aslanna]

It's not elitestism that drives my contempt. It's the fact that these people with no specialized job skills or advanced education are bitching because their jobs evaporated. I know there were honest, hardworking people who lost their jobs, but for every one of them there were 4 LIFERs (Lazy Innefficient Fucker Expecting Retirement) doing just enough to not get fired. In a field that moves as quickly as IT, that will kill your business.

Lol. So clueless. Again...

[Neroon]

It's true that many manufacturing companies in the leather, textile, steel, apparel and consumer goods industries, have experienced job shifts in the past several decades. In this global economy, moving certain manufacturing jobs is sometimes a necessity. It's important to keep in mind that these jobs have not only shifted from the U.S. to Asian countries, but also within Asia; from Japan to China. The contributing factors in these situations include many things such as the cost of labor, logistics and the need for direct communications. For example, if your customers are concentrated in China, then you can only be competitive if you have a presence there and manufacture your goods side-by-side with the Chinese.

In my view, the reasons why manufacturing jobs shift in order of importance are as follows:

Proximity to the customers (synergy and immediate transfer of information);
Cost and availability of personnel;
Cost of transportation and transit inventories (cycle time);
Cost of supplies;
Incentives from respective administrations;
Lower taxes; and
Faster administrative processes and fewer regulatory requirements.

Executive leaders have a responsibility to keep their corporations viable and competitive. Therefore, they have to observe the economic necessities or else their companies may cease to be successful and eventually even cease to exist. Shifting jobs can be a disturbing process. However, theses changes allow the global economy to grow and markets to expand, meaning more jobs for everyone on a global scale. This promotes higher global wealth, closer ties across national boundaries and peace among nations.

Manufacturing jobs in advanced economies will invariably continue to diminish and be replaced with other valuable, generally knowledge-based jobs involving design, innovation, and highly complex precision processes. Therefore it is important for everyone to keep learning and stay flexible.

This was the reply from the CEO of my company when the question of moving jobs overseas came up. I'm not saying I agree 100%, but it is an interesting perspective.

[Krimson Klaw]

Yea, business-wise it makes absolute sense, but it still sucks when you are the one losing your job to an overseas migration.

[Aslanna]

This was the reply from the CEO of my company when the question of moving jobs overseas came up. I'm not saying I agree 100%, but it is an interesting perspective.

It may work for manufacturing jobs.. But it's a bunch of BS when used for other industries. It's all about companies being able to pay less for labor/services which equals more profits for them.

[masteen]

This was the reply from the CEO of my company when the question of moving jobs overseas came up. I'm not saying I agree 100%, but it is an interesting perspective.

It may work for manufacturing jobs.. But it's a bunch of BS when used for other industries. It's all about companies being able to pay less for labor/services which equals more profits for them.

So it's wrong for companies to seek profits and an international presence? Damn that free market and those greedy capitalists, damn them straight to Hell!

[kyoukan]

trading short term profits to keep greedy shareholders happy for the long term economic health of the country you live in is pretty stupid yes. the holy free market you keep jabbering about like you have a fucking clue is actually a tad more complex than what you are trying to make it out to be.

[masteen]

It doesn't take a ecomonic geenious to figure out that it's good to have local operations in two of the largest developing infrastructure markets in the world.

It's not like these were jobs that had existed before the 90's anyway. So associating them with the economic health of this country in any way more specific than "new jobs=good" is a fallacy.

[Aslanna]

I normally don't wish bad things on people.. But I honestly hope your job is outsourced to someone in New Delhi.

[kyoukan]

It doesn't take a ecomonic geenious to figure out that it's good to have local operations in two of the largest developing infrastructure markets in the world.

It's not like these were jobs that had existed before the 90's anyway. So associating them with the economic health of this country in any way more specific than "new jobs=good" is a fallacy.

It doesn't do developing countries any good by outsourcing these jobs to them. Deliberately keeping wages low by manipulating the economies of these countries and convincing local governments to keep a lid on wage caps does not help them develop very much. It is basically one step above sweat shop labor and these countries know that if wages get too high they will lose all of these jobs and all the taxable income and american money to pay their wages that comes with them.

And new jobs that were created in the 90s are there to replace old jobs that have become obsolete. I am not sure where you get a mentality like this is such a good thing. A retarded child could tell you how bad it is for in the long term to outsource so many jobs.

[Skogen]

It doesn't take a ecomonic geenious to figure out that it's good to have local operations in two of the largest developing infrastructure markets in the world.

It's not like these were jobs that had existed before the 90's anyway. So associating them with the economic health of this country in any way more specific than "new jobs=good" is a fallacy.

It doesn't do developing countries any good by outsourcing these jobs to them. Deliberately keeping wages low by manipulating the economies of these countries and convincing local governments to keep a lid on wage caps does not help them develop very much. It is basically one step above sweat shop labor and these countries know that if wages get too high they will lose all of these jobs and all the taxable income and american money to pay their wages that comes with them.

And new jobs that were created in the 90s are there to replace old jobs that have become obsolete. I am not sure where you get a mentality like this is such a good thing. A retarded child could tell you how bad it is for in the long term to outsource so many jobs.

/nod kyoukan.

...and just a general addition..

Ever wondered why there is so much insugency in central & south america, especially in the oil producing countries? No, they really aren't a bunch of power-hungry, gun-toting, bloodthirsty thugs. The multinationals have the entire ecomony & government in there pockets. Those countries that resist the US "interests" pay a high price. One of the most extreme examples of this is what happened in the 1973 fully US backed & supported coup in Chili.

[masteen]

It doesn't do developing countries any good by outsourcing these jobs to them. Deliberately keeping wages low by manipulating the economies of these countries and convincing local governments to keep a lid on wage caps does not help them develop very much. It is basically one step above sweat shop labor and these countries know that if wages get too high they will lose all of these jobs and all the taxable income and american money to pay their wages that comes with them.

And new jobs that were created in the 90s are there to replace old jobs that have become obsolete. I am not sure where you get a mentality like this is such a good thing. A retarded child could tell you how bad it is for in the long term to outsource so many jobs.

So you're saying that tech support for China and India should be done from here? Know many techs that speak Chinese? How about Hindi and Bengali? Punjabi? Fuck, back in my days I had trouble finding a tech that could speak Spanish when the odd SA reseller would call in.

I'm not saying that Dell trying to move it's US desktop support to India was a brilliant and selfless move, but given that SE Asia is the biggest potential market in the world, is it suprising that companies are looking to get a foothold there now? You seem to think that there are no other factors than short term greed motivating these moves.

The new jobs created in the 90's weren't just created to replace obsolete ones. They were jobs that had never existed before. How many CCIE's were there before 1990? Exactly. Problem was that companies were under the impression that the new economy would be able to sustain the massive growth rate, and staffed accordingly. Now that we've come back down to reality, adjustments had to be made.

[Aslanna]

Except you're under the misguided notion that it's just tech support jobs being outsourced to Asia/India. Hello? McFly?

[masteen]

Except you're under the misguided notion that it's just tech support jobs being outsourced to Asia/India. Hello? McFly?

I was actually under the misguided notion that was the focus of the discussion, as those were the bulk of new jobs created in the tech boom and other types of jobs have been going to Asia, Mexico, Canada, and other developing areas for decades.

[Skogen]

since when has a thread here stayed focused?

[Dalmoth]

Software Development is being outsourced to India at a pretty hefty rate. This trend started in the last 3 years. Within the next 3 years it will level off as the benefits become less and less for doing such.

The cost of doing business (in Software Development) overseas rose 20% last year, the cost savings are now only 40 cents on the dollar and they are dwindling every year.

Couple this with the realization that outsourcing INSIDE the country is starting to get a black eye and companies will begin to slack off on their outsourcing soon enough. What it will mean is that some companies WILL have offices over seas and permanent employees there instead of whomever has the lowest bid on any given day.

[Aslanna]

http://news.com.com/2100-1011_3-5133261 ... &subj=news

More and more tech jobs head overseas
Last modified: December 24, 2003, 6:59 AM PST
By Reuters


U.S. corporations are picking up the pace in shifting well-paid technology jobs to India, China and other low-cost centers, but they are keeping quiet for fear of a backlash, industry professionals said.

Morgan Stanley estimates the number of U.S. jobs outsourced to India will double to about 150,000 in the next three years. Analysts predict as many as 2 million U.S. white-collar jobs such as those filled by programmers, software engineers and applications designers will shift to low- cost centers by 2014.

But the biggest companies looking to "offshoring" to cut costs, such as Microsoft, IBM and AT&T Wireless, are reluctant to attract attention for political reasons, observers said this week.

"The problem is that companies aren't sure if it's politically correct to talk about it," said Jack Trout, a principal of Trout & Partners, a marketing and strategy firm. "Nobody has come up with a way to spin it in a positive way."

This causes a problem for publicly traded companies, which would ordinarily brag about cost savings to investors. Instead, they send vague signals that they are opening up operations in India and China, but often decline to elaborate.

Moreover, on the threshold of a U.S. presidential election year, job losses are a hot-button issue. A company that highlighted a major job transfer could wind up in the campaign debate.

Multinationals find that when they trumpet expansion overseas, they cause problems at home. When Accenture executives in India this month announced plans to double their staff to 10,000 next year, they triggered a flood of calls to the company's U.S. offices about U.S. job losses.

Offshoring companies "are paying Chinese wages and selling at U.S. prices," said Alan Tonelson, of the U.S. Business and Industrial Council, a trade group for small business. "They're not creating better living standards for America."

The U.S. sales director for one of India's top computer services providers said his company has won business from customers such as Walt Disney, Time Warner's CNN and the Fox division of News Corp.--none of which wants public disclosure.

In India, some technology companies have recently adopted lower profiles. Microsoft has been removing its name from minibuses used to ferry engineers on overnight shifts. Major Indian beneficiaries of U.S. business such as Infosys Technologies, Wipro and Satyam Computer Services have stopped identifying new customers.

While there have been reports that IBM intends to ship 4,700 high-end jobs to India and China next year, they mark a rare instance when figures "have been reported in black and white," said Linda Guyer, president of Alliance+IBM, a union that has tried to organize IBM employees.

Those numbers were not released by IBM, but rather disclosed by The Wall Street Journal, which had obtained an internal memo. The company has declined to comment.

Guyer believes as many as 40,000 of IBM's 160,000 U.S. jobs will be transferred overseas by 2005, a figure she says was gathered from phone calls by IBM employees.

Previously, IBM has pointed to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute that concludes the U.S. economy ultimately will benefit. The report was commissioned by Nasscom, a group made up of Indian tech companies as well as IBM's Indian services unit--showing an effort by those invested in offshoring to sway public opinion.

Recently, AT&T Wireless told the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it would lay off 1,900 employees this year. Communications Workers of America members obtained an internal memo prepared by Tata Consultancy Services of India that discussed how it would assume those U.S. jobs.

Subsequently, AT&T Wireless officials acknowledged it was exploring the job shifts but didn't offer details.

While some companies, such as Electronic Data Systems, CAP Gemini Ernst & Young and Sapient, acknowledge they shift jobs abroad to exploit cost advantages and around-the-clock work, IBM asserts that it is not moving jobs but creating new ones.

"It's a business strategy, period. You cut costs. You revamp. You look at what your mission statement says and try to turn a profit," said Sylvia Thomas, who was laid off by chipmaker Agere Systems after declining offers to relocate to headquarters in Allentown, Penn.--or to Singapore.


Story Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

[Zaelath]

It doesn't take a ecomonic geenious to figure out that it's good to have local operations in two of the largest developing infrastructure markets in the world.

It's not like these were jobs that had existed before the 90's anyway. So associating them with the economic health of this country in any way more specific than "new jobs=good" is a fallacy.

Well, the problem here is that the jobs that did exist before the 90's are also gone. Manufacturing mostly.

America will eventually reach a saturation point where there's far too much money going overseas or to the top 5% and it will begin to eat itself. Or, more predictably, it will begin to eat the rich.

Any society, it has been said, is only three meals from revolution.

[CalandraWindrose]

A pure capitalist argument can be made that quality etc being equal you are going to go where costs are lower

some companies are finding that management, overhead, cultural differences, security concerns etc add to the costs and make it not as attractive as it first appeared

regardless it *might* not be nearly be as bad a thing if there were easier to transition employees - it is a painful process to re allocate and/or re-educate people to do other things

the people at the closing Levi Strauss plants in Texas (the last in the US) are going to have a tough time I would imagine retraining themselves with no money coming in

costs of higher education have outstripped inflation - and students and their families are bearing more of the costs in the form of student loans etc - and graduate education can begger you easily -