Look up from Your Code! Where Has Your Job Gone?

[David Abramowitz]

Look up from Your Code! Where Has Your Job Gone?

The problem here is that I don't believe that this will help very much. There are many outsourcing premises that are based on false assumptions. That is why the majority of outsourcing efforts when viewed in totality, are actually a detriment to the bottom line. For instance the assumption that American programmers are lazy and non-productive when compared to their foreign counterparts simply does not hold water. An examination of outsourcing efforts will show that the firm managing the project has placed far more people on a given project (in many cases more than twice the resources) than were available to the company in the first place. It is fairly easy in most cases to show Gantt Chart productivity gains when more resources are allocated to a task. That's in most cases. Productivity often breaks down because the lines of communication are muddied with layers. Line workers who use systems, and may have had local input into the needs and requirements are often not consulted when a project is outsourced. Design efforts are invariably made only at the highest level, and by the outsourcing management. The design is invariably tailored to talents of the foreign resources, who, familiar with the type of specifications delivered, can knock it out easily. It is possible to compete in this handicap match, but certainly not easy. Take an individual foreign resource out of this environment, and place them toe-to-toe with American resources, pay them exactly the same, and then let's see who is more productive dollar for dollar. Dave

[M.Savino]

Look up from Your Code! Where Has Your Job Gone?

Chuck, I find those remarks highly offensive..... And a lousy Bee-Hive analogy at that! At least Drones are pampered and fed and get to make love to the Queen once in their short lives before they're driven out of the Hive to shrivel-up and die. Worker Bees on the other hand, live long, productive (though sterile, celibate) lives. So I really think that the coders you're eluding to would be more appropriately referred to as "Worker Bees". But once the colony starts driving the Worker Bees out of the Hive, they're messing with Mother Nature. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

[MCWebsite.Staff]

Look up from Your Code! Where Has Your Job Gone?

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[tswales]

Look up from Your Code! Where Has Your Job Gone?

The fundamental problem with this "issue" is that it's the same typical media hype on almost every topic today that drives opinion and not facts. COTS applications were supposed to do this years ago, but large consultant firms(writing custom business code, etc) are stronger than ever. Then came SAP, Siebel, Documentum, etc. This has made technical skills even more important in this country than ever before. Now a company like IBM can make OS code offshore - so what? It's not like they didn't or couldn't do it before. In order for a job to be off-shored, generally the company has to see significant ROI - like the poor fellow who on TV recently lost his job with BP to some "enterprising" off-shore company for pennies. The point is that his job was probably 100% mechanical and unfortunately for him BP figured it out. The only way to offshore most programming business jobs is to offshore the thinking of people who require those systems. Do you know how many times a day a mere programmer suggests a better way to do something and gets rejected outright because "that's the way we do business". If the current client that I work for now would heed our suggestions we would be gone in months, not years, way, way under budget and a substantial savings to them. But what I'm really interested in is what programming jobs will be off-shored? If a company cannot buy a COTS app now and requires only custom programming to run their business then I would bet that company is run by a bunch of morons. Most iSeries, Sun, Wintel shops start with COTS and go from there, why else does a business buy the box(s)? I do believe those jobs targeted for offshore can be easily identified, and that has already been done, the rest of us are in no more in danger of being off-shored then we were with COTS, or SAP or Java taking over programming. The devil is in the details and I have yet to hear anyone prove this other than the standard rhetoric. Plus no one has enough experience to prove that a customer can actually work with someone thousands of miles away and be productive. The paperless office and telecommuting were all the rage - what happened to them? If most customers complain today that the "fill in the blanks" doesn't meet my needs, then how does thousands of miles help anything? It doesn't and once companies figure that out off-shoring will remain the privy of large companies who have way, way too much overhead anyway. Not to say that all change is bad, it usually makes people better. The bottom line is for me, is that it makes great media fodder but "prove" it. We already know that you can build a car in Japan and sell it here or what now are local Toyota assemblies. What I want to know is, if we have no economy who are they going to sell too? In the end their economy is tied to ours.