Stop Offshoring
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Tuesday, January 27, 2004
 
Haven't had time to update this blog recently because of work (project deadlines still slipping, still amazed at how incompetent these Indian H1Bs are).

Here are a couple of recent articles that I found:
- Tech Workers Combat Offshoring
- Nationwide snubs Indian call centres in favour of UK

Has anyone found a site that explains the opinions of the Presidential candidates on the offshoring issue? In this election year, that will be a determining factor in who I vote for, but I haven't been able to find out where the candidates stand. If you see any info, email me at kpth123@yahoo.com, and I'll post it in a future blog.

Friday, January 16, 2004
 
An AOL member informed me that one of the headline news panels on the AOL home page yesterday discussed the loss of U.S. jobs to overseas workers. Glad to hear the issue is getting more publicity!

I've been busy at work the last two weeks since I started on a new project. The project itself has been going on for months. Before I joined, the project team was composed entirely of Indians, both employees and contractors, mostly H-1Bs. Now that the project is way behind, our company is pulling in resources from other groups to help out.

This is yet another instance where the H-1Bs may be cheaper workers, but they obviously aren't as productive as we expected. I looked at some of the modules they've developed so far, and I can't believe it's taken them this long to finish it. The work should've been done in weeks, not months. So much for the argument that Indian counterparts are as capable as American programmers.

Now the project dates have slipped and the rest of us are overworked trying to salvage it. Who is benefitting here? The company? Nope. The overworked American workers? Nope. The only beneficiaries I see are the Indian H-1Bs. Great....

Friday, January 09, 2004
 
For those who don't believe that you get (less than) what you pay for when offshoring, check out this Mercury News article: Offshoring labor savings don't add up

"Ultimately, Sattar decided there was little advantage to doing major development work in India -- especially as he watched his launch date slip from March 2003 to December and now to next month."

This is the kind of experience that I've found over and over again -- the offshore workers don't provide the same productivity level as workers in the U.S., and deadlines start slipping, causing havoc for everyone. The only winners are company execs who think they've saved some money and line their own pockets with hefty stock options. American workers either lose their jobs or work extra hours to compensate for their offshore counterparts.

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In other news, execs of leading U.S. high tech companies are trying to convince Congress that offshoring is a good idea.

Their "solution" to offshoring's negative effects on American workers is more education. As if they would hire an American with more skills over a cheaper foreigner. They haven't been doing that yet -- I don't see why they would start in the future.

"A vocal critic of moving jobs overseas, Marcus Courtney of Seattle, dismissed the latest report. 'This is not a recipe for job creation in this country,' said Mr Courtney, president of the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers. 'This is a recipe for corporate greed. They're lining up at the public trough to slash their labour costs.'"

"Democrat Senator John Kerry introduced a bill in November requiring service representatives to disclose their physical location each time a customer calls to make a purchase, inquire about a transaction or ask for technical support. The proposal targets the increasingly popular decisions by companies to move their call centres overseas to capitalise on low labour costs."

I haven't been following the platforms of the presidential candidates, but I thought this was interesting: "Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean said during a debate last month that America needs a president 'who doesn't think that big corporations who get tax cuts ought to be able to move their headquarters to Bermuda and their jobs offshore'."

Friday, January 02, 2004
 
Happy New Year, everyone!

The first posting of 2004 comes from a CNET News article: More and more tech jobs head overseas

My favorite quote from the article is:

"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."

Hmmm, if you can't put a good spin on it, maybe it's not good! Ordinarily, if you're afraid to talk about something that you did, doesn't it mean you did a bad thing or an embarrassing thing? Wouldn't it be something you'd try to avoid doing in the future? Managers of companies that are offshoring would do well to examine their actions and wonder the same thing. After all, if offshoring is so great, they should be publicizing the heck out of it, not shamefully hiding it.


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