Stop Offshoring
Friday, March 09, 2007
Bill Gates was in Washington D.C. earlier this week to speak about innovation in the United States. He stressed the importance of education in order to maintain American competitiveness.
Companies must advocate for strong education policies and work with schools to foster interest in science and mathematics and to provide an education that is relevant to the needs of business. Government must work with educators to reform schools and improve educational excellence.
Paradoxically, Gates then turns around and asks for more H-1B visas. That doesn't make sense to me. If you want to encourage today's kids to get an education and become the workforce of tomorrow, why send them the message that you won't support them once they enter the workplace? Why bring in more foreigners to steal the jobs that could go to Americans?
How many prospective engineers did this country lose during the 2001 - 2003 downturn because it seemed like it was next to impossible to get a job in engineering? Yet at the same time, offshoring took off! If companies had kept jobs in the U.S., then students wouldn't have dropped out of engineering programs and we wouldn't have to worry about a labor shortage. Using H-1Bs to patch a temporary job surplus is counterproductive to the long-term health of the country. Someone who is as smart as Bill Gates is supposed to be should know better than that.
Friday, March 02, 2007
InformationWeek reported this week that a Deloitte study predicts banks will dramatically increase their offshoring budgets in the next three years. According to the study, banks spend 6% of their IT budget on offshoring, but that will grow to 30% by 2010! Yikes! I happen to have worked for a bank that offshored some IT services to India, and I can tell you that the atrocious level of service (and the resulting additional work I had to do to make up for the offshore workers) played a large part in my dissatisfaction with the job.
