tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61064922011-12-14T19:09:42.983-08:00Stop OffshoringSupporting the AMERICAN workerHSnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1601100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-55259036614149421832011-05-02T12:41:00.000-07:002011-05-02T12:47:08.568-07:00A Wall Street Journal Article titled India Graduates Millions, but Too Few Are Fit to Hire re-iterates some of the problems I've encountered with Indian offshoring companies. For example, Indian schools "focus on rote learning rather than critical thinking and comprehension", which results in many candidates sounding good on a phone interview but aren't really qualified to do the job. Another HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-88881672269244721852011-04-01T17:54:00.000-07:002011-04-01T17:59:50.744-07:00There was an interesting article I came across today that talks about Congress taking up the offshoring issue again. I didn't know such talks were going on, but it sounds like it's related to H-1B visas, which I have talked about before because they are abused by companies to prevent Americans from getting jobs taken by H-1Bs. The Congressional debate focused on data that shows that seven of the HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-6995758876628124202011-03-07T12:40:00.001-08:002011-03-07T12:40:39.174-08:00I just read an article today about small businesses in America moving away from offshoring. This is encouraging news, and I hope more companies start learning that offshore outsourcing isn't worth the alleged cost savings. As the article points out, most companies look at offshoring because of costs, but now they "are looking to base their decisions on more than just costs". One big reason for HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-88065653045535931682011-02-01T13:17:00.000-08:002011-02-01T13:24:53.992-08:00I saw a post titled "What's wrong with CS in India" that describes some of the problems that I've encountered working with Indian offshore teams.Point 1 - As the blog post says, "the usual quality of work is rather crappy". I agree. There were so many bugs coming out of the Indian teams that it took as long for the local employees to fix them as it would've taken us to implement the features HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-24777753565554095872011-01-03T13:16:00.000-08:002011-01-03T13:17:01.436-08:00The new year brings reflections on the past year and predictions for the year we've just entered. If you're an IT worker, the news isn't good on either front. A report from the Hackett Group shows that 1.5 million corporate IT jobs were lost in the last decade. The two main culprits were automation and offshoring. The report also doesn't foresee IT contributing to new job creation in the HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-73688147980151479302010-12-08T12:44:00.000-08:002010-12-08T12:48:43.075-08:00We are in the midst of what experts refer to as a "jobless recovery". Yes, the economy has improved since its lows of 2008, and the pace of layoffs has lost its steam. However, job growth isn't where it should be at this point in the economic cycle. For IT workers, you can point the finger at offshore outsourcing. Two recent articles, in Computerworld and Computerworld UK, talk about how HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-24559198581574498222010-11-08T12:42:00.000-08:002010-11-08T12:45:53.030-08:00One of the common excuses for defending offshoring (after penny pinching) is that the U.S. will continue to excel at R&D while offshoring manufacturing to the rest of the world. A Huffington Post article today exposes that fallacy as unsustainable. Eventually, the U.S. will become a second tier industrial power as a result. The solution, which I've also argued for, is to motivate companies HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-37584218311215727022010-11-01T13:13:00.000-07:002010-11-01T13:15:03.690-07:00Can the green industry save U.S. jobs as well as the environment? It has the potential to, according to two articles I read recently - here and here. Not only may clean energy companies increase the number of manufacturing jobs in this country, but it will also play into what is supposedly the strength of American workers, being the technology leaders in developing new energy sources and the HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-50146196581013822862010-10-05T18:03:00.000-07:002010-10-05T18:04:13.132-07:00Kudos to Ohio governor Tim Strickland for banning the practice off sending his state's government work to offshore workers. In defending the decision, Strickland said that "no one in India, or anywhere else, is going to tell the citizens of Ohio where we can create jobs or how we can spend our resources." Makes sense to me!Unfortunately, at the national level, Republican senators have stopped HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-46084043309822414422010-09-01T13:43:00.000-07:002010-09-01T13:48:38.836-07:00Andy Grove, the former head of Intel, has shifted his opinion on offshoring and is now on my side. Grove fears that the U.S. will lose its technology lead in the future because so many high tech jobs have moved abroad. Even "commodity" functions such as manufacturing should be kept in the U.S., Grove says, because we're losing expertise in large scale manufacturing. One of Grove's solutions toHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-67334620707292145382010-08-05T18:34:00.000-07:002010-08-05T18:35:42.230-07:00Add lawyers to the list of professions threatened by offshoring. The NY Times describes the growing practice of replacing American lawyers with their counterparts in India. In some cases, the lawyers working in India are Americans who moved there (because a lawyer in India apparently makes as much as a lawyer in a midsized firm outside of major metropolitan areas in the U.S). As another sign HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-3555110907212449512010-07-01T18:12:00.000-07:002010-07-01T18:17:25.841-07:00Et tu, Facebook? The social networking company is reportedly going to open an office in India that will staff 500 employees. The main purpose of the Indian office will be to provide round-the-clock, multi-lingual support. In other words, no matter what language you speak, you will soon become frustrated trying to get an answer to your Facebook issues!HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-28237731180988177232010-06-03T15:20:00.000-07:002010-06-03T15:24:28.497-07:00I've heard grumblings recently about the offshore team from other local engineers at the company. Ironically, I found myself as having one of the more positive attitudes. People are widely discouraged that the offshore team isn't as productive and independent as the local team. While I agree with that 100%, I also think that compared to past offshoring experiences I've had (mainly with teams HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-18165753564715078322010-05-07T07:11:00.000-07:002010-05-07T07:14:58.113-07:00After the disastrous release in March, the Philippines team has improved somewhat. Our most recent release wasn't nearly as late or buggy as the March release. Part of it was increased diligence on the part of us local employees, yet another instance where offshoring caused more work for the local employees because we can't trust the work done by the offshore team. But at least we're slowly HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-48440761249835661292010-04-07T17:09:00.001-07:002010-04-07T17:09:50.917-07:00I recently got some disturbing insight into the mind of an executive who has chosen to pursue offshore outsourcing. Our VP of Engineering pulled me into his office to gather "candid" feedback about our offshoring effort. As soon as I told him the first issue that I had (the productivity of the offshore team), he shut me off and began giving me a discourse on his view of offshoring. Basically, HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-46463902247052491782010-03-17T17:13:00.000-07:002010-03-17T17:18:14.436-07:00Our last release was late and contained more bugs than any release I've seen at the company because the QA team in the Philippines was incompetent. Our process, once agile, is now more like a big bureaucracy where code is thrown over the Pacific to the Philippines QA team when the developers are done. The result is that we spend lots of time explaining what the new features are, the QA team HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-28872114051240668962010-02-16T17:54:00.001-08:002010-02-16T17:57:10.051-08:00In the past month, I've grown to really dislike our offshore team. I dislike that they aren't self-sufficient yet, after having worked with us for months. I dislike having to spend a hour or two everyday helping them out and troubleshooting things that they should know by now. I dislike having to rearrange schedules whenever we have a team meeting in order to accommodate their time zone. In HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-24571143263084522302010-01-05T19:36:00.000-08:002010-01-05T19:40:52.522-08:00It's been four months since I started working with our Philippines team. What seemed so promising at the beginning is now resembling every other failed offshoring effort I've encountered. The Philippines team, while eager, is about a quarter as productive as the local team. As if that wasn't bad enough, I spend an hour or two each day helping them out, answering their questions, and fixing HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-63611105581077865202009-12-04T15:33:00.000-08:002009-12-04T15:42:14.630-08:00Any initial enthusiasm I had for the current offshoring effort with the Philippines is now gone. Rather than helping us get more work done faster, I find myself spending a good part of the day babysitting them, teaching them what to do, and then double-checking their work after they're done. Additionally, a lot of this has to be done during hours that are more appropriate to their time zone.I HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-92151602648745619422009-11-01T15:34:00.001-08:002009-11-01T15:37:15.872-08:00Working with the Philippines, while still better than any previous experience with offshore teams in India, has taken its toll lately due to the time difference. It's been difficult to find a time when both teams are available, and when we haven't been able to, it's been the U.S. team that has to make the sacrifices and work late more often than not. It really makes you wonder if it's worth it,HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-32402917967977551992009-10-09T17:21:00.000-07:002009-10-09T17:24:02.283-07:00Apparently the recent ban on telecommuting that my employer imposed doesn't apply to everyone. It seems like people at a certain level of management or above are still free to work from home whenever they like. It's just us rank-and-file employees who must show up in the office everyday. Yeah, this is going to be great for morale. I can feel it already.HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-81481412340085316082009-09-23T08:41:00.001-07:002009-09-23T08:48:04.971-07:00The focus of this post isn't about offshoring. It's about telecommuting. Namely, the new policy from my employers that telecommuting is outlawed. Yes, in 2009, while more and more companies are embracing telecommuting, my employer is taking a big step backwards and banning the practice. I've been working from home once a week, except for weeks when my presence is required in the office. HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-13323525229805708082009-09-07T11:17:00.000-07:002009-09-07T11:25:56.441-07:00I've been working with our offshore team in the Philippines for over a month now. Well, not really a team yet, just a couple of people helping out. So far, this has been one of my best experiences with offshoring. This is the first time I've worked with the Philippines, and they are far better than working with Indians. For one thing, they have been more competent than any Indian offshore HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-66841565181378559302009-08-05T09:47:00.001-07:002009-08-05T09:51:00.889-07:00I started working with our new offshore team in the Philippines. So far, the biggest disruption has been that we have to move all meetings that involve the team to a late start time in order to accommodate the difference in time zones. It's still too early to tell if the offshore team is any good, or whether they will be a net positive or negative for the company. However, I've found that the HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-17484247936958409142009-07-03T19:46:00.000-07:002009-07-03T19:48:49.902-07:00Last time, I mentioned that my current employer was thinking of offshoring some engineering functions. It's now official. We hired our first employees in the Philippines. We'll see if this is the first time that an offshoring strategy at a company I worked for succeeds, but I'm not counting on it.HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-69558757128854498702009-06-10T10:33:00.001-07:002009-06-10T10:36:38.884-07:00My current employer, which has been a great company to work for so far, announced that they're thinking of offshoring some engineering functions. Of course, I told management about all of my bad experiences with offshoring, and there were members of the management team who also concurred. Interestingly, someone made a comment that nowadays, venture capitalists expect all of their companies to HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-14610497265362606322009-05-13T08:14:00.000-07:002009-05-13T08:18:42.428-07:00President Obama continued his support for American workers when he complained about the current tax code that "says you should pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York." Clearly, something is wrong if American companies find it more profitable to expand overseas than within their home country. I don't know if Obama's plan to remove taxHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-72870063254310216082009-04-15T07:49:00.000-07:002009-04-15T07:52:52.323-07:00In some good news regarding offshoring, student loan provider Sallie Mae will bring back 2,000 jobs to the United States. The effort to undo its offshoring operations will take up to 18 months to complete. The company recognized that the U.S. economy is hurting, as are American workers, and moved to create more jobs in this country. Hurrah!HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-82862235326917414962009-03-27T17:11:00.001-07:002009-03-27T17:13:03.645-07:00Just when it was looking like the offshoring tide was turning in Americans' favor, IBM announced that it would cut jobs in the U.S. while expanding in India. Thanks for taking a big step backwards, IBM. You may be Big Blue, but you're obviously not red, white, and blue.HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-67286254753624344802009-03-03T08:18:00.000-08:002009-03-03T08:23:40.681-08:00President Obama has been following through on his campaign promises to limit the movement of American jobs overseas. In recent speeches, Obama has talked of taking away tax benefits for companies that participate in offshore outsourcing. He has also stressed the importance of creating jobs in the United States. It's refreshing to hear a President realize how much offshoring hurts this country HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-11111298568625992072009-02-04T17:43:00.000-08:002009-02-04T17:53:16.378-08:00An Associated Press review of visa applications found that banks receiving federal bailout money sought permission to hire thousands of foreign workers for high paying jobs at the same time that they were laying off American workers. Banks receiving a total of more than $150 billion in aid requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years. The average salary for the HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-25978302331102767742009-01-09T10:20:00.000-08:002009-01-09T10:29:02.208-08:00Ramalinga Raju, chairman of Satyam Computer Services, India's fourth largest outsourcing firm, admitted that the company's balance sheet was falsely inflated by over $1 billion. 94 percent of Satyam's assets were, in effect, fictitious. The scandal is being called the "Enron of India."It is unknown at this point what effect the announcement will have on the future of offshoring. Gartner InvestHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-17671615361699597662008-12-12T07:02:00.000-08:002008-12-12T07:12:20.978-08:00As I listened to the news about the failed auto industry bailout package, it occurred to me that this was one instance where I didn't mind if the products were made outside the U.S. The reason is that American cars are, in general, not as well-built or as environmentally friendly as their Japanese counterparts. When we buy cars, we don't focus on just the price, which is the case when many HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-86470678982963534162008-11-19T14:48:00.000-08:002008-11-19T14:54:21.235-08:00Now that Barack Obama is the newly elected President, it remains to be seen what impact he will have on offshore outsourcing. During his campaign, Obama said, "I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America". However, tax policy may not be enough to change what companies do because taxes HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-32588198609301653662008-10-03T15:01:00.000-07:002008-10-03T15:06:28.024-07:00As we roll toward the Presidential election next month, it's becoming increasingly clear that Obama is on the side of American workers whereas McCain supports offshoring. McCain's record indicates that he supports giving tax breaks to companies that ship their jobs overseas. On the other hand, Obama seems to be in touch with the angst of American workers, with quotes like the following during aHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-59771798665392026232008-09-01T17:02:00.000-07:002008-09-01T17:05:53.793-07:00With Presidential campaigning season in full swing, I'm going to keep an eye out on how both candidates respond to the issue of offshoring. Barack Obama has started in the right direction. During the Democratic national convention, Obama said he "will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-2994992178450505022008-08-02T10:46:00.000-07:002008-08-02T11:05:44.423-07:00A Wall Street Journal article I recently read talked about the declining value of a (U.S.) college degree. The story began with the story of a woman with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science. After advancing in her career for a few years, she was laid off in 2002. She took a number of temporary and low-end positions, and in 2004, her former employer offered her a job similar to the one she HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-77089946222751052142008-07-09T10:25:00.000-07:002008-07-09T10:31:49.170-07:00It's been relatively quiet on the offshoring front recently... that is, until a friend of mine told me that her company is outsourcing application support functions to India. The idea was widely panned by everyone involved, especially those who aren't losing their jobs. They expect service levels to drop and for U.S.-based employees to have to work more to pick up the slack. I sympathize with HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-56817081389490716442008-06-01T13:37:00.000-07:002008-06-01T13:41:15.032-07:00I saw an interesting quote in an article on IT consulting firms like Gartner that has to do with offshoring. The quote is:Two such themes that are popular with such consultants right now are offshoring/outsourcing and getting rid of legacy applications to gain agility, whatever that is....Outsourcing, while a very popular recommendation to improve IT, is treating the symptom and not the problem.HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-77668354974635680702008-05-02T16:11:00.000-07:002008-05-02T16:21:53.406-07:00I read an Industry Standard article earlier this week titled "10 reasons that start-ups 100% absolutely should outsource (almost) everything". Of the ten reasons, I agree with #8 (Outsourcing keeps you from hiring the wrong person) because firing a contractor is easier than firing an employee. I also agree mostly with #1 (Outsourcing lets companies be an expert in everything) if you're talking HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-12118976364602197412008-04-23T09:50:00.000-07:002008-04-23T10:01:08.518-07:00The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has a page explaining the problem with H-1B visas. They explain the history of the H-1B and how it is used to unfairly hurt American workers. I've argued against H-1B visas (and the unfortunate outcome of working with H-1B visa holders) in the past, but I recommend reading FAIR's explanation because they do a good job of it.HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-40037112207492781052008-04-12T16:12:00.000-07:002008-04-12T16:13:05.485-07:00With the recent protests against the Olympic torch, I started wondering why the anti-Chinese faction is more vocal now. If they really want to hurt China, how about trying to get companies to stop offshoring jobs to China? Or asking consumers now to buy products made in China? That would hurt the Chinese more so than harassing the Olympic torch runners.HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-23103171381202135362008-03-25T10:44:00.001-07:002008-03-25T10:47:02.124-07:00With the U.S. slipping into a recession, it will be interesting to see if companies will turn to offshoring again. The practice of outsourcing white collar jobs abroad took off during the last recession of 2001-2002. However, with a weak dollar negating cost benefits and more than five years of offshoring horror stories, will companies still decide that offshoring is the key to weathering the HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-74806774384625307682008-03-02T17:21:00.000-08:002008-03-02T17:26:11.383-08:00This is the last week that my company's Indian offshore team will work for us. I am so glad they're going to be gone, and I'm not alone in that opinion. Especially since the beginning of this year, their incompetence has been extremely painful for the rest of us. It's universally agreed, all the way to the top ranks of the company, that hiring the Indian team was a bad idea. Even though they HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-91843993703609707522008-02-07T17:46:00.000-08:002008-02-07T17:50:20.665-08:00Last month, I mentioned that the company I work for was considering pulling the plug on its offshore team in India. The decision has been confirmed! They will be history in a month or so. Everyone I talked to here who's had to work with the India team thought they were incompetent, but the difference between my current employer and past employers is that this time, management listened to the HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-32755590892428396692008-01-15T13:38:00.000-08:002008-01-15T13:43:53.421-08:00Let's say you're an executive at a company that is considering outsourcing IT to India. Your employees who have worked at other companies that have offshored IT tell you that what you're planning to do won't work. Other employees who came from India and know folks in the India IT outsourcing industry advise you against it. Do you still do it?If you are one of the idiot executives who work at HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-59174565161364197862008-01-02T08:37:00.000-08:002008-01-02T08:41:24.362-08:00Happy new year!Some possible good news to start 2008: my current employer, who has been outsourcing some Engineering functions to India, is having second thoughts. We are finding (not to my surprise, of course) that the engineers in India aren't nearly as skilled as they promoted themselves to be, and we are running into all kinds of problems with their work (or more precisely, lack thereof). HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-20770649910550123962007-12-18T09:26:00.000-08:002007-12-18T09:33:19.466-08:00I came across this article that's appropriate for this Christmas season: Offshoring Santa: Even his suit is made in China. It tells the tale of the last Santa suit manufacturer in the country, Halco, whose suits have been seen in movies and on TV. This year, Halco let go of its domestic workers, and the Santa suits are made in other countries instead. Merry Christmas indeed.HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-45505799565643332362007-12-02T15:13:00.000-08:002007-12-02T15:23:55.587-08:00Recent posts have talked about the possibility that the offshoring tide may be reversing because of the weak U.S. dollar. However, according to the Everest Research Institute, offshoring is expected to remain strong in 2008. The advisory firm's conclusions are based in part on the belief that large organizations currently in the exploratory phase will take the leap into offshoring.Update: It's HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-11740670925773742522007-11-15T08:38:00.000-08:002007-11-15T08:42:55.317-08:00It looks like the devaluation of the dollar and rising wages overseas, making offshoring less attractive financially, is making some companies reconsider their offshoring strategy. According to an eWeek article, "Organizations are beginning to realize that much of what is lost in outsourced relationships can cost nearly as much money as they were saving in the first place." That's what I've HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-73408258314297679802007-11-02T10:49:00.000-07:002007-11-02T10:54:49.810-07:00Following up on my last post about the declining financial advantages of offshoring, an ITBusinessEdge blog talks about the same phenomenon. It finds that some companies are finding it as cost-effective to hire workers in small-town America as in India.All is not rosy, however, as CIO Insight reports that the cost differential will mean that low-level IT work will still be offshored, but HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-64077673517182436132007-10-15T09:03:00.000-07:002007-10-15T09:07:05.341-07:00The primary reason that companies offshore jobs is to save money. This reason may not hold as much water nowadays, with rising wages and a weak dollar, as this blog entry points out. Hopefully, this will sound the death knell for offshoring. We sure can't rely on the brilliance of executives to figure out that offshoring isn't worth it. Maybe the new dollars and cents equation will finally HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-49609504826798100342007-10-06T14:50:00.000-07:002007-10-06T14:57:17.336-07:00Two articles (here and here) talk about a recent UK research report showing that mid-level IT jobs are shrinking due to offshoring, although management and consulting positions are still growing. The mid-level jobs include positions such as software developers, which were once thought to be complex enough to be safe from offshoring. Apparently, they aren't, and a new class of knowledge workers HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-55745865881617597552007-09-27T11:30:00.000-07:002007-09-27T11:42:48.846-07:00A friend of mine, who became VP of Engineering at a new startup a few months ago, told me shortly after he joined that they were offshoring their R&D to China. I thought they were nuts. The company only has 3 employees in the U.S. -- my friend, the CEO, and another business guy. Instead of building up a core team locally, they hired engineers in China to build the first version of their HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-56435521201345096512007-09-11T08:29:00.000-07:002007-09-11T08:40:45.171-07:00The past two to three years, which has seen the U.S. economy grow, has shielded the backlash against offshoring because most American workers were able to find jobs, so they didn't care that their employers were opening offices in other countries instead of hiring more Americans. With the economy now slowing down and job creation reversing its growth trend, it will be interesting to see how mostHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-73542355090875679382007-09-01T07:28:00.001-07:002007-09-01T07:33:21.340-07:00While the U.S. government continues to advocate letting foreign companies steal American jobs, I read about Korea's New Paradigm Center. The NPC is a government-funded research and consulting organization. They focus on subjects such as "employee training, team building, reducing work hours, increasing organizational trust, raising the level of employee satisfaction and engagement, and HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-74532451125107507142007-08-15T11:11:00.000-07:002007-08-15T11:18:21.417-07:00With more recalls of toys made in China every week, senator Dick Durban, the number two Democrat in the Senate, called for the inspection of all toys imported from China.I say, if they want to take that step, why not inspect all imported toys, regardless of where it originated? What makes you think China has a monopoly on defective toys? And when will this wake people up to other dangerous HSnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-82981175865239353942007-08-07T20:06:00.000-07:002007-08-07T20:10:16.182-07:00For a change, Congress is doing something to help Americans fight offshoring. According to the Computerworld article titled "Congress eyes R&D spending to counter offshoring of jobs", Congress reached a deal to fund the creation of ARPA-E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy. Senator Lamar Alexander said the bill was a "direct response to the challenge to our country to keep our HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-64773668776848010662007-07-22T09:10:00.000-07:002007-07-22T09:15:19.860-07:00There's a debate in BusinessWeek regarding H-1B visas called "Beware the H-1B Visa". Of course, I landed on the side that believed H-1B usage should be curbed. Some quotes from the argument:The H-1B program has been corrupted by a large and growing share of firms that use it for cheap labor and to facilitate the outsourcing of jobs.The H-1B visa is so critical to the offshore outsourcing HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-22959470533644240672007-07-03T08:58:00.001-07:002007-07-03T09:03:57.122-07:00A report by management consultancy AT Kearney states: "Most businesses that ship information technology work offshore are still not getting the results they want and more than a third fail to achieve budgeted savings." 60 percent of companies that offshore part of their operations have fallen short of performance expectations. Part of the problem may be rising wages, prompting some companies toHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-64746530668414719782007-06-21T08:23:00.000-07:002007-06-21T08:31:10.452-07:00Recent news shows another casualty in offshoring: our children's health. The Consumer Product Safety Commission said a majority of recalls issued by the agency this year have been for Chinese-made goods. What's even more disturbing is that in many of these cases, the goods were manufactured for American or European companies, i.e., they were produced as a result of offshoring.1.5 million ThomasHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-20507977424784460892007-06-06T08:05:00.001-07:002007-06-06T08:11:12.927-07:00Offshoring supporters often argue that as Americans lose their jobs to foreign workers, our country will continue to prosper through innovation. However, a new report concludes that offshoring is actually undermining innovation. Michele Nash-Hoff, author of the report, says that "When inventors operate at a distance from their inventions, they lose the hands-on experience that fuels innovation".HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-62023246423189604632007-06-01T08:20:00.000-07:002007-06-01T08:36:00.110-07:00I recently read a review of a book called "America's Engineered Decline". It may be of interest to those who also believe that offshoring is an overall negative for the U.S. By exporting our jobs to workers abroad or importing unskilled immigrants, Americans are participating in a "race to the bottom". Rather than prospering from the current fad of cheap foreign labor, the U.S. is exhibiting HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-84253479627596270412007-05-08T15:03:00.000-07:002007-05-08T15:13:11.037-07:00I recently met someone whose company was considering offshoring, and she wanted opinions from people who have gone through the experience in order to learn the pros and cons. Of course, I was happy to talk to her about it.I discovered that for those who haven't had to deal with offshoring (as it pertains to IT/software engineering) before, there are two big misconceptions. They believe that HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-65859700049220968812007-04-19T10:25:00.000-07:002007-04-19T10:36:10.762-07:00There was some grumbling a couple of weeks ago because the H-1B limit had been reached. If you think raising the H-1B limit is a good thing and helpful to the American economy, you should read this article: Skilled Jobs Also in Danger.In the article, Princeton economist Alan Blinder, a proponent of free trade, warns that 40 MILLION desirable jobs will be lost to offshoring in the next decade or HSnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-12389086780828266302007-04-04T07:54:00.000-07:002007-04-04T08:00:31.712-07:00Amid all the news of more and more companies sending jobs offshore, a ray of sunshine appeared in the form of the city of Minneapolis. In a recent Computerworld article, Karl Kaiser, the CIO of the city, referred to offshoring as a "no-no". Kaiser isn't protectionist, citing that they buy products from around the world, but he realizes that sending his city's jobs abroad isn't necessarily in HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-8521257452360740322007-03-09T07:18:00.000-08:002007-03-09T07:26:51.609-08:00Bill 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 HSnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-61904953070905217942007-03-02T12:10:00.000-08:002007-03-02T12:14:57.042-08:00InformationWeek 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 HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1172509803904914722007-02-26T09:04:00.000-08:002007-02-26T09:10:03.920-08:00The San Jose Mercury had an article over the weekend about "nearshoring". Responding to complaints about the poor performance of offshore employees in countries like India, American companies are bringing more work back to the Western Hemisphere, although not necessarily to the U.S. itself. Three locations highlighted in the article were Costa Rica, Nova Scotia, and Mexico. This may be a step HSnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1171642969832414692007-02-16T08:16:00.000-08:002007-02-16T08:22:49.843-08:00Amid recent claims that offshoring will have little effect on domestic jobs, The Brookings Institution estimates that as many as one in five programming, software engineering and back office jobs may be eliminated as a result of offshoring. The most heavily affected parts of the U.S. will be major metropolitan areas such as Silicon Valley, Boulder, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1170862982910695052007-02-07T07:36:00.000-08:002007-02-07T07:43:02.923-08:00For companies considering offshoring, perhaps this news story, titled "Offshoring is too costly", will help you decide. It's about the Newcastle Building Society, which has been testing using staff in India for two years. In the end, it determined that "overall costs here are less than the all-in costs of outsourcing to India" due to all of the hand-holding needed to train and manage an HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1169395385301388382007-01-21T07:59:00.000-08:002007-01-21T08:03:05.316-08:00I've recently been seeing studies that supposedly show that offshoring doesn't result in job losses. In my opinion, they are flawed in that they're confusing offshoring's effect on jobs with a bull market. With the economy booming, it seems like jobs aren't being lost to offshoring, but how many more jobs could've gone to American workers if companies didn't send jobs abroad to places like HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1167664205680616562007-01-01T07:04:00.000-08:002007-01-01T07:10:05.693-08:00A new year often brings new hope and optimism. Such is not the case, however, for anti-offshoring believers. Recent headlines show more western companies sending jobs offshore and Indian firms trumpeting their success in stealing our jobs. The only silver lining I saw was a report of more data thefts from Indian call centers. Let's see what the new year brings on the offshoring front.HSnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1165250120489567812006-12-04T08:29:00.000-08:002006-12-04T08:35:20.503-08:00At a meeting last week, one of my Indian coworkers talked about how he had friends and relatives in India from non-technical backgrounds who went through a six-month programming curriculum and then came to the U.S. to obtain programming jobs. He thought it was amusing that it was so easy for them to get jobs here with minimal experience. Of course, I didn't find the story funny at all. It just HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1163695485468377052006-11-16T08:34:00.000-08:002006-11-16T08:44:45.480-08:00Two years ago, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry carried the torch for offshoring opponents, citing "Benedict Arnold CEOs" who willingly weakened the U.S. economy to fatten their wallets by sending jobs offshore. With the Democrats regaining control of Congress, does the shift in power indicate a change in the stance against offshoring? Unfortunately, the answer is most likely "no".HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1162491812323446542006-11-02T10:18:00.000-08:002006-11-02T10:23:32.336-08:00I read two recent articles that indicate not only that offshoring will grow, but that increasingly more complex functions are being outsourced to offshore workers.Enterprise IT to Oursource more across all categories in 2007U.S. Design Next in Line to Go East?When call center operations started going offshore a few years ago, offshoring proponents argued that higher level work such as design and HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1161276787866029502006-10-19T09:49:00.000-07:002006-10-19T09:53:07.890-07:00A recent NY Times article talked about the dearth of employable talent in India. Despite a large number of graduates, few are qualified to work.A study commissioned by a trade group, the National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom, found only one in four engineering graduates to be employable. The rest were deficient in the required technical skills, fluency in English or HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1160491831781221592006-10-10T07:45:00.000-07:002006-10-10T07:50:31.796-07:00Americans aren't the only ones being hurt by offshoring. This article talks about Australian workers' fight against offshoring. Australian Workers' Union national secretary Bill Shorten had a good quote: "The problem is that if you can't get someone to be the CEO of a bank, you pay them more money... If you can't get someone to work as a teller in a bank, then they'll want to send the job HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1159196620391532182006-09-25T07:58:00.000-07:002006-09-25T08:03:40.410-07:00I was talking to a former coworker who was lamenting the company's decision to outsource much of its software development to India. He didn't see why, after he and others had put in so much time and effort into building the software that runs the company, the company would cut them loose and replace them with programmers in India who wouldn't be able to do as good a job.The irony of the HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1158246550547703882006-09-14T08:04:00.000-07:002006-09-14T08:09:10.563-07:00The company that I work for went through some layoffs recently. I won't disclose the reasons why or how many people were let go, but I found it frustrating that all of the layoffs occurred in the U.S. No one on the offshore team was let go. Even when rumors of layoffs were circulating and people were wondering if their jobs would be cut, no mention was made of cuts offshore. It was as if theyHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1157112697890278922006-09-01T05:06:00.000-07:002006-09-01T05:11:37.900-07:00This post isn't about offshoring per se, but I was wondering why so many companies endorse offshoring but not telecommuting? Why do managers think it's OK to have someone work on a project half a world away, but local employees should be chained to their desks, even though they are infinitely more accessible at home than someone in India or Asia who doesn't even wake up until most American HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1156175730505776882006-08-21T08:52:00.000-07:002006-08-21T08:55:30.523-07:00I have said on more than one occasion that despite the seemingly encouraging U.S. job picture, things are still not all rosy, as a result of offshoring. Here is an article that supports my contention: US Jobs Decline Continues.American economists are yet to face up to the fact that offshoring high productivity, high value-added jobs that pay well and replacing them with waitresses and bartendersHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1155224449023874422006-08-10T08:36:00.000-07:002006-08-10T08:40:49.036-07:00Offshoring was an issue in the 2004 Presidential election. I wonder if it will play a part in this year's elections. I haven't heard any candidates talking about it yet. Much of the focus has been on the war in Iraq instead.Article of the day: Viewpoint: Outsourcing vs. isolationismHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1154532766930125612006-08-02T08:27:00.000-07:002006-08-02T08:32:46.943-07:00Here's a take on offshoring that I hadn't read before: that companies are using offshoring as a tax write-off rather than realizing any true benefits from it. "We may never know if hidden in the justification for offshore development is a form of cost savings that uses the tax code to support offshoring while it drains Uncle Sam's coffers."The article talks about some of the negatives of HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1153931134015430792006-07-26T09:14:00.000-07:002006-07-26T09:25:34.036-07:00According to a news story I read and also heard on the the radio, earnings for American workers with four-year degrees fell 5.2% between 2000 and 2004 when adjusted for inflation. One of the factors blamed for the wage stagnation was, of course, offshoring.Off-shoring, which has shifted manufacturing and call-center jobs to Mexico and India, is increasingly affecting the white-collar sectors of HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1152097453660378052006-07-05T03:56:00.000-07:002006-07-05T04:04:13.676-07:00Some good news and bad news recently in the world of offshoring:Good news - Pervasive Software Inc. and Apple both recently announced plans to pull work out of India, "citing complexity of management of the operation, and increasing employee cost and turnover"Bad news - Canadian lawyers are the latest to see their jobs offshored to IndiaHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1150805572264197452006-06-20T04:58:00.000-07:002006-06-20T05:12:52.283-07:00You wonder why I have such a negative experience with offshore workers and H1Bs? Let me give you a peek into what my work life has been like the last three months because of them. I've been on a project to migrate data from a customer's old application to their new platform. However, there's a catch -- the old data is proprietary and the customer will give us export files from it that we can HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1149166901030675392006-06-01T05:52:00.000-07:002006-06-01T06:01:41.046-07:00You still think your data is safe after it's been offshored? Not according to these articles:The Security Implications of OutsourcingGovernment Bureau Offshore Outsourcing Firms do not Respect Private Data Report Says.Stories of offshore companies disregarding privacy laws and forgoing background checks of their employees should make you very nervous about who has access to your data. As a HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1148561730059802402006-05-25T05:49:00.000-07:002006-05-25T05:55:30.070-07:00A reader sent me an email asking what legislation I would write to stop offshoring if I were in Congress. Off the top of my head, here are some reasonable bills I would introduce to address the offshoring threat:Banning or severely limiting federal, state, and local government contracts that are allowed to be handled by offshore workers. Prohibiting work that involves sensitive data (such as HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1146587123197852472006-05-02T09:11:00.000-07:002006-05-02T09:25:23.210-07:00I just read an article that talks about the threat that offshoring poses to the American chemical industry. Madeleine Jacobs, the executive director of the American Chemical Society, has a quote in the article that expresses the hypocrisy of business executives when it comes to offshoring. "We are sending a very mixed message" to students when chemists and engineers are needed by the nation to HSnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1146056113893727622006-04-26T05:51:00.000-07:002006-04-26T05:55:13.903-07:00Here are two articles that talk about how the U.S. federal and state governments are offshoring some of their functions. There was some progress a couple of years ago by some states to restrict offshoring of government contracts, but not enough is being done. And with all the talk about national security, why does the government think it's OK to send jobs and data to foreign countries?Most US HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1145362109439665722006-04-18T05:03:00.000-07:002006-04-18T05:08:29.453-07:00Just when I thought people were coming to their senses regarding offshoring, along comes this InfoWorld article that shows we're still as stupid as ever.Here are a couple of discouraging quotes from the article:“We’ll be retired before the full force of this really hits.” But our kids may find out later in their careers, he warned, that no job is sacred, and all work will eventually migrate to HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1143898313456912172006-04-01T05:28:00.000-08:002006-04-01T05:31:53.456-08:00InfoWorld's Ephraim Schwartz wrote another nice article about the employment of foreign workers by U.S. companies, specifically the abuse of L-1 visas to bring workers into this country. The last paragraph sums up how I feel about the issue.There are a lot of things wrong with this. But what bugs me the most are the statements made by our leading high-tech CEOs about the poor quality of AmericanHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1142517941735674942006-03-16T06:01:00.000-08:002006-03-16T06:05:41.746-08:00IBM recently announced that the company is offshoring some strategic R&D work to India, the kind of work the offshoring supporters said we should not fear being sent overseas. By next year, IBM expects to have over 55,000 workers in India.If you're an American worker like me, don't expect President Bush to help. He thinks offshoring is great. Easy for him to say, we can't offshore his job, HSnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1141220354301395222006-03-01T05:32:00.000-08:002006-03-01T05:39:14.313-08:00I read an Australian IT article about the security dangers when offshoring data. The article brought up many of the concerns expressed previously, but I wanted to highlight one quote from the article:"People won't be satisfied with the major banks making a profit here and shipping jobs overseas," a spokesman for the Finance Sector Union says. "Data security is a real concern. We've seen what HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1140009553961040842006-02-15T05:13:00.000-08:002006-02-15T05:19:13.980-08:00I just read an InfoWorld article that provides a ray of hope in the stampede toward offshoring. Writer Ephraim Schwartz wrote about a conversation he had with the CEO of Kana, whose company is "backshoring" development back to the U.S. Let's hope this is the start of a new trend. Backshoring -- I like it.Some quotes from the article:... he noticed that for every four or five offshore engineersHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1138886858052325532006-02-02T05:25:00.000-08:002006-02-02T05:27:38.063-08:00It looks like there's no letting up in the offshoring movement in 2006. On the contrary, I'm seeing more stories about firms choosing to send their jobs offshore, and it's not just American companies, but also European ones as well. Sigh...Offshoring could cost 38,000 jobs, ICTU warnsAccenture to double staff in India, China, PhilippinesHSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1137509189085109672006-01-17T06:42:00.000-08:002006-01-17T06:46:29.096-08:00Here's a relatively recent article about offshoring: Local High-Tech Workers Deal With New Reality. Much of what's in the article has been said in many other articles in the past. However, one section caught my eye:College students today are accustomed to hearing about massive layoffs. To prepare them, the CSU business school brings in alumni and mentors who have successfully rebounded from HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1136210076727135112006-01-02T05:49:00.000-08:002006-01-02T05:54:36.753-08:00I hope articles such as "Bangalore Backlash: The Security Implications of Outsourcing" will give companies second thoughts about offshoring. The article talks about growing concerns over security and employee qualifications at Indian call centers. One of its conclusions is that "A full-out retreat -- a Bangalore backlash -- might seem like the safest course of action." I fully agree.HSnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6106492.post-1134047967777363202005-12-08T05:10:00.000-08:002005-12-08T05:19:27.790-08:00In this past week, some U.S. corporate giants announced plans to outsource more jobs to India.Microsoft to invest $1.7 billion, add 3,000 jobs in IndiaIntel, J. P. Morgan outsource to IndiaAmerican workers should be alarmed by these moves not just because it means more jobs going offshore, but the complexity of the jobs as well. Where offshore proponents once argued that only low-level tasks HSnoreply@blogger.com0