Offshoring and Lowered Expectations

Computerworld ^ | March 8, 2004 | Dan Gillmor

[Luis Gonzalez]

"...radiologists in India are performing diagnosis for US hospitals online for $ 25/hour -- 5% of what their US doctor counterparts are getting..."

But that's making 5% of the yearly per capita income in an hour for an Indian.

What one gets paid doesn't matter so much as what one can buy with that money.

In 1960, our per capita yearly income was under $3,000, so $25/hr would have been significant wages.

[citizen]

See post 69....corporations are - or should be - a caring, intergrated part of the fabric of everyday America....they used to be, maybe those days are gone, permanemtly.

[international american]

They are LONG gone....compensation based on the stock mkt.prices changed all that 15 years ago.

[EverOnward]

"Unless we fire corrupt sandbagging public sector employees we will lose."

Are you referring to the outsourcing of government jobs? Now the taxpayers can pay three times the amount for the job to be done -- and private contractors with connections are making out like bandits. Just drive outside the Beltway (Washington DC) -- all those office buildings are government buildings -- just giving the money to insiders/contractors to do the job now. The little incest game -- one day govy, next day contractor. One day awarding the contract, next day working for the contractor. One day head of company, next day appointed head of agency that awards conctracts to company. It's a great game!

[templar]

Have you tried skydiving? I am considering a try:)

On my agenda for this year. Too windy this time of year (I think), I'll probably go this summer sometime. A skydiving club operates out of an airport just a few miles from me. They got instruction down to the point that you can jump your first day now. Last time I was set up for a jump, my instructor (a co-worker back when I lived in Oklahoma) managed to get killed the week before he was going to take me up during a skydiving exibition. Maybe I'll have better luck next time.

[RussianConservative]

It always amaze me that study find that peoples with many things usually not as happy...consider that many things not mean many friends or human contacts...image that...human need more then plastic crap????

[RussianConservative]

It is G8, Russia ahead of Canada and if grow rate continue this year, then it will be ahead Italy, possibly England too.

[eno_]

Many executives get their stock price negotiated at a lower level than the asking price. Sometimes a lot lower. Sometimes almost as low as the founders share price, if the company isn't that old.

Yeah, I got that kind of deal as part of being hired in by investors. But that only works once when a company is formed and before anyone puts in money at a higher price. Any other non-qualified option grant at a price below the market price is income, and is taxed as income. That makes those kinds of options extremely risky - for the grantee.

The main form of funny business is in repricing options. But even in those cases the vesting schedule resets - it isn't retroactively repriced. So that kind of fix only works if there is some event, like an acquisition that accellerates vesting.

Oh, and if you are getting a divorce, do it BEFORE your shares are liquid. You can often get them valued at the exercise price.

[eno_]

According to Yahoo Finance, SOuthern, symbol SO, H. Allen Franklin, 58, Chairman, Pres, CEO, got $4.65M in salary and exercised option worth $1.21M in the last fiscal year. Pretty phat for an easy gig, but not a crime. Did the article you read cite a source?

[dr_lew]

Holmdale i think, I was up at murry hill. The build you are talkingabout is not a ghost town, ahrdly any people inthat building. I think that they are trying to sell it.

What are you people, on crack? It's Holmdel and Murray Hill, which is really in Berkeley Heights. For that matter, there is no Murray Hill - it used to be a Post Office, but never a town or township.

My parents started to work at Murray Hill in the fifties, and my dad moved down to Holmdel in the sixties, after working at West Street for a while. Then my mom moved down to Crawford Hill ( an adjunct of Holmdel, where the cosmic background radiation was discovered. ) And we moved down to Holmdel the year I graduated from college, 1970.

I started work at Indian Hill Bell Labs in 1979, and I'm still there ( which is an amazing thing), although of course it's Lucent now.

My mom hobnobbed with a lot of the biggies, Nobel Prize winners Penzias and Wilson, Hamming, Pierce ( Echo and Telstar ) ... Tukey ...

Those were the days, my friend,
We thought they'd never end

[eno_]

I have either been the CTO or the CEO several software companies and believe me it has been decades since you could start a software company in a garage.

The little garage shop I joined last year went from a $1M cap to a $5M cap in one year, and will probably hit a $30M cap value this year pre a $15M VC round. One of our competitors that is public in Europe has a $200M market cap. Or is that too small-time for you?

Just because nobody is interested in a competitor to Microsoft Office doesn't mean it's game-over.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Factories in India and China will manufacture low-cost goods whether we buy those goods, or someone else does.

We can either let others buy that product and try competing against them, or we can own their output, and use it to our benefit.

I say we own their output.

[eno_]

Or look at it this way:

My grandfather went from riding a horse to school and milling grain with water power to being a penniless refugee to flying in jet planes and laying out highways with lasers.

And we are complaining that the world changes?

[Filibuster_60]

Soon it might be G9 with China included - China's the 2nd-biggest economy in purchasing power.

[Luis Gonzalez]

The world changes, that's the constant.

The next constant is that thus far, we have not only survived, but we have prospered.

We will again.

[Luis Gonzalez]

When competition tries to break one's market, the best (and simplest) solution is to buy the competition.

When we contract these Indian factories to produce goods for us, we are effectively buying the competition.

[Ciexyz]

And why will more education solve the problem?

It's helping one machinist I know whose job was outsourced to China. The guvamint is paying him to retrain as an electrician. Meanwhile the wife is supporting the family.

[Luis Gonzalez]

We "protected" our auto industry from the Japanese with tariffs.

In turn, they had no option but to build factories here.

We think we saved our auto industry that way, and we saved lots of jobs.

Yet...

The Japanese now own the home market.

I'd rather employ foreigners, than be employed by them.

So, we go to India, and build factories.

They are OUR factories.

[sixmil]

If taxes and regulations were lowered and relaxed, there would be absolutely no problem keeping jobs here at American wage levels.

Outsourcers themselves say they are moving jobs overseas because of the price of labor. Are they lying? Not once have I heard them give any other reason. The price of labor is determined by supply and demand, nothing more. These countries have a massive supply of labor with little demand for it. This is and L-1/H-1B are nothing more than an attempt to drive down the price of US labor by creating a massive supply. It's really that simple. The end result is equally simple, lower wages and lower consumer demand. Viola, you have accomplished nothing in the long term.

[Luis Gonzalez]

I can find an unemployed IT guy in damned near every seat at Denny's in downtown Miami.

The Denny's manager however, couldn't get anyone to come fix his ice maker for two days.

Techs too busy.