Posted on 06/24/2005 9:54:36 AM PDT by phoenix_004
US tech giant IBM plans to increase its payroll in India this year by 14,000 workers, even as it cuts 13,000 jobs in Europe and the United States, a labor group said on Friday.
The shift, first reported by The New York Times, highlights the transfer of some skilled jobs to low-wage countries such as India by a number of companies including IBM, the world's largest information technology company.
The moves in India were indicated in what was claimed to be an internal company document posted on the website of the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, of Washtech, which seeks to unionize high-tech workers.
It indicated IBM's Indian workforce would rise to 38,196 in 2005 from 24,150 in 2004.
IBM declined to comment on the document or specific workforce levels. But company spokesman Edward Barbini said IBM is increasing its staff in high-growth countries such as India to meet increasing demands.
"IBM India has seen double-digit growth in the last five years," Barbini told AFP. "In 2004, IBM India recorded revenue growth of 45 percent. We ended December 31 with roughly 23,000 employees in India making IBM India's sixth largest IT employer."
Barbini offered no specifics on increases in Indian hiring, but noted that the company has announced it would hire 1,000 programmers for a new software center in Hyderabad.
"India, China and Brazil are high-growth markets for IBM and we are hiring to support our local growth in those markets," he said. "There is a rapidly growing demand for business transformation services."
Washtech said the moves were hurting workers in the US and elsewhere.
"IBM is really pushing this offshore outsourcing to relentlessly cut costs and to export skilled jobs abroad," Marcus Courtney, president of Washtech, told the Times.
"The winners are the richest corporations in the world, and American workers lose."
""IBM India has seen double-digit growth in the last five years," Barbini told AFP. "In 2004, IBM India recorded revenue growth of 45 percent. We ended December 31 with roughly 23,000 employees in India making IBM India's sixth largest IT employer.""
Sam Palmisano is destroying IBM. They just canned thousands of employees that were some of the best at what they do. Our institutional memory has been outsourced. I call our internal support line and get someone that I can't understand and it takes hours to do what could have been done in minutes. The management have a dream and they're sticking to it whether it works or not.
....but but but it will make the computers and services cheaper for us americans so we will be able to buy more. It will keep more money in our pockets.
(I wanted to add this before some free traitor does)
I guess the "international" in their name really means international.
what about me and tons like me in the IT world that were laid off due to this-our user told the company we won't be understood and maintenance is easier onsite but no-go.
And the hits just keep coming.
In other news, McDonald's, Home Depot, and 7-11 Stores announced they will be hiring more employess in the foreseeable future, but they will all be minimum wage, without annual pay increases.
Perhaps its time to unload IBM stock.
Your post is the correct take on this. What companies do in global competition to succeed should remain up to the company, but (like when this was tried by my company) some moves will backfire and limit the company's growth for years to come. I expect this is still a small percentage of IBM's total work force, but moving jobs off shore creates a very large negative emotion here at home. I suspect this decision will not be looked at with hindsight as a good move.
a 1:1 loss of US jobs for every person they hire in India.
well what IBM is doing is-they are the largest consultant company so they are in turn outsourcing the projects that were sent to them already.
Were I live there are alot of "former" IBM workers.
The people at IBM making these decisions are not stupid. If they can have the same work done at a fraction of the cost than in the US, why shouldn't they do it? The free-market economy doesn't know "patrotism" or any other sentamentalism.
You're right. It is a free-market economy. I guess it remains to be seen if IBM's move will be for the better or for the worse in the long run.
Don't buy IBM, either. And the dollar must fall in relation to other currencies. We (many) have much better systems (different kinds, and not Linux) at much less cost waiting for you. ...and all the software you can use.
And I have no pecuniary interest in the market at this time.
Companies that outsource think they are getting the same work for less pay. That isn't really true, but it isn't the real problem they face anyway. The truth is, very few companies produce quality software, and those that can do so in spite of managerial incompetence.
By offshoring, they complicate the part of the process they already suck at: Managing.
I work for a company that outsources, and I see it all the time. In-house workers manage to duck management's best efforts to stymie them and get something done. Outsourced projects come back, time after time, with huge performance and quality issues. Management then wants in-house people to tidy it up for release.
They always wind up spending a lot more to get the product ready to market, but pointing that out is forbidden. I have even caught management in outright lies about the resources they devoted to projects. They were lying because to disparage outsourcing is a career-ender for a manager.
The real winners in this will be the entrepreneurs in the states who will eat the lunch of the large corporations caught in the outsourcing tar pit.
Yeah, why get sentimental about some CEO, CFO and other assorted accomplices getting their golden parachutes worth millions for their condos in the Bahamas while Mr. and Mrs. Smith try to buy that new $399 color t.v. on Mr. Smith's new monthly income as a burger flipper at McDonald's?
I'm sure those patriotic CEO's take the time (between mai tais) to hail all the little (now unemployed) people who put them in those nice condos, don't you think?
I already posted an answer, but in a nutshell: The challenge to writing software, and many other tasks, is not in writing it but in managing it. Outsourcing will only complicate a task that most of these companies are only marginally able to do.
Every outsourcing project I have first-hand knowledge of has been a failure relative to comparable in-house development, but saying so is such a career ender that I have even caught managers assigning in-house people to projects on the sly to keep it from going under.
IBM/India, a joint venture, years ago manufactured the last of the model IBM 1401s - the "G" model. The government of India then mandated that all joint ventures have at least 51% Indian ownership. [By-the-by, Brazil did the very same thing at the time.]
IBM (World Trade) withdraw from India totally - sales, support, and manufacturing.
Today ... IBM seeks to increase its Indian "foot-print" - but why?
Largely because Johnny and Suzy, educated in the US public school systems, which US tax payers are "forced" to fund, cannot read, write, or add/subtract ... let alone reason.
Suggestion: All children, at their birth in the US, get a set of the "McGuffey's Eclectic Reader" and a Merrian-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. At age five ... they take by "themselves" a timed test ...
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