Job Loss Anger Should Fade

SAP Web site ^ | 7/30/2003 | Gartner Group

[chimera]

Bunch of saps. These people are walking around with a noose around their necks and don't know it. They're next. We'll see how much the SAPs like flipping burgers.

[No.6]

"The way I see it, by then we will be making a killing cleaning up all the crappy code left behind by the offshore programmers."

BUT Indiacorp said they could do the project for half of what I would pay XXX for, so we went with them, and our IT director who approved the whole thing skipped for another job using our "cost savings" to pad his resume, now the dam thing doesn't work and the offshore guys don't answer our calls ...

It took IT decades to figure out that the cost of fixing bugs increases by orders of magnitude the further you go into the lifecycle before discovering the problem ... and 3 years of crazy dot-bomb pricing to forget everything they'd learned.

Cheap, fast, and good. Pick two.

[DManA]

SAP whistling past the grave yard:

The anger felt by American workers about high-tech jobs going to India will fade away in a couple of years.

[dfwgator]

Some people have to learn the hard way. Of course in this day and age when the majority of the shareholders of stock probably don't even realize they hold a company's stock, and yet demand results quarterly (screw the long-term), this is what happens. Investing has become "amateur hour" just like it was in the 20s.

[Utah Girl]

Yep. I am a quality assurance tester, and they seemed to have no idea of what was quality testing and what was not. We had a UNIX project, I was the only US tester. Drove me crazy. They'd just throw code at me, and I would throw defects back at them. It was definitely an uneasy relationship.

[dfwgator]

FWIW SAP is a German company.

[Elric@Melnibone]

"most of the Indians I have worked with here were good coders"

Coders, yes. ENGINEERS, no!. With most of the stuff my company outsources to India, if it is not explicitely detailed, they can't handle it.

Which, by the way, is different from what I have experienced with Indian engineers in this country. They are typically pretty good (also educated here, which may be the difference).

Check out the Memorial Day artical by Jack Ganssle at www.embedded.com for his current thoughts. Makes for interesting reading.

[chimera]

I know. Its gonna get them too. And Gartner. Why pay them the big bucks when Vishnu Boogaboogahdoo can do the work for half the price and make the bottom line look better for that quarter?

[Paul Ross]

Despite bills passed in the US houses of government aimed at slowing or even stopping offshore outsourcing, none have been passed into law yet as American authorities tend not to interfere with the right of businesses to operate in the most competitive manner possible.

Notice how this piece characterized our government the same way as they would in Bejing's case. Not the usual American-government-sensitive: such as the bill 'hung up over differences in conference Committee' or 'threatened with a veto by President Bush.'

Just the anonymous all-powerful 'authorities' blocking America's protection...and for the most-preposterous of all reasons...as you accurately iterated. Plus a few other biggies: US Civil Rights Comm'n, and EEOC enforcement, EPA's emissions regulations..and SuperFund claims, OSHA's work-place rules and arbitrary enforcement and sanctions.

[DuncanWaring]

The way I see it, by then we will be making a killing cleaning up all the crappy code left behind by the offshore programmers.

My current employer sends a lot of work to India.

A lot of what comes back is crap.

But, at least it's cheap, so it's worth it. They say.

Unfortunately, in this line of work, crappy code leads to airplane-shaped holes in the ground.

[Utah Girl]

True, you just made a point that had escaped me. I will never forget when one of the India programmers made a huge change in the way our code worked in regards to replication. They thought it worked better the way they had "fixed" the "problem". The head of the division finally had to order them to make the code work the same way as the other platforms. There was a bit of arrogance in the way they were always "fixing" our "problems". The thing they didn't realize was that we had marketing and focus groups and years of customer experience for the replication code to work that way. It was a battle royale. Glad I'm out of that company (I was laid off in June after 13 years there.)

[dfwgator]

Not to mention the fact that over there, how do you stop Al-Qaeda agents from working as software programmers?

[taxed2death]

This is funny.

Do you think the researchers at Gartner will feel the same way once their research jobs are moved offshore? :)

[harpseal]

Now people who have lost their life savings becuase of the religous belief in Free Trade that is not Free trade are supposed to forget the harm their families have suffered and love their masters. I don't think so.

Beyond that the rise of China and the coming military confrontation will focus people on those who have actively tried to destroy teh American economy for their personal gain. note I did not state their shareholders gain. One of the down sides to mutual fiunds is there is no longer a real stockholder check on the excesses of hired management.

[DuncanWaring]

P.S. Once the 20-40% layoff in Engineering hits here next month, the guys who get "outplaced" (and I'm by no means immune) will never get over their anger.

[Lazamataz]

The anger felt by American workers about high-tech jobs going to India will fade away in a couple of years. That’s the prediction from research company Gartner. The reason that the company believes the anger will ebb is that by then the global economy will have improved and unemployment levels will have decreased.

Possible. If people are working, they will only look back on the hard times as,... well, hard times.

But that assumes that people will be working. If offshoring is limited to 10%, I bet Murrica will get along nicely. If it goes any higher, watch out.

Despite bills passed in the US houses of government aimed at slowing or even stopping offshore outsourcing, none have been passed into law yet as American authorities tend not to interfere with the right of businesses to operate in the most competitive manner possible.

One tariff could shut down offshoring in about 15 minutes.

[Heyworth]

and our IT director who approved the whole thing skipped for another job using our "cost savings" to pad his resume,

Man, don't even get me started on the stories I can tell about that specific routine. And it's not just IT directors. It's all mid-to-senior management. They roll in, make big changes to justify their existence, rack up some immediate gains, then bolt to a better gig while everyone else is left to pick up the pieces when the whole thing crashes. But what do the managers care? They're off screwing up someone else's company.

[Lazamataz]

My current employer sends a lot of work to India. A lot of what comes back is crap.

I knew it. Offshoring is a fad, a very bad-for-business fad.

[Lazamataz]

Not to mention the fact that over there, how do you stop Al-Qaeda agents from working as software programmers?

In fact, in that portion of the world, COUNT on Al Qaeda programmers.

[harpseal]

Others have made many of the poinbts I would have made about this study. i think what Gartner is saying is an additional 10% of the remaining programmers will se their jobs gine since the losses to date are already greater than that 10% figure.