Posted on 07/30/2003 2:03:53 PM PDT by leadpencil1
Good G-d man. You are watching too much "Sopranos". :o)
Here, too! About '70. Big, nationwide. Tnx Pres Nixon. Although the old-timer engineers pointed out that engineers could expect to be pounding the pavement sometime during their careers. Maybe more than once. This is hardly a new phenomenon, but maybe it has a new twist.
Maybe so, but they will all wind up like Kenny-boy. It won't be pretty for them.
Actually, we have:
Main Entry: grun·tle
Pronunciation: 'gr&n-t&l
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): grun·tled; grun·tling /'gr&nt-li[ng], 'gr&n-t&l-i[ng]/
Date: 1926
1: to put in a good humor <were gruntled with a good meal and good conversation -- Merriam-Webster dictionary.
It seems VERY healthy, as most of the bigtime tax cheats never get called on it.
You'd have to hire 1 out of every 3 Americans as a full-time IRS agent to catch enough cheats to deter the rest.
Nor should our decision to invoke tariffs be in any way influenced by the minority of businesses who choose to be scofflaws. That would be like revoking fraud law because a minority of individuals commit fraud.
It may not be a minority, if some studies across the 1950s-1990s are at all accurate.
And there's an argument to be made that we should refrain from making laws that are practically unenforceable, which covers most laws on the books today--and I think we can agree that we have entirely too many laws in America today.
Keep in mind that the Indians you worked with here were probably better than average, as it took some hassles to do the H1B paperwork, so it made sense to only pick the best from the pool.
Also, keep in mind that over here, you had a team of Indian programmers working under American managers. We know that there are Indians who are skilled coders. Being skilled project managers may be another story
It appears more and more of the bigtimer frauds are getting their weenies whacked. cf: Martha Stewart.
You'd have to hire 1 out of every 3 Americans as a full-time IRS agent to catch enough cheats to deter the rest.
AH! A solution to the white-collar offshoring phenomenon! We all become FBI and IRS agents!
It may not be a minority, if some studies across the 1950s-1990s are at all accurate.
I'd be VERY hard-pressed to believe that 51% or more of American businesses were tax scofflaws. Cut a corner here or there? 90%. Tax scofflaws? < 20% or less.
And you'll be shown a nice Potemkin Village set of books.
Oh, what are all these entries to 'Vishnu hara magdu programming'?
There aren't any, sorry. The only payments are to entities such as "GO PAT GO Software," "Buchanan Technologies," and "America First Code Slammers, Inc."
It would appear that you owe [Amt paid to Vishnu] x 400% Wage Equalization Tariff. Pay up, sucker. And, oh, btw, we are scheduling a visit for you personally MR. CEO/CIO downtown at the FBI offices for committing a fedferal felony...
You realize that you were being digitally videotaped? You realize that that videotape shows you demanding a six-figure bribe? You realize that you're going to spend the rest of your miserable IRS-agent life covered in my pocket lint? (Blows smoke rings from a fine cigar)
Whistle blower reward set at 20% of fine levied. Levy really big fines, too, to make it worth it.
LTS
The job I lost was due to the project tanking (the machine didn't work). Fault of in-house personnel. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I had to train my offshore buddies, then find my current up-and-running job finally landed in, say, India. Only curse words would do this justice.
Here's a new slogan for this situation - Never Forget.
Martha's just penny-ante stuff. Terry McAuliffe's still a piker, and he's friggin' untouchable--and he did much worse.
I'd be VERY hard-pressed to believe that 51% or more of American businesses were tax scofflaws. Cut a corner here or there? 90%. Tax scofflaws? < 20% or less.
The problem is that IRS enforcement is statistically worthless, particularly if you use some of the more baroque business structures--an IRS guy I know says it's like trying to grab a puff of smoke. Simply put, from about 1956 onward, business' fear of God and the IRS has declined steadily.
1) It's here to stay, people. We can't regulate it. Too much revenue from US enterprise SW companies comes from overseas. Companies are really very global now. Ericsson, Nokia, and SAP, for instance, are not US companies. They're Swedish, Finnish and German respectively. SAP sells a lot of software here. Oracle sells a lot of software here too, but they also sell in South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Sweden, you name it. If SAP used to develop software it sells in South Africa in the United States, and now it develops in India, no amount of regulation is going to change that. The alternative is to completely close ourselves out of the global marketplace. But we can't do that. Really.
2) Offshoring saves about 30%, maybe 50% if a company is really good with communication. The time zone difference, cultural differences, communication and management costs, add a little cost to very cheap labor. But in the end, it's much cheaper, if it's managed properly. Companies that don't do it are going to be screwed. Just like Fieldcrest Cannon went out of business today: that textile company couldn't operate in the United States, where costs are much higher. Same is true for SW.
3) Quality is mixed. There's some good code coming out of India, and some atrocious code. Many companies have also added Bangalore operations years after the code has been evolving in the United States. The Indians don't know company policy regarding variable naming conventions, commenting, libraries, modules, etc. So they screw it up. Exact same thing would have happened if you had gone to Denver and done an outsourced operation there. Except maybe in Denver, communications would have been easier. Many start-ups are now starting offshore operations from day 1. Their HQ may be in Boston or Mountain View, but a lot of coding and product development is in Bangalore or Hyderabad. Many large companies are providing good training to Indians so they can get up to speed or they're only putting certain products in India that aren't mission critical until the Indians become familiar.
4) This is a trend that's certainly going to continue. And while that's unfortunate for local programmers, the other alternative -- to totally close our borders of foreign products -- won't work either. The reason that so much is now being offshored to India is that in the last few years, India has opened its borders. And lowered government regulation. The "Permit Raj" is over.
There are two main ways to develop software: rapid-prototyping, and the waterfall method (where you do a high-level design, detailed design, program specs, and finally code from the specs).
The waterfall method is most popular in bureaucracies, where managers get to sign off on lots of specs and such and hold lots of meetings.
Rapid prototyping, in my experience, produces better results and a higher probability of the finished product being what the user really wants, since the user's real needs often don't really crystalize until he sees a prototype of how it will look and operate. BUT this method requires developers who can actually communicate and interact with the end-users, and insecure managers don't like it because it has their developers working directly with users, instead of all communication coming via the management hierarchy.
Off-shore development only works if the specs are actually any good
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