Posted on 02/23/2008 3:44:22 PM PST by Momaw Nadon
Cool
Once a business is established it can make money for a long time with incompetents. And with incompetents below your exaltedness, there's lessened risk for a manager. In such businesses cost becomes a focus and driver. The business does not have to grow, it can continue by reducing costs.
But a business is never alone. In any business arena there are competitors, and those competitors are caught in the same overall cycle. There is a human tendency and it is a very strong tendency to follow the pack. So a manager will be asked by a boss -- "Why aren't we outsourcing? The costs are so low overseas." And the boss was asked by the CEO, who was asked by the Board, who were asked in their circles of friends. "Outsourcing is GOOD!"
Of course to be stated another way that means "Cutting costs is good business!" Which it ain't. But we employ a different word, a different thing "Outsourcing!". Sounds wise to the pack.
Yet at some point, the net becomes impaired enough so everybody sees it. Even in the silly circles. Then a new theme!
"Competence!"
Yeah, competence will fix the problem!
IT is one of the *first* areas outsourced, as the legend/myth/wishful thinking of management is that India and China are overrun with people who speak flawless English, have IQs of 220+, and work for $7,000/yr.
I've done QA on Indian code, and the above is manifestly untrue, but management continues to believe it.
Must be LSD in the executive water cooler.
The Chinese do good work but will steal your trade secrets.
Project management is a decent area, however; or if you can get a job cleaning up the mess the Indians left behind, you can do pretty well.
If someone *is* going to outsource code work, I'd go to Russia for it. Or Israel.
Cheers!
Cheers!
A Falling Tide Grounds All Boats
The Other Face Of India, or, The Social Climber
Cheers!
The Chinese have difficulty with large complex systems and also with radical innovation. They are great at copying and also sometimes at improving, but they are of such a long-established cultural heritage that they will always be playing catch-up to radical innovation. And it is constant radical innovation that Americans excel at when not self-hobbled by pack-following and self-indulgent delusions. And in America there are a small, but good number of people who do understand engineering large complex systems in a way only equaled (maybe) by the Scandinavians as a general population, and by a very rare handful in all populations.
I think that there must be some IT professions that are resistant to outsourcing, mainly the ones that require a physical presence in the US.
Are there other factors besides outsourcing that make IT less than an ideal career choice?
If IT is not the way to go, then what kind of career would you recommend?
Cheers!
IT’s not that hazardous. The reality is that most of the companies that outsource a lot of their IT are the kind of cheap poorly run companies you don’t want to work for anyway. And most outsourced project fail miserably, it takes a lot of high quality communication and top notch organization to effectively manage a project that’s happening on the other side of the planet, and most companies can barely communicate down the hall and have no real organization to speak of. The life cycle tends to be that a company will outsource a project to see how it works, it crashes and burns, they stop, a few years later (with new VPs) they might try again, but it too will crash and burn.
It can be a little hazardous of course, especially if you’re call center oriented in your work, people do lose their jobs. But the idea that India and China are the great vacuums sucking the IT out of America is laughable and foolish.
Project management is good -- seems to be mostly women doing that, often downsized managers.
IT consulting / contracting -- if you can learn SAP, maybe Oracle, some UNIX scripting; or as another poster has said read the new O'Reilly titles to see the latest buzzwords.
Then go from gig to gig.
The caveats there are contractors are the first let go in a downturn but the first re-hired when things pick up; and you live live 3-6 months at a time.
Doing that is better if your spouse has health coverage at their job, so you don't need it from your contracting firm; or if you are single, you can travel from city to city if need be on assignments.
In some cass, you could do software QA, but you need to have an analytical, organized mind, and be able to put up with insane deadlines -- the developers are given as much time as they want, and then you have to do all the testing in the 12 hours before release ;-)
QA is now being overrun with people from India -- deep business knowledge in the area, or manual testing, are the way to get around this.
Classes in supply chain management or accounting make you more appealing too.
...or you could always open a taco stand and wait for the flood of illegal aliens to hit your hometown ;-)
Cheers!
I don't disagree. I lumped illegal immigration in with "national security" because, well, the continued existence of the American nation - as opposed to a resurgent Mexican nation - is to me, at least, an element of national security!
These days national security gets equated with the Middle East only, which is myopic.
Also, I'm known here as a single issue poster on illegal immigration - which is a choice I made, because you have to focus on one thing to get it out there - and I thought just for a moment I might abstract myself away from it for a moment and put it in a larger context.
And who has an absolute lead in the number of votes across the country?
Hint: it isn't the party of Stevie "smirk" Forbes.
Get back to me in November after the big celebration parties all across Africa.
Those that sit and gnash will be left far, far behind. Tell your kids to adapt to the new world. The day isn't too far in the future when you'll hold a small device in your hand and, when you want to know anything, from Plato to Oppenheimer to Intel you'll merely need to log in and ask.
Think of it. The entire knowlege base of the human race up to that moment in your hand and keeping up as that knowledge doubles every six months or so.
In the future it won't be how much you know but how you use all the information that is at your fingertips.
It will probably be tossed for economic (and geopolitical, but that is another story) malfeasance, even if it doesn't. It will be overdetermined if they do.
The left has no long run political future in this country peddling socialism (or pacifism), because it doesn't work. It can be tried a while sure, but it is a dead end.
I don't have any interest in pointing fingers. The only person responsible for my future is me.
I'd like to have a career in IT, I'm looking at all the options, and am just asking for career advice in the context of current market conditions.
You can mealy mouth it all you want, but if the Dims don't deliver job stability to their clients, the clients will get rid of them.
Like I said, sport. Get back to me in November. The selling point for Fwee Twade was "there will be more and better jobs with NAFTA/CAFTA/MFN for China etc etc"....which was a crock and they knew it. The same BS was run in 1980 when the first trade deals with China were being discussed.
It was, and always has been, about breaking the unions and destroying labor political power in the U.S.
Labor figured that out. In particular, white labor.
And so they Won't Get Fooled Again.
Like I said, unless the vote gets overturned somehow, that's the way it will go eventually. All other things will pale relative to it.
You and the Stupid Party can begin to understand that, and walk away from Bush the Elder's sophomoric understanding of political economics.
Or end up marginalized, irrelevant, unimportant.
Oh wait...they're almost there now.
Ta-Ta, won't be answering for a while, gotta jet off to Europe today for some of them thar international biz.
Globalism, ya know?
Personal banking is local but banking fundamentals and software to run them are truly global except for the language. With more and more people going to automatic deposit and online billpay, even the ‘local’ banking will continue to drop off.
And before him for Gephardt.
And Buchanan, can't forget Buchanan.
These are the moral titans of modern American politics.
We do have economic issues, but we also have more jobs than ever paying more than ever. The economic issues stem from capital stuff - overpaying for housing, over-confident housing finance, insufficient personal savings, Fed leaving interest rates too low for too long. Standard cyclical adjustment things.
The Dems "clients" always get rid of them eventually, because none of their ideas work. They have achieved sustainable economic practices when they were pragmatic enough to listen to Robert Rubin speaking for Wall Street, and when Newt controlled federal spending, demanded welfare reform, etc. Left to their own desires, every economic policy their base actually wants would fail in one presidential term.
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