Thursday, October 16, 2003

Why all the tech jobs are going overseas Silly us. We thought the reason corporate America rushed to move tech jobs to India was because they thought it saved money. Not so. According to an Indian research and IT group, the US population is aging and will suffer a labor shortage by 2010. Coupled with slow population growth, there just won't be enough qualified IT workers to go around. Hence, India will be poised to pick up the slack. According to the report, the US can fend off the crisis by global sourcing in the form of immigration, temporary workers and offshoring. "The study clearly shows the necessity of offshore activity to support the growth of the US economy. The report also found that offshoring keeps US businesses competitive, creates new markets for US goods and services, and fills the shortfall in services labour that the US is expected to face in the next seven years," said the Nasscom statement. Wow. And you thought Rumsfeld was a spin expert. But clearly, the economy is not growing enough. So if offshoring is necessary to support growth, that must mean we haven't sent enough jobs overseas yet. Don't you just love it when a plan comes together? Not to worry, though. The good jobs are staying here. The offshoring of IT services, the report argues, has allowed US workers to tackle specialised and creative work, while more run-of-the-mill tasks have been pushed abroad. The proportion of specialists in the US IT workforce, it notes, increased from 38 percent in 1983 to 74 percent last year. Ah, so that's it. Just the run-of-the-mill jobs went offshore. Although my C++ and Java programming friends who were recenlty laid off may disagree with the characterization of their jobs being so run-of-the-mill. Or like my tech writer friends at Computer Associates, who recently discovered their jobs were being sent to India. Yep, their documentation will now be written by non-native speakers of English. The report admits that there will be a short-term impact on the US employment market as 1.3 million jobs move offshore in the next seven years. About 1 million workers in the country will be affected, but 70 percent of these will be only temporarily out of work, says the report. As more than 8 million jobs are reallocated every quarter in the US economy, the reallocation process should not be a strain. The remaining 300,000 workers will require retraining, suggested the report. That pesky short-term impact, huh? I'm sure those who will be defaulting on mortgages will be comforted to know it won't be "a strain". 3:02:52 PM    Oh yeah? []

Friday, October 10, 2003

When someone says security, hold your checkbook. I love that quote. Amazingly, it came from a congressman. Describing a plan to build a $10 million underground tunnel between the US Capitol building and the Library of Congress, Rep. Jack Kingston thinks it's a bad idea. Originally planned to draw tourists from the Capitol to the seldom-visited Library, advocates now claim it's a security measure. Now, though, the tunnel's mission has changed: to that of a congressional escape route. Project officials revised the visitors' center plans extensively after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to strengthen the structure and improve the ventilation system. They also concluded that the tunnel could provide important protection to people fleeing the Capitol in case of, say, a biological assault. You also gotta love this description of the Library of Congress: Originally, the idea behind the passageway was to help the Library of Congress, never a huge tourist draw, tap into the Capitol's bounty of visitors. The library's lavish 1897 Jefferson Building features elaborate mosaics and carvings and a 23-karat gold-plated vestibule -- all of which once prompted former Russian President Boris Yeltsin to exclaim, "How did you get a building like this? You don't have any czars." Of course, Yeltsin made that comment before the current administration took office. 6:04:18 PM    Oh yeah? []

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

Will the last tech worker to leave please turn out the lights?" The outsourcing/offshoring debate heats up. Well, it's really not a debate because corporate America holds all the cards. Still, signs of intelligent life amongst the common folk are beginning to appear. Including a recent protest at a hotel in Silicon Valley's backyard hosting the 2003 Nearshore & Offshore Outsourcing Conference. Pertinent quote: "What's to keep contractors in India and Russia from creating competing businesses once we train them and lay off all the people here?" said [a protester]. "These companies that are sending work offshore don't realize that what they gain in short-term profits is going to cost us in the long term." Indeed. Except that thinking beyond the next quarter's earnings results is anathema to the current way of doing business. 4:48:45 PM    Oh yeah? []

Friday, September 12, 2003

Friday Morning Coming Down I never much cared for Johnny Cash as a performer. [heresy] As I felt about Dylan [/heresy], his works were best covered by other, more gifted singers. The simplistic boom-chikka-boom beat, the gravelly voice, the sparse electric guitar. Way below my level as an enthusiastic rock guitarist. By the time I began listening to country music with some level of seriousness, Cash was ending or had moved completely past the prime works that defined his legend. For many years I asked what he had done for me lately to earn such acclaim within the country music community. This, after all, was a genre known for one- or two-hit wonders from the early years who continued performing weekly on the Opry long past their capacity to do anything but relive past glory. As I began playing country music professionally, certain misconceptions cleared. I began to appreciate Cash's unique qualities as more than marketing hype. The man had substance, had depth. You couldn't be a Johnny Cash today, even if you tried. There is no room at the inn for an ugly, tortured singer who mushes lyrics and speaks his mind. As with most other genres, modern country is more about The Look than the guts. What Cash had couldn't be manufactured, freeze-dried, and applied to all the other wannabes attempting to pass marketing savvy off as musical talent. There is no greater measure of how much country music has changed than the realization that Johnny Cash couldn't exist in today's Nashville, save as a legend. It's a sure bet that in 20 years, someone will still be singing Cash's "I Still Miss Someone". It's a substantially riskier proposition to say the same thing about Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue". Today, the first day of post-Cash modern country music, it's all too apparent how big his shoes really were. And they'll be empty for a very long time. 4:44:30 PM    Oh yeah? []

Thursday, September 11, 2003

Outsourcing to some place that's really cheap Okay, the rush to India may be over for companies looking to outsource all their tech workers. The new hot spot is... Romania? A new report ...claims that not only is the cost of using and providing IT services in Romania much cheaper than in India, but the country is also home to an abundance of well-educated and highly skilled workers who have a better understanding of Western European culture than their Asian counterparts. Well, I actually have some experience with this phenomenon. The company for which I'm currently contracting laid off almost an entire division of US programmers last year and established a wholly owned subsidiary in Romania. And this group is currrently programming the telecom app on which I'm also working. I also have a friend who is a fairly recent immigrant from Romania. He claims that workers there can live like kings for $6-10K a year. Apparently, that's undercutting even India as a source of cheap programming. So how well do they program, and how is it working out? Well, certainly I can't speak about all Romanian programmers. But the ones we've been using have been, shall we say, less than stellar. An entire section of code had to be taken back and rewritten here. And just two days ago a conference call revealed a huge misunderstanding between the Romanian programmers and their US counterparts (not all of whom are native, BTW) which will result in a significant setback. Of course, none of this matters a whit to the bean-counting execs who see nothing but a bottom line and will be quick to fire US employees when the product invariably fails to go out the door on time. 4:52:20 PM    Oh yeah? []

Friday, September 05, 2003

FLASH: Jessica abused again First, the unauthorized made-for-TV bio pic. Now the tell-all book. For a $1 million dollar advance. Some folks are upset, including this savage column in the San Francisco Chronicle. Ouch. Yet despite questions over the official versions of the capture and rescue of Pvt. Lynch, and her apparent amnesia, someone has decided this is a story that must be told. Lynch has granted her first offical interview to ghostwriter Rick Bragg. Apparently she still has told no one else, including her grandmother. "We don't talk about what happened to her over there," Mrs. Lynch said. "When she wants to tell me, she will." Let's see, she hasn't been able to talk to close family members, but she can tell a former New York Times reporter? Hmmm. All the hubbub over Lynch has not gone down well with others, including the father of one of her deceased comrades. Randy Kiehl, father of deceased Army Spc. James Kiehl, of Comfort, Texas, told TV station KSAT: "Pretty severe, isn't it? That she makes money off the death of my son and off the deaths of so many others." Not to mention the professional soldiers and veterans represented on Col. David Hackworth's Soldiers for the Truth site. You should read several of the articles raising questions about the whole affair and how the readers feel about the medals being awarded in Iraq. Try: Using Private Lynch Hints of Torture and Rape A Silver Star by the Original Rules Lynch Deserved Praise But Not the Medal This poor young woman is a pawn, manipulated by an administration desperate for good news and callous media desperate for money and ratings. I have a modicum of sympathy for her. But I make this prediction: On the heels of the book release will come the inevitable book tour. Oh, not the common blitz of local TV talk shows, radio interviews, and newspaper reporters. No, that would be too, um, tacky. No, it will be some sensitive, hour-long "exclusive" with Bawbwah or Diane. Just so she can get "her side" of the horrible story out, you see. And timed miraculously to coincide with the book's release. Bet me this doesn't happen. 4:24:22 PM    Oh yeah? []

Monday, September 01, 2003

Overheard on the Net Bruce Schneier, in the New York Times, on the increasing number of viruses and digital vandalism on the net: "There's a reason this kind of thing doesn't happen with automobiles," says Bruce Schneier, chief technical officer at Counterpane Internet Security in Cupertino, Calif. "When Firestone produces a tire with a systemic flaw, they're liable. When Microsoft produces an operating system with two systemic flaws per week, they're not liable." 11:11:10 AM    Oh yeah? []

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