Outsourcing and Racism

Same thing happened when the Japanese began to come in with cars etc. Germans and Swedish cars were OK, but not the Asian makes, though. Holland, Britain and Germany own more of the USA than any other country, but when Japan began to buy property in the US, ooooh! that was baaad! C'mon folks, stop this partiality and let's move on.

You shouldn't accuse others of racism when you are more guilty than those you accuse. Moreover, you can't blame others for wanting to protect their livelihood. Their jobs weren't threatened by factory-workers in Ireland or Poland. They also weren't losing jobs to ungrateful aliens on the homefront.

You're right! I wouldn't mind flipping burgers for a living if my tech job went to a blond, blue-eyed Aryan.

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.....is the color of money - GREEN.

perhaps it is fear of a few in power with no morals but plenty of greed.
A billion eager souls with many younger than I seeming to work for next to nothing in this unfair arrangement, has nothing to do with race.
It is not that I think they are better, it's that if we miss too many paychecks, it does not matter what we think.
Ever hear of self preservation? That is what *THEY* are doing. Don't be fooled. It is human nature and will never change.
If you are not willing to take from your own family to feed India, then you are NOT for offshoring.

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Does this mean that Americans whose skin color is something other than white who, presumably, lose a job due to outsourcing can complain about racism as well?

If someone "claims" racism, but there really is no racism involved, who's the real racist, or is it just a case of mistaken accusation?

I wish it were as simple as racism, this outsourcing trend, which is more of an arterial bleed than a capillary leak.. If it were racism, we could at least sue over it via civil rights legislation, etc., but it isn't. The truth of the matter is that American executives are just plain GREEDY and they want to line their pockets and fatten their bonus packages, by reducing their company's costs of doing business. Yes, they reduce their costs, in the short-term, but in so doing, they eliminate American jobs permanently. That's GREED in action my friends, pure GREED, NOT RACISM.

Frustration in Flying Round the World
Our office is actively searching for effective US based customer support in determining our selections for new purchases. Telephone tag around the world does not work. I would greatly appreciate TR's post of suppliers that provide service from employees that are located here in the US. I challenge fellow IP professional to find upper tier support from these far flung outsourced locations, and can understand or make themselves understood by primary tier support staffers in India, The Phillipines or Korea. Outsourcing to these locatiions rips off the IP consumer!!!!!

Personally my anger isn't directed towards either the people receiving the offshore IT jobs (people from India, China, etc.) and it isn't directed towards the companies with the offshore contracts. As far as the people are concerned in similiar circumstances I would do the same thing. As far as the companies are concerned if they are able to cut their IT expenditures significantly then it is a wise business decision. In business in order to stay ahead of the competition you take every advantage you can.
What I don't understand is why isn't the US government doing anything about it? It is obvious that a US worker cannot compete with a similiarly skilled worker from a third world nation because their cost of living is a fraction of what the US worker's is. This happened throughout manufacuring and now it is happening in IT. We have to be the only country to actively promote domestic jobs going overseas. All other countries seem to set up some form of protection for domestic jobs except for the US.
And I could care less where the IT jobs are going, I simply don't like the fact that they are leaving our country and going some where else.

Without readin opinions above and generating a personal bias, I will just add some surface thoughts and person al experience.

First of all, England is one such country that is also suffering from outsourcing to India, to say your jobs are going to the UK is incorrect, I think, unless the UK firms are then subcontracting to India of course.

Having lived in Vancouver so long, I have learned that even though I hold a personal bias against the way some races treat thier new home I need to accept racial differences, there are very few ACTUAL Canadians (Native indians) in this picture and we are ALL immigrants ourselves. Whether born here or not, we are not the founders of this land, we simply occupy it.

That aside, I have always been open to outsourcing, I don't work in a help desk related position, which is where I see MOST outsourcing.

I recently had a NIGHTMARE 5.5 hour phone call to SMC tech support. Reps were EXREMELY polite, they tried VERY hard to be helpful. They just didn't understand that exch new rep I was passed to was going over the exact same steps as the last. When I hit the 5 hour mark, I was practically BEGGING for a senior engineer, as opposed to the nest telemarketer who simply started reding the same steps everyone else had.

I finally got a senior engineer, he understood my issue immediately and as peredicted over 5 hours before, my router was DOA and I need an RMA.

The day before, I had done all the steps as read out by the help desk people, the conversation ended with a tech saying, if you add this patch and it doesn't work, call us back ad we'll issue an RMA. This will explain my frustration when that callback to obtain the R

I'm glad you shone a light on the Inaccuracy thet you give the world thier inventions.

I agree that you often IMPROVE inventions or develop patents but the US is not really seen as an inventor by anyone I know.

Now, in the same sense, the Japanese have been gien the tag as the ones who take other inventions and make them smaller, lighter, faster and many say better, this is true due to the assembly processes and electronics engineering in Asian countries.

As for cars, US suto manufacturers have never even come remotely close to developing the high RPM technology that the Japanese have. North american cars are large, bulky, inefficient workhorses of the industry. No matter how sleek and light they try to make them, compact cars in North America are 5 year disposables at best.

As for racing, this is an entirely different market. Big block V8's MADE North America, they were the status symbol that every American clung to during the great depression.

nobody has ever denied the ability of a 440 magnum or a 429 Cobra Jet as a real powerhouse that makes Japanese cars look like toys.

Unfortunately, as much as American muscle is my passion (I've completely restored 5 Mopars to original showroom condition that are now shown and winning regularly).

So racing and Japanese refinement of the compact car are not similar in any sense of the word.

Just look at what happened to Chrysler after Ford built the Pinto and Honda had the Civic. chryslers bit idea was to use the same parts for ALL cars and just change body styles. What a nightmare that was, garbage from Chrysler was around throughout the 80's, have you seen an 84 Lebaron on the road lately? Bet you've seen hundreds of '85 Civics, Acccords and Preludes though.

This gave American manufacturers the bad name they have fought to rid themselves of for decades now, to little or no avail.

Pickups? No Asian company has come close to matching a North American truck, out of which nobody has matched Ford's engineering.

Compact cars, we don't have a chance. That is truly a European/Asian market. They NEVER built full size cars, you couldn't drive one in England or Germany or Japan. They specialize in compact engineering.

North America, bigger has always been better, and that didn't stop with automobiles.

Racism is a sad reality of human nature, at least to some. The problem with outsourcing is that it should have been stopped or flags raised long ago. Now these big corporations are sending the jobs overseas because labor is cheaper and they don't have the overhead costs in benefits that they do here. It stinks agree wholeheartedly as I'm a techie that's been out of work for almost 2 years with no job in sight and no way to pay bills even with a BS and a MS on the way...

Big corporations found a way to cut there budgets in areas that would increase their revenue and they're going to do it regardless of what it does to this country's IT industry.

With the US showing an average wage increase of 3% last year and India's showing a growth of over 22% things are getting tougher everywhere.

Here's a recent article that addresses the same issue I've had with Indian outsourcing. Polite but not understood.
http://tinyurl.com/38ckv

We've used "off-shore" techies (being in Canada, I am an "off-shore" techie to you guys/gals). We've used "home-grown" techies. The difference between the two boils down to "cost" and control.

Our experience with "off-shore" techies has not been great. Language comprehension and culture have caused problems. Differences in contract law have caused problems. Time zones have caused problems. Lack of being able to meet with the people doing the work and not being able to review problems face-to-face has caused problems. Yes, the code cost us less but we also received far less in true value. We could have accomplished the same thing with home-grown techies for the same real cost!

Also, quality "off-shore" techies are becoming increasingly expensive. I rapidly foresee the time when home-grown techies (even US techies) will once again be in demand. They sure are in Canada. Anyone with a University Computer Science degree has NO problems finding excellent employment! Sure, there are losers in every profession and people that just don't want to work for a living. But if you're willing to look at IT employment as a "career" and not simply a "job", I can see no reason why a qualified IT professional would be unemployed (anywhere)!?

If worse comes to worse, join the "off-shore" work force OR, better yet, set up a firm to manage off-shore resources for US based companies. You can then have it both ways!

That?s absolutely ridiculous. The reason people are upset now is that a lot of American workers have lost there jobs. If tech jobs moved overseas to Germany ect. It must not have taken many jobs because there wasn?t a shortage of IT jobs until recently. If all the tech jobs moved to Germany and it displaced a large amount of workers, people would be just as pissed. The only thing not surprising is someone screaming racism!!!

well I wouldn't move to Ontario either. I lived in the Maritimes for a year or so but too much snow. Toronto's too snowy, Montreal and Alberta are snowy.

The west coast of BC, we get drizzle and rain but for the month of March so far it has been sunny almost everyday.

Form working and travelling across Canada, there is no way I would live anywhere other than the BC West Coast, it is unsurpassed for beauty and scenery.

We've still got an eastern government...

But what the hey, the sun is shining, the snow is melting and there's lots of work to keep you busy!

No kidding? I line the Victooria Harbour and Parliment Buildings but that's just for show.

I didn't realize we actually had a government in Canada. You'd think we'd hear about it somewow.

Oh well who cares, I going camping. :-)

Outsourcing is not the only problem. In the IS department of the company I work at they just laid off a whole bunch of people and then replaced them with "in" office workers but they are consultants from India and are not citizens of the US. So they fired people to bring in people from another country. I know that's no the same thing as outsourcing but what would it be called? This trend scares me more because if you are in IT you can always find some job that is hands on and can't be outsourced but what do you do if they bring the outsourced jobs in office. Do you know what I mean?

It is funny how racism pops up every time someone who is here either illegally or on a work visa but wants to stay here. If you live here, You know milk is $4.25 a gallon. The cheapest beef you can find is $3-4 a pound. Housing is also expensive. Now the funniest thing is that you expect us to BUY your product. You have the choice to make it and we have the choice to BUY it...in case you have not heard it is called democracy, not racism. And all my legal Indian friends living here will attest to that.

Sorry, long day