We go out to lunch everyday during which he explains, brilliantly of course, each new twist and turn of the deadly serious comedy that is advanced, global capitalism.
I was longing for one of these lunchtime lectures yesterday.
For it was yesterday that I, along with all my co-workers (known, in moments of grandiose feeling, as ‘colleagues’) received an interesting email/memo from the boss.
He wrote that the “tremendous challenge” the information technology sector faces from inexpensive offshore competition, centered in, but not limited to India, makes it “impossible” to ignore the trend. The company – an IT consulting firm of some size – “must develop a response.”
As I read this, I became 12 years old again for a moment and imagined the ‘response” in development being something like the giant energy canons Japanese scientists in Godzilla movies were always able to design, engineer and build in about a day. Sadly for cinematic real estate values in 1960s Tokyo, Ghidra and Rodan were never detained for long by these displays of human might.
Perhaps the consulting firm’s “response” will be similarly splashy but ineffective. A bad segue I know but it can’t all be gold ladies and gentlemen.
Now, when management uses words like “challenge” or “response”, actually, when management uses just about any words at all you know that trouble is not far behind and so it is in this case.
The response in the works is an “onshore alternative” to the “offshore challenge”. When I got to this part of the memo I was a bit confused like I was that time, early in my marriage, when my wife sprung a psyops on me by stating that I could cheat if I did it “intelligently.” She patiently waited for me to say something stupid in response. That was confusing.
Why confusion (about an “onshore alternative”)?
Well, you see, the reason companies are choosing offshore development is because the Indian (or Russian or Phillipino or… the list grows) programming teams are paid just about enough to buy a used Dodge Neon – if they’re lucky. When you compare this to the handsome fees Americans have been traditionally paid for similar work - well, no self respecting management type with a conventional POV, facing the sorts of pressure they do for endlessly tweaking profit from above, will hesitate to relocate much or all of the dev shop to Bangalore, India.
So how could they replicate the cheapness of cheap labor abroad right here in the God-kissed (or is it God smacked) U.S. of A?
The answer came; all I had to do was read a little further in the memo.
Turns out that the master plan is to do two things:
One.) Import H1-B visa talent from India and pay them low, low wages.
Two.) Form partnerships with Indian software services firms so labor intensive work requiring many programmers will be outsourced to them.
And so, by degrees, my employer, once the source of lucrative and reasonable work for hundreds of people, is morphing into a 21st century indentured servant clearing house.
The folks who come here on visas will be forced by economic necessity to live in crammed conditions, work absurd hours and hope against hope that their employer will not weary of them. The ones back home will probably fare better in some ways but the hours and the stress will dog them too.
It’s an odd feeling to actually see the train that’s going to hit you approaching with a slow, sinister majesty.
The future will look like the past, only with better toys.
DRM
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