--- Dwayne Monroe <idoru345 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Doug wrote:
>
>
> I'd be careful about extrapolating too much from
> this
> - what we're hearing now sounds a lot like what we
> were hearing 10 years ago, just as the U.S. economy
> was about to add over 20 million jobs. I don't think
> we're on the verge of a strong recovery like that of
> the 1990s, but I also doubt we'll see a solvency-
> and
> stability-threatening mass exodus either.
>
> ****************
>
>
> I would like to believe this, if for no other reason
> than the financial well being of my colleagues and
> myself. But my own observations indicate that a
> hollowing-out is underway.
>
> For example, just last week, a senior manager for
> the
> IT consulting firm I work for sent out a 'state of
> the
> team' email. Among bits of feel-good cheerleading
> about how well we're doing in spite of the general
> stagnation there was an interesting paragraph about
> the need for outsourcing.
>
> Apparently, the firm lost out on a contract worth
> 500K
> because all of the competing bids were from
> companies
> using offshore programmers. No matter how many
> times
> the numbers on our end were moved downwards to make
> us
> more attractive, the competitors were able to go
> lower
> to an insane depth.
>
> What it came down to, in the end, was the fact that
> the labor cost of a firm using coders in Bangalore,
> India was tens of times lower than a domestic firm.
> So, they could reduce the cost by hundreds of
> thousands of dollars for the client.
>
> The pressure to match this sort of competition is
> tremendous upon middle management, who, after all,
> are
> in their seats because they can produce the numbers
> the owners like. If they can preserve the desired
> profitability, but lower their labor costs
> dramatically you know they'll do it.
>
> Clairvoyance is not required to foresee a time, not
> long off, when the highly skilled, well paid
> programmers at the firm are seen, not as a revenue
> source, but as an expense relative to the much
> cheaper
> offshore alternatives. Layoffs will follow as night
> follows day.
>
> This is the result of nations like India having
> top-notch technical schools and universities, but
> insufficient domestic demand and infrastructure to
> absorb their tech labor pool. The American market
> is
> a good target for this low-wage/high skill group.
>
> Which means that skilled, well paid American
> programmers (along with others whose jobs can be
> distributed remotely via the Internet) will find
> themselves unable to find work in the numbers, and
> at
> the level to which they've grown accustomed.
>
> The standard neo-liberal response to complaints
> about
> this is that workers need to retool and 'go with the
> global economy flow' (you'll read this sort of
> comment
> from the more smug posters at Slashdot.org).
>
> But what I'm thinking about is the loss of millions
> of
> high wage jobs that can buy houses and cars and all
> the other 'good life' artifacts that keep a good
> section of this economy spinning its wheels.
>
> If a good chunk of the manufacturing jobs are lost,
> followed by a good chunk of the white collar and
> technical positions, how can it not have a
> profoundly
> depressive effect upon the US economy as a whole?
>
> I don't want to sound like an alarmist but the trend
> seems clearly visible from where I sit.
>
>
> DRM
>
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