It's great your a globally, new world order kind of guy. You are being
fooled into what is really going on. Right now we are forced to deal with
India, Pakistan and other developing nations for tech support. Everything
from my cell phone to my computer support is outsourced. This is fine...
for now. We are told it is because it is cheap. It is a matter of time
before we are told that we must go through India for tech support not
because of cheap call center labor, but because they are the only ones who
know the product, developed the product, and made the product. We will have
to learn Indian dialects if we want to learn the product.
Most Software takes about 10 years to get really good and polished. 10 good
years of outsourcing is going to bite us deeply. We have a mentality in the
U.S. that we will just get smarter and step up if that should ever happen.
The reality is we will be 10 years behind... and the only way out will be to
increase H1-b visa's and entice others into the country. We might not be
able to buy our way out of this one. I am trying to learn .Net. I am
finding it is better to learn Indian dialects in order to learn the
important stuff (check our some acad api web casts). I am a little upset
that I can not put an add in the paper and get qualified programmers. The
article mentioned in the original post is clearly stating the big guy's are
not helping this situation.
I am American before I am a global citizen. Americans are losing jobs in
the tech arena. Americans are losing street cred with tech. Americans are
getting disenchanted with learning and doing hard, real work in lieu of
sitting on the sidelines. But hey, its all good, the stock is performing
nicely. Why be smart, when I have shares.
--
CB
"Matt Stachoni" wrote in message
news:6034314@discussion.autodesk.com...
On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:43:53 +0000, Tony Tanzillo
wrote:
>Well, perhaps the problem is that your definition of outsourcing is much
>narrower than mine.
No, just the opposite.
Perhaps the problem is that the rate of economic change affecting the entire
world is way too fast for some people to be comfortable. And the fact that
this
country in particular has moved from an agrarian, to industrial, to
manufacturing, to service, and now to a largely financial economy, and some
people don't really know how to deal with that.
Which is why the recent turn of events has everyone screaming like chickens
with
their heads cut off, and making just about as much sense.
>It's not just about Autodesk and Microsoft outsourcing labor, it's about
>everything we consume, which for the most part, is produced there and
>imported.
Yep. Because people, at least in Western countries, are usually expensive,
often
spoiled, and rather static. Everything else - factories, raw materials,
computers and even companies themselves - is not. So if you can find cheaper
labor - not because they are worth less, but because their local economies
are
simply much less advanced than ours - then you would be doing a disservice
to
your customers and shareholders not to explore ways of cutting costs to
remain
competitive.
And, if you can find someone to do the dirty work cheap, that otherwise
costs a
lot of money to do here, and DON'T have to pay for factories, raw materials,
computers, and so on, then it's a huge gain.
>The money we spend is not staying here. It's going to Asia and elsewhere.
>IOW, the money we spend on what we consume is not going to pay the wages of
>US citizens, and hence, is not being spent here.
Of course it is spent on wages for US citizens.
The difference is that only a PART of what we pay for something is going to
U.S.
workers. The other part is going to pay the original manufacturer, who more
likely than not is overseas.
We are instead paying for the "value add" rather than the core product.
We're
paying for Wal Mart's brick and mortar (or, more likely, Dryvit and caulk),
for
Senor Citizen with snow white hair to man the front door, and for the fine
young
thing with the cute off-the-shoulder tattoo of a flower and snide 'tude to
ring
up your purchases incorrectly.
>Consumer spending is what drives the economy.
And consumers demand low prices and low inflation. Which means that large
purchasers of goods like Wal-Mart drive their suppliers to produce and
supply at
the lowest absolute cost. Which causes suppliers of hard goods to look for
low
cost alternatives to manufacturing in the U.S., because of labor costs.
However, with that pressure for lower prices, we as Americans produce
something
else as a beneficial side effect. That is, an advanced IT infrastructure
that is
head over heels better than anything else abroad, and that is staffed by
crack
teams of U.S. "knowledge workers."
For example, Wal-Mart's IT folks can manage direct every one of their stores
to
the minutest detail, using technologies they built and use here. Their
centralized 423-Terabyte Teradata system churns the data from over 1,200
stores,
1,600 Supercenters, 540 Sam's Clubs and over 1,500 stores worldwide.
They know exactly where everything is and what variables affect sales in
what
stores, and can optimize things to a point which was unheard of 5 or 6 years
ago. Right down to the shelf that the Skittles are on. On Black Friday,
they'll
start watching what happens on the East Coast stores at 6 AM and then direct
changes to be made on the West Coast stores. They can analyze promotional
sales
and remotely catch issues with a store's advertising, and direct local
changes
to stop confusion.
Wal-Mart drives this kind of thing up and down the supply chain, and is the
primary proponent of RFID technology, to track and inventory palettes of
goods
quickly with the flick of a switch. That new technology, in turn, invented a
completely new industry, which means higher wages and upward mobility for
those
involved.
In addition, they've innovated the use of using technology to save money in
other ways. One guy figured out that if they just replaced the light bulbs
in
all of their display ceiling fans with compact fluorescents, they would save
over $6 million a year in energy costs. That's huge for any company.
So, for every worker put out of work by a changing economy, you have
hundreds of
opportunities to move forward in other areas that should be more rewarding.
If
people were not static, and could better roll with the changes, you would
not
see the gnashing of teeth you do today.
>The unprecedented and totally unnatural rate of growth in developing
>nations in Asia, South America, and other places is driving up the demand
>for energy at an equally unprecedented rate.
It's unprecedented THERE. Not here. The same phenominal rate of growth
happened
in the U.S. after WWII.
The difference is that Asia is going from an agrarian economy directly to a
combination industrial/manufacturing/service/financial economy all in one
without any stepping stones in between.
The reason they can do this is that the IT/Internet revolution was already
in
place before they got going, so they went from 0 to 60 (planting rice in a
paddy
to planting chips on a wafer) in MUCH less time than we did. The
disadvantage is
that the new global economies demand infrastructure, and lots of it, which
Asia
does not have. They have tons of people but not very good ways of moving
them en
masse from point A to point B.
This more than anything else has driven the world economy: China is the
largest
consumer of energy and raw materials like steel, glass and concrete. The
"build-out" phase for agrarian Asia is affecting prices for everything
worldwide.
>Oh, there is a bright side. Our steel industry is doing a little better
>because increased energy costs have resulted in making it much more
>expensive to import steel from China.
Not only that, but with the uptick in energy costs we are seeing instances
of
manufacturing coming back to the U.S., because it is not becoming on par
with
labor costs.
>The economy is in the early stages of what will eventually make the great
>depression look like a mild recession.
I completely disagree. I think that what we are experiencing now is the
start of
a resurgence of U.S. investment and capitalism (if the government properly
gets
out of the way), because we are seeing a leveling of the playing fields
around
the developing nations in the world. What we have gone through to date is a
completely natural process, because Asia had to play catch-up.
Alongside that we have an incredible amount of investment happening in green
technologies and alternative energy sources. Those are in turn inventing new
industries as well.
I for one could not care less is a U.S. worker is not making Nikes for
anyone -
let the rest of the world do that. I want to see us developing smart
software
and new processes to take us into the future.
>In a few years, you will not be able to think about people like Bill Gates
>and Carol Bartz, without muttering a few explictives.
Sorry, but I cannot share your views. Those folks ran multi-billion dollar
corporations that consistently grew over time, took a LOT of chances, and
kept a
LOT of very smart people employed for a long time. They have my respect for
that.
However, that doesn't except their real boneheaded, short sighted decisions
that
have hurt their customer base and growth potential. They have.
What is most troubling to me is the importance on shareholder return and
profit
margin that has overshadowed product quality. That is the most dangerous
aspect
of our current corporate climate and does nothing but undermine and erode
sales
and customer confidence in their products.
For example, Subscription was Autodesk's way of getting around the "eroding
sales" part. If they had not managed to "rope-a-dope" their entire customer
base
into this insane contraption as they have, their profitability would have
maintained the same, which is to say, they would have failed in the eyes of
investors.
No matter that the quality of the product would have risen substantially,
unhindered by the crunch that the stupid yearly release cycle has imposed.
And
that their customer base would have stayed MUCH more loyal.
But again, to me this kind of thing opens up avenues for competition, most
certainly for the "little guy" to come in with newer, better concepts and
gain a
foothold.
Matt
mstachoni@verizon.net
mstachoni@bhhtait.com
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