On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 12:52:17 -0600, Vic Smith
wrote:

On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 10:06:53 -0800, jps wrote:


Outsourcing is efficient for pedestrian applications.

Efficient to whom?
Sure as hell isn't efficient to the American who lost his job or the
American economy.
Maybe you haven't quite adjusted to the new reality yet.

Real
development of new products is best done under the watchful eye of
local managers.

Bull**** on a couple counts. Firstly, Indians can do it all. And
often speak better English while they're at it. And H1-B's can do
local management.
Secondly, management of projects requires skill and knowledge of what
is being managed, The best managers are those who have come up
through the ranks, and it's not coincidental they all start with
PEDESTRIAN applications. Those spawning ranks are disappearing.
You have to decide if you're on the side of business as usual or
a strong America.
You just posed 2 slippery slopes, and displayed the kind of thinking
that I've seen directly lead to your previous complaint of seeing only
H1-B's apply for work at your firm.

There's a lot of folks out there who'd be damned pleased with a
$40K/yr. job right now and it surely wouldn't require 6 years of
school. 2 - 4 at most.

But 40k jobs could then be termed "pedestrian."
And outsourced.

--Vic

I know a lot of folks who've attempted to offshore and, for simple to
moderate IT projects that are well-defined with lots of documentation
and clear requirements, offshoring is okay.

When you're building a product that requires the ability to confront
and make sound decisions about unanticipated permutations, offshore
hasn't worked very well, even with good management.

Further, as offshore programming services have improved their ability
to be more trustworthy with these design/creative decisions, their
rates have steadily climbed to where the overhead of the relationship
and lack of proximity makes less sense.

What used to be a $5 to $10/hr. worker has turned into a $15 to
$20/hr. once the offshore programmer is fully burdened with overhead
and profit.

I think there's an opportunity for Americans to work back into that
role. It's not going to be the retrained steel worker. It's going to
be a person with an associates to bachelors education. While it
doesn't do much for currently displaced factory workers, it could
certainly help supply future jobs for middle income families and
reduce our need for H1-B workers.