This phenomenon has happened many times in the history of the US economy. The US used to be a powerhouse in steel, textiles and electronics manufacturing. Those jobs are now done overseas. New industries will be created in the US due to our superior financial markets, secondary education (ie university systems and infrastructure), legal infrastructure and political/regulatory business friendliness. Possible solutions will be medical innovations, nanotechnology, biotech, etc. The liberals love to play politics with this issue and scream their protectionist ideas and how our economy will soon go down the tubes. That's a bunch of crap.
I'm not fmailiar with their product. But I do know they laid off several hundred engineers in Houston. A lot of the software developments are moved to India and Israel.
Umm... The unemployment rate is the lowest it has been since September of 2001. Andy, stick to your hippie lettuce threads. You are embarrassing yourself (again).
I was one of those who got the BMC axe. The persons who replaced me (20+ years of experience) were green and their work product was sh*t. The Indian programmers will eventually figure what is up, but I doubt BMC will be seeing a cost savings until then.
I am really sorry to hear that you are one of those who got axed. I totally agree BMC won't see a cost saving by using more Indian programmers. BMC is on the wrong track. So getting axed today may not be a bad thing.
First of all, I am sorry for anyone that loses his/her job. That sucks. That said, how can a corporate manager justify paying a domestic employee 10 times what they pay an Indian employee? How is that in the shareholders' best interest? They wouldn't be doing their job if they retained domestic employees in situations where an Indian employee can do a comparable job.
There was a remarkable new medical discovery recently concerning breast cancer. Of course this comes from England, where they have socialized health care. He has to do with removing some of the back up capability of cancer cells, so that when other medicine weakens it, it will die off rather than back itself up. Anyway I love how conservatives who prattle on against national healthcare claim that incentive for innovation will be gone.
I got the BMC axe in August of 2003. I had spent the 6 months prior to and four months after the axe looking for a new job. That was one effing tough Houston job market. The market is better now, but BMC dumped again so things might be tight for while, though I know a friend who got a s/w job last week after looking for a month. BMC has desperately lost its way. They no longer know how to write software. They are really good at buying other s/w companies and driving them into the ground. I expect at some point another company will buy BMC and try the turnaround. As a side note, the BMC President makes like 16 large every year. The only memorable thing he has done has had layoffs every six months for the last 4 years or so. That's a hella resume. I was actually surprised his head did not roll on the last dump.
Good point. A lot companies are moving their back office work to India and China. I can understand that. What gets me is that some companies are moving their enterprise ops overseas. For example, Dell moved their customer support to India (or was it Pakistan?). Customer support was a market differentiator for Dell. Was. BMC makes software (in theory). That is how it makes money. Why move that to India/China in hopes of saving money? And if a company does make that kind of move, then they better be damn sure about the savings and the impact on product quality which directly effects their customers and their representation. How hard is it to build a good "brand" name? How easy is it to lose?
A good Indian software engineer is not that cheap. A contractor from Infosys (The largest Indian software company) will cost $30,000 a year. The Indian programmers are usually very young, so they don't have much software experience and intuition. It simply won't work if you want your product to be done in the right way and in a short period of time. Engineering and manufacturing are the foundations for any new industries. When this foundation is lost, it will be harder and harder to develop new technologies and new industries. Most useful new ideas are discovered in the process of engineering and manufacturing. Besides, people need jobs. I mean all kinds of people. Not everybody can be a scientist or a manager.
30k is still cheaper than you'd pay for a similar job in the US. Even if it's only a 10% savings for comparable work, how can you expect people to turn that down? The problem is, as in any endevor, some hot new idea comes along and unthinking drones down the corporate ladder apply the idea without thought. There are instances when outsourcing to India is a good idea, where equal quality employees can be hired for equal cost, but when the concept becomes the hot new thing in the business world, second-tier decision makers apply the concept inappropriately. Regarding Dell's customer support, you'll notice across the board deterioration in all segments of technology customer support, becuase it's the most expensive continuing cost. The other option for these companies involves either computerised solutions as a 1st level buffer, or a large army of minimmum wage drones who read off a list of instructions based on your problem and only send you to a real technical person when they've exausted options. Just about every tech company has done something, even if you aren't using the service enough to have noticed, becuase the costs have become prohibitive. This is a classic application of The Problem of the Commons or The Prisoner's Dilemma in that the American economy is ultimately interdependent, and requires people to be employed and have free cash to spend at American businesses in order to stimulate the economy. Without strong employment numbers these people don't have the volume of customers for good earnings. At the same time, there is direct incentive to doing an action, that is ultimately harmful to the group in the long run, but without group agreement, doing what's best for the business in the long run isn't productive, and is actually damaging to short term profits. This is a perfect example of why limited government regulation isn't always harmful to businesses and is not the pariah that some believe it to be. I don't necessarily think any regulatory changes would be effective here, but it is an example of the type of situation that calls for examination of regulation as a solution.
No actually it is not. It is an application of comparative advantage and specialization of labor. India and China are providing cheaper labor that is of comparable quality. Economics 101 says to allocate any resource, including human capital, in the country that has comparative advantage. They do, not us. With regard to your employment point, which policy helps employment: 1) Outsourcing 1,000 IT jobs? 2) Not outsourcing, having the company fail, and destroying the company's entire 10,000 jobs? No economist worth their salt would ever argue that free trade of goods and services is bad for an economy.
i don't know how knowledgeable you are but there is a reason why the jobs are going to India.....these companies ar'nt exactly idiots....globalization is a growing trends that will occur in many more fields of work... so get used to it.
