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During the Outsourcing Conversations show today, the participants named Wipro, Tata, and Accenture as the heaviest abusers of the H1-B visa system. I have first hand experience with Accenture's abuses of this system. With any project near the Canadian border but in the US, Accenture will try and staff as many positions as possible in that project with Canadians holding H1-B's. Why? Because Accenture's corporate borders are not the same as geo-political borders of the US and Canada. |
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Since “blog” was the number one word this year, a lot of people seem to be reflecting on why they blog. My wife asked me this question the other day. (Is there something in the air? Are the planets aligning?) I blog to:
- be a part of the conversation shaping our future
- share ideas that I can’t make happen on my own
- solicit feedback on ideas I want to pursue
- share what’s going on in my family’s life with friends and family that don’t live near us
- share life knowledge and experience with others that might be experiencing something similar to me
- learn from other’s experiences and life knowledge
- record point in time thoughts that might be valuable later
- record details related to my job that I need to reference later
- organize thoughts, ideas, and input in a way that is meaningful to me
- increase my competitive advantage
- become more efficient
- increase my performance
I’m sure if I thought about it a little more I could double the size of this list. In short, this is why I blog. |
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Outsourcing Conversations had a great first show. It was arguably one of the best, if not the best, discussion on offshore outsourcing I've heard in quite a while. Look out Lou Dobbs. Again, congrats to Doug and Alex. |
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Michael Teitelbaum has a great post on Paul Samuelson's view on offshoring. I was hoping that they would reference Samuelson. He truly has the most rational outlook on this topics. I took a graduate economics class from Paul Samuelson when I was at Boston University entitled Mathematical Finance. |
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IEEE members are hurting in terms of employment prospects and income. In 30 years of surveys, this is the first year absolute income dollars have dropped. A larger pool of unemployed members exists this year than over the last six surveys. "What have you done since being unemployed?" A large number of people are leaving the workforce. Involuntary retirement jumped from 3.5% to 5.1%. Duration of unemployment has increase from 49 weeks in 2003 to 82 weeks in 2004. This is the first time absolute unemployed and unemployment duration have increase simultaneously. This may point to a growing "hard core unemployable base." |
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"Things to come in offshoring: greater specialization, increased quality, improved skills, faster technology advancement." These things sound pretty general to me. These things are going to happen in all industries, not just offshoring. |
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Unions contradict a lot of what technology workers believe in. I refuse to join any union. If I can't make it on my own I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing. |
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I firmly believe that multi-year financial results from offshoring projects and endeavors will make people stop and think. |
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On one hand some people are seeing a "dearth of job openings" while others are seeing and working with clients who can't find qualified job candidates. Hmm. I can see both, but I mainly fall into the later category with my work across industries. Most companies I've been working with can't find qualified candidates fast enough for the positions that are open. Granted, there are not hundreds of positions open. |
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Provided entirely online for those who want to pursue it that way. Hmm. I might look into this. |
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Making workers comfortable may make up for a different in wages. I've telecomuted for the past two years when I'm not on the road. It does work. However, extended periods of telecomuting (>2 weeks) led me to crave face-to-face interaction. |
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So says the Sloan Foundation. "The outcome of online education is equivalent to face-to-face." |
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"Collect data to undrstand the problem, reform visa programs that have been misused, trade adjustment assistance to services workers. Leverage technology to match qualified workers with job." Duh! We created this stuff and we can't used it? What a state we find ourselves in! |
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The IEEE salary survey of 13,000 technical professionals is being processed now. Data has still come in over the last 36 hours. Median income from US participants in the IEEE salary survey dropped from $101K down to $99,500 over the past two years. Consultant fees have also dropped over the past two years. Reasons for drops? In 2002, 6.6% of the participants reported unemployment due to outsourcing, both domestic and offshore. In 2004, 22% reported unemployment with 15% due to offshore outsourcing and 6% due to domestic. Industries with highest unemployment rates are computer (17.4%), electronics (15%), and communications (15.2%). These industries have realized drops in wages as follows: computer (2.2%), electronics (2.4%), and communications (1.8%). The industries with the lowest unemployment rates are automotive, utilities, and defense. The wages for automotive workers have increase 0.6%. The utilities industry has realized a wage decrease of 1.3%. Defense has seen a wage increase of 1.2%. Workers being displaced may be softening the entire wage base of the country. More data will be release this week. The US does not know how to deal with displaced workers. |
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Straw man: white collar workings are being treated like blue collar workers. That's because the definition of blue and white collar is changing.
Hypothesis: People loosing their jobs are smart and should be able to retrain and continue on without government assistance. Amen.
Traditional job protection laws apply only to argriculture and manufacturing. Why?
There is no strong constituency/lobby pushing for trade assistance/relief in the services industry. Wow! |
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We've hit the ancient conversation of protectionism vs. free trade. There are literally tons of writing on this topic. The overwhelming conclusion has been that free trade always wins from the macro standpoint. This is not to say that at the micro level there won't losers. |
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Hardly. |
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I can't join the IRC channel for Outsourcing Conversations due to firewalls between me and the outside world. Darn. I hope someone will post the IRC transcript. If so, please post a comment here with a link to it. Thanks. |
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Kerry's comments on offshore outsourcing were "not useful." "CEO's are doing what they think are rational." Rational is the key word. Students of economics know what being rational means. Capital will flow down the path of least resistance. |
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Quarterly data is going to be coming out of IEEE on offshore outsourcing and salary data! Yiipppeee! Finally, some hard, objective data on offshore outsourcing. |
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I'm listening to the IT Conversations event this morning. I'll be blogging my reactions as the program proceeds. The program may misnamed. They are specifically focusing on offshore outsourcing. |
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HP has started external blogs that you can find here. There are only a few posts. These guys need to start posting more frequently. [via Om Malik] |
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