<p>I never agree with Bay but I agree with him/her on this. </p>
<p>It’s a simple supply/demand problem, really.</p>
<p>Now if only we could mind control people to give up their ambitions, give up their jobs for the sake of other people who need it more, in the guise of it being “right for the children”.</p>
<p>Work is overrated. Family is most important. </p>
<p>Remember that saying, “No one on his deathbed wishes he had spent more time at the office.” ;)</p>
<p>I like the idea that if one spouse had a job the other person could be self employed but not work as an employee.</p>
<p>“Work is overrated. Family is most important”</p>
<p>I agree with Bay.</p>
<p>Of course family is most important.</p>
<p>But I’ll bet there are many deathbed regrets about people giving up on their dreams. My mother in law, who had six kids, will always regret giving up her career forever, though of course she loves her kids.</p>
<p>It’s not like you have to breastfeed them until they’re 18.</p>
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Ok, so, the offshore workers can’t deliver when the work is done offshore, but when the work comes back it is done by offshore workers who come here?</p>
<p>:confused:</p>
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<p>I know it sounds hard to believe but that’s really how it is.</p>
<p>Usually off-shoring large projects ends in disaster not because of off-shore skill gaps but due to the off-shore team not having convenient access to the information and knowledge available on-shore. </p>
<p>Try developing a large scale computer system relying only on third-person requirements, specs, hearsay, and the like. Won’t work regardless of how many people you throw at it or regardless of how many pages of specs you write. Bring the same people here, where they at least pay some US taxes :), and things work a bit better.</p>
<p>Why else would we be bringing hundreds of thousands of H1B and B1 visa holders here…</p>
<p>Offshore outsourcing also may fail if they go for low price and low price alone in selecting. Then they get the quality that they pay for (you don’t get IIT graduates that cheaply…).</p>
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<p>Yep. Boeing is paying a heavy price for this right now, with the dreamliner.</p>
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<p>France (then governed by the Plural Left coalition of the Socialists, Communists, Greens, Left Radicals, and Citizens’ Movement) tried something similar by limiting work weeks to 35 hours (down from 39 hours), beyond which overtime pay needs to be paid, in February 2000. In theory, the 10.2% cut in hours would create demand for more workers, reducing the unemployment rate, which was 9.5% at the time it was enacted. However, the unemployment rate in France never got below 7.5% since then, and is now 10.5%.</p>
<p>^^Seriously, poetgrl. Add onto that, a large scale offshored airplane built primarily with composites, and a huge lithium battery, these people are nuts. Lithium batteries are our primary threat, more so even than terrorists. I might fly on it over the US because we have airfields everywhere you look, but over the ocean? No way!</p>
<p>Makes you wonder what people are thinking. Saving some pennies might cost you billions.</p>
<p>Well maybe state run child rearing centers. We already essentially have state run healthcare and media and education. By handing over child rearing to the govt we might finally achieve true equality for all!</p>
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This doesn’t match my experience with off-shored software projects. There are absolutely huge skill and cultural gaps.
Because, even though these people cost more than if they stayed in their home countries, they still cost far less than Americans. And they are essentially economic slaves who cannot leave their jobs for better paying ones. Win-win for a business. </p>
<p>There is so much abuse of the H1B program.</p>
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<p>Another issue that I’ve seen is the environment and transportation infrastructure.</p>
<p>Off-shore workers may work in areas with poor infrastructure where they have to spend a considerable time commuting (via bus, bicycle, walking). They may work in polluted cities or cities where there are considerable problems with colds, flu, infections, etc. and miss days due to these problems.</p>
<p>The issue with off shore in my experience is regardless of what band levels, skills and certifications they are supposed to have there, is a major knowledge gap between what they are actually able to do and what would be expected from a US worker. </p>
<p>Most of them have blitz through their certifications and really only have inch deep knowledge of their actual field. And they definitely dont have knowledge of a related area enough to integrate anything. If your Red Hat Certified Engineer actually can set up clustering you are ahead of the game. But dont expect him to know anything about SAN or networking. </p>
<p>The other issue is that the labor pool is just too large to get to stability. As soon as the employees get experience on accounts of major US corporations they become marketable so they jump away to another position at a pay raise and their backfill is a new guy out of the certification factories. You are always running accounts with staff that has 6-9 months of familiarity.</p>
<p>At the end it becomes quite profitable to herd young offshore resources. If we were getting national or regional college grads no herding would be needed but since 2000 we seem to be getting the people that could not get in to anything remotely decent…</p>