Offshoring: San Jose Mercury News article?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Eric Dunn wondered: <<My retort to the article is the same as I've stated
before on list. Why do Silicon Valley workers have any need to complain no
matter where their jobs get moved to? Compared to India or Wisconsin they're
too expensive.>>

My, how Darwinian of you. <g> The reason to complain is simple: Like most of
these people, I don't want to move to India, even if the much lower salary
I'd earn amounts to a lordly sum by local standards. I have friends and
family here that I don't want to leave behind. Moreover, while India would
be a wonderful place to visit, I frankly couldn't survive in a climate with
a mean annual temperature greater than 70F. No, I'm not joking--spending the
rest of my life in an airconditioned box isn't any way to live. Shanghai, on
the other hand... I could easily see moving there once the kids are in
university.

<<That's the answer. If your work has become commoditised, develop new
skills that aren't.>>

That's only a short-term solution. Any skills we can develop, Indian writers
can develop just as quickly. The thing about working in the knowledge sector
is that it doesn't require much in the way of capital: intelligence is a
rare commodity, but it's every bit as common in the third world as it is
here. Probably more so, in fact.

The problem can't be solved in the present context. If our profession is so
undervalued that the only consideration becomes cost, we might as well start
looking for jobs at McDonald's now. And even if quality is considered, the
Indians and Chinese (and soon, other countries) will be able to match us in
the long term--some can match us right now, and are doing so, for that
matter.

The long-term solution is not to develop different skills: It's to figure
out a solution that provides people in "third world" countries with a living
wage equivalent to our own. If you can do that and maintain full employment
in the "first world", you've got a Nobel in economics awaiting you. I'm not
holding my breath.

The shortsightedness of the offshoring attitude beggars description: If I
have no money to buy Microsoft's software because they've moved my job
offshore, they've lost me as a client. Sure, they'll be able to sell into
the Indian market, but at Indian prices--not the extravagant North American
prices they've grown to expect. And if they think piracy is a problem here,
wait until they move to India and Asia. (While I was in China last fall,
there was an interesting lawsuit going on because the pirates of the Harry
Potter books had had their own editions pirated. Poetic justice, anyone?)

--Geoff Hart, ghart -at- [delete]videotron -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada 

"Wisdom is one of the few things that look bigger the further away it
is."--Terry Pratchett

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