***** Outsourced Programmer Starts Business

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

------- Original message -------
From: Suresh Ramasubramanian  <suresh () hserus net>
Sent: 1/5/'05,  15:28

David Farber wrote:
> From: Andreas Ramos <andreas () andreas com>
>
> "My parents paid for me to get a (degree) in math and now I am a pooper
> scooper..."
>
> Is this an example of "putting the cherry on top" that Thomas Friedman is
> talking about?

Speaking of high value jobs to do with poop, here's a wired article 
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/toilet.html on how PhDs in 
aerospace engineering (including an Indian - there, that should raise 
the pooper scooper guy's hackles enough) are making lots and lots of 
money developing new and improved flush toilets, and testing them by 
trying to flush golf balls and plastic tubes full of a mixture of 
concentrated miso soup and flour ..

And speaking of Thomas Friedman, I saw his documentary on Bangalore and 
Outsourcing, on CNBC (I think) last year, when I was attending a 
conference in Beijing.  I was quite jet lagged back then, but one thing 
struck me about the documentary - his careful choice of "opponents" of 
globalization ...

1. A rich and quite possibly empty headed socialite of the sort that 
sits on the boards of one social work organization after the other

2. A typically inarticulate member of the RSS, which is a militantly 
right wing hindu religious organization with rather extreme views on the 
"superiority" of Indian culture and a rather fixed hatred of the USA as 
a polluter of that culture with rock music and KFCs. Note: Friedman did 
manage to interview a couple of kids who worked at a call center and 
enjoyed both these, right before interviewing the RSS guy.  An analogy 
would be asking the Rev Jerry Falwell, or Lou Dobbs on CNN, or maybe the 
grand wizard of a Klan chapter, what they thought about mexican 
laborers, or indian software engineers, for that matter - you can hardly 
expect a balanced or reasoned argument from either of these people.

His arguments are weak, and based on sensationalism and soundbites 
rather than logic, besides being one sided and focused on the whole 
"globalization works" theme, without being in any way sensible of its 
defects, especially when badly implemented.

I wouldn't take a Tom Friedman article about globalization and 
outsourcing at face value without a large pinch, no, make that a large 
truckload of salt, any more than I would articles about people scooping 
dog poop at $10 a lawn because those nasty outsourced indian programmers 
drove them out of work.

In fact, I'd be quite happy to lend the Pooper Scooper guy a whole lot 
of newspaper clippings of Tom Friedman articles to help him scoop up the 
dog poop .. they'd be a lot more productively used that way

?srs

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