An outsourcer's reply to Greenspan's testimony on overseas jobs

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---

From: Rich Wellner <rw2 () gridwisetech com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: Re: [Politech] Alan Greenspan on offshoring: take the long-term view
Organization: The society for better programming of greater Chicago

Declan, hope you can use this on the list...

I'm confused, Greenspan's position is that it's the fact that we aren't
graduating enough high skilled workers and the accelerating demand for them is
the reason I know programmers who are out of work?

It's the lack of highly skilled workers that are causing companies to desire
$10/hr salaries in India instead of $60/hr ones here?

Honestly, I'm not a economic Luddite who has his head buried in the sand and
hoping that we'll soon return to the halcyon days of ferromagnetic cores.
I've seen the trend and last year started an offshore operation in Poland to
answer the demand in the market.  I can provide a similar quality of work for
less money using programmers in Poland who are at least as highly trained as
those I can hire in the US.  Companies get this.

Not a single person I've talked to since the recession started some years ago,
not one, has approached me from the standpoint of it being too hard to find
quality labor in the US.  In my experience the only reason companies are
interested in offshore is because it is a better value.  This value is the
combination of *all* the costs (e.g. more difficult remote management, time
zones, IP protection, language barriers) and *all* the benefits (lower cost,
as I say above, being the one they are universally interested in).

So, Greenspan has proven himself a survivor and has in many ways done a good
job over the years.  On this one, at least as it pertains to IT, I think he's
so completely off his rocker as to make me nervous about his other faculties.

On the plus side, and a glimmer of hope for those reading this, markets
sometimes surprise us in how rapidly they adjust.  In the year that we've
setup our Polish operation competition in our town has already sprung up and
we already have to pay more in salary for our programmers than we did mere
months ago.  We're still a no-brainer in terms of the value proposition, but
there is reason for US programmers (of which, I hasten to add, I'm one) to
hope the gap will narrow.

rw2

--
Rich Wellner                                              rw2 () gridwisetech com
Gridwise Technologies                                  http://gridwisetech.com
Grid Consulting and Training                             Serving US and Europe
_______________________________________________
Politech mailing list
Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)