| |
March 9, 2004
There's another good article in the NY Times on why America need not fear the current outsourcing phase. I'm commented several times in the recent past on this, and on how we here in America are going through growing pains, and we need to continue to educate ourselves and plan well.This article though brings up the fact that the US is pretty much The Place for innovation. No where else will you find an infrastructure as solid and an evironment as conducive to innovation. I like the story one Indian lady brought up about the guy making money off his own unemployment. Nowhere else but the US.
Posted by charr at 8:03 AM
Reader Comments
That's all well and good, but what do you say to the folks who are losing their jobs right now to programmers in India? Come up with a new t-shirt idea?I don't think it's realistic for every programmer who loses their job to become an entrepeneur. I'm sure it will work for some, but it's not a realistic solution for everyone.
Ah, but I never said there wasn't pain involved, thus "growing pains." I'm mentioned before that during the transition, there it is hard on those who need to change, but the long run is what I'm after. People want to be isolationist and not merge with current globalization, but that is anti-progress. My point is that this is a painful part of evolving. We've done it before and we're doing it again. I know many are affected, but that doesn't affect the long run goal.
Okay, I can see your point for the long run, but for the short term it would be nice to figure out some way to help the people who are losing jobs.
I agree, but that seems to be the secret nobody knows. What I do know is that isolationism isn't the key.
I am not concerned so much about losing jobs, but the privacy and security issues. For example, our medical records are outsourced to India. Well, outside of the US the HIPPA forms that we all have to sign our lives away on aren't valid. So, for all intents and purposes they could be public record, they aren't protected. Also, bank information, credit information, SSN#s, these are things that are being outsourced without any security for those of us who use those services. I recognize that we can't be isolated but we also have to be keeping private information protected. Members of the AAMT (American Association of Medical Transcriptionists) are really divided over this. My personal feelings go somewhat like this: It will be interesting to see how much (work) we can ship off to foreign countries because we are too cheap to pay for it ourselves.
Meghan, while I was focusing on jobs, you did bring up a good point. And the problem isn't just international. There is a lot of information on people all over. A guy at work was just telling me he was calling somewhere, but accidentally dialed the wrong number, though he didn't know that at first. They asked him his name, and pulled up all sorts of information on him -- and it was a wrong number to a place he didn't know. That's a little scary.
|
|
|
That's all well and good, but what do you say to the folks who are losing their jobs right now to programmers in India? Come up with a new t-shirt idea?I don't think it's realistic for every programmer who loses their job to become an entrepeneur. I'm sure it will work for some, but it's not a realistic solution for everyone.
Posted by dan at March 9, 2004 10:33 AM