[ale] Indian outsourcing

[Ronald Chmara]

On Jan 30, 2004, at 7:55 PM, Eichler, Paula J. wrote:
> Losing jobs to automation is a bit different because machines CAN be 
> more efficient.  Building automobiles on an assembly line didn't take 
> a master's degree either.

The IT jobs that are being lost in droves don't require a master's, 
AFAICT..... They're mostly "IT manufacturing" jobs aka assembly-line IT 
and programming (not to be confused with programming in assembly), or 
similar low-level tech jobs. Some examples:

-Microsoft call center support tech. This was being done, in the US, by 
high school level people (or in some cases, high school dropouts. 
Skills required: Reading a prompt on screen.

-Jr Level DB interface programming (implement a db connection in PHP? 
That's what, one or two lines?). I know some high-school dropouts doing 
this, too. Skills required: About two weeks of training.

-Maintenance coding to debug the occasional error. Skills required: 
Ability to find typos, be able to read one computer language, 
understand some very small sections of a given program.

One thing India is doing well, better than the US in many cases, is 
figuring out *how* to make IT into a manufacturing industry, an 
automated industry. Not every worker on any production line needs to 
understand the whole line, or how it all fits together.... whether the 
line is producing cars, or accounting software, the same theories 
apply. Break the task down to small enough bits that minimal skills, or 
knowledge, is required to do each part. Workers are cheaper, training 
is cheaper, replacing workers is easier... the whole thing follows 
suit.

So, in India, they often break projects out to enough small pieces that 
little training, experience, or academic ability is required. If you're 
going to be working for a company where your primary role is writing 
and debugging menus, you can focus on that one part of the job, no 
database theory needed, no skills in networking, no hardware knowledge. 
As a result of task hyper-focus, those workers can often do that one 
job *better*.

Contrast that to the american approach to IT, where someone who is 
writing menus often has tons of experience in many comp-sci fields, is 
probably one member of a very small team writing a program, and may 
have earned a master's degree on the way to accumulating all of that 
knowledge. As a result, they expect to be highly paid.

Rather than american IT education systems creating workers for the IT 
assembly line, we've been turning out the equivalent of automotive 
engineers, who would then expect to be paid an engineering salary, for 
simply bolting part 1978-a to part 1978-b while working on the line. 
Our approach to IT has been one of hand-built, specialized, custom 
vehicles, not the approach of mass-production, automation, and the 
assembly line.

-Bop