Job Outsourcing? Future for us nerds?

[xKelbax]

Most of you have probably heard of all the job outsourcing to India and China.

Basically, this means instead of hiring American programmers, corporations will hire people from different countries for MUCH cheaper...

My questions is, do you think that their will be good job positions for future programmers in the US? I've actually e-mailed Microsoft twice about this and got to very funny replies..

Reply 1: They fowarded my message to a non-existent e-mail address

Reply 2: I was told that if I was interested in a job, I should check out their career center. Thank you for completely disregarding my questions. Hats off to Catherine at the customer help center.

Also, kind of offtopic, but does anyone have a guide on how to build a laser printer? I'm going to attempt to get A+ Certification soon and I was told I will need to know how to. And do you think A+ is even worth it?

[ck3k]

I am not to worried, course I do sells, you can't outsource in store company reps. I think that the qualified people will get jobs, honestly if someone goes around thinking they are the fucking man for there A+ cert, they deserve to realize others can do it better for less. The local ISP here will hire no one with a cert, because they find them pointless. I do see the outsourcing of tech support bad, but most companys keep some higher level people here so you just demand to be transfered or hit the numbers to get the manager.

[xKelbax]

http://www.softwaredeveloper.com/

Found that usefull link while looking around..I can make ~50,000 for programming in Java. Yay.

Let's all watch that list shrink within the next three months. It's seriously starting to worry me...need emotional support....

[night_flux]

does anyone have a guide on how to build a laser printer? I'm going to attempt to get A+ Certification soon and I was told I will need to know how to. And do you think A+ is even worth it?

I would send a PM to Telco88. We did laser printer repair at a DC503 meeting and a cd-rom was handed out with a lot of laser printer material on it, not sure if there was a build guide, but a lot of troubleshooting info. There are some links to laser printer info on the DC503 site under the meetings menu then at the bottom of the laser printer page.

Hope that is of some assistance.

[Zelazny's Cat]

My questions is, do you think that their will be good job positions for future programmers in the US? I've actually e-mailed Microsoft twice about this and got to very funny replies..

I'm sure there'll still be good positions for skilled programmers. It's easier to outsource the lower tier than the higher...And I'm betting some limits will be imposed on outsourcing in the near future.

You don't exactly get thoughtful, personal replies when you email a large business, especially not one of MS's scale. I'm not sure what you expected, really...

[murakami]

I've been to Mumbai and Bangalore and yes you should be worried because not only will programming sent offshore, I predict that Indian companies will eventually (over the next 10 years) purchase and own many of the software companies we are familiar with today. Time to brush up on your Hindi and Urdu!

[Clp727]

"A+ is worth it, if youre going after some CompUSA job or something"

Isn't that the truth! My certs have gotten me nowhere. A degree is a must. I had taken classes at a local university, in hopes of making a major career change.
The local university ran a radio ad that stated something similar to: "Tired of that dead end tech support job? You can earn your MCSE, A+,Net+,and Sec+ certifications in as little as one year, and you could make upto $70K a year." I fell for it.... then later realized a degree would be required if I wanted to make more than $28k in the Louisville Ky area. General Electric (in Lou. Ky.) has outsourced most of their technical staff already. I hate to see this type of thing happen to American jobs. I'll get the degree, but untill then I will keep on programing CNC machinery for a machineshop.
On the bright side of things, my education will count as 32 credit hours toward the degree.

A side note... I feel like the schools that offer classes like the one I attended, are doing nothing more than putting alot of people out there without any REAL experience. The classes simply prepare you for the certification test. To get the real jobs, experience is a must as well as the education.

[noid]

I have a slightly more optomistic view of things I think. I think some of the larger companies are going to realize that some of the short term 'soft' savings are going to turn into bigger costs down the road, causing them to pull back into our borders.

Initially it seemed like mana from heaven from a business perspective. Hire 3 C+ coders in Mumbai for the price of one college educated punk here in the US? Get an entire tech support call center for 20K a month? Too good to be true. Now, theres the obvious customer satisfaction issue. If Mr. and Mrs. Not-Tech-Savy Middle America dont like having to fight the uphill battle of explaining a problem they barely understand to a guy who can barely speak english, they are going to buy their next computer from a company that has a tech support staff in Tulsa. However, thats not where outsourcing is going to hurt American companies. A few unhappy customers will not affect the bottom line.

They're going to take it in the shorts from a business perspective. There have already been cases of companies outsourcing programming jobs to little companies in the 3rd world and not getting anything back, or getting broken code that doesnt work. What are you gonna do about it? Fly to Deli? So companies then have to go back to domestic companies to finish their projects (or debug what they got), thus raising their bottom line. Theres also signifigant risk to the longevity of your company when you outsource. Not all these people are ethical. Most of these outsourcing companies are working for a lot of different people, including your compeditors. The possibility of one of these outsourcing shops selling your code to your compeditor are pretty good. Or, they may realize 'Hey, we're working on these projects for two competing companies, lets take both of them and create our own product'. Needless to say, as an InfoSec practioner, I cringe when a client tells me they are thinking of outsourcing their projects to other countries. You lose the confidentiality and integrity of your product. Who knows who else has your code after you send it halfway around the world. Finally theres also the overlooked potential for litigation. Israel recently outsourced the code to their missle guidance systems to IBM, IBM subcontracted an Egyptian company to do the actual code. Israel, upon hearing that a country that is basicaly their enemy, wrote their missle guidance system, had to then go and have their code audited. I'd be willing to bet cash money IBM picked the tab up for that fuckup.

I think eventually most domestic corps will realize that the long term hard costs outweigh the initial soft savings. Sure you save a few bucks initialy on programmers, but in the long term you expose yourself to much higher costs. I think after a few big corps learn a valuable lesson, we'll see outsourcing start to go away. Especially as countries like India start to emerge as competing nations.

[xKelbax]

I'm toying with the idea of appling for a computer engineering job with the nsa (National Security Association) when I'm allowed too. Good thing is that job will never be outsourced, and once you get it you will never be fired unless you really fuck up.

[astcell]

I'm toying with the idea of appling for a computer engineering job with the nsa (National Security Association) when I'm allowed too. Good thing is that job will never be outsourced, and once you get it you will never be fired unless you really fuck up.

Hmmm, National Security Association? Is that a club for folks in the National Security AGENCY? Maybe that is the difference between the nsa and the NSA.

Appling? Did you mean applying?

And when you are allowed to or allowed too? WTF!

You make other assumptions I won't waste bytes to explain. Let's just say some Indians and Chinese have better English skills than you, and you WILL be outsourced for that reason alone!

You have a good chance at owning a 7-11 though.

[murakami]

I'm toying with the idea of appling for a computer engineering job with the nsa (National Security Association) when I'm allowed too. Good thing is that job will never be outsourced, and once you get it you will never be fired unless you really fuck up.

Go ahead and apply but make sure its the correct NSA and not this NSA . Both your statements are incorrect, you job maybe outsourced and probably will be and you can be terminated with out really fucking up.

[astcell]

WOW look how easy it is to join the NSA!!!

[erehwon]

I'm toying with the idea of appling for a computer engineering job with the nsa (National Security Association) when I'm allowed too. Good thing is that job will never be outsourced, and once you get it you will never be fired unless you really fuck up.

Don't be so sure you won't be outsourced out...

http://www.washingtontechnology.com/...ver/449-1.html

The National Security Agency is quietly taking steps to outsource its data centers, desktop computers, telecommunications and other pieces of its information technology infrastructure under a contract that could be worth $4 billion over 10 years.

The contract, which is expected to include provisions for as many as 2,000 agency employees to transfer permanently to the winning contractor, also may cover applications such as payroll and human resources.

The agency is turning to outsourcing so it can focus more resources on its core intelligence functions, sources said. Part of the Department of Defense, the agency provides signals intelligence, communications security and information systems security for the government.

[xKelbax]

That's really awsome. Now we can get fucking China to mass produce half-assed missile programs.

"Oops, the missile accidentally landed in the wrong fucking country."

[erehwon]

That's really awsome. Now we can get fucking China to mass produce half-assed missile programs.

"Oops, the missile accidentally landed in the wrong fucking country."

Jeezus, where have you been?

You have Arkansas based Loral Space to thank for that blunder, while they didn't hand over the technology directly, having one of their satellites explode soon after launch and having the Chinese PLA technology exploitation teams reverse engineer that bird, Because of which, they now have the expertise to launch over the horizon W-88 based (more stolen U.S. technology) nuclear warheads to the west coast of the United States.