[ale] Defeated by the offshoring of America....

[George Carless]

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, John Wells wrote:

> I guess it's a bit harder to stomach these days when I see friends who've
> been out of work for 8+ months and who basically worked their asses off in
> school and in their jobs afterwards.  Friends who are highly intelligent,
> very capable, and begging for any sort of work that will help support
> their families.  It's more difficult when you see the strained look in
> their eyes when they wonder how they will provide for their families.

Absolutely, and I hope that nobody thought that I was in any way
suggesting that this feeling was *wrong*.  I'm just wary of the
misdirection of dissatisfaction: too often, the Indian workers become the
target of abuse when, realistically, it's been Western greed in a bull
market which has led to many of the problems we see today in the IT
sector.  And the economy moves in cycles, and - for better or for worse -
I think many programers and the like were spoiled by the 90s boom and need
to reassess their worth to the economy in general.  I'd count myself
amongst those needing to do so, incidentally -- I make a decent salary,
and I work hard and know my stuff - but can I honestly say that I add a
great deal more to the world than does (to use a recent example from this
list) a garbage collector?  It's the pervasive view of "deserving"
employment, of "deserving" to be paid a certain amount, which rubs me the
wrong way.  Oftentimes, people need to recognise that there's not a global
conspiracy keeping them from getting jobs, and that if they're unable to
find work at their desired salary level (or if jobs are outsourced for
less money) then it is perhaps because their work isn't worth as much as
they think.  A brutal statement, but I make no apologies: numerous other
workers have had to come to that same realisation, in many different
fields.

I've noted that I can share the feelings that upper management often don't
seem to know what the hell they're doing, and that it's objectionable when
said people give themselves huge bonuses while the company languishes.
But then, mediocrit is, unfortunately, rife everywhere in business - and
I've seen some *terrible* programmers developing code that stood every
chance of running their company into the ground (majorly exploitable code,
massive obfuscation that prevented code reuse, deliberate obsolescense,
etc.)  It's unfortunate, but the entire system tends to be running on
rather shaky infrastructure.

> > For my part, I'm proud to be a foreigner over here stealing your jobs
> > and your women. ;)
>
> >From what I hear about you Brits, it's not the women you're stealing ;-).

Actually, I'm here for the free dental care.

Cheers,
--George

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