What Should a Documentary Filmmaker Ask About Offshoring? 1091
Philadelphia-area development economics and finance student Rachel Anderika and her associate, programmer/filmmaker Krishnan, are making a documentary about the effects of offshore outsourcing. Their "still under construction" Web site, Project Outsourced, gives you more information about their work. They're interviewing economists, bankers, anti-outsourcing advocacy groups, pro-outsourcing CEOs, columnists, and others. Where you come in is helping Rachel and Krishnan come up with good questions to ask. We'll forward 10 - 15 of the highest-moderated ones posted here (within the next 24 hours) to them. Expect summaries (and possibly audio or video clips) of the answers in late May, and news about the finished film this Fall.
Outsourcing on Slashdot: Fair and Balanced? (Score:5, Informative)
V
Valence Technology
VA Software
Veritas
Verizon
Here [cnn.com] is a list of companies that use outsourcing.
Re:Why India? (Score:1, Informative)
I've heard Poland is a good place to open call centers, but unfortunately they do not have a solid power grid.
Re:Practice of outsourcing (not a question) (Score:5, Informative)
It seems that this outsourcing thing can and does work both ways, no?
(err, cue massive down-modding by disgruntled outsourced IT workers...)
Re:Practice of outsourcing (not a question) (Score:3, Informative)
For the japanese it is much less expensive to produce a car here. They use very strict processes that have cause for little waste, high quality (so they don't have nearly as many bad parts made and don't have to do the same amount of testing) and they don't use unions.
Re:What kind of car do the complainers drive? (Score:2, Informative)
What if the Toyota was actually made in America [toyota.com]?
On the outrage meter, where should I be on this one? 1? 10? .... 11?
Re:What kind of car do the complainers drive? (Score:3, Informative)
Just nit-picking here, but for a while, Toyotas have been made in Mexico, and within the past year or so have moved their base of operations into the US.
Nissan is also locally made, in Texas and Mexico. Next time, try ranting with Honda, Daihatsu, or some other obscure company that makes bad cars
Try the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Score:3, Informative)
The best factual source for these numbers is directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics [bls.gov] of the US Department of Labor [dol.gov].
Their March 2004 Report [bls.gov] is online, as well as archives of past reports.
Do NOT rely on any "statistics" from politically motivated people or organizations such as Robert Reich, or even any Republicans. Anybody can manipulate and cherry pick numbers to make them fit their political agenda. Use the BLS numbers only!
Unfortunately since almost all documentaries seem to be created for political/social agendas or with biases, I highly doubt that my suggestion will be used. That's why I as a potential film viewer will almost never watch a documentary on current events, regardless of the position or whether I agree with it. If it doesn't have footnotes and references I can check, I don't want to be fooled into thinking something is fact when it is not.
Re:Practice of outsourcing (not a question) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How is it different than Robotics? (Score:3, Informative)
What about failures? (Score:4, Informative)
Having inherited outsourced code........ (Score:3, Informative)
The first 3 or 4 months we got thier A-Team, the code was good quaility, and we had make a few revisions based on them not completely understanding our business requirements. After the A-team left, we got code that was so bad I was working 60+ hr weeks to rewrite/fix the stuff from india. We actually hired more American Programmers to fix the indian stuff. This happened on the next project as well (Different Indian Co.). After that our management went to small XP groups that actully sit right next to the users and everyone has been very happy with the results. For some things like reports, we still outsource those, but for anything very complex our we do our own......
Re:Practice of outsourcing (not a question) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:India has a high education level (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What field next (Score:3, Informative)
No, that's not how it works. Our standard of living is set by how much we get. Trading with another country can't reduce our ability to get stuff, only increase it (we still retain the ability to make more stuff by employing the unemployed).
If you want to worry about something decreasing our standard of living, worry about something that will *decrease* imports. That could happen by a fall in exports (people become less interested in buying our stuff) or if we stop producing the world currency (we get a certain amount of free imports because we produce the world currency; same reason that the Federal Reserve Bank always runs a surplus).
Imports are problems for companies, as domestic companies compete with foreign companies for sales (note though that domestic companies also get benefits from imports, as they have to purchase stuff too). In terms of the country as a whole, they are good, as they transfer stuff to us. Exports are bad (except in that they fund imports) as they transfer stuff away from us.
Imports are a tiny part of our economy. Focusing on them just takes away resources that could be spent looking for ways to produce more stuff for us. Especially important are areas that are currently expensive: housing, oil, etc. Falling prices in those areas would allow the Fed to pump more money into the economy, which would provide more funds for companies to use to hire workers...including IT workers.
Re:What kind of car do the complainers drive? (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah, your car may be made in the USA, by good ole' American people and that's fine. But you're only gaining the benefits from the taxes paid on their incomes not on the corporation. The profits of the company in the long run are going to back to the homeland.
So do you support your American workers or your American companies?
filling mundane jobs with visa holders (Score:2, Informative)
There are NO RESTRICTIONS on the L1 visas as far as making sure that there is not a qualified American to do the job. There is NO WAGE REQUIREMENT, so it may be these people are working in the US and making Indian wages.
These visas are snapped up by the big Indian consulting companies as a way to market their cheap labor in the US.
For fun, notice the age and sexes of these imported workers. The big Indian consulting firms that import labor are NOT bound to US hiring laws, and frequently advertise age limits in the job postings in India for these positions.
Re:Outsourcing on Slashdot: Fair and Balanced? (Score:3, Informative)
Some people labor for the love of it, while many more of us are not apt to do a thing unless we can foresee some kind of reward for our efforts. In so far that copyright has harnessed one of humanity's most base characteristics, namely greed, it has been wondrous, yet for a society to tolerate any kind of monopoly there must be an overwhelming reason to do so.
Perhaps copyright's best effect has been to allow artists the ability to make a living pursing their passions. Without copyright it is plain to see that an artist's works would be taken and reproduced or distributed by the unscrupulous. The artist could at worst be left with nothing but the memory of his creation. An artist whose works make money for someone should not himself be poor unless by his own choosing.
Copyright recognizes that the creator of a particular work has, for a limited amount of time, the exclusive right to it. Surely this is the antithesis of capitalism, which abhors a monopoly. Yet, most of us believe, and rightly so, that capitalism is the best economic system available. So what is the justification for this anomalous thing called copyright?
People who create things of value will likely create other things which are also valuable. Therefore, if we want them to create more things it behooves us to ensure that they are rewarded for their original creations. Copyright has at least ensured that artists have a right to their works, and for a great many of them this has been enough to become quite rich. Without a doubt society benefits when a great artistic achievement is made. What would the world be like without the likes of Shakespeare?
Artistic achievement enriches our entire society and it is useful to encourage it. Even the framers of the Constitution, although they did not invent copyright, realized that protecting intellectual property was important. This was so clearly recognized that one of the enumerated powers of Congress is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". 1 However, copyright, which is so contrary to one of our most fundamental economic principles, that of granting a monopoly, should be approached with great caution.
In 1790 the First Congress passed legislation that allowed authors the rights to a particular work for fourteen years. In addition, the copyright could be renewed for another fourteen years. Since then the term of a copyright has been increasing. Currently, a copyright lasts for the life of the creator plus seventy years.
It is hard to see how current copyright law adheres to the spirit of the Constitution. Certainly seventy plus years is a "limited" time in the most strict sense of the word, but in terms of human life it is nearly forever. For example, a work published right now will be protected for a minimum of seventy years, assuming also that the creator dies now as well. This can not be construed as limited in any practical sense. A seventy year copyright seems unconstitutional.
It is also terribly immoral. Encouraging people to create is necessary, but allowing the heirs of the creative to live at the expense of society for no particular achievement of their own is despicable, and instances of this abound. There is no reason whatsoever that the heirs of Martin Luther King Jr., Ernest Hemingway, J.R.R. Tolkien, or George Orwell should profit from their ancestor's works. By now the works of these great men should belong to society at large.
Obviously we want people to create, and I do not dispute the need for copyright, but there is a point where these monopolies cease to serve anyone except the heirs of great men and corporations. Society in no way benefits from granting these copyrights. It is actually damaged because anyone who might wish to create a derivative work is prohibited from doing so. For a monopoly to even be tolerated it must be of some critical imp