Editorial: updated 9/18/2003

Despite trying to keep up with changing technology, I am having problems. Why? For one thing, you are considered old in this field once you hit 35, especially in the Silli Valli. Another factor is the flood of cheap H1B and L1 visa workers that the tech companies talked the government into allowing into the country. Note that they don't even have to pretend to pay L1's market rate. If I remember the number correctly, there was a report on NBC that 400,000 IT jobs disappeared the first half of 2001. I'm sure that trend has continued.

And now it's been reported that 1 in 10 current IT jobs will be outsourced overseas by the end of 2004. The number of H1B's allowed in is scheduled to return to more sane levels; so instead of bringing them here, we are sending the work to them.

Let me digress to mention just one incident. In early 2000, there was a requirement matching my background in Washington state. To make a long story short, I called the recruiter about a week after I had been submitted for the contract at a rate $15/hour less than my previous assignment. He told me that they had decided to only consider local candidates; I was in Vegas at the time. Remembering that the ad mentioned that H1B applications were accepted, I remarked, "Well, I guess if you walk off a plane from Calcutta you are local but if you walk off a domestic flight you are not." All I got in response was the phone slammed down in my ear, so draw your own conclusions.

The latest trend is sending customer service and tech support to countries like India and even China and possibly Russia.

How stupid is it for a company to spend several hundred thousand dollars on CRM software (Customer Relationship Management, designed to make a company more responsive and in tune with the needs of its customers click here for more), and then have the first contact a new customer makes be someone from a different culture whose second or third language is English? Will American companies ever look beyond the next quarter's P & L statement? Ever since I started in IT, over 30 years ago, the number one problem has been communication between IT and the business side. If the business people can't make their needs understood, and the IT people can't figure those needs out, when both speak the same language, how the HELL are you going to get someone in China to get your supply chain management in order? (Ziff-Davis just published an article in their daily newsletter on 11/10/2003 on this subject.)

Can't they see the short-sightedness of removing talented developers, analysts, managers, etc. from our workforce?

9/18 update: I get newsletters from Computerworld in order to keep up to date. Apparently this outsourcing thing is hitting a nerve with a lot of people. Please follow this link for real-life stories.

This situation reminds me of the early 90's. Then, the term was "downsizing" instead of "outsourcing." Companies were reorganizing, admittedly getting rid of some fat. But it was also common to find someone doing the jobs of 2 or 3 people, afraid to complain knowing they might be cut next.

Of course we all know what happened a few years later. People were being allowed to bring their dogs to work. Some were offered leased BMW's and outrageous signing bonuses. Companies never learn, history may repeat.

I feel that outsourcing overseas also has the potential for causing strategic harm to our nation. India, and especially China, have never been and will never be friends of this country. What are these companies going to do when these countries pull the rug out from under us and we no longer have the talent to do the job here?

I sometimes wonder what the real unemployment rate is. By that, I mean people that have just stopped looking for work, or are working for ten to thirty percent of what they used to make in technical fields. The official rate only reflects those actually drawing a meager check from their state, obviously grossly underestimating the truth.

And it's not just COBOL programmers, Web developers caught in the dot-com bust, etc. that are affected. It is all technical fields.

One of the things I am doing in a vain attempt to make ends meet is public opinion surveys. I talk to a hulluva lot of people every week from New Hampshire to California. It seems like at least one out of four with a college degree and technical/engineering background are out of work, or, more likely, doing something like I am. I talked to a nice lady last weekend whose son had a mechanical engineering degree and 20 years experience and was mowing people's lawns this summer.

I think we better quit worrying about blowing the rest of the world to hell; all we are doing is pissing people off so much that the next incident may make 9-11 look like a cherry bomb. Bush is the biggest liar we have had in the White since Nixon, there are no WMD and the inspectors and others all said that. We better find a way to get our people employed in the capacity they were educated and trained for; and quit rewarding our economic enemies by sending them our jobs.

Is there one candidate willing to take that stand? If so, there are a few hundred thousand of us out here willing to vote and probably work to get you elected. Hell, we need a job.

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