Over the vacation, I got to visit some friends in the US. A couple of them recently lost their jobs as programmers in a software company. They blame the economy and off-shoring - the practice of moving business processes overseas, to reduce costs. The current momentum in the US is in the outsourcing of their core competency.
Now, they're active in a labor group pushing for Congress to to do something. They argue, that proponents of globalization claim benefits which are misleading. Off-shoring is costlier than it seems because the agency overhead, communication links, not to mention the delays caused by different business practices, and the decline in the quality of work because of young and inexperienced programmers.
Some experts think that businesses will grow due to off-shoring, which in turn, will increase investments in these businesses. My friends think that the jobs created by these new investments will likely be off-shored too.
Now, they're active in a labor group pushing for Congress to to do something. They argue, that proponents of globalization claim benefits which are misleading. Off-shoring is costlier than it seems because the agency overhead, communication links, not to mention the delays caused by different business practices, and the decline in the quality of work because of young and inexperienced programmers.
Some experts think that businesses will grow due to off-shoring, which in turn, will increase investments in these businesses. My friends think that the jobs created by these new investments will likely be off-shored too.
This just goes to show that there is balance in the world. As jobs flow into the Philippines, jobs get drained from the US. I wonder though if these new opportunities are testament to our growing competitiveness, or, if my friends' arguments are true, just an illustration of how we can get away with poorly paying and training our people.
1 comment:
Off-shoring is not a zero-sum game.
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