Wipro's Azim Premji - 'The man who wants to take your jobs'

[lug at the-leveys.us (Don Levey)]

John Chambers wrote:

> A few kids resist the taunting and insults and grow up to  be,  well,
> like  the  people on this list.  But it's not nearly enough.  We need
> lots of technical workers, and we have historically gotten them  from
> groups  of people whose children grow up thinking that education is a
> good thing.  This has been mostly recent immigrants, though there are
> a  few  minority  groups  (we  all  know who they are) that instill a
> pro-education attitude in their children.   This  is  something  that
> isn't likely to change soon.
> 

But is the problem that we don't have enough educated people?  Were that
the case, we wouldn't have thousands of us out of work while the jobs go
to Mumbai and Bangalore.  The problem, in my eyes, is that corporations
perceive a lower cost solution off-shore.  The Indian government, for
example, made a conscious decision to fund a string of technical 
universities.  Does that make the people better than ours?  No, it doesn't,
and it doesn't mean that we are (necessarily) undereducated.  It does
mean, however, that when a programmer will work for $20k there's no need
to pay multiples of that.  There's a perceived cost difference, but I don't
think it is real.  I would humbly predict that within 5 years the major
corporations who've moved to offshore operations may start to bring them
back because they realise the difference is illusory.  The product is
oftentimes inferior, requiring more time and effort to bring up to snuff.
Sure, $10/hour is attractive to an employer - until it takes 3-4 times more
hours to get the job done properly.  Add to that the lost time due to 
transport delays, communication difficulties, time zone differences...
Those sweat shops will dry up, unless they produce better quality.
I'm seeing this in my day-to-day work.

If they do, and the standard of living truly does rise there, then they 
will be defeated by that too.  If there is a true equalisation, then there
is no need to ship the jobs there because the costs will rise.  But five
years is a long time to wait here before you can make your mortgage 
payment.

 -Don