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

[rlk at alum.mit.edu (Robert L Krawitz)]

   From: Derek Martin <invalid at pizzashack.org>
   Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 22:52:36 +0900

   On Tue, Mar 23, 2004 at 07:44:05AM -0500, Robert L Krawitz wrote:
   >    idea.  Most of us became "spoiled" by investing a great deal of
   >    time and money into obtaining our skillsets.  To be good at IT is
   >    often EXPENSIVE.  

   > It's no more expensive being trained in IT than it is being trained in
   > any other engineering/technical/professional skill.  

   In my experience this seems wrong.  Friends in other engineering
   fields don't seem to spend anywhere close to the same amount of time
   earning certifications and taking special triaing classes that my
   friends in IT do.  So I don't have any statistics to back that, but my
   experience is that your statement is false.

I don't see too many people spending a lot of money or time earning
certifications or taking classes.  Maybe that's just in what I do
(development for high end platforms).

   > Continuing education is expected in many professions.  Doctors, for
   > example, have to earn CME's (continuing medical education) credits
   > just to continue their practice.

   Doctors also frequently make seven-digit salaries.

Statistics?  I think that that's pretty rare.  High five figure and
low six figure are more common from what I've read, and medicine can
be very expensive to practice (insurance, for example).

   >    We deserve high salaries; we work as hard as doctors or
   >    lawyers, and obtaining our skillsets is at least as expensive.
   >    Our skills are in high demand, even if that currently means
   >    importing cheap labor.  We deserve to be compensated
   >    appropriately.  In my opinion, this SHOULD add up to
   >    six-figure salaries for most experienced and talented IT
   >    workers.  But we're being jilted because of the availability
   >    of cheaper labor elsewhere, and dishonest businesses who abuse
   >    the system.
   > 
   > So everyone else should continue to pay artificially inflated
   > prices for IT and IT-related services to keep our salaries up?

   Are the prices artificially inflated because of our wages?  Or is
   it because the companies are excessively greedy?  Who makes the
   most: Microsoft's programmers, its executives, or its stock
   holders?  On average, I'd bet a month's salary it's not the
   programmers...  Are our wages artificially inflated?  I don't think
   they are.

I'm not talking about commercial software; I'm talking about in-house
IT departments and the like.

   > What about the people both in the US and elsewhere who write free
   > and open source software?  Are those people also competing
   > unfairly with paid IT workers by commoditizing IT?

   No.  They're not competing at all.  They are hobbyists.  FWIW, most
   free software I'm familiar with falls into one of two categories:

Linux is a bit more than a hobby.

   > The way the H-1B program works, a holder of this visa has no
   > security whatsoever.

   Nor should they.  It's intended as a temporary stop-gap measure.
   When their term is up, they should go home.

That's self-defeating on your part.  If someone's going to be kicked
out of the country after a few years they have no incentive to put
down roots; they'll simply save everything they can and take it home
with them.  Likewise, the very lack of security in this situation
makes someone accept less money than they might otherwise, which
drives down wages.  Furthermore, it means expelling highly skilled
people from the country.

   > What I find ironic about this argument is that the second part of it
   > ("That income is spent directly...") is the classical free market
   > answer to complaints about excessive disparities in income, while the
   > first part is the classical protectionist argument.  

   Right: it's logically inconsistent.  I fail to see how that relates
   to anything I said.

You appeared to be saying that the jobs of IT professionals should be
protected precisely because they're high income.  That income comes
from somewhere.

-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>      

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
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"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton