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I just read another article about almost all the programmers at Disney getting laid off and replaced with programmers from lets say India.
A couple of months ago, it was Southern California Edison, the local power company.
I talk to a guy that works for Honda in Gardena CA, and they replaced 1/2 the programmers there.
He said this has been going on at a fast rate since Obama was elected.
They pay these folks 1/2 the money, and force them to work twice the hours if they don't have a green card.
One foreign programmer bought a house, so now he works twice the hours.
Now there laying off the poor programmers from lets say India, and replacing them with another foreign programmer, because they can't follow the directions of the project, and submitted something totally different.
Here's the part that blows my mind.
He says that all the talent in India is gone, and there here now. And there's nobody left in India worth their weight.
I'm a rogue programmer, had no idea this was happening. I read these articles and wonder if I made a mistake getting back into this gig. I do realize that as society moves forward with more technology, that more programmers will be needed to do the work. But on the flip side of the coin, wondering if I should farm out some work to these guys.
Oh, I mean no offense to Indian members here at Code Project, but I am curious if this is true or not. And what the programming scene is like now in India.
I'm going home now, it's 5PM here. Got to go bowling tonight.
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jkirkerx wrote: I'm a rogue programmer, had no idea this was happening.
This has been going on for 20+ years. The pendulum swings back and forth. Disney will learn its lesson, like so many other companies have.
Sure, if there's by-the-book, cookie cutter grunt work programming to do, maybe hiring someone "overseas" will work for a company.
The problem for me is that there's a lot of problems with hiring practices here in the US. I detest it when a company outsources work because of claims of reducing labor costs -- sure, that's a short term bang to the bottom line. I also detest how overseas workers get paid sh*t wages and work in sh*t conditions. Have you ever seen those pictures of "factory programmers" in India? Here's one[^] My god, it's inhumane.
And while I enjoy the hourly rates I can get as a consultant, it's pathetic that teachers make 1/3 of what I make, because I think teachers are a whole lot more valuable, especially given some of the stupid projects I've worked on (MX Missile Train, GOP Data Center, etc)
And the weirdest thing is the recruiting business. Post your resume on Monster and 90% of the people calling are Indian, with names like "Joe" and "Jane". I just hang up on them, but I also feel sad for them because they're probably getting paid a pittance, someone set up a "professional" looking website and registered a business here in the US, and they're like sharks feeding on job postings -- I have literally gotten calls from three different Indian recruiters in one day for the same crap Ruby on Rails job.
This industry (like others) is mostly FUBAR when it comes to employer/employee relationships.
But you think overseas outsourcing is a problem? Just wait until programmers are replaced by programs. It will happen. The elephant in the room everyone is avoiding is the whole trend of roboticizing the workforce, which is starting to really pick up steam. Here's[^] an interesting article on replacing truck drivers. This[^] article is quite astonishing, particularly: Believe it or not, writers are at risk too. Many of the news articles you’ve read over the last few years have been written by software, and you probably haven’t even noticed. Some of the world’s most reputable publications — Forbes, for example — regularly run computer-written articles. This is especially true in sports and finance, as those verticals are extremely data-oriented.
Welcome to Generation R(obot), where your job can probably be done better, faster, cheaper, and safer by a machine. It would be a good idea if we crossed that line with eyes wide open.
Then again, if markets are allowed to be truly free, all those robots will have nothing to do when masses of people become unemployed and stop being able to consume the products the robots are producing. So there may be checks and balances, but there will also be further separation of those who have, and those who do not have. So much for the BS that we live in a global economy.
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: Have you ever seen those pictures of "factory programmers" in India? Here's one[^] My god, it's inhumane.
See the little cross partitions between the desks these privileged workers have, well if you remove them that is what I work in. In Singapore, at a major financial institution.
Admittedly very few of 300 people on my floor are programmers, that just means they have no respect for your concentration and feel free to laugh and clown around at their leisure. 18 months and I'm out of here!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Mycroft Holmes wrote: 18 months and I'm out of here!
I'm not sure I could hack 18 months. I bailed on Citi after 5 months of hell, and those were much better work conditions (except the commute was a 3 hour a day torture-fest).
Marc
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Well they do pay me a shitpot of money and I have always been a tart. Lifestyle in SG in one of the best anywhere I know of, so there are some perks!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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jkirkerx wrote: And there's nobody left in India worth their weight.
Am still in India; weighing around 72 kg. Is that weighty enough?
More seriously, there're a lot of programmers here, more than two thousand of them in my building. And, this is one of several buildings across various 'tech-parks' around here.
Coming to the 'factory programmers' thing, that's so in some service companies here. In 'product-based', aka, foreign companies which have directly set up shop here, its much better*.
* Nowadays, there's shift to an 'open office' concept; not sure how productive it will be for programming jobs.
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Avijnata wrote: 'open office' concept; not sure how productive it will be for programming jobs.
In my opinion, open offices are a great solution - As long as they don't get too noisy*.
Programming is a Team thing (usually). Teams work best when the communication works well, and open offices seem to enforce this.
* Even in that case, there's still this[^] for me
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Regarding the headset*, not sure whether its long-term use will gradually make one hard of hearing?
* irrespective of whether it is noise-cancelling or not.
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Avijnata wrote: not sure whether its long-term use will gradually make one hard of hearing?
Naah, didn't hear about anyone having this problem 
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It's a worldwide thing. I dare to say that out-sourcing is not only a big topic in our industry, but many others. Ford used to produce the Model T in the US, nowadays most cars are produced anywhere in the world (usually places where labor is cheap).
With the rise of China (and other emerging countries) we will face more and more competitors even on highly specialized jobs. But: Even chinese (as an example) workers pay will eventually rise (an effect of capitalism, though it may not be fully applicable on a semi-communist country) and make outsourcing to these countries more and more less worth the effort.
To me, language seems to be the top deal breaker: The company I'm currently with is specialized on Scanning solutions & Scan data analysis (Questionnaires, Election Forms and so on). Many of our customers are not international, plus the forms we are scanning and analyzing are not written in english. Our solutions often need a lot of customization on the customer site, since some of the systems are not connected to the internet due to security standards. The customers are often small to middle sized, sometimes international companies and government organsations. While the international companies *could* afford to outsource our work to foreign countries, the others can't do this, since the overhead would cost them more than they can possible afford.
See where I'm going? While big projects seem to be prone to be outsourced, development of small, specialized solutions seems to be safe on the middle-term run (Ignoring the threat of being replaced as developer by a computer program).
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A lot depends on what a company is hiring a person to do.
If it is purely to kick out code based on a specification written by someone else, then there's no particular reason to not hire a cheaper person.
However if you want a 'developer' who is involved in the whole project lifecycle then this is not a good idea.
It's not a good idea because culture and language are extremely important when communicating and developers need to be able to communicate in a manner that is culturally relevant to their environment.
There are certain cultures where the concept of "No" and "I don't know" do not exist and this can cause big problems on projects.
Personally I don't want to work on a project with someone who is unable to say "No" or "I don't know".
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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jkirkerx wrote: And what the programming scene is like now in India.
Probably a bit like this.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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I usually sleep the desktop computer instead of shutting it down. I sleep it and restart it perhaps 3 times per day.
I've noticed that the more days I go without rebooting it, the more page file chugging is required to switch between applications. And if there is an application that hasn't been in the foreground for more than 24 hours, the system virtually comes to a stop until it pages in all the memory associated with it when I finally bring it forward.
Anyway, if the machine has gone several days without rebooting, then it's painful to switch applications because of all the hard drive access.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Was there any Windows version that handled this better? Not as far as I can remember - unless it's Windows 7, I always shut it down completely because of its quick boot up on a SSD.
If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't. — Lyall Watson
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Yeah, I never noticed it on 7.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I run my various Windows 7 machines (a few at home and a couple more at work) for days and weeks on end without ever shutting them down. They go to sleep, not hibernate, come back up fast and never seem to show the slowdown of which you write.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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I notice it regularly. I do not put it to sleep, but hibernate. So each time I close the lid, it goes to hibernation mode. Yes, same thing happens. Each time it takes more than 3-5 days, applications run a lot slower til it comes to a stage where I have to restart the laptop.
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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Glad to know I'm not imagining it! 
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I run 8.1, shutdown the computer down a couple of times, came back the next morning and it was asleep instead.
Had to reboot by 12 noon both times, because strange things were happening.
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