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

[Robert L Krawitz]

   From: Derek Martin <invalid at pizzashack.org>
   Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 14:06:04 +0900

   There may be some truth to this, but I think we should reject this
   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.  Our employers usually demand a great commitment
   from us in terms of the hours we work and our availability after
   work (especially for us support types).  This should be rewarded.
   Maintaining our skills so that we do not become obsolete generally
   requires a great expenditure of time and/or money.

It's no more expensive being trained in IT than it is being trained in
any other engineering/technical/professional skill.  In terms of
formal higher education, it's very unusual for a graduate degree to be
expected, much less the 3-4 years expected of medicine and law.  The
IT field is actually a lot more egalitarian than most.

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

The problem of excessive hours is not restricted to the IT field (and
is not universal within it), by the way.  It depends a lot upon
management and corporate culture.

   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?

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?

   In many cases, Indians (and others) are being paid by our government
   to attend our universities, in the form of financial aid.  Those who
   don't receive money from US financial sources, as I understand it, are
   often paid by the Indian government to go to our schools.  Then
   American businesses hire these workers on false pretenses, paying them
   less than American workers doing the same job.  This does three
   things:

     1. reduces the number of high-paying jobs available to Americans
     2. causes a reduction in pays of the IT industry generally
     3. Since many of these foriegn workers send a large chunk of their
	salaries to their home countries, it removes a lot of money from
	our economy, to the benefit of those other countries.

There are problems with the H-1B program and other similar programs,
but those problems really center around the temporary nature of these
programs.  Most if not all of the people that I know who hold or have
held these visas are interested in living permanently in the US and
becoming citizens.  I have no idea what if anything they're remitting
to their parents, but Boston isn't exactly cheap to live in,
particularly if you're paying off student loans and don't have a lot
of savings.

The way the H-1B program works, a holder of this visa has no security
whatsoever.  If someone with one of these visas is laid off, or quits
without getting another job very quickly, they have to leave the
country within a matter of days.  This puts them in a position of
complete dependence -- indenture -- upon the host company until they
get their green card (permanent resident status).  That's why H-1B
holders are in at least some cases willing to work for short money --
they don't dare rock the boat.

The process to gain permanent resident status is arduous and there are
all manner of things that can go wrong along the way -- somebody
forgets to file a form in time, for example.  They're also on a short
time table; if they don't get their green cards within 6 years,
they're out.

   If you believe in the free market system, then maybe your response
   to this is, "as it should be."  But at the very least, you must
   realize that it is unquestionably detrimental to the American
   economy.  It is worse than the case of manufacturing jobs, because
   these jobs are high-paying jobs, yeilding a lot of disposable
   income to IT workers.  That income is spent directly on goods and
   services, fueling growth; or it is saved in financial institutions,
   improving the supply of money for loans to build businesses with
   capital expenditures.

I hardly know where to begin here.  Since this is a Linux list, I'll
quote Darl McBride in his letter to Congress (which of course claims
that OSS is riddled with proprietary code, but the argument is really
against competition):

	1. The threat to the U.S. information technology industry. Our
           economic recovery appears to be well underway, but it is
           still fragile and could be thrown off track. Just as
           technology and innovation have led the U.S. economy during
           previous boom periods, many assume that this will happen
           again. But imagine a major new technology buying cycle in
           which revenue from software sales shrinks. Free or low-cost
           Open Source software, full of proprietary code, is grabbing
           an increasing portion of the software market. Each Open
           Source installation displaces or pre-empts a sale of
           proprietary, licensable and copyright-protected
           software. This means fewer jobs, less software revenue and
           reduced incentives for software companies to innovate. Why
           should a software company invest to develop exciting new
           capabilites when their software could end up "freed" as
           part of Linux under the GPL?

	   Economic damage to the U.S. software industry could have
	   serious repercussions if this continues unchecked.
	   International Data Corporation forecasts that the global
	   software industry will grow to $289 billion by 2007. Beyond
	   the economic stimulus provided by the software industry,
	   U.S. sales taxes on that amount of software will be
	   somewhere between $17 billion to $21 billion.

	   Our economy has already been hurt by offshore outsourcing
	   of technology jobs. I'm sure you've seen this among your
	   constituents. What if our technology jobs continue to move
	   offshore at the same time the economic value of innovative
	   software declines? For more than 20 years, software has
	   been one of the leading examples of innovation and
	   value-creation in our economy. When software becomes a
	   commodity with nearly zero economic value, how will our
	   economy make up for this loss?

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.  So it sounds to
me like this argument is that the supply side should be protected, but
the demand side should be free (to hold down the prices of these goods
and services).  I don't know how much people in the US not in the IT
sector enjoy having to pay higher prices because of this extra
disposable income chasing the same goods and services and therefore
driving up prices without driving up their wages.

-- 
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