On Wed, 2003-12-10 at 04:36, Vaughn Treude wrote:
> On Wednesday 10 December 2003 00:36, you wrote:
> > My reaction was that $40,000 isnt the cost of hiring an Indian programmer.
> > 40,000 includes a lot of overhead.  $40,000 is the cost to an American
> > wanting to hire an Indian programmer through a middle-man.
> >
> > Also, it's important to realize that the $45,000 isn't the W2 rate--its the
> > total payroll expense for the firm.
> >
> > Still top notch Indian programmer, aprox. $10,000/year I've heard--US
> > programmer W2-$25,000 maybe, still not bad for the US programmer.
> >
> 
> Not bad?  It really sucks compared to what I was making just a couple of 
> years ago.  Of course, the weak economy is partly to blame, and the internet 
> bubble, which left the market with a glut of our kind of talent.  Another 
> problem is the overvalued dollar.  I bet a person can live like a king over 
> in India for $10K worth of rupees.  
> 
---
This thread has a lot of political implications far beyond the IT
talent. It started with the concept of having a readily available talent
pool because so many jobs have migrated overseas. What we consider
American companies have become American marketers and the products are
designed, manufactured and assembled elsewhere and now the customer
support is also handled overseas.

So we read in the newspaper about the rebounding economy that doesn't
produce any meaningful reduction of unemployment in this country and
worse yet, the jobs that are available are for low wages.

I sort of chuckled that the tone of the original article implied some
sort of heroism for this guy who bucked the trend and hired American
programmers at a discounted price. Perhaps that's the result of supply
and demand - free market forces at work but I hardly see any heroism.
There's too little pride in American produced goods and services - a
lack of an esprit de corps so to speak. 

If you recall the presidential elections of 1992 where Ross Perot
labeled NAFTA as the sound of American jobs being sucked to Mexico, he
had the concept right but it wasn't NAFTA but the lowering of trade
barriers worldwide and in America, it has resulted in lower cost goods
at the expense of jobs - are we better off? I suppose that neither of
the two major political parties can articulate a solution to this
problem but if one of them could, that would likely tip the elections a
little less than a year away.

Craig