that means replacing high cost american workers with workers from china and india.
Fine by me, they can use foreign workers offshore, in fact I say have at it. But to import workers who don't have the same standard of living as US workers, particularly from countries like China that have artificially low currency, is just the same as dumping products on the US markets (Japan did this in the 80s). We have anti-dumping laws for products and I think we need that same kind of thing for labor. Actually just removing the excessive visas will have the same effect.
I don't buy the "we'll just move it offshore" excuse, because I know from personal experience a lot of these foreign teams don't know what to do in terms of getting a product out the door. Maybe some do and that is fine, I2 for example is pretty much an indian company now and they are free to operate in india, build whatever they want there and sell it here, if they can.
The truth is that Larry Ellison wanted to pay less for engineers in the 90s, he wanted to pay 50K for some skillsets while the market was demanding double that. Since there was pretty much jobs aplenty for everyone, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer "bought it" (to quote Dianne) and gave the CEOs here 200K H1-Bs. Now, 4 years later Oracle is an indian company with layer upon layer of indian management. It works, as long as they stay here, local in California. Back in india details and vision required to build accounting software for the US market is a bit tougher skill to come by. Sure they can do it, Oracle has been trying to build application software in india for awhile now and the results are some of the buggiest software in the industry. I'm sure they will get it right eventually but in the meantime a smaller, smarter, closer to the customer company in the US might just cut them off at the knees, just like manugistics did to I2. The loss of customer proximity and competitive climate in India is why Larry wants to hold on to these visas. I want a level playing field myself, that is all I ask for.
I have been hearing about how superior the universities are in india, and how highly qualified the people are. Somehow the products coming out of the indian teams don't seem to be reflecting this superiority. Maybe it is a bunch of BS. Anyway like I say bring on the competition from offshore software companies, I welcome it. But dumping cheap labor on SV is gone. |
