To: X Y Zebra who wrote (16615 ) 12/14/2002 11:55:01 AM From: Lizzie Tudor Read Replies (2) | Respond to I simply do not see semi-skilled (or even skilled) American labor go to the depths in price to compete with the third world. They've already called it, the events and circumstances for the Perfect Financial Storm are gathering in the horizon... easy to call and point out the main characteristics, yet I have no idea of the outcome. entire industry and if you do... the time to market and inability to react kill you. Remember schwinn bicycles was like that, they tried to outsource to wherever but the problem was, by the time you set up the foreign manufacturing the trend had changed and it was too late. Meanwhile specialized and all these "higher end" producers in the US took the market for both N America and Europe, it was all about agility which you don't get outsourcing. Same with tech jobs imo. First of all tech salaries in 99 were too high and this recession is bringing them down. I'm talking about IT consultants making 200K/yr in SV, it was ridiculous, companies felt trapped. Now with salaries more in range at 80K or so vs. 20K for an indian outsource job. For the DBA and by the book programmer its a no brainer, companies will go cheap but when you get to the business analysis, and general visionary stuff thats where a breakdown will occur imo. Of course right now you have some cutting edge (somewhat stupid) companies like applied trying to outsource *everything* in IT to india because they are just fed up dealing with it. Smart companies like Dell embrace the challenge (btw I doubt Dell outsources anything and I suspect they remain competitive). It will take a few years to work all this out. I don't think this recession is any worse than the 1990 recession as far as jobs go, btw.
