At 07:32 AM 5/8/97 -0700, Louis Proyect wrote: > >The notion that programming jobs are being exported to India is something >that people in my field discuss often. Not only is this a constant worry, >there is also the worry that computer programmers from India will be >imported into the United States. Two years ago, the AIG, a NYC based >multinational financial corporation, fired all of its computer programmers >and replaced them with Indian consultants. This was reported widely in the >trade press and even became an item on the network news as a sign of white >collar decline. > >Leaving aside the racist implications of a lot of the reporting on the >Indian connection, there are a couple of comments I can make as an industry >insider. First of all, AIG simply couldn't make things happen with the new >staff. They lacked the breadth of experience the long-in-the-tooth in-house >staff had acquired over decades. (My experience, by the way, is that >American corporations have shot themselves in the foot with a lot of the >downsizing that goes on in EDP. They view systems building as a simple >technical task that can be done by hackers. Hackers, by and large, don't >understand systems analysis. Furthermore, systems analysis can not be >taught in a book. It is a skill that is tied to living experience.) I presume similar arguments were tossed around when Frederick Winslow Taylor started replacing skilled workers with "hacks" controlled through his time-motion studies. The quality might have gone down then and may, as well, go down now (for that matter, Windows 95 is a piece of shit comparing to Windows 3.1) -- but since when capitalists started to care about making quality products? Deskilling is not about product quality but about control of labour. "Imported" programmers may lack the skills of their domestic counterparts -- but they have two highly desirable (from the management's view point) qualities: they are cheap, and they are alienated from the local labour force -- which makes it unlikely that they will organize. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 ****** REDUCE MENTAL POLLUTION - LOBOTOMIZE PUNDITS! ****** +----------------------------------------------------------+ |There is no such thing as society, only the individuals | |who constitute it. -Margaret Thatcher | | | | | |There is no such thing as government or corporations,| |only the individuals who lust for power and money.| | -no apologies to Margaret Thatcher | +----------------------------------------------------------+ *********DROGI KURWA BUDUJA, A NIE MA DOKAD ISC************
