It's a multinational corporation, I don't see a problem with it on a surface level since they have no real obligation to maintain some arbitrary percentage of American workers. The current climate of companies needing to continually push down cost to compete is the new normal and there will be various ramifications as further globalization opens up more cost saving opportunities. Maybe it will hit a turning point where we reevaluate how the health of firms are gauged but I doubt it.
IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S
21–30 of 259 posts
Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S
#22I'm not surprised. As H1-B regulations keep getting more strict, this phenomenon will spread to other big players in the industry.
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Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S
#23I've heard some B-school grads refer to this as some "inflection point". They were talking about more overseas workers for IBM in 2006 or so. The more important question is in which direction does the money flow? It has to be net positive for the US albeit not to US upper middle class programmers. My simple rule of thumb is if the move is not filling up CxO level coffers, it won't happen.
Why would it have to be net positive for the US? If $100 million flows from AT&T to IBM. And IBM pockets $10 million and sends $90 million to India, that would be a net -$90 million for the US economy.
That's assuming the $100 million flow in question can happen at all without the India piece of the puzzle. Another way to think about it might be "$100 million wealth flowed (and taxes paid on it, and salaries paid, &c), $90 million of which goes to India, vs. $0 wealth flowed (and so no taxes, no paychecks, etc.)" A lot depends on the accounting of where AT&T got the $100 million at the start of this story, and what spending that $100 million enables AT&T to do, whether this flow turns out to benefit both the US and India, mostly the US, mostly India, or neither.
Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S
#24The real question is (and this is serious): how is it working out for them?
Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S
#25I think that this is a good example of how racism, conscious and unconscious is making us worse at predicting the future. Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code and Indian accents. The idea of Indians actually working innovative jobs seemed laughable to many Americans. But there wasn't actually strong evidence that Indians were less good at doing cutting edge research. This…
Just a thought about the "huge" salary difference. Are you taking the Purchasing Power Parity(PPP) into account? I know that PPP is too macro for comparing very specific cases but it does steer the discussion in the right direction. Let's say, an engineer's monthly salary is $10,000 in the US and he can afford X level of arbitrary "comforts in life". To be able to afford the same X level of arbitrary "comforts of lif…
Companies try to do that in America where they justify your income based on the fact you live in an area where you have high PPP. (Urbana,IL vs Palo ALto,CA)
That doesn't make it right to do or that this behavior will get the high quality talent pool every company says they will hire. So why do you think that it will work in this case?
Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S
#26I think that this is a good example of how racism, conscious and unconscious is making us worse at predicting the future. Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code and Indian accents. The idea of Indians actually working innovative jobs seemed laughable to many Americans. But there wasn't actually strong evidence that Indians were less good at doing cutting edge research. This…
Just a thought about the "huge" salary difference. Are you taking the Purchasing Power Parity(PPP) into account? I know that PPP is too macro for comparing very specific cases but it does steer the discussion in the right direction. Let's say, an engineer's monthly salary is $10,000 in the US and he can afford X level of arbitrary "comforts in life". To be able to afford the same X level of arbitrary "comforts of lif…
That assumes the person in question wants to live in India, not save to leave India.
Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an example of this racism, I'd use this comment from the article: "It often takes 2 and sometimes 3 Indian employees to perform the role of the North America diluting the savings." https://nyti.ms/2yxCQGX
I did not even want to comment but I have to. You are very xenophobic towards americans. Every developed rich nation has this attitude when it comes to outsourcing and offshoring. But all of it is just anecdotal evidence (it goes both ways).You are not only forgetting about how economics work but also evidently omitting how that happened that US is so rich and can afford paying such salaries. I really do not want to…
Let's not bring "disparity" into the picture after Nov 8, 2016 :P
Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the tech sector at least, the relative salaries of employees located in India is still significantly lower than those in most America metropolitan locations. This overall reduced cost to a company is significant enough to invest in the market. As India is still considered a developing country, the quality of life, while debatable, would be considered a downgrade for many who could potentially be poached from other…
"the quality of life, while debatable, would be considered a downgrade for many who could potentially be poached from other regions". Why would it be a downgrade. If they paid an American $120k a year to live in Bangalore, that would buy the American a nice villa, pay for several servants, and allow for frequent travel. In SF, that same money gets you a shoe-box apartment.
I guess you could also use that money to buy a diesel generator so you don't suffer from the daily power outages and you can buy a great water filtration system so you don't have to worry about ever drinking unclean water either.
Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S
#29I think that this is a good example of how racism, conscious and unconscious is making us worse at predicting the future. Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code and Indian accents. The idea of Indians actually working innovative jobs seemed laughable to many Americans. But there wasn't actually strong evidence that Indians were less good at doing cutting edge research. This…
In the tech sector at least, the relative salaries of employees located in India is still significantly lower than those in most America metropolitan locations. This overall reduced cost to a company is significant enough to invest in the market. As India is still considered a developing country, the quality of life, while debatable, would be considered a downgrade for many who could potentially be poached from other…
> This overall reduced cost to a company is significant enough to invest in the market.
Tech companies are especially inclined or incentivized to offshore work because their highest cost/liability sinks are their employees. Other sectors, a significant portion of their costs/liabilities are equipment, supplies, etc. Tech industry is unique in that their employees are their biggest liabilities.
I know that tech companies have been struggling the past decade+ on trying to rein in their employee costs. HR departments have trying hard to lower employee costs.
The move to bring in more women and minorities into tech is a commendable goal by FB, GOOGL and the tech industry, but it's also driven by rising employee costs. It's not spoken about widely and openly but these companies are desperate to get control over rising salaries/costs in the industry.
Diversity is a great way to maintain and lower employee costs that have political/social benefits. Another way to lower costs is offshoring, but that has a lot of political/social costs.
But profits are profits and costs are costs. The industry isn't going to stop offshoring because of bad publicity given how much they stand to gain.
Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S
#30I think that this is a good example of how racism, conscious and unconscious is making us worse at predicting the future. Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code and Indian accents. The idea of Indians actually working innovative jobs seemed laughable to many Americans. But there wasn't actually strong evidence that Indians were less good at doing cutting edge research. This…
Racism isn't based on facts. BUT, Indians and [insert third world country citizens] do great--in a country like USA.
Question: Now IBM charges probably $300/hour per programmer. Even if it is $100 and I understand that not every hour is billed, but why isn't IBM making way more money given Indian wages?