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Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

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Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#51

Post by CmonDev »

julie1 wrote: post #33

People are not tired of this kind of FUD? Whatever you do good devs are a limited resource, and all that is made to try to walk around the problem worsen it: - outsourcing ? => You have to compensate in supervision and you lose in quality. (Indians are not bad coders, but there is something called the Babel tower effect that creates a lot of signal perturbation/costs) - agile? => Trying to cut on correctness and deta…

"...if only people were not starving in the streets..."

You have a bigger problem with IT then investment banking and international politics?

I am personally very happy that once in a while engineers are getting a kind of fair deal. Of course let's not forget that salaries in Silicon Valley were artificially suppressed for a while in an illegal agreement between the likes of Google and Apple. So being underpaid is what we should be really complaining about.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#52

Post by CmonDev »

brandonmenc wrote: post #17
ilaksh wrote: post #3

I know this is a tough sell but I am going to say it anyway. Automation effects every single person and every single job. For example, if your job is writing custom software, it becomes progressively harder to find problems that don't already have open source solutions. Or look at how component marketplaces and open source components or modules increases software reuse. There is not an infinite capacity for software…

> For example, if your job is writing custom software, it becomes progressively harder to find problems that don't already have open source solutions. There's a lot of work to be done writing glue code.

There is a whole business of 'integrating' the software products that are kind of ready (much more so than OSS) - ERP (Dynamics, SAP etc.).

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#53

Post by peterjancelis »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #14
gboudrias wrote: post #4

> The automators will continue to get very, very rich, while the automated will have to find something else to do. Part of me thinks this will lead to make much more apparent the paradox of capitalism: Those with the most money can... make the most money. Over time this means it all gets funneled into just a few families' pockets, until they own everything (which is silly and most likely would not be put up with afte…

Over time this means it all gets funneled into just a few families' pockets, until they own everything... Yes, this is a popular theory, but it doesn't appear to be happening. To quote Larry Summers: > the Forbes 400 list also provides only limited support for Piketty’s ideas that fortunes are patiently accumulated through reinvestment. When Forbes compared its list of the wealthiest Americans in 1982 and 2012, it fo…

Index funds do about 4% real return over time and scale very well.

You are right that wealth is more dynamic than most people think but the reason is rather that the most effective way to get really rich is to leverage everything into one company, which is a strategy that hurts you on the way down as much as it can help you on the way up.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#54

Post by yodsanklai »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #14
gboudrias wrote: post #4

> The automators will continue to get very, very rich, while the automated will have to find something else to do. Part of me thinks this will lead to make much more apparent the paradox of capitalism: Those with the most money can... make the most money. Over time this means it all gets funneled into just a few families' pockets, until they own everything (which is silly and most likely would not be put up with afte…

Over time this means it all gets funneled into just a few families' pockets, until they own everything... Yes, this is a popular theory, but it doesn't appear to be happening. To quote Larry Summers: > the Forbes 400 list also provides only limited support for Piketty’s ideas that fortunes are patiently accumulated through reinvestment. When Forbes compared its list of the wealthiest Americans in 1982 and 2012, it fo…

> it found that less than one tenth of the 1982 list was still on the list in 2012

It doesn't seem like a good argument. It's not because they're not at the very very top anymore that their fortune hasn't grown a lot.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#55

Post by hokkos »

The author of this weak article seems to surf the waves of "robots are taking our jebs" because he brings no proof that the layoff of Yahoo, IBM, Cisco in India are the results of automation or business shrinking or strategic decision about outsourcing. Also this site hacks the scrolling wheel in a bad way, small scrolls seems discarded.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#56

Post by rtpg »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #43
noonespecial wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its almost like a signaling error. A farmer would gladly grow corn in exchange for a tractor and a mechanic would gladly supply that tractor in exchange for corn, but the corn that theoretically could be factory farmed by automation would be cheaper than the farmer can grown and the robot built tractor would theoretically be cheaper than the mechanic can build so neither do anything. Both farmer and mechanic starve a…

> Both farmer and mechanic starve and then the automated systems make neither corn nor tractor while the capital owner wonders why no one is buying. I don't think your math works out. If a tractor is worth more in the market than the corn then the mechanic is better off to sell the tractor and buy corn in the market than trade with the farmer, and vice versa if the corn is worth more in the market than the tractor. M…

I don't see how automation of growing corn will make iPhones cheaper.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#57

Post by rtpg »

anigbrowl wrote: post #30
beedogs wrote: post #12

"What does it mean for the economies of these up-and-coming world powers? Well, probably the same thing that it means for everyone else: The automators will continue to get very, very rich, while the automated will have to find something else to do." Or, you know, basic income. Why is the answer to "there are no jobs anymore" always "well, I guess you can starve, then"?

Very possibly, but proponents of a basic income consistently fail to articulate three things: how these monies will be collected, what rationale there is for distributing it (other than the implicit acknowledgement that the alternative is civil unrest) and why it won't be inflationary.

>what rationale there is for distributing it

Instead of spending all their time being wage slaves and buying the $2 boots that fall apart every month, they can actually invest in the $15 boots that last 10 years (thus of maximum utility) and help signal to the boot market that we don't need crappy boots.

Poor people cannot invest in good products, so companies build shitty things that sell because people need to survive, but are a bad long-term proposition.

Basic income can destroy shitty products.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#58

Post by yummyfajitas »

yodsanklai wrote: post #54
yummyfajitas wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over time this means it all gets funneled into just a few families' pockets, until they own everything... Yes, this is a popular theory, but it doesn't appear to be happening. To quote Larry Summers: > the Forbes 400 list also provides only limited support for Piketty’s ideas that fortunes are patiently accumulated through reinvestment. When Forbes compared its list of the wealthiest Americans in 1982 and 2012, it fo…

> it found that less than one tenth of the 1982 list was still on the list in 2012 It doesn't seem like a good argument. It's not because they're not at the very very top anymore that their fortune hasn't grown a lot.

>a significant majority of members of the 1982 list would have qualified for the 2012 list if they had accumulated wealth at a real rate of even 4 percent a year.

This part of the quote, which you snipped, is in fact a good argument that they didn't accumulate much. As I said before, that's far less than I earn from trading.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#59

Post by zo1 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #54
yummyfajitas wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over time this means it all gets funneled into just a few families' pockets, until they own everything... Yes, this is a popular theory, but it doesn't appear to be happening. To quote Larry Summers: > the Forbes 400 list also provides only limited support for Piketty’s ideas that fortunes are patiently accumulated through reinvestment. When Forbes compared its list of the wealthiest Americans in 1982 and 2012, it fo…

> it found that less than one tenth of the 1982 list was still on the list in 2012 It doesn't seem like a good argument. It's not because they're not at the very very top anymore that their fortune hasn't grown a lot.

Well, it could simply just mean that others have surpassed them in terms of overall wealth, sure. Not that they lost the wealth.

Re: Outsourced Jobs Are No Longer Cheap, So They're Being Automated

#60

Post by davidw »

zenogais wrote: post #20
gboudrias wrote: post #4

> The automators will continue to get very, very rich, while the automated will have to find something else to do. Part of me thinks this will lead to make much more apparent the paradox of capitalism: Those with the most money can... make the most money. Over time this means it all gets funneled into just a few families' pockets, until they own everything (which is silly and most likely would not be put up with afte…

> Another part of me thinks that automation has been part of our society for a long time, and that taking it further only changes the kind of jobs everyone has, maybe even promoting equality by eliminating the more menial tasks (and therefore making every worker's skill and experience important, instead of them being just a replaceable cog). This is the theory, but the realities of this promoting equality are really…

> An increase in the supply of labour has two fairly predictable effects - it both lowers wages overall (more supply, less demand) and provides a pool of cheap workers should things pick up

It's more complicated than that though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

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