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IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

nytimes.com

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Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#201

Post by as1mov »

iamnewhereqwer wrote: post #46
burger_moon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you been to Bangalore?

I live in Bangalore and I'd say he's correct. Bangalore might be better compared to other Indian cities, but nowhere near the level of a American city. There are issues with power outages, water quality/shortage, absurd traffic jams where you'll be stranded for hours, costly real estate and even rent.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#202

Post by pm90 »

samstave wrote: post #61
davesque wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people are comparing US and Indian employees is because the doubling of IBM's India workforce since 2007 seems to be, in many ways, a result of labor arbitrage, as the linked article is arguing. You can slice things any way you want, but the fact is that this is a problem for the average American worker. In other words, it's something that readers of the NYT would care about.

I am beginning to think that out-sourcing ones-self is a better and better idea...

I've heard a lot of my foreign born collegues do that. After they've reached a certain seniority, they decide to go back to their country of birth while keeping similar compensation, essentially making them very rich in their home country. I've only seen this work for Indian and Chinese born nationals though, where the home country has good relations with the US (as opposed to, say Iraninans, who don't have the option of going back).

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#203

Post by adventured »

BeetleB wrote: post #178
adventured wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't merely an accident. The US had a superior context which enabled something like IBM to exist and thrive. Name another country circa 1911 that could have produced IBM and enabled it to acquire such vast global scale at its peak. There are only a handful of nations that can even be considered as possible. IBM came out of the US for the exact same reason Fairchild, Intel, Cisco, Silicon Graphics, Motorola, Texa…

>IBM came out of the US for the exact same reason Fairchild, Intel, Cisco, Silicon Graphics, Motorola, Texas Instruments, HP, Sun, Xerox, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, etc. all did. By that reasoning, IBM is outsourcing from the US for exactly the same reason virtually all the other companies you listed are. Sure, something about the US helped them to exist and thrive. And something about the US is helping them to outsource.…

> By that reasoning, IBM is outsourcing from the US for exactly the same reason virtually all the other companies you listed are.

Of course. Most of the outsourcing has been about labor costs. The US has among the highest labor costs on the the planet, the nations (Vietnam, China, India, Mexico, etc) that the US has heavily outsourced to - whether manufacturing or IT - are or were far lower net cost nations to do those outsourced things in.

What's cutting against the US is mostly obvious: incomes are very high, infrastructure costs are far too high (impacts almost everything in the cost structure in the US, from transportation to manufacturing), the effective corporate income tax rate in the US is among the highest (while many developed nations are aggressively lowering their rates), vast & rapid growth in economic regulations over the last 30-40 years, large expansion of general burden on business formation over that time (taxes, regulation, red tape, abusive zoning laws, etc.; leading to far lower dynamism in the US economy, weak productivity growth, perpetually falling new business formation, etc).

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#204

Post by vram22 »

blizkreeg wrote: post #84
pavanred wrote: post #42

Everyone seems to be making the assumption that all the work IBM India does is outsourced from US. IBM India is the biggest domestic IT player in India with clients like Airtel, Indian Railways, HDFC etc.; IBM India also services clients from other countries in the world (which wouldn't have happened otherwise because its too expensive in the US). And, IBM India, has a few research labs setup that do independent rese…

You're getting a little defensive here. IBM was one of the crown jewels of American industry. It was an iconic company in its time. The fact that it now employs more people in India than the US is something to ponder. It isn't so much about the merits of outsourcing. Everything can be done cheaper by getting it done in another part of the world. Should it be? Sometimes the answer is yes, at other times, not. Imagine…

I'm not fully arguing against your point, but would just like to make one observation:

IBM has been laying off people in the US (and maybe elsewhere too) for several years, every now and then. I have been in the software field for many years now, and have been reading the industry news for a long time, that's how I know it. I remember even way back, I used to read the news in Indian and foreign IT magazines, every now and then, that IBM (and other US companies too) were laying off like 10K, 20K, or more workers at a time. And it was not always because of outsourcing jobs to India, in many earlier cases it was before outsourcing even started.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#206

Post by alexasmyths »

794CD01 wrote: post #117
blizkreeg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting a little defensive here. IBM was one of the crown jewels of American industry. It was an iconic company in its time. The fact that it now employs more people in India than the US is something to ponder. It isn't so much about the merits of outsourcing. Everything can be done cheaper by getting it done in another part of the world. Should it be? Sometimes the answer is yes, at other times, not. Imagine…

That was merely an accident of history. The I in IBM doesn't stand for American.

"That was merely an accident of history. "

It was no accident.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#208

Post by alpha_whiskey »

davesque wrote: post #66
alpha_whiskey wrote: post #36

It's bound to happen. Stricter H1-B policy actually will negatively impact the Americans. DO you need more proof than this?

If there were looser H1-B policies, wouldn't jobs still go to non-Americans but just not over seas?

That's better than outsourcing the entire project overseas.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#209

Post by pm90 »

jordanb wrote: post #58
atarian wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. As someone who grew up in America during that time, this is the exact opposite that I was told by the media and teachers. We were taught that Indians were just as effective (if not more) than people working in the US and that we…

Yeah 2002-2005 or so the conventional wisdom is that there wouldn't be software written in America anymore -- that companies were going to beat a path to Asia just like they'd done in textiles and furniture. Economists explained that software is a highly "tradeable good" and Asia -- especially India -- was filled with millions of highly educated cheap programmers. Given that the number of people employed in software…

> I would say that software development has been good to me so far as a career, but I still think I would hesitate to encourage a young person in America to pursue it.

This is absolutely terrible advice. Please do not ruin some young American's life with this advice. Technology seems to be one are where the demand seems to always outstrip supply, and a person trained in Computer Science would be capable of learning new skills and advancing rapidly in the tech industry.

Re: IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

#210

Post by likelynew »

GordonS wrote: post #166
likelynew wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 500,000 you mentioned doesn't seem correct to me for IBM. It is the lowest in the IT sector targeted to freshers from substandard colleges. In most first and second tier college, the average for IT is 15,00,000 to 25,00,000 at the time of joining.

Those numbers are far too high - it's extremely rare to find anyone who will pay those wages, even in tier 1 cities for experienced candidates. By way of comparison, plenty of people in the UK entering their first IT job would make less than the equivalent of 25,00,000!

I am studying in college that has is not known by most people in India, and the official average here is around 18 LPA. I have the stats from the placement unit of our college. For IITB and BITS Pilani, I can confirm from friends it's around 27 LPA. This is one public stat I can find: http://www.selaqui.org/iit-jee/placement.php. Average is 24.67 LPA for CS, and it's from 2011-12. I don't know why you reacted with so much disbelief, when every one and every newspaper tells that average for IT placement is very good.
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