U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers

Any American unemployed IT workers out there? How do you feel about this?

U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers

Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $36 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.

UPDATE: InformationWeek has learned that USAID just launched a similar campaign in Armenia.

Looks like they are going to get free training over there in Sri Lanka in English, JAVA, and other related skills. How nice. Taking jobs from the US on the taxpayers' dime. Only in (out of) America, eh?

Any unemployed IT workers in the US should feel that big administration finger in your eye right about now. And we know which finger that is.

It's been happening here in the UK for years. For the price of hiring a 10 UK IT professionals companies can hire 100 offshore workers. Even when the quality has been shown to drop, even when the new workers have no concept of the nature of the work they are doing the employers don't care. They work on the principle of a room full of monkeys with typewriters will eventually come up with the works of Shakespeare.

I worked for a Supermarket company, they moved the IT development function offshore, and found it was a disaster. The people doing the work had no concept of shopping in a supermarket, how the logistics supply chain worked, why customers would be interested in loyalty schemes, etc. Whereas we could make the logical leap to fill in the blanks, work out issues in the design, and such we found the offshore workers to be technically skilled they were bound in their thinking, but again the employer didn't care at all as the cost savings were huge compared to the massively increased lead times in getting the delivered solution right. Also accepting code that met 80% of the needs would be good enough, and was it worth their while to spend more on closing the gap to get solutions that met 100% of the requirements.

I found the offshore workers to be nice, very well educated people, who were hard working. But they lacked the context of the environment into which they were drawn. That meant work had to be specified exactly, and misspellings and such would be translated onto screens and reports. Not their fault, but I felt it was a fatal flaw in the process.

My major concern over this movement of work is security, companies have already experienced problems with credit card details going astray. What happens when peoples sensitive data is sold on the black market, and suddenly you find your life is not your own, or your details are displayed for all and sundry to see, or you're blackmailed to keep you medical, sexual, or other preferences quiet from your employer. What happens when our troops order ammunition to defend themselves and receive a crate of boots because people of ill-intent are coding systems that really should be done by nationals.

What really appals me is that this reply will no doubt have me marked down as a racist, I'm not, but because I speak out against what I see as an appalling solution to a non-existent problem, except to enrich the pockets of the rich at the expense of the middle classes, I'll be labelled as such.

I've lost my job to this problem more than once, but I bounce back, I've yet to see it work as a long-term solution, and heard the CEO of one major internet security company describe moving to India from the US and UK as an unmitigated disaster, but instead of coming back was moving on to China to see if that worked any better!!!

You have to wonder sometimes about the sanity of some people, you really do! Quality solutions require quality workers who understand fully what they are doing and understand the context of the work they are doing, and that costs money! You can't cut corners, it doesn't work, it just devalues the entire process.

People in America have been training the people offshore who were taking their jobs for decades now. Where've you been? It's the ultimate of ironies. How would anyone feel about this? Be happy?

But I will say this too...maybe the intense dislike of "Obama" is actually a good thing in that it's finally making some people who have been asleep for years notice things.

Blessing in disguise.

[edit on 8/8/2010 by ~Lucidity]

For those that has lost their jobs due to oursourcing and facing hard times, take a good look at what the traitors in our congress are doing to the work force in this nation with tax payer money.

Your hard earned money to train foreign workers so they can comeback and take more American jobs away.

What people doesn't get is that our government regardless of who party is in charge are nothing than fat rats enriching their pockets while helping prop foreign nations.