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Ed Yourdon Back In The Doom And Gloom Business
from the must-sell-a-lot-of-books dept
Ed Yourdon made quite a name for himself in the late 90s predicting that the Y2K problem was going to bring about the end of society. He sold a ton of books and videos based on his fear mongering statements that the lights would turn out at midnight on January 1st, 2000. After that didn't happen, he seemed to lay low for a bit, but now he's back predicting that American jobs are being lost forever overseas. Now, there's quite a valid debate over offshoring issues, but seeing Yourdon's track record of raising a big stink to sell lots of books about a problem that didn't pan out, I'd take it with a pretty large grain of salt. He seems to like to take a simple case and extrapolate it out, without considering how other issues may impact what actually happens. Yes, there are issues that the US needs to deal with concerning outsourcing, but the doom and gloom scenarios are counterproductive. Already there are signs that things like the famed Indian call centers aren't as great as they were made out to be and additional evidence suggesting that offshoring creates additional costs for companies. Certainly, this is an issue that companies need to be aware of, but we have to look at the issue in context, and not just assume that because a job offshore is cheaper it really means that all US jobs are gone.
Reader Comments
(Flattened / Threaded)
Idiot..
Mike you are a fool, and flamingo, with head
buried in the sand...Bush is the RED Queem,
shouting "Off with their heads!"
For sure, after 30 years, even the blind can
see the auto industry, steel, semicondutors,
and now even software and services, going to the
greedy Xploitation of labor in foreign countries.
Exploitation by greedy executives of faceless
multi-national corporations , just the rich,
with no loyalty, nor ethics, no moral obligations
to help those less fortunate, no
societal baggage to support graduated income
taxes or a living wage.
THe US will soon be very like India, Thailand,
Mexico, and much less like France,Sweden, ...
The US will have a permanen LOWER class and
a few miniscule middle class monkeys who repeat
and chant the mantra of the
ruling elite , that " ALL is okey.."
Wake up...
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Re: Idiot..
I'm assuming you didn't even read what I wrote if you reacted that way. It's nice to see that you're so confident in the US that you don't believe we can, as a whole, adapt to changes in the economy, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
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Re: Idiot..
I read what you wrote and I read what he wrote. He is writing the same thing I've been writing so I can only assume he's on the mark this time and you haven't read enough.
One question: What jobs can be created that can't be outsourced too?
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Re: Idiot..
One question: What jobs can be created that can't be outsourced too?
Simple. Jobs that require a human presence and/or cultural understanding of local customers. There are many more of those than you think.
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Re: Idiot..
The question is, what will we have left to trade with the countries whose products we need?
One big strength of the U.S. and Canada is food production. That isn't likely to change, and there isn't a much more basic need than food. However, between those two countries we can darned near feed the world on the labor of 1% of our populations.
What happens to the middle class if all of our exports can be generated by a small percentage of the population? Are we doomed to have a small strata of very wealthy individuals who produce goods and services for export, trickling their wealth down to service workers struggling to get by?
(No, I know that it is nowhere near that simplistic. I merely point out that "we'll all work in local-service industries" isn't an answer, either.)
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Re: Idiot..
Dude, go back to whatever you're smoking or at least learn something about the subject matter you're talking about.
Automotive production in North America is forecasted to grow by over a million units in the next five years, so this segment is *growing*, although less than the rest of the world since percent of worldwide production will probably drop a whopping 2% from 29% to 27% of all cars produced in the world. Keep in mind that "foreign" companies like Nissan, BMW (Daimler is now sorta domestic), etc. open plants here pretty often - but it's *foreign* "greedy executives" deciding to outsource to the U.S. in this case, giving jobs to Americans (or exploiting U.S. labor, but I assume this case is okay)
If you really wanted to help those less fortunate, then the poor in India are probably near the bottom of the barrel, so you would want to help peole there the most if the "poor" are your primary concern.
Less like France is okay with most people. Unemployment has consistently been 3-4% higher than the U.S., and it's currently in the range of 9%. If you like things over there, I don't think there is anything stopping you form immigrating.
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Re: Idiot..
"Automotive production in North America is forecasted to grow by over a million units in the next five years, so this segment is *growing*."
I'll assume you're ignorant and have overlooked the fact that while automotive production is UP, jobs in automotive production are DOWN due to automation. The original poster only cares about manufacturing as it produces jobs.
So, yes we can potentially build autos as cheaply as any, (and that's questionable given our labor laws, land prices, etc) there's not going to be anyone to buy them, at least not here in the states. That's the concern of the original poster.
And it's quite possibly valid.
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Re: Idiot..
This is the same drivel that was being spouted in 1977 when it looked like Detroit was going under and everyone was saying "last one out of Michigan please turn out the lights." The auto industry survived and the the 80s were one of the longest periods of sustained economic growth in history. Then the post-war recession after Desert Storm had people screaming the same shit and then the 90s blah blah blah. The stock market is inching back toward 10,000 and the economy grew by the most in nearly twenty years. Doom prophets always need something to bitch about because otherwise they'd have to go and get real jobs.
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Yourdon's Back
Yourdon, out of respect for some of the great stuff you'd done, I, much to my embarassment, followed you off the edge of the cliff of y2k angst. I was more than an idiot, & I am ashamed.
Would you now do us all a favor and shut the fuck up? Your time is past, old man- Your published opinions are the worst sort of tripe and your "skills" are moot.
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Re: Yourdon's Back
He is right on the mark this time and if you can't see it you haven't read enough.
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Re: Yourdon's Back
Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
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Who's still listening to Yourdon?
Years ago, Yourdon was already predicting doom and gloom for the IT business in the USA, and in 1993 his book The Decline and Fall of the American Programmer appeared. His predictions turned out to be true, and the 1990s were a terrible time to be in IT. Oh, wait, actually there was the Internet boom and times were never better. Well, Yourdon saw the error of his ways and in 1997 came out with another book, The Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer. Shortly after that he got into the business of predicting that Y2K would cause everything to fall apart. Now it seems that he's back to his original thesis, but with a track record of being so wrong so often, and reversing his position whenever it suits him, why would anyone bother listening to what he has to say any more?
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No Subject Given
Specification-based programming can be done anywhere you can send the specs. Those aren't good jobs and they should go offshore. You're not helping anyone or creating value. It's not that big of a trick to program a computer any more. Millions of barristas proved that in the late '90s, so those jobs should go away anyway.
The professionals who visit users at their site, watch them work, figure out what they need, figure out how to integrate the crap software from offshore, figure out how to improve processes, know how to work with management to set goals based on extending the tech; those are the folks who are helping productivity. Those are jobs that can't be done from offshore.
Those are good jobs that *should* replace coding.
Think about the telephone industry in the first half of the 20th century and what happened to the great future job of that time - telephone operators.
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Don't listen to the Yourden!
Let's face it. Evey country must pay their dues. They typically start in agriculture, move to production and industry, and then proceed to information. The United States paid their dues in the 1600's and 1700's growing and shipping all kinds of crap back to England and Europe. We had some of the worst working conditions because our Government at the time didn't care about the worker....they cared about the dollar.
For those of you who think it's a Company's responsibility to care about the worker....you're half right. The main responsiblity for the Company is to make money and please stock holders. If the company is bright enough to see that happy workers = less turnover = more productivity then all the better for them....but in the long run, it's the Government's (run by the people) resposibility to see that laws are in place to keep workers from getting exploited.
This brings us to cost of living and the exact definition of exploitation. How many of you nay-sayers on this thread have actually been to China, or Taiwan, or Thailand, or Malasia? A good salary in those countries is $6 to $20 per day. Why? Because the things that they need to live simply don't cost them very much. I stayed in Thailand for a week on $200. It's true. So it's actually in a large Corporation's best interest to locate their factories overseas where their labor costs make up 20% of their balance sheet instead of 55%.
OK, so all the MFG jobs are going away....what do we do? The U.S. must charge forward and make the difficult move to a cerebral, information-based society. Education, thought, ingenuity will be the mantras for our society. Those who don't adapt to these ways for better or for worse will be left behind. I have confidence that people are capable of learning throughout their lifetimes and our ability to adapt to the changing landscape in this country will see us through. - The End.
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Don't listen to them Yourden!
This is what I intended the title to be. My previous title suggests that I disagree with Mr Yourden. Sorry about the confusion.
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Re: Don't listen to them Yourden!
Um. But you are disagreeing with Mr. Yourden and agreeing with us. I'm confused... Our argument has been all along that the US can adapt. Yourden is saying the opposite. You seem to be saying that it can as well. So... where are you going with this?
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Re: Don't listen to them Yourden!
OK, I'm an idiot. Screw the title. Peace out ;)
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Journal Article From Tues...
Reminds me of a Wall Street Journal Article from Tuesday (or Wednesday) that said that EDS was considering moving thier call centers out of India because (get this!) the Indians didn't want the crappy jobs and were asking for too much money! :)
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