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Surplus Indian programmers in UK!!

 
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UK to plug Indian IT inflow
RASHMEE Z AHMED
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 2003 12:12:11 AM ]
LONDON: Armed with a pile of scary statistics, Britain�s infotech industry is putting pressure on its government to police a legal loophole that allows hundreds of Indian workers to be imported into the UK.
Monday�s deliberations, focusing on the Intra-Company Transfer (ICT) scheme, come just nine months after industry pressure forced Britain to take IT off its so-called shortage occupations list.
The ICT Scheme is considered a sure-fire way for an Indian computer professional to get a UK work permit and enter Britain. Early last year, unemployed British computer consultants and contractors had forced the Blair government to end its fast-track visa system for Indian techies.
On Tuesday, the London-based director of management gurus, Deloitte Consulting, confirmed to TNN they would be putting out a figure �within weeks� on the number of jobs expected to move from the City of London and Wall Street to India.
�The financial services are leading this trend,� said Chris Gentle, whose April survey of jobs migration theorised that two million jobs from the US, the UK and Europe could move to low-cost locations such as India, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa and Australia.
Monday�s discussion by the IT Sector Panel Board focused on the ICT Scheme. �The schemes being abused,� Gurdial Rai of the IT Sector Panel Board baldly told TNN.
Indian employees work on �third-party sites�, contravening the spirit of the ICT, said Rai. �Till now, the government has been reluctant to prosecute.�
He said stopping ICT abuse could mean the difference between a job and penury for 100,000 unemployed UK-resident techies.
Rai is a director of computer contractors and consultants trade body, which campaigned against fast-track visas for �surplus� Indian techies.
Now, the organisation claims a British home office minister, Beverley Hughes, has assured them she wanted �the number of work permits issued (to IT workers) to reflect prevailing market conditions�.
Outsourcing?
�Intra-company transfer scheme gives access to Indians in British IT sector
.Consulting firm to furnish figures of the jobs that will move from London to India
�Indian workers on �third party sites� contravening ICT spirit, says IT panel
 
Greenhorn
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hmm... Outsourcing to India is so attractive to many companies in UK and US that no regulation would really plug the inflow. If a regulation is really passed, then the already weak companies who are facing an economic fallout will weaken further. Indian companies seem to be offering a proposition which would make life easier for companies to get through these bad times. I am sure once the economy improves, nobody is ever going to bother about outsourcing to india. And I think this is a temporary phase and the job market will again improve. If the companies are banned from outsourcing it would mean that they may have to shut down their offices which again would mean more job losses. Rather the government should follow policies which would enable companies to sustain this economic fallout and allow companies to do everything that would make them get through these hard times.
- Ritu
 
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Actually, if you read closely, it's attempting to close the door on imported Indian IT workers, just as the U.S. has been more or less doing by lowering their H1-B limits.
However the real killer's actually offshoring and neither the H1-B or its UK equivalent are going to stop that. At least not until the cost of living (or at least salaries) in all affected countries reaches more or less the same level.
 
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QUOTE] However the real killer's actually offshoring and neither the H1-B or its UK equivalent are going to stop that. At least not until the cost of living (or at least salaries) in all affected countries reaches more or less the same level.
I agree with you Tim. Well said.
 
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So Tim,
You mean to say that cost of living in US and UK should go to the level of countries like China, Russia, Malaysia and India. Until then offshoring won't stop ???
 
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Here's the story from my side as i see it, the way i have experienced it in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India.
Since the last decade, there are more and more collages and institutes offering software training in mumbai and other parts of India too. In a bid to make quick money and not be left out, many small business owners turned to software. Some opened learning centers, others opened small sub-contracting companies, some went into body shopping businesses, etc. Everything was fine till 2000 and is still looking fine, well atleast superficially. Now here's the real problem today. There are thousands of fresh computer science graduates getting out of collage every year, and thousands of certified Java, .Net programmers getting out of other learning centers every year, all with the same purpose- enter the software bandwagon and make more money.
Because of more and more offshore outsourcing done in India by US companies, fewer and fewer people want to join other desciplines like mechanical, chemical, electronics, etc. I fear that in a few years from now, we will have lost quite a potential pool of engineers in other fields (not sure if similar thing happend in the US too). This may affect the growth of other fields. Also, because every other small business owner wants to invest in some kind of software related venture, there isn't much "systematic" and "well-planned" growth in other small/home based busiesses. Note the keywords in the quotes. Another fear is the high monetary expectations. Young fresh graduates today are making tons of more money than some middle-aged people who are not in software. There is some mental friction of course but this friction is not just because of jealousy only, it is also because of the very high rate of inflation caused by the highly paid software workers (welcome to the world of capitalism!) And, god forbid, if there is a recession in the software industry in india too, (which i believe is going to happen in the next 3-5 years, may be because of murphy's-like laws or may be because of the golden rule of Geeta that nothing lasts forever, or for whatever other reasons), the youths over there are also going to face the same problems of unemployment and depression as the people in software industry in US are facing today. I wish the state and various levels of governments in india invested more time aggresively spreading information about other fields and desciplines too. may be they are and i' m not aware of.
For those who have stayed in bombay would probably know that such similar trends/waves have in the past occured in fields like electronic engg, chemical engg, etc. Businesswise, these trends were seen in the textile market, diamond industry, chemical industry, plastic industry, Stock trading, etc. Even though these were just small scale or medium scale crests and troughs in the economy wave compared to the current amplitude taken by the software industry, there were lot of depressions following the trailing edge each time. The only difference this time is size of the scale and that's making it scary enough for me. Like someone had said about the dot-com boom earlier, this outsource/offshore party too isn't going to last forever and the hangover will be painful.
 
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The story is talking about indians, working for indian firms, getting paid in RS, but sitting in offices in the UK.
As you know indians (foreign IT workers in general!!) are no longer eligible for work permits in the UK.
 
Tim Holloway
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Originally posted by Menaka gangamavari:
So Tim,
You mean to say that cost of living in US and UK should go to the level of countries like China, Russia, Malaysia and India. Until then offshoring won't stop ???


"Should"? That doesn't really benefit anyone. I'm more worried about will.
What we have is the economic equivalent of 2 tanks of water, one mostly full, one mostly empty (I exaggerate to make the point). If the two are connected by a pipe at the bottoms of the 2 tanks, water will flow until the tanks both reach the same level.
The problem is, if the difference in potential is extreme, something's likely to blow. On the receiving side, you can get runaway inflation. On the sending side, you can get runaway DEflation, and on top of that, there's an old adage that when the US catches a cold, the rest of the world gets pneumonia (economically speaking), so even if low COL countries didn't take the inflation hit, they'd still be at risk.
I don't advocate slamming the doors. I wouldn't deny the joy of software development to anyone and I think that an industry with relatively low environmental impact and capital costs is a good one for developing nations. We've seen more than enough Bhopals. And for many reasons I feel that the world will be a lot better place when the entire planet has a comfortable standard of living (which does NOT mean a resource-wasting SUV in every garage - or necessarily even a garage).
However, we're dealing with forces that in and of themselves are impersonal and potent no less than the flood waters that come from the monsoon rains. So if we're to avoid being swept away in the flood, we need to come up with ways to manage it. Simply building dams isn't enough. Dams, as we've seen can break.
 
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Originally posted by Mumbai cha bhau:
fewer and fewer people want to join other desciplines like mechanical, chemical, electronics, etc. I fear that in a few years from now, we will have lost quite a potential pool of engineers in other fields (not sure if similar thing happend in the US too).


By an interesting twist of captalism, qualified plumbers in London can earn more than software engineers. Purely because of supply and demand.
I read of one individual making in the region of �150K (~$220K) in a year. His callout fee for emergencies is �100 (~$150) per hour.
Richard
 
Tim Holloway
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Originally posted by Richard Scothern:

By an interesting twist of captalism, qualified plumbers in London can earn more than software engineers. Purely because of supply and demand.
I read of one individual making in the region of �150K (~$220K) in a year. His callout fee for emergencies is �100 (~$150) per hour.
Richard


Which is funny, because one of the arguments I'm making to a local plumbing company who wants to take a 1-week job I've spec'ed for them and reduce the already reduced rate is that their hourly rates are higher than mine. And that's not even scaling it to the number of users who'll benefit.
Of course the reason plumbers are doing relatively well is that you can't ship your plumbing offshore to be repaired by someone whose monthly income needs are 1/10th those of UK plumbers thanks to cost-of-living inequities.
 
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------------------------------------------
Of course the reason plumbers are doing relatively well is that you can't ship your plumbing offshore to be repaired by someone whose monthly income needs are 1/10th those of UK plumbers thanks to cost-of-living inequities.
------------------------------------------
True.
However, we may bring plumbers in from third world nations.
This has happened. Think about nurses, they come to US with H2 visa. BTW, no degree requirement to be eligible for H2 visa. While local nurses make typically $45K+benefit, the H2s (most from India and South Africa) get usually less than $30K.
 
greg norman
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I am wondering these days if it is a good idea:
USA, UK, India, Australia, Canada and all other English speaking become united as one nation.
Then we will have everything, nature resources, highly-developed technologies, smart and cheap labors, huge market.
And of course, we will no longer worry about off shoring.
 
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Hi,
That is something I could see in the future. The world map will be redrawed into many sectors not countries. Similarly like present day EU. But that could be well after the polar shift and US could lost 9 western states into the Pacific Ocean. I hope that I will not be here on this earth to see it.
Cheers,
MCao
[ June 13, 2003: Message edited by: Matt Cao ]
 
Tim Holloway
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Oh, I just know India would like to belong to an empire again.
Of course, as desperate as I am (er, you didn't think I spend all this time here while I'm at work do you?), I'd be pushing for ol' Dubya to let those "forces of liberation" roll, if I thought that that would do any good. I know better than that, though.
It's not really about nations, its about how much the region thinks its people are worth. Before offshoring, a lot of the manufacturing in the US slid South because the cost of living was lower there. However living's even cheaper overseas, so the jobs started moving out of the South as well. So making the Punjab the 57th state wouldn't help, alas. Maybe getting them under US minumum wage laws would though.
COL is everything. Although a lot of people resent the H1-B program because imported labor is always afraid to demand higher wages/benefits for fear of being deported, nonetheless H1-B's get paid a wage I can compete with (barring a downward spiral). After all, once over here, they need to be paid enough to manage our cost of living!
 
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Dams, as we've seen, can break.


Excellent sentence. And walls, as we have seen, can be down.
The world has been fundamentally changed through the internet. Mankind must ford the trouble water to proceed via the trial and error process.
Nevertheless, as long as mankind exists on the earth, the confrontation between the have(s) and the have not(s) never seems to cease repeating itself over and over again. The rivalry in the beginning of the last century was between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. In this century, the have(s) are global corporations. Please do not draw any implication from those sentence. I am not a Marxist.
It is difficult to predict the future. I am simply letting my thoughts fly.
Provided that no major breakthrough in the present form of production, there will be political processes before the living standard of all nations is eventually equalized as the result of job offshoring. In industrialized countries, as job losses spread over all sectors of the economies, those who are thrown on the street will take the street. The Labor Party will gain power. In case that the Labor Party has majority votes, offshoring barriers will be erected. Dams will be built to stem the flow. But, it is not going to be the solution. Dams, as we've seen, can break.
I am uncertain how far those global corporations can go. Offshore production/services no longer makes sense if the majority in industrialized countries cannot afford to spend or purchase much.
In case that global corporations find their way and the living standard of all nations on earth is equalized, it is not going to be the end of the story. Global corporations will further ask if labor can work for free. At that time, I believe that there will be a global labor union to counter the power of global corporatism. It is another political process. History tells us that the oppressed will win eventually. But, it is not the end of the story either. A new power in another form is going to emerge.
I incline to conclude that to live well in the 21st century is to be a global entrepreneur. Just make sure that nature death comes before the global labor union sends you to guillotine.
[ June 14, 2003: Message edited by: JiaPei Jen ]
[ June 14, 2003: Message edited by: JiaPei Jen ]
[ June 14, 2003: Message edited by: JiaPei Jen ]
[ June 15, 2003: Message edited by: JiaPei Jen ]
 
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