Outsourcing: Not such a bad thing

[ibe98765]

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for the students (my patience is limited), I don't have the educational background required for teaching.  The contract I just finished has left enough money to enable me to look around for a while, but at my age, I don't think a permanent job in any field will be an option--I'll probably join the legion of temps.  I read that about 20% of the jobs being filled these days are temporary assignments.

Become an eBay seller. Heard Veep Dick Cheney say the economy is better than the numbers indicate because at least 400k people are working at selling on eBay! John Edwards then suggested that perhaps the government should also start counting running lemonade stands and bake sales. [roflol]Or you might consider becoming a CEO...

For CEOs, offshoring pays By Ed Frauenheim CNET News.comAugust 31, 2004, 12:48 PM PT Chief executive officers at the companies shipping the most U.S. jobs overseas seem to be pocketing some of the savings, according to a new report. The study, published by two groups concerned with economic inequality, found that average CEO compensation at the 50 firms outsourcing the most service jobs abroad increased by 46 percent in 2003. CEOs at the 365 large companies surveyed by Business Week only saw an average raise of 9 percent, according to the report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. CEOs at top offshore outsourcers earned an average of $10.4 million in 2003, while average CEO compensation hit $8.1 million, according to the report. From 2001 to 2003, the top 50 outsourcing CEOs earned $2.2 billion while sending an estimated 200,000 jobs overseas, the report said. "These 50 CEOs seem to be personally benefiting from a trend that has already cost hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs and is projected to cost millions more over the next decade," the report said. Offshore outsourcing, farming out tasks to lower-wage nations, has become a hot-button issue over the past year or so. Defenders of the practice--including President Bush's top economic advisor--say it ultimately assists the U.S. economy. But critics say it costs U.S. workers jobs and threatens the country's long-term tech leadership. The exact scale of the trend remains unclear. The new report names a number of technology companies in its list of leading offshore outsourcers. IBM is among them. Big Blue has plans to shift about 2,000 U.S. jobs abroad this year, but it also is hiring thousands of employees in the United States. According to Tuesday's report, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano's pay reached $7.7 million in 2003, up 13 percent from 2002. The report lists a more dramatic increase in pay for Stephen Bennett, CEO of Intuit, which makes personal-finance software. Bennett got a 425 percent pay increase in 2003 to $22.3 million while sending call center jobs to India, the study says. Neither IBM nor Intuit immediately returned requests for comment. The study also said the so-called CEO-to-worker wage gap is rising again, after two years of narrowing. The ratio of CEO pay to worker pay reached 301:1 in 2003, up from 282:1 in 2002. If the minimum wage had increased as quickly as CEO pay since 1990, it would be $15.76 per hour, rather than the current $5.15 per hour, according to the study. Link

[ebrke]

Chief executive officers at the companies shipping the most U.S. jobs overseas seem to be pocketing some of the savings, according to a new report.

Why does this not surprise me? If there's one thing that's certain, it's that they're going to get theirs. I think the corporations they lead are going to suffer in the long term--these jobs are being shipped to volatile areas of the world, and I think that fact is going to bite at least some of these corporations in coming years.

[ibe98765]

If you've got a lot of time, checkout this Lou Dobbs/CNN Link:

Exporting America: The listHere is a list of companies we've confirmed are "Exporting America." These are U.S. companies either sending American jobs overseas, or choosing to employ cheap overseas labor, instead of American workers.

Looks like mostly everybody is doing it, sigh. Will be more and more of this as time marches on. Everyone, particularly those that are younger, better think about finding a position that will be difficult to outsource. You don't want to wake up 10 or 20 years from now facing the ax.This evening, I spoke to 3 people in SBC tech support who were in India. A female called Ephel disconnected me. Then I spoke with two "Tom's", one a supervisor. Both did not know where San Francisco was relative to Los Angeles (where there was an SBC outage). I suggested that if they were going to provide support tot he USA, they have a map at their desks and study it occasionally...