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.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Idiot..
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...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Idiot..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Idiot..
One question: What jobs can be created that can't be outsourced too?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Idiot..
Simple. Jobs that require a human presence and/or cultural understanding of local customers. There are many more of those than you think.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
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.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
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*, 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.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Idiot..
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.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Idiot..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yourdon's Back
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.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Yourdon's Back
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Yourdon's Back
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Who's still listening to Yourdon?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
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.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Don't listen to the Yourden!
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.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Don't listen to them Yourden!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Don't listen to them Yourden!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Don't listen to them Yourden!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Journal Article From Tues...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]