Wednesday, December 17, 2003

If Only the USA were more like the Third World

Interview at Salon today with Ravi Chiruvolu who is one of the big proponents of moving technology jobs to India. It's kind of a chilling look at how the captains of industry look at the American worker.

"OK. But what would you say to one of these lower-end programmers who lost his job? What would you tell that person to do?

I would tell that person that it's inevitable to the extent that someone is willing to do your job much, much cheaper than the price at which you're willing to do the job, and there just isn't enough demand to hire that other person and you. In tough economic times like today, you're exposed. There's an economic reality to that.

And you could either sit on that reality and wait until the economy gets better, or hope that this problem goes away, or you can basically move up the value chain, and the way that you do that is you gain different skill sets.


Kind of a cold outlook--and ultimately a problematic one. Because the one question is, whos going to buy your programs if everybody goes broke?

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