UK warned of China, India software threat

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RE: UK warned of China, India software threat

I find the combination of smugness, bigotry and panic posted on this blog truly appalling.

What's all this about OUR jobs? Where is the evidence that we are 'better than them'? And where do you get the idea that everything that comes out of India or China is second-rate? Since when did we in 'the west' have any more right to own, run, or work in the software industry than those in Asia?

We _created_ a global (internet-based) software development community and were very pleased with ourselves for doing so ("Isn't it great, I can work from home!"), but seem to have ignored the obvious fact that there are around 5 billion poor people out there who would really like a slice of the same pie. We aren't _better_ than them, we're just _wealthier_. But that is changing.

Westerners chastising the Indians and the Chinese for 'stealing our jobs' are like Europeans giving Americans a hard time for stealing their jobs in manufacturing in the late 19th and early 20th century ... or for making a fortune out of the misery of the Second World War and its aftermath (a period of enormous economic growth in the USA).

People are happy with global capitalism when it works in their favour, but when the tables are turned they complain that it's unfair. Well, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee: we in 'the west' have had the whip hand for the better part of 200 years, but now things are changing and we can't stop it, so we're going to have to find a way to live with it.

If we want to be competitive in the software industry (or any other service industry) we are going to have to _do_things_better_ than our Asian competitors, because we can't do them cheaper. That's going to be _very_ hard, because the people we are competing with in India and China (and Malaysia, and Thailand, and...) are every bit as clever as us, and typically more motivated than we are. We are busy educating our competitors because we need their fees to support our under-funded education systems (we've got used to keeping most of our money, and we resent spending it on education in a way that they don't). We then employ them at salaries that we wouldn't work for. Sooner or later some of them set up their own businesses and bingo: for the first time the 'western' software industry is facing _real_ competition.

One of the major blind spots of the US software industry right now is that it is parochially American. That's one of the reasons we hear daft comments like "the Indians/Chinese have never produced any decent software". How the hell would you _know_? What you mean is that you haven't seen anything that's obviously an Indian/Chinese product doing well in the American market. Newsflash: those 5 billion or so people who are not part of the US market frequently have needs and aspirations that are different from yours.

Posted by: Steve4Fluff   Posted on: 05/26/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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