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Why don't you tell heini (or whomever) to restore the title and put the link back on the headlines so your company can face the music, fair and square.
Where are you and heini going for dinner tonight? ; )
Also, while Google is there, it might pick uo a few hundred "R&D" people to staff its call centers of future. :-)
As far as "facing the music"--this article appeared in the WSJ with a quote and several comments from our head of engineering. What exactly aren't we facing? For me personally, I started to lose interest when you tried to argue that India is a company.
Anyway, it would be pretty hard to have dinner with heini--I'm pretty sure that he lives outside the U.S. (as do most of our users.)
Your quote of me calling India a company is out of context. BigDave was trying to argue that you cannot outsource to a country, which is not true. That was the context. I'm sorry if it was confusing, but I am still looking forward to your take on the matter: why go abroad when you have about as many or more engineers available in the U.S. and they would love to work for a great company like Google? A lot of people are very interested to know. Some think it is to exploit India's cheap labor pool.
I was not serious about you having dinner with heini. ; )
Reading through it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Why the hell shouldn't Google hire some people in India? Mattdwells, you should travel more. There's a big wonderful world out there. Your many posts have been nothing but a sustained argument for the worst kind of xenophobia. Should all of us non-Americans avoid American Search Engines? Is that the way you think things should work? One big bunch of armed camps glaring through the barbed-wire at each other?
Madness.
One love. One people. One planet.
The primary point I was trying to make is that Google was being deceptive when they insisted they were not outsourcing. I expected more from a fine company like Google and was only hoping to help educate others on the matter. I do not think it is fair when the PR division spins news stories like that. It's hiding the facts.
I'm sorry I gave you the impression that I believed we should separate ourselves with barbed wire and only use local search engines, I did not intend that, perhaps you misread some of my posts. I like people from India and all countries. I believe in human goodness in all shapes and sizes.
Why do you think Google was trying to cover up the facts?
...why go abroad when you have about as many or more engineers available in the U.S. and they would love to work for a great company like Google?
I remember reading somewhere that just a few years ago while companies like Microsoft were claiming that they could not get skilled labor in the USA in order to get lots of engineers on H-1 visas, they were hiring only 2-4% of the American applicants.
Professor Norm Matloff of UC Davis, who has done extensive research on this, found that the shortage of software professionals was a myth and at the same time Indians brought on H-1 visa were exploited and got below-average wages. (Most Indian engineers are meek though and don't dare to complain, making them ideal employees.)
Moreover, there is the issue of age discrimination, so rampant in the IT professions. Hiring younger workers is cheaper.
I can bet that if Google wants to hire legal staff, there are millions of Indians willing to study day and night mastering American law to be ready in a couple of years to work for a tiny fraction of about $125,000 + bonus that is so common among first year law graduates from good schools. Why don't they do that? Is this because most offsprings of rich and powerful tend to go for legal and business careers and making them compete with Indians wouldn't be a good idea?
Most IT professional in the USA, in contrast, are from middle-class background and most of them through hard work and talent have done okay but now is the time to punish them. I can envision that, in not-so-distant future, American IT professional will be applying for visas to go to Bangalore and work there for Google and other American companies.
Let's stay on topic folks. Thanks.
Before you post again about spin, inequities, middle class jobs, offshoring, or whatever do this.
1) Go and look at per capita broadband statistics by country
2) Go and look at % of world internet use by native language
3) Go and look at asian digital divide initiatives
4) Go and look at world population statistics
5) Think about how different the internet world is now as opposed to 1995.
6) Consider how all these things are changing and what the trends are..
In fact, consider not only the fact that India has some incredibly talented programmers but also further some of the general attitudes expressed here from Indian developers about domestic business morality.
Google is not outsourcing in the traditional sense of OEM production &/or call centers for cheap labour. 100 hired engineers and bringing research and development to a 1 billion population country are simply not the same thing.
I'll say it again, it's a good business decision, period. Try and think 5-10-15 years from now, what would YOU do if you were in google's shoes?
I would hire the programmers in the US. Why? Morale and recruitment strategy. If Google employees, and prospective employees, peceive Google as filling jobs with cheap foreign labor, then they will a) suffer decreased morale, b) start looking to other companies for employment, c) feel less motivated to help Google become the best company in the world, and d) feel a sense of betrayal.
Now these may seem like touchy-feely, non-$$ concerns, but they often have a tremendous impact on a company's bottom line because its talent pool will diminish and go to competitors. It happens all the time to short-sighted cheap companies.
Do you truely believe they went there just to save cost - how much they can save on 100 Engineeers?...Even if you take the high end of 100k/engineer , its just 10 Million USD . Do you truely think that the hottest Internet company which is valued at a 20 billion USD went through all those government red tape procedures to setup a indian subsidiary to save a pesky 10 Million
And it really is a lot of hassle and red tape to setup in India. A fact which many don't realize is google is defacto search engine in India. Not many people know of any other search engine. Also Google regularly gets press coverage. It seems to be a good idea to tap the local press for media coverage.
And yes, JasonHamilton, you are exactly right: we spoke ill of Google and got censored. This is living proof.
I really think you should read Florida update threads. If that does not convince you otherwise nothing else will. ;)
I think the jealousy factor is playing a big part in people's resentment for Google. Especially for those in competition with Google. I guess they've given up.
It's no wonder this thread was pulled from the front page. Brett probably finds stuff like this quite embarrassing.
Sorry.
Will the new offices be getting legos and large balls to play with? Have you interviewed chefs yet?
google rocks!
lotsa smoke and mirrors coming out of the plex.
I think the google folks are jealous of Matt, one guy and a scientist with no VCs and his results are every bit as good as googles.
Really remarkable!
There is no way someone in the united states can compete, regardless of their desire or willingness with people in other nations who can live off of $10 a week.
It isn't because the US workers are slobs, or don't have skills. It costs a lot to live somewhere like NYC. Look at housing costs, look at car insurance.
It's more than google, it's the edge of a slippery slope that is getting steeper by the minute.
In the 80's, we had something similar with artists, where jobs were sent to Japan and other countries. What is happening now, will be much bigger than just tech jobs. It will continue to expand to other job markets.
Surely everyone can see some rationalization with why google is outsourcing to India. It is not a bad move on Google's part. But at the same time, you cannot expect everyone to be happy about it, especially if you are one of those who had their jobs cut in the last few years, and can not find a job, or has the ability to see past their own nose to see what is coming for the rest of us.
GoogleGuy...Where are you and heini going for dinner tonight? ; )
I know an excellent Indian restaurant...
>I wouldn't call it "outsourcing R&D to India"--when we opened a new engineering office in New York because there's good talent on the East Coast, would you call that "outsourcing to New York"?
Boy when BS runs deep it runs deep. Obviously Google has no intellectual talent in the US.
I know an excellent Indian restaurant...
how sweet.
The thread has been a political one - so there is little reason to not continue it as such.
I would like to congratulate my US cousins for having similar feelings regarding injustice as the majority of the British public: both internally where jobs are lost - and externally, where cheap labour is exploited.
I don't know if it makes good business sense to see thousands of Americans out of work and Google jobs being transferred to India. I think the more accurate term is people see it as corporate greed. Everybody supports cost-cutting until it comes to them being cut. I don't support support any business policy that eventually will cost us all.
Whatever the definition of outsource is, you can be assured that the trend towards India will reduce wages for tech professionals. US workers are getting the shaft because their bargaining power is being diluted by cheap labor overseas.
So?
Quotes like this from the land of the free, and the champion of globalization. I find it amazing such ignorance is still bandied about amongst supposedly educated people.
Adam Smith, upon whose principals the US economy is based would have just said that the Indians have a both a competitive and comparative advantage in programming and that in an open economy it would be natural for their services to be in demand. This in turn would prove a cheap import for the US and would increase Google's profits, which, let's face it are spent in the USA on American goods and services.
Protectionism is short sighted and produces poverty. We have plenty of it in Europe and it is no good for anyone.
What would happen to those unemployed programmers in the US? Well I guess they would end up working somewhere where their services are required on site and cannot be geographically outsourced. Get a grip.
Adam Smith, upon whose principals the US economy is based would have just said that the Indians have a both a competitive and comparative advantage in programming and that in an open economy it would be natural for their services to be in demand.
Assume there is a small island where everybody is almost starving. However, most of the people are quite attractive. Americans go there during holidays and avail themselves of a few 'comfort' people at reasonable prices. Those island people come to realize that only way to make good money is to be 'comfort' person and be good at it. Otherwise, they will starve to death. Soon, everybody on the island has become a 'comfort' person and has attended some sort of 'geisha' school to learn how to please the Americans who are willing to pay high prices for extra-nice services.
According to you, now, since the island people have both the competitive and comparative advantage in providing 'comfort' it is ok. However, mostly women in America would likely get quite upset. Moreover, do you want that island country to survive on providing 'comfort' only?
India is NOT naturally strong in programming that is better than that in other countries. It is just that American firms needed this skill and in India there are very few avenues of making good money, forcing people from other fields to move in to programming. Other areas are getting quite neglected.
Two months ago I went to India and found the quality of software at local phone companies and banks to be horrible. Why? Most likely good programmers are in Bangalore writing software for export while the local industry suffers unable to pay high wages that companies like Google will be able to pay.
Adam Smith's theory works only when people are free to make choices. In India this is not the case. This is just economic bondage.
Well, aside from thanking you for labeling me as "ignorant," I would like to congratulate you on showing the webmaster community that your understanding of American economics is simplistic and unsupported. You can cite Adam Smith all you want; however, my argument was based on the theory of collective bargaining - a theory which has had a significant impact on American economics, just as Smith has.
In my view, the term "R&D" is used the deflate the public criticism about lots of software jobs going to places like India. Without knowing much details, from my experience dealing with American firms, I believe that while jobs might carry fancy titles, almost all will be back-office data adminstration jobs to take care of Google's vast databases - jobs Google Head Office would rather not do in Palo Alto and spend time on interesting things like algorithms and 'dancing.' ;)
IITian,
That's an interesting comment. Even though 'you don't know many details', you seem quite sure in your criticisms. Your views on all IT work in India being of the back office type are typical of what the media points to, but it does seem that this trend is changing to more research based and engineering jobs. IMO Google is not alone, as per this [iht.com] article the likes of Intel, TI, Motorola and Cisco are doing a lot more. They must be...or else what are they filing these hundreds of patents for?
If Google is really sending R&D work to India, I am all ears for their explanation of what 'R&D' work they are going to do there. I will also be interested in knowing how many Indian-born engineers are in R&D departments in its US operations and out of how many total? I mean besides Krishna Bhat, of course. ;)
And regarding getting patents, when I was working in Japan for a large multinational it was filing for patents left and right mostly for business negotiation purposes and to block off competition. (It was #2 or 3 in the world in terms of number of patents.) Hey, I believe even I got a patent there for something I worked on for about 5 minutes. (I still don't know what it was all about.) All you need is the patent filing fee and willingness to file documents according to their guidelines.
[somewhat related add]Just a few days ago there was a news article about how Indian-born IIT Kanpur graduates are so dominant at MIT that they are referred to as 'IIT Kanpur mafia.' It was stated by a MIT professor. Guess what, I did some research and found that ... Tppe in the keywords and you will find what I found.;) [/add]
From reading the IHT article I posted above, there seems to be a lot of R&D going on in India. Only time will tell what Google decides to do in India, but for now I see no reason to get worked up over it.
