If your job moves to India, follow it
A controversial IBM program hints at how globalization is changing high-tech careers.
By Tam Harbert, Contributing Editor -- EDN, April 7, 2009
In February, two news stories reported seemingly contradictory trends. First, word leaked out about IBM’s Project Match, whereby IBM would allow laid-off US and Canadian workers to apply for IBM jobs in India and other low-cost countries and would help them with visas and moving costs. A week later, the Wall Street Journal reported that Indian outsourcing firms were planning to hire more workers in the United States.
These aren’t contradictions, however. Rather, they both signal how globalization is transforming business and the labor market, and thus reconfiguring the job prospects and career paths for technology workers, including electronics engineers and managers.
Some high-tech workers found IBM’s Project Match appalling. If hired by IBM in a foreign country, employees would work under that country’s terms and conditions, which would mean they would earn a much lower wage than in the United States. Project Match was not announced publicly but was reported in the press and confirmed by an IBM spokesman. IBM declined to be interviewed for this story.
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The program is just another form of offshoring, according to Tom Midgley, an IBM employee and president of Alliance@IBM, a group that’s trying to unionize IBM workers. Positions offered include consultants, IT architects, sales, technical services and software development, he said. Most of the openings (1,000) are in India, but there are also jobs in China, South Africa, Brazil, and several Eastern European countries.
“You could afford to go there, and maybe earn a decent living,” he said. “But you’re probably not going to save enough to be able to move back to this country.”
With the election of President Obama, the rhetoric on offshoring has been heating up. The recent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and Obama’s proposed budget contain some provisions designed to discourage offshoring. In fact, the increased US hiring by Indian IT firms is at least partly in reaction to the growing anti-offshoring sentiment, according to the Wall Street Journal story.
Ron Hira, an offshoring critic and assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, takes such reports with a grain of salt. He said that Indian IT firms have said they would increase their US hiring several times in the past, but rarely follow through. When they do, they typically hire only a few “rainmakers” to help sell their services in the United States, said Hira, who co-wrote the book, “Outsourcing America: What’s Behind Our National Crisis and How We Can Reclaim American Jobs.”
But Robert E Kennedy, author of “Services Shift: Seizing the Ultimate Offshore Opportunity” and a professor of business administration at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, said he has seen more and more recruiting by Wipro Technologies, Infosys Technologies Ltd, and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd at his school over the last several years. He thinks the increase in American hiring by foreign companies while US companies move jobs overseas are just two sides of the same coin. US companies like IBM are taking advantage of low-cost technical labor, while Indian firms are realizing they need more staff closer to their US customers.
Although IBM’s Project Match was “politically tone-deaf,” the program isn’t a bad idea, according to Kennedy. “From a purely economic perspective, IBM’s view is that this work is best done somewhere else. They’re saying that they can’t support this job in the United States, but if you’re willing to move you’ll get first crack at the job. I think it’s better than just kicking you out the door.”
In fact, taking a job overseas may turn out to be a good career move, even if you’re mid-career and taking a pay cut, insisted Stacie Nevadomski Berdan, consultant and co-author of “Get Ahead By Going Abroad: A Woman’s Guide to Fast-Track Career Success.” “People with international experience tend to get ahead because a lot of Americans don’t have it and companies need it,” she said.
Globalization is making international experience a requirement. A recent survey of 243 multinational companies by Mercer found that the number of employees on international assignments has doubled over the last three years. “A lot of companies are saying that international careers are mandatory,” Kennedy said, adding that he suspects that’s true in engineering, as well as business. “If you expect to have a career in engineering, there’s going to be tremendous pressure to be willing to move.”
In any event, a job is a job, and with unemployment soaring in America, US workers may simply have to go where the jobs are, said Nevadomski Berdan. Project Match may be a harbinger of things to come. “I would not be surprised,” she said. “I believe we’re going to hear more and more of this.”
For more on the career environment, visitEDN's Career Center.
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And people wonder why kids are leaving engineering by the droves. Anyone with even a smattering of intellect knows now that the technology sector is a bad place to start a career.
It's too late for old timers like me to change, but kids in college look at rotten deals like this and say I am going into law or medicine, forget engineering. Of course that leaves room for the less qualified to fill the positions. Quality will suffer, as it already has in some areas because of offshoring.
Don't expect to recruit youngsters from college with overseas programs. Most people don't want to leave home, let alone move to another country.
Chuck Sampson - 2009-6-7 05:29:00 PDT -
A very weak attempt on IBM's part to "aoploigize" for outsourcing, knowing fully that Americans and Canadians will not accept those wages and working conditions.Even in the states, if you move from Northeast to South, for example, the cost of living differences at same salary means no return. I'd hate to be stranded in Brazil, for example,when the next currency devaluation takes place - assuming I were foolish enough to bank there.There are alternatives to IBM,just need to find buyers with integrity.
eyedpro - 2009-2-7 08:40:00 PDT -
.. then the US companies should stop whining about the "lack of talent" here.
Bill Grayson - 2009-16-4 10:38:00 PDT -
The warm feeling I get when someone is thoughtful enough to say thank you for having been helped far outweighs the empty one I get when there's no feedback at all.
Lorrie Joe - 2009-13-4 08:29:00 PDT -
And IBM hopes that India will fill their pockets with money? The customers willing to spend many dollars on products are here in North America. And if their jobs are lost (outsourcing) they will not buy. And another crisis and so on. Is it so difficult to see this cause-effect relation?
zenovia zena - 2009-13-4 05:58:00 PDT
