Friday, August 13, 2010

U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers

I ran across this article in Information Week and I'm thinking, "What's wrong with this picture?" We have unemployed IT workers here in the USA and it seems that we are training people who will eventually compete with them for the few jobs that exist. By the way, there is an update that we will be doing the same thing in Armenia. Of course, this will all be done with borrowed money.

Some key quotes:

"Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $36 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia. Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs.

Under director Rajiv Shah, the United States Agency for International Development will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency."

I don't know. I've stopped asking "why?" Back when outsourcing became all the rage we were told that in a new service economy people would rise to higher level positions. Instead, these US IT workers are trying to find the best position they can in an economy where there is a race to the bottom in terms of pay.

I know there are job training programs here in the USA, but even trying to find the front door to those programs is difficult. How often do you see those advertised? And now even those programs are being cut due to lack of funds. I guess we need to pay for other training programs for people in...Sri Lanka, Armenia and who knows where else.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.



3 comments:

Gary Parker said...

Unbelievable. Maybe this is what Obama is referring to when he is talking about "job creation". The government is creating jobs alright, for people in other countries!!

Calkelpdiver said...

Randy,

I could give you the full list of things of my thoughts. But I'll just do one, disgust.

I've been in software testing for over 20 years and I've never seen such a push by the business folks to run their tech staff's positions and payscales to the bottom like this. I guess you could say it is revenge for the Dot Com run-up on salaries. But this is getting ridiculous.

Go over to Dice.com in the Discussions section for Tech Market Conditions. That will give you some good insights to the frustration of people.

Regards,

Jim

Randy Rice said...

Thanks for the tip about Dice.com. Yeah, that forum gives a pretty raw picture of things.

The thing that really concerns me is the supply/demand issue. With so many people out of work, the pay isn't that great. So, some people are finding it pays better to be on unemployment.

Then...people in the administration are talking about these conditions being "the new normal." I'm sorry. That's unacceptable. If these folks in "leadership" can't get things back on track, we need to find someone who can.

Serenity now.....

Thanks for your thoughts!

Randy