[Tip of the hat to Sarah O’Keefe, in Palimpsest.]
[reposting with spelling correction]
An entry in Dan Gillmor’s blog brings my attention to this entry in Ed Foster’s Gripelog:
Diluted Documentation
Are
IT product vendors deliberately watering down the amount of information
they provide in their documentation? Not only do a growing number of
readers seem to think so, they have some interesting theories as to why
reading the feeble manual no longer does much good.
. . .
Many readers think the main reason for
shortchanging customers on the documentation is to give the vendor a
lucrative aftermarket.
. . .
Another reader, himself a technical editor, had a
somewhat different theory. "This is a by-product of the outsourcing
trend," he wrote.
[One of the comments in Dan’s blog also points us to an article from 1998: "The Death of Documentation."]
Speaking as a reformed software developer — one who spent some 17 years building software and now has spent over 22 years explaining (other) software — I have some other observations.
The ITtoolbox charactrizes itself as the
IT Knowledge & Support Network
It has a weblogs section called ITtoolbox Blogs.
One of the features is IT Outsourcing: Special Coverage from the Front Line
The debate surrounding IT outsourcing is heating up. To help provide an in-depth, real-world view of the issues and impacts of this phenomenon, ITtoolbox Blogs is now featuring special coverage on offshoring, highlighting firsthand experiences and front line perspectives of ITtoolbox Blog authors from across the globe.
I’ll be reading this blog….
The ITtoolbox charactrizes itself as the
IT Knowledge & Support Network
It has a weblogs section called ITtoolbox Blogs.
One of the features is
IT Outsourcing: Special Coverage from the Front Line
The debate surrounding IT outsourcing is heating up. To help provide an in-depth, real-world view of the issues and impacts of this phenomenon, ITtoolbox Blogs is now featuring special coverage on offshoring, highlighting firsthand experiences and front line perspectives of ITtoolbox Blog authors from across the globe.
A student from India posted on SlashDot about the state of US education and attitude.
I come here and notice that being smart or good is being made fun of - this, despite the fact that I’m in one of the US’s top engineering schools. The ones with the social life are the ones who show off or the ones who throw ball. Even here, being really smart or nerdy is looked down. People do not respect the need for some of us to be introverted and reclusive, and people are branded as obnoxious or stereotyped as nerds or geeks, most often in a derogatory manner.
Am I bitter? Absolutely.
I come from an environment where both my parents went to grad school, half the people in my family are PhDs and my uncle is a quantum physicist at CERN. When I was in middle and high school, I wanted to be a physicist or a mathematician. Social life was not an issue, it was always a given.
This is not just about his social life — it is an indictment of our society’s attitude towards technologists in general.
A signifcant number of comments follow the main item cited in Slashdot. Check it out.
[A story reprinted from a well-known business daily]
U.S. Tax Code Provisions
Encourage Offshore Jobs
As if U.S. workers didn’t have enough going against them. Turns out there really are provisions in the tax code that seem to encourage sending jobs offshore.
…
The tax code is written in a way that allows companies not to pay the full 35% U.S. corporate tax rate on foreign income when that money remains invested overseas.
…
“Brilliant,” you say, “a U.S. corporate tax cut will end the incentive to go abroad.”
Not so fast. As the biggest and best economy in the world, the U.S. is a price maker. We set the standard. A U.S. tax cut might only ignite an international game of tax chicken where all the Lowtaxistans cut their rates below our new, lower rate.
Of course, the revenue will have to be made up elsewhere, which would mean higher individual taxes.
Sending Jobs Overseas Isn’t Always Worth It, U.S. Companies Find (L A. Times — April 11, 2004)
Story
Story formatted for printing (Note — viewing the L.A.Times probably requires free registration.)
Problems with logistics, language and red tape can make outsourcing jobs overseas a money-losing move.
They found them in different places — Oliver in Australia, Kuhns in India — but learned the same lesson about the global economy: For all the hype and hand-wringing about U.S. companies shipping jobs overseas, outsourcing to foreign countries can be a mind-boggling chore that doesn’t always save much money in the end.
…
About $35,000 of that was because of the extra work Oliver had asked the vendor to do to get the right level of quality and detail. But the biggest cost, which was not calculated in the vendor’s bill, was the extra time Oliver took to manage the project and the delays caused by the long-distance back-and-forth.
The magazine Fast Company has a weblog. One of its categories is Offshoring.
They running a series of postings on offshoring, called “Offshore Storm.” Each has accumulated some comments.
The first is just a call for inputs. …Have you — or someone you know — lost your job to a worker overseas?
The second is a roundup of several links to other items on the subject: CFO, CNN, Fortune, Tom Peters….
The third brings in some politics and other links.
The fourth links to their cover story on the subject and to a Gardiner study.
More news as it happens….
The IEEE-USA (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.) has issued a great position paper on offshore outsourcing. It was:
…developed by the IEEE-USA’s Career and Workforce Policy Committee and represents the considered judgment of a group of U.S. IEEE members with expertise in the subject field.
It is well reasoned and recommends some specific actions that could be taken to analyze and moderate the loss of American technical jobs overseas.
CNN reports that people, as well as tech jobs are moving to India.
Robert Dunn first spotted the warning signals three years ago, after the dot-com bust.
That’s when his Las Vegas-based company, Creative Healthcare Solutions, which provides Internet technology services to healthcare clients, started seeing jobs being awarded to companies in India and China.
Instead of protesting against the offshoring of work that might have gone to U.S. firms like his, Dunn, 55, has decided to get in on the game.
…
“It’s important for Americans to collaborate more than they have been,” Dunn says. “It’s unfortunate that everyone has put a stake in the ground that outsourcing is totally bad or totally good. No one’s looking in the middle.”