The title of this post, I think, is very appropriate. If this falls into the wrong hands, if the wrong people complain, if someone has an axe to grind, then it is very possible that I could lose my job. See, this post will be accessible by some of the people that I'm writing about, and they could, but I hope they won't, take offense. I'll explain that more a little later on. Also, this could be a VERY long post, and for that I apologize for in advance. The only thing I ask is that if you have read this far, but don't think you'll read the whole thing, please just don't read this at all. Missing parts of it, or the ending, will change completely the meaning of what I'm conveying.
So first, the background. As many of you know, I work in Information Technology. I've worked for the company I'm at for the last 14 years. I started as a "Senior Software Engineer" which at this company means I was really just an experienced programmer. And so I "coded" which is what us programmers call programming. I very much liked writing code, especially the code I was there to write. At the time, it was brand new. It was "object oriented" programming. It's still the type of code we write today, although since I've moved up the ranks during those 14 years, I no longer write code and haven't written code for several years. Sometimes I miss it. I had no employees. I had one system to look after. I designed the code, wrote the code, and when it broke or didn't work, I fixed the code. There was no QA team. I was the QA team. And it worked because I knew I was gonna support the system I worked on, and that meant that I was damn sure gonna make sure it was coded right!
The second background. I've been binge watching "The West Wing" on Netflix. I've seen them all once already. I'm watching them all again. If you've never watched the show, you should. So much of the politics is still relevant today. The show came on the air 15 years ago. And the episode I just watched was, funny enough, aired about 12 years ago. Two years after I got my latest job.
This particular episode concerned a trade deal that was going to be signed in the next few days. Everything was cool until the wrinkle (there is ALWAYS a wrinkle) developed. The wrinkle was that India had suddenly decided to join the trade agreement. And then a company that sounded a lot like IBM had a leak, that 17,000 programming jobs were being moved to India. So there was a bit of a panic in the administration. They verified that this number was not only correct, but that over the next 10 years, 3.3 MILLION programming jobs would be moving to India across the entire industry!
Now, let me get to the part that is gonna get me in trouble. The show was spot on. In fact, my guess is that they underestimated the numbers. When I first started working at my company, I worked with people named Mark, Lance, Doug, Keith, Andy, Missy, Jeannie, and Jackie. None of them worked for me because I hadn't yet moved up the ladder. In fact, none of them ever would work for me. But that was the way things were. Some of them were managers, some business analysts, and some were programmers like me.
I won't go through all the specific details, but I will say that at one point, I got my first direct report, even though he worked for a consultant firm. His name was Shiva. He was the onsite coordinator for a team of offshore consultants based in India. He was working to take over support for a system that ironically I now own. At the time, I didn't work with that system at all. But it didn't matter, because I was an independent employee whose job it was to see that this transition go well. I was on loan to a newly created "resourcing" department whose job it was to lower support costs. And this was the pilot project.
The employees who did own the system (whose names I won't share) were vehemently opposed to this pilot. They didn't want it to work. They threw up roadblocks at every turn. Part of my job was tearing those roadblocks down and making sure this pilot was a success. All of the players in this game were foul, including the resourcing manager I worked for. They were all foul in distinct and varied ways, but ironically, the only person I came away trusting at the end of this engagement was Shiva. Like me, he was just trying to make the new model work.
Rolling the clock forward to today, this is the current situation. Mark, Lance, Doug, Keith, Andy, Missy, and Jackie all still work for the same company. We were the lowest people in the technology ladder at the beginning. Now we all work with large teams of people. None of us lost our jobs. Jeannie left the company of her own accord long ago. But none of us are programmers anymore. Most of us are Vice Presidents now, running these large teams. Here is my example.
I now have 4 employees that report to me. Their names are Raja, Jai, Deepak, and Gauri. None of them were born in the US. But they are employees, and in all cases are Technical Leads that generally oversee the work product of the next group of people that work for me. I have about 12 "onsite coordinators" that are all from India (I won't list all their names). They have offshore counterparts that number somewhere around 75 consultants. They all work in 3 or 4 different cities in India. I suspect none of them were born here.
Now, let me say a few things here because I know that I'm rubbing shoulders with abject racism here. And I don't think I'm being racist and will explain why. But the problem is that most racist don't think they are racists. So I'm leaving that possibility open. So disclaimer done, now you be the judge.
I love all of the people that work for me. My direct report employees, my onsite coordinators, and my offshore programmers. With out exception, they are all hard working, ethical, honest, easy going, and productive people. I don't care what color their skin is and I don't care what country they hail from. They do their best to please me, they take criticism well and act on it to change, and they own up to mistakes they make. In short, they are some of the best people to work with, and I genuinely like them.
I also like to think that I treat them well. The ones that work in my office have family half way around the world. Frequently there are deaths or sicknesses in the family. When I find out about it, I tell them to forget about work, get on the next flight, and take care of what they need to take care of. Families are everything in the Indian culture. Weddings take 4 weeks to do! So they often take no vacation time for 2 years and then burn 4 weeks all at once on their trips back. It only makes sense. When you have to take a full day to fly home, and a full day to fly back, you ought to spend some time when you are there! From a business perspective, this can be disruptive. However, this is just part of the deal. Nobody told me this. I learned it. Learned to adapt, and whole heartedly support them. I will continue to do so until someone I work for tells me I can't.
I'm hoping none of that was racist. And I hope you get that I don't have any personal animosity for the people that work for me.
Now back to the West Wing episode. It turned out that the President and his administration knew all along this was going to happen, that programming jobs were gonna move offshore. They knew American programmers were going to be thrown out of work. And while the show is fiction, it sure rings true to me.
They started the episode talking about good high paying jobs the free trade deal would create. At the end of the episode it was painfully clear that we already had good high paying jobs that were gonna go to India. A lot of them. Maybe most of them. Or in the case of my company, ALL of them.
And that's my point here. While me and Andy and Keith and the rest of us didn't lose our jobs, there were no new jobs for the next round of Americans looking for good high paying jobs. Those positions simply don't exist in my company any more. We've outsourced all the programmers. And the senior programmers. And we're losing Assistant Vice Presidents - those tech leads I talked about. Those are high paying jobs. And when the company (yes, "when" not "if") outsources those positions, the transition will be complete. Our company will "own" but have no clue about our intellectual property. No one who draws a paycheck on company checks will know how the code was written, where it's weak points are, what it's failure points will be, and how to fix it. Our "partners" will have that knowledge, not us. And so while we will own the code in name only, they will be the real owners.
I don't hold any ill will against our Indian partners. Is it bad that fewer Indian children have to scour garbage dumps for
their next meal? Of course not. And so if they got some programming
gigs, I have no problem with that. But do they have to own the whole industry? That feels wrong.
This situation is not their fault. And they are following a tried and true model. Witness the Television. When first invented, we made them all. The Japanese were relegated to making those clunky old radios. That's okay, we said, we make the TVs. And the Japanese used that opportunity to learn how to make TVs. But they made Black and White TVs. 'Mericans made COLOR TV! So it's okay to give them the B&W TV market.
Can you buy an American TV today?
I don't blame the Japanese. Don't hate the players, hate the game. And we've seen the same thing with phones, computers, microchips, and in the past 15 years, software and programmers. Now I'm not a protectionist at heart. I don't like protectionism. I get free trade. But I guess its easy to be for free trade when it is only the crappy jobs that get outsourced. This hits me where I live. Too close to home.
When kids and young adults ask me if they should go into technology, I tell them sure. But don't learn to program. Learn to be a business analyst or a project manager. Companies won't feel secure offshoring those jobs. But programming? That ship already sailed my friends. It's a dead art in America. Heck, I don't even really know how to code anymore. And since its so technical and business leaders don't really understand it, its easy to make the uninformed decision, save a lot of money, and outsource it. "We have to" they tell themselves. We'd be noncompetitive if we didn't. And they sleep well in their stylish homes and their comfy beds.
I tell kids today to go into the trades. Plumbing, electrical, HVAC. No way to outsource that. And we will always need it. And the pay is good. Especially when you realize that you don't have to pay $120,000 and up for a college education. Mike Rowe and Norm Abrahms have the right idea.
So cudos to the writers of the West Wing. Not many people can predict the future 15 year hence. And they nailed this one.
Finally, a warning.
You may think this doesn't affect you. To my banker friends, to my claim handling friends, to my broker friends, to my underwriting friends, to all my friends in the services industries. Be on watch. If you think programming is some special kind of skill that was easily outsourced, but that yours is not, think again. Programming is hard. Don't believe me, try it. Spend 4 hours and see how your first program turns out. If you can't get a "Hello World" application built in those 4 hours, then what makes you think your job is so special? ("Hello World" should take you about 10 minutes)
Be on guard. It's a global world out there. And someone wants to eat your lunch. And if they don't want yours, they may be aiming at your kid's lunch.
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