Ed Yourdon's Darwinian View of the Offshoring Issue
I just finished reading the Oct 15, 2004 issue of SD Times magazine, which contains a good Guest Editorial by Ed Yourdon. Yourdon is known for many things, but one of them has been his ongoing commentary on the state and outlook for the American programmer. Two of his most famous books are Decline and Fall of the American Programmer and Rise & Resurrection of the American Programmer. No doubt Mr. Yourdon is pontificating on this current topic in order to promote his newest book, OUTSOURCE: Competing in the Global Productivity Race (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Yourdon's primary message in this editorial is this:
While much of this anger is understandable, and some of it is justifiable, it’s time for us to stand up and tell these angry people: Stop whining. Stop waiting for someone else to solve the problem. Take charge of your own jobs, your own career and your own future. No one else is going to do it for you.
Yourdon takes a very Darwinian approach to the issue that I find it hard to disagree with. First, he says that the percentage of American programming jobs that will be lost will be on the order of 10% to 20%, not a total wipe-out of the industry as America has seen with industries like steel and textiles. Then he asserts that it is our responsibility as players in the marketplace to ensure that we're not one of the people that loses his or her job to outsourcing/offshoring.
If this seems unnecessarily cruel, think back to the manic period of the late 1990s, when the dot-com boom provided jobs to college kids who felt they were entitled to $100,000 jobs as Webmasters because they had mastered the arcane intricacies of HTML. When most of these innocent lads and lasses lost their jobs after the bubble burst, did we IT veterans shed a tear? No—because we felt that most of them didn’t really deserve to have high-paying jobs in an industry that traditionally required a specialized education and several years of apprentice-level work before moving into the high-paying ranks. In a Darwinian world, the same is unfortunately true for the hard-working, well-meaning veterans who today find themselves in that vulnerable 10 percent to 20 percent economic bracket: They’re not "entitled" to jobs if there is an alternative supply of lower-cost, higher-quality, higher-productivity people.
Notice also the Darwinian view of the "ageism" issue that affects all programmers eventually.
The view of career self-management that Yourdon puts forward is one that I've shared for quite some time. I first adopted this view back in the early 90's when I heard a speech by bestselling business guru Tom Peters in which Peters advised workers to avoid any thinking that assumes that employers a) give a crap about you, and b) give a crap about helping you manage your career, or c) feel like they owe you anything. Peters didn't put it in those exact words, but the implication was clear: We each are our own company. We are each competing in a marketplace, and just like you would not hesitate to switch phone companies to get a cheaper rate or better service, employers will do the same when it comes to your programming services. If we want to be offshore-proof or layoff-proof or dismissal-proof, we each have the responsibility to ensure we're achieving at a level that's commensurate with or (preferrably) above what the market demands. This means investing in ourselves, just as any company must invest in itself to become and remain competitive. Hence Yourdon's advice: "stop whining."
Another related issue that Yourdon only touches on briefly is that of how our choice of specialties affects our job security. Picking the most popular language/technology is a double-edged sword: there are more jobs available, but when a specialty skill becomes a commodity, there will be more outsourcing and offshoring of that specialty. For more on this issue, please check out Part One and Part Two of an essay I wrote awhile back called Specialties and Strategies.
I recommend checking out Yourdon's editorial in full.
Whine
While whining is not a particularly useful activity, it is a simplistic rhetorical trick to dismiss the other side of an argument as "whining." Drawing attention to and calling for action on a pressing problem is not necessarily whining. We would be unlikely to hear any mainstream commentators asking people to "stop whining" about terrorism or health care costs.
Obviously, offshoring (though we might as well give up and start calling it "outsourcing" like everyone else does now) is not in the same league with those two issues. But it is a vital and important issue in the US software development industry right now. Jobs are certainly being sent overseas in an effort to save money. Personally I have a theory that software projects that do this end up paying more in the long run, but that's another issue.
Software developers have every right to band together and protect their interests--just as every interest group in this country does. Lawyers, doctors, old people, and even corporations band together to form groups to advocate unapologetically for their own interests--regardless of how their interests affect the interests of others. This process is called politics.
The fact that software developers have not effectively banded together to lobby to protect their own industry and their own jobs is a crying shame, and we are all suffering the consequences in salaries that are lower than they could be and jobs that are more difficult to find and keep than they should be.
Doctors unapologetically fight political battles to, for example, limit the rights of individuals to sue for malpractice. Lawyers fight unapologetically to protect and enhance the right to sue. Software companies lobby hard to increase the number of H1-B visas available and to protect their own tax breaks when they send jobs overseas. There would be absolutely nothing wrong with software developers fighting to protect American software developer jobs. Why should we, and we alone, disarm in this fight?
The attitude that software developers (read workers) should buck up and lift themselves by their own bootstraps and see themselves only as individuals within the system is very helpful to the corporations offshoring jobs. If we simply "stop whining" and refuse to band together to protect our common interests, well, we'll continue to see declining salaries and more jobs being shipped overseas.
It all comes down to a pervasive anti-union attitude. Whenever a group of workers get together to do something, it smacks of unionism. Everyone knows that unions are bad and are only out to protect the lazy and incompetent, and that libertarian software developers would never want to be involved in anything like that.
I see nothing wrong with software developers fighting to protect themselves just as doctors, lawyers, airline pilots, professional athletes, and corporations do.
Macro vs. Micro in the Outsourcing Issue
Rob, I very much appreciate your comments. They add something valuable to the discussion. You bring in another side to this story, and one that I did not consider as an implication of Yourdon's imperative for developers to "stop whining." I find myself in the interesting position of agreeing both you and Yourdon (and I'm not sure Yourdon would disagree with you either re: organizing). When you say this:
The attitude that software developers (read workers) should buck up and lift themselves by their own bootstraps and see themselves only as individuals within the system is very helpful to the corporations offshoring jobs. If we simply "stop whining" and refuse to band together to protect our common interests, well, we'll continue to see declining salaries and more jobs being shipped overseas.
I find myself in total agreement with you, even though, as I've said in writing on more than one occassion, I am a big believer in the idea the programmers (in the U.S., at least) need to take responsibility for their own destinies. Your employers are not your parents, and they are not going to "take care of you." But I also fully support the idea of programmers and other software professionals getting organized. I am glad that organizations like the International Game Developers Association, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, the Programmer's Guild, and others are out there fighting for all of us. I'm a believer in unions, despite their flaws and limitations, and I'm a member of the National Writers Union. I fully agree that we are living in very anti-worker-organization times here in the U.S. Free Trade is like a religion to a lot of people.
But I also find myself in agreement with Yourdon when he says this in his editorial:
But most of those whose jobs are at risk are understandably nervous, and many strongly oppose the whole concept. More than that, they argue that "somebody ought to do something about outsourcing." Meanwhile, they’re mad at their elected leaders for not doing something, and somehow being responsible for the evil plot of outsourcing. They’re mad at their employers for making cold-blooded, greedy decisions about outsourcing. And they’re mad at the whole world for not sympathizing with their plight.
While much of this anger is understandable, and some of it is justifiable, it’s time for us to stand up and tell these angry people: Stop whining. Stop waiting for someone else to solve the problem. Take charge of your own jobs, your own career and your own future. No one else is going to do it for you.
I think what we have here is perhaps a difference between a macro view and a micro view. I think what Yourdon is saying is that if you as an individual fixate on the macro-level problems and don't pay attention to your own career management, then you do yourself a disservice. That is where my message comes in: take hold of your own destiny, don't wait for external forces to change in your favor. The danger in this message, though, is that it leaves out the imperative to also be part of the macro-level solution.
I also think Yourdon may be reacting to a lot of bile and ranting that has gone on in various message boards and blogs. I just received a review copy of a new book called Dude, did I steal your job?: Debugging Indian Computer Programmers by N. Sivakumar. The book includes several quotes like this one by anonymous programmers posting on the net:
Greedy American companies are falling all over themselves to hire pathetically stupid and incompetent workers from India. Why? Because they are as cheap as the dirt which covers everything in India.
With the discourse sinking to this level, I can see where Yourdon gets the word "whining."
Dan
Debate is moot?
That the debate over offshoring, offshore outsourcing is getting to be a mere rhetoric is obvious from the fact that even the media is spending lesser newsprint on the topic as we head towards the 4th quarter of 2005. Analyst reports suggest that about 80 to 90% of fortune 500 companies already have their offshoring strategies in place….
- Mohan, Author: http://www.offshoringmanagement.com
Too true.
I spent the last year cursing offshoring, being out of work and desperate for a coding gig. But I've changed my tune a bit, seeing how the economic realities of it are starting to play out. I pretty much agree with the "stop whining" standpoint, because there really isn't any alternative.