Jobless IT workers should reinvent themselves

Date: Friday, September 27, 2002 1:20 PM

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I hate the message that these Indian and Russian outsourcers have, but they
are probably right. Perhaps schools should have a new course for programmers
and engineers called "Commodities 101".

http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/labor/story/0,10801,74627,00.html
Panelists: Jobless IT workers should reinvent themselves

By THOMAS HOFFMAN
SEPTEMBER 26, 2002

NEW YORK -- Out-of-work IT workers in the U.S. upset about lower-cost

H-1B and L-1 workers and offshore outsourcing firms wresting away their jobs
should accept that highly skilled, cheap foreign labor is here to stay and
instead broaden their own talents beyond programming acumen.
That was the message this week from panelists who spoke at Northboro,
Mass.-based Brainstorm Group Inc.'s Nearshore & Offshore Outsourcing
conference here.

"There's certainly a feeling out there that [offshore programming is] a
threat to American IT workers," said Larry Gordon, vice president of
marketing at Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., a Teaneck, N.J.-based
custom software developer with offshore programming interests in India.
Gordon spoke on a global sourcing panel moderated by Computerworld.

"Programming is becoming commoditized. If you can do programming for $20,
$25 an hour, why would you pay $150 an hour?" said Amit Govil, managing
director and CEO of Sapient India in New Delhi.

H-1B visas allow skilled foreigners, many of them in the IT field, to work
in the U.S. for up to six years. The number of H-1B visas issued is
restricted by a quota set by Congress.

The L-1 visa program allows multinational companies to transfer overseas
workers to the U.S. after they have been employed by the company for at
least one year. There are no caps on the number of L-1 visas.

The growing unemployment of U.S. technologists "is a very serious problem,"
said Kent Bauer, principal consultant at GRT Corp., a Stamford, Conn.-based
data management consultant with operations in Russia.

Bauer suggested that American IT workers should consider "moving up the food
chain" and working more closely with business units to help steer big
projects like enterprise resource management (ERP) and customer relationship
management (CRM) initiatives.

Govil agrees with Bauer that American technologists should act as a "bridge"
between IT and the businesses they serve "by becoming planners and
organizers" in charge of implementing "conceptual solutions," he said.

Srinivas Raghavan, an engagement manager at American International Group
Inc. for Troy, Mich.-based outsourcer Syntel Inc., says there are "huge
opportunities" for U.S. IT workers to bundle their expertise in
communications and integration skills.

Those skills, Raghavan said, could be used by a growing number of companies
that are focusing on further integrating e-business and other types of
applications throughout their organizations.

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