IT in permanent decline, execs worry

Date: Wednesday, September 24, 2003 9:11 AM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

This article is about the decline of the IT industry. Plenty of
corporate executives were interviewed and they all had reasons for this
decline, but none of them accepted the blame. That's despite statements
like the one from Executive Vice President of Sun Microsystems,
Papadopoulos, who complained that some employment laws "prevent a
smooth flow of workers among companies." What he is really saying is
that he wants more freedom to import cheap labor to displace American
workers so that Sun can accelerate the decline of our industry.

Packet Design Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Judy Estrin, is worried
about our kids. Estrin said, "People talk to me a lot, worried that
girls are not going into science and engineering. Yes! I worry also
that the boys are not going into science and engineering." Estrin
should be happy that boys and girls in the United States are smart
enough to avoid these dead-end careers, but of course her main concern
is to have a continuous flow of workers to flood the labor market.
Estrin cares as much about kids as the cigarette companies do.

Speaking of kids, Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and chief
technology officer of Intel's Corporate Technology Group begins the
article by ranting about our education system. As we saw in the Senate
Judicial Hearing, Intel contends that Americans are too ignorant to
work at Intel, and the only way they will ever work there is to catch
up with the H-1Bs. Kids are smart, and that's why they will choose
majors that will allow them to be free of Intel's treachery.

In summary, according to these corporate pooh-bahs, the reason the IT
industry is on the decline is because American citizens are ignorant
and poorly educated, and they don't have good work ethics like the
indentured H-1Bs that will kowtow to every demand. They accept no
responsibility for this decline because in their view the fault lies on
the shoulders of the American workers who no longer deserve to have
jobs at their companies.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/09/19/HNindustry_1.html

IT in permanent decline, execs worry

Industry leaders at Intel Developer Forum air concerns about US future

By Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service September 19, 2003

SAN FRANCISCO - The U.S. IT industry may be in a state of permanent
decline, a high-level Intel executive told an audience Thursday at Fall
Intel Developer Forum.

"In many regards, I think the restoration of the IT industry will not
occur in the U.S. In fact, the U.S. IT industry may be flat to going
down permanently," said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and chief
technology officer of Intel's Corporate Technology Group, in Santa
Clara, California. "Some of the things going on in government, policy
and so on may be leading us right to the demise of the IT industry in
the U.S."

For one thing, he said, strong educational fundamentals give foreign
engineers an edge over many of their U.S. counterparts.

"Our education system has continued to deteriorate in that regard,
which has further accentuated this weakness of the perception of the
engineering industry," Gelsinger said. On the other hand, he praised
the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as a relatively
progressive regulator, echoing comments he made earlier in the day.

Gelsinger's comments came during a panel discussion about innovation
that brought together technology executives from Intel, IBM, Sun
Microsystems, networking company Packet Design LLC and the FCC.

The conversation touched upon several globalization-related topics,
including overseas research and development by U.S.-based companies, as
well as rising competition from foreign vendors and the challenge of
capturing growing foreign markets.

Packet Design Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Judy Estrin, a longtime IT
industry executive now based in Palo Alto, California, who has served
at Cisco Systems Inc. and 3Com Corp., said children in the U.S. need to
be inspired to take up the banner of technology innovation.

"People talk to me a lot, worried that girls are not going into science
and engineering. Yes! I worry also that the boys are not going into
science and engineering," Estrin said.

Though the corporate leaders voiced worries about U.S. competitiveness,
they embraced the idea of doing research and development outside the
country.

Sun carries out development outside the country not to save money but
to take advantage of foreign skills, Executive Vice President and Chief
Technology Officer Greg Papadopoulos said.

"Talent is worldwide, and you go to where the talent is," he said. For
example, Silicon Valley's culture fosters certain kinds of technology
innovation but other regions stand out in other areas, such as consumer
electronics product development.

IBM carries out research and development in more than 20 countries,
said Robert Morris, director of IBM's Almaden Research Center, in San
Jose, California.

"We're probably underinvesting, considering where the sales and the
markets are," Morris said.

Taking advantage of better talent outside the U.S. poses a challenge to
smaller technology companies because they may not have the money for
multiple facilities and international travel, according to Estrin, who
has founded several startups. There's no real substitute for
face-to-face collaboration in solving some kinds of problems, Estrin
said.

"I think the smaller companies can't afford to be as distributed, so
you could maybe have development in two places. It's hard to be all
over the place, and the small and medium companies won't do that as
much," Estrin said.

In response to a question from the audience, some panelists praised
Europe as a site for innovation. Gelsinger said Eastern Europe has been
the source of many new ideas since the fall of the Iron Curtain. But
Sun's Papadopoulos bemoaned some employment laws there that he said
prevent a smooth flow of workers among companies.

"It's a real risk to hire people in a lot of parts of Europe, just from
the burden that you put onto the company in doing so," Papadopoulos
said.

Globalization creates some new criteria for those setting up business
locations. One audience member, an American currently working for a
small company in Switzerland, told the panel it's a great place to work
because he has easy access to partners: Asia and North America each are
only about a 12-hour flight away. The issue rang true for Papadopoulos.

"The physics of time zones, in fact, is hard ... we should all move to
the North Pole or something," Papadopoulos said.

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