Conference 7.286::digital

    From what I understand this is true. And I say good luck to India.
    I'm all for it. That's what global competition is all about.
    
    Dave

    Geez,I guess it won't be long before our entire corporate organization
    moves to an off-shore island,say SriLanka. I hear office space is real
    cheap there and *office help*,ha! it's cheap,cheap cheap!
    
    Ken

	... Digital Equip. of India, Limited (DEIL) for the last few years
to staff residencies where it was unprofitable to reloc a US employee.  We
eventually hired one permanently in Alabama, I think.

	Even our US-owned "staff supplement" partners use Indians quite a
bit.

    DEIL is not a subsidiary of Digital (c).  It is a joint venture with 
    Hindutron 30%
    Govt India 30%
    DEC (c) 40%
    We  1) manufacture for the local marketplace.
    	2) subcontract a lot of code crunching through them.
    There are a lot of these guys here in the States working for us.
    It's a great deal. We get the cream of the crop of 700 million
    potential programmers.
    
    Chris,

    In a country where the sales tax is over 100%, the export of software
    is a benefit both to a very gloomy national trade balance and to DEIL's
    success in the Indian market.  Having spent time in India recently I
    would just like to show some appreciation for the outstanding folks
    working there and for the incredible support they are providing on some
    very large projects at the moment.
    
    Keep up the great work folks
    
    Mark

I used several contracted people from DEIL in the past years. They were 
good people who contributed to my group and did excellent work. In part, 
our use of this arrangement was part of the agreement with the Indian 
government when we built a plant in India. I believe it is their trade laws 
that required us to do more than just use the population for inexpensive 
assembly labor. 

    Vic

       
    >There are a lot of these guys here in the States working for us.         
    >It's a great deal. We get the cream of the crop of 700 million
    >potential programmers.
    
    I haven't got much time for long replies, but I can relate an
    experience I had when I worked for Field Service Logistics engineering. 
    We had several of the Hindutron people working with us, and they had a
    need for documenting their work.  At the time I was involved in trying
    to implement "paperless processing" into the organization, and compound
    document editors were a part of that.  I had both Interleaf and
    DECwrite, and the Hindutron people asked me if they could use one of
    the workstations to write with those applications.  I agreed, but asked
    them if they wanted some instruction or at least look at the user's
    guides and they declined.  Ironically while I was having all sorts of
    problems getting our people to use the new tools, the Hiditron
    engineers were up and running in no time flat, without documentation!
    
    I'd like to make one comment concerning the tone of this note and the
    other (#1431?) re:"tax havens".  There seems to be a subtle underlying 
    racist tone to these discussions, or at least what I would consider an
    anti-third world attitude.
    
    Blaming the downsizing of manufacturing on the third world is a cop
    out, plain and simple.  You are ignoring the processes that are
    influencing these decisions.  You are also ignoring the fact that
    Digital is an international company, not an American one.  This has
    been stated by K.O. on several occasions.
    
    I am not in favor of layoffs, but perhaps people could wake up to the
    big picture and try to contribute to solutions that will prevent
    further downsizing.
    
    --David  

    
    Re: .7
    
    > Ironically while I was having all sorts of problems getting our
    > people to use the new tools, the Hiditron engineers were up and
    > running in no time flat, without documentation!
    
    This doesn't surprise me.  I have encountered incredible resistance
    in Digital to changes whether major or minor.  We had better overcome
    this problem.  Frankly, I think this resistance to change IS the
    problem.
    
    > I'd like to make one comment concerning the tone of this note and the
    > other (#1431?) re:"tax havens".  There seems to be a subtle underlying 
    > racist tone to these discussions, or at least what I would consider an
    > anti-third world attitude.
    
    While I agree totally with what you go on to say, I believe it is more
    Nationalist than racist i.e. hurrah for the good ole USA and to heck
    with the rest of the world.  This will sink us if we don't wake up.
    
    Steve
    

    Digital needs good people.  If the good people are in India, better
    that they work for us than for our competition.  Same goes for anywhere
    in the world since we are a global company and the competition is also
    global.  Heaven help us if we are laying off or turning away good people 
    because of anything other than good business sense.
    
    Steve

  I first heard about India's booming software industry a year ago. Until then
I thought U.S. software engineers' jobs were relatively safe. Now every U.S.
software engineer must watch this trend carefully to make sure he/she is not
"blindsided".
  I read somewhere that one reason why so many U.S. companies are setting up
programming operations in India is that there are heavy restrictions on import-
ing software into India and having the software written in India is the best way
to deal with these restrictions. But it's obvious that a lot of the software
written in India is being written for export. Why do U.S. companies have such
a strong preference for this? So far we have mentioned a big savings on labor
costs, Indians being more willing to accept change, and the fact that India has
a much larger population base from which we can draw the "cream of the crop". 
I think U.S. software engineers *should* be concerned about this. It's really
not much different from the issue of U.S. manufacturing jobs being exported to
Mexico or Hong Kong. Software is very easy to transport; in fact, it doesn't
need any "transportation" at all in the traditional sense. One factor that is
keeping some manufacturing jobs in the U.S. is the cost of transporting heavy
products, such as locomotives, around the world. Of course, shipping costs are
never high enough to ensure that all items of a given product that are sold in
the U.S. will be made in the U.S., but if shipping costs are not a factor, it
makes it much easier for a U.S. company to move the manufacturing of that pro-
duct (in this case, software) offshore.

	RE: .10 I agree that US programmers should be concerned. But the fault
	if there is any for the move to off shore programming belongs to US
	programmers and their managers. I believe that both our quality and 
	productivity is pretty poor. I've read a lot of code over the last 19 
	years and there is not too much of it very good. I've written a lot as 
	well and while there is some that I am quite proud of there was also 
	some that I'd rather do over now that I've learned a bit. There is also
	quite a bit that would never have to have been coded if proper 
	productivity tools were available. But in the US it seems like everyone 
	wants to re invent the sort routine, the parsing routine, the 
	schedualling routine, and on an on. Re-usable code is pooh poohed in 
	the US. But not elsewhere.

	Code reviews are given little more then lip service. Testing? "You want
	the code tested?"  "I'm sorry I can't fix that bug I'm working on new
	features." "Yeah, I know there are bugs but management says we have
	to meet the time to market goal." When US management gets serious
	about quality and supplies the enviornment (this means tools as well
	as management support for time to do it right the first time) THEN
	we'll have a chance. I hold out little hope.

			Alfred