[IP] ***** Outsourced Programmer Starts Business
------- Original message -------
From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 1/5/'05, 15:28
David Farber wrote:
> From: Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> "My parents paid for me to get a (degree) in math and now I am a pooper
> scooper..."
>
> Is this an example of "putting the cherry on top" that Thomas Friedman is
> talking about?
Speaking of high value jobs to do with poop, here's a wired article
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/toilet.html on how PhDs in
aerospace engineering (including an Indian - there, that should raise
the pooper scooper guy's hackles enough) are making lots and lots of
money developing new and improved flush toilets, and testing them by
trying to flush golf balls and plastic tubes full of a mixture of
concentrated miso soup and flour ..
And speaking of Thomas Friedman, I saw his documentary on Bangalore and
Outsourcing, on CNBC (I think) last year, when I was attending a
conference in Beijing. I was quite jet lagged back then, but one thing
struck me about the documentary - his careful choice of "opponents" of
globalization ...
1. A rich and quite possibly empty headed socialite of the sort that
sits on the boards of one social work organization after the other
2. A typically inarticulate member of the RSS, which is a militantly
right wing hindu religious organization with rather extreme views on the
"superiority" of Indian culture and a rather fixed hatred of the USA as
a polluter of that culture with rock music and KFCs. Note: Friedman did
manage to interview a couple of kids who worked at a call center and
enjoyed both these, right before interviewing the RSS guy. An analogy
would be asking the Rev Jerry Falwell, or Lou Dobbs on CNN, or maybe the
grand wizard of a Klan chapter, what they thought about mexican
laborers, or indian software engineers, for that matter - you can hardly
expect a balanced or reasoned argument from either of these people.
His arguments are weak, and based on sensationalism and soundbites
rather than logic, besides being one sided and focused on the whole
"globalization works" theme, without being in any way sensible of its
defects, especially when badly implemented.
I wouldn't take a Tom Friedman article about globalization and
outsourcing at face value without a large pinch, no, make that a large
truckload of salt, any more than I would articles about people scooping
dog poop at $10 a lawn because those nasty outsourced indian programmers
drove them out of work.
In fact, I'd be quite happy to lend the Pooper Scooper guy a whole lot
of newspaper clippings of Tom Friedman articles to help him scoop up the
dog poop .. they'd be a lot more productively used that way
?srs
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