29 ms·

IBM Now Has More Employees in India Than in the U.S

238 points by perseusprime11 9y ago

kanwisher 9y ago
Honestly I'm surprised this is just now the case. Last time I was in Bengaluru(Bangalore). There were ads on billboards for programming jobs. Everyone walking down the street had backpacks from major tech companies. The sheer number of tech work there has to be massive
- perseusprime11 9y ago
  I've also heard IBM is becoming the default for pretty much all Indian companies when it comes to consulting work for complex projects.
  - BatFastard 9y ago
    OLD saying is you never get fired for hiring IBM.
    - samstave 9y ago
      When I worked with IBM through Lockheed as we were doing the RFID system Lockheed was selling to DOD and DOD-subs... It was a freaking nightmare of a process just to provision a single firewall rule... Sure thats a famous old saying about IBM -- but my personal new one is that I would never hire their professional services for anything after that experience.
- kylehotchkiss 9y ago
  I love India but lots of non-tech people have backpacks that say "Apple" with an attempt at an apple logo on it :) i always smile when i see those
  - snambi 9y ago
    It is just marketing...
timthelion 9y ago
I think that this is a good example of how racism, conscious and unconscious is making us worse at predicting the future. Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code and Indian accents. The idea of Indians actually working innovative jobs seemed laughable to many Americans. But there wasn't actually strong evidence that Indians were less good at doing cutting edge research. This racism is again mirrored in the huge salary difference. Are those Indian workers really worth so much less? One thing is certain to me, that low salary is hurting IBM. By not paying a competitive salary, those IBM offices in India are lacking the deep experience of western programmers. In a way, they have to re-invent the wheel. In the pictures, everyone there is Indian, and that hurts the company as a whole. Diversity is more than just not being all white. Diversity means not being exclusive to any background and ethnicity. Edit: I have yet to hear of anyone (European or American) from the sectors I work in, being poached to work in India.
- eurticket 9y ago
  > I think that this is a good example of how racism, conscious and unconscious is making us worse at predicting the future. Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code That statement is racist
- bruxis 9y ago
  In the tech sector at least, the relative salaries of employees located in India is still significantly lower than those in most America metropolitan locations. This overall reduced cost to a company is significant enough to invest in the market. As India is still considered a developing country, the quality of life, while debatable, would be considered a downgrade for many who could potentially be poached from other regions.
  - timthelion 9y ago
    "the quality of life, while debatable, would be considered a downgrade for many who could potentially be poached from other regions". Why would it be a downgrade. If they paid an American $120k a year to live in Bangalore, that would buy the American a nice villa, pay for several servants, and allow for frequent travel. In SF, that same money gets you a shoe-box apartment.
gourabmi 9y ago
I'm not surprised. As H1-B regulations keep getting more strict, this phenomenon will spread to other big players in the industry.
- pkaye 9y ago
  What regulations have gotten strict? From last I read, the changes that Trump proposed seems to have gotten nowhere. Yet IBM has been shifting the worker base to India for decades.
  - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
    > the changes that Trump proposed seems to have gotten nowhere Revisions to H1B are "under review". It may all be just smoke and mirrors but it would be an easy, and legal, way for Trump to meet one of his campaign initiatives. EO 13788: (b) In order to promote the proper functioning of the H-1B visa program, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Labor, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall, as soon as practicable, suggest reforms to help ensure that H-1B visas are awarded to the most-skilled or highest-paid petition beneficiaries.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Antrikshy 9y ago
  I have researched H-1B heavily (because I was transitioning into it myself). I don't think the regulations have changed whatsoever in the last couple of decades. If they have, I'd love to hear in what ways.
  - scholia 9y ago
    I have no idea, but a quick Google turns up lots of stories like this: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/world/america/040417/shock-to-indian-techies-programmer-no-longer-eligible-for-h1-b-visas-in-us.html http://www.deccanchronicle.com/world/america/040417/shock-to...
megaman22 9y ago
This should come as a surprise to no one. They've been gutting their US-based, long-tenured locations and staff for a long time.
sriram_sun 9y ago
I've heard some B-school grads refer to this as some "inflection point". They were talking about more overseas workers for IBM in 2006 or so. The more important question is in which direction does the money flow? It has to be net positive for the US albeit not to US upper middle class programmers. My simple rule of thumb is if the move is not filling up CxO level coffers, it won't happen.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- timthelion 9y ago
  Why would it have to be net positive for the US? If $100 million flows from AT&T to IBM. And IBM pockets $10 million and sends $90 million to India, that would be a net -$90 million for the US economy.
  - sriram_sun 9y ago
    Good point. I hadn't thought of that.
  - fixermark 9y ago
    That's assuming the $100 million flow in question can happen at all without the India piece of the puzzle. Another way to think about it might be "$100 million wealth flowed (and taxes paid on it, and salaries paid, &c), $90 million of which goes to India, vs. $0 wealth flowed (and so no taxes, no paychecks, etc.)" A lot depends on the accounting of where AT&T got the $100 million at the start of this story, and what spending that $100 million enables AT&T to do, whether this flow turns out to benefit both the US and India, mostly the US, mostly India, or neither.
  - njarboe 9y ago
    One would hope that AT&T gets and IBM get something for their money. If the flow is $100 million to IBM, and AT&T nets a $200 million value from workers in India, maybe it is still a net flow to the US. If the US can trade a simple change in a computer record (a US dollar transfer) for stuff it wants, seems like a net positive. Economics is a complicated system with lots of feedback where the actors in the system can change the system itself.
NKosmatos 9y ago
I guess the I in IBM, now stands for Indian. [It's a joke, don't take this seriously :-)]
- code5fun 9y ago
  Hahaha so funny man good joke. [Pleas don't sue me, it was a joke :-)]
- samstave 9y ago
  India, Bangalore, Mumbai
- RoadieRoller 9y ago
  Innovative Bangaloreans and Madrasis (Madras is the old name of Chennai and Madrasis refers to people who live there). IBM has huge presence (8-10 Offices) in Chennai.
njharman 9y ago
Aren't there more people in India? Why is this suprising / news? Did you think global companies weren't global? Did you imagine corporations we're patriotic or loyal in some way? Do you hope free marketism cares about anything than efficient allocation of resources / maximum profits?
jgh 9y ago
Time for Americans to start moving to India and waiting 20 years for permanent residency ;)
southphillyman 9y ago
It's a multinational corporation, I don't see a problem with it on a surface level since they have no real obligation to maintain some arbitrary percentage of American workers. The current climate of companies needing to continually push down cost to compete is the new normal and there will be various ramifications as further globalization opens up more cost saving opportunities. Maybe it will hit a turning point where we reevaluate how the health of firms are gauged but I doubt it.
- crispyambulance 9y ago
  The thing that bothers me is not so much that technical and implementation work goes straight to India and manufacturing goes to China, Mexico, etc. The thing that bothers me is that there's so many goddamn "project management professionals" state-side. It's like now students are coming out of college and going straight into project management doing bullshit work. American industry is in a downward spiral, we're training our competitors. These "low-cost-centers" are going to eat our lunch at some point in the future. They will be lean, efficient, creative, business savvy, and ready for anything. In the United states we'll all just be a bunch of useless PM's and supply chain specialists who can barely do more than work a phone. It will be like taking candy from a baby. Of course the execs that forced all this will be retired and living filthy rich by then.
  - southphillyman 9y ago
    Ha, I have a MIS BA actually. Most of my former classmates took the PM/BA route post graduation and generally all are successful according to Linkedin including a guy who runs his own investment bank and another pretty high up at Amazon apparently. I think so many people go that route because people who can "speak tech" and "speak business" are incredibly valuable now days. At least that's the reasoning that sold me on it, despite me now being almost completely technical. I have personally seen individuals on the same team with similar skills have careers diverge dramatically because one person could present in front of a room and another couldn't. The PM types are on the front lines and get all the credit because they are "selling" the product or business. I get why it's attractive to some.
- 9y ago
e40 9y ago
The real question is (and this is serious): how is it working out for them?
- burger_moon 9y ago
  20 straight quarters (from Arpil this year) of revenue decline would tell me IBM has problems, though they may have nothing to do with where they source the labor from. http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-revenue-decline-20-straight-quarters-chart-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-revenue-decline-20-straig...
  - samstave 9y ago
    so should one be shorting the stock???
    - R_haterade 9y ago
      No, the margin interest will eat you alive. It's a decline, nowhere near a collapse. IBM still has a tremendous amount of good will.
- DarronWyke 9y ago
  Badly. They've lost many clients because of it. Disney was one of their biggest; they jumped ship a few years ago due to constant missed deadlines and poor work. I used to work for IBM. We had a few workers in India who were decent to good, but most of them are just seat warmers. Their work was abysmal and required frequent re-doing.
  - maccard 9y ago
    really? I distinctly remember Disney doing the exact same thing, to the point where they paid their current employees to train their own offshore replacements [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html?mcubz=3 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff...
alpha_whiskey 9y ago
It's bound to happen. Stricter H1-B policy actually will negatively impact the Americans. DO you need more proof than this?
- davesque 9y ago
  If there were looser H1-B policies, wouldn't jobs still go to non-Americans but just not over seas?
  - zerr 9y ago
    H1B lottery-based system is crap. There should be deterministic, points-based, uncapped immigration scheme tailored for highly skilled and paid talent, similar to Canada and Australia I believe.
    - Antrikshy 9y ago
      I'm on H-1B now, and the process was extremely frustrating. I would love to see what you describe be put in place.
  - alpha_whiskey 9y ago
    That's better than outsourcing the entire project overseas.
singaraja 9y ago
Standing by its name now. Truly International!!
- FroshKiller 9y ago
  They were notoriously international in the '30s and '40s.
pavanred 9y ago
Everyone seems to be making the assumption that all the work IBM India does is outsourced from US. IBM India is the biggest domestic IT player in India with clients like Airtel, Indian Railways, HDFC etc.; IBM India also services clients from other countries in the world (which wouldn't have happened otherwise because its too expensive in the US). And, IBM India, has a few research labs setup that do independent research. Considering this, how is the number of employees in India and US even a relevant question. Isn't it similar to say why is there more manufacturing workforce in China when compared to US for company X? We know why, it costs less for the company and the client, and taking advantage of it opened up new markets/demand.
- davesque 9y ago
  The reason people are comparing US and Indian employees is because the doubling of IBM's India workforce since 2007 seems to be, in many ways, a result of labor arbitrage, as the linked article is arguing. You can slice things any way you want, but the fact is that this is a problem for the average American worker. In other words, it's something that readers of the NYT would care about.
  - samstave 9y ago
    I am beginning to think that out-sourcing ones-self is a better and better idea...
    - saimiam 9y ago
      Meaning?
      - majewsky 9y ago
        Moving to a poorer country on reduced pay that still outperforms that of locals in the same job, maybe?
      - mikestew 9y ago
        Collect a U. S. salary while shipping the actual work to a less expensive worker elsewhere. Just like companies do, only on an individual basis. I believe it has actually been done (then the person got caught and fired, IIRC).
github-cat 9y ago
This is not good for IBM indeed. As lots of people know that IBM gets 21 consecutive revenue decline and it's forced to cut down cost. But cutting down cost doesn't mean you should shift your development work to under qualified developers or programmers. This will further affect IBM's software quality and hurt its revenue. Why not putting the money hiring less but good developers. If you are a developer, you would find what that feels like to work with under qualified developers. To be honest, have you heard about any impressive software product or solution from IBM in recent years? I would blame this to a short-visioned management team. Maybe its management team is thinking they could hire more below averaged developers with the same money of hiring one good developer in hoping that quantity can cover quality. In fact that's totally wrong in technology field. Moreover, those talented technical people are escaping because they are not getting what they deserved. The management team is investing far less in technical talents than in so-called business. The end result is that the product quality will become worse and worse and customers would finally give them up. While other companies are attracting talented IT people by all means, IBM is lost and it's driving them away.
- samstave 9y ago
  I am just curious.. I havent purchased a single IBM roduct for maybe more than a decade (professionally and personally) -- the last major professional purchase was an AS/400 upgrade... 1998? I have never bought an IBM-->lenovo laptop, although I have been provisioned some in various jobs... What other main product(s) does IBM have that I would want? they have great eng resources, scientists, etc... but I just dont see any of my money headed their way any time soon...
  - notyourwork 9y ago
    IBM is a massive consulting agency and they sell people's time and expertise to other companies. Customer projects, resource augmentation. Similar to Accenture and others.
  - jstarfish 9y ago
    As a consumer, probably nothing. But they still sell a lot of big iron to banks and FIs and try to shove QRadar down everyone's throat.
calvinbhai 9y ago
Would this be true if high skilled legal immigration system in USA wasn’t broken? If IBM had zero restrictions on importing skilled labor, IBM USA would probably still be larger than IBM India.
- majewsky 9y ago
  Cost of living is still higher in the US, so you have to pay them more in the US than in India. The actual question is if these increased salary costs are offset by productivity improvements from not having to communicate across timezones etc. There's probably no single answer to that.
- indubitable 9y ago
  At a high enough level a company's customers and employees are one and the same. Exploiting labor can lead directly to a tragedy of the commons. If all companies were able to pursue the cheapest labor possible on a worldwide scale, then the overall disposable income in this nation would proportionally decrease. That income is precisely what ends up being used to purchase a company's products and fund their ventures. In the big picture - when all companies pay less, they end up earning less. This is also ignoring local effects. As domestic workers are displaced by the cheapest workers across the world, unemployment would increase. As wages decrease and revenues fall you have the ideal scenario to start an economic depression. Rising unemployment and an economy in depression is something that is extremely difficult to stop once it starts. Fear of even the hint of this happening is part of the reason we're already flirting with ostensibly insane economic measures ranging from quantitative easing to negative interest rates.
mathattack 9y ago
I'm very surprised that it took this long. This was true for Accenture may years ago.
- froogler 9y ago
  This is actually old news. Here's one from 2012 : http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/NHnLRi9Gn5LQFX1Z2CnG0N/IBM-employs-more-staff-in-India-than-its-US-workforce.html http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/NHnLRi9Gn5LQFX1Z2CnG0N/IBM-e...
MarlboroMan 9y ago
IBM should lenovo-ize its last two good divisions: z-enterprise and the chip R&D, and let the rest of the rump of the company become a consulting firm.
yeukhon 9y ago
For those working at IBM, how do you feel about your job in general? I have a couple friends working for IBM now or before, from what I gathered, unless you work in the research division or in the smart city project, the rest felt unimportant. These negative sentiments perhaps just edge cases...
- framebit 9y ago
  IBM is best understood as a collection of disparate companies that have very little to do with each other in the day-to-day. There are generalizations to be made about the company as a whole, but the experience of working for IBM in division ABC is going to be vastly different from the experience of working in division DEF.
ashwinaj 9y ago
The discussion seems to be diverted to outsourcing; whether it is good or bad. If I were an IBM shareholder, I want to know who is holding the IBM execs accountable? For years they have underperformed, whatever metric you care to use to reach that conclusion; they seem to be unaffected by outsourcing and have golden parachutes. To hide their technical/execution incompetency they outsource jobs and cook the books. It is moot to discuss outsourcing, the real problems are: 1. The widening wage gap between a regular employee and an executive 2. Complete lack of accountability of executives 3. Despite their pathetic performance are getting richer and richer
jakelarkin 9y ago
Sadly it seems IBM is mostly a sales & marketing operation for high-markup low-quality IT labor. MBA management of tech as a cost center has reached its next milestone. Of course, in the long-run, a company can't succeed by gutting its core competency.
mirrormind 9y ago
I am an Indian and i will tell you how it is. Most indians in india and the valley where i live and work suck in programming. I can't say how i do because we can never judge ourselves objectively. Indians in India write bad code because they will they are being cheated and being paid less money. The other issue is the education system is to memorize stuff and get a job so they can make money. There is no passion to do great or decent work. The end goal is to keep a job and make money. The same is true for people who work for google or amazon. They memorize the damn interview questions and get the job. Now all this is my experience with majority. So don't ask me for a study. I am sure there are exceptional programmers, founders that are Indian but majority aren't.
- mirrormind 9y ago
  Why is IBM outsourcing then? It's not just about money. They can't find an American to do that job. Americans get paid more and can find more interesting work. Plus, Indians are really good at delivering code fast of inferior quality. Americans like most people here delve too deep in stuff and are slow at churning code.
- snambi 9y ago
  Majority of programmers are bad. It is nothing to do with race or nationality. People are taking to programming because it pays well and there is demand. Most companies hire a person with good attitude than a great programmer with bad attitude.
  - mirrormind 9y ago
    "People are taking to programming because it pays well and there is demand." This statement is wrong. Not everyone takes to programming only for that sole reason. In america people tend to follow their passion first.
    - snambi 9y ago
      Passion doesn't guarantee quality. I have seen "passionate" engineers, failing to understand the problem. "Passionate" engineers tend to find a problem for the solution they have at hand. It is very hard to work with such people.
bitmapbrother 9y ago
I wonder if those Indians know that it's only a matter of time before their job gets relocated to another country with lower wages.
balls187 9y ago
It does stand for International Business Machines. Randomly, Amazon employs over 350,000 people, 25,000 of which are here in Seattle.
chisleu 9y ago
I worked on a data science team at IBM in the Watson division and most of the people in my group in America were Indian or Pakistani.
tdeck 9y ago
Is this news? This was mentioned in a 2012 TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/nirmalya_kumar_india_s_invisible_entrepreneurs https://www.ted.com/talks/nirmalya_kumar_india_s_invisible_e... (at the end)
alunchbox 9y ago
I wonder if this might have a reason why the Phoenix Payroll system was such a disaster. Originally the estimate was for $5.7 mil but somehow it is now costing 32x more (~185 mil)[1], mind you, this is Canadians tax-payers money :(. Not to mention the ball they dropped with Queensland (beyond any software horror story I've read to date). It must be difficult having two hugely different cultures & work ethics trying to work in synchronicity to complete this type of project. (I'm only speculating that the project was done by their India teams and not the US/Canadian teams) [1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-ibm-contract-union-pay-government-1.4295827 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-ibm-contract-un...
chrshawkes 9y ago
I find it disturbing as an American software developer that Americans (mostly) created companies like IBM and all their products, but since IBM has basically missed the boat on every major technological breakthrough over the last 30 years it's no wonder they are doing anything they can to stop the death spiral. I hope IBM goes out of business as quickly as possible and before that happens they should move their HQ to India. Is it time to start talking about unionizing software developers? To protect their jobs, creative freedoms and the rampant ageism that exists in Silicon Valley?
thisisit 9y ago
And here I thought IBM was firing more people in India: http://profit.ndtv.com/news/tech-media-telecom/article-ibm-india-denies-report-of-5-000-possible-layoffs-in-coming-months-1694397 http://profit.ndtv.com/news/tech-media-telecom/article-ibm-i... Where do these jobs go?
Dowwie 9y ago
What's missing from the discussion here is the business that IBM receives from the United States government-- Billions of dollars in contracts. If you are unhappy with IBM's practices, let your elected House officials know why. They may be able to do something about that.

Honestly I'm surprised this is just now the case. Last time I was in Bengaluru(Bangalore). There were ads on billboards for programming jobs. Everyone walking down the street had backpacks from major tech companies. The sheer number of tech work there has to be massive

perseusprime11 9y ago
I've also heard IBM is becoming the default for pretty much all Indian companies when it comes to consulting work for complex projects.
- BatFastard 9y ago
  OLD saying is you never get fired for hiring IBM.
  - samstave 9y ago
    When I worked with IBM through Lockheed as we were doing the RFID system Lockheed was selling to DOD and DOD-subs... It was a freaking nightmare of a process just to provision a single firewall rule... Sure thats a famous old saying about IBM -- but my personal new one is that I would never hire their professional services for anything after that experience.
kylehotchkiss 9y ago
I love India but lots of non-tech people have backpacks that say "Apple" with an attempt at an apple logo on it :) i always smile when i see those
- snambi 9y ago
  It is just marketing...

timthelion 9y ago

I think that this is a good example of how racism, conscious and unconscious is making us worse at predicting the future. Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code and Indian accents. The idea of Indians actually working innovative jobs seemed laughable to many Americans. But there wasn't actually strong evidence that Indians were less good at doing cutting edge research. This racism is again mirrored in the huge salary difference. Are those Indian workers really worth so much less? One thing is certain to me, that low salary is hurting IBM. By not paying a competitive salary, those IBM offices in India are lacking the deep experience of western programmers. In a way, they have to re-invent the wheel. In the pictures, everyone there is Indian, and that hurts the company as a whole. Diversity is more than just not being all white. Diversity means not being exclusive to any background and ethnicity. Edit: I have yet to hear of anyone (European or American) from the sectors I work in, being poached to work in India.

eurticket 9y ago
> I think that this is a good example of how racism, conscious and unconscious is making us worse at predicting the future. Ten years ago, so many Americans were making jokes about poor quality Indian code That statement is racist
bruxis 9y ago
In the tech sector at least, the relative salaries of employees located in India is still significantly lower than those in most America metropolitan locations. This overall reduced cost to a company is significant enough to invest in the market. As India is still considered a developing country, the quality of life, while debatable, would be considered a downgrade for many who could potentially be poached from other regions.
- timthelion 9y ago
  "the quality of life, while debatable, would be considered a downgrade for many who could potentially be poached from other regions". Why would it be a downgrade. If they paid an American $120k a year to live in Bangalore, that would buy the American a nice villa, pay for several servants, and allow for frequent travel. In SF, that same money gets you a shoe-box apartment.

gourabmi 9y ago

I'm not surprised. As H1-B regulations keep getting more strict, this phenomenon will spread to other big players in the industry.

pkaye 9y ago
What regulations have gotten strict? From last I read, the changes that Trump proposed seems to have gotten nowhere. Yet IBM has been shifting the worker base to India for decades.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  > the changes that Trump proposed seems to have gotten nowhere Revisions to H1B are "under review". It may all be just smoke and mirrors but it would be an easy, and legal, way for Trump to meet one of his campaign initiatives. EO 13788: (b) In order to promote the proper functioning of the H-1B visa program, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Labor, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall, as soon as practicable, suggest reforms to help ensure that H-1B visas are awarded to the most-skilled or highest-paid petition beneficiaries.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Antrikshy 9y ago
I have researched H-1B heavily (because I was transitioning into it myself). I don't think the regulations have changed whatsoever in the last couple of decades. If they have, I'd love to hear in what ways.
- scholia 9y ago
  I have no idea, but a quick Google turns up lots of stories like this: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/world/america/040417/shock-to-indian-techies-programmer-no-longer-eligible-for-h1-b-visas-in-us.html http://www.deccanchronicle.com/world/america/040417/shock-to...

megaman22 9y ago

This should come as a surprise to no one. They've been gutting their US-based, long-tenured locations and staff for a long time.

sriram_sun 9y ago

I've heard some B-school grads refer to this as some "inflection point". They were talking about more overseas workers for IBM in 2006 or so. The more important question is in which direction does the money flow? It has to be net positive for the US albeit not to US upper middle class programmers. My simple rule of thumb is if the move is not filling up CxO level coffers, it won't happen.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
timthelion 9y ago
Why would it have to be net positive for the US? If $100 million flows from AT&T to IBM. And IBM pockets $10 million and sends $90 million to India, that would be a net -$90 million for the US economy.
- sriram_sun 9y ago
  Good point. I hadn't thought of that.
- fixermark 9y ago
  That's assuming the $100 million flow in question can happen at all without the India piece of the puzzle. Another way to think about it might be "$100 million wealth flowed (and taxes paid on it, and salaries paid, &c), $90 million of which goes to India, vs. $0 wealth flowed (and so no taxes, no paychecks, etc.)" A lot depends on the accounting of where AT&T got the $100 million at the start of this story, and what spending that $100 million enables AT&T to do, whether this flow turns out to benefit both the US and India, mostly the US, mostly India, or neither.
- njarboe 9y ago
  One would hope that AT&T gets and IBM get something for their money. If the flow is $100 million to IBM, and AT&T nets a $200 million value from workers in India, maybe it is still a net flow to the US. If the US can trade a simple change in a computer record (a US dollar transfer) for stuff it wants, seems like a net positive. Economics is a complicated system with lots of feedback where the actors in the system can change the system itself.

NKosmatos 9y ago

I guess the I in IBM, now stands for Indian. [It's a joke, don't take this seriously :-)]

code5fun 9y ago
Hahaha so funny man good joke. [Pleas don't sue me, it was a joke :-)]
samstave 9y ago
India, Bangalore, Mumbai
RoadieRoller 9y ago
Innovative Bangaloreans and Madrasis (Madras is the old name of Chennai and Madrasis refers to people who live there). IBM has huge presence (8-10 Offices) in Chennai.

njharman 9y ago

Aren't there more people in India? Why is this suprising / news? Did you think global companies weren't global? Did you imagine corporations we're patriotic or loyal in some way? Do you hope free marketism cares about anything than efficient allocation of resources / maximum profits?

jgh 9y ago

Time for Americans to start moving to India and waiting 20 years for permanent residency ;)

southphillyman 9y ago

It's a multinational corporation, I don't see a problem with it on a surface level since they have no real obligation to maintain some arbitrary percentage of American workers. The current climate of companies needing to continually push down cost to compete is the new normal and there will be various ramifications as further globalization opens up more cost saving opportunities. Maybe it will hit a turning point where we reevaluate how the health of firms are gauged but I doubt it.

crispyambulance 9y ago
The thing that bothers me is not so much that technical and implementation work goes straight to India and manufacturing goes to China, Mexico, etc. The thing that bothers me is that there's so many goddamn "project management professionals" state-side. It's like now students are coming out of college and going straight into project management doing bullshit work. American industry is in a downward spiral, we're training our competitors. These "low-cost-centers" are going to eat our lunch at some point in the future. They will be lean, efficient, creative, business savvy, and ready for anything. In the United states we'll all just be a bunch of useless PM's and supply chain specialists who can barely do more than work a phone. It will be like taking candy from a baby. Of course the execs that forced all this will be retired and living filthy rich by then.
- southphillyman 9y ago
  Ha, I have a MIS BA actually. Most of my former classmates took the PM/BA route post graduation and generally all are successful according to Linkedin including a guy who runs his own investment bank and another pretty high up at Amazon apparently. I think so many people go that route because people who can "speak tech" and "speak business" are incredibly valuable now days. At least that's the reasoning that sold me on it, despite me now being almost completely technical. I have personally seen individuals on the same team with similar skills have careers diverge dramatically because one person could present in front of a room and another couldn't. The PM types are on the front lines and get all the credit because they are "selling" the product or business. I get why it's attractive to some.
9y ago

e40 9y ago

The real question is (and this is serious): how is it working out for them?

burger_moon 9y ago
20 straight quarters (from Arpil this year) of revenue decline would tell me IBM has problems, though they may have nothing to do with where they source the labor from. http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-revenue-decline-20-straight-quarters-chart-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-revenue-decline-20-straig...
- samstave 9y ago
  so should one be shorting the stock???
  - R_haterade 9y ago
    No, the margin interest will eat you alive. It's a decline, nowhere near a collapse. IBM still has a tremendous amount of good will.
DarronWyke 9y ago
Badly. They've lost many clients because of it. Disney was one of their biggest; they jumped ship a few years ago due to constant missed deadlines and poor work. I used to work for IBM. We had a few workers in India who were decent to good, but most of them are just seat warmers. Their work was abysmal and required frequent re-doing.
- maccard 9y ago
  really? I distinctly remember Disney doing the exact same thing, to the point where they paid their current employees to train their own offshore replacements [0] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html?mcubz=3 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff...

alpha_whiskey 9y ago

It's bound to happen. Stricter H1-B policy actually will negatively impact the Americans. DO you need more proof than this?

davesque 9y ago
If there were looser H1-B policies, wouldn't jobs still go to non-Americans but just not over seas?
- zerr 9y ago
  H1B lottery-based system is crap. There should be deterministic, points-based, uncapped immigration scheme tailored for highly skilled and paid talent, similar to Canada and Australia I believe.
  - Antrikshy 9y ago
    I'm on H-1B now, and the process was extremely frustrating. I would love to see what you describe be put in place.
- alpha_whiskey 9y ago
  That's better than outsourcing the entire project overseas.

singaraja 9y ago

Standing by its name now. Truly International!!

FroshKiller 9y ago
They were notoriously international in the '30s and '40s.

pavanred 9y ago

Everyone seems to be making the assumption that all the work IBM India does is outsourced from US. IBM India is the biggest domestic IT player in India with clients like Airtel, Indian Railways, HDFC etc.; IBM India also services clients from other countries in the world (which wouldn't have happened otherwise because its too expensive in the US). And, IBM India, has a few research labs setup that do independent research. Considering this, how is the number of employees in India and US even a relevant question. Isn't it similar to say why is there more manufacturing workforce in China when compared to US for company X? We know why, it costs less for the company and the client, and taking advantage of it opened up new markets/demand.

davesque 9y ago
The reason people are comparing US and Indian employees is because the doubling of IBM's India workforce since 2007 seems to be, in many ways, a result of labor arbitrage, as the linked article is arguing. You can slice things any way you want, but the fact is that this is a problem for the average American worker. In other words, it's something that readers of the NYT would care about.
- samstave 9y ago
  I am beginning to think that out-sourcing ones-self is a better and better idea...
  - saimiam 9y ago
    Meaning?
    - majewsky 9y ago
      Moving to a poorer country on reduced pay that still outperforms that of locals in the same job, maybe?
    - mikestew 9y ago
      Collect a U. S. salary while shipping the actual work to a less expensive worker elsewhere. Just like companies do, only on an individual basis. I believe it has actually been done (then the person got caught and fired, IIRC).

github-cat 9y ago

This is not good for IBM indeed. As lots of people know that IBM gets 21 consecutive revenue decline and it's forced to cut down cost. But cutting down cost doesn't mean you should shift your development work to under qualified developers or programmers. This will further affect IBM's software quality and hurt its revenue. Why not putting the money hiring less but good developers. If you are a developer, you would find what that feels like to work with under qualified developers. To be honest, have you heard about any impressive software product or solution from IBM in recent years? I would blame this to a short-visioned management team. Maybe its management team is thinking they could hire more below averaged developers with the same money of hiring one good developer in hoping that quantity can cover quality. In fact that's totally wrong in technology field. Moreover, those talented technical people are escaping because they are not getting what they deserved. The management team is investing far less in technical talents than in so-called business. The end result is that the product quality will become worse and worse and customers would finally give them up. While other companies are attracting talented IT people by all means, IBM is lost and it's driving them away.

samstave 9y ago
I am just curious.. I havent purchased a single IBM roduct for maybe more than a decade (professionally and personally) -- the last major professional purchase was an AS/400 upgrade... 1998? I have never bought an IBM-->lenovo laptop, although I have been provisioned some in various jobs... What other main product(s) does IBM have that I would want? they have great eng resources, scientists, etc... but I just dont see any of my money headed their way any time soon...
- notyourwork 9y ago
  IBM is a massive consulting agency and they sell people's time and expertise to other companies. Customer projects, resource augmentation. Similar to Accenture and others.
- jstarfish 9y ago
  As a consumer, probably nothing. But they still sell a lot of big iron to banks and FIs and try to shove QRadar down everyone's throat.

calvinbhai 9y ago

Would this be true if high skilled legal immigration system in USA wasn’t broken? If IBM had zero restrictions on importing skilled labor, IBM USA would probably still be larger than IBM India.

majewsky 9y ago
Cost of living is still higher in the US, so you have to pay them more in the US than in India. The actual question is if these increased salary costs are offset by productivity improvements from not having to communicate across timezones etc. There's probably no single answer to that.
indubitable 9y ago
At a high enough level a company's customers and employees are one and the same. Exploiting labor can lead directly to a tragedy of the commons. If all companies were able to pursue the cheapest labor possible on a worldwide scale, then the overall disposable income in this nation would proportionally decrease. That income is precisely what ends up being used to purchase a company's products and fund their ventures. In the big picture - when all companies pay less, they end up earning less. This is also ignoring local effects. As domestic workers are displaced by the cheapest workers across the world, unemployment would increase. As wages decrease and revenues fall you have the ideal scenario to start an economic depression. Rising unemployment and an economy in depression is something that is extremely difficult to stop once it starts. Fear of even the hint of this happening is part of the reason we're already flirting with ostensibly insane economic measures ranging from quantitative easing to negative interest rates.

mathattack 9y ago

I'm very surprised that it took this long. This was true for Accenture may years ago.

froogler 9y ago
This is actually old news. Here's one from 2012 : http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/NHnLRi9Gn5LQFX1Z2CnG0N/IBM-employs-more-staff-in-India-than-its-US-workforce.html http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/NHnLRi9Gn5LQFX1Z2CnG0N/IBM-e...

MarlboroMan 9y ago

IBM should lenovo-ize its last two good divisions: z-enterprise and the chip R&D, and let the rest of the rump of the company become a consulting firm.

yeukhon 9y ago

For those working at IBM, how do you feel about your job in general? I have a couple friends working for IBM now or before, from what I gathered, unless you work in the research division or in the smart city project, the rest felt unimportant. These negative sentiments perhaps just edge cases...

framebit 9y ago
IBM is best understood as a collection of disparate companies that have very little to do with each other in the day-to-day. There are generalizations to be made about the company as a whole, but the experience of working for IBM in division ABC is going to be vastly different from the experience of working in division DEF.

ashwinaj 9y ago

The discussion seems to be diverted to outsourcing; whether it is good or bad. If I were an IBM shareholder, I want to know who is holding the IBM execs accountable? For years they have underperformed, whatever metric you care to use to reach that conclusion; they seem to be unaffected by outsourcing and have golden parachutes. To hide their technical/execution incompetency they outsource jobs and cook the books. It is moot to discuss outsourcing, the real problems are: 1. The widening wage gap between a regular employee and an executive 2. Complete lack of accountability of executives 3. Despite their pathetic performance are getting richer and richer

jakelarkin 9y ago

Sadly it seems IBM is mostly a sales & marketing operation for high-markup low-quality IT labor. MBA management of tech as a cost center has reached its next milestone. Of course, in the long-run, a company can't succeed by gutting its core competency.

mirrormind 9y ago

I am an Indian and i will tell you how it is. Most indians in india and the valley where i live and work suck in programming. I can't say how i do because we can never judge ourselves objectively. Indians in India write bad code because they will they are being cheated and being paid less money. The other issue is the education system is to memorize stuff and get a job so they can make money. There is no passion to do great or decent work. The end goal is to keep a job and make money. The same is true for people who work for google or amazon. They memorize the damn interview questions and get the job. Now all this is my experience with majority. So don't ask me for a study. I am sure there are exceptional programmers, founders that are Indian but majority aren't.

mirrormind 9y ago
Why is IBM outsourcing then? It's not just about money. They can't find an American to do that job. Americans get paid more and can find more interesting work. Plus, Indians are really good at delivering code fast of inferior quality. Americans like most people here delve too deep in stuff and are slow at churning code.
snambi 9y ago
Majority of programmers are bad. It is nothing to do with race or nationality. People are taking to programming because it pays well and there is demand. Most companies hire a person with good attitude than a great programmer with bad attitude.
- mirrormind 9y ago
  "People are taking to programming because it pays well and there is demand." This statement is wrong. Not everyone takes to programming only for that sole reason. In america people tend to follow their passion first.
  - snambi 9y ago
    Passion doesn't guarantee quality. I have seen "passionate" engineers, failing to understand the problem. "Passionate" engineers tend to find a problem for the solution they have at hand. It is very hard to work with such people.

bitmapbrother 9y ago

I wonder if those Indians know that it's only a matter of time before their job gets relocated to another country with lower wages.

balls187 9y ago

It does stand for International Business Machines. Randomly, Amazon employs over 350,000 people, 25,000 of which are here in Seattle.

chisleu 9y ago

I worked on a data science team at IBM in the Watson division and most of the people in my group in America were Indian or Pakistani.

tdeck 9y ago

Is this news? This was mentioned in a 2012 TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/nirmalya_kumar_india_s_invisible_entrepreneurs https://www.ted.com/talks/nirmalya_kumar_india_s_invisible_e... (at the end)

alunchbox 9y ago

I wonder if this might have a reason why the Phoenix Payroll system was such a disaster. Originally the estimate was for $5.7 mil but somehow it is now costing 32x more (~185 mil)[1], mind you, this is Canadians tax-payers money :(. Not to mention the ball they dropped with Queensland (beyond any software horror story I've read to date). It must be difficult having two hugely different cultures & work ethics trying to work in synchronicity to complete this type of project. (I'm only speculating that the project was done by their India teams and not the US/Canadian teams) [1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-ibm-contract-union-pay-government-1.4295827 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/phoenix-ibm-contract-un...

chrshawkes 9y ago

I find it disturbing as an American software developer that Americans (mostly) created companies like IBM and all their products, but since IBM has basically missed the boat on every major technological breakthrough over the last 30 years it's no wonder they are doing anything they can to stop the death spiral. I hope IBM goes out of business as quickly as possible and before that happens they should move their HQ to India. Is it time to start talking about unionizing software developers? To protect their jobs, creative freedoms and the rampant ageism that exists in Silicon Valley?

thisisit 9y ago

And here I thought IBM was firing more people in India: http://profit.ndtv.com/news/tech-media-telecom/article-ibm-india-denies-report-of-5-000-possible-layoffs-in-coming-months-1694397 http://profit.ndtv.com/news/tech-media-telecom/article-ibm-i... Where do these jobs go?

Dowwie 9y ago

What's missing from the discussion here is the business that IBM receives from the United States government-- Billions of dollars in contracts. If you are unhappy with IBM's practices, let your elected House officials know why. They may be able to do something about that.