How about?
Orion,
Since you're so hip on unionizing, why don't you go to India and unionize all these Indian programmers who are paid so much less than us?
I was reading an article recently that said that the telecom, power, and road infrastructures in Southern India were already lacking, and now there are companies of the like of EDS, Microsoft, and Sun hiring and recruiting for thousands of new workers.
The same article suggested that brownouts in Bangladore are already common (not good computer working conditions), and that common commute times are already above 1 hour. The monopoly telephone company takes months to connect lines (unless of course you have wined and dined the Vice Presidents). I'm really hoping that most of the companies will have so much trouble getting established, that they will give up and move back. Not likely, but it's a hope. Either that, or hope that Pakistan and India start exchanging hostilities.
The infrastructure in India is already lacking, and if you could get workers' pay doubled or tripled, then perhaps that would encourage companies to move their software development jobs back to America.
So, it seems to me, that if we could just get these poor, underappreciated Indian programmers a better paycheck, we could be on our way to convincing global companies to move their work back to a place with better infrastructure. (Maybe they would move back to Denver, Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso, Tucson, Phoenix, OKC, St. Louis, Detriot, Indiana, etc. instead of Silicon Valley.)
The other thing that needs to occur is that global business leaders need to be "sold" on less expensive parts of the U.S., like the D/FW metroplex. Currently, our overall unemployment rate is almost 7%, and the programmer unemployment rate is about 12%. There is lots of power, lots of office vacancy, and if you plan your location well, most of your employees should have about a 30 minute commute. C/C++ programmer rates have fallen into the upper 50K to lower 60K range, and Java is about the same. Some positions are even being advertised in the 40-50K range. The cost of housing is low here, so you can afford to make 40K (if your wife works, too) and have a decent living. A 3br home in a decent neighborhood (not new, used) can be had for 100-120K. Older homes can even be found less than 100K.
So, I really do think that D/FW is a good area. In the San Antonio and El Paso areas, programmers make 30K-40K a year and are bi-lingual, which would probably be even better.
So, where's the advantage in India? There are plenty of places in the U.S. where there is lots of power, good commuting, cheap cost of living, and wages could be 10K more than Indian wages. If you have to build your own power plant, then relocating to India isn't such a great thing.
Maybe some us need to work for the smaller city Chambers of Commerce to convince EDS, Microsoft, and Sun to stay here.
Glen Austin
