Everywhere, Everything the Same

I got an email from LiveJournal. I have an account there. I don't write in it. I don't even know the password offhand. I opened it once so I could more easily comment at other people's LiveJournal pages. I don't remember the last time I cared about that.

The email said they were very sad to cut staff but it was all part of a "restructuring". Global design and product development is now in Moscow. The new server farm is in Montana. The HQ remains in San Fran.

Yeah.

People who do my job in Asia are getting better at it. American jobs that moved to Japan and Taiwan have long since moved to China, where people worry about India and Vietnam. It takes time, but eventually the quality of the work is comparable, and the costs remain better than competitive.

They have great programmers in Russia. Hell, so do we (my employer, I mean). How long before they lose jobs to Poland? Poland is already taking jobs from Ireland, as Dell seeks to cut costs.

As Tom Lehrer said, who's next? The cycle will continue for a very long time, until every continent and country has pulled itself more or less on a par with the others. And the bitch of that is, since the U.S.A. is the richest, the furthest "ahead" in that sense, over the long term we will be on the shallowest growth slope for the longest time. Well, barring wars and socialist insurrections that set others back, of course.