Jon Udell writes Monday about offshoring anecdotes:
Last week, an Indian who runs an outsourcing business in Texas wrote to tell me that somebody threw stones through his office window.He says he can't prove this attack was motivated by anti-outsourcing sentiment, but thinks so based on the fact that his website was also recently defaced with messages like "*&*&&** you have taken our jobs!"
Sigh.
Ditto the sigh.
Almaz Negash, Director of the Global Leadership and Ethics Program, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, at the Santa Clara University whom I saw present at an International SIG for SDForum about a week ago says that the outsourcing / offshoring issue has gotten pretty emotionally charged.
Tony Nash - And another side note: Yes, I have been laid off, and I understand the fear, embarrassment, and so on of being escorted to the door post-bubble with a family to feed and the sheer panic of paying Bay Area rent with a disruption of income.[Comment] Sorry to hear about your misfortune. Now let's see how your viewpoint might change after say, 10 months out of work, your unemployment has run out, your cash savings have evaporated and if you have an IRA, your using it to live on.
Tony Nash - At the end of the day, the offshoring issue is really about protectionism. Is it really better that a single American worker takes home a salary, a fraction of which could support five or more families in emerging parts of Asia?
[Comment] Of course it is. This statement is completely off the wall. But were you actually talking about someone getting a salary here or someone who is getting paid too much, say, like oh one of those VC's or CEO's who makes 400 times the average workers salary? From your statement, it sounds like we should just cash in all our savings, sell all our belongings, send the receipts to somewhere like Bangladesh and go take a mass suicide jump off the GG Bridge!
IBE98765 | POSTED: 03.26.04 @01:05 | I rate this blog: [3]
Yep. After reading these comments, my first reactive response was to say, quit your whining, 10 months without income is nada (and I know this first-hand). But at another level, I remember what it actually feels like.
A lot of people are in the throes of the stages of grief (identified for loss of any type; originally applied to death, and expanded to include divorce or loss of any important relationship). Very emotional times indeed.
- Denial. This stage is filled with disbelief and denial.
- Anger/Resentment. You are angry with the other person for causing the situation and for causing you pain.
- Bargaining. You try to negotiate to change the situation
- Depression. The "It's really happened" stage. You realize the situation isn’t going to change.
- Acceptance. You are able to begin to move forward.
I realized I went through these stages myself when the start-up I was with closed its doors (a long story, but suffice to say a more emotional-wrenching story than simply not getting next round of funding) in Jan 2001. Followed by a separation and eventual divorce while still unemployed within the same year. I wallowed in the middle stages far too long.
So the reactions I see these days seem to vacillate between anger/resentment (it's India's fault) and bargaining (let's lobby to stem the tide of jobs going overseas). Luckily, the stages of grief eventually (and it does happen - you only control how long the process takes by your resistance) lead to final stage -- acceptance and the ability to move forward.
It's almost impossible to believe in the throes of grief, but it especially in a career situation you can definitely shift your mindset and get to point where you are like the phoenix rising from the ashes and re-emerge stronger, more creative, and uncommoditizable.
"Most beings spring from other individuals; but there is a certain kind which reproduces itself. The Assyrians call it the Phoenix." - Ovid
hmm. Interesting steps, I think I skipped a few steps when I was out of work for over a year. I guess I don't believe in the natural right to a job/high pay etc. Like some darwinism evolution vidoe game played in fast speed it's "adapt or perish". I think it's quite cool that we live in age where we can change quite rapidly, reinventing and discarding our old selves if we want to and open to the reframing/shedding exercise.
It's one of the reasons I liked being a contractee, as it always keeps me on my gaurd to make sure my skillset is desireable, and I'm aware of the job market and not being taken advantage of. Of course that mindset came after being blind to when the first startup I was with dropped on me "we can't pay you for this month...in fact we are pretty much going to have to close our doors"..this was Christmas month and I also broke up with my serious girlfriend (what a fun month that was!).
I do remember that searching for a job was tough and emotionally troubling. It's hard to recitify with oneself, making big bucks doing important things one day (for several years) and then half a year later looking at the hard cold reality of working 60 hrs at various retail jobs (which are still hiring) is what it takes to pay for rent/food/expenses for a single person in the bay area not living a very lush life. Harder still to recognize that the previous jobs made better utilization of my skills than a rather mindless job stocking shelves. I unlike many was prepared to move (and did) because I recognized that too many were playing that 'wait it out, denial *THIS is silicon valley, it will be great as it once was again* and many had commited to families, spouses who had jobs, children in schools, a decaying victorian house they spent $800K and a year searching for. For which I don't have a great deal of sympathy for, as prioritiy wise in the scale of things and time it's pretty superficial, you'd think people would remember that turning on the news and seeing parts of the world are lucky to have a house that's not being blown apart, and their children sent off to war.
Throughout time people have faced worse displacements: sea fishermen, the old wooden printing presses, stagecoach by the railway, mom & pop stores being displaced by walmart, independant book stores via amazon.com wagon wheel repairmen via cars, factory workers via machine (cotton gin, car assembly robots) etc. This is a drop in the buckey compared to those diplaced by wars, starvation, disasters (e.g. chernoble), imagine sailing to america on a boat with almost nothing!
It's denying reality to think that life provides any lasting security plan -within hours an unseen massive asteroid, earthquake, volcano (like the Yellowstone caldera) could and most likely will wipe out the majority of life on this planet (as it has in the past)-. neither will shaking our fists trying to hold on to hte past, bring back the green of the burnt forest that was dried and would have burned one way or another..but it will blind us from seeing the phoenix rising from it's ashes!
Posted by: Troy | Apr 12, 2004 at 03:35 PM