[thelist] RE: Does web design have a future in 'highwage'countries? (wasQuestion])

[Diane Soini]

On Friday, July 23, 2004, at 02:43 PM, thelist-request at lists.evolt.org 
wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> * Cheap does not mean unskilled.
>
Exactly. I do not believe for a minute that people in low wage 
countries are not as capable as people in high wage countries in 
design, programming or whatever else. We are all humans of equal 
capabilities (although perhaps not of equal resources to develop those 
capabilities.)

> Why -- if you are a professional web designer/developer/coder/whatever
> -- do you see them as your competition? Can you not differentiate your
> offerings from rent-a-coder.com?
>
Perhaps there is poor quality at rent-a-coder, but in my case, as an 
in-house web person at a software company, the programmers they are 
hiring in China are to replace the American ones. They would not 
replace them with rent-a-coders. They are replacing them because we 
make manufacturing software and China is where the manufacturing is. I 
am in the eLearning department. I cannot see any reason whatsoever why 
they couldn't save a lot of money and get just as good or better 
quality by shipping that off to China too. Heck, if the manufacturing 
is in China, wouldn't Chinese be the first language you'd want 
eLearning translated into? If I were the boss I would be asking why do 
I have Americans doing this at all?

All this off-shoring would be fine with me if I knew what was going to 
replace these jobs.

I think that freelancing could actually be a better option than being 
in-house. You may not get a lot of money, but small companies are 
probably not going to hire Chinese or Indian or _______(fill in the 
blank) web designers. There will always be those small business people 
who insist that nephew Johnny can do this for a pack of rollos, but not 
all of them will think that way.

I'm trying to be open-minded about this new global economy, but at the 
moment it's looking a little scary over here in America.
Diane

> patrick sanders
***
Don't be afraid to try something new. An amateur built the ark. 
Professionals built the Titanic. -unknown