A recent article in the L.A. Times detailed what they're doing.
formatting link
In PDF format:
formatting link
I thought Agilent was supposed to be one of the good companies. They made a decent product. One I'd be proud to own. Now they spit on American tech workers.
OK. I'm boycotting them. I'm in the market for a bench power supply. I looked at B&K, and Agilent.
formatting link
formatting link
Agilent looked like the better product.
But now, I just can't do it. That could be me. I will not help a company that willfully targets and destroys its American workers. To take away someone's job and bring in a complete foreign mercenary as a replacement is in fact a form of economic and physical genocide. Agilent can just go to hell.
I think you'll find that you will have to bycott most of the industry at the moment, cause they are all doing the same. Lets face it Foreign workers are cheaper. The IT industry has had a bashing in the last couple of years, what with the .com boom etc, this is how they are cutting costs. Not a way to treat loyal workers but keeps the stock holders happy :(
I believe that the B&K power supply I have is designed and made ENTIRELY in CHINA by a completely CHINESE company with the B&K name stuck on it. So who are you really hurting by boycotting Agilent?
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
All that's happening is the free ride is over and reality is catching up. You can either pay more for goods manufactured by high-salaried Americans, or you can get the stuff made overseas at the cost of U.S. jobs, or you can take a pay cut. Either way, your disposable income is going down to the same level as everyone else's. Fair is fair.
With all due respect Joe, you don't know what you are talking about. Unemployed people do not have disposable income. They also do not buy luxury items regardless of the price. They are also not being offered pay cuts to keep their jobs. IOW, you don't seem to know anything about how outsourcing is implemented in this country.
I think, hopefully Agilent. I'm not sure where you live, but what is taking place in the US (at a rapidly increasing rate) is precisely what engr said. The American high-tech industry is being systematically dismantled and shipped overseas. If the companies (like HP, Agilent, etc...) had their way, they would just bring foreign workers (H-1B's) in to replace all the Americans and leave it at that. However, there are caps on the numbers that can be brought in, so the large corporations are simply packing up and moving everything overseas instead. Of course they first force all the locals into training their foreign counterparts ("knowledge transfer"), then promptly toss them out into the cold. There are no limits on this. Meanwhile (while literally hundreds of thousands high-tech workers are basically panhandling) the corporations are whining to the govt. that there just aren't any qualified people here and the H-1B caps need to be raised. It's all a lie and it's all about short term gains (greed). To add insult to injury, the govt. here screams about national security while they allow any and all corporate trade secrets (including those of military contractors) and private financial information to be entrusted to individuals that have 0 accountability under US law. They are also allowing America to "give away" it's technological advantage to countries that we barely get along with. Actually, all in all, it's quite disgusting.
As a born & raised in the US citizen, I don't see a problem with outsourcing. What I see a problem with is the management types doing the outsourcing. I worked at a very big high tech company who opened a site in India. Management thinks "I can get 3 workers for the price of 1" and just start lobbing projects over the wall without training assuming they'll get the same quality. It has of course come back to bite them and will continue to do so until the education becomes the same across the board (and don't tell me that it's the same everywhere - many countries who have recently entered the high tech industry are, in my experience, WELL behind any western schools and more importantly - experience). This of course will change over time.
And I also don't think that US citizens have some God given right to their jobs. It's as if there are those who are whining about outsourcing are complacent in their jobs and don't want to better themselves. I see the .bomb era as a good thing - it got rid of a lot of trash that shouldn't have been employed by the tech sector in the first place. I just had to laugh at a recent news segment where several students who just graduated college with CS degrees were whining about having a tough job market when they got into computers and thought it would make them a lot of money. Justiced served, IMHO.
It's very profitable for the shareholders, and the shareholders "own" the jobs, through corporate management, not the employees. Employees will just have to adapt to the new reality, just as they did when farm jobs disappeared, and telephone operator jobs disappeared.
Personally, I'd be more than happy to help a fine company like Agilent do just that with this particular product line, for suitable (i.e. handsome) remuneration, of course. Their competition is already, as I said, and it's not a product line that makes much business sense to make domestically, IMHO.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
Oh, I know, but it's the CEO's and board members that are doing this. In the end, it's the real stockholders (people not owning millions of shares) that will suffer from this when the companies eventually fail from lack of investment and R&D. This is just another technique for pillaging every last penny from a company. $20 million bonuses have to come from somewhere. :-(
How will you feel, when it's your job? After you are in the exact same dead-end industry.
I wouldn't be looking for the prices to be coming down on their equipment if I were you. I would be looking for a rapid decline in quality as the brand name is leveraged for maximum profit. I'm not saying the decline in quality will result directly from outsourcing, it's just the way things are done today in America. The people running the company have no comprehension of the product line (in a technical sense) therefore they could care less about how well the equipment is made, or how reliable it is. In fact, I'm reasonably sure they think you (the end user) are getting way too much value by being able to use their high-priced equipment for so many years. Look for this to be corrected.
Grow up and widen your perspective. This is happening all over the world, not only in the US. And we created the situation ourselves. I mean, who wants to pay $500 for a printer when you can have it for $69 right? (just an arbitrary example of real life)
On Sun, 06 Jun 2004 22:42:29 GMT, engr wrote: [snip]
What are we, your Spanish competitors, supposed to feel? We earn about half as you, but twice as the Indians. These are the effects of globalization. You and I are not better than the Indians, we are richer. And more expensive. Be prepared to downsize your living standards. And expect more non-Americans to read these newsgroups. As for myself, I think I'm going to learn Chinese, just in case...
I take it you've never shopped around for cheaper goods then? I'm as guilty as anyone of expecting lower prices and this is what drives companies to 'outsource' manufacture because they can't pay Joe America a living wage (let alone a decent wage) to fit parts into a PSU or refrigerator or car or and remain 'competitive' in the market. For competitive, you could also read 'pay shareholder dividends'.
I think Joe is right. It is all about competition and free market and that includes us engineers as well. Every product has to have a competitive advantage over the others, otherwise there is no market for it. Engineering capabilities are a product in the same sense, which has to find its marketplace. That's tough but true. If there is no advantage left in quality, then cost will have to fall. These are very basic facts of a free market.
To a certain degree, the market can be controlled, though. The US, like many other countries, do that by issuing working visa and by charging import duty on imported goods. On the long run, market forces will always prevail, however. Protecting the domestic market, will hurt the domestic industry, as they don't have the need to be innovative and to remain competitive. They will fall even further behind and so protectionism is the beginning of a vicious circle. In Germany we have seen such a textbook example with former East Germany: there was no competition and so they simply went completely bankrupt.
We all have to accept that competition is a good thing. It enables us to achieve the best possible results. Education is of paramount importance for competition. We have to face the fact, at least in Germany, that education is mediocre at best. My perception from the distance is, that it is not much better in the US, if at all. Since a few weeks, we have quite a few new members in the EU and we have to accept that their schools are often at least as good as ours. So don't fool yourselfes by thinking that those newcomers are less good engineers. They are not and actually they are proving it every day. And even more, they are hungry!
Let me just add one example: it must have been about 12 years ago, when our company had a booth on the Electronica fair in Munich. The borders to the east were already open and we had a small delegation from Poland visiting our stand. Internet was not yet very common and so they collected a whole pile of databooks. And guess what, the next day they returned for asking very detailed questions, which proved that they must have read the databooks on the evening before, while everybody else was either visiting Munich or having a sundowner at the hotel. That has impressed me a lot.
So what can we do? Very simple, like always: become better than our competitor!
For the above argumentation, I have decided already a long time ago, always to purchase the best possible product, independent of its origin. It would be a bad service to any domestic company, if I subsidized their mediocre products. (I should add that there are a few exceptions to this rule, which we shouldn't discuss here: slavery and child-labour, to mention just two. But I expect politcs to boycott imports from those countries).
Grow up? I'm 42 years old and can't find a job at any wages, much less livable ones. It would be one thing if I had to take a lower salary, but instead I have to accept no salary. At any rate, I'd rather pay $500 for a printer that still works in 10 years rather than $69 and have it fall apart in just over a year. Not to mention $50 ink cartridges that can only print a couple of hundred pages (if you're lucky). The cost of living is not getting any cheaper here either. For example, health insurance. I'm not asking for $80-$100K per year, I'd settle for $40K (and some health insurance) right now.
Funny how so many people that don't live in the US are experts at what is required to live here. The US is rapidly turning itself into a third world country, without the benefit of a low cost of living. Why does the rest of the world think that all Americans are filthy rich when only a relative few are? The "average" American has very little disposable income, if any at all. Does the average executive in your country earn
100 (and in far too many cases 1000) times what the average employee gets? Too bad we can't outsource one of them and save several hundred (thousand?) jobs, hopefully soon the stockholders will get wise and insist upon it. It's greed Meindert, not competitiveness. Tech companies with no R&D have no future.
I doubt it. Imported workers would be paying N.American rent, N.A. food prices, car expenses, and all the usual N.A. cost of living, and they'd have to be paid accordingly. They're much cheaper where they are.
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.