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Comment by okjnboikjnb | Hacker News Reader

At the moment Indians are cheap labor for US consumers, at some point Indian consumers become the market and the US becomes irrelevent.

Riduculous of course - just like the idea that those Japanese could ever make cars as good as Americans, or motorbikes as good as the British or cameras as good as the Germans.

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The US outsources to India because it's cheap. We get 4 support people in India for the price of one in the US.

When India is really up to the standards of the US, it's not going to be cheap anymore.

Well, there is a hidden externality here. Traditionally helpesk and tester roles have been a "feeder" for sysadmin and developer roles. They are entry level jobs that are easier to get, a company gets to see who is talented and ambitions and they "move up" to more complex and technical work. If that pipeline disappears because helpdesk and testing have moved offshore, then the Western IT firms lose the ability to hire capable people that for whatever reason haven't gone the CS degree route, and those people lose the opportunity to get into the industry too.

Penny wise, pound foolish.

Actually, IT labour is not cheap in India. It is quite common for IT workers to expect 15% minimum yearly increase in salaries and not less than 30% hike in salaries when switching jobs.

The Rupee-Dollar arbitrage is the biggest advantage Indian IT companies are enjoying right now.

No, it's still very cheap. People in the US aim for 30% when switching jobs.

That is exactly the point. Why resort to protectionism. Let the market forces play themselves out. Protectionism is just the opposite of what the US preached to the world.

Indians are sufficiently entrepreneurial - especially given the constraints they work under. I am quite confident that Indians would figure out a model that will continue to work.

The reason why, every Indian IT majors are trying to stop america from going into protectionism mode is their 90% of the revenue comes from US. Yes the labour is "cheap" here - 24$ per hour.

Currently Indian IT majors have no or very low focus on local Indian consumers.

> Currently Indian IT majors have no or very low focus on local Indian consumers.

India's largest software exporter, TCS get its almost 10% revenue from domestic clients. One of the major client is Government of India ofcourse.

The IT majors have looked beyond US to de-risk their portfolio. IIRC, Infosys' dependence on US market is < 50% of their revenue. They are expanding aggressively in Europe etc.,

Isn't it sort of silly to compare manufactured products to labor talent?

Like... that you can somehow craft a process that will take any given human being and make them into an excellent worker, free from abnormalities and flaws?

I mean the Americans feel threatened by cheap Indian labor and so set up protectionist policies to stop Indian workers having access to their economy. All this does it force the Indian economy to grow to the point where the consumers for Indian goods and services are Indian - and the same for China.

I'm not saying I agree that Japanese products can't be better than another country's, but... isn't crafting a better production process the result of labor talent in the first place?

You are all probably too young to remember when Japanese imports were dismissed as cheap copies.

Rather like Chinese products or Indian software is now.

I disagree. Outsourcing overshadows everything else when it comes to India. What everybody doesn't know is this. Just walk into any departmental shop and you will find more American brands than Indian (the only possible exception to this is fresh food and other food raw materials.) Only in the last few years have Indian consumer brands became well-known and competing against foreign brands. Take any category and the top 1-2 brands are probably American. India supplies a huge amount of consumers for American brands (for that matter any good quality products).

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