Moving Programmers Offshore, to the Land of the Free… China!?
February 20th 2007 15:18
The typical school of thought is that the industry is gradually moving all work offshore to India or China but now it looks like the actual programmers are moving offshore to China.
As much as plenty of people in the rest of the world likes to claim China is an oppressive nation it sure has quite a few things going for it ‘free’ countries could learn from.
In China the maximum a person can work in any given day is eleven hours and it is illegal for a person to work over thirty six hours of overtime in any month. Unlike *some* other places these laws are in place to prevent slave labour. While they may create other problems they do help ensure rather than employers work their people to death they will have to employ more workers.
It isn’t like that in the US or Australia, people, especially in software development have tight deadlines to meet. Often this results in a period known as ‘crunch time’ where you have people working for every moment they are awake to meet a looming deadline. I recall of one person fondly remembering enduring such an event, he claimed even when he slept he dreamt about the work.
This can easily be fixed, simply employing one extra man could reduce the overall workload significantly, of course it comes at a premium price. To the employer it often simply doesn’t justify the expense and with no laws barring the company the employer can simply impose the deadline and sit back, without needing to check how many hours it would take to accomplish the task at hand.
Companies like Google may not have to worry about such matters. As a company it prides itself in providing an extremely relaxing environment for those in the payroll, their philosophy of giving their people freedom is easily reflected in their soaring stocks and dominance in just about every field they enter.
Of course such movement is already taking place, Chris Pfeiffer and Max Garber were both worn out by their work in game development. Fed up with working 16 hour days during the dreaded crunch time they soon realized after a vacation to China working there might not be such a bad idea.
The laws not only help keep everyone relaxed the cheap labour sure will help,
Says Chris Pfeiffer, he and Max Garber plan on starting a small time game studio in China which they believe everyone will want to work at.
As much as plenty of people in the rest of the world likes to claim China is an oppressive nation it sure has quite a few things going for it ‘free’ countries could learn from.
In China the maximum a person can work in any given day is eleven hours and it is illegal for a person to work over thirty six hours of overtime in any month. Unlike *some* other places these laws are in place to prevent slave labour. While they may create other problems they do help ensure rather than employers work their people to death they will have to employ more workers.
This can easily be fixed, simply employing one extra man could reduce the overall workload significantly, of course it comes at a premium price. To the employer it often simply doesn’t justify the expense and with no laws barring the company the employer can simply impose the deadline and sit back, without needing to check how many hours it would take to accomplish the task at hand.
Companies like Google may not have to worry about such matters. As a company it prides itself in providing an extremely relaxing environment for those in the payroll, their philosophy of giving their people freedom is easily reflected in their soaring stocks and dominance in just about every field they enter.
Of course such movement is already taking place, Chris Pfeiffer and Max Garber were both worn out by their work in game development. Fed up with working 16 hour days during the dreaded crunch time they soon realized after a vacation to China working there might not be such a bad idea.
The laws not only help keep everyone relaxed the cheap labour sure will help,
We will have an onsite chef for breakfast, lunch and dinner, massages, dry cleaning, company supplied drivers, language and cultural tutoring (English or Chinese), haircuts, fitness memberships, car washing and maid and grocery services are just some of the other perks Balanced Worlds have in store for their development staff.
Says Chris Pfeiffer, he and Max Garber plan on starting a small time game studio in China which they believe everyone will want to work at.
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