Outer Web Thought Log
August 19, 2003
Spielman for president!

Dear Ms. Spielman, I am completely disgusted by your perspective. I would suggest the same policy to be applied to women in the computing industry for that matter. While I agree with you that companies should never outsource their core business, and try hard to please their customers, I am pressed hard to find a rationale for your ideas about foreign workers except for rabid nationalism. In the 1930s in Europe, it was the same kind of doubletalk that led an entire nation of perfectly sane people to believe they could salvage their economic situation by eliminating people based on their religion and ethnicity.

Posted by stevenn at August 19, 2003 09:05 PM ()
Comments

I appreciate your viewpoint here regarding some of the rather politically incorrect viewpoints that Sue Spielman expressed but do you really think the Holocaust reference is necessary? Hopefully I am not misunderstanding you here but I think this is being a little dramatic. Don't compare systematic extermination of an ethnic group to opposition to offshore outsourcing. It just doesnt make sense to me.

Posted by: Kevin at August 20, 2003 04:56 PM

Kind off makes sense...
some of the trying times i have had are, working with women- instead of trying to understand (men are frm mars..women venus) - why not support a legislation to stop women from working... so that all of beer drinking..swear word using buddies can hog the workplace.

Posted by: George Spiel at August 23, 2003 06:18 PM

I think the comment was totally appropriate. Spielman is doing nothing but creating scapegoats.

Posted by: jadams at August 29, 2003 05:32 PM

I can't believe the crazy comments she made.. it smells of two things - fear and you can guess the other ;)
Don't get me wrong, I do feel badly for the workers who have lost their jobs. But i think this is just a start of things to come. IMHO America's golden days are over. Time for a new world leader - hopefully one thats more responsible.

Posted by: Chris Allen at September 5, 2003 05:34 PM

Sue gave her story of the difficulties that people in the U.S.A. face, both in terms of employment in computer-related "hi tech" and managing processes that give reliable results in technical support. She made no racist nor "politically incorrect" statements. She made no objections to the ethnic background of a U.S. worker, but these facts --- and rational observation of them --- escaped the blog author, here, and some of those who have replied, whose motives remain unknown regarding their disingenuious misrepresentations of what she actually did write. She did a good job of stating her case regarding her concern for local employees. She did a good job of expounding upon the difficulties of getting good help from thousands of miles away, when distance, technical difficulties of communications, and even language are barriers to efficient and timely resolution of problems, which, by the way, the present blog author is experiencing with Compaq in regard to the failing Evo N600C. Furthermore, Sue's observation that the "business decision" by which "corporate America" is "outsourcing" to questionable sources of solutions ... is more a lemming response to a theory, is correct; "corporate America" has not throught through the consequences of such moves, beyond the next quarterly report. BTW, I know what horror a holocaust is. I know what it's like to have the ramp drop on the bow of the boat you are on; to step into the surf and try to survive the several hundred yards to the seawall, and then the next several hundred kilometers ... to finally arrive at the gates of "the fruit of nationalizing socialism." So please spare us the dramatization. The truth is that the worst killers on the planet have been unlimited governments, and to protect ourselves from their rise, we must limit government powers. Post-World War I Germany, under economic duress which was largely caused by its governments wasting the public trough, set the stage for a "final solution" being "national socialism." It is my humble opinion, that we should keep an eye on "national socialism" and "nationalizing socialism," lest their rise to power follow the usual path of misrepresentations of what "the other guy said." If you want to pick on Sue because you disagree with her opinion that we should or should not outsource because outsourcing does or does not work, please "knock yourself out." But if you want to pick on Sue because you incorrectly wish to argue against what she did not say, then it is you who are the source of unhappiness.

Posted by: Mike at September 29, 2003 04:37 PM