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May 17, 2006 3:54 PM PDT
Mexico wants your software work
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And the benefits of proximity add up, says Eduardo Ruiz Esparza Flores, president of CANIETI, a Mexican IT trade group working with the Mexican government to promote the country as an outsourcing destination. He is also CEO of RFID Native, which builds radio-frequency identification systems.
"There are over 300 flights a day" between the U.S. and Mexico, Flores noted during an interview at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo. Bandwidth costs on software projects also add up, so the closer your programmers are to corporate headquarters, the better.
"We are looking for complex and network-needed projects with high response requirements," he said.
The language barrier is easily hurdled, according to Flores, and in many areas, U.S. executives can stay in the U.S. and commute down to work.
Three years ago, the Mexican government launched a program, called Prosoft, to promote the country's tech industry. The goal is to increase the size of the Mexican IT industry to $15 billion annually by 2013. Two weeks ago, the government launched an advertising and recruiting campaign for Prosoft.
Mexico, however, isn't cheap compared with the larger Asian nations when it comes to outsourcing. Mexico's contract-manufacturing industry was hit hard when China ramped up as a manufacturing powerhouse.
Still, Mexican labor is cheaper than American labor. Newly minted Mexican engineers make around $1,200 a month, Flores said, about a third of what young engineers earn in the U.S. Intel has about 1,000 employees in Mexico, he added. Freescale also has development operations.
Technology also remains a popular subject with students in the country. Mexico has around 400,000 students studying IT-related subjects in universities and technical schools. Roughly 60,000 of them graduate from these programs annually. The Monterrey Institute of Technology, which used Massachusetts Institute of Technology as its model, remains the country's premier technical university.
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23 comments
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(that' a joke).
Man, Mexico's obviously on some PR campaign here, I see Business Week recently ran an unbelievably idiot, unresearched article buying the story that Mexico is producing far more qualified engineers than the U.S.
then your reading & comprehension skills definitely need improving. That article is stating that "Currently, 451,000 Mexican students are enrolled in full-time undergraduate programs, vs. just over 370,000 in the U.S." Which is a fact. It's not stating whether the engineers are "far more qualified" or not than their U.S. counterparts. The article seems objective, nothing stated there is such a big secret to those who have been following development in Mexico and in Latin America, so stop bashing what you obviously no nothing about.
Bottomline: The pie is only getting bigger and not being split; at least not yet.
- Mohan [Author: "Offshoring IT Services : A Framework for Managing Outsourced Projects" <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.offshoringmanagement.com/theBook.htm" target="_newWindow">http://www.offshoringmanagement.com/theBook.htm</a> ]
What do you say?
My fellow American, you and I can not control outsourcing directly. Why? Capitalism. One important aspect of capitalism is shareholder wealth. Because Americas top elite want to continue to get richer, they will do ALL and everything they can do to run a business at the least cost to their pockets. Therefore outsourcing is actually supported by Americas elite and our own American government. Unfortunately, those who are not part of those shareholders, they do not have a say in this. This is where our own government and corporations screw us Americans and only contribute to the pure capitalistic approach, "the rich get richer and the poorer get poorer."
Therefore, lets not blame Mexico, China, and India just because they are competing globally for jobs.
The problem is here at home, where we are allowing outsourcing.
Unfortunately, the ones to blame for such an astonishing influx are the local employers. IF they were to stop hiring illegal workers, they would not come to your town. Simple as that. Supply and demand.
There are better, and more effective ways, to address your concerns. But, sarcastic bigotry is not the best.
Sounds like a great deal for Mexico .....
Why don't you return the territories that you STOLD from us 150 years ago, and problem solved!
Jeez, you'd think that while Dubya is building a wall to keep Mexicans out, he can build another one to keep American jobs in?
Maybe then we could get some of the taxt money that is not being paid now.....