Posts Tagged ‘Recession’
Mexican Nearsourcing a bright spot in an otherwise dismal year.
Posted by: andy in Agave Lab, Nearsourcing on December 11th, 2009
Check out this well-written article about Mexico’s rocky 2009. The flu, recession, drug wars, rogue neutrinos – it’s been a hell of year. Thankfully, one happy little corner of the economy happens to be where we’re camped.
Another industry that has thrived in Mexico despite the recession is software development. Anchored in the city of Guadalajara and surrounding state of Jalisco, Mexican software engineers both develop their own software and provide “nearshoring” code writing services to software companies in California and elsewhere. Jalisco boasts over 200 information technology companies, and national IT organizations are projecting 11% growth for the sector in 2009 at a time when most other industries are facing contraction for the year.
Idiots
So, do you party?
I’ve held my tongue on this for a while but am I the only one who feels that “pandemic” thing is ridiculous?
Every year, the regular old flu kills 35,0oo people in the US and 500,000 worldwide. So far, the pig/bird/human flu has killed 1 person in the US and some number between 60 and 200 in Mexico (depending on who you want to believe). And for this, all businesses have been shuttered here (crippling an economy that wasn’t doing so well to begin with), the US is doing backflips trash talking Mexico, and, perhaps worst of all, everyone is walking around with those ridiculous surgical masks on. Come on people, pull your head out – are we that starved for drama?
And now that disaster is not panning out, we all seem a bit, well, disappointed. Check this story, “What we thought is that we would have an exponential growth in the number of persons with symptoms. But the information we have is that hasn’t occurred, and we now have a stabilized curve with no important growth” of confirmed cases, Mexico City’s mayor Marcelo Ebrard said declared Saturday.”
UPDATE: Also see this NYTIMES article. “Of 908 suspected cases that were tested, only 397 people turned out to have the virus, officially known as influenza A(H1N1), Mexican health officials reported on Friday. Of those, 17 people have died. ”
H1B Visas for Tech Workers
Posted by: andy in Nearsourcing on April 12th, 2009
So, I know that the US’s protectionist stance toward foreign talent is GOOD for our company, but I can’t help but see that it’s one of the dumbest things for the country at large. An influx of talented, motivated, innovated workers that might then want to remain in the country – oh, no, that would never work! Read the (longish) article here.
The Sound of the Other Shoe Falling
From an article entitled Tech jobs getting zapped, “Year to date, 8,000 tech jobs have been slashed, including 4,100 just last month.”
I’m not sure if this is good for us or bad for us. The recession has forced plenty of early-stage tech companies to find ways to do more with a lot less (aka: good for us) but there will be plenty of laid-off tech workers that will be willing/required to work for less (aka: competition, aka bad). I guess we’ll see.