Fortune Smiles on Autodesk

This week's 'Fortune' interviews the Autodesk CEO in the magazine's "Question Authority" column, which annoints Carol Bartz The Reigning Queen of Tech following the ouster of Carly Fiorna from HP.

Answers in the brief, one-page interview include:

- suvived 13 years at CEO because "I've turned this company around three times."
- is terrified of girls failing to get into math and technology.
- feels outsourcing to China, et al is good for the American economy.
- thinks business will become harder in China, and so sees India as the counterbalance.
- she guarantees the tech sector will turnaround.

Comments

[Tony Tanzillo]

[Carol Bartz] "feels outsourcing to China, et al is good for the American economy"

Do you know what most experts and the representatives of OPEC countries consider to be the primary cause of high gas prices?

It is the skyrocketing demand for petroleum based products like gasoline, in countries like India and China. Thank Carol and others who are sending our jobs there, for the spending spree.

Gee, wonder how interested those folk are in alternative forms of energy and conservation? Greenhouse gasses? What greenhouse gasses?

Given the reality of pump prices and other directly related factors, how can Carol with a straight face, tell anyone that outsourcing is good for our economy? What did it cost you the last time you filled your tank?

What we should all try to keep in mind, is that Carol Bartz is getting very rich from offshoring. Good for the economy? Well of course it is!!!

[Raj]

Tony,

India is a signatory to Kyoto protocol and it emits about 5 % of greenhouse gasses than what US does.

India is also on euro 3 norms. Gas in India costs about one dollar per litre !!!

Let me know if you have any more objections and I would be glad to answer them for you.

[Tony Tanzillo]

"India is a signatory to Kyoto protocol and it emits about 5 % of greenhouse gasses than what US does."

Greenhouse gasses really aren't India's problem. Uncontrolled population growth is the source of the problem. What Carol Bartz and others are doing is simply exploiting it.

Our wages are higher because we live in a country where doing many things that people and business in India do, is illegal. We don't turn our rivers and other water bodies into sewers, for example. Much of our taxes goes to ensuring that our country does not end up like yours.

I consider that what Carol Bartz and others are doing, is put quite simply, exploitation of the lower costs associated India's abysmal failure to treat the Earth we live in, the way it should be treated.

While it may be convenient to take the greenhouse gas example literally, India has nothing to bragg about when it comes to the net sum damage it has done to the Planet:

http://www.punjabilok.com/india_disaster_rep/issue_significance/environmental_disaster.htm

[Tony Tanzillo]

The URL at the end of the last comment
should be:

http://www.punjabilok.com/india_disaster_rep/issue_significance/environmental_disaster.htm

[martyn Day]

Offshoring is a minefield, I don't think anyone really knows what the long term consequences will be. All that I know is that for corporate profits, offshoring is a good thing in the short term. I don't see software products coming down in price because of the origin of the development. The software products cost the same or more and yet the development cost is drastically reduced. There is little benefit for the end user, unless they own shares in the CAD company they use.

In fact it would be an interesting metric to take, let's say, AutoCAD and work out the real productivity gain in $ from upgrading or going on subscription and then compare that to having put the upgrade/ subscription money in Autodesk stock over the last year. I reckon the yeild from the stock would be higher than the money saved in design time

Then with the money made from the stock, you could fund a nice holiday in India or China and go visit some of our old jobs

[Evan Yares]

I admit it. I offshore. I'm getting rich off it. Not.

I have a team of developers in Russia. I have developers here in the US.

The Russian developers are smart and talented people, and we pay going rate for them. And we try to make sure that they get the support they need not just to do a good job, but to feel good about their work. We have very little attrition because of this. We lost an important and valuable person last year, and have tried to make sure that it doesn't happen too often.

The US developers are, with rare exception, very high-end people who are worth the premium pay.

What makes a person worth premium pay? Coding skill alone doesn't cut it. It's the big-picture skills, the deep understanding of software architecture, and the experience that brings with it a profound knowledge of the problem domain.

Those are rare in any country. When the management of a software company thinks they can open up an offshore development facility, and automatically get these kind of people, they're fooling themselves.

It's hard enough to create great products, even with the best of development teams. I need both my US and Russian teams in order to serve my member companies -- which happen to be scattered all over the world.

Offshoring is not about making better products or making money. It's about recognizing reality... that enrollment in computer science classes is down in the US and Europe, and is up in China and India.

Here is a list of the winners of the 29th Annual ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, sponsored by IBM:

-- Shanghai Jiaotong University (GOLD, WORLD CHAMPION)

-- Moscow State University (GOLD, 2nd Place)

-- St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics (GOLD, 3rd Place)

-- University of Waterloo (GOLD, 4th Place)

-- University of Wroclaw (SILVER, 5th Place)

-- Fudan University (SILVER, 6th Place)

-- KTH - Royal Institute of Technology (SILVER, 7th Place)

-- Norwegian University of Science & Technology (SILVER, 8th Place)

-- Izhevsk State Technical University (BRONZE, 9th Place)

-- POLITEHNICA University Bucharest (BRONZE, 10th Place)

-- Peking University (BRONZE, 11th Place)

-- The University of Hong Kong (BRONZE, 12th Place)

The highest rated US team came in tied for 17th place.

Now, you tell me... with evidence like that, if you were the head of a multinational software company, where would you do your development?

All companies have a responsibility to their customers, their owners, and their employees -- and these responsibilities are intertwined. If they choose to handicap their development solely to preserve local jobs, then it is their customers and owners who will pay for it. And, ultimately, if they go out of business, any employees they have left will suffer too.