Digital Tipping Point: Natasha Humphries On Globalization And Job Security With Free Open Source Software 02 - Info and Reading Options

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This is one of many short video segments which will be added to the Digital Tipping Point (DTP) archive. Thanks to Thomas King, a writer for Linux.com and LXer, for doing the rough editing for this series of interview segments! In this series of 15 interview segments, software engineer Natasha Humphries tells the remarkable story of losing her job as a software engineer to colleagues in Bangalore, India. Natasha, a Stanford grad who has worked for 10 years as a software engineer, was interviewed by the US national news media and called to testify before Congress about her experiences. Her Digital Tipping Point interview focuses on how things might have been different for her if she had been working on a Free Open Source Software project. She says that if she had been able to control the code on which she was working, her employer, Palm One, would not have been able to dismiss her as easily it did, since she would have been able to fork the code and thus give her greater bargaining power in her relationship with her employer. A less enlightened individual might have lashed out at the person who replaced her, but Natasha looks past that knee-jerk reaction. Natasha shows us the connectedness between herself and the colleagues with whom she worked in India. She provides a very moving personal account of a trip to India in which she encounters deep poverty, and she sees that the Indian colleague who replaced her could not do much to increase their wages or improve their working conditions. As long as those software engineers, both in the US and India, could not control the code they created, they could not control their own financial destinies. This footage is shot dark in segments 01 through 1:01 of segment 04 (Tape 157~001-004). Those segments will need to be re-rendered lighter for final use. The audio is really good. After 1:01 of segment 04, the footage is lighter. This footage is our raw rough-cut footage. It lacks transitions, music, special effectsor finish rendering. It is our "source code". Please feel free to rip, mix and burn this footage consistent with our Creative Commons license as disclosed on this page. In segment 01 (Tape 157~001), Natasha talks about her work at Palm One in Silicon Valley, California. The job she will discuss primarily in this interview is her position as a senior software quality assurance (QA) engineer at Palm One. She led a small team of sofware QA engineers. She lost many of these engineers over a 3 year period due to lay-offs. The jobs were essentially sent to India. In 2000, Palm One started outsourcing the jobs to San Francisco Bay Area vendors; by 2002, those jobs were being sent to India. She goes into detail as to what her job responsibilities were. Essentially, her job was both technical and managerial in nature. They tracked and squashed software bugs. She was the US interface for the multidisciplinary team. She essentially helped the business and technical people talk to each other. The last product that she worked on was the Tungsten T3. In segment 02 (Tape 157~002), Natasha explains that QA people are the last check of the product to make sure that it will be acceptable when received by the customer. The Tungsten T3 was designed to be easier to read than its predecessors. She goes into detail to explain why it worked like it did. She switches topic and talks about how she got into this job with Palm One. She worked at Apple doing a similar job. She then switches topic again forward in time to Palm One's decision to outsource the jobs to India. Her software project was one of the first to use the Indian team, which happened in August 2002. All of Natasha Humphries' interview segments can be found here: <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_001.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_001.ogg</a> (segment 01) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_002.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_002.ogg</a> (segment 02) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_003.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_003.ogg</a> (segment 03) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_004.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_004.ogg</a> (segment 04) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_005.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_005.ogg</a> (segment 05) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_006.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_006.ogg</a> (segment 06) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_007.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_007.ogg</a> (segment 07) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_008.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_008.ogg</a> (segment 08) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_009.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv157_sf_01_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_009.ogg</a> (segment 09) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv158_sf_02_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_001.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv158_sf_02_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_001.ogg</a> (segment 10) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv158_sf_02_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_002.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv158_sf_02_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_002.ogg</a> (segment 11) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv158_sf_02_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_003.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv158_sf_02_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_003.ogg</a> (segment 12) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv158_sf_02_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_004.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv158_sf_02_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_004.ogg</a> (segment 13) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv158_sf_02_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_005.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv158_sf_02_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_005.ogg</a> (segment 14) <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv158_sf_02_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_006.ogg" rel="nofollow">http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv158_sf_02_natasha_humphreys_palm_one_006.ogg</a> (segment 15) If you like this segment, please consider typing up a summary for it and emailing that summary to Christian Einfeldt at [email protected]. Your work will be credited and posted on this page. The DTP will be many, many films created by the global open source video community about how open source is changing their lives. We, the DTP crew, are submitting this footage for anyone to rip, mix, and burn under the Creative Commons Attribute - ShareAlike license. We welcome edits, transcriptions, graphics, music, and animation contributions to the film. Please send a link for any contributions to Christian Einfeldt at [email protected]. Or, if you would like to contribute by directly transcribing this particular video segment, you can do so by going here: <a href="http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Tape_157" rel="nofollow">http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Tape_157</a> and typing the audio as you hear it into the wiki. Please be sure to add the transcription for this segment under: Segment 002, Natasha Humphries You can find other ways to contribute by going to our wiki front page here: <a href="http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page" rel="nofollow">http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page</a> Thanks for viewing our video!

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