Digital Tipping Point: Natasha Humphries On Globalization And Job Security With Free Open Source Software 09 - 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 08 (Tape 157~008), Natasha says that her Indian colleagues were very excited about the opportunity to work for Palm One at $4.00 US per hour. Those are middle class wages. They are able to purchase cars, which they didn't have before in many cases. They are willing to cancel weddings and vacations to get the opportunity to work for US companies. And yet India is still very under-developed in many ways. She was chatting with her lead counter-part colleague there and asked what her colleague was going to do one weekend. Her counter-part said she was going to wash her clothes. Natasha asked well, what will you do after that. It had not occurred to Natasha that her colleague was talking about washing her clothes by hand, which takes all day. And companies really push the workers. Out-sourcing companies even switch workers around from company to company, "just moving bodies around." But there are more amenities of like, such as a simple story of a worker eating ice cream after a meal, which was relatively a novel idea. In segment 09 (Tape 157~009), Natasha says that Indians are starting to adopt some Western habits, such as drinking mocha coffee. But the work ethic in India is much different. The Indians she met were very eager to work hard to get ahead. She tells a funny story about her colleagues surprise to find out that she was "not fat" because they expected a typical US employee to be fat. They offered to take her to Pizza Hut. She declined, saying, no, I don't eat Pizza Hut in the US. Everyone has a cell phone. [In 2004, that thought might have been surprising. In 2008, it is not surprising, as the US slips economically relative to India, or at least we are starting to perceive it as such in the US now in mid-November, shortly after the election of Barack Obama]. In segment 10 (Tape 158~001), Natasha says that the younger generation in India is quite positive about globalization, as it gives them more opportunities. But she repeats the example of her counterpart at Palm One in India as saying that she was separated from her family. Even phone calls were too expensive to do on a regular basis, and so she was not in touch with her family as often as she would have liked. Her counter-part's father was also in favor of her getting a decent education and a decent job, despite the costs to the family. Another of her colleagues, an Indian, who lived in the US, had lost her job in the US to globalization. That colleague took action to scale back globalization and was quoted in the press for it and received critical emails from Indians she did not know who were offended that she would try to slow down globalization. Apparently, those Indians said that this colleague was a "disgrace" to Indians because she was slowing down progress. But this colleague said that those Indians should have been insisting on the same standards that US workers were receiving. This Indian colleauge saw the corporations' practice of moving work to underpaid Indians as exploitation; but some of those same Indians saw the "exploitation" as "opportunities" for themselves. Indians are aware of the displacement that happens in the US as a result of moving jobs to India, and they are sensitive to the potential backlash against them as a result. There are many Indians who see off-shoring as inevitable and a natural progression. Natasha continues her thought in the next segment. 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 009, 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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