Into Thin Air

It was Saddam Hussein who broke the news to Myra Bronstein that her job was gone forever.

A 48-year-old senior engineer at WatchMark Corp., a Bellevue, Washington, software company, Bronstein had spent three years running tests and hunting for bugs in the company's software. She knew that things weren't going so well at work; she'd been asked to pull 12- to 18-hour shifts frequently, her boss reiterating that the company's success depended on her "hard work and efforts." So when Bronstein received a brusque email in March 2003 instructing her to come to a 10 a.m. meeting in the boardroom the next day, she began to worry. "No way can that be good," she thought.

Looking for guidance, Bronstein logged on to a Yahoo users' group for WatchMark employees. And there it was, in a post written by "Saddam Hussein": "Here's what's going to happen tomorrow," Bronstein remembers the post read. "For all the quality assurance engineers reading this, your jobs are gone." At that very moment, it said, their replacements were on their way here from India for training. It listed their names, then concluded with sadistic glee: "Make sure on Monday you welcome your replacements with open arms, because your company has chosen them over you."

Bronstein says she felt an icy chill. "It's a feeling of horror and panic because there's nothing to be done," she says. "Saddam Hussein's" intelligence proved absolutely right. The next morning, a Friday, Bronstein and some 60 others were told that they were being terminated. Some left immediately; others, like Bronstein, were asked to stay on for several weeks to train the new folks. "Our severance and unemployment were contingent on training the replacements," she says. "It was quite explicit." WatchMark's new CEO, John Hansen, says an additional payment beyond the severance was offered to those who stayed on.

And so the next week, Bronstein walked into a room to find her old coworkers on one side and the new group from India on the other. "It was like a sock hop where everyone's lined up against the wall blinking at each other," she says. "People were trying not to cry." In an attempt to lighten the mood, her boss said she would like to introduce the old staff to the new staff, while the VP of engineering chimed in with familiar words. "We're depending on you to help this company succeed," he said. Bronstein spent the next four weeks training her two replacements who then went back to India--two people whose lives were suddenly bettered in exchange for one whose life had taken an unexpected turn for the worse.

Since leaving WatchMark (now called WatchMark-Comnitel), Bronstein, who made $76,500 plus bonus, has been out of work, making ends meet with unemployment and by cashing out her 401(k). With both of those gone, she's turned to selling her collection of antique women's compacts on eBay. "It's the difference between hopeful and hopeless," she says. "If you're just laid off, you can tell yourself that the economy swings back and forth, but if it's outsourced offshore, it ain't coming back. It still exists, but it just exists in another place. The IT industry in the United States has gone from being a very high-level, well-paying industry to being very low-paying sweatshop labor, and that's an inexorable trend."

Bronstein's story is increasingly common in a global economy where labor is crossing borders almost as freely as capital. Starting decades ago with low-skilled manufacturing jobs in basic industries, followed by textiles, cars, semiconductors, and now, services, the nimbleness of the world's economy has allowed us to reduce costs by moving production to wherever it's least expensive. The benefits to our economy--in increased productivity, lower prices, and greater demand for American products--are touted by corporate America as the only way to remain competitive. "This is the next iteration of the global economy," says Atul Vashistha, CEO of neoIT, an offshore advisory firm. "The story is what would happen to these companies if they did not go offshore."