A Whole New Mind

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Its interesting seeing how people are watching a lot of our jobs head overseas to be done by people who will do it cheaper, and for less money, yet we still complain when our products then don't work as well. It seems that as much as people get caught up in the "modern" world of economy, and business, that there are still some of the same ole' problems that will begin popping up again.

My dad works for an electronics company designing parts for medical equipment. Some of the manufacturing has been moved overseas. There's been loads of problems. The internet might make it easier to have a video conference call. But it doesn't help a 7-8 hour time difference. Sending some of the testing equipment overseas is taking weeks longer then expected getting it to pass through customs and be shipped, etc. Some of the engineers working in the design part of the plant aren't all that fluid in English, and there's been problems understanding their reports. Not all of the engineers are as well trained about the importance of procedure and that one small undocumented change can ruin everything else down the line. Just because it seems cheaper upfront doesn't mean its cheaper down the line.

Maybe we'll be in a position to have better-looking products, but they might not be working as well. Other people may be able to do it faster and cheaper, but not better. Its just like GM being "In the Art Business." As the economy gets tight, people are going to look for cars that are affordable, reliable, and well-designed. GM might be affordable now, but their not particularly well-styled, and their reliability isn't great either. Look at GMs sales now; They're hurting. Badly. People want reliable cars, and Honda and Toyota are easily filling that market. (Hondas are statistically the most reliable cars out there. My family own two of them.) And Hondas and Toyotas have the styling inside and out that people want. GM can't just change the outside of their car and expect their sales to go up.

But changing a cars design isn't just about having an artist or a right-brained person do some drawing on paper. There's a left-brained person somewhere who's gotta create a template for the sheet metal to be rolled, to re-tool the robot that assembles the car, even an engineer who has to look at re-designing something as simple as the little switch that rolls the window up/down.

Honda and Toyota aren't doing better because they're "art" companies. They're doing better because they have good engineers who know how to design each and every aspect of their cars. They know that what their designers say is just as important as what their engineers say. I'd rather see GM start to act like a "Car" company again, and maybe they'd get a product that actually worked and lasted.

This whole left-brain right-brain debate is very silly in a lot of ways. I'm typing this blog post on Google Blogger. Someone very left-brained wrote the code that this page is running right now to type this post. Someone else wrote the code that the internet browser runs on that lets me connect with the program on Googles server to write this blog. As demand for more new media stuff goes up (like web 2.0 and other interactive web elements), so will the demand for left-brained people to write the code that powers it. You can see the same thing with out HTML projects. You used to HAVE to know HTML to do a webpage; Take a blog for example. Years ago, each entry would be a new page, with a new link, etc., etc. These days you can code a beautiful website with Blogger, point-and-click only - no HTML required. It helps to know HTML, but its not required. But getting to this point took thousands upon thousands of lines of other code so that we don't need to do the HTML ourselves anymore.

The need for left-brained people is there, its just behind the scenes more then it has been in the past. Sooner or later we're going to have a situation where all the engineers are outsourced to other countries - then what are all of us right-brained design people supposed to do? How long will we tollerate midnight conference calls discussing minor design changes to a final product? How long until they try and export us right-brained people too?