My employer will shed 1,500 IT jobs here over next three years

[ziggy29]

If they brought those profits home, there's no guarantee they'd invest in jobs here.

All you have to do is look at the unprecedented pile of cash they are sitting on (collectively). That they would rather sit on a record amount of cash earning 1% than either reinvest in the business *or* pay out dividends with it gives you a good idea of what many corporations would do if they given additional tax breaks. (Hint: It wouldn't be "distribute to shareholders" or "hang the help wanted sign".)

 

[explanade]

So you would think they could attach specific conditions, like you get a tax credit for each $ you spend of repatriated funds on new jobs or capital outlays.

More R&D credits (or do they already have those in place?) and so on.

Didn't politicians say they would eliminate the tax breaks or advantages for offshoring companies? You'd think there would be some kind of incentives for creating jobs but those are usually at the state level.

 

[BigNick]

Good question. When I started in the field around 1980 it was called Data Processing. I worked as a low level software coder for a government agency (GCOS anyone?) Right around '86 the field became known as Management Information Systems. Some time later just plain old Information Systems -- proving that management was clueless anyway. Sometime around 2000 it became IT (Information Technology).

I always thought Americans referred to IS (Information Systems), or MIS, or DP. Some time in the early 2000s I discovered that they had apparently imported the term IT from Europe, rather to my surprise.

 

[CoolChange]

I always thought Americans referred to IS (Information Systems), or MIS, or DP. Some time in the early 2000s I discovered that they had apparently imported the term IT from Europe, rather to my surprise.

It may have as much to do with age as location.

I have been in pretty much the same industries (mostly manufacturing and transportation, some telecom) serving the same business function (at various levels of responsibility) for over 25 years. When I started, you could tell who the old guys were because they still referred to the department/function as Data Processing (DP) rather than MIS or IS. Then it changed to IT; now, some engineers (of the software variety, QA variety, etc.) are offended by being called IT reserving that for the folks running network cables and installing operating systems on desktops, etc. So, I now have software engineers, quality engineers, etc. working for me as well as an IT group.

To address the OP: At least many of the jobs being lost in Seattle are moving across the country rather than accross the globe. This should give some employees a chance for relocation if needed/desired. (I have had entirely too much exposure to the other kind of outsourcing, an ocean and many time zones away, over the years as well and have never seen it work as well as advertised for anyone involved.)