Courting Controversy

MAY 09, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Within minutes after my Q&A with Gerald Cohen was posted on our Web site last week QuickLink 54143, the e-mails started pouring in. The founder and CEO of business intelligence software vendor Information Builders had certainly stirred some emotions with his comments against offshore outsourcing and lifting the H-1B visa cap.

"Congratulations for letting someone tell it like it is! Gerald Cohen deserves a medal," cheered one reader. "This guy is an American hero for sticking to his guns and bucking the popular trends," gushed another. A third had quite a different view: "Mr. Cohen is not only wrong, but also foolish," he grumbled.

When you get polar opposite reactions to what you've said, you know you've said something worthwhile. That Cohen is worth listening to stems from the simple fact that he doesn't avoid controversy. In fact, he appears to relish it.

He didn't seem particularly thrilled to discuss the delay of his flagship WebFocus 7 product (it's now expected to ship "a month or two" late, sometime this summer), but other than that, he was as candid as they come. Cohen was perfectly willing to chime in, for example, on the recent troubles at Siebel Systems. ("It's an unpleasant company to work for. ... The remarkable thing about Siebel is they survived.")

Cohen's most colorful comments, by far, came during our discussion of the offshore outsourcing and H-1B issues. He said he doesn't buy the argument about outsourcing to India as a means of getting a foothold in that market. ("What are you selling in India? Zilch.") And he scoffed at Bill Gates' recent statements about there being a need to get rid of the H-1B visa cap. ("He's full of it.")

I love a good sound bite as much as the next interviewer, but what I appreciated even more was Cohen's candor with respect to the dilemma he faces over what he has to do to keep his own company profitable. As chairman of the New York Software Industry buttociation, Cohen is obliged to champion the cause of keeping IT jobs in the U.S. -- he's clearly an advocate for restricting H-1B visas and for avoiding offshore outsourcing. But he acknowledged that Information Builders sends "the routine kind of quality butturance work" offshore. "I can get things done cheaper in Moscow than I can in New York City," Cohen said.

Still, he didn't shy away from the fact that "a lot of these jobs that go overseas are the spawning grounds for future jobs." QA work has traditionally blazed a career path to programming and ultimately to more advanced software design, so sending it offshore damages the employment ecosystem. "The whole industry's going to move offshore," Cohen lamented.

So, what's the answer? Cohen doesn't pretend to have it. "I have no solution for how we're going to throttle this in some way," he said,

But you know what? At least he's willing to talk about it, and to do so with candor and humility. I don't know that there's much more we can ask for. What's unfortunate is that so few people are willing to even discuss the topic on the record because they're afraid of being judged in the court of public opinion.

I don't know whether Cohen is an American hero who deserves a medal, but I do know he's not foolish. What's foolish is thinking you can be a respected leader without being willing to speak your mind.