This is just an beyond the pale stupid report. Microsoft is literally offshore outsourcing it's own, internal, for it's employees, tech support.

From Economy in Crisis:

U.S. software developing giant Microsoft Corp. announced on Tuesday that it had struck a three year deal with Indian outsourcing company Infosys Technologies to provide technology and support services for the Seattle-based company.

The deal, the terms of which are undisclosed, but believed to be valued at over $100 million, will allow Infosys to take the reins on internal IT services in 450 locations in 104 countries.

Infosys will provide global internal IT services including helpdesk, desk-side services, IT infrastructure and applications support.

So, while they make the products, if the employees don't know how to use them, then they must dial 1-800-Bangalore, talk to some cheap labor, steal-a-job, and ask how to use the products the corporation they work for, made.

“If someone at Microsoft can’t figure out how to do a pivot table in Excel,” The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Wingfield writes, “they can now get the answer a few continents away from an Infosys employee instead of from someone next door who actually helped make Excel.”

I don't know anyone making $175k a year, even in advanced R&D, so where these salary figures are quoted by The Seattle Times must be from some sort of fantasy land propaganda report they are reading.

Obviously the motivation is to do yet another financial giveaway to Infosys. Lord knows they can't do anything that makes common sense or is in the long term interests of U.S. workers or even Microsoft employees world wide.