Outsourcing outside the USA

toplay

The following is a quote from the Minister of Communications and Information Technology in India regarding a Ten Point Agenda (5/26/2004):

http://www.mit.gov.in/tenpointagenda.asp wrote:
I shall make all endeavours to make India the world's hub for outsourcing skilled manpower in the IT sector.

I've seen first hand, as I'm sure you have, how jobs have been lost in the US IT sector to outsourcing work to other countries.

Symantec and some other major companies outsource their primary customer technical support to outside the US. Personally so far, I have not had pleasant experiences when trying to get support from companies that outsource outside the US. Either because of their lack of knowledge in the product, the language barrier both verbal and written (side note: endeavors is spelled wrong by US English standards in the quote above), or difference in time zones. US Companies think they're saving money by outsourcing, but I think they're losing customers in the long run.

Bush doesn't seem to be concerned or doing anything about it from what I've been told. Not that I blame the president, but I would think that it would matter to the government. People who loose their high paying IT jobs can't pay bills, can't buy products, will pay less or no taxes, etc. and that will eventually impact various businesses, government, and everyone more and more.

I'm concerned. As a programmer, how can I compete with someone else in another country that's willing to do a PHP script for $5 USD or $5 USD an hour?

I have a friend who went through school and got the highest degree possible in computer science at top honors, and he looked for work for over a year with no success. He gave up looking in the US and took a job teaching in Saudi Arabia.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm happy that other countries can get business from within the US, but I feel it is impacting us here drastically. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area near Silicon Valley.

What are your feelings about the subject? How can we regain and retain IT jobs in the US?

:bemused:

LoganK

I feel it is a growing problem. Not that I'm racist or anything, but what if some of those people over there become hot-headed with ideas of religious wars or jihads? They could wage everything digitally and cripple us because they control our source code.

Ok, really-bad worst-case example. Seriously, this is taking our jobs here. Freelancers are down since the height back in the early part of this century (2000-2002/3), and jobs over there are up. The only way to get a good job in technology over here is now to be a CIO, or manager of the IT staff. And that sucks for us people who actually enjoy writing code, because once you're a CIO, you'll never see another line in your life. Plus even that job isn't stable - many CIOs get fired once their bosses find out they can't do something, although that "something" their bosses want to do is usually very unfeasable.

kakki

LoganK wrote:
They could wage everything digitally and cripple us because they control our source code.

sure, but thats what you get when you hire underpaid programmers.
( i know a guy who ddos'ed his former employer because he thought, that he
hadn't an equal share on the income of the firm )

i worked for a firm, which outsourced the programming and then ( 6 months later )
quitted that, 'cause no one could really work with the source they sent back from
india.

the second big thing is that you need trust to form an "enterprise" across
continents - if you're programming opensource, you cannot have the feeling
of a rip-off because you share the code freely.
( what happens, if your super-cheap-programming-"farm" sells 'your' source-code
to some crackers or competing enterprises - OR you can buy competing firms
new "product" - 6 month in advance - to estimate their new market-share??? )

i think that if you want to compete with 'outsourcing' firms you have to be better
than them ..... which could be:
- native language on telephone calls( english is a foreign language for me, so i
don't fear the programmers from india )
- prompt programming time
- credibility ( you'll handle the biz like a professional and not like a child )

Merve

I think outsourcing is a huge issue for Americans, not so much for Canadians, since a lot of US jobs have been outsourced to Canada. Just look at the number of call centres in New Brunswick.

I must say that while people in Indian call centres may not a lot about the products and are just good at fast databse lookups, they are very knowledgeable of the English language, perhaps even more so than Americans. They actually learn grammar and things like that (how many of you can say that you actually learnt much grammar beyond different parts of speech?), the difference being that they learn British English, which is very different from American English in its vocabulary and sometimes differs in its spellings. In fact, English is one of India's official languages.
So are the people who work at Indian call centres less knowledgeable about the products? Of course! They're hired because they can type quickly in a search box! Are they bad at English? Of course not! For many, it is a second language, but they know it quite well nonetheless, having learnt it in school. The best related example I can think of is taking French Immersion in school, but it's hard for Americans to relate to that...

On a different note though, I think that the reason Americans are so worried about this is that they think that they will not get the service they require when phoning these call centres. I tend to agree on this point. These people are not experts on the products that they are supposed to help you fix.

One trick these employees have managed to pull off is that they use a regular American name like Sally, Thomas, or John. This is supposed to make people think that they are phoning within the country. It doesn't really work as sometimes they are quite bad at masking their Indian accents. But when an Indian person phones in to them, they immediately drop their fake North American accents and use their real names...I'm sorry, but I'd rather talk to some white guy who actually knows about the product.

On the whole, I believe that outsourcing is very good for the economies of countries such as India, but it is bad for North American customers in that they do not get the service they deserve. I don't think that there is any sort of language barrier between the customer and the person answering the phone. It's just that that person isn't really helping you; their computer is.

BuzzLY

No language barriers??? Are you serious? I work with MANY people from India in my company, and although they know the English language, many of them still have very heavy Indian accents, and are very hard to understand. To top that off, as you said, they learned and speak British English, and when you combine that with a thick accent, they become almost impossible to understand at times.

That is not the main problem, though. They crank their people through schooling so fast, that many of them don't have the proper education and experience required to work on code. We end up having to go through their changes to make sure it works correctly. Many times, we are required to send them work that would take us 30 minutes to write. It takes them 3 days to write the same code, test it, etc. So even though we're paying them less than our in-house programmers, it still costs more to get that code done. And it's 3 days late.

Outsourcing may occasionally have its place. For the most part, however, it is a very bad thing.

piersk

It's a very real problem over here in the UK, both in the IT industry, but also in the customer service industry, and it's going to grow much much worse with VOIP becoming more and more popular.

The issue is that it's so goddamn cheap to employ people in India. For example, I know of someone who found that it was cheaper to employ a team of 10 people over there and fly from the UK to India on a sunday night and come back on friday night, including all hotel bills than it was to employ 10 people in the UK and work and live over here.

I'd like to see what jayant has to say about this...

This t shirt always amuses me

Roger_Ramjet

Well I've read some xenophobic crap in my time but some of yours take the biscuit.

Logan, once again we come to whose spelling is the correct one?? Indians do of course learn and use British spellings, so 'endeavours' is spelled correctly for all native english speakers except you yanks: Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, South Africans, and Indians to name but a few countries that share the OED as the arbiter of correct spelling. Add all the Germans, French, Italians etc who use english for trade and commerce to that list.

For about 10% of the indian population English is their first language at home (that's 100million people), but they generally speak another 2 or 3 to get around. Any educated middle-class family will send it's children to an English-medium school even if english is not their first language.

All of the people employed in indian call centres will have a good degree - can US call-centers claim the same?

Most of the tech support bods I find here in the UK are tossers with a bad attitude and contempt for their callers. They think the little they know is all there is to know: and they are only reading from a script or the company's FAQ. If I'm calling tech-support it's cos I've tried all the things these wankers are going to suggest and now I want to speak to a real specialist. Usually takes me 3 or 4 calls before I do. I phoned McAffee's tech line one night cos I had a real virus problem, guy in India was excellent and we resolved it with 1 call and 3 emails. It had to be India cos they shut the UK office at 6pm, but I had to fix my LAN by 9am!!

The USA has NO official language. That is why the attempts in California and other southern states to impose one failed on constitutional grounds. For large sectors of your population, english is not their first language at home, or work.

The problems you experience with indian call centres are mostly cultural, they have markedly different attitudes to authority and hierachy. We have the same problems with them. But they are learning fast. Firms in the UK that outsourced to India are now re-employing some of the staff they sacked and sending them out to india to teach them how to do it our way.

Yes, it's a nightmare that I've known about for 10 years. How can I compete with someone who can live an upper-middle class life on £5K a year. That means servants, private education for the kids, wife don't work, car, house etc. That was what Sun microsystems were offering for a software engineer with a top degree and 5 years experience the last time I was out there.

The answer is to find a role that can't be done from out there.

LoganK

Roger - it was toplay who mentioned "endeavors" not me...

😃

Roger_Ramjet

Whoops, sorry! [me bad]

But you still can't spell it!! Gagh :rolleyes:

BuzzLY

So... the answer to the problem of others "taking our jobs" is to find a job that they can't take? Yep... that's what I dreamed of when I was a kid: "when I grow up, I want to be an American worker doing a job that can't be taken over by outsourcing."

Weedpacket

At least some people in the U.S. know how to spell Endeavour 😃 Perhaps later on they'll get the hang of International units as well as spelling.

Roger_Ramjet

Nice one Weeds 🙂

It's probably cos all NASA's top engineers and scientists are European born and educated :p

toplay

Thank you all for sharing your opinions.

LoganK, I once was an IT Manager and there was too much politics for me. I prefer coding.

kakki, I think there's great talent everywhere, however, I personally have found that the talent in-house has actually been better than what the outsourced company can provide.

I think that when a company considers outsourcing, they consider a lot of things, but I believe in the end it comes down to how much money they think it will save them. So, they can bring their budget down and look good to upper management. One of the major US Banks I worked for (and I'm not going to name them) expected their managers to be within 2% of their forecasted budget. Now, that's tight and leaves no room for error.

Merve, I haven't come across Indian support personnel using simple names like John. My last support person was Audhesh Jaiswal. Unfortunately, I have not gotten the same good service that I was accustomed to (prior to outsourcing). It sounds like others have though like Roger Ramjet.

BuzzLY, my experiences have been exactly like yours sorry to say. I understand and agree with all your remarks.

piersk, yes that's my point about the cheap labor. How do you compete with that? I think that some employers forget to look at quality, and time and just look at the cost. Of course there's also great quality work coming from outside the US too.

Roger Ramjet, it's not about whose spelling is the correct one or whether you think the USA has no official language. I was raised in London. I know how the darn word is spelled on both continents. I was glad to learn and conform to the way certain words are spelled here out of respect for the country I'm in.

I'm glad to see that you've had good experiences dealing with McAffee's tech. support. My experiences haven't been that great with other companies.

I'm also aware about outsourcing for a long time now too. In the mid to late 1980's while working for a big well known US computer company, I was shocked that they decided to outsource their whole entire computer data center. It was a nightmare and internal clients were dissatisfied. The outsourcing company was billing for every little thing, right down to how many sheets of report paper was consumed. It ended up costing the company more to outsource (but they initially thought it would be cheaper). I can't remember, but I believe the VP of IT was fired shortly after that fiasco. Boy, that brings back memories.

There are non-technical customer service jobs in the US requiring a college degree. I've seen a drastic shift in US employers hiring and work attitude. In general, I see US employers seek 4 year college degrees as a must in most cases, a background check, a credit check, a drug screen, writing samples, code samples (for technical positions), references, plus maybe various other tests related to the position you're applying for. Then they pay less than a couple of years ago (despite inflation), expect you to do three people's jobs, and you're expected to be happy that you're getting paid and have a job. Yearly raises are about 3% of annual salary. It maybe that way in the UK now too, but I'm just sharing that it's changed in the US because it wasn't that way before.

I like BuzzLY's reply to your "...can't be done from out there.".

Weedpacket, that's a cute find!

I visited India in '94 and love the culture and the people. I don't mean this topic to be an attack on Indian nationals.

All I can see the US government doing if they got involved, is maybe do some sort of tax break to companies for retaining a certain percentage of US workers.

I know there's good talent in the US and it seems to me that some US employers don't want to put out the money for experienced talent anymore. They now prefer young recent college grads that are willing to do the same job for little pay. As these college grads gain in wisdom and experience, they could cost their employer lots of money due to bugs. A well established developer can save the company money, but they don't really see it that way anymore.

I'm writing this early in the morning and half asleep. I'm off to bed.

🙂

Weedpacket

BuzzLY wrote:
that's what I dreamed of when I was a kid

I'd say what I wanted to be, but it was all outsourced to the US.

BuzzLY

What? Did you want to be an American? A U.S. Senator? President of the U.S? 😃

LoganK

Roger Ramjet wrote:
But you still can't spell it!! Gagh :rolleyes:

Endeavor, Endeavor, Endeavor, Endeavor, Endeavor, Endeavor, Endeavor, Endeavor, Endeavor, Endeavor!

I agree with toplay's post - although I wasn't born over in England/Europe, if I were to go there, I'd speak/spell with more of their traditions out of respect for them.

Weedpacket - what possible job over there could've been outsourced to the U.S.?

pohopo

5-6 years ago everyone predicted a mass exodus of high paying programming jobs to other countries. Though some have moved, it has not been near as big as people thought. And some of those that did try it out decided that it is best to keep the programming here.

IMHO, the biggest reason high paying programming jobs are going down is not because of outsourcing, but because we do not have the major shortages of technology people we had in the late 90s and early 2000s. During the dot com era you had kids running things because there was no one else. Many of which were getting paid much more then they are worth. I believe now the tech world has normalized and we are seeing incomes that reflect this.

Merve

BuzzLY wrote:
No language barriers??? Are you serious? I work with MANY people from India in my company, and although they know the English language, many of them still have very heavy Indian accents, and are very hard to understand. To top that off, as you said, they learned and speak British English, and when you combine that with a thick accent, they become almost impossible to understand at times.

Buzz, to me it's no problem because I understand the accent, me being of Indian origin, but it might be hard to understand for others. I don't know.

I think the main problem with call centres is that they are not run by the company but the work is contracted out to people who are not experts about the company's products. You will the get the same results if your call is routed to a call centre in New Brunswick or a call centre in New Delhi.

In my opinion, we can't really say that Indian IT workers are less educated than American ones. They are expected to have the same level of university education as American IT workers.

Maybe I can see this issue in a more positive light because: a)I'm a Canadian of Indian origin and b)I'm still a highschool student. Then again, it's taking away other people's jobs. And that's bad news.

toplay

LoganK, good one. See, you showed them that you can spell!

pohopo, that's a very good point. It is extremely competitive now in the IT sector. There's lots of people in it now.

Merve, ahh! that's why it's easier for you to understand British Indian accents. Yes, Indian IT workers could certainly have as much education as Americans. The coding skills between the two may be debatable though.

Weedpacket wrote:
At least some people in the U.S. know how to spell Endeavour...

I was going to say it earlier and I forgot: Maybe the French made that too! 😃 😃

😉

LoganK

toplay wrote:
LoganK, good one. See, you showed them that you can spell!

Thanks! Now I know one British person who thinks one American (me!) can spell right!