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Offshore Outsourcing Threatens Offshore Outsourcing
theodp writes "India offshore tech support companies may soon face job losses as U.S. companies such as IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and PeopleSoft explore countries with even cheaper sources of technical labor, including Romania, Russia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Concerned that outsourcing might be outsourced from India in the near future, a Bangalore call center owner said 'It's hard to know where it will all end. Is there a country where people will work for free?'" There's a Newsforge story about the same subject.
Then a few years later, along comes NAFTA and now Mexico offers lower taxes, lower wages, and fewer regulatory burdens. So the companies pick up and move south of the Rio Grande, and these Southern cities are shocked that these companies have no loyalty to their new Southern US homes.
In a race to the bottom, no one wins but the few at the top.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Dumbass.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Um, your argument is totally retarded. I can understand that people make similar decisions. I'm fine with that. But people are still ACCOUNTABLE for their actions, and you seem to totally IGNORE that. If I go murder someone, I can't say "oh, anyone would have done it, just let me go, buh bye". It doesn't work that way. When these corp boards decide to fire their american workers and go offshore, those are AMERICAN LIVES they are ruining, and I want them held accountable for it. I recently read a story about Kevin Flanagan's suicide after being forced to train his foreign replacement at Bank of America. I only wish he could have taken out the people responsible for that decision. Well, FIRST I wish they never had MADE that decision, but since they went and did the evil thing, I wish they were dead too.
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Here's a link to the story about Kevin Flanagan
http://www.cwalocal4250.org/outsourcing
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
I used to work telephone technical support, and I know from experience that it is EXTREMELY difficult to troubleshoot problems over the phone. It's both dificult and frustrating.
I've grown out of the telephone tech support many years ago and now I'm an occasional user of it. I tell you there is nothing that compounds the frustration and anger of having to troubleshoot over the phone than having a language barrier.
I can't tell you the number of times that I've gotten someone who speaks broken english, or whose english skills are barely adequate - and I wind up "talking too fast" for them to understand. This is not to mention the cultural differences.
Companies like IBM and the like will soon find that customers will start avoiding their products & their company in general because their tech support is considered "Rude" or just plain difficult to understand / talk to.
Getting cheaper labor does not mean that you'll ever be able to match the quality of work/support you can get from another Red Blooded [North] American.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I am Apu's screaming child who cannot eat because someone from a central-asian ex-soviet "republic" can do my job for 5 cents an hour cheaper.
A firm's goal is to maximize profit. This cannot be done at the most efficient levels if money is paid with regard to social justice. Yes, we all have different assumptions on what social justice is. Regardless, I don't think that anyone should have to work 12 hours a day building many items that are worth more than a year's wage only to come home to high infant morality rates, a mud hut and malaria. Mod me as troll if you wish, but fuck everyone who thinks that poor-ass countries should stay poor in order to continue our unsustainable lifestyles.