Slashdot Mirror
IBM Snags Leading Indian Outsourcing Firm
theodp writes "In one of the biggest foreign acquisitions in India in the past few years, according to ZDNet, IBM will pay an estimated $150-$200 million to acquire Daksh, India's third-largest back-office services company. The deal will give IBM access to privately held Daksh's 6,000 employees, who mainly offer call center services to 13 clients, including Amazon.com."
A guy from Microsoft, a guy from Apple, and a guy from Sun are at a conference. During a break they all go to the restroom to take a leak.
After they finish, the Microsoft guy washes his hands, takes a whole bunch of paper towels and dries his hands REALLY well. He turns to the others and says,
"At Microsoft, we have to be thorough."
The Apple guy then goes to wash his hands and takes a single paper towel and dries his hands perfectly with it. He smugly says,
"At Apple, we have to be thorough AND efficient."
The Sun guy just walks straight out the door without even washing.
"At Sun, we don't piss on our hands."
I heard Slashdot is going to start outsourcing Anonymous Coward comments to India. Is this true? Will I be out of work?
American Anonymous Coward
If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.
In related news, Daksh announced that it would be closing its domestic operations and laying off 5,500 Indian workers, in favor of opening offices overseas, in the developing world. Offices in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo), Pitcairn Island (South Pacific), Ashgabat (Turkmenistan) and Hickory-Flat (Mississippi, USA) are planned.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
IBM Snags Leading Indian Outsourcing Firm
Just don't call it Leading INDian OutSourcing" and everything will be fine.
I wonder if this will result in more layoffs from the company that once boasted it would never do so. How times change.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Remember, IBM never gets into a business that others haven't already proven profitable.
...are made out of PEOPLE! Soon they'll be breeding us like Amigas.
So now that IBM has bought them...is it still considered outsourcing?
up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...
I've talked to some of these call center operators. I was trying to activate one of my credit cards (the automated activation wasn't working I guess), and when I was done, they asked me a few marketing questions. They wanted me to add payment protection and some other insurance options. I said that I would like to wave those options. He seemed confused by my response, and asked what I meant by waving those options. Clearly, this was not one of the responses they had been trained to deal with.
So if you're disgusted by the practice of outsourcing, make your dialog with people you suspect as being an outsourced employee as complicated or colloquial as possible.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
I hear the voices of 6,000 worried Indians, afraid that their jobs might be sent to the US because they were bought out by an American company.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
"We're not 'outsourcing', they are an internal company."
Even though the actual results WRT jobs/people will still be the same.
I remember seeing an IBM ad during the NCAA Championships touting "IBM will do you HR for you so you can focus on your company" or some jive like that. Combine this with today's activities and you get a company that will do your little dirty deed for you, so your company doesn't look bad.
Just my $.02
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
It's comforting to know that, whenever one of these whiny self-centered outsourcing articles is posted here, some Slashdotter in India is going "Ha Ha!"
P.S. No hyphen in Hickory Flat.
Secessionistically, Joe Bob Bubba Earl Senior VP for Information Technology
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
I understand, this is how capitalism works, and this is saving so many businesses - and probably creating a lot of jobs somewhere else. I still get quite scared by it though. Its probably just my instinct as a human to try to preserve what I already have. I mean - yeah it should be a fair world and everyone deserves a piece of the pie, And I have no more right to work than anyone anywhere else - But the idea of going from the income that I barely get by on to a wage one third of what it is now, just to compete with someone who has never experienced indoor plumbing or a room of their own terrifies me.
I understand that i have no right to the lifestyle I live now (and its not extravagant by any western standard... but I've grown quite used to it). I fear the future if even the higher skilled jobs, like IT, become minimum wage - or worse.
Linux good, outsource baddddd!
What's the difference? Neither are run by Americans...
Does anyone work for an IBM call center in the U.S.? If so, what kind of severance package are you expecting?
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
This is good for IBM we kinda.
i bought allot of IBM stock about 3 months ago with the notion that they were about to split, since then its been heart atack city.
i hope the stock splits now.
I cant figure out what any logical person could have against outsourcing.
Yeah I know abt the diminshing jobs in the IT sector (And I guess I am writing this since I dont work in the It sector).
After all if IBM can get something done for a fraction of the price in the US why wouldnt or shouldnt they go for it.
This is not Soviet Russia you know
Hrmm how many times do you think the answer to a question is going to be... well thats because (vendor) has a problem with (X)... you should buy the IBM (model) Do I sense a IBM storage solution for amazon in the future? -zr
I got a bunch of fuckin Mexicans playin' around the fuckin roof slappin each other around with hot mops and firing each other off onto the lawn. I've had it with this shit.
I wish the friggin contractors next door would hire people that don't work 14 hours a day and 7 days a week so I could actually have some peace and quiet. You know, people that appreciate a good ole American 40 hour work week.
I love calling for help or with a problem and having to call back ten time until I can find someone that speakes "american english".
You know what the big thing now is... setting the volumn really low on there phones so you can't hear then and have to hang up.
It seems to me that IBM may be doing this not for the sole reason to outsource, but to gain market share outside the US in terms of government contracts. The Indian Government is fiercely isolationist when it comes to contracting out IT and other services, and IBM acquiring Daksh may just get their foot in the door.
------
Amadaeus
The last bastion of Mathie-ism
Daksh is an early mover in a sector that is thriving by tapping India's English-speaking workers to provide services such as accounting and insurance claims processing to foreign customers looking for low-cost outsourcing.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be an investment rather than a direct acquisition.
In other words, these 6,000 employees wouldn't be taking tech jobs from the U.S.
When its hot outside and your hemmoroids are even hotter,
just look to the cool relief of Preparation-H
to get you on your way.
Go find me an American company that has 6000 people and you can pay $150Mil for.
They're getting people for $25k a pop.
(ok, $33k if they get $200Mil, still a BARGAIN)
You insensitive clod !!! you dont care about non-Americans do you ( By the way do they really exist or is it all SCO propoganda)
Life is a bitch, she can reward you one day and ditch you the other day.
You serve your company, your wallet, your country, your familiy then your god.
Bascially no one person is more important then the organisation.
Of course if IBM had bought a similarly staffed US or European company, it would have cost 5 times more.
*rimshot*
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What happens when India starts to outsource? I see all those screaming people dismembering Americans on CNN, and I wonder what will happen when my 401k information gets put into their hands...
Maybe English isn't your first language either?
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
Is IBM going to lay off those 6000 employees and outsource the work to Guatemala?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Lots of Indian firms are outsourcing to China, for the same reason that US firms outsource to India. And the Indian workers being replaced are just as upset as American workers.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
So what's this Outsourcing thing about? Is it good or is it whack?
Backoffice outsourcing = call centers. Where i work, the customer support center has a 40% turnover rate...and they are entirely in the US. This isn't Information technology. What's more important is who's writing the software the call center reps use?
Daksh is one of the biggest call center operations company in India. It was an early mover and has built up a significant repository of top clients in US. Infact there is an army of employees working for them and you can see many of their ads in the local newspapers every week for hiring new people. Interesting fact is that Citigroup and General Atlantic Partners and Actis hold 2/3rd of the equity in the company. This deal is going to make the Chief Executive and some employees in Daksh and the equity companies millionaire's overnight. Infact they recently opened a center in Philippines so it gives IBM the foot print in India as well as Philippines. IBM snatched a big one here!
I have a -very- smart friend who works in the bowels of IBM: The top management may be back slapping each other about how they're doing financially right now but, they're bleeding talent badly and they don't realize how badly they're actually harming the company's long term prospects (some would say, "don't care"). The capable tech folks left at IBM are as bummed as any of us about outsourcing in general but they're also pretty unhappy with the low quality of the "results" that they're getting from "teams" in India -and- China (not to mention the viruses). We have yet to see what the actual IBM customers will think of all of this but it doesn't yet look like it's going to make for better products.
Of course he could have assumed, by your bizarre american accent and through the audio quality limitations of the phone that, rather than waive those options you would like to have them. Yay! More fun for you when you blow your stack trying to get it sorted out over the phone...
Reference to old gag.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Right?
Jeoin
I'm waiting for the first company to make the claim "We're an American company using all American workers and keeping our money and jobs in America."
Bet they'd clean up. They'd get my business and a hell of a lot of others like me.
In the interim, I just patronize smaller businesses that are all-American (local credit union instead of giant bank, drive a Ford with 90% domestic content, etc).
So they bought a portapotty and all the logs of shit that came with it.
And this is "News for Nerds" because???
RedHat's outsourced already, noone ever mentions it here because you cant deride the almighty linux vendors.
You need to pay more attention! Open season has been declared on Redhat since they killed their desktop distro. Deride away!
Well in looking at the numbers in the various articles IBM has 9K currently in India, now another 6K and a couple months ago annouced they will be outsourcing 4.6K current U.S. jobs to India. They might as well change their name. Also note their latest ad's on TV for IBM HR services. Guess they have the most experience at dumping US citizens and moving the jobs overseas.
Guess Bush and his CEO cronnies are to short sighted to realize in the long run they are gutting middle America. Whose going to buy all the products when middle America is unemployed. Unemployed people don't pay taxes, there goes the bulk of the tax base.
Then the security issues when corporate America's date is now being accessed all over the world.
Very ironic, considering that the Indians are attacking US Federal and State Government measures to limit outsourcing to Americans!
Since Wipro has a big pressence in the US, I would have thought that that would have been a better match for IBM. This deal just makes it easier for them to sell a canned solution to new customers and to integrate their already offshore costs. If offshore a good term to use or is it "Indian" costs. I'll never know.
Problem is Dakash has a bunch of blue suits in front of them. Ever seen what it's like at Verizon with all of the offshore guys running around? It's like a day in bangalore.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
to this, http://www.ctssar.org/images/benedict_arnold.jpg
I don't care if it's off-topic, it's the best laugh I've had all week!
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I used to work at an American call center awhile back. We were in combination with an Indian call center. I'd get irate customers almost in tears because they just spent an hour on the phone with someone they could barely understand and I'm the first American they could speak to all night. Nothing against Indians, but you can not have people with thick accents working phones. It's bad enough when a southern company's customers have to call the mid-west to try and communicate, it's 10x worse when the person isn't a native english speaker. I've had my share of frustrations lately too. It takes twice as long to get information out of someone you can't understand.
Uh. Hi Eric. Yes, hello. yah ... I'd like my corporate tax breaks back. Um. Yes, the foreign investment credit. No. The foreign investment back. Remeber when IBM used to pay taxes? Yeah, well you can start paying the same 35% of income taxes as I do. What? Hello? Eric? Hello? Corporate America? Hello?
click.
Va faan ! Har du inget hyffs? Hur kan du skriva: Re: Linux ar bast alla andra kan dra o suga kuk
Sug kuk sjalv du !
Med halsning/
Ett Linux fan
India Business Model - At IBM we operate a front so your comapny can export jobs without appearing to do so.
Good. Cost of outsourcing to indian labor goes up with IBM now in the middle to get their slice. Give it time. This will be the trend as well.
I think dealing with automated phone systems designed to cut jobs and 'maximise' service is shit for my personal needs, but I KNOW that dealing with some outsourced call center tends to do even worse, both in terms of getting things done (unless there is a button for it on their GUI you are screwed).
I'll give an example, a friend of mine wanted setting up with Freeserve (don't try this at home kids) and even had a CD, this disc was dated two weeks from the date we installed it (normally I would just generate an account via my browser and transfer the dialup number and pass, without any of the cruft they insist people need, but this time that wasn't possible.
The dialup number on the CD was incorrect, so when it tried to dial into the registration server it wouldn't connect, nice scam to change it every so often and make 'customers' pay 50p per minute for Bangalore support.
So, I duly called the helpline, got connected to Bangalore no doubt. Even after telling them the number didn't connect, all the staff there could / would do would be to either 1: hang up, 2: tell me some shite that was totally unrelated to the connection we were trying to setup (broadband, this was a number given on a dialup CD).
This is the kicker, said I wasn't happy about my friend paying the #3.50 charge that accrued trying to get the right number, they put me through to c ustomer service, again Indians. Hung up on three times, finally they suggested we drive to a store, buy a magazine or get a new cd someother way.
Shit. But if it helps the bottom line, then its cool it seems.
50 year economy runs dry.
Why aren't people waking up to what is happening?
PS, I am not at all trying to be racist or inflammatory with my remarks, just that the guys we spoke to were either totally hopeless or lost without a script.
*Puts down his book on introductory Chinese and sighs...*
Back to the drawing board.
Will someone please explain to me why, if we're running a trade deficit and have been for next to forever, the dollar is still so strong compared to other currencies?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Habeeb: Yes Gupta, how can I be helping you?
Gupta: Habeeb, how do I spell IBM?
I thought for sure that you were being facetious until I realized you didn't post anonymously.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
IBM doesn't hire americans. They hire contractors in amreica.
For any dotters in ATL, IBM Global Services operates the e-commerce wing of the BellSouth building downtown. That was a nice transition.
You used (2003) to be able to call the security desk and say, "Hi, I'm a big bad nerd and I want to see my servers." Show up 20 mins later, they were ready for you.
Nowadays, you call, get transferred to Bangalore, tell them when you want to be there, show up, and get blank stares from security.
Technology Consulting & Free Downloads
"privately held Daksh's 6,000 employees"
is this the latest PC term for 'slaves'?
Almost every night I dream of killing people I don't know and then I have to escape over a river infested with gigantic alligators.
This really bugs me.
Is "skilled" in Hindi and not "alert" as stated in the article. I guess the name itself speaks for the company!
I would like to change the world,
but they won't tell me the source code.
"No one ever got fired for being bought by IBM."
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
You must lead a dull life.
But on the other hand, IBM is outsourcing your job to India.
But maybe there is consistency here. Linux = free software. India = cheap labor. They both help IBM keep their costs down.
Been there. Done that. I worked for IBM in India and in US. And, quality, atleast at my level (developer with usually a stupid architect), was just the same at both places. Except that in India people were ready to put the extra effort. And, capable tech folks are leaving IBM India in hordes, the last I heard. I left IBM because the architects (US folks) were driving me crazy with their 'managerial and technical talent' .
Now, i suppose, we have balance of opinion.
Science as a way of life.
When they finally meet, one is skinny and the other overweight.
The thin one says: "How did you manage? I ate a human just once and they turned out a small army to chase me -- guns, nets, it was terrible. Since then I've been reduced to eating mice, insects, even grass."
The fat one replies: "Well, *I* hid near an IBM office and ate a manager a day. And nobody even noticed!"
See, IBM has had a long tradition of too many chiefs, not enough err... Indians.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Its a sea change from the 80s when IBM was kicked out of India during Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's administration.
To really look beyond the short-term glitter and understand what this might lead up to, you must watch Life & Debt, which chronicles the Jamaican tragedy. Once Jamaica agreed to freetrade & opened up its trade zones, in a short span of few months, its entire native diary industry & banana trade was totally destroyed ( Milkpowder was dumped at dirt-cheap prices, and MNCs like Dole undercut the banana trade by bringing in bananas from Mexico ). There are a lot of pluses to free trade, but unless developing nations like India wield their bargaining power carefully, they will sell out to corporations & lose their autonomy.
But a lot of Indians in the panel felt the American ownership of Indian firms was a good thing, and it could erase some of the anti-outsourcing sentiment prevailing here in the US. Towards the end, the panel discussion got particularly heated up with sharply polarized arguments from both sides. A host of people agreed to talk to us about the "sale of India", as one of them put it.No easy answers to be found on this one.
Anyway, let's boycott IBM ... Can't we?
But IBM outsourcing does byte.
We have yet to see what the actual IBM customers will think of all of this but it doesn't yet look like it's going to make for better products.
It's all par for the course. Every time some new business buzz-concept comes along, every business writer drizzles saliva all over it and writes about how amazingly wonderful it is, and about getting "left behind". Every MBA reads the series of articles, and somewhere over the year of getting this stuff hammering at them, decides that they need to take advantage of the latest and greatest. Inevitably everyone moves at once, which happens too far and too fast, and as a result most of the people moving with the herd come out bloodied and worse off than they started.
Let me start in the late eighties going into the nineties. IT spending was a big thing. Huge amounts of money were directed into IT, lots of people (an unsustainable number, which now screws over all the people having to deal with an oversaturated job market) were hired, incredible amounts of money were blown on completely unnecessary products. Oracle installations and high-end hardware cost *stupid* amounts of money, but people paid it. "Computers" was a buzzword, and to "computers" MBAs flocked. Microsoft got really, really rich.
Then, in the late nineties, "Internet" hit the radar. The government was pushing it as a big commercial deal, economists were enthralled, everyone was convinced that *now* was the time to get in on the ground floor. Business rags raved about the "Internet". Sure enough, stupid amounts of money (unsustainable amounts) were committed. The dot-com boom happened...and then crashed.
Now, in the naughties, "outsourcing" has become insanely popular. If an MBA hasn't considered "outsourcing", he should have a good reason why. So we're going to shove a whole lot of people to various countries, go overboard in doing so, and burn ourselves again.
Whenever the business press catches on to something and starts to get excited, it's a really good time to run in the opposite direction.
May we never see th
what will happen to trailer parks everywhere will now happen to IBM.
The despair calendar has a quote:
"A company that will go to the ends of the earth for its people will find that it can hire them for about 10% of the cost of Americans."
Calendar photo at: www.despair.com/discovery.html
I was working for IBM Canada in the early eighties, and spoke to many fellow employees who had recently come from IBM India.
Apparently, IBM had pulled out of India, because IBM was unwilling to submit to the level of control that the Indian government wanted to exert over the company in those days.
The counter-example is Union Carbide, who put profit ahead of principle, and caved under pressure from the Indian government. Under government order, Union Carvide agreed to replace most of their imported American-trained chemical engineers with local Indian workers who, at that time, had much less training in chemical plant safety. The result, of course, was the Bhopal disaster.
Given that the Indian software industry appears to be flourishing, I speculate that the Indian economy is quite a bit more free than it was 20 or 30 years ago.
Could anyone who lives in India tell me whether that's true?
PLEASE, get me to India! :-)
1. I'm a php programmer, perl, Java, J2ME, blah, blah, blah
2. I'm a native English speaker.
3. I don't eat much!
Seriously, what are my next steps? Where are the jobs? Who do I contact? Do I start out teaching English?
thanks!
Gov't will outlaw outsourcing, sorry IBM.
Seriously, I've heard about a dozen variations of that joke.
Don't you have teh internet?
When will the really good jobs be outsourced?
You know...the Jerry Springer wenches, Girls Gone Wild hostesses or Personal Injury lawyers.
Oh the humanity! We might actually have to use our brains to invent something new to do for a living!
What the fuck are you on about?
Habeeb: Yes Gupta, what is it now?
Gupta: This new dress code is not making me very happy.
Habeeb: What is it that isn't making you not very happy in the new dress code, Gupta?
Gupta: Oh Habeeb, I now have to wear a blue turban instead of a white one.
Habeeb: Oh good gracious Gupta, what are we going to do?
PS. By modding this down, you agree that you are a fag.
When will our nations captains of industry realize that putting every American out of work is not conducive to getting their products sold to Americans!?!?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Now they'll be able to avoid calling it "outsourcing" or (worse) "offshoring", and at the same time make you move to India and take a 90% pay cut -- "it's just a transfer".
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
You said you wanted to "wave those options", when you really wanted to "waive those options". No wonder he was confused.
That's just a follow-up to my last post. If you can actually derirve some kind of formula explaining property rights, or why IBM should be allowed to do whatever they want with their property, I would certainly like to see it. The last time I checked, things such as property rights, freedom of speech, etc., were decided simply because people thought that it would be a good thing to have in a society, not based on some kind of "logical" or mathematical proof. You see, American isn't the kind of country where we simply let people starve and work as slaves for the rich, we're not 3rd world Brazil you know, at least not yet.
so until you are willing to pay a significant premium for the MADE IN USA mantra... drop the act.
Just ask someone spouting off about offshoring whether or not they shop at Walmart, Costco, Target, etc.
Americans can't compete at being cheaper without serious automation. They _can_, however, compete at being smarter or better. That's a tougher fight, less room for error or sympathy for incompetence, so it's more painful.
OTOH, I'm in a field where skillsets can die quite horrible deaths into obsolescence, so I'm used to having to learn constantly.
Maybe working in India isn't all its cracked up to be after all - according to their web site, to work in customer care for Daksh, you have to be between 21-25, and to be a team lead you have to be between 23-27 years old. No age discrimination protection! What happens if you are a customer rep and turn 26? (prolly a moot point, since most of those folks quit after a short tenure). Do they fire you?
You must lead an even duller one to have to respond to his statement.
Doh.
It would be funny, if it were true.
Howeer, Sun has fired almost 15,000 employees in the last three or four years - including about 6,000 currently being fired. Meanwhile, they're actively outsourcing work which does include software development to India.
still the funniest thing I've seen all week. and five folks agreed it was a fine story, it's now at 5 points.
:-D
as for the dull life... what is life? I have heard of it, and would like to get one. is there one downloadable?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
These (the jobs at the place IBM bought) are not high skilled jobs. They are call center jobs, which are essentially as low skill as you can get (at least in the manner in which they do them). One gives a small set of answers to questions based on what the computer says.
Personally, I think that this is kind of silly on IBM's part. Outsourced call centers are one of the worst products available. IBM's main image is of products that are expensive but worth it. This is a product that is cheap and might not be worth it (primary skill needed in an effective help desk employee: communicating; someone in their second language will never be as good at this as someone in their first).
If your Amazon or several others, your board is looking at each other saying, IBM owns our help desk? Of course IBM would never use that leverage to make anyone change their practices or attitude, now would they.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
That reminds me of everyone's favorite game's dreams. Spoilers, but if you don't know already, you probably weren't going to do so:
Well, there was this knife, more aptly described as a broadsword, and I see, well, I was swinging down the street on my way to a movie and this guy, yeah. He was about six foot eight and huge. He was holding this knife, only to me, I would describe it as a broadsword, something from the Knights of the Round. Before he can even open his mouth, he collapses. Meanwhile, I can barely lift a finger to put the toupee back on his glossy head because I'm shaking so much.
He was vomiting and I knew that he was alive because he kept saying something like 'durability' between convulsions. What happened next was really bizarre. Both ends of the street flood with black-suited men, just like in a movie.
These men look tough and pissed off, the eyes behind their sunglasses are probably cold as my hands are getting. I feel like my heart has stopped, I'm so damn scared. As they start to inundate the street in black, they move with one will.
I figure that I'm dead anyway, so I reach down for the blade. The blade is being covered by his vomit, but the hilt is clean. I can hear the men getting excited, but I can't stop. My fingers slide around the leather hilt which is oddly cold...
terminal end
I'm in the same street, and as I reach into my pocket for my keys, my eyes follow the blackened streaks of gum that pock-mark the sidewalk. The man is gone, and someone in sanitation cleaned up the aparitions and vomit in a real hurry. I hurry down the stairs heading for the subway, but my keys aren't in my pocket anymore. I'll have to get in through the side window.
The subway station is very bright and shining from the sanitation team that has been sweeping a swath in front of me. The concrete floor is losing years of tarnish, keeping only the protective layer of the gum streaks which make up constellations in an otherwise vacant sky.
The train arrives right on time, and just ahead of a mass of dark suited men who have been following me for what seems like years now. Between the sanitation and the suits, I must be going colorblind, but the train is here now, and those men, no, they won't catch me...
terminal end
and
Seven hundred and sixty one armless and legless corpses float inconspicuously around the inside of hangar ninety six. I say that they are inconspicuous because it is their arms and legs which demand my attention. I did this, or I could have stopped it. Which is it? It doesn't matter now. I did this and could have stopped it, but nothing in nature ever follows a gaussian curve. Sure, they'll tell you that it does. They say that every five minutes someone dies in a car accident, but how often are there seven hundred and sixty one armless and legless corpses in one hangar?
May we never see th
> Time to nuke the fuck out of India.
Well, if it were true that America attacks countries for purely economic reasons, then I guess you would see that happen.
Just as you would have seen America attack Japan in the eighties.
Fortunately, it's not true.
Are these Indian workers really as qualified as their American counterparts? I have met a few Indian programmers here in South Africa, and all of their qualifications seem to be technically-rich, but there is nothing to balance that technical training out. Having studied in the USA, I can testify that American colleges tend to be far more diverse in their teaching, concentrating not only on technical knowledge, but adding the vital components of logic, mathematics, physics and humanities. Compared to this, the content of Indian degrees looks more like what you'd find in trade schools or certificate programmes.
Having said all that, let's say that Indians somehow manage to get through a US-equivalent college degree programme. What of the cultural gaps and communication gaps? There are tons of anecdotes about awful experiences with Indian call centers and messes made by Indian development teams, both outsourced and H1-B workers. I forsee a lot of mess-ups being made by these teams, and companies contracting the more qualified American workers to clean up the messes. (This is already happening to a certain extent, from what I've gathered, but I forsee it happening on a much larger scale as outsourcing becomes more common).
If you go for quantity instead of quality, you will end up shooting yourself in the foot. American management will realize this sooner or later and things will start to normalize. In the mean time, a lot of out-of-work American programmers can probably expect to get lucrative contracting positions at their former companies.
OK. I am an Indian who is in grad school in the US (in one of the top CS schools in the US) and am trying to find a job in this market.
You guys talk about there being no jobs?
1. Why is it then that for every company/ institution/research lab that requires a green card/ US citizen , there are empty slots during interviews on campus which none of us international students can take?
2. Why is it that most of my American friends landed jobs in these places after one nominal interview (I am talking of places like the NSA and JPL here) , while I go through 8 rounds in the few private companies that I interview with, and they then kick me out because I don't remember an itsy detail of a project I did 2 years back?
I'll tell you why. My batch has around 20% Americans to 80% Asians or Indians doing EE/CS degrees. In engineering schools almost everywhere in the US, the demographic is similar (Asian/Indian majority).
If the Americans want to find jobs that are not outsourced, go to these places. Work hard. Go to grad school. Add value. And don't just crib about jobs being lost.
And yes, you talk about India opening the market to the US? We have pretty low tariffs, you know. (Don't talk about crap you have no clue about) Coke/Pepsi battle it out in India. All routers are Cisco, and servers IBM/HP. Levi's and Nike are the brands of choice, and cellphones (Nokia rules, btw) are way cooler than the pathetic choice national providers here give.
Get a grip on reality. The saddest reality is that most of you have no fscking clue of what you talk about to even have an opinion.
I'm not sure what all the bitching is about with respect to call center jobs going overseas. Last time I checked, these were not particularly well paying jobs and don't require much talent. It would be nice to be able to speak good English as they read the script, though.
It's turtles all the way down.
Earlier ..
...eh..call center...eh..Daksha..
Whom do you work for?
er
Now..
whom do you work for?
IBM!
Wonder why out sourcing to Ireland and Isreal does not get covered? Did you look at your Dell laptop recently? Assembled in Ireland (and not China)
Or it is more painful to see the brown and yellow guy take it rather than the them?
Go ahead, rate it flamebait.
We just have to remind the world that we are fucking god once in a while ...
Buddy, capitalism is all about greedy and unpatriotic corporations that hold nothing sacred except profits. Their only goal is to maximize profits without getting caught.
My father's company has dealt with several firms in India, China and Russia who write software for specialized gaming systems. Essentially, the problem is this: The software produced is not of high quality. It works, but it's not good. We had the option of buying software from these companies, hardware from our suppliers, and assembling solutions that way, but the fact of the matter is that in-house programming of the software components has lead to higher quality products, and I can assure you of one thing: the programmers we have hired are NOT from Bangalore, or educated in India. The majority of them are from South Africa, educated in South Africa, with a few specialists from Europe and the United States. Doing it this way has raised costs to a certain extent, but the product seems to sell well, and outclass the offerings that make use of lower-quality components.
I had an interview scheduled with daksh which i was delaying because they were not paying much.Now after reading this i've got it scheduled for day after tomm.Damn , i'll be working for the BIG blue! :-)
A little about Daksh if you dunno, it was one of the first few call centers in India with a really good reputation.They still are one of the biggest in the arena.No wonder IBM wanted them soo bad.
Lord of the Binges.
I was 30 days from being axed from my call-center helpdesk position. Thankfully I found another internal position working with contracts, away form the IT field, but the other 27 members on my old team weren't as lucky. Now I get to hear transfers from these indian cheap-hires with customers complaining about how thankful they are to have gotten transferred to someone who can speak english and can understand what the rep is trying to say. Dell learned hard lesson, you get what you pay for, and soon, I hope IBM will learn it's lesson all it's own. Until you experience working with these outsourced help, you will never know the impact it has on a business in terms of customer satisfaction or the many times I have to hit mute to laugh because one rep calls himself "Dan" for short when his real name is nasahary"dan"apeptlan, and he is forced to tell customers his name is Dan for the sake of saving everyone some fustration just from his GREETING alone!
You seem to be missing the whole point of trading. We do not trade to give people jobs. We trade to get stuff. If other countries are willing to send us stuff without us sending them stuff (which is what a trade deficit is), that is *good* for us. It means that we are getting free stuff.
The problem is that we have many unemployed people in industries where we are in surplus. Increasing exports to India won't fix that. They won't buy IT services; they'll buy things they need, like grain or pharmaceuticals. That still won't help IT workers (and might hurt us if it increases prices of food and health care).
For unemployed IT workers to find jobs, one of two things needs to happen: one, the market for IT could increase sharply (don't hold your breath); or two, IT workers could move into fields that are hiring. Unfortunately, most IT workers would be considered unskilled labor in other fields, so we are reluctant to take the pay cut involved in doing this. Also, most industries are more interested in skilled (in the work of that industry) workers than unskilled workers.
The only thing that we get from increasing exports without increasing imports is money. Since we (as a country) have the ability to print money (much cheaper than trading for it), that is not helpful. Instead, we need to fix the structural issues with the economy (i.e. move the unemployed into industries that are hiring) and produce more stuff for *us*. That way, we get the benefits of both the jobs *and* the stuff produced.
IBM isn't buying them to get Indians to answer phone calls for Americans who want to talk about IBM products - they want them answering questions about IBM's customers' products.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Ok, you just lost 5,000 local jobs to a call center in India. Yep, it sucks. But half of the people that complain about the outsourcing phenomenom don't realize one very important fact that has been happening for a long time now-- These 3rd world countries have been outsourcing their best and brightest to first world countries for years. It goes both ways. the opportunities in the US, Britain and other countries are so attractive and lucritive that they are quite literally losing their most important resource- Their FUTURE -to other countries. In fact, it's so prevelant that pop culture recognizes it in shows like The Simpsons. You know, the Indian 7-11 owner?
Ok, so we just lost 5,000 $7.00/hour jobs (hello, $7.00 an hour???). In exchange we are getting hard working citizens dying for a success they can only dream of in their country. Business men. Store owners. Free enterprise.
Yes, I know some of the jobs lost are worth more than $7.00, but frankly, it's still a fair trade. Go find another one. If you can't, you're not trying hard enough... After all, they are, on less, and succeeding, in your back yard.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
With our excellent English and knowledge of American culture, we could have those Indian tech jobs in a heartbeat. Sure, we would have to live in Delhi, Bombay or Calcutta, but the wages we would make there would let us live almost as well as here in the US.
Speaking of the whole outsourcing phenomena in general, we in the US and Europe did it to ourselves.
1) The industry did it. We were lax in our quality. Shoddy software. Shoddy support. An industry with history's lowest customer satisfaction rating.
2) The workers did it. We demanded too high of wages. $100,000 is still considered an average wage for a techie. Yet we didn't have any professional degrees to back it up. Any DeVry or ITT dropout that read "Learn Java in 2 Hours" could get a job starting at $60,000".
3) The government did it. Wages are only half the cost of hiring an employee. Taxes, regulations, bureaucracy, etc., all increase the cost of an employee. While I'm not necessarily arguing for the complete removal of these economic hinderances, we should at least think about scaling them back somewhat. Free trade is about a level playing field, so why have we chosen to punt from the middle of a cratered minefield?
Bring back quality software, friendly support, realistic wages and an unencumbering economic policy, and you'll see these jobs come back.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
just do like what indians who come to america do :
:
>> get a job in a company in India : ie interview, get offer
>> get offer letter
>> go to Indian consulate, apply for a work visa.
>> indian consulate officer will try to make sure of the veracity of your documents, make a judgement call about if you are a pakistani terrorist, and issue you a work visa. often without any attitude issues.
>> you go to India and take up the job.
Oh, before I forget
>> india is a different country. so prepare yourself for it.
>> dont expect people to fall at your feet because you are american. any arrogance and attitude will probably get you beaten up in street.
>> develop some more immunity.
>> if you cannot get any dates in US, do not expect it will be any easier in india.
>> do not complain about every little thing and compare it to things in US. if you do not like it, do something constructive about it, or pack up and go back to where you came from. remember, it was your choice to go to India.
there, you have your instructions.
Now Americans are [potentially] profitting of offshore outsourcing....oh the sweet irony ;-)
-psy
At Indian prices, I'd be surprised if most of those employees are making $10K/year. I'll bet they'll be asking for a bit of a bonus.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Yes, let's make light of the situation.
There were 150 of us living in a shoebox at the side of the dig. We had to get up every night, half and hour before we went to bed, and bite the concrete apart with our teeth. And when we got home, our boss would outsource us and dance on our unemployment checks singing Hallelujah. And we liked it! We liked it fine!
But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
Gee, I guess this is an example of "insourcing outsourcing".
and the Republicans are about to take it away from you. Spout all you want about "perfect capitalism the way our forefathers envisioned it" - that's malarkey and you obviously have never read the "Founding Fathers" either.
Ok. everybody is outsourcing. They are saving money. but does anyone here have any experience with the QUALITY of the product (code, reps) etc?
Ironically, 'Property Right' is not part of Indian constituition.
Of course as with all things the idiots who came up with this plan either left the company with large stock option packages (Bill Price, VP of customer service) or got promoted. I would be surprised if an audit of the outsourcing to Daksh showed that any money had been saved at all.
Those myths shot down.
1-And outsourcing will improve this how?
2-Some but if you read through the site above, you'll note that a lot, in unemployemnt are NOT "DeVry this" or "ITT" that. But let's hold onto the myth that the only people being affected are "DeVry, or ITT" grads. (besides they've done nothing wrong to deserve being treated as a scapegoat, by Globalization apologists)
3-If free trade was about Level Playing Fields, then we would be insisting that India and other countries would raise their standards, instead of lowering ours. Or is it Indians don't deserver clean water, fresh air, and protection from exploitation? Glad to know we like giving our jobs away, without all the other benefits.
http://www.daksh.com/feb03.htm
I guess that went out the window when IBM dangled enough green in front of them.
Many of us wear clothes produced in China, drive Japanese cars, and put cheap foreign memory in our assembled overseas computers. A few mundane IT jobs go overseas and then we are up in arms, demanding special favors from the government. I don't get it.
THink about it:
company A buys company B, because company appears to have something company A wants (clients, reputations, products etc.). Probably company A borrowed some money to do so. So the first thing to do is recapitalize. The reuslt; company B is often stripped and milked. Often this destroys the very reason company B looked good on paper. So layoffs after a buy out are to be expected. Even when they are not competing and one company wants to destroy a competitor by buying it.
For much amusement one can watch this process in action, re: HP/Compaq merger follies.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Have you stopped to think what will happen to the poor in this country if the white collar wages decrease dramatically?
There are people in the US that don't have air conditioning, can't afford indoor plumbing or electricity. There are alot of people who cannot afford food. Don't even get me started about being able to afford to go the doctor or the dentist. If your wage gets cut by 2/3rds, does it follow that someone eeking out a living on minumum wage will also see a decrease in their wage?
It frustrates me to no end that as Americans we are so quick to feel pity and sorrow for people in some distant land when there is real suffering here in the US.
Many of these call center jobs that have been outsourced were located in the US in low income areas, some of the call centers that have since closed made the decision to open in these low income areas to take advantage of the tax breaks offered by local officials who wanted to provide some sort of economic boost to their cities and towns. When the call centers realized they could get workers overseas for much, much less than minimum wage earner in the US, the call centers closed. What became of these people?
It is very important to think globally, but we honestly need to clean our own house first before we start trying to clean up the neighborhood.
www.displacedtechies.com
Drop the free market crap.
IBM has recieved a lot US tax dollars over the years. Type "corporate welfare" into Google and see what you get.
Research subsdies, loan guarantees, tax-breaks, etc.
Talk about redistribution of wealth...
Another typical thing in the 90's was for companies to strip down the retirement plans for a company that it bought. I personally know several people that lost several hundred thousand dollars each from their retirement plans this way. Kind of sucks to be 60 years old and set to retire only to find out that you suddenly have half a million dollars less than you thought you did.
"3-If free trade was about Level Playing Fields, then we would be insisting that India and other countries would raise their standards, instead of lowering ours." And were will India get money to rasie level? The goct does not have enough money to feed people. Now for your sake they will take whaever money they have and put all of it into pollution control? How much does US Govt spend on that? What have you done to change from single-digit-percent population to mid-double-digit-percent consumption? Or should India also loot land and resources like looted from American natives and turn into overnight rich people to argue on 'standards'?
Well, I guess IBM's no longer "cool" on Slashdot.
"Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists."
Great name for the firm - WTF name is Daksh?!? So when you get outsourced, you can scream "I've just been Dakshed!!!"
Your job is now being of outsourced to India. Thank you, come again."
Americans are "consumers" only to the degree that they have "jobs". What will market fundamentalists throwing around their religious formulas, sometimes the basic context gets lost.
India and China have next to nothing to do with outsourcing and offshoring and high unemployment in the US and especially among technical workers.
We have a political problem - politicians and CEOs have decided to throw Americans out of work and use poor overseas workers to replace us. The minimal gains in "efficiency" are more than compensated by the political gains, pressure on workers in the US, who will now except lower wages. That's a political problem, not an economic problem.
IBM, Microsoft, all the companies that are "outsourcing" could easily only hire US citizens, and still turn a hefty profit and stay in the Fortune 500. Instead, they are making an investment for the future - changing the political nature of employment and citizenship, and terrorizing US workers. Notice how very public announcements are made - remember when this was done quietly in the 1990s?
Free market economics, such as it is, has next to nothing to do with this phenomenon.
We'd never attack a country for purely economic reasons. Oh, wait, I forgot about Iraq..
I'd be surprised if many Americans knew the difference between "wave" and "waive." Even you don't know the difference in spelling, apparently.
Your stupid Hindu mom comes home after providing anal sex services to muslim brothers at the cell. Fucking retarded cunt why don't you kill yourself?
Now they can outsource the jobs to some country overseas, and slowly shut them down.. uh, oh, wait a minute.
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
Here's how you turn a liability into a money-making opportunity. You know those phone operators that are a go between deaf people and everyone else? Similiar idea, you learn Indian and people who need to speak to someone (individual, corporation) in India, call you. They get results (hopefully) and you put a charge on their phone bill. Scale accordingly.
Then the oracle guy walks,washes his hands, and then takes a leak. "At Oracle, we wash our hands before touching Holy Things."
Other than that, I agree with what you say. I'm just not quite willing to give up on the US's technology sector just yey.
That is another issue: National security. If most our computers are managed overseas, we are a much bigger economic and military target. Cut a few trans-ocean cables and our economy is a sitting duck. -- gonewiththeworld.com
1-And outsourcing will improve this how?
Because India has always produced high quality software. At least that's the perception. A quarter of the price and four times the quality is a pretty hard deal to pass up.
2-Some but if you read through the site above, you'll note that a lot, in unemployemnt are NOT "DeVry this" or "ITT" that.
Everyone is affected by this, MIT grads along with junior college dropouts. But when entry level jobs start at $60K, experienced workers are going to want a proportionately higher salary.
There is a cost to non-local development in the form of inefficient management, communication problems, training issues, and with overseas development, customer satisfaction as well. When the cost for a local worker is only 50% to 100% more than the remote worker, it can often be cost effective to stay local. But when the cost of local is 500% to 750% more, then it's much easier to justify going to for the cheap labor.
3-If free trade was about Level Playing Fields, then we would be insisting that India and other countries would raise their standards, instead of lowering ours.
This is always the argument that is raised. But we don't have any say over the internal policies of another nation. We only have control over our own. Why should we punish India for accepting our dollars, when at least some of the problem is our own damned fault?
A level playing field doesn't mean that everyone is equally handicapped. It means that the rules of the game are the same for all participants. The distinction is subtle, to be sure. But when we impose additional rules upon ourselves that we demand of no one else, then that is just handicapping ourselves.
When more than a half of my income goes towards taxes (income, sales, property, etc., both local and national), then something is seriously out of whack. Add to this the non-monetary cost of bureaucratic paperwork, and there's quite a bit of room to shrug off a few of those self-imposed handicaps.
To be absolutely crass and selfish about it, I would rather have a job and pay into my own retirement fund, then to be unemployed with social security. I can live with a few more potholes in the roads if it means I can be employed.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I mean payroll taxes.
If a business outsources they not only pay less but also pay no payroll taxes on each Indian head!
Even if you were willing to work for 15k a year, your employer would still have to pay taxes on your salary. That is sooo wrong.
Notice farmers and lumbermen are government subsidized? This is to protect them cheap labor overseas.
If you favor free trade and who is the cheapest then damn we need to do it right and fairly.
Pay no payroll or tax breaks to offshore and make sure farmers can compete agasint Africans and Chinesse then we will be even. If they did this we would have a revolt of course in the midwest.
I favor one way or the other and a fair scale.
But what if we got rid of minimal wage and ever American would have to work on $100 a month like they do in China? I mean the argument is insanse because we can not without becoming third world ourselves and heavily devalue our currency. This will hurt corporate America too because no one could afford to buy their products.
I think we need some breaks on free trade. They offer nothing but elimination on the middle class to favor the top %2.
http://saveie6.com/
First of all, "Indian" ain't a language, mofo. Secondly, any person in India who Americans would have enough desire to speak to that they could afford paying a real-time phone translator is probably already quite proficient at English (seeing as how it's one of their official national languages, notably used in academia).
THE NERD IS THE COMPUTER.
XANDROS XANDROS XANDROS
Hunger is the best sauce.
Them's injuns to you, dot-head.
THE NERD IS THE COMPUTER.
'Daksh' means 'capable' or 'efficient' in Hindi. We need to ask their customers if the name is well deserved. :)
The Dirty Work Group
That's the big joke though. Name one country America has attacked since WW2 which comes close to it in terms of size(size of military, and general population, or area). The answer is NONE. America doesn't really have balls to fight. It attacks places like Iraq, Korea, Afghanistan, Serbia, Vietnam (and still loses there). Try picking a fight with Russia/India/China, and see where it gets you.
All this work to get linux 'on the desktop' like you get anything out of it. You guys ho ha about how stupid business majors are but here you are working for them for free. Keep following your borderline autistic idealist 'leader' Stallman to financial ruin.
then you were being exploited; just as the people in sweat shops are being exploited. 100 years ago you might (_might_) have had a point. Modern technology (computers, electric motors, Nuclear Power) renders sweat shops unnecessary. When only 1% of your populace can produce all the food you need, you don't need to have the other 99% slaving away 60+ hours a week. The only reason for these conditions to exist are:
A) People are too stupid to stop having lots and lots of kids
and B) Human greed is unlimited, and left unchecked societies tend to devote all their resources to satisfying the wants of a lucky few. Ex1: A story today about surgeons implanting jewelry into people's eyes. Consider the time, expense and expersitise wasted developing and carrying out such a procedure. Consider how much better those resources could be spend. Consider the rich fsck head who aranged for societies resources to be wasted that way. Consider the society that allows said fsck head to do that.
Ex2: Modern opera houses cannot match the quality of older ones, because it is impossible in this day and age to get society to dedicate that much of it's resources to something as frivolous as an opera house. We're not willing to let people starve so the previously mentioned rich fsck head can hear his opera a little better (not yet, anyway).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
n/t
"We should pressure India to open up its markets and provide the SAME AMOUNT of trade from the US."
According to http://www.ncpa.org/iss/tra/2004/pd031504b.html that is what is currently happening. The US currently exports $131 billion worth of services. We only import (outsource) $77 billion. Thus, we have a $54 billion trade *surplus* in services. All increased outsourcing does is bring us back into *balance*.
I will say it again: the problem is not that foreigners are taking American jobs. The problem is that in the *US* there has been a drop in consumption of IT services. This leaves many IT workers unemployed. To fix this, we need either a boom in IT demand *in the US* or we need to move some IT workers into other industries (to make more stuff for us). Relying on foreigners to fix this for us is just silly.