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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."
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
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 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.
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.
Not only has IBM laid off employees but they have a habit of making bad choices that all but nullify their acquisitions of human resource based takeovers. When IBM purchased PriceWaterhouseCooper's consulting firms, everything was all good, until about a month or two ago when these former PWC employees found out they were not going to recieve any of their yearly bonus (~50% of yearly earnings for many of these consultants) because IBM "didn't make enough money" It'll be interesting to see what happens with this one, whether it becomes another PWC or whether they actually take care of the employees.
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)
Wow, I didn't think too many people remembered that. When I was little I lived in an "IBM town" (there was a local plant that employed abut 25,000). After the first layoffs in the early 90's (?) where at this particular plant two-thirds of the jobs were cut (I think a lot of them were white-collar folks), the entire community changed. In my case, I would say roughly 3/4 of my neighborhood moved out within 3 years. It was interesting afterwards to say the least.
I think before if you got hired by IBM, it was pretty much assumed that you would work there until you retired. How times have changed indeed.
-- Kircle
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.
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.