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."
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.
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.
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)
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
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.
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)
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...
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.
IBM won't be splitting anytime soon IMHO. They are too busy restructuring, and the haven't posted any large gains (yet). I would still say it's a great buy though, for a long term (> 1 year) investment. I'll probably end up purchasing some by the end of spring expecting sales in big iron to be up later in the year (they have been doing some good marketing.).
Mod +5 Drunk
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.
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
haven't posted any large gains
Maybe not, but they are busy buying up their shares.
Long term goal might be to become a private company again.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
No friend, just a product of the public school system.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Who are you kidding? Most Slashdot readers are already breeding like Amigas. By the way, when was the last time you saw an Amiga in the wild?
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!
i wont that all test my new ibm server www.chill-net.com
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 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.
*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.
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
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
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!
is this the latest PC term for 'slaves'?
No, for "pod person". Your replacement will arrive soon.
Sounds kinda cool as slang for getting downsized..."I've been dakshed!"
May we never see th
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.
liar...
Ok what if i start an american computer manufacturing company. all parts are made here in the us.
That $1000.00 Dell, my equilivant will be $6500.00
there is no way in hell you would buy it because it has a Made in the USA sticker on it. Americans are cheap bastards that love their dirt cheap computers and electronics. They WILL NOT pay a premium for domestic products, that was proven without a doubt in the 80's when textiles went to hell as you could buy what you wanted at 1/3rd the price from overseas even AFTER the government protection fees were paid.
I so love to shoot down patriotic jerks that wave the flag and talk like they would do what it takes to save american jobs and support america.. but I'll bet that over 80% of what you own was made, manufacturered and or assembled outside the USA... espically clothing and electronics.. hell your carpet in your house is more than likely a south american product.
Yes even most american cars are Assembled in either Canada or Mexico, or had major portions assembled outside the country.. Many FORD midsize cars are completely made by the KIA corperation in korea or other forign car companies... My family was big in the automakers, a 3 generation UAW family decimated by ford and GM whoring out assembly and manufacturing to mexico and other countries.. no love for those companies that destroyed towns os they can chase the almightly dollar... go visit Flint or Pontiac michigan and see what those great american companies did to the american worker.
so until you are willing to pay a significant premium for the MADE IN USA mantra... drop the act.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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
My family was big in the automakers, a 3 generation UAW family decimated by ford and GM whoring out assembly and manufacturing to mexico and other countries.. no love for those companies that destroyed towns os they can chase the almightly dollar
And that's different from today how?
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
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!
Oh yeah, to answer the rest of the diatribe, it's "do what you can."
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!
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
They have a market cap of 158 billion. That's how much it would cost to buy back all of their shares and go privat -- and they would probably need a premium of at least 10% over market price.
Meanwhile, net income for 2003 was 7.5 billion. It would take 21 years to buy back all their stock if that's all they used their profit for, if the stock price somehow managed to stay at it's current level.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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?
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).
I think both of you guys need to go back and show me where I said ONLY American products,eg no imports. As the one guy so cogently pointed out, you can't avoid imported products.
The point is, if Citibank says they're shipping 5000 jobs to India, I'm going to say fuck Citibank. If IBM does it, I'm going to say fuck IBM and so on til I have no alternatives left.
There's a big difference between imports and selling out...this is the WalMart'ing of America.
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.
That's kind of funny.
The US has a tradition of the longest work weeks in the world. Mexico has a tradition (if semi-gone, at least in the city) of taking a nap in the middle of the day.
May we never see th
Earlier ..
...eh..call center...eh..Daksha..
Whom do you work for?
er
Now..
whom do you work for?
IBM!
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!
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.
Mexico has a tradition (if semi-gone, at least in the city) of taking a nap in the middle of the day.
I believe there are many other latin countries that do the same thing. I also remember hearing that this is practiced in some places in the middle east. For example in Saudi Arabia they wake up before dawn to do their prayers and then go to work. Then in the afternoon they have a nap.
Ok. everybody is outsourcing. They are saving money. but does anyone here have any experience with the QUALITY of the product (code, reps) etc?
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.
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
Well, I guess IBM's no longer "cool" on Slashdot.
"Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists."
We'd never attack a country for purely economic reasons. Oh, wait, I forgot about Iraq..
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.
It's completely gone in Mexico City. People barely have time to go eat something. But in many places around the country it's still something a lot of people do.
I lived in a small city near the coast or Veracruz for two years and in the two hours I had for lunch I could drive home, help my wife finish cooking, brew some coffee, have a cup, read a little or take a nap, and go back to work, and sometimes all this would only take one and a half hours.
Now I'm back in Mexico City and in an hour and a half I can go eat out in a place that's within walking distance and come back in about that time. Can't take the car, the traffic is incredible at that time of the day.
Go hug some trees.
Then the oracle guy walks,washes his hands, and then takes a leak. "At Oracle, we wash our hands before touching Holy Things."
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.
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
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).
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"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.