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Growth in Indian Offshoring Slowing
quantumstream writes "CNN/Money is reporting that high wages are causing some software companies to look to other countries for outsourcing, including Eastern Europe and several other SE Asian countries. Gartner Research believes a drop of 45% in India's share could happen in the next two years. Is this the beginning of the end of the dominance of India in the tech offshoring market?"
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India is being outsourced? That's ironic.
Note to mods: I'm probably being sarcastic.
From TFA:
"Four years ago, a typical call center employee would have earned between 5,000 to 6,000 rupees ($114- $136) a month. Now it may be up to between 7,000 to 9,000 rupees ($159 - $204) a month," he said. "The rise in labor costs isn't significant yet. What's more important is that these increases so far have not been passed on to clients in the U.S."
What goes around comes around I guess.
now i will have a plethora of accents to learn, and i already have a hard time understanding american.... :(
In a global economy, there will always be someone able/willing to do it for less money. Eventually those who were the go-to people are undercut. And then the undercutters are undercut. And it so on, and so forth. Eventually a global economic equilibrium is reached, where the price is the same everwhere.
When price is no longer the main factor determining where to outsource a project to, the focus will shift back to quality, maintainability, and so forth. Indeed, it is quite possible that the future software industry will appear very similar to that of today's automotive industry in terms of multinational competition.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Who cares? The key here is the companies are still looking at OFFSHORE outsourcing. Doesn't matter from the U.S. "Average Joe" standpoint what country it ends up in. It's still "somewhere else".
disclaimer: I work in the outsource call center industry. Although I am not fully opposed to offshore outsourcing... it's disheartening to see people you know getting laid off so that their job can be sent overseas for cheap labor.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
With the increase in prices in Indian seen in the recent past, and the rest of the non-English speaking world realizing the potential for the BPO business, it was but a matter of time that businesses would move elsewhere (read cheaper).
What is surprising though is the 45% drop...
Let's see, we need a place where people speak English, there is a significant number of people who know something about computers, and the wages are even lower than in India.
Given the plethora of 419 e-mails that evade my spam filter, how about Nigeria?
I was nice to you guys giving you 100 rupies a day plus all the empty bottles from the cantine that you could carry home with you, and now suddenly thats not enough?
Forget it, im taking my business elsewhere.
Quality of life standards are improving, driving up labor rates, and most of the "easy" outsourcing has already been done. Outsourcing larger development projects ends up not saving as much as expected because of the added management layers that are needed here and there to ensure a successful project.
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/
Can't wait until we start offshoring jobs to the USA :-)
With companies constantly looking for new ways to increase profits it was only a matter of time before they found a place cheaper then India. And in theory it is only a matter of time before they run out of places to find. As more countries make the transition from 3rd world, the people living there will begin to realize they are worth more then the $5,000 a year they are making. Hopefully one day it will come back to the best person for the job gets the job, no matter where they are geographically, or how expensive they are
I love to deploy my packages
http://www.smh.com.au/news/icon/attack-of-the-botn ets/
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/ Basically, we're moving out of the (Indian) frying pan and into the (Eastern European) fire.[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
That was pretty funny.
Maybe South Carolina, and other low cost of living states here in the US, will take some of this business!
What's more important is that these increases so far have not been passed on to clients in the U.S.
Well duh, after all we never saw the drop in prices thanks to switching from hiring people for $1000 a month to $120 a month. I'm sure they won't raise prices until they hit $500/mo.
As with any disruptive mechanism, the original value proposition is driven lower and lower to the point where it is as commodity as the market it surplanted...I am thinking a dot.bangalore crash may be just around the corner. And we are yet to see the real long term negative effects of short-sighted, cost driven offshoring.
a number of business sites are saying Latin America is the new India for outsourcing. They have similar timezones to U.S., speak English, and are even a relatvely short plane trip away. Who knows, might be a more attractive spot to immigrate to than south asia too, for those willing to follow the work
Folks..
Lets not kid ourselves here, the poor developers in India are exploited. The average salary is around $390/month, the kids down at the local fast food joint here in the US make more money than that. Sure the cost of living is a little lower over there, but things like books, computers etc, still cost the same or more than they do here.
I've worked with several out-sourced Indian teams, and to be honest... you get what you pay for. Just like everywhere else, they have good programmers and bad programmers. Unfortunately, the nice people in India have a tendency to what to "please" you, so instead of giving you accurate, clear-cut information, they tend to tell you what you want to hear.
They also have very little motivation, unless they are working for a big company like IBM, which has a reputation for a solid career, most developers aren't going to pull the allnighter or get the job done to meet the deadline.
Out of about 30 code reviews I've done for Indian teams in the past month, I would say I've turned them all back for one coding mistake, bad design, or flat out not fixing the problem. The quality is poor.
I've also spent time building teams in India, and its been pretty much hit and miss. Some teams do great work and are very successful, other teams spend their time trying to negotiate to do less work and have longer times to complete projects, to the point where we've just dropped Indian teams and finished the work ourselves.
Outsourcing costs more than its worth, better off hiring some students and getting two or three good developers vs. 20 bad ones in a different time zone.
Cargo ships and decomissioned aircraft carriers to be converted into mobile call centers! Will dock where the wages are lowest!
People want something for nothing, and are willing to enslave others, then justify it to themselves because they're "saving" these people from poverty.
Only one place those goddamn cost cuts are going. Into the CEO's pocket.
We need to cap CEO salaries to something like 4 times what their best people on the ground earn. Don't think it can work? Check out Korea's ship building industry.
Capitalism and a "free" market are all well and good but it's not a perfect system and there do need to be controls.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I was just getting good at understanding the Indian accent when I was calling Tech Support!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Water flows downhill...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
Transmogrifying the American economy from a producer to a consumer is a big mistake.
... and one that's just as growth oriented as a "global" economy.
First of all, it's a huge security risk. What happens if a third world war breaks out? Are we going to fire ACLU lawyers and Fox News pundits at the enemy?
Second of all, where is all this extra growth that's supposed to come with globalization? Last time I looked, the growth rate about the historical average. Globalization and actually enforcing the borders create about the same growth rate. Only difference we used to make computers and cars and now we just make McMansions (with Mexican Labor and Canadian wood).
If we can tax Joe Hardworking American 30% of his income, why can't we tax outsourcers 30% of their income? Is their income more special than Joe Americans? If we taxed foreign trade like we taxed the American middle class; we'd see a closing of that price differential.
I'm not advocating isolationism and please hold of on the "xenophobe" accusations; but we'd be better off with favoring American companies and workers. American was built mostly by Americans and we're better off by engineering a more egalitarian society
it occurs to me that it was "trendy" to outsource to India (and managers basically fabricating lies about how much money was saved and how quality was maintained), will it be "trendy" to move outsourcing *from* India? The U.S.of A provides the lion's share of India's outsourcing income and I could see a cascading collapse of major portions of the economy over there ...
"India raked in more than $2 billion of an estimated $3 billion global ... market."
"the worldwide offshore BPO market will grow to about $24 billion by 2007 of which India will earn about $13.8 billion."
So with massive market growth India might slip below 50% market share if they don't watch their back.
But it's not like they're stocking up on pink slips in Bangalore.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
Life imitates art. Or at least Outsourcing.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
So for every country that does well like India, there will be another one seeking to enter the same market and will undercut the price. The company doing the hiring will learn this is how it works and they will quickly make the switch whenever they want.
Are they also taking into account changes in exchange rates when they are calculating the dollar cost? The figures stated look like they are basing the dollar cost in todays dollars(since the ratios stay about the same), but could it be that 6,000 ruppees buys more dollars now than it did 4 years ago?
Monstar L
They took our jobs!
Granted I am a firm opponent to outsourcing, but Dells have been getting much cheaper in the past few years. For 1500 two years ago, I got a 2.6GHz/512MB/17" LCD/Radeon 9800 Dell/CDR, and my mother just six months ago got a 3.2GHz/1G/19" LCD DVI/Radeon X300/DVR for significantly less, something like 1200. I don't think that's just because of the natural rate at which technology becomes cheaper.
Here comes the next sweeping wave of late careless American based IT workers.
What are you smoking? I actually have some Indian friends who work for American companies doing things like programming and call center staff. They worked their ass off to get their education (which is harder to come by in India). Instead of being relegated to begging, dirt farming, or other forms of hard subsistive labor, they have an oppritunity that was never avaliable to them before to bring themselves and their familes out of abject poverty and gain self suffience.
How you call this slavery boggles the mind. You'd personally throw them back into abject conditions, wouldn't you?
As with any disruptive mechanism, the original value proposition is driven lower and lower to the point where it is as commodity as the market it surplanted...
While the original article was talking about relatively low-level stuff such as call centers, that has already happened there in the engineering outsourcing.
The insistance of venture capitaliasts on startups having an "offshoring story" led to the last round of startups building up with their archetectural core teams in the US and the bulk of their engineering workforce offshore - principally in India. The result was to hire-up the available qualified professionals, and to bid up their wages as the supply dried up - to the point where they're paid nearly on a par with similar pros (at least those here on H1 visas), or even higher. Thus the engineering talent is being sought elsewhere.
Meanwhile, back in the US, you hear screams of agony as managment tries to hire back some of the old pros and discovers that they've gone to companies, like Google, who gave them comfy, rewarding jobs paying enough to keep the mortgage payments up and the car gassed. Now that they have a comfy seat that didn't dry up in the crunch it takes a BIG premium to lure them back into the no-downward-loyalty rat race.
I am thinking a dot.bangalore crash may be just around the corner.
Could be.
And we are yet to see the real long term negative effects of short-sighted, cost driven offshoring.
We're seeing some of it already. Like whole engineering teams getting the product design jelled, then deserting to form a competing company - under Indian, rather than US, IP law. B-)
Also a blackmail attempt by a data-entry person threatening to publish customer medical records.
(Of course you're already familiar with what accent and cultural barriers do to helpdesk communication.)
All of this will recur in spades with outsoucing to China (where armies of engineers clone the tech sent there to be assembled and set up competing companies). Ditto in Eastern Europe (currently in a "robber baron" period where membership in organized crime is a prerequisite for corporate success).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Power in the hand of the worker
But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand
There is power in a Union
Now the lessons of the past were all learned with workers blood
The mistakes of the bosses we must pay for
From the cities and the farmlands to trenches full of mud
War has always been the bosses way, sir
The Union forever defending our rights
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite
With our brothers and our sisters from many far-off lands
There is power in a Union
Now I long for the morning that they realise
Brutality and unjust laws cannot defeat us
But who'll defend the workers who cannot organise
When the bosses send there lackeys out to cheat us?
Money speaks for money, the Devil for his own
Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone?
What a comfort to the widow, a light to the child
There is power in a Union
The Union forever defending our rights
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite
With our brothers and our sisters from many far-off lands
There is power in a Union
WORDS Billy Bragg
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
1. Some "consulting firm" is involved in a study instead of some non-profit organization.
2. When that firm is Gartner, who've been known to make all kinds of outrageous claims to get publicity.
3. They come up with nice, easy numbers like "Gartner Research believes a drop of 45% in India's share could happen in the next two years." Anyone who've done any research or studies, knows that numbers ending in 5 or 0 don't have special meanings in reality. The only thing that it matters to are readers, especially PHBs. What this suggests is that Gartner just pulled some number out of a hand to get more publicity, again. 45% is much easier for a PHB to rattle off than 73% during a meeting.
I have no strong feelings about this "news" either especially coming from a source as unreliable as Gartner. The trend is probably true but the number is probably bogus.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Offering someone a job, even at what you consider to be a crappy wage, isn't enslavement.
It isn't necessarily a bright idea either. A hefty chunk of the really smart people overseas tend to emigrate to where they'll get paid nice wages. Managing projects on the other side of the world, through culture and time-zone barriers, isn't very easy. Clueless PHB types at big companies are torching resources by following this outsourcing fad but it's very difficult to outright sink a huge corporate ship, short of pulling an Enron. Our clue^H^H^H^Hfearless MBAs are trying though.
What we should do is make it as easy as possible to start and run businesses. Pass the Flat Tax so we won't have to waste so much time and money figuring out how to comply with the tax code. Heck, that step alone would give a huge boost to small businesses who can't afford platoons of tax attorneys and accountants (and "donations" to Congressmen to encourage the writing of favorable tax loopholes). Tort reform would be nice too.
Make it easier to start businesses and the dumb ones won't be able to stay in business so long.
Well this should keep you happy all day
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
You should'a got in when you had the chance, loser.
Dell makes hardware. Hardware has never been made in the US anyways, or India for that matter. The issue here in software programming which is skilled labor as opposed to who has the fanciest manufacturing plant.
Which Latinamerican countries speak English, apart from Belize, Surinam, and a few Caribbean islands?
Lately I've been finding myself routed to South America for customer service (Motorola for one). I hope this is a trend because the general knowledge, english skills, politeness, and service is LIGHT YEARS above India. When I get routed to India for IBM or Dell, I'm more likely to get hung up on. My South American service with Motorola was so good I started asking where they were from. Argentina and Costa Rica. I guess the front line is Argentina and the actual support is in Costa Rica. They were great to talk to and if anything, overly polite.
yes
n/t
A recent study (I was one of the contributors, plug admitted) was done by a Dutch University. The link to the website is http://stitch.ewi.utwente.nl/detail/chakra/-page=e n-info.htm, but to be honest I don't know if the results are currently online.
Not sure about the rest of your comment, but it sounds mostly like anecdotal evidence and opinions tend to be subjective. I disagree with this particular excerpt from your comment, though.
Convering salaries directly my multiplying/dividing by the exchange rate without taking into account the Purchasing Power Parity is plain ridiculous. To sum it up for you, PPP is used because:
The PPP measures how much a currency can buy in terms of an international measure (usually dollars), since goods and services have different prices in some countries than in others.
Goods and services cost an order of magnitude less in India than they do in the US. For example, a loaf of bread costs about Rs. 10-20 (about 0.25 - 0.50 USD). Monthly rental for a pretty spacious house would approximate to Rs. 10000 (about $250). Those are rough figures, and will differ by region, but a single software engineer (for comparison purposes, since I'm single too) could live *comfortably* in a metro city like Bangalore for about Rs 15000 (including food/rent/groceries/booze/other_expenses). That works out to about 50% of his average salary of about Rs. 30000. Ofcourse when you convert his salary to USD, it comes to only about $750, (which wouldn't even cover the monthly rent in most areas in the US) and causes you to gasp, go hyper and claim "OMG, they're exploiting software engineers" or "OMG they're stealing our jaabs by working for less".
In the end, the major cost saving for companies is *not* the lower salary (as you claim fast food workers in the US get), but about the *Exchange Rate*. Poorer economies have a lower cost of living than more developed counterparts, and hence have a weaker currency against the US Dollar. This multiplication/division factor allows companies to earn in USDollars and pay in Rupees (or any other weaker currency) thus widening their profit margin. So please ponder over these finer points before spreading FUD/incorrect information and basing other (consequently erroneous) axioms on an incorrect assumption. Thank you.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
If I remember correctly, the majority of the viruses, trojan horses etc were written in the U.S.A. and Europe during the 80s and 90s... that didn't hurt the IT industry back then, did it? Most hackers got a daytime job too. ;)
Offering someone a job, even at what you consider to be a crappy wage, isn't enslavement.
So if you say "here do this work, otherwise you'll end up poor and starving" isn't enslavement? It isn't far from it if you ask me. The only decent option is to ask someone else for a job, but if everyone in a position of power is offering the same conditions, guess what you're back to the same conditions: work for me or die.
At the very least this is servitude. You do get some choice in who gets to be your master.but honestly I don't think it's that far off enslavement.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Protectionism is mostly a tool for making certain industries profitable at the expense of everyone else. It takes a brave and enlightened government to resist the urge to throw up trade barriers. The Bush administration isn't one of them.
I've been working on a little theory that the whole outsourcing phenomena is reflective of a much deeper economic problem that's been developing in the U.S. over the last 20+ years.
The last great bout with price-inflation in the U.S. was in the late 1970's, after Nixon cut the dollar's theoretical gold-peg (theoretical, because only foreigners could redeem dollars for gold), and while the economy was absorbing all of the dollars that'd been "printed" to pay for the Vietnam war.
Paul A. Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979->1987, solved the Inflationary crisis of the early 1980's by hiking interest rates to obscenely high levels. His entry in the wikipedia says that inflation was reduced from 9% in 1980 to 3.5% in 1982. The cure wasn't easy, however, as it induced a recession and much joblessness. It was thought that Reagan was going to be a one-termer.
Anyways, today is like the 1970's all over again. We've had tons of newly printed money spewing out of the government since about 1995. First it fueled the dot-com bubble. The government opened the money-faucet even wider after 9/11. The effect of having more money in the economy is that prices go up for scarce items with high demand. Hence we have home prices that seems to grow without end, and the price of oil going through the roof.
The difference between the 2000's and the 1970's is that Giant Corporations seem to think they have a way out of paying American workers the increased wages price inflation forces them to demand: outsourcing.
Remember Little Boy George's hundred-billion $ economic stimulus package that got passed soon after 9/11? In decades past, Americans (er, USians) would've taken the money and gone out and bought products built buy other Americans (USians). Those producers would take their profits from all the sales and use them to invent new things to sale, and new American factories to build them in. Closed circuit, stimulus gets recycled in the economy over and over again.
In the new system, Americans take their economic stimulus to go out and buy stuff "made in china" And profits from that sale allows chinese entrepreneurs to go and build a new factory in China. Open circuit. So Georgie Boy's stimulus package went around once.
There's nothing wrong with trade, so long as it's a two-way street. But at least in the last 4 years, Americans have been buying goods from China, and the chinese have been lending the dollars they've made in the sale back to us, to pay for our illustrious leader's silly little jihad against self-induced terrorism (See Harry Browne's When Will We Learn [part 2], and his other 2001 articles for what I think is a lucid explanation of how the U.S.'s foreign policy has lead to the problems we face today).
Getting back to the subject at hand: the primary problem is not that there's a trade imbalance, but that the Federal Reserve's willy-nilly printing of money allows the imbalance to grow much much larger than it ever could otherwise. In hard-money times, if China accumulated an excess of dollars, those dollars would become worth less in world trade. Chinese products would become more expensive for Americans to buy, and American products would become cheaper for the Chinese.
But as it has been, the Chinese pegged their currency to the dollar (hence, no relative adjustment in the value of the two currencies), and that was just fine for Georgie, 'cause the chinese bought plenty of U.S. bonds to pay for his silly little war.
I think i'm rambling now, so I'll quit soon. My main point is that Giant Corporations are outsourcing today to hide rampant 1970's-style inflation from their customers.
Outsourcing is also done to prevent the natural "leveling of the playing field." In a closed-circuit economy, if no one want
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Not really, assuming the market for offshoring remains strong; it's only really been an issue in the past what, 6 to 8 years? And only really taken off in the last 2 to 3. So if only, say, one out of every four companies that decides to offshore sends its business to India, that just means India's share doesn't grow as fast as the market.
I don't have any hard numbers, but let's say for example that India currently has 70% of all offshoring business. A 45% drop puts them at around 40% of the total market in two years, which isn't all that bad if, during the same period, you're adding in a whole bunch of new competitors.
So if you say "here do this work, otherwise you'll end up poor and starving" isn't enslavement?
That's not the offer. The offer is: "I'll pay this much for this work." If the person to whom you make that offer doesn't want to do it for the price you're paying, then he goes and works for someone else. There is competition for labor, even in India.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I think it is because the products are cheaper. Costs have come down and continue to come down. Dell is all about economy in large scale. Look at memory prices for an example, they have dropped like a rock and there is very little manufactor support required for them so the savings was not from cutting support costs.
Getting off topic here to your post but along the lines of the article.
I personally think the bottom level support systems of any large company are completely useless. They might as well have no support structure at the lower tiers. They would serve the customer at the same level and not have to pay for something that is useless.
A recent example with HP.
To start off. I had a dead IP Console switch (16 port IP KVM). It was completely dead and the power led was not even on. When I finally got to the right department, the first level tech refused to acknowledge there was no power. He wanted me to upgrade the firmware and call back. I repeated that the device does not even power up at all, no fan, no power led and it is impossible to upgrade the firmware. He asked what firmware was currently on the device. When I said I did not know has asked me to connect a server to it, power it on and read the firmware to him from some menu after the device was done booting. I repeated that it does not power on at all. He finally understood after I described what the product actually does and what it was for, hello, it is a KVM and it is DEAD. Okay, new one on the way...
HP like many other companies has a system in place to send you emails about the status of existing open support tickets. I recieved one about the replacement KVM I was to recieve but it was noted to be on backorder. In the email I was given a link to inquire about the new shipping date. The link took me to the HP self serve web site. I filled out the form with all of the case information and asked when my part was going to be shipped. The result of the web request was another email asking me to call the 800 number to inquire about my shipping date. What the hell was the purpose of that exercise? I called the number (1800-HPINVEN(T)), and the voice system had absolutely no options for IP Console Switch, KVM or anything I could possible use to describe the product. It said I could use "OTHER" but it only actually understood the word "OTHER" after saying it at least 5 different times. I was transferred to bottom level support to describe my problem. I supplied the case number and the person asked what product I was talking about. I asked her to pull up the case number and see. She does not have access to case numbers so I had to describe to her what the product was. She had no options for IP Console switch or KVM and I finally asked for the server group. Finally, after 12 minutes I was at level 2 in the server side, an english speaking person (unknown location but at least sounded like he was a native english speaker with a southern accent). Regardless of where he was, he pulled up the case number, knew what the product was, had some in stock and I recieved the new one via overnight morning delivery.
I know everyone has their own tech support nightmare stories but my point with this one is why even have a tier one or general support line at all? More often then not, it is 100% completely useless and gets you nothing. I guess the status quo keeps them there but they could save even more money getting rid of them entirely.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
I visited Bangalore a couple of years ago, and talked to a bunch of people in the IT industry there. They were already starting to realize that the outsourcing business is, basically, working for wages.
The real money is in developing a property income. Look for a wave of Indian software products, developed from their own designs. A couple of years later, look for the same thing from China.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I am suprised by many comments that there is an underlying racism. There are good programmers and bad programmers in every country or culture. Why putting down Indians while an average Indian is definitely intelligent than your American president who is elected by the majority of the Americans.
Oh yeah, speaking about their English accent which probably might be their third or fouth language, how many languages can you speak without accent? Stop looking down at the third world countries. You are not any better....
Gee who didnt see this coming?
There isn't going to be a permanent state of affairs of American companies offshoring professional jobs in order to get cheap labor.
It is simple supply and demand. If the demand for skilled Indian labor increases, and the supply of skilled indian labor doesn't expand to meet the demand, price will go up. Eventually, it will go up to about the same amount as it is here.
And, because it is SKILLED labor, these people are smart enough to make sure they don't spend the rest of their life in a sweat shop. They WILL find a way to increase thier standard of living over time.
At one time Japan was the place where low quality products were produced by extremly cheap labor. 30 years later and Japanese skilled workers make higher income than in the U.S and their product is considered superior. (There have been a lot of jobs that stayed in Japan that didn't come back to the U.S. after Japan became wealthy, but that is because Japanese are better educated and more competent than the average American, not because they work for cheap.)
A country that is well educated, smart, hard-working, and honest doesn't have to worry about being devistated by offshoring... which means America may very well be in trouble, but the problem isn't free-trade or Indian programers, the problem is Americans.
I'm waiting for the revolution... That's revolution as in wheel, not revolution as in speech.
Heres the road map:
US workers are too expensive so US companies outsource jobs to India.
India becomes too expensive, so they outsource to Russia.
Russia becomes too, so they outsource to [another country].
Repeat ad nauseum until...
[Mid. o' Nowhere] becomes too expensive, so they outsource jobs to... the US.
I will call this assertion More's law. I propose that this cycle will double in frequency every 18 months. It will be become so rapid that every country in the chain will only add 1 character, then only 1 bit.
This will continue until no real work will be done. There will be an infinate loop of new contracts circling the globe every few hours. The only way to break the loop is run out of lawyers. The matrix was so close, it was actually lawyers, not robots that envslaved humanity. Now we know, so we can stop it.
That's not the offer. The offer is: "I'll pay this much for this work." If the person to whom you make that offer doesn't want to do it for the price you're paying, then he goes and works for someone else. There is competition for labor, even in India.
Except that the market isn't all that perfect, and in places like India the employer has a huge advantage in the labor market.
See, you have this false belief that the employee actually has a choice. In many places, there is no real choice. The employee's options are to work at crap job X or crap job Y and get crap wage Z at both.
We care less if it's in India, Vietnam or Europe. When will they ever come back to Mainland? Is it possible ? No.
The BPO definition will widen from call center to urine and blood sampling to stock research and auditing.
Adding to American woes is the dick-head immigration policy where we are neither getting enough graduate or P.hd students nor the ones graduating are working here.
Ultimately, China and India will de-stabilize the economic balance created and get richer. Lets accept the fact and begin to work harder or perish.
Trust Microsoft/Trust ManagedCode!
MWAH, HA HA HA HA HA HA!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
But their share-holders saw the increase in profits, and they will not be happy. The increase will be passed to clients, rest assured.
John Carmack fan, browsing at +5 since 1999.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=8247
Slashdot = Sarcasm
http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=ITJOB S
You can bet your reputation on this question at the above link--a game where you can speculate on future outcomes. This market is currently predicting a fairly good long-term for the US software market, the market currently trades at a value that says it is 70% likely that there will be 35% more IT jobs in the US in 2012 over 2002.
There is also this weird cultural work phenomenon that I don't think US management is prepared for from India outsourcing.
At my company, everytime a new India employee joins a team, one the existing employee who has worked the longest automatically expect to become a manager.
This guy would do nothing and just manage all the new employees. We thought it was a joke at first. But this is really bizarre as every new hire have that same belief.
nuf sed
Table-ized A.I.
What did this guy just say? Seriously, I believe that there is and should be a lot of flexibility in the english language. However that flexivibility should be within the limits of people understanding you, otherwise it no longer counts as communication.
This means
A)Don't use so much jargon that people don't know what you are saying and:
B)Read what you just wrote and see if you can understand it.
Okay, the parent is not guilty of violating A), but B) is severely in question.
Dude if you don't want to read my posts just skip it. Stop being a fucking Anonymous grammar teacher when you can't even spell yourself.
India = Indo-European languages.
True, but the Slavic languages such as Russian are also Indo-European languages, and they can introduce just as much of an accent barrier as anything else. What matters is not the lineage of a language as much as how its phonology differs from that of English.
African and Semite languages are about as far from Indo-European as you can get...
Afroasiatic languages are more closely related to Indo-European languages than are, say, the Uralic-Altaic-Japanese-Korean superfamily or the Amerindian superfamily. Go look up "Nostratic" to see how (comparatively) close Afroasiatic languages are to IE.
...with no extra effort required to do so either. Think grandparent needs to have dinner.
So if you say "here do this work, otherwise you'll end up poor and starving" isn't enslavement?
All you can do is grow the economy as quickly as possible so that competition for labor will intensify. Socialist-style "you WILL pay this much for labor, and you can't do this and this and this..." breeds weakness and stagnation. Witness France. Thus why I said: make it as easy as possible for people to start new businesses, small businesses in particular.
I know everyone has their own tech support nightmare stories but my point with this one is why even have a tier one or general support line at all? More often then not, it is 100% completely useless and gets you nothing. I guess the status quo keeps them there but they could save even more money getting rid of them entirely.
If everyone could actually read and follow simple instructions, there would be no need for a legion of underpaid monkeys to do it for them.
I do agree that certain products (not just problems) should be automatically escalated: the kind of person who buys a KVM is also likely to hook it up correctly. That said, what is the deal with DOA KVMs? How can any single component be so consistently shitty from so many manufacturers?
Well if anything, it makes things even more expensive (for India) because 4 years ago, it was about 49 rupees to the dollar. Now it's about 43 rupees. The more you outsource, the more the excahnge rates rise, the less revenue Indian outsourcing companies get, the less lucrative outsourcing becomes, yada yada and yada.
As an Indian working in India, I've been screaming myself hoarse about this, and how America really doesn't have much to fear from outsourcing - because wages/costs/value of rupee is rising a lot faster than jobs/wages are falling in America. So eventually, say within the next 5 years, it won't be worth it to outsource to India. Now some people think that it just means things will be outsource to China or Kazakhstan or Sudan..but no.
1) China's GDP per capita is already much higher than India's. This means (in very inaccurate, general terms) that a chinese worker is ALREADY more expensive than an Indian one - coupled with a MUCH higher exchange rate - so the work will NOT be shipped to China.
2) It won't be sudan or wherever because India's main advantage is ENGLISH population. Sure they're not speaking as perfect as an American (debatable point actually), but there are more people speaking English in India, than in China, or the Philipines or wherever - in fact the World's largest selling English Daily is published in India - the Times of India (I'm not including a link to it because the f-ing site is bloated with spyware, and one of you poor souls might actually still be using IE!). There's that and the fact that India is 10-12 hours ahead of a US time zones. This is one reason for the efficiency - providing 24 hour customer service to Americans is easy if for 12 of those hours, your customer reps are actually just doing a regular 9-to-6 in their own country.
So again, there some particularly unique factors as to why India has been successful. Once our economy picks up, outsourcing on the *relatively* large scale will slow, or even drop greatly. Plus, in those 5 years, America will also move on in different ways (incomes won't rise or may even drop, yyou guys will find some alternative "growth" industry to keep you going, allowing retrenchment of unemployed software engineers/call centre workers, e.t.c).
My Favourite Meme
All you can do is grow the economy as quickly as possible so that competition for labor will intensify.
There is a limit to how much and how quickly any market can grow. One of the main problems I have with unfettered capitalism is that this never seems to be recognised. Any system relying on continual growth eventually fails, and in this case it would take nations or in a global economy the world with it.
This is still the key thing that pure captialism has over communism Soviet style. You can put off a collapse for as long as you can sustain growth. Problem is those who stand to gain most from the capitalist system are those who are rich and in power. It's in their best interest to ignore problems like unsustainable growth and prattle on about free markets because while the system is working they get richer and fatter.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Dude, if you don't want to make sense, just don't post.
I read your post 3 times and I'm not any closer to figuring out exactly what you meant.
Either make sense, or just stop wasting everyone's time.
Of companys that have completly unacceptable business practices. My memory is long. Seagate has'nt gotten off the list from the 80Meg era.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
But mebbe dey people here dey laff na bicos ee dey like say dis wahala no speak English. He speak pidgin. Wake up and hear de smell, Dell!
That's just phonetic spelling for English with an Ebonic accent, as heard for example in sitcoms on UPN. Most Americans can understand urban English. Treating a dental 'd' as an allophone of voiced 'th' and correcting the "eye dialect" spellings, you get this:
But maybe they people here they laugh now because he -- they like say this wahala no speak English. He speak pidgin. Wake up and hear the smell, Dell!
Suddenly, it's not some "pidgin" but just English of a lower socioeconomic class, apart from the loan word wahala. If you want real pidgin (albeit one that has creolized), go to Wikipedia and look up Tok Pisin.
I understood it fine.
the original poster is saying that India employees expect to be managers whenever a new replacement is coming in to do the dirty work essentially.
The issue here in software programming which is skilled labor as opposed to who has the fanciest manufacturing plant.
It's a fallacy that electronic hardware manufacturing does not require skilled labor. Sure the people running the machines don't require alot of skill. But essentially they are the equivalent of call center people. Those factories also need:
Technicians - Maintain equipment
Mechanical Engineers/ChemE/MatSci/EE - develop machine processes, techical documentation, troubleshoot complex problems
Industrial engineers - layouts, material flows, production improvements
Business educated people - manage supply lines
Other college educated - managerial, training, quality,etc.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
It's just a big ass pyramid scheme with the U.S. on top.
Comments like this one aside, there seems to be an acceptance of India as a place were software work really gets done. I don't see so many Indian Tech Support jokes as there used to be. And I can't see a single "Poverty and clean water first" post modded up yet.
Just move your business to ethiopia, Ethiopia Leapfrogs into the digital age train and hire them, and ultimately you'll have cheaper prices than both Asia and India.
There will always be some country more desperate for jobs, who are willing to work for cheaper, so programming as an industry is dead for Americans. Soon there will be more than enough Africans, Chinese, Indians, South Americans etc to do all the programming the world will ever need, as long as we don't use patents we will have plenty of innovation.
their dominance was just begining and it is already gone?
Ironic. Gloablization is a curious beast.
Protectionism does the following...
1) Hurts the poor by raising the cost of goods.
2) Funnels money into inefficient businesses.
3) Cost the taxpayer money to support the regulatory agencies, subsidies, etc.
4) Gives the government a means to further distort the economy by tailoring their tariff policies to favor special interests.
5) Strangles what remaining export industries we have by encouraging tariff wars with foreign governments.
6) Leads to more pain and dislocation in the future by putting off inevitable economic restructuring.
7) Is frequently practiced by autocratic countries.
The fact is that CAD CAM is NEXT, in our hitlist
The interesting side effect of the indian offshore market in the UK is that many of the customers are going to alternative providers for whatever service they require. I personally have rung my bank and was talking to someone in india. They promptly denied it when I asked however the latency and quality of the phone line made me wonder about how truthful it was. When I wanted to get a bankers draft (bank cheque) drawn up and asked them to have it at my local branch they did not even know where abouts I was or the area even though it was one of the best known areas in london. I find it more than unlikely that anyone in the UK would have not known the a) area b) area or c) area. hence we are moving our banking away from that bank. its all about quality of service and you dont get that from india.
I'm in an MNC operating out of India. Being part of the workforce, I know pretty well the wretched condition Indian coders work in. Our training is inadequate, faculty is of poor quality, resources are lacking and we are always in a hurry. No wonder India has never produced a world renowned software product. At this rate, it never will.
So if you say "here do this work, otherwise you'll end up poor and starving" isn't enslavement?
Enslavement is when a person is owned by an other, and can be bought and sold as property, as well as raped, tortured or killed at will, just as you would be free to destroy any other property.
By contrast, offering someone a job is at worst pointless. If the prospective employee doesn't find the offer better than his current situation, he can always decline it. At best it can improve someone's life immensly. At the utter level of poverty many third worlders live in, a few cents more a day can be the difference between life and death.
I fail to see how you got insightful, unless the mods' cluelessness matches yours. Here's a hint, kid: as much as I think labour unions have long become more evil than good, there *was* a reason for their appearance in the first place. The 'free labour market' myth was a lie then and hasn't changed all that much up to now. It all depends on where you stand on the grand food chain.
But I guess you never had to choose between a crappy underpaying job and going hungry. Just be thankful you're selling yourself for more and don't think too much about the flip side of someone actually owning you.
Offshoring Slowing => Foodchain Rising
where did my sig go? where's my sig at?
Ya, that's right. Every programmer in Eastern Europe is a crook.
I'm a programmer from Romania (Eastern Europe) and I'd like to tell you that things aren't always black or white like you imply. Maybe there are more gray areas here than in your country, but I'm sure you can't be 100% sure that every one of your fellow programmers are crystal clear honest. So please don't generalize this way.
and take a stand....buy a sheep?
And then (when it's eaten your lawn to dirt) buy the sheep food from your local greedy capitalist sheep food selling superstore.
Ooops.
Might as well try more cowbell!
In Britain if you are made redundant from a job (Note not sacked/fired) Then the company that made you redundant cannot employ someone in the same position as you once had, until after a fixed period has elapsed. If they want to do that they have to sack you with due cause i.e you have to have been incompetent at your job etc. You do however get paid a statutory fee for the number of years worked. However there is a loop hole where by you can be made redundant and your position filled by a similary qualified person by having your position outsourced abroad. I find this rather odd that you can be allowed to do this!! Thank god its not Sweden its even stricter my freind was demoted to a receptionist until he left of his own free will. Then they filled his position agian.
Another one from Gartner....!!!!
As ppl have commented earlier, Gartner looks for something that can draw attention, that can possibly be a deviation from normally whats going on and hence they make name for themselves,
they havent said anything that is new, except the number they got by some magical spell they casted on the industry...45%.
Fact is, every1 is aware that as markets mature, there is no single player who can have even a 75% share, those figures are unreliastic, what really happens is one player dominates around 30-40% market at max, and i think that will be the case with india too...outsourcing is nothing new now, its been actively on canvas for around 5 years or so, where are those Vietnams, Russia(no offence to my friends from these countries) and all other countires which are talked abt in the article, problem is those countires even China is not making consolidated efforts which are required to play a dominant role in IT outsourcing and this is being done by India upto a large extent,whether its promotion from govt, whether its open policies, whether it preference given to IT companies, whether its big pool of engineers, that why you see so manu Multi Nationals flocking to India inspite of poor infrastructure
One more important thing that i have noticed is the strategies developed by Indian IT services companies, whether its relatd to management, whether it relates to business models...they are actively looking for ways to move up value chain and cut competition...
things will stabilize but as i said earlier there will be mutiple players and as far as salaries are concerned, they will surely be stabilized and need not be the sole reason for shifting business to another countries coz companies will stop paying that much and due to mkt conditions developers will take that as it happened during dot bomb era...
This report talks about low-end call-center type of jobs and not software jobs. Not to say that software jobs are high-end jobs, but in India the difference, in terms of pay, between these two professions is huge.
Unless you have a common definition of poverty, these statistics are useless. Like comparing apples and oranges.
Thank you,
Your CEO.
Not by much. About one or two percent on average. The large exchange rate shift was in 1998-99, right after the bust started.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C Clark
Whether you're advanced enough to appreciate it or not, economics is a science. A complex one to be sure but some people understand how it works. Now, press the button marked "off" on the bright magic rectangle in front of you and read a book or two book on economic theory. Adam Smith would be a good place to start.
Deleted
I've dealt with a few Indian firms, for outsourced tech support staff and for programmers. For the most part, these guys are incompetent. I think the main reason offshoring there is so popular is due to their English skills. However, with increasing demand, and therefore prices, it has now become unfeasible to outsource there, at least for me. I see many firms trying to charge $25/hour for sub-par programming. Why do that when I can pay a little more and get a real local programmer whom I can watch and supervise?
The goal of outsourcing is to either save money, or to get better expertise. I feel neither is true now, so India is no longer an attractive option.
In fact, I see Russians (and other Eastern Europeans) as being better programmers overall. I've checked out a few, and they seem to know what they're doing, unlike the Indians.
And just to let you know, Indian English skills aren't that great either. I've tried many outsourced tech support. They've all sucked. All of them.
eTrade SUCKS
Excellent points BTW.
There's also huge infrastructure investment which mean higher taxes, higher costs which push up prices.
The money also kickstarts the internal economy of India, the outsourcers have additional internal customers, demand increases, prices increase. Indian people start importing desirable products as their wealth increases. Guess what, other countries can benefit by selling stuff to India too.
Deleted
It's not the computation of the % of your profit you owe in taxes that makes things complicated, it's figuring out what your profit was to begin with. Flat tax doesn't help with that (unless you're proposing a flat tax on gross receipts, in which case kiss low-margin industries like groceries goodbye...)
The SCO lawsuit makes me wish my company were in Utah. We need a new building.
...bull$#!+
;)
The GLA and the borough councils aren't run by Nigerians, so who benefits from these parking tickets? Even if the ticket wardens are working on a commission basis, illegally issued parking tickets are easily contested, so why would they do it?
As for your bank example, that sounds like bull$#!+ too.
You must be "colour prejudiced"....
So if you want to complain about poverty (which is what you are actually talking about, but dressing it up in more emotive words) then do so, but don't blame the very people who are offering an alternative. I'm sure they're not offering the alternative for any moral reasons, but that doesn't mean that it is a priori a bad thing.
a priori? Give me a break and stop being so pretentious. Your view of the world means ANY employer no matter how bad the conditions he or she (or the company) sets is doing a good thing by offering the job. That's rubbish. Don't tell me that the people doing the exploiting are "offering an alternative" to poverty. They're just profiting from and prolonging that poverty!!!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I think more companies should look at Newfoundland Canada as a potential place to outsource. In the town of Grand Falls-Windsor there are multiple companies that are US based and rely on Canadians for their workforce. Those companies are benefiting from the lower cost of living that Newfoundlanders have compared to the rest of North America which in turn keeps salaries down. The people there are highly educated professionals with the credentials to suit most technology jobs. One of the companies that has a location there, choose Newfoundland in the late 90s after outsourcing to India for years and being very displeased with the results.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Well, it seems almost trivially correct that they are offering an alternative to poverty. I mean, looking at the definitions of the word, i really don't see how you could argue otherwise.
alternative 1. The choice between two mutually exclusive possibilities.
offer 1. To present for acceptance or rejection; Taken from dictionary.com.
And finally, do you have any evidence to support your claim that the outsourcing of computer programming or call centres to India is "prolonging the poverty"?
The big point everyone is missing is that all these 'offshoring' and 'outsourcing' companies are not necessarily owned by Indians. For example, about 40% of Infosys, which is one of the largest software/BPO firm is owned by Indians. http://www.infosys.com/investor/investor_frm.asp So, ultimately, who stands to gain from the bugeoning business of these firms? The shareholders - most of which are from 'rich' countries like USA.
Wonder if the CEOs ever get the idea that the basic US population really hates them so much?
I mean real hate and dislike on a level that keeps on ramping upward.
Do they know this and just not care?
Do CEOs ever read slashdot?
Dear syousef,
I have a job for you. Otherwise, you'll end up poor and starving.
Thank you,
Your future employer
>> Ultimately, China and India will de-stabilize the economic balance created and get richer.
If the current global trade was really perfectly balanced, and in perfect equilibrium, there would not have been an oppurtunity for cost arbitrage in the first place.
The so called "Balance" that you speak of was created during the industrial revolution, when western powers exploited the African and Asian nations and dumped their goods (clothes etc) onto them.
China and India were the richest countries in the world till 1700's.
The reason India, China or any other developing country are able to sell goods or services cheaply and competitively is that their currencies are very weak in Forex markets, while their real purchasing power is quiet high in the domestic market.
The BALANCE would be restored when some of the emerging economies realize their full potential, and attain developments levels closer to the western ones.
This is just a long due correction of economy.
Some days you shall be the piegon, some days you shall be the statue.
Man... get a grip. And instead of your whining about it, how about a solution to it? Yeah... I didn't think so.
Great; we finally get them to the point where they can be understood over the phone, and the moronic "Profit, and ONLY profit" motivated corporate exec's look to shave 2 cents and send the general public back into support Hell.
I wonder when those heavily educated buffoon's will realize their profit margin will be meaningless without someone able to purchase the products and services they offer... Or will they just up and move when the country is in economic ruin, and no one is able to survive off the "Living Wage" they offer?
Is this the beginning of the end of the dominance of India in the tech offshoring market?
No- it's the beginning of the "poverty as a comparitive advantage" economic model. Just like we've been predicting for years.
These corporations were getting high off of the fact that they had an easy way to undermine American labor and trade standards- India was the perfect "fertile ground" for that; They had the education system of a developed nation (skilled workers), but the labor standards of a third-world nation. Now that they are actually establishing some standards for themselves, they are losing their "poverty advantage".
Welcome to the new World Economy- a "round robin" game where your nation wins when your standards of living have eroded to a point less than everyone else's; and you lose as soon as you try to start making them better.
Anyone who thinks the outsourced employees in India have even a loose grasp of English doesn't work closely with said employees. Where I work we outsourced to India, and anytime they call, a 1 minute call becomes a 30 minute ordeal. Then again, maybe we just went for the "15% off if English isn're required" deal.
About two years I decided to ship a used computer to a poor friend in a remote part of Canada.
Canada charged $40 just for the used 17" monitor (I could not have sold it for $50 here).
The package was declared as gift, and all. Canada didn't care.
What capitalism brings is an arena for the 'biggest, fastest, smartest, baddest (sometimes) to get ahead and get their share (what they EARNED not what was handed to them).
:)
Some men came to north america with nothing (ie Andrew Carnegie) and ended up being incredibly wealthy through hardwork, grit, and maybe a bit of schemeing. On the world stage, are we not all more wealthy than in the past?
Hasn't capitalism allowed greater trade, and an overall better standard of living? How many television sets are in the household of a (capitalist) north american living 'below the poverty line.
How do the poor live in communist china? The rich are ok, they don't live like the beverly hills wealthy, but they're ok. The poor, not so much.
Don't be sweat shop worker, strive to be a sweat shop owner
Well buddy, I'm one of those employees. So I'm pretty sure you're wrong.
My Favourite Meme
Moderation +5
40% Interesting
20% Insightful
20% Informative
What's really "interesting" is that the none of the mods ever saw the very popular movie (a comedy) where this quote was taken (the whole comment was a copy-and-paste from IMDB). The more amazing part is that they actually found it Interesting, Insightful, and Informative!
There is a limit to how much and how quickly any market can grow. One of the main problems I have with unfettered capitalism is that this never seems to be recognised. Any system relying on continual growth eventually fails, and in this case it would take nations or in a global economy the world with it.
Population growth helps feed market growth. If we run out of room for population growth, THEN we're in trouble. We're no where near that here in America, our goofy housing market notwithstanding. I would like to see us figure out how to expand off-world but that's a topic for another thread.
Problem is those who stand to gain most from the capitalist system are those who are rich and in power. It's in their best interest to ignore problems like unsustainable growth and prattle on about free markets because while the system is working they get richer and fatter.
Not true. The people who stand to gain the most are the ones who are not rich yet. The already rich can prattle on about how much they "care" about the little guy while they frustrate the entrepreneurial class that could unseat them. See the Kennedy clan, Warren Buffet, George Soros, heck even Bill Gates, all Democrats or worse. The Left is extremely well represented by the very rich. Big business political funding patterns bear this out. Small businessmen are overwhelmingly Republican or Libertarian. Cutting tax and regulatory complexity for small businesses is the best thing you can do for the economy.
Any more, perhaps, but long-time phone jockeys, who endured lots of training, paid lots of money for (and overnight-crammed for) certs and other post-surname letters, tend to take it in the crotch on statements like that.
But now all the highly-qualified service techs that Big Business squandered to India for a song can only get about $8.00/hr (in Houston, anyway) for swapping boards and "Ghost-imaging" drives, which is why we're all cable guys or envelope-stuffers or warehouse forklift drivers, or what-not.
Whose fault? Take this multiple-choice:
A: "WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! WE WANT CHEAPER MACHINES! WE WANT CHEAPER MACHINES! (oh, by the way, we stil want you to support 'em, but we're not paying for that)..."
B: "WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! THE SERVICE DIVISIONS ARE REVENUE BLACK HOLES, AND IT'S MAKING ME LOOK INCOMPETENT! WAAA- WAIT! - I GOT AN IDEA! OUR CUSTOMERS AREN'T PAYING FOR SUPPORT, SOOOooo
C: "WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! YOUR SHARES AREN'T PERFORMING! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! YOUR SHARES AREN'T PERFORMING! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!"
D: (the correct answer) ALL OF THE ABOVE.
-- "Everything to the Internet!" - Michael Capellas -- "Everything to Bangalore!" -
Well they still have the processes. A lot of the company's doing the outsourcing work in India are Indian. The know how belongs to Indian's not americans. That makes it potentially easier for them to hold on to their work because they have more than just cheap wages. If that was the case then it would be very easy to outsource to say Ethiopia. Eastern Europe has some advantages but it is not clear to me that wages make _that_ much of a difference.
Actually quite a few did. The number of hispanics in US is growing bigtime and as far as I know it's already second biggest language in the US, in some states even close to English in size. In light of that, I wouldn't considering actually offering a spanish-speaking helpdesk, as an alternative, totally silly. :)
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
1. Are you using some kind of time compression technology...? 9am - 6pm = 9 hours, I think you will find.
2. If you are trying to provide 24 hour coverage it doesn't matter which timezone you are in. 9am-6pm is 9 hours of the 24 hours anywhere at all (unless of course you really do have some kind of time compression machine.....)
note: "call center"
Its the *skilled* jobs that have high turnover due to people moving to higher paying jobs.
Don't believe it for a second. This is propaganda supported by groups like the ITAA and multinational corporations. Their goal is to get you to let your guard down, allow an increased number of H1B visas, and stop bothering your government representatives about the problems of offshoring. Don't believe it! If the last 5 years have taught you anything, it's to never let your guard down.
Training dirt farmers as programmers is much easier and faster if you do not require all the math, ie calculus/differentials require for a CS degree in the US.
The idea that wage somehow makes slavery not be slavery is an illusion. Note that slaves have always been given something, such as food and a place to sleep. That's not the point. When you basically have no choice but to work for one guy or entity day in and day out, then you're a slave. Unfortunately, that's how the world works for the vast majority.
XML UI Browser/Platform
India's pretty big. If they have three time zones, covering 12 hours on 9-6 shifts would be feasible.
You are mostly right, except your point about China. My company outsources to both India and China, mostly for QA work but also for some maintenance programming. Of course programming is more expensive than QA work. However, Chineese programming is still cheaper than Indian QA. Of course I think the main reason for this is your point #2. All of our Indian resources speak pretty good English, but that is not true of the Chineese ones. So if a project is more or less self-contained, then we send it to China. If it is something more collaborative (which is usually the case), we send it to India.
Oh, and like you're any better? What have YOU done to make the world a better place? Grandparent poster is as least trying to spread awareness. Perhaps if you educated yourself you would realize that you're in economic bondage (unless, of course, you happen to be a CEO posting to /.). And while even the peasants in America have it pretty good, that's because we are near the top of the pyramid. Look at the ass end of capitalism for a more enlightening view. While I'm sure some of the South American banana-pickers love their jobs, I'm also sure there are many of them who would rather be developing software if they could only get an education, a computer and a chance.
Electric Monkey Pants
He's moving his development team to India where he can get class programmers for $1200-1500/month.
This is a "high wage"?
So this means companies want to outsource to Uganda where they can get programmers for $200/month?
What's wrong with this picture?
When are they going to outsource to Ethiopia where they could probably get programmers for $10/month?
I've no objection to the concept of internationalizing to save money, but it seems to me there comes a point where the "employee" becomes a slave, not an employee. When the boss is making $250,000 a year, and the employee in another country is making $100/year, something is wrong.
Not that it will last. People in other countries aren't stupid. The reason these corporate morons are looking to move from India is because the Indians figured out they are worth more than they were initially charging.
That will happen in Ethiopia, too, and damn soon.
The free market works both ways, corporate assholes.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I know everyone has their own tech support nightmare stories but my point with this one is why even have a tier one or general support line at all? More often then not, it is 100% completely useless and gets you nothing. I guess the status quo keeps them there but they could save even more money getting rid of them entirely.
Tier 1 serves two purposes now.
Firstly, having thoroughly and intentionally deskilled it, it became the lowest-hanging fruit for cost cutting. Hence, massive outsourcing and offshoring gutted Tier 1 support. Execs could look like heroes for their acumen at "saving money".
Secondly -- and mostly -- corporations stopped seeing customer support as valid. Since Tier 1 is the first contact, it made sense then to try to use that level of support as a "demotivator" for customers to actually seek any support whatsoever.
So, fella, please re-think your call for eliminating Tier 1 support. You're only following their plan to stop supporting their products for you. You are only allowing their vicious selfishness to authorize the removal of their responsibility.
As a metaphor, if politicians hired thugs to beat you up if you tried to vote, why would you start calling for the end of voting? STOP THE ABUSE.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Yet another article from a financial news source that assumes rising wages are automatically bad. Isn't an increase in the standard of living the point to economic progress? Isn't that the excuse whenever business gets their tax breaks and tarrifs and corporate welfare, that there will be more and better jobs? They describe rising wages in the tech sector in Ireland in the 90's like it was a natural disaster.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Brilliant points, parent.
The real problem here is trying to get "all gain with no pain". The recession has been buried with paper-printing and off balance sheet spending. While growing the government to huge proportions has propped up some of the unemployment -- the rest is covered by simply changing how we compute the data.
The way we compute unemployment now and inflation is different from the 1970s. Plus, the new phenomenon of both parents working and people working more than one job have skewed everything. If I am employed for two jobs, does our current unemployment figure account for that? I don't know. But you aren't counted as unemployed after about 5 months -- which means anyone can be jobless but not unemployed. That is called a discouraged worker. Anyhow, the real growth has been in disability. If you really want to not work, you go on disability -- this figure is a huge revenue drain and is not counted in the CPI data that everyone nods sagely to on the Financial News Network.
Just from common sense; with all the changes we've seen in the economy from 1990 to 2005, the unemployment figure has (as far as I remember) never fluctuated more than 1 % from 5.5 %. So, from booming economy to massive off shoring and we still get pretty much the same number. Putting it that simply, doesn't that tickle your Bull Shit detector?
OK. Still not convinced? Now I blow your mind. When GM massively lays off people, the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics can actually compute job creation. How? Well, only 40 % of large businesses are used to compute actual employment. Since a lot of jobs are based on small companies and self-employment and none of those are actually sampled -- the government can assume that those 12,000 workers in the auto assembly plant at GM have now become profitable entrepreneurs selling doilies on e-Bay. What the F@%#, you ask? This is called the CES Net Birth/Death Model.. A name that is so weird and obscure that you wouldn't stumble upon it accidentally and worry your pretty little head about economic matters that might be inconvenient. Yes, it is 1984 every year where we come up with meaningless names. Since wall street likes unemployment because this lowers wages because more people are trying to compete with illegal workers that we let in for construction and sweat shops, but doesn't like them too low because that scares consumers into not rotating debt between 3 credit cards and a second mortgage... well, they want to tell us that we got about 200,000 new jobs each month. So, this past year we've had 35,000 actual new jobs reported and 180,000 estimated with B/D Model in one particular month and another month we actually had about 320,000 (which might have scared wall street) and 120,000 were subtracted (because whatever). But on average, we've had about 80k jobs added each month this year to "fluff up" the figure. OK -- these are from a vague memory. I get all this info and then check it out with actual www.bls.gov figures at this web site -- good source of rumors and Angst.
Inflation. Well, basically, the government now has a huge incentive to keep this reported figure as low as possible. Union Wages and government programs and a whole host of other expenses have built-in inflation increases. The 3% inflation that we keep getting reported doesn't include volatiles like the price of Gas, Food, or Day - Care. Volatiles aren't included because they change a lot and it is reasoned that those prices are going to effect the durables eventually. But let's look at what we actually spend money on in my house; the House payment is just near the top of expenses. Since I refinanced with a low interest loan (and these rates are a danger to our countries debt finance) and a lot of people have re-fied to 30 and 40 year low interest loans -- so that reduces a major expense that reduces apparent inflation -- even though the price of the houses is going up at about a 20%
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
The numbers we've seen recently (the last year) on programmer rates in Indian are ~60 cents on the dollar US programmer. At that rate the savings of outsourcing programming are seriously marginal given the logistical costs and time zone differences. Any development that requires short loops or high touch is a net loss. That pretty much means you outsource technology work that 5-10 years mature only. Leading edge stuff is pretty dicey.
C'mon... I think we're all aware of what goes on around us. And again... I see nothing but whining. No talk of 3rd party... no talk of anything remotely constructive.
"Economic Bondage"?? You must be joking. Do you actually believe because these people have all this "stuff", i.e. crap... they are any more happier than you or I? And that Bill Gates goes to bed at night with a smile on his face because he knows he can slash his wife in cold blood and get away with it?
...you're still an idiot.
Steven Wooston, Lead Programmer, J-J-J-Julius Games
Author of a CONSIDERABLE number of best-selling games
Lunch, kid. Wait till you get a job, and find out it ISN'T 9-5, it's 8-5, or 9-6, or 7-3:30 (with 1/2 hour lunch). Only in Hollywood's imagination do you get a paid lunch. Otherwise, you got to make up the time...
It's been happening on land for years. Right down the street is a factory for the largest appliance manufacturer in the US.
They don't own the building, the city does. They don't hire the workers, a local temp agency does. They get tax breaks for being there. They can pack up and leave and be operational anywhere else within three weeks. They threaten go to Mexico every time production slips.
If you have a city run by nincompoops, chances are you already have one of these same mobile factories, right here in the US.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
That's what you get when you let your local nationalist make the rules. :-) "We gotta be INDEPENDENT (read - different) from other countries! Its a matter of PRIDE! (read - guarenteed money for the upper class due to translation/transitioning difficulties that require additional services of professionals like us!)"
Sure they're not speaking as perfect as an American (debatable point actually)
True. There seem to be a lot of people 'loosing' their minds abou this, recently... ;-)
How about if I make the equivalent of $50,000 in the local currency...an amount which is enough to give me the purchasing power that $50k would fetch me in another locale?
Way to go and completely misinterpret my arguments by introducing a tangential rent vs mortgage argument into the discussion. I could spend some more of my time trying to explain where you're wrong, but I'd rather have you do it yourself. Please read up on some basic Economics. The Wikipedia article about PPP I linked to in my original comment would be a good starting point. So is this slightly sketchy Wikipedia article about the Cost of Living index. I also presume that you're also okay with not receiving your annual COLA, since the cost of living doesn't really mean anything to you.
Just because you seem to hold a strong opinion that salaries should not take the cost of living into account doesn't necessarily mean it's correct.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The definition of slavery is nothing else than ownership of another human being. This does not necessarily translate in the right to rape, torture or kill at will. Many past societies where slavery was prevalent had legal codes against this very sort of thing. Further, it is quite evident that, with some types of property, there are regulations that prohibit certain uses. Many places, for example, will arrest and imprison anyone who rapes their pets regardless of the fact that their pets are their private property. In most countries, private property rights are not absolute, but limited by various social conventions.
Not that I'm defending slavery. Explicit slavery is a repugnant practice that all modern civilizations have rightly rejected. My point is merely that your examples of what differentiate employer/employee relationships from master/slave relationships are not attributes that are necessary to the condition of slavery.
The one aspect that makes a difference is the attribute of consent. A master owns a slave regardless of the slave's consent to the relationship. In theory, an employer only employs an employee with the consent of the employee. But in reality, this consent would only truly exist in a world where there would be no question of whether or not the material needs of a laborer were met if that laborer didn't work. In the real world, especially in less developed countries, if individuals don't work, they starve to death or die from exposure. Consequently, it can be argued that these individuals cannot really give consent to an employer/employee relationship.
As you correctly point out, at ``the utter level of poverty many third worlders live in, a few cents more a day can be the difference between life and death.'' In other words, those workers do not have the opportunity to consent to better employment. Their only real choice is to take it because the only alternative is to die. It is not so obvious how this differs from the master/slave relationship.
So, fella, please re-think your call for eliminating Tier 1 support. You're only following their plan to stop supporting their products for you.
Point taken.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
>> Protectionism does the following...
Replies lettered, I submit that very strong protectionism for a huge landmass/nation such as the US does no harm, does only good
>>1) Hurts the poor by raising the cost of goods.
A. Increases wages for former poor as goods all need to be manufactured, thus jobs are created and wages not reduced by wage levels of poorer countries.
>>2) Funnels money into inefficient businesses.
B. Competitive markets develop as more money is available to small family owned businesses to compete where they see an opportunity.
>>3) Cost the taxpayer money to support the regulatory agencies, subsidies, etc.
C. Regulatory agencies exist anyway, this is a invalid argument.
>>4) Gives the government a means to further distort the economy by tailoring their tariff policies to favor special interests.
D. I favor no tariffs, close the borders tight, we don't need anything from any country.
>>5) Strangles what remaining export industries we have by encouraging tariff wars with foreign governments.
E. We don't have any export industries anyhow other than artificially proped up ones. I say we make quality goods by Americans for consumption by Americans. If Honda, Toyota, Nissan are making their cars in America, then they are American by my logic/view, Does it really matter to the worker what stock market their employer is traded on?
>>6) Leads to more pain and dislocation in the future by putting off inevitable economic restructuring.
F. Bogus, lame, meaningless non-argument
>>7) Is frequently practiced by autocratic countries.
G. so?
Population growth helps feed market growth. If we run out of room for population growth, THEN we're in trouble. We're no where near that here in America
So your system relies on INCREASING the world's population? You want everywhere to be like China, and "THEN we're in trouble". Oh yeah I want to live in your world.
Not true. The people who stand to gain the most are the ones who are not rich yet
How the hell do you expect to get rich when your job pays so little you can't afford to pick yourself back up if you get ill?
Gimme a break!!!!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
it's libertarian bullshit, asshat. How dare you call me a liberal. :)
Besides, that post was just a first draft. I'll think about fixing some of the gramatical errors and dropping some of the inflamatory words. But the attacks on the sitting "president" are going to stay. He can claim to be president, but I know the truth.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Of course they are megalomaniacs and egomaniacs... and I don't know about you, but I'd regard that as some kind of mental illness.
And that's why so many people flock to religion... "god will get them for their evil ways you just wait and see". Sheesh... talking about dumb sheep!
Thanks for the link!!
So your system relies on INCREASING the world's population?
It helps, but it's not strictly required.
How the hell do you expect to get rich when your job pays so little you can't afford to pick yourself back up if you get ill?
As I keep trying to tell you, CREATE NEW BUSINESSES! Start your own if you can. The big problem, especially outside of America and a handful of other nations, is that governments make it insanely difficult to start new businesses. Many governments make you prove that there's a "need" for your new company. Many take months, even years to process the paperwork, unless you pay bribes. Bad government is the #1 poverty creator.
Just out of curiosity, what nation are you from?
Agreed. It's not "I'll pay this much for this work." (It's "How much can we screw you over?"), when there is a economic lockin by employers that restricts mobility. That is in every way, wage slavery when you combine the part of insanely expensive education that doesnt mind overcharging the people who least afford it with a job market that works against the people in it. I'll take slightly higher taxes if it means everyone is educated at a level comparable to Ivy League standards, and is afforded the same connections to the job market.
That's also why you see countries such as France recognize this and stand up to it when the wrong type of globalism enters their country. They might be the ones you look to, not China when you want something done right, the first time. At worst, you have the rest of mainland Europe that also resists the problem that this kind of globalism brings.
There is no competition when companies work against the other side of the market. It is only when you can help your own domestically as well as others to the same level instead of lowering yourself that you have it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Sorry guys, allot of good arguments about exchange rates, racism, corporate greed, and quality of services as regards offshoring work to India, but these are the facts...
The United States will still remain the powerhouse for technology and technology jobs including software and infrastructure professionals, period! We are still one of the TOP places for offshoring of services and according to three surveys I've read, will remain so!
Funny...we read about Indians replacing 30% of all software programmers in the US by 2010 (from analysts like Forrester and Gartner), when really more foreign countries come here and buy stuff from the US in terms of services than we offshore, at present. And the stats show that maybe 1-5% of all technology services procvided in the US are pushed overseas at present. Thats nothing! That speaks VOLUMES for the quality of tech services we provide as a country, to ourselves and the world. The loss of jobs is purely based on poor business decisions and technology ignorant CEO's in the US who are now getting burned by those decisions, from the articles Ive read.
Second, according to Venture LLC, Indians on average make roughly 1/4 what techies in the West make, yet that has risen 10-30% per year. Forget about inflation and the security risks and the HUGE attrition rates of Indians and the mass movement to "captive" corporate employment hiring versus direct purchases of that labor pool. All those things also affect the failures in offshoring, but the HYPE is around the salary differences, when that has almost NOTHING to do with cost...or at present, or lack there of. Venture says that cost savings from work overseas was 9% and maybe 10% OF THAT was due to labor. That means labor cost savings were around 1%!!! Thats nothing...so has NOTHING to do with cost. The issue is it takes 4-12 Indians what it takes one high quality tech professional in the US to do. There is no cost savings when you measure PRODUCTIVITY! Or managemnet costs involved. What does that say about the US techie versus offshored Indians? Or the poor business decisions mangagers in this country have made???
Next, I work for a tech services firm and was the only one left in our development team in 2002 when the last developers were cut by our CEO. Ive been to many corproate board meetings, met many clients and their CEO's and written the code that supports many many corproate products online. Now our company is booming again and we have allot of work and tons coming. Salaries are way up, and we have people from all over the world working with us. Its even hard to find talent. From what I see its clearly an advantage to hire US people over foreigners. This has nothing to do with race...its culture! People nutured in our country and in our corporate environment have HUGE talents and can innovation on a dime and wear many technology "hats". We can put one developer on a very large c# project and it comes out nearly bug free. The productivity and code quality level is unmatched. We have tried hiring small teams of Indians and it takes 4-5 guys to work on one web application...when our team can have one guy building several at once. There is no comparison in quality and productivity...but managers and dumb business people dont see that in technology and the work professionals do...its like we still have this stigma of disrespect from upper level management. Why, when we are the ones managing the infrastructure, the profits from bug-free software, the competitive edge in superior customer support. etc. etc.? But that is changing.....
From my experience, here is what has happened:
US CEO's and business managers are the DUMBEST people in the WORLD as regards technology. Thats a a fact. I cannot tell you how many times Ive met CEO's who have NO CLUE what the technology or spec docs they paid thousands for did! Nor do they or their managers know what their technology people did in their organization before they laid them off. I cannot tell you how much damage US business people have
U.S. PROGRAMMERS = INNOVATION