Slashdot Mirror
Outsourcing to Rural America
andy753421 writes "Wired is running an article about 'Rural Sourcing, an IT company that outsources not to India or Mexico, but rural America.' The company targets IT workers in rural location due to lower costs of living, 'The company charges $35 to $50 per hour for IT expertise, which may cost around $100 in New York City. While this is no match for outsourcing rates in India, clients benefit from local accents and similar time zones -- not to mention the absence of stigma sometimes attached to farming jobs out to foreign countries.' The article also points out several other innovative attempts at outsourcing such as Lakota Express and Seacode, which was previously covered on slashdot."
It seems many of the better quality India based customer service companies have been hiring employees with little or no accent, so their English is very clear.
...". It takes almost 3 times as long to have a conversation as it should. You can be polite, but also be quick.
The thing that annoys me now is that they're so damn polite. You give them your first name and they reply "Thank you. Thank you sir. Thank you for the information." To ask a question they start with "Sir, could I please ask you for the
I work in Indianapolis. The parent company is in Los Angeles. Works out for both of us.
I note that Thomas Friedman talked about this in his book, "The World is Flat" where he discussed how, I believe, Southwest Airlines sent its booking to stay-at-home moms in Utah. They were stable, ad low turnover, the pay was good for them, and Southwest cut their costs fairly significantly.
In addition, you are less likely to see unionization, you can sometimes farm out (heh!) work on a piece basis, reducing the benefits/workers comp/unemployment comp, etc.
I live in a built-up area of PA. I grew up in the boonies. I have long considered the possibility of giving someone where I grew up a copy of Openoffice, a dialup account, and a computer so that I can email my dictation out there and have them send it back on a piece rate basis.
I could probably save about 25-30% on my transcription costs.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
$35-$50. I pretty much live in rural America, and Sykes only paid $7-8 on the average. $9-11 if you were a admin. This was the highest paying section, and these people were required to know how to tell a client to completly disassemble and reassemble a computer. That's between $14,500 - $16,600 annually Yet, in the state where I live, the supposed annual salary for a programmer was stated to be $50,000, when in actuallity it was more like $27,000. To make comparisons, the adjusted County income for this same area was stated: Very Low: $30,300 Low: $33,000 Moderate: ~$44,000 Median: ~$65,000 Forget Indiana. India is right here in America.
At the risk of being a shill, I use WildBlue. It is cheap, the dish is small, the speeds rock, and it works. About the only thing it sucks for is off-hours fragging. My speed us 1.5 up 256 down, with 500ms latency (last time I looked). Most could live with that, I know I can.
BTW, I looked at a getting a T-1 before I found this place. Verizon doesn't run them to homes per policy.
Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
I'm not certain what the people on the coast think we're missing, but it's not an extremely high-pressure lifestyle. I'm guessing people on both coasts (in the big cities, anyway) need vacations in order to survive or go splat! Living a quieter lifestyle takes a lot of that out of you. We're not lacking for much. But the standard of living is much, much different.
Your guessing wrong. There are people (I am one of them) who live for the big city lifestyle and wouldn't trade it for anything. When I lived in NYC I had 24/7 access to virtually I wanted. Almost every culture in the World is represented. I could get food just by walking half a block that I now have to drive over two hours to find. Virtually anything made by the human race can be found in a World City like New York.
When I moved out of the city and back upstate I relocated to a moderately sized city (Binghamton). I now live in the suburbs. Aside from losing access to all that culture and activities the biggest adjustment for me was how quiet it is around here. I miss the sounds and smells of the city.
Just pointing out that the country lifestyle is not for everybody.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.