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Life on the Other End of the Tech Support Line
Ant writes to mention a PC World article about life on the other end of the tech support line. From the article: "According to interviewees, entry-level jobs at U.S. tech support firms pay about $7 an hour. Workers for a third-party tech support firm in New Delhi, India, make less than half that. Akanksha Chaand, who holds an advanced degree in computer science and had a job fielding calls for Hewlett-Packard at Business Processing Outsourcing in New Delhi, India, made the equivalent of $13,000 a year working in tech support--significantly more money than many less fortunate people in India earn. In contrast, a tech support pro who now lives in Arizona says she was barely scraping by on her $7-an-hour salary with no benefits. The rep, who asked that her name not be used, said it was only a bit better than her previous job--delivering pizzas. She said she received two weeks of training before taking calls from the public. "
When everyone and their brother wants to fill a role they're not qualified imagine that, they get paid like shit.
It's like someone who studies to be a chef wondering why they don't make a lot of money at McDonalds.
There are L2 and L3 roles which pay better. I know a few L3 people at IBM and they're smart people earning decent bucks [way more than $7/hr].
So if these peeps are so damn smart don't apply for L1 support roles.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The difference in the cultures make in interesting. Akanksha has a computer science degree and holds what is probably a very respectable job in his peer's eyes. Here in the US, the job could be considered elementry. Are the standards for a computer science degree in India equivalent to those of a similar degree here in America?
The main subject of the article is tech support, and that's fine (I guess death threats and lusers tend to be all alike all over the world) but examining the difference of income between outsourced and american employees involves taking account of differences in taxation, welfare, lifestyle...
It's a broad subject that in my opinion has little to do with TFA and might be better discussed relating to jobs in general, not tech support in particular.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
From my understanding, the industries' average pay for a tech support position isn't typically that low. In the area I'm in, you won't be paid less than 8 for customer support and 9 for technical support.
That said, they are still very crappy jobs with many centers having turnover rates that would make fast food places blush.
So what about this is newsworthy? The U.S. job is entry-level and staffed with the bottom of the barrel. We're talking people whose last job was pizza delivery. Of course they're not paid much by the U.S. economy's standards.
The Indian with a BSCS degree will get a job that pays well in the economy in which she chooses to live.
1. If the Indian wants more, she should move to the U.S. where the demand for degrees and pay is higher. 2. If the U.S. former pizza driver wants more, a degree and experience is the answer. I've stopped visiting this site as often because of "relevent news" like this.
Simply befriend a nerd. They are a common species of parasite and can be found in nearly all urban centres. They charge little for their advice or knowhow, and usually can be bartered with using goods such as 'Coca-cola' and 'Chocolate'.
As a rough of comparison, a loaf of bread which costs $2.50 in the US costs a little less than 25 Indian Rupees ($0.50). US $13000 is a little less than 600k INR which by all means is quite a _comfortable_ if not princely salary to get by in India.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Gamasutra had an interestng article about support desks for computergames a little while ago. You can read it here.
It gives an interesting list of what to do with which emails, when to press delete and when to press reply, what to do if somebody threatens to commit suicide and so on.
My freeware games
Paid eight what? Grecks? Beers? Shillings? Drachmas? Space Hookers?
It only took me 20 to write this when it could taken me 5, but that's the convenience of having a 1.2 vs an 800.
A "dollar" is what a dollar buys. It has no fixed value.
In third world economies a "dime" may well be "ten bucks," so long as you stick within the local economy for food, clothing and shelter. Living is actually quite cheap, which is why so many people from the first world choose to vacation/retire to the third. You may well find you can live, and live well, for a year for less than what it would cost you to spend two weeks at Disney/land/world/universe/whatever.
The rub is that things from outside the local economy, imports, are priced at what a "dollar" is worth where they are made, and can thus be beyond the means of someone who would otherwise be considered middle class. Things like a simple radio or portable television may require the investment of an entire community which otherwise lacks nothing needed for sustaining a good life.
One can see the same affect in the first world when comparing rural vs. urban living. I turned down $60k/yr in Manhatten awhile ago, because $60k in Manhatten cannot buy me what I could get working a cruddy retail job upstate.
When comparing disparate economies you cannot think in terms of dollars. You have think in terms of hours per pound of rice/place to sleep. When you do this you may find that lower wages are often greater wealth. Money is not wealth. It is an abstraction. What your money buys you is wealth. The "stuff" itself.
KFG
I have seen many people who work in tech support complain about the unearthly working hours. Especially if the call center caters to the US clients, then out of the 30 days a month, one has to work for atleast 20 days in the night shift. The pay is relatively good. But the burn out is higher. The employees are given training to talk like the americans using the american slang especially if the job involves accepting calls. It seems really surreal to see one of these guys talk. And the people stay at one place only for a couple of months and then move on.
So IMHO, irrespective of the pay, a call center job is not exactly a cushy job. One should not measure a job in terms of money alone. Job satisfaction also counts a lot.
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The blurb links to the Digg page for the story, not the actual article: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125537,0 0.asp
I went from tech support to delivering pizza. Pizza delivery actually pays pretty well. I averaged $12-15 an hour (with tips and gas factored in), as opposed to 10.50 an hour. Granted, this was when gas was $1-$1.25. It's funny, i remember all of us drivers standing around bitterly complaining about having to pay $1.35 for gas. Damn that was high ;)
Any information may be true or incorrect depending on your perception of said information
This sort of misses the point of the problem. There are a fixed and small number of well paying job and special skills or knowledge are required to get them. The number of unskilled jobs is very large- more jobs than there are people to fill them. These are the jobs that our president refers to as "jobs that Americans just won't do." These jobs are almost uniformly low paying, often menial, sometimes dangerous (recent statistic about 25% of all workplace deaths involve undocumented workers, which is disproportionately high).
Unfortunately, our American lifesytle and economy seem to require these jobs. The people who pick our vegetables, serve us in restaurants, work in supermarkets, work in hotels, work security jobs, etc. They are everywhere. Imagine how life would change without these jobs/people.
In fact, the American lifestyle is addicted to low paying jobs and what they mean- $2 BigMacs, $40 DVD players, cheap vegetables, etc. Companies outsource whenever they can to reduce cost and we , the consumers, reward them with our business. Over half a trillion dollars in trade deficits go overseas every year. Half a TRILLION dollars! Two or three years ago, there was a rumor that S. Korea was going to sell of US dollars in favor of Euros. Based on this rumor, the value of the dollar fell about a percent. China owns at least an order of magnitude more dollars (and growing every day). The administration accuses China of artificially devaluing their currency to keep costs of their good low. China/US relations quite frankly suck- US spy planes off the coast of China crashing into a fighter jet, the US bombing the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, President Hu visiting Bill Gates prior to president Bush, each accusing the other about human rights violations. The list goes on and on. China is a proud nation that is rising fast, sending up people in to space, and taking a more dominant place on the world stage. If/when they want to break the US financially, they almost certainly can.
Meanwhile, we, Americans, continue to pay illegal immigrant works to do "jobs that Americans won't do." All the while paying other Americans money for unemployment and welfare (Add to that the problem of billions being spent in Iraq.) The national debt is increasing. Bottom line is that this is not sustainable. One day China, Saudi Arabia, and all the other countries that own US dollars are going to decide that the US dollar is not a good investment (would you buy stock in any company that year after year goes further into debt?). That day is not far off.
I don't claim to have all the answers but I think that it involves something like paying people in the US a living wage, increasing the wages on "jobs Americans don't want" to the point where Americans would want them, stop migrating jobs out of the US, stop increasing the national debt, ie stop giving tax cuts with money you don't have. Americans will have to accept that it costs money to maintain our society, country, and way of life. It certainly does not involve smugly saying that if they are not qualified, they get paid "like shit."
Then the L2 would come on saying something like, "Tell me a little more about your modem problem", and the customer would say something like, "Oh, that's just what I put in the form to get to a real person."
Then things would get ugly fairly quickly.
I can't compete with someone who only has to pay thirty bucks a month for rent, and who can feed his family in a nice restaraunt for a dollar.
I'm happy for these people, to be honest. I have a privileged fucking head-start on life, just being born in the United States. Add to that the fact that I'm white, and suddenly I have a leg up on a lot of people, even though it shouldn't be that way. I'm glad to hear other people in the world are living well, instead of suffering--and I don't care how that happens, whether it's cheaper than me or not.
I don't get upset when other people are doing better, if they're getting better perks, or if their lives are easier. I left that whiny, woe-is-me bullshit behind when I left high school.
You can compete, if you want to. If you don't, you'll whine that you can't.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
I used to work tech support for Comcast. I am also in an area that Comcast does not have service (Canada). So you could describe me as a person who had an outsourced job for a while.
I live in a smaller city, where there's really a University and not much else. As a result, the call center has hired just about everyone in town who has the slightest bit of computer knowledge at this point in time. The real life blood of the center though is in international students at the University. It's often difficult for them to find jobs, but they have a great deal of technical knowledge (especially the computer science students). As a result, our center was the highest rated center for Comcast for a very long time.
I got paid a little over $10 CAD/hr. I hear that it's gone up to $11.25 since I quit, but that's likely due to the minimum wage going up (it's $6.25). The call center is a complete shit job, and people only stay to earn money (providing tech support for Americans is right up there with jizz mopper), and the center has to pay us enough over minimum wage to be appealing.
But that's my personal experience. I find it rather interesting that according to the article, Americans get paid ~$3 less than us. But of course I had plenty of experiences with the American call centers. Mainly cleaning up messes that they created. So I guess that the call management people I worked for figured that the extra $3 was justified, as the results were better up here? (Seriously, I could rant for hours on the American call centers... the one in lubbock, tx most especially. And believe me, I wasn't the only one who had to clean up MANY messes from that center.)
Look, if your not earning a "living wage" then adapt. This means going without luxuries. I have friends who still work "dead end jobs" and they harp all the time about the fact they don't get paid enough. Yet they still want their cell phone, cable, high speed internet, and more. Of course its not sustainable on their income. Worse, all these "monthlies" they pay out keep them from having the money they need to get an education to move them up.
The real trap is that too many people are convinced they deserve the "extras" but don't want to do what it takes to have them. These jobs that people complain about are for the unskilled. We are no longer a low skill work force but we do have many jobs that are low to no skill. Every economy will have these jobs. They are mostly to introduce people to the workforce. As many know there are people out there who just are not fit to work in professional environments. They don't have the personality, the required restraint, or the discipline. As such they will work these low end jobs. Some will take on more than one.
When I worked for a large security company, think rent-a-cops, I was amazed at how little some of the people made. We even had a few of these people working the building and lot of the company. What I found was three types of people, there are obviously more. The first were students who needed a simple job with regular hours. Much of security work is sitting and they would take advantage of it by studying. They would do their walks and escort ladies to the vehicles upon request. The second were people in between "real jobs" who were doing what was necessary to keep their homes and their families comfortable. Many had the security job as their second job. The third group were the majority of our hires, they were the people with no initiative. They simply didn't want more to do. Their idea of a better job was one with even less to do! Don't underestimate the number of people who fall into this last category. Sure we can find many who are in these jobs that should be somewhere else but those people are the exception. They should be spending their off time looking for the better job and improving their skills to get that job. I know, I was in this category for 5 years after leaving the service. I got out and expected to be able to land a decent job yet I found that my skills were not needed or out of date. I spent 5 years in a "dead-end" grocery job and eventually got myself back into tech school with the help of friends and my parents.
It was an incentive to not live that way that helped me move on. During that time I did without the big cable package, cell phone, and high speed internet. I didn't party every night or see movies all the time. I had an out of date car and for most of the time a 8 year old motorcycle to get to and from work. Sure it sucked, but initiative is the key. Unless you want to improve your situation you won't, you'll just bitch about how unfair it all is and never get anywhere.
Paying a living wage can be a trap as well. What consititutes a living wage for one person is barely surviving for another. How do you decide? Also, how do you provide incentive for people to better themselves and their families position if even the bottom end jobs pay a living wage? This is the big lie being foisted on people. The caring elite don't want these people to succeed, they want them content in their bottom end jobs so they, the elite, can enjoy all their low cost living without feeling guilty. Keep the poor happy and have no guilt for living off them. Gee, how nice. The "American way" is to build a better life for yourself if possible and definitely for your children. A living wage does not necessarily encourage the attitude needed to do that. Its a crutch, like many social programs, that keeps people just comfortable enough to keep them from improving while removing any guild felt by those with more.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
for what it is worth.
One thing I kept from my low skill days is my disdain of monthlies.
You want some real money? Simple, avoid nickle and diming yourself with all these monthly bills.
I have a pre paid cell phone. Since I have a regular phone line, without any of the silly add ons like caller id and such, I only need a cell phone for occasional use. While others I know spend 40 to 50 bucks a month I spend an average of 7 to 10 a month. Cable? I have basic cable for less that $15 a month instead of the big packages that are 40 to 60 in range. I do splurge with DSL but negotiated with my provider and only pay 40 instead of the normal 50 that most of their subscribers pay. I keep a zero balance on my credit cards, never buying what I cannot pay off immediately. When I go to buy my new laptop I will be able to pay for it straight up. Sure it would be nice to have it now but then I would have a new monthly. I don't eat out every night or even every weekend. I don't eat out for lunch at work, I watch my co-workers spend 7 to 10 dollars a day for lunch on top of their morning coffee runs, hell I bring my own instant coffee to work!
Get into the habit of not loading yourself down with monthly bills and you will see that you can do quite a bit with little money. Get into the habit of not buying your coffee house coffee every morning, eating out for lunch at work, and running a credit card balance and your income will seem to be many times what it is. Even I don't like the current prices of gasoline but since I am not burdened down with all the frivolous extras many people cannot seem to live without I can sustain the higher price of gasoline without a lifestyle change. I only have two kinds of monthly payments, my house and my car. So top that off with my bills needed to maintain the house and I can buy lots of "toys - read computer junk etc" and appear to my friends and coworkers to have more than I do. It took a long time learning what is really needed to enjoy life. Look, marketing works. You get bombarded every single day of your life. Too many people fall for it. They become to believe they need all these things, after all its less than a dollar a day, why shouldn't they? Well all those dollars add up and they reduce your flexbility and ability to deal with emergencies. If you lose your job what are the first things your going to have to give up?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I am surprised no one has mentioned that $13k a year (about $6.5/hr) is almost the same as $7/hr. This assumes 40 hours/week for 50 weeks.
So the question becomes, where was that money savings in shipping support to India? Apparently Americans will work for "Indian wages" for support.
One possible difference though, there is no comparison between their relative skill sets.
In all seriousness, having worked on a phone job once as an undergrad, they are probably fired if they deviate from the script.
Option one is to move somewhere where you would only have to pay $30/month for rent, and could feed your family in a nice restaurant for $1.
Option two is to form a consumers' union and refuse to do business with companies who employ people in places without minimum wage, environmental and healthcare laws at a comparable level to your own. Do not buy goods or services made in these countries. Lobby your government to promote free trade with countries that have similar regulations to your own, and impose heavy trade tariffs on those that don't.
Option two is probably the better one. In the short term, it will make prices rise (goods either have to be made by well paid employees, or the importers will have to pay heavy tariffs). In the long term, it will provide a significant financial incentive for other countries' governments to enact minimum wage laws, etc. which will result in an increase in the global standard of living.
Globalisation and free trade work really well, when everyone is at a similar economic level.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You can still trash a mac if you know shit about computers and insist on fucking with them. You can still fall for the ol' 'allow this program to run as root' social exploit.
They need systems which do not allow for remote changing of system code. If this requires a man to show up once in a while to plug in a device to update the firmware, so be it.
I've been told that such service jobs are the future of our economy!
Blar.
1) As commented many other places, you get what you pay for. If you're going to pay $7/hr US, or less for offshoring, you're going to get tech support on par with the kind of service you get when ordering fast food.
2) On the other side of that coin, if you are an employee of any kind, you should be doing your job to the best of your ability, not being an elitist prick to make up for what you see as an imbalance in compensation. Doing a crappy job for $7/hr isn't going to qualify you to get a job making $10 or $15. Besides which, you knew the deal going into it. You'd make $n/hr and be required to perform certain tasks (certainly including "don't be an elitist prick to customers").
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
It's pretty hard to run a tech oriented business ya know. I worked for Time Warner once upon a time as a tier 1 tech. Basically we were just customer fodder. I knew more than the "have you reset your modem" drivel, but I was not ALLOWED to go beyond that because that's what the tier 2 and tier 3 techs were for. So in a sense, we were automatons with human voices that were supposed to try to pick up sales on every call from every jim-bob down the street who threatens to kill me because he can't watch his nascar racing at 3 in the morning.
Machines can't yet do that. And when they can, many people will be out of a shitty job they never wanted.
You're nothing; like me.
It's the nature of the beast. Level 1 support is entry level and so skill is going to vary depending on the product you're calling about. I've worked frontline consumer and frontline for professional server products and the training and pay varied greatly.
It really depends on the product being supported and the customers. I've worked in tech support for a long time and you have to work on the following principles when dealing with a customer-base with a varying level of expertise.
1) Start simple. Explain concepts using non-technical words and provide detailed instructions. If the customer demonstrates some technical skill then adjust to their level. It's fairly simple to quickly determine someone's skill with a few questions. If it's done well, the caller doesn't realise they're being tested.
2) Don't assume the obvious. No-matter how experienced someone is, they are prone to making silly mistakes. The trick is to disguise the questions so they don't seem patronising. If you just ask someone if they've plugged it in, some people will take offence or become embarassed if they did indeed forget to plug it in. Ask them to disconnect the cable and reconnect it. Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups and I've seen too many cases at level 2 and higher where the obvious was missed because the caller claimed they had already carried out a step. of course, in cases like that the caller will blame the tech support guy, not themselves for missing the obvious.
The front-line guy in most cases isn't a moron and does speak English. What you're describing is an incredible generalisation or you've been dealing with companies that just don't take support seriously.
$50 dollars an hour for support is either incredibly excessive or very cheap depending on the type of product. It's the difference between buying an iPod clone or a Magnox nuclear reactor.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Government officials and policy makers talk about jobs Americans won't do. The reason why most Americans won't do certain jobs is not because of the work, it is because of the low pay! Americans need a certain amount of money to pay for housing, energy, food, as well as all the government-mandated expenses. Most mega corporations have become so obsessed with short term profit margins that they willingly sacrifice quality and customer service in order to squeeze another nickel in short term profits. Governments have become so obsessed with making sure that everything that is done under their auspices conform exactingly to every written specification and petty policy regardless of the costs. This is why costs are so high and service is so shitty.
What the author said is true when it comes to computer tech support. Most "technicians" receive about 2 weeks of training here in the Police States of Amerika before being turned loose on the phones. When I worked at Sykes Enterprise as a tech support agent, I was trained for two different clients. The first client was AT&T Worldnet. This training lasted about 3 weeks and included some basic computer troubleshooting concepts as well as training on how to use AT&T's troubleshooting database (Information Warehouse). The second client I worked for was SBC Internet, and this is where I received "training" on how to use their "Knowlege Base." The way "Knowlege Base" was organized made it next to useless, so a group of tech wrote a Web Browser sidebar that made finding relevant information much quicker. Many of the managers did not like that fact that this tool was created because they thought it would foster dependencey, however the technicians loved it.
The point is that different people with different skill levels become involved in tech support for various reasons. Some do not even know how to turn on a computer, while others are people who have programmed and hacked their way around systems for over 27 years. I took a tech support job because I (thought I) wanted a doorway into the I.T. profession.
I became dismayed as to how management limited my ability to provide assistance to users simply because if I provide a high level of support, customers would expect other technicians to do the same. I finally got promoted to the I.T. department after a couple of years. I ended up leaving the company in order to accept a position as a software engineer at another (small) company. About 6 months after I left the company, it moved overseas to the Phillipean Isles.
Tech support pays nearly all technicians low wages regardless of the knowlege and skills of the technician. This is the same for nearly every job in the P.S.A. What the government and corporations don't seem to grasp is that people can and do learn very much outside the confines of a four year college program. These days, if you are working as an employee for someone else, about the only way to get a good paying job is to become a memebr of the bachelors' degree club. For many who choose to go this route, they have to spend much more than four years living under slavish conditions in order toscrape together the money to pay for their membership. A great majority of those who get their degree are lucky enough to have parents wealthy enough to pay all of the membership fees. Others manage to get student loans to pay for their membership. A membership in this bachelors' degree club is considered mandatory for most well paying careers that
once accepted non degree holders.
An example of a job that now requires a college degree is that of a nurse. About 30 years ago, a person could become a nurse by studying some material and getting on the job training. Nursing school was also an option (which is a good thing). Now days, it is against the law to be a nurse without having a college degree. The cost of nursing school is simply beyond the reach of most working people. There are those who would say that this is done to protect that [patient from shoddy work. I would
Maybe by changing your greeting you can help speed things up. I'll add the inflection and tonals
"Hello (higher and faster than normal,because you stretch it out very slightly, end the O Long "Hellll-O), you are speaking to the computer help desk (this is lower pitched and slower, just slightly, with an exact matching linear cadence on the syllables, they are all equal), this is Matt (emphasis on "this"), how may I help you with your problem?(how is treated like the first "hello", end the "you" a little louder, notmuch, just a little 'in soviet russia...YOU'..."
This is psychology and salesmanship, and double reinforces to the customer the primary thing that is going on, they aren't calling *Matt*, they are calling *the help desk and they are annoyed with voodoo that has nailed them*. It's just a slight wordage variation with the addition of just a few more words and paying attention to how it sounds, but it amplifies the initial interaction so that both parties can get quickly to the point. Also remember, you are a sales person, even if you aren't selling anything tangible per se, you are immediately in a customer/sales position. You are "selling" a service that your "customer" never even wanted to be forced to buy in the first place, so it's a "tough sell", your customer IS approaching you with a negative based mindset, ie, they already have a problem which has annoyed them to some level, so you have to be extremely delicate and precise, but control the situation and your only tools are language and psychology.
Right off the bat they will need to be defused down from their anger (whatever level that anger is at, it *is* there), and they have to be re-assured that this will "work", that by the end of the conversation they will be a happy camper-and you have made a "sale", you have "closed". Tone of voice is very important as well, it makes a big difference. You need to sound enthused, happy, and *very* confident. You only have two sentences total in the beginning to establish the mood and probable outcome of the call, no matter the problem.
Anyway, fool around with it, try some experiments, it's amazing what slight variations can do to help out.
Back before outsourcing was a big deal I worked for a mail-order PC company doing technical support. I started at about seven bucks an hour and hammered on the phones, worked lousy shifts, and was required to work every other weekend. Usually, I loved the job but sometimes angery people got to me. I did have my life threatend on more than one occasion. In one case the threat was serious enough so that the police were even called.
After a few years of doing this gig, I started getting calls from head-hunters at work and at home. The salaries that these guys were offering were more than double what I was earning! At first I resisted their efforts, I was safe and secure in my job and I liked it but one day I recieved an offer that I couldn't refuse. I was allowed to "name my price, name my conditions" so I picked a number that I thought was unbelieveably high, said I wanted to work Monday through Friday, and that I had a guaranteed one year contract. When they agreed to meet these demands, I couldn't believe it!
I went to work as a contractor and worked for the agency for over two years when the company that I was working for offered to "buy" my contract from the agency. In the end they offered me a job with another raise, full benefits, retirement and everything! The company agreed to give me up in exchange for more business from the company. I am still there and have worked my way up the ladder.
I can credit that phone-line tech support as being a great foundation for the path that I followed and the work that I am doing today. I am glad that I did it then and am not doing it now. It was an excellent and fertile training ground that opened a lot of doors for me.
I can't help but wonder how out-sourcing will affect the future generation of tech types. If these jobs aren't around to give the "experience" that so many better jobs require. If these jobs are all overseas, what is that going to do for the corporate IS jobs that demand the well rounded experience a TS job gives?