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Apple Pulls Out of India
tanveer1979 writes "Barely 3 months after it commenced India operations, Apple has decided to pull out its software operations from Bangalore. The employees will be given a severance package which is equal to two months' pay. The sales and marketing operations will remain on (these consist of around 30 people) but the software and support will be completely pulled out." From the article: "Apple had set itself a hiring target of 600 by the year-end. After a gala induction ceremony on April 17, the operations team went to Transworks for training. Some of the managers were about to leave for the US for further training when they were asked to stay put."
Last paragraph of the article, from an India employee losing his (or her) job:
Yeah, there are a lot of U.S. employees familiar with that feeling. Welcome to the global market.
Personally, I find it just as offensive companies whimsically shift work forces, often at high personal and financial cost to employees caught unawares, whether it be in the U.S. or India. I'd like to say, "see how it feels?", but I find no satisfaction in that. I guess the global economy does apply globally. It really does become about money on ledger sheets, and little about the workforce and impact on people just trying to make a living. Meanwhile CEOs and other execs reap massive rewards, usually with little relationship to how well their company does because of these decisions.
(That said, the article is far too short on detail to understand exactly what prompted and triggered the change in plans for Apple.)
I guess a cheaper country was found
Looks like they got a taste of their own medicine.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
India and Apple obviously haven't been properly educated about the dangers of pulling out.
India: What do you want for nothing? A rubber biscuit?
Apple: Bow, bow, ooo-oo-ooo-ooommm...
Two months severance pay in India = about $42 and 7 cents
The company had commenced operations in April and hired about 30 people for its subsidiary
In Silicon Valley, a one cough by a hiring manager can cause 30 people to disappear overnight. Thirty people in India represented less than a million dollars worth of pocket change to Apple. The story in really, "What were they attempting to do in the first place?"
Have you Meta Moderated t
"Meanwhile CEOs and other execs reap massive rewards, usually with little relationship to how well their company does because of these decisions."
So in keeping with slash-groupthink, Jobs and company just got a massive reward from this manouver. Right?
When I first viewed the comments on this article, the quote at the bottom of the page was this:
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. -- Churchill
Do you figure that since socialism has gone bust, capitalism has had to take over the sharing of the misery?
This ain't rocket surgery.
"On May 15, Apple officials addressed us and were highly appreciative of the workforce and the task it would execute in India. I wonder why they never said anything even then," said another fired employee.
Seems pretty cold to me. In a lot of developing countries like this a job at a major multinational serves to support not just the family but the entire extended family. No doubt some of these people even had to quit other jobs to join Apple, and can't return. I worked many years for the international division of a large multinational and saw first-hand the culture of abusing foreign workers because management knew they could work them 14 hours a day and the people couldn't say or do anything about it. And since these people are all classified as "professionals" no one can swoop into the factory to blow the whistle, you have to work whatever overtime is demanded of you, for free. Pretty crummy if you ask me.
Wow. When you can't outsource menial jobs, then there is no point in oursourcing. Apple just realized the new workforce was less productive than adding a few new employees to their current operation. Wow!
Apple (and others), do not outsource if you can't spend a year or two getting the new group "up to speed"! It is called the "learning curve".
I hope India's not pregnant!
The only way 30 people could disappear overnight is if that hiring manager is a corporate officer. Speaking as one who has been in the "hiring manager" role in Silicon Valley for quite some time, it's pretty hard to get rid of people, even poor performers. Yes, California is an at-will state. California's courts, however, have proven to be very pro-employee. So, firing somebody in California usually requires lots of documentation.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
That's what happens when you sell a lifestyle as opposed to a product. Yuppies don't want to talk to an Indian when they call support about their iPod.
Indian Giver comes to mind, it's funny, I just haven't figured out how yet. :P
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
You don't throw good money after bad when you get a losing poker hand. Perhaps they realized that their India operation was a mistake. I suspect that the beans will get spilled eventually.
With all this evil alien bacteria invading, perhaps it's a good move for the company?
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
I've seen them elsewhere (interestingly, always on foreign newspaper sites) but web searches only turn up people complaining about them, only to have jackasses insist that they must be spyware-infected because Firefox is infallible. (As I type this I'm realizing what answer I'm likely to receive, but nonetheless...)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
"We have re-evaluated our plans and have decided to put our planned support centre growth in other countries."
In other words, the US was too expensive and now India is as well. Time to move to an even cheaper place to develop our overpriced products.
Based upon your grammer, I am assuming English is not your first language.
Despite the HR blurb at the bottom of TFA claiming the Apple India crowd were doing well and all that, I imagine that it was questions of quality that led to the firing of the workforce. Apple's recent Aperture debacle, where it was discovered that Aperture was majorly inferior to Adobe's Lightbox in performance, features and quality probably resulted in a major shakeup in Apple's software development divisions. There have been a number of stories about companies having problems with outsourced software development, and I presume this is another one. My guess is that Apple will probably either increase the size of its Ireland operations or move the development to eastern Europe where the quality is generally known to be good.
That the technology transfer was not happening as smoothly as they thought it would, and the costs became an issue too. Having worked for Apple, then NeXT, then Apple/NeXT and finally Apple again, I have seen this problem long before it became fashionable to outsource oversees. It was true stateside between regions of this country, and even more so with language/cultural barriers in this global market. The axe swings many ways, this time back to another country, possibly back to the US.
I agree. It also helps corporate/industrial espionage.
Because that's how much i earn in India @ 43.5 to a dollar.
Why?
Employees whimsically shift employers too, when they get a better offer.
And when a company does this, it'll often hire an equal or larger number of just as deserving and at least as needy people elsewhere.
If this team is as hot as they think they are, why don't they start up a competing product to whatever it is Apple hired them to do -- and if they do prove worthy, Apple'll have to pay a premium to get them back. Oh. They weren't really that great. Then IMHO Apple did nothing wrong.
That's weird, I was under the impression it is usually companies like Microsoft that fuck countries.
Holy fuck - that does it ... I'm going downtown and buying an Apple tomorrow.
I don't know which, maybe an Intel Mini, maybe an iPod - but something.
Good job Apple.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Most Indian CS majors (not talking about IIT grads here) come out just knowing C#/VB .NET. Its hard to train them to learn Objective-C or any other language they are used to since all of their CS skills are bound to a single language. Go to any job posting in India for .NET and you will get millions of programmers who know everythinhg about .NET. Ask for people who know Objective-C or anything non-Microsoft base, then you will get almost nobody. Its hard to find programmers in India with Mac OS x experiance, or even *nix experiance.
Um, it's "grammar" actually, and no, English is not my first language either.
Hmmm, I might buy the Russian part of this comment - but China? Are you nuts? You've clearly had no experience with the state of outsourcing in China. The current lack of skills of the average Chinese IT worker looks like India in 1981. 1,000's of bodies at extraordinarily low wages with essentially no skills.
The biggest scam going right now is onshore U.S. companies fronting for these masses of "programmers" through mergers with Chinese companies. If you think organizations have been disappointed by outsourcing to India - you haven't seen anything yet.
This will be the next big scam - unfortunately the workers and the investors will take the shaft while the dealmakers take the money. Not one of these deals goes down with a few $'s making their way to a Hong Kong "subsidiary" of the company.
Just my opinions of course.
"US jobs get moved to India because US capitalists want to increase their profits by getting the same job done for less money in India."
And US workers want the jobs to come back so they can make more money (salary). Everyone's looking out for their own interest. It's just that you only hear one side (mean old business, woe is me worker).
My guess would be that Apple was having the squeeze put on them by
corrupt government officials and just decided to say "screw it".
As I remember, there was considerable shock when it was announced that Apple was moving some technical support operations to India.
I think this might have been in response to that backlash, which at least means Apple listens to its customers.
As you may remember this is even a mini-trend. Dell also moved much of their support operation back from India when customers complained.
I notice others feel sorry for the Indians, and I have some sympathy, but I could never understand those thick accents. So I think Apple's decision was a wise one. I was baffled as to why they would have gone in in the first place. I could have told them there would be customer hostility concerning the move.
D
and why are people so unable to understand this?
china = communist country, you know, where all your 'capitalist' corporations buy their raw materials and computers
europe = socialist countries
canada = socialist country
india = socialist country
USA = going to become socialist very soon because the health care system is horrifically broken
Considering the low-cost, high-quality talent pool that Bangalore offers, it is unclear why Apple decided to shut shop just over a month after it commenced operations.
The person that wrote this has never dealt with Indian tech support I take it.
heh heh
NT
That's why the world buys Indian planes, train, cars... Oh, wait, no one does! Have you seen there trains? When they say, "Get on the train", they get ON the train, in the train, under the train. Weird, man, weird! And there cars all have three wheels, and look like a rikshaw with a motor and wheel up front. Weird, man, weird! I don't think they have any planes since they don't have even paved roads. Weird, man, weird. Did you notice the cattle in the streets? Time to cook up some steaks if you ask me. Weird, man, weird!
I hope they don't cry over those spilled beans. But that's what you get when you count your chickens before they cross the road.
I hear that europe is more heavily tilted towards socialism - especially France.
Actually most of the European policital forces usually mislabeled as 'Socialists' or even 'Communists' by US right wingers are actually modern Social Democrats who have become moderate to the point where they generally do not see a conflict between a democratic society with a capitalist market economy and their own goals which in turn means they have very little in common with Marxism, Communism or classical Socialism. To call political parties like the British labor party or even the German PDS/Linkspartei Socialists would actually be considered an insult by a true die-hard Socialist.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
This would be less disturbing if your screen name weren't what it is.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Time to move back to the US.
Many companies are coming back to the US for Software Engineering. Especially mid size companies. The company I work for also recently canceled its dealings with its Indian outsourcing firm. They had two reasons:
1) In 2001 with benefits, a decent Software Eng:
$60/hour in USA versus $5/hour in India
In 2006 with benefits, a decent Software Eng:
$60/hour in USA versus $25/hour in India
No longer worth the hassle of communication problems and slow response time to fixing defects.
2) Quality of their work was awful. This seemed to be due to major attrition problems. The attrition rates at the firm we were using were like 50% a year. Even their manager's were job hoping. So nobody really cared about quality since they knew they would be long gone to better pastures before it caught up with them.
that the cost of outsourcing is higher than the hype tells it to be. A lot of businesses try to outsource to India, and while it might work better for some companies, I guess the cost of a = inferior customer satisfaction and b = more people needed for the same work equals c = higher costs in the long run. And since a is more important for Apple they've seen outsourcing is not a good idea.
Don't get me wrong over b, I guess there are great people out there, but first of all: they don't speak English very well (ever called an outsourced helpdesk and you know), second of all: they are not educated as we in the westerner countries, so they need to be educated more and longer on the job while we are supposed to get that education through our schools. It's not the inhabitants fault, but India is pretty close to a 3rd world country.
Next to that they also have a higher constant cost. TFA mentions shipping over some people for education in the states. They can do it 2 ways: ship someone from west -> east and pay big $$$ (250k/year) for someone willing to do that and ship over his family and belongings back and forth every 3-6 months for 30k/year and cover the costs over there for 50k/year. Or ship 20 people every month from east -> west for 2 weeks and cover their costs for 400k/year.
If you don't do it yourself and outsource your outsourcing to a "specialized" company, you'll see that the costs equal the costs you have here but without the hassle of outsourcing, keeping your customers happy only thing is that you have to keep in account the unions.
I don't know, while outsourcing could be helping keeping costs down, I think the only thing that should be outsourced is labour by hand without customer contact. This is not because the people over there don't have brains, but simply because of the differences in language and culture. They are trying to fix that too, but what do you think when you call the D-Link helpdesk and "Bob" speaks with an Indian accent and ask how the weather is down there in Ohio? Yes, they have cue sheets with different lines that people in the US would use, but it just sounds wrong, try it.
And just so I wouldn't break Godwin's law: why didn't hitler outsource his stuff to India?
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The written word has an amazing effect at conveying a person's perceived intelligence. When used well, it is to your advantage. When poorly used, it is to your detriment.
Stop! Dremel time!
I do not trust Chinese engineering at all. If you have bought a cheap gas powered scooter, you would understand what I am talking about. I assume the design and engineering that goes into some of this stuff was only to make a working final product and no consideration was given for actually using the product as it is intended. The battery compartment is under the frame under thin sheet metal and any slight hit under the scooter breaks the battery, the key to start the device only worked for about a week until the whole key and tumbler would spin around together, the pull string broke off after less then two weeks, the mirrors fell of the mirror housing when the temperature went above 80F, the rear brake light lens fell off within minutes without even being touched, the speedometer quit working and the plastic over it was fogged up after a light rain, the plastic headlight socket holder melted, two of the four engine mounting holes cracked (is a rubber grommet for vibration isolation really that expensive?) blah blah blah.
You get what you pay for.
I know our last 2 contractors had to go through a two week trial period at the agencies expense and we kicked both of them back. We probably get just as many bad American contractors, but the whole point of exporting jobs or importing workers was that we gain talents that aren't available here at a lower price. If their skills and education are all suspect and have to be verified at a greater expense and difficulty than local talent why bother? Apple probably found the same thing.
So maybe some of that factored into the decision to cut and run. I guess the true story will come out eventually.
Steve Jobs stood at the entrance and as each worker left, he said "Thank you! Come again!"
I'm using IE with the google tool bar and all those popups I'm reading about in this thread were successfully blocked.
Surely there is room for a dozen or so people trying to sort out which John or Sarah gets which package since they all have the same name.
This is slightly offtopic, but let me explain the state of affairs on Indian Software Services companies. This is not about product companies which operate here.
I guess I'll be the only Indian in the world who'd wish this outsourcing boom would settle.
Why?
Because we have contributed nothing to computing, technically or in research. This is more about the attitude of Indian software services companies. Infosys, TCS and the like, relegating writing software to a BPO styled operation. Cut and Paste mechanics, unhealthy and ugly code. 95% of coders here plain suck. I really hope software dev automation gets a breakthrough, so these guys lose their jobs (for which they are not qualified anyway).
These companies are surely helping India with jobs, but they have done _nothing_ for computing. (How many Indian Open Source products do you know!)No contribution to open source, and full scale leeching. Meanwhile, revenue is upwards of $2billion, profits $600 million plus. Yet.
Damn, I dont wanna think about it.
Btw, this is not a problem with Indian techies, there are so many of them working in research (abroad and in India) who are really good.
Obviously you made a mistake in hiring them in the first place.
Firing people is bad for morale. It means that people shouldn't trust you. It means that your remaining employees should start looking for a different job.
Whenever I was a manager, I protected my employees. If they messed up, I coverred for them and helped them fix the problem. I have their back and I expect the same in return.
I think some people feel that because India is a long way away those employees don't matter. Only a sick kind of employer would feel that way. Once you hire someone you owe it to them to make it work.
hah, I get paid $355,925.47 and I've got a bigger dick than you. So there!
He or she is posting on Slashdot. In other words: who cares? Activate grammar/spelling Nazi mode when you're not on a website filled with techies that don't write formally for a living. This is stuff that is typed at the spur of the moment upon seeing a silly subject or idiotic post. It's one thing to write documents or letters and a completely different thing to just splash your two cents on an internet forum.
that should have been
"I'll say it for you, then: "See how it feels?". See how it feels?"
See how it feels?
Let's hope that this is an increasing trend. The outsourcing of tech and support jobs from the US to India has been destroying the industry.
It just didn't work very well for him either.
So this..is what in-sourcing is.
Hmm, I've worked with quite a few Russian engineers who had a tendency to omit the article "the" from their sentences. I wonder if that has any bearing on this ad hoc ranking...?
He didn't say as a result of, he said meanwhile. Meaning CEOs and other execs do reap massive rewards from their companies, but not necessarily as a result of outsourcing, often a cost-saving strategy of dubious effectiveness.
Mr Jobs just sold $295,000,000 worth of Apple stock.
In 1992, CEOs held 2 percent of the stock of US corporations, nowadays they own 12 percent. In less than 15 years, CEOs (not including other executives, just CEOs), have 'earned' themselves 10 whole percent of corporate America. If the division of pay were entirely fair and equitable, Steve Jobs and his fellow CEOs must be responsible for exactly one tenth of all the wealth created by anyone at all who works for a large corporation.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Let this be a lesson to anyone who thinks Apple is somehow different, hipper, or cooler than the average multinational corporation. They think with their bottom line too.
As a current Apple phone rep, I have to say that most of the customers I've talked to that have had -any- contact with the Bangalore workers were not terribly bimpressed by them.
Given the general tendency of older customers, more affluent customers and students of all ages to be Apple customers, I'm not surprised they'd rather talk to someone who has a name they can pronounce in a city they have heard of.
"You've been iSourced!"
Table-ized A.I.
my dog raped your momma nine months before you were born
If you think a big company is bad about treating you like a number, join the Army.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
There's no such thing as job security through obscurity.
It's a joke, laugh.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Here is my 2 bit theory.
Steve wanted to stay in Cupertino. If you listen to the town meeting from a month or so ago it is clear that getting the land for the new campus was not a sure thing. Estimates are that Apple paid 500 million for the land for the new campus. India was probably more of a contingency if they couldn't expand in Cupertino. Once that deal went though, then they needed to back out so as not to stretch themselves too thin.
It would look pretty silly spending 0.5 billion on a new campus and then have no one to fill it with.
Ever hear of a bluff?
... So considering in Canada $8/hr ($1280/mo)is the highest minimum wage, your $732/week is about 2x more than minimum wage.
;-)
So in short I'd say he has you beat by a factor of 4.
Let us know when you start making $2928/week, and then maybe the joke won't be on you.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
anywhere you've got poor, dumb people having lots of kids, you'll have corporations moving jobs there. If you want to improve things for the working man/woman, get the poor ones to stop breeding execesively. But it's taboo to sugest you shouldn't be allowed to have kids just because you can't afford them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Thank you! Come again!
-- Boycott Shell
In this case, firing foreign developers might be good
for morale in the US. Makes people feel more secure.
I agree.
I'm not from India, I'm from Pakistan. But...
There are outsourcing companies on those regions which aim just to get contracts signed, and focus much less on who they hire. The cultural and timezone differences will always exist, but I've known tonnes of worthless techies involved in the outsourcing business. The better ones just find their way out, head for the west themselves and find work.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I think Apple got scared of having their software pirated in India, especially due to leakage of source code. Having on same hardware specs as Windows only aggrevates the concern. I wonder how no one else has posted this before !
Yes, you are right. Innovation is the key and Indian companies have tremendously failed at it. I also agree with the point of Open Source Projects coming from Indians (I am not sure about the involvement of these techies in such projects though; in other words, it would be interesting to find out the statistics of number of Indian techies involved in open source projects). Considering that open source offers so many opportunities for everybody to work upon, its really a shame to see nada products... P.S. You are not the only Indian.
The "Aryans" were already there...y
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_invasion_theor
Guys you can't talk about the $ values comparisons between countries, you need to talk about cost of living, i assume making about $800 per month in india is about making 3000-4000 in USA, because i am sure you rent for an apartment in india isnt $800 a month
http://iesucks.org
I never understood why this was a racial slur towards Native Americans, I mean it was the white man that gave them a bunch of land treaties and then broke all of them...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Someone posted a comment that said "the quality of the average American IT worker is far better than those from India."
This is a moot point. The quality of an average American sweeper or construction worker might be far better than the comparable Mexican's for all I know/care, but no one cares about your quality or better sweeping skills when you demand $50 an hour to wash my sink, health insurance to take care of your diabetic fat ass, severance pay, hard working conditions allowance, and various other allowances. And on top of all this, you refuse to attend school or get trained in newer skills.
The high end management tasks are still handled in the US, although they are increasingly being outsourced in the stockholders' interest. Think about it from a stockholder's point of view. Would you want to invest your $$$ in a company that pays its lowest workers $60 an hour for work that doesn't demand a lot of quality or warrant the demanded benefits? Would you want to invest in a non globally competitive stock?
And I am surprised people are talking crap about India's education system. Instead of commenting on that, I am just going to laugh at their face.
Also, when did Apple become a software bastion? It has always been a failure at mass market commoditization, the iPod notwithstanding. The reason they pulled out could just be that Steve Jobs is making another one of his harsh business decisions. Read "The Fire in the Valley".
I am done with the ignorance.
I've noticed in the last few years you simply can't get high quality cheap talent in India. Don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of high quality talent in India, but it's expensive. And you can still get cheap, but the people you get cheap tend not to be very good at all. Things are basically evening out.
You are attempting to come up with a logical reason for Apple's action, because you still have the idea that executives at companies must have some reason for the things they do. But they don't. In many cases, they do things out of pure whim.
The other possibility is a turf war. Probably the VP who started up the Indian office was on top, but then a few months later he wasn't and the new guy shut it down to "implement his own ideas".
I've worked in a company that had a reorg that divided projects under either the domestic sales VP or the international sales VP. But our project had both domestic and international customers. So we got put under international... and our VP told our domestic customers that we wouldn't do any more work for them beyond current contracts. Several million down the tubes because one prick wouldn't let another prick get revenue credits off "his" project.
There are plenty of war stories I could tell; everyone has their own. The point is, most executives are stupid or greedy or both. The execs at the very top seem to want to surround themselves with idiots, probably so as to lessen the competition for the top exec who is raiding the company for every last dollar he can squeeze. Then he moves on to the next company to suck dry.
That's why these execs act like idiot puppeteers, fighting over which string gets pulled. We're just the puppets, getting jerked around.
+++++ Please MOD parent up. Could NOT have said it any better if I had tried. :0)
Am NOT an american by birth.. .and I agree with ever word you said...
-Anon
The fact that India subsidises Gas, Petrol and Kerosine; so you may get $800 per month, but a good portion of your cost of living is being subsidised.
As for the amount, one has to look at the cost of living, and the likes; in New Zealand, the minimum wage is NZ$9.50 per hour; I'm on $11.20 per hour, in the average week, I'm paid around NZ$320-370 (with tax taken off); if one converted NZ dollars to US, I would be considered 'poor' but given the low cost in living in NZ; rent being $100 per week, power, $20 per week etc. one can easily have $120-150 left at the end of each week.
A recent trend is for companies to get out of cheap engineering off shoring deals and move the jobs back to the US in rural areas--called Farm Shoring. The cultural differences are obvious to anyone who has used an India off shored help desk. The work force targeted in the US is rural non-technical people who are being trained to do low level support. Expect a small return to computer science majors at rural colleges. India and other places are countering by trying to teach their workers more of the US culture including language variations such as 'Texan', New Yorker, the South etc by holding dialect classes where their students practice sounding like different parts of the US.
Come on! You vist your slum by train - ON TOP OF - and pass as many cows in the road as you do 4-wheeled cars, side-stepping sewer in the streets all the while. That's not a country, that's a slum!
I sure wish my mod points hadn't expired, because the parent hit the nail on the head. I, too, know the absolutely horrible quality that comes from the countries to which we outsource. It's costing us more than just lost productivity; it's pissing off US emplyees who have to deal with the clueless outsourcees...
Actually, I think you have it completely wrong. Firing poor bad employees shows that you know what is going on and will not tolerate BS. More often than not, the complaints I hear from people are almost always do to a boss who will not act firmly. This means protecting good employees and FIRING the ones who are not up to par. Yeah you can spin it as the managers fault for hiring the person, but if you wanted to avoid that, you'd still have an idiot working with you. I enjoy my free time and therefore do not want to have to fix all their crap. Been there, done that. People lie, cheat, and steal, but once you figure it out, FIX THE SITUATION!
Anyone making $120k/year can afford some of the nicer houses in any midwestern city.
If you don't want to be living one mortgage payment from being out on the street, DON'T! Learn to live within your means. Put 25% of your money into your retirement account. Buy a house where you can pay your mortgage payment and then some, or rent a place you can afford. Drive a late model auto. Don't spend $4,000 a year on the latest tech toys. Bring your lunch to work instead of eating out all the time.
EXCERCISE SOME FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY! If you make $120,000 a year and are one mortgage payment away from being on the street, it's because you're being stupid with your money.
paintball
Indian society is one of the most porous when considering trade secrets - information gets around. I don't see how Apple could hope to maintain any security whatsoever with Microsoft so highly invested in Bangalore. Every punjabi and his dog within 50 miles would be selling Apple confidential docs to Microsoft.
Because employees would react. If they said "we're thinking about closing" or "things aren't working out as expected" then at least a few employees would just bail, or worse. No company wants that -- if there is a chance to salvage the situation, then they would prefer the employees never even knew how close they came to being laid off. Especially if a few employees leaving could damage the potential turnaround. And if there is no chance to salvage the situation, then they want those employees to still be around long enough to finish whatever needs finishing.
I'm not suggesting that how corporations treat employees is good. I'm just telling you what the thinking is. In fact, I hated that thinking so much that I quit my first high-level job. I'd been a manager of Web teams for most of my career. I got a job with Sabeer Bhatia (the Hotmail guy), and he brought me on as a Director. I sat in all/most of the upper-management meetings. I heard all sorts of private discussions, not meant for the rest of the employees. I knew when the product had serious issues that would hurt our funding. I knew when there was trouble with an investor. I knew when the management team was in conflict. It was never a good idea to let employees in on the issues. I learned that quickly. The first few times there were issues, I took my team to lunch and let them know. You cannot believe the fallout, swift and sure. I grew to hate it. I had to lie to employees when they would ask about rumors. I was supposed to have been doing that all along, anyway (well, maybe "lying" is too harsh because I'm bitter about it, I'm sure a more seasoned person would have simply said "none of your business" to every single rumor or TMI kind of question -- but for me, that just gets uncomfortable when you know the person has a family and will be out of work in a month). Eventually I quit. At my next job, the hiring manager was curious why I was going for a job as a manager of a small team when I was clearly moving up into Director & VP level work. I realized I'd rather be with the rest of the employees, not knowing about the sheer volumes of crap that hit the fan daily.
As I get older, I get better at things, of course. I'm self-employed now, and I have a subcontractor for the times when the work is too plentiful. If I don't have work for the subcontractor, I just say so. If he ends his business relationship with me due to it, I'll deal with that. I try not to make too big a deal out of anything. But I'm also not running a company with 10,000 employees. If things go bad for me, the impact is tiny.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
In industry generally you outsource when you have a large batch of work to do and you don't want to ramp up inhouse. In the software business this generally means finding someone to churn out mountains of code.
The resulting mountains may look good on the monthly sloc metrics but its not what you want to see as an engineer. If a programmer comes back to me and says he made the required changes and produced negative 200 lines of code I would be happy.
One reason that a company like apple might decide not to proceed with something like this is that mass production is not really what they are looking for.
I don't have any problems with India specifically and I think we are going to see more of this situation where the large packages of work, which are less interesting for me anyway, going off shore.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Ability to feed children has nothing to do with poverty, it has to do with arable land. People with no money who have some arable land can feed themselves. We've been doing it for millions of years. And the more kids you have, the better chance you have at producing enough extra food to do something else (at least, if we westerners didn't drive down food prices so much with our nice agricultura subsidies.) Kids don't really starve in India. Kids do starve in Africa, because of widespread FAMINE, i.e., the inability to grow stuff (and in many places, warlords taking anything that does get grown.)
In most parts of the world where poor people have lots of kids, people don't have kids DESPITE not being able to afford them; they have lots of kids because they CAN'T afford NOT to have them. Procreation gets you free labor in a few years and assures there is someone to feed you when you're old. It's the poor man's social security.
If you want poor people in 3rd world countries to stop procreating all the time, give them the same agricultural subsidies we give to 1st world farmers. Then instead of having kids they'll buy tractors.
That's the funny thing about westerners - you spend a bunch of your tax dollars driving down the price of food on the world market to the point that people abroad can't make any money in agriculture, then get pissy when they find a way to do programming instead.
paintball
In my experience they do. They often sound "foreign", of course. But the difference in pronunciation between an Indian and an American is of about the same magnitude as the difference in pronunciation between someone from New York city and someone from Alabama.
If anything, the Indians I have talked to speak better English than a lot of Americans, if you ignore accent and notice grammar and vocabulary.
From a nerd in California, I have to say that you are absolutly correct. Once I hit $50k a year, life was pretty easy.
I hear all about outsourcing to India, but how do you find a (cocoa) programmer?
Bert
India's problem is that it's India. Who wants to live in India?
All the talented people I've worked with who are from India (or somewhere similar) live in the US. And I think that's the problem Apple is having - the cheap labor in India is cheap for a reason: It sucks. The people in India who are talented leave. The people they work for figure they'll get more out of them if the live in the US, or they get enough money themselves to move here, or they establish their talent with education and get accepted for US masters programs and work here after that.
If you're an Indian who can do a job as well as an American can, why work for Indian wages in India when you can work for American wages in America?
paintball
That's interesting. But to put the number in context, maybe you could tell us a bit about your cost of living? What is a flat per moth? What about cars and computers?
Absolutely correct. Actually some lower level professional jobs have begun being outsourced such as law research firms and other lawyer jobs. Payback is a bitch - take that 'professionals' (the big fanboys and fangirls of outsourcing).
Let's be serious here - Corporate America is infected with hundreds of thousands of middle managers of dubious skill. As an engineer I've seen close to zero decent department managers or even good project managers. The quality usually stops at the team leader level and this is due to the fact that Corporate America is in love with MBAs, though an MBA promises nothing. Getting an MBA isn't like getting an M.D. You still need experience and talent regardless of all the pseudo science you learn at that business program. Most successful startups made it by having plenty of engineers and not enough biz people. Once you add layers upon layers of managers whose only skill is the ability to repeat buzzwords you start to grind to a halt.
Nor is top management worth what it gets. Does anybody really think that a zillionaire CEO who owns 10% of the company is worth the pay? Ken Leigh sure did a number on Enron as did many other 'business visionaries'.
There's nothing wrong with Chinese Engineers. I'd like to see Bretchel or any American company take on Engineering something like The Three Gorges Dam. China actually has a strong history in Engineering going all the way back to building the Great Wall. China's products are of low standard not because of poor engineering, but because there is no Qaulity Assurance program.
I recently read an article about the latestt numbers coming out of the whole outsourcing process.
Problem is that after you take into account all the supporting factors and not just employee salaries, it is costing roughly the same to outsource as it is to host the jobs in the US.
So not only does a company get a lot of bad publicity, they don't really save any subtantial amount of money.
My belief is that this was a factor in Apple's decision. Either they plan on housing the jobs in the US for roughly the same price, or they are looking for a country where the savings would be greater. Outsourcing seems to be a fad that is falling off in popularity.
the software and support will be completely pulled out
I wonder... I am an apple service tech and we have lost our dial-in support for service assistance in leu of an ichat-like support from... you guessed it... India. I talk to Chetan quite a lot but the names are very clearly all Indian. (they don't do like some tech support places, where you get someone with a hip-deep Indian accent who introduces himself as "Greg". Ya right...) A few times I've asked them where they were located, and it was of course some city in India. They do seem to be "otherwise occupied" when I chat with them, with 3-10 minute "ping times" on their answers being common. I also asked one of them one time, how many people are you chatting with right now? He says NINE. wow. Indians apparently have one thing on me, an amazing ability to multitask to the extreme.
While the people we are chatting with are actually quite capable and do a good job, they are being pushed much too hard to offer the level of service we were used to by the US reps on the phone. I don't know if that's Apple demanding it, or the Indian phone support business offering a no-questions-asked calls-taken-per-hour rate.
I seriously wonder though if this includes the service support also. I would like to see it go back to the old ways. If they are doing it, I would not be surprised if it were based on the feedback that they are receiving on their quality of service. "Sweatshop" work is never high quality.
If it's just the customer support that's being moved back, best guess would be the customers do not like talking to someone that they clearly can tell is not even in the same country. I know it slightly irks me when I call some support/help number and get someone from India. (why is it always India? why can't it be Russia or Japan or Africa?) I think that even if the person on the line is knowledgeable and helpful, knowing it's someone from India (or any other country really) tends to put people in the mindset that they are not receiving high quality support, possibly because they know that the support person is probably receiving a very small wage compared to what it would be in the 'states.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
We're not talking civil engineering here. Pay attention to the topic; we're talking about Software Engineering. And being at a company where there's a large contingent of outsourced staff, it's been extremely difficult getting decent quality out of Chinese engineers. A ton of money was thrown at the problem, and the bottom line is most investment in hiring in China is just done so that companies can grease the wheels for doing business there (since locals will not (or are not allowed to) do business with comapnies that do not invest in China. It's ridiculous and sad, and I just wish people would stop justifying it by saying that it's cheaper or that the outsources was done because they have skills that couldn't be found locally, because both those arguments are bald-faced lies.
Same experience from academia: almost all Indian students are "#2 out of X thousand students" at their school, at least in their resumes.
I have a part-time university job (research, no actual teaching), with a placeholder university page. My academic e-mail address brings me a steady stream of CV spam, from Indian, Chinese, and some Pakistani students. With very rare exceptions, all Indian students claim to be #2 in their class, i.e., "out of X thousand". The few modest ones were only #3.
You can do all that and more and still be up a creek if you have a run of bad luck. Hell, you could be a VP earning 300k a year and enough money saved up for six years worth of bills and be royally screwed by the loss of your job and any of these events:
The last can be a real bitch, because states get matching funds from the federal government for the child support they collect, so they have a strong incentive to collect as much as possible. It is difficult to have payments reduced in the event of a job loss and in any case might be set based on what you "should" be making. Some of the more draconian states will even seize your car, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you have to drive to get to your job.
A number of people have been commenting on how outsourcing is being scaled back after initial enthusiasm due to communication problems (language and time lag) primarily.
Really, this has been pretty obvious from the start. Outsourcing makes sense for some companies, but for companies whose bread and butter is software, like apple, it's pretty crazy to put your workers on the other side of the planet from you management. The different time zones alone make it difficult to hear back from someone on the same day for any issue
However, there's an important question that most people gloss over. If there are so many indian developers, why aren't they starting their own companies and selling us the software directly, instead of working through an intermediary. Hiring an american firm to do localization, but keeping management in india makes a lot more sense than having the software designers and the software implementers on the other side of the world.
Really, an important question is, why is software development still so centered in american, canada, and europe? Even the Japanese and Koreans seem to mostly only put out software in terms of video games.
I suspect a lot of it has to do with distribution. It might be difficult for a startup company in india to make the necessary contacts to get their product onto shelves in walmarts in america, or to get them pre-loaded on a dell OEM disk. Even so, that shouldn't apply to Japan, where many companies have a strong presence here. Why doesn't Sony have consumer software division? Why isn't there a Japanese Microsoft or IBM? Why isn't there a Microsoft or IBM in *any* country aside from America?
There's often a lot of talk about the material differences between the first and third world nations (does china still count as a 2nd world nation? how many people still remember what the 2nd world refers to?), but there is there seems to be a major economic disparity among the first world nations. This disparity isn't so much in the standard of living, but in the ability of local industries to sprout up and end up dominating in the international scene. The mcdonalds, starbucks, microsoft, coca cola phenomena.
If I stop and think about it, what foreign brands are there that are really prevalent in the US? There's quite a few japanese brands in electronics, games, and cars. There's some german car brands... hmm.. ikea? Really, you'd think there'd be a stronger showing from the historically economically powerful countries like Britain, Germany, and France. What's keeping them on the sidelines?
what ever happened to exploiting young nerdy kids fresh out of highschool? they work for a pittance and have more energy. sure theres a language and cultural barrier but hey, the more disposable income the kids have the less they have to mooch of their parents for that new ipod/ibook. win win baby!
Anyway, think about this: The reason for outsourcing is to reduce costs. So, they will go for the cheapest option. The contractor wants the greatest profit, so will go for the cheapest people.
Ergo, all outsourcing projects have dumbasses working the lines.
Absolutely NOTHING to do with the skills available in the group.
Yes, this explains that Steve Jobs sold $296m worth of shares in order to pay tax on the other $300m+ worth of shares he was paid by Apple.
In other words: He sold $296m worth of shares (back to Apple) as I stated. He received a massive amount (several hundred million dollars) worth of income off Apple in the last few years, in the form of shares, as I implied.
What's your point?
my password really is 'stinkypants'
The whole outsourcing thing seems to be backwards to me. We should be using our massive base of educated and tech-literate people to become the destination of outsourcing from China and India. We've got the base. Let's add the language to create SuperGeeks. Chinese call centers should be in the USA. Same with India ones. Guy from Bangalore calls Detroit to get his PC straight and talks to some American in Hindi. Send our salesmen to India and China, not our programmers or call centers.
From what I've read here, Apple probably had problems with recruiting, training, costs, culture, general educational level, communications, troubleshooting, QUALITY, language etc. etc. You've got to be some kind of corporate moron or delusional to take that on.
Some day companies will get the idea. Then they'll all want to come home. And guess what? They will have lost the thread. I suggest there is a subtle, but very real, longterm cost to pay for spending x years out of country. Things are never as interchangeable or as reversible as they seem.
E Proelio Veritas.
Yah, but you're a girl.
White lie
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
What goes around comes around, as they say. I've been amused by many companies over the years who thought they could save a huge bundle of money, when in reality the staff employed in those functions they want to move makes up perhaps 20% of their organisation but makes the most impact. Do people in a foreign country answering your calls, where it is totally obvious they know not even the most basic things about where you live (and you have waste time and money repeating things twenty times), does that sound good and make you want to use that company? I'll quote Joel Spolsky and Pradeep Singh:
1 7/sr=1-2/qid=1149421474/ref=pd_bowtega_2/202-73591 57-8712641?_encoding=UTF8&s=books&v=glance
(Here's something Pradeep Singh taught me today: if only 20% of your staff is programmers, and you can save 50% on salary by outsourcing programmers to India, well, how much of a competitive advantage are you really going to get out of that 10% savings?)
You also have the additionally huge costs of training those new employees, or outsourcing organisations, up in the ways of the organisation, the products, the technology and you also spend huge amounts of wasted time and money on communication. I've known many banks who've had that experience. A poor call centre worker gets the warm ear treatment from a customer in Europe, US, Canada etc. because the website is throwing up errors and he/she can't complete a transaction. A call is logged and there is a series of frantic phone calls and e-mails to the outsourced programming company in India, who needless to say, haven't got the faintest idea what they're talking about. Also (and this happens even in outsourcing companies situated in the same country but in another part) because they are not physically located in the heat of battle, and within on-site reach, they just don't give a shit. They'll do it when they've got time.
In short, you need to have your support functions in your company with you completely, and they need to be as close to your paying customers as you can get. If there is a market in India for your products then by all means get close to your customers and open offices in India. Idiot CEOs and boards still have this ridiculously stupid fucking idea that the world is a place separated only by a common language - English. I think even British, American and Australian people can agree that that is most certainly not true. I suggest these idiot board members go and read the number one, definitive guide on running a multinational company properly:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/18619769
What happened here is difficult to tell from the article, but maybe Apple had that sneeking suspision that maybe it just wasn't going to work.
Flash-block. I don't see any ads from TOI (times of india).
I hate the TOI website - it's a bloody tabloid and they have no sense of what's news and what's not.
www.thehindu.com for real Indian news - except their website is beyond pathetic.
Apple Pulls Out of India
I suppose that's better than Apple prematurely ejaculating inside India.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
At least one company has the sense to pull out of the land of the incompetent at least. I've been trying to resolve an ongoing issue with Dell's worthless Indian support team for 10months now. They collected my laptop 4 times and failed to fix it every single time which took 4months total and then they offered to replace it which was great... only now they're pestering me to pick up the old laptop which I've taken 3 days off work to wait for the courier to collect and neither of the 3 times it arrived yet they're threatening to invoice me as if it's my fault they haven't arranged for the courier. Anyhow, add in a few promised phone calls that never happened +50 or so phone calls at my expense throughout the whole debacle without it being resolved still and it's left me with the conclusion that the problem with Indian support centres isn't just a language barrier issue, they're just as a whole outright incompetent with a horrifically bad work ethic.
Been a good weekend for news really:
- MPAA etc. getting it's ass kicked by TPB
- Various Al Qaeda terror busts across the world
- A company realises that outsourcing to india sucks
It's as if the world is suddenly becoming sane again!
I am an ex-employee of a couple of tech support firms handling big customers such as the world's number one software maker and the number one computer maker, I've also handled tech support for an ISP in US .I've spent a total of 4 years in the call center industry, Quit that field and am now happily doing what I love best ( Coding :) )
I would like to share my observations on the entire ordeal, while I see a lot of frustration and anger about outsourcing, belive me the same level of frustration is present here too.
Lets take the cost advantage issue while American companies benefit from outsourcing it is the Indian companies that are the real winners reaping huge rewards (unfortunately these rewards are never passed on to the tech) while the tech on the floor suffers, they are increasingly pushed to achieve higher FTR (first time resolution rates), Higher (Csats) customer satisfaction rates and a lower on call time.
Would you believe we had to wrap up a call including documentation of the case in 18-21 minutes flat and the phones would start ringing automatically after a 2 minute break?? (Try reinstalling windows XP in 20 minutes!!!) Or that Incentives would be provided to who ever achieved the insane figures of 80% FTR and CSAT of 95%.Many a times the last company that i worked for screwed all the techs off their hard earned incentives by putting up targets that were beyond anybodies abilities.
The previous poster hits the truth when he says there is a lot of churn in the Industry and a person goes to the next company with all the training he has obtained from the present company for a substantially higher package.
The biggest thing working against such places is that they do not have an healthy respect for knowledge and have never heard about knowledge management.
While all these factors leads to lower morale among techs and frustrated customers at the other end, the techs are the ones who suffer breakdowns and literally perform career suicide by checking out call center jobs which are a dead end.
I am thankful that i got out of this industry when i could.
Not everyone is coming to India for cheap labour. Likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are doing research and development and not just maintenance work. So, It's cheap labour + great products which these companies are looking at. Apple has a history of screwing up once in a while, not a surprise that they would do something like this within such short span of time.
>> Techflock-flock onto the best bits of technology
Obviously they wouldnt have floated the venture w/o months of prior spadework/feasibilty - Yet to pull out in 3 months? Sucha sudden decision? Something went awry somewhere - probably just in someones head ....Wanna see whos gonna break the REAL story !!
Why does yahoo do this
and that freaked the apple brass. what, quit before we can you? how can this be?
but it makes me feel way better this morning that somebody pulled back from the Slope to Hell.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Well, I am from Poland and ues, those who call themselves
social democrats are quite liberal with respect to economy and values.
But there are many more who call themselves
conservatives who are very socialist in their view of economy.
So do not look at how one calls himself but look
at opinions:
Free education, free medical service, high and
long-term unemployment benefits, early retirements
and progressive and high taxes ( overall taxes
related to my salary that are paid by me and by
employer reach 85% ).
Those are things MUCH more popular in Europe than
in the US and this is what it means that
Europe is more 'socialist' than the US.
No offense to the anonymous coward there, or any other Indians, BUT:
/*cough*/ diarrhea /*cough*/.
If you're making $800 a day or whatever you should seriously consider buying Bangalore, declaring yourself Mahrajah, and giving out free DVDs on holidays.
Seriously..
If you're getting above average pay (US standards) as an entry level SE, then why did apple try to get Indian talent to develop *in* India? If it's just good engineers, they would have shipped them home (MS is doing that here in Egypt now). Money is obviously involved.
P.S We all know why Apple left India. It was the food you dorks.
Curry
I'm not talking about people starving, I'm talking about them raising their standard of living. We're a mechanized society. We don't need kids, we've got machines to do all that back breaking labor (well, not all of it, but most. It takes about 1% of a mechanized populace's workforce to make food for the other 99%). The problem is, we don't need these kids anymore, and there's nothing really for them to do (no jobs). In Utopia, they'd all go off and become great artists and thinkers. In the real world, they've pitted against each other in economic and military wars for the benefit/amusement of the ruling class.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You know, even at the top of the heap, executives and senior managers sometimes get the boot suddenly and without pity, just like this. Look at what happeneed to Carly Fiorina. As Charles DeGaulle said once, when being begged to run for another term as President of France, "the graveyards are full of indispensable men." Everyone is a replaceable cog in a giant machine, and nobody should be surpised or discouraged because of it. If you don't like it, start your own company where you can be the undisputed kingpin.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
A mountain of beef vindaloo,...
I thought you guys didn't eat beef, you know, scared cows having the right of way in the streets and all that other stuff that we in USA get taught about India.
You wrote: "In 1992, CEOs held 2 percent of the stock of US corporations, nowadays they own 12 percent. In less than 15 years, CEOs (not including other executives, just CEOs), have 'earned' themselves 10 whole percent of corporate America."
What is your source for this data? I'm not disagreeing. I've certainly seen a great increase in C level remuneration, but I've never seen it quantified this way before. Which CEOs? All corporations; Fortune 500; all publicly traded?
Slashdot illiteracy
...in the classic words of the Terminator.
It is not wage rates that create unstable outsourced jobs in the 'global' economy. Your corrupt Central Bank aka Fed Reserve, is a huge USA job killing machine.
FEDERAL RESERVE JOB TERMINATOR
That is what the Federal Reserve does. It kills jobs. That's all it does.
Score & Karma: SASA: Slashdot Approval Seekers Anonymous
It's pass/fail over there. So they all failed and tied for 2nd.
Domestic servants, hair cuts, medical service etc would be very very cheap. He would pay higher percentage of his salary than his US counterpart for things like diapers, rubber foam inner coil mattresses, cars, electronics, etc.
If any of you find a good source of PPP conversion factors for countries, especially with historical trends and fluctuations, please do post. Most of the links make assertions like "India is the fourth largest economy after adjusting for PPP" or "China jumps from fourth to second position after adjusting for PPP", without actually specifying the number. The PPP figure seems to be mostly popular with macro economists. In US one can find the cost-of-living adjustment numbers for any city quite easily. May be once a mobile global workforce develops such numbers will be availble for all countries and cities.
[1] http://internationalecon.com/v1.0/Finance/ch30/F30 -1.html
[2] http://www.economist.com/markets/bigmac/displaySto ry.cfm?story_id=2708584
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Robert Brenner, Towards the Precipice in the London Review of Books
as to your second question, the context doesn't make it clear. i'm assuming all publicly quoted (and trying to find his original source..) hth.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
I am a CS student in India, studying in an engineering college. Over the past few years a large number of privately funded engineering institutions have mushroomed all over the country. We students, when we wrere in school, took it as the opening of oppurtunities for us to study engineering. Because all these years engineering was confined to a few prestigious state funded institutes (of which the IITs are world famous).In an overpopulated country like India competition is fierce and getting into these places is difficult. It is also the dream of most middle-class students to become an engineer or a doctor. These professions bear a lot of social prestige. So, once out of school, the path forks into either of these two fields. Doctors command a lot of respect and in a place where poverty is widespread there is always work at hand. Engineers nowadays rush to enter the IT industry. Starting salaries of Rs 20,000/month (around 450 USD) are attractive for beginners, and even more tempting is the chance to travel to the US, when the company sends them on training.
Academics here stresses on theoretical knowledge. In our college, there is no difference between the IT and the CS course. 90% of the students learnt to program in C in college. We still use the DOS Borland Turbo C++ (blue screen) IDE and know that compiling a program means clicking on the menu and finding the 'run' option. Those who have a slight inclination towards technology and computers, get sucked into the VB-.NET-Java paranoia. Though we've had papers on data structures and algorithms they have been grossly neglected by teacher and student both. It's but natural, because, spending time learning these will give us no edge over any body when we get recruited by the IT companies. For the few (there are two in my class) who resist such commercialisation of computer science education, it becomes frustrating, coping with poor quality teaching and zero exposure to innovative work.
The IT industry here is services based. Companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, CTS are into mass manufacturing and maintenance of hackneyed business software. Making money is the major motivation of Indian companies. That said, at the end of the day we Indians are chasing illusions. Our policy makers are inviting outsourcing and creating jobs, and mass-producing software professionals (from engineering institutes). In the long run we loose our identity and the foreign companies return dissatisfied.
In India you'll find geeks in litrature, music, art but since there is no generation that has been brought up on electronic gadgets, video games and the PC, the programmer community and culture is hard to find.
India not pregnant.
Indeed I was just in India, I found that sometimes this power can be even greater. For example, one can feed five people very satisfying dinners at a decent restaurant for $8; one can even get a full lunch for $0.50. Try that in the US!
The parent is not flamebait. Sometimes modding on slashdot is strongly biased.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
But then in Internet Explorer, I have it prompt me every time someone wants to run java script or ActiveX.
Isn't that a lot of bother?
Possibly. But it always defaults to "No", not "Yes."
But it gives me a LOT of control over what web sites do - INCLUDING slashdot.org.
Going into this web page, it asked me if I wanted to allow ActiveX. I said "No."
I've tried Firefox/Mozilla's javascript security out but the control it gives me is "Yes" or "No". I can't tell Mozilla to ask me. Why is that important? Because my answer (Yes/No) can vary from page to page on the same web site.
There are ~6 web sites that I allow popups/activex from unconditionally and about the same 6 I say "no" to everything for. And come to think of it, I should block all javascript/activex for slashdot too. Since when are they necessary for reading stories or articles on this web site?
For that matter, the main reason that companies outsource to India is that Indians are native English speakers. On the other hand, Japanese people who can speak English well enough to do technical support are rare and expensive. They could just as easily get a job translating technical articles at $.25 a word, which would be equally boring yet not stressful and way more lucrative.
With great power comes great fan noise.
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4515/945/
http://www.ciol.com/content/search/showarticle1.as p?artid=84773
http://services.silicon.com/offshoring/0,38000048
The company stressed it isn't cutting any US jobs, noting that its ranks are growing both in the United States and overall. The Apple representative said: "Our call centres in Austin and Sacramento also continue to grow."
Moaners can read this too :c e=NLT_MGT&nlid=23
http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/2648?sour
Why does yahoo do this
It may be hard to imagine for some people, but there are those among us that willingly sacrifice some of taken-for-granted pleasures in life for a larger purpose.
So even if the military isn't your thing, or you think it's evil, fine. Use the Peace Corps or Doctors Without Borders as my example. I never hear anyone say "Boy they treat those Peace Corps volunteers like shit! I bet they don't even have cable TV!"
800$ India = 8000$ US or 16000$ California.
Believe me most Indian software programmers lead a much better life than California programmers. However they have to do it in the middle of society where rest of society is jealous of them so they have to kind of lead a life of fear as the poor might lash out at them anytime. So California is much better in that manner where the programmers are at the bottom so they dont have to be scared Rather the stockbrokers are afraid of the day programmers rise in revolution and storm the Bastille. Guess its your choice what you prefer if peace of mind come to California ; great lifestyle stay in India
**Life is too short to be serious**
For Apple, investing in India is not worth the money.
Possible problems might be:
1/ prices for software development not competitive
2/ India suppliers unable to provide sufficient skilled personnel
3/ Use of phone service for customer service or technical support not judged to meet Apple's quality standards.
4/ Negotiations with US-based [or elsewhere] suppliers successful after playing India card resulted outcome more favorable to Apple.
5/ Fully-loaded "system" costs of using India suppliers [labor, travel, logistics, management overhead, quality control] were too much to compensate for simple estimation based on cheaper labor.
6/ Inability to get legal protection in India for intellectual property [trade secrets, patents pending]. Indian laws are inadequate.
7/ Security and reliability of Indian subcontractors not up to Apple standards.
8/ India not judged to be priority market for Apple products and services [in comparison with other parts of the world].
If this was a phone support operation, good bloody riddance!!! Shame on you apple!
Here I was thoroughly impressed with Apple's phone support. After being PC-centric for 15 years, I finally purchased am Apple (Intel MacMini). When the wireless KB failed several weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to obtain a warranty replacement. The phone rang several times, no hold, and I spoke with a friendly, intelligent, and helpful (English speaking) tech. Not to mention the replacement KB arrived on Monday (call placed on Sunday morning).
Wish I could say the same for Dell. I absolutely detest Dell's new "outsourced" phone support. Being responsible for 200 PCs, I've had a handful of occasionals to contact Dell Support. In the past, it was similar to my experience with Apple. Easy, painless, and expedient. Sadly, in the last year or so, I've had the misfortunate of requiring Dell Hardware Warranty support for several systems...
Let's leave it to say that now when clients are looking for reasonably priced PCs, I still suggest Dell, but with the caveat of being prepared for infuriatingly poor support. : (
Ok I interviewed with Apple for their San Jose office and turned them down. During my interview even the interviewer from Apple said " We dont expect people to have Obbject C experience as its so obscure and we train them" So maybe the reason Indian programmers dont have Objective C experience is because it is not used widely. The other point is if you have basic understanding of programming language concepts learning a dialect of a language is not a big deal. Also whats the thing abt people who install a Linux CD which makes them think *Nix experience makes their penises longer/boobs bigger (take your pick) . I work with *nix (sic)at college but I also use Windows on my laptop. Anything which really needs to be done on *nix (sic) I just ssh in to my department servers and work from my Windows laptop so whats the big deal? In any case anyone who understands basic computer productivity rules should be productive irrespective of platform. Secondly Mac computers are toys for people with money to burn. Their market positioning is like that of BMWs and Mercs. Just like you wouldnt find a lot of Merc mechanics in a developing country you wont find a lot of Mac programmers in India. And just like a good mechanic certified to service GM cars can retrain to service Mercs a competent .net programmer can retrain for the Mac OS platform
**Life is too short to be serious**
True, you can dine out very cheaply as you said. A maid to scrub the floors with Dettol, do the dishes and wash clothes for 10 to 20$ a month. Hair cut is 1$. No body has health insurance, but doctor consultation is about 1$ and may be 2$ if you get an injection at the clinic. But on the other hand ...
If you compare how many days one has to work to earn a washing machine, a fridge, an a/c, a digital camcorder or a digital camera you would find that these things balace out the cheap maid, medical service, hair cuts etc.
As a rule, all labour intensive services/products are very very cheap. All material intensive things are high priced or down right unaffordable. Especially imported things like dental drills or digital cameras. My brother-in-law pays the full exchange price of 45 Rs/$ to import dental drills and other dental equipment. His patients pay him hardly 1$ per cleaning or 2$ per extraction. Ouch!
That is why the economists use a basket of goods and services and they hope, statistically, with a comprehensive basket, they can figure the true "purchasing power" of local currencies. Since they are economists, they argue endlessly over every component of the basket and the weightages.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
the original (Robert Brenner's) source is an interview with John C. Bogle, somewhere on the web, but I haven't been able to track it down.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Apple has never been a huge H1-B backer, but Bill Gates is MR. H1-B. He's now lobbying Congress to allow in almost unlimited numbers of foreign programmers - anyone with an American Masters degree, e.g. How they will flock! What Bill wants, Congress rushes to do, and Bill has always loved flocking American programmers!
s / (may require your sitting through a sponsor's animated ad)
...
Doc
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/05/26/visa
What's good for Bill Gates...
The Microsoft mogul says America needs more foreign engineers and programmers to compete. Critics say it's all about cheap labor.
By Rebecca Clarren
Salon Magazine
Generally, industry lobbyists are quick with statistics and reports, but in this case it appears they weren't needed. Neither Microsoft nor Intel would reveal how many Ph.D.s or master's students they hired last year, and how many they need for next year. When the companies and their lobbyists were asked what data and reports they showed Congress to convince them of the need for these new visas, they reported that they don't have any reports and statistics. Marcus Courtney, president of WashTech/CWA, a tech workers union, says as long as they have Bill Gates on their side, "they don't need to use anything to substantiate their arguments."
"William Gates was in Washington, lobbying -- a pretty high-priced lobbyist -- to come talk about the needs of Microsoft, a marvelous company, high-tech, enormous advances for America -- he wants more people with Ph.D.s and wants a larger quota of visas for those people to come in," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the bill's author, told Salon when asked what data the industry had shown him. "We have accommodated that. And we have created more opportunities for people to come in who are students."
Such ardor for Gates flows from both sides of the aisle. When asked about reports and data presented to convince Democrats on the Judiciary Committee that the U.S. didn't have the workforce it needed to fill these jobs, Tracy Schmaler, spokesperson for the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, responded: "Did you know Bill Gates has been pretty high-profile on this?"
Critics of the bill, mainly academics and those who represent American tech workers, say they have no voice on this issue; that Congress has been blinded by campaign contributions of big companies. In 2004, Microsoft alone spent $9.46 million on lobbying and hired 16 different firms; it listed immigration as one of its top issues on lobbying disclosure forms, according to data from the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. That same year, computer and Internet industries spent $70.5 million on lobbying.
"There is no greater case study to understand corporate power in politics," says Courtney of the tech workers union. "I could give you 75 reports that prove that H-1B is a horribly flawed program that hurts American workers, but it doesn't matter. As long as Bill Gates says there's a shortage, and that's it, thanks for playing, game over, try again next session."
These articles don't often mention it, but when companies move out of India it's because Indians are too expensive and Chinese are now the cost winners.
Poor choices in life are no excuse for being a failure. I mean beyond the possibility of illness the thing mentioned in the parent comment are all things you would have control over at one point.
Hardly.
If you some how thought it was resonable to purchase a little condo for $1.5 million
Of course it is, because like any card carrying elitist libertarian asshole, you busted your ass to get into Harvard's business school and graduated at the top of your class. Now all your hard work has gotten you a VP position at a corporation, you make 300k a year, have all your school loans paid off and enough money saved up for several years worth of bills. Real estate is insanely expensive in your area, but you don't want to live in a hovel with roomates, so you buy a nice little condo for $1.5 million, which is perfectly reasonable given your salary and the size of your savings.
If you can't figure out how to make a marriage work, or are a poor judge of people then once again I don't feel any sympathy. There are families in the united states that survive on just over minimum wage with little governmental assistance. If you ever pulled down $300k a year and find yourself in hard times, you pretty much fucked up and probably should be allowed to handle your personal finances anymore.
Obviously you are a card carrying elitist libertarian asshole who has never had a run of bad luck. When you do have that run of bad luck, and need a hand to get back on your feet, I hope the only people you find are also card carrying elitist libertarian assholes that slap you in the face instead.
In 2003 I moved from the UK to the US. My income is up about 2.5 times (even considering the poor exchange rate) although I've been pretty lucky. My state and federal income taxes run me somehting like 11% of income, and even after paying for healthcare, I'm way ahead.
:)
It's not hard to find good beer and imported cheese here, but the bread thing pisses me off - i end up baking my own.
Plus the weather is great and gas prices are fantastic
Many people have always struggled to find good, well paying and secure jobs in India. Even IT folk. It does not need an American company to teach them what it is like to lose one's job. This is not payback. This is just business as usual. It just happens to be Apple that is doing the firing.
Thanks. I don't think that this "community" understands the ramifications of this situation.
If you don't want to be living one mortgage payment from being out on the street, DON'T! Learn to live within your means.... Buy a house where you can pay your mortgage payment and then some, or rent a place you can afford.
Out in california, if you have a family, you'll find there really isn't any affordable housing... and depending on the field you work in, there may not be job opportunities elsewhere.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
[...]you'd probably be able to afford fewer toys, but I am pretty sure you would not starve to death.
Even though this woudld seem the only reasonable long-term possibility, I'm afraid we are already too many to achieve decent living for all, even without any toys.
It is well-known that if everyone were to live like Americans and Europeans, we would need around 3 planets.
How much does the standard need to be lowered to fairly feed and provide energy to 6.5 billion people? Is it even still possible?
:..
I think some people feel that because India is a long way away those employees don't matter. Only a sick kind of employer would feel that way. Once you hire someone you owe it to them to make it work
I have seen this at at least 2 employers that I worked for. One of them was AOL. Mainly we are commidites and if you dont do your job and screw up you need to be fired and replaced with someone else as quick as possible. This is true regardless of the %60 turnover rate within 90 days. Needless to say I quit IT for now
http://saveie6.com/
Except lets keep democracy this time and NOT succumb to the Fascists of any philosophy. If we can have a world economy we MUST also give workers the same rights regardless of where they reside. The right to assemble and form unions must be undeniable. Globalization must not be just a global shell game for a wealthy Fascist aristocracy.
you couldn't even afford a house in new york city on that salary. you'd be a slave to the landlords still.
welcome to the real world.
Hey, not any midwestern city. I live in Chicago, and I'm pulling down $110K/yr. My wife is in graduate school. 6 years ago I could have bought a house here for $300K or so, but now if I want to live somewhere other than a bungalow in da hood then I'd have to cough up $650K+.
The crazy thing is that I make a helluva lot more $$ than probably 2 million people in this city, but if I want to have a kid, pay for my kid's college, and have enough $ saved so I don't get screwed if someone in my family ever gets really sick and can't work... well, I still feel constrained.
Sure, you can live in corn-country nowhere IL where there are zero jobs and buy a house for $80K, but if you want to live somewhere with opportunities then you gotta cough up a lot of dough. I agree that there are some people who probably earn less than $120K, get a huge mortgage, and can get burned hard if the economy ever turns for the worse and they lose their jobs. If you want to have some security and protect yourself from that possibility then $120K doesn't look like a fortune anymore. Sure, I'm making $110K now, but I can lose my job AT ANY MOMENT. And then what? I think I'm a good coder, but what if there's an economic downturn? Maybe the only job I'll be able to find is writing php for some shitty company or taking care of win2k SMB/CIFS file and print servers and AD at some small businesses... I don't necessarily expect that it will happen next year or the year after, but I would not be surprised at all if I lose my job at any moment. Hey, I'm overpaid -- there are programmers in India, Brazil, Russia... who could do my job.
I always wonder what prompts apple to do what they do. Like writing a rude letter to a 9 year old girl who was just trying to be helpful. Come on she is 9!
THe government is cooking the books on the deficit, the debt, the CPI, GDP and unemployment statistics. For information on how this is done and estimates of the true numbers, see: John Williams' articles.
Walter J. "John" Williams was born in 1949. He received an A.B. in Economics, cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1971, and was awarded a M.B.A. from Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration in 1972, where he was named an Edward Tuck Scholar. During his career as a consulting economist, John has worked with individuals as well asFortune 500 companies.
Quotes from one of his articles:
Federal Deficit Reality
I think we need to acknowledge how far from fiscal conservatism this supposedly conservative bunch in the Congress and the Executive really are. The difference is that runn
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
From everything I've read about Steve Jobs, this makes a lot of sense.
Here you have a man who is a total perfectionist. Obsessed with quality, down to the very last detail.
My guess is that some high-up Businesshead Suit Guy whispered in his ear, "Y'know, Steve, we could save a lot of money by outsourcing...."
Steve was probably reluctant at first, but then the Businesshead Suit Guy hyped it up with a bunch of Thomas-Friedman-speak, "This mind-blowing business practice will revolutionize how the world does business, like what corned beef did to sliced bread! Everybody and their brother is doing it! You don't want to be the guy who invented the pet rock! You want to be the guy who invented the pet WORLD! Don't get left behind! Outsource, outsource, outsource!"
Steve was probably like, "Oh, alright, I'll give it a shot. We'll start small, and see how it goes."
So he commits a small amount of money to his India project. Lo and behold, what he gets back is crap, and he's like, "What is this? This is crap! The quality is terrible! There are a million little widgets that are all in the wrong place. This little graphic thing was off by a whole 5 millimeters. 5 millimeters! My customers will hate it! I can't even get anyone on the damn phone to fix it! Every time I want bring someone to task over this, all they can talk about is their damn contract! Hey Businesshead Suit Guy? Where the hell are you?"
Unfortunately, Businesshead Suit Guy is nowhere to be found. He took the big fat bonus that he got from saving the company so much money through outsourcing, and is off vacationing someplace exotic.
Possibly even in India. I've heard that money goes a lot further down there.
Steve isn't that bad (and anyone who makes a corned beef reference to him would probably get a foot in the ass).
However, the post isn't that far off from what probably happened--and this is no reflection on the quality of engineering in India. The ability to insure quality, adherence to specifications, and observance of scheduling requirements becomes much more difficult when management, engineering, marketing, and quality aren't co-located. I worked on a project where the engineering team was in Ireland and everyone else was in California. It finally made more sense--was cheaper--to pack up the engineers and the managers, fly them to our site, and finish the project. We made a bullpen for them in one of the conference rooms (they were only allowed access to the cafeteria) and got to work.
The product that resulted still works over ten years later.
There are a lot of wrong numbers floating around here... Let me set a few things right. The average Indian salary in the non-tech sector is around 80USD. This is for a guy who's got a few years of experience behind him. The average for somebody who's put in about twenty or thirty years is about twice as much (175USD). 80USD also happens to be the official minimum wage for any government employee - the guy who sweeps the streets, the people who work at government offices, post offices, utilities etc., make that in a month. The new economy brought about a lot of changes as far as salaries go - you could be young, very young indeed and earn in a month what most people do in ten. So the guy above who makes 800$ a month is actually an overpaid fish. Fish? They work in these big glass walled buildings (supposedly to reflect the buildings in Silicon Valley) with their airconditioners on while the rest of the country breathes fresh air out open windows. But that's another story. So does the guy who earns 80$ a month starve and live in penury as some other thread here seems to follow? No, not at all. Costs in India are low: food, clothing and shelter cost almost nothing. The guy on 80$ a month probably has his own house, a motorbike, eats out regularly, watches movies a lot, puts his two kids to school and still saves money for his retirement. Now the guy who's earning 800$ a month has to keep up appearances and buy a fancy overpriced apartment, overpriced car, eat at overpriced restaurants and so on until he hasn't much left to keep. So we have here the irony of the whole situation the tortoise keeps slogging away at his minimalist salary but his job goes on forever while the hare earns quick and burns quicker with his job on the line all the time. A lot has changed in Bangalore - prices have gone through the roof, property has become dear, peak hour traffic is tremendous but all have their own levels of making a life. I noticed another thread here that mentioned that the middle class guy in India lives terribly but that's according to western standards of living, hygiene and circumstance. The middle class guy with a steady job and salary in India today, is king, whatever you might think about it.
Hey, Apple, didn't we tell you that pulling out is not an effective form of birth control? Use a condom!
I currently work tech support, and I know I'm not even a number. I am simply a slot that any marble can roll into. I don't matter in any way what so ever to the company as a whole. I've haad it made evident to myself in so many ways its not funny. A higher up once told me and a class full of trainees to stop asking questions because there were a thousand people waiting for our jobs. He is now stocking shelves at the dollarama, fired for fucking an inferior in a board room. When I see him I fight the urge to spit in his face. NOw this was a few years ago, and I've since learned that those 1000 that were waiting for my job are a joke. They are running out of people to hire that arent yokels. They burned through the degreed people first (my group) then the trainables, now they have nothing left to hire from but the bottom of the barrell... anyone with any mind in their head won't work here. Its kind of funny.
Not funny if the only way to suceed in IT is start at help desk :-(
.bomb and know yoru stuff when you work for 7/hr jobs for several years. I was hoping the AOL help desk would save me. The handle time requirements were unreal and it was about talking very fast and being incorrect to get people to hang up on you. Not about solving problems which would take more than 9 minutes. Especially those with malware infested machines that take 15 minutes to boot up while you wait in fear looking at the clock ... shudder.
OR worse doing repair where your employer can rip you off. Otherwise they wont consider you for any other job. At least not in Florida where I live.
I can't wait to get my degree so I dont have to take such jobs and I can explain my worth. Its hard to prove you once worked in IT before the
http://saveie6.com/
ah the good ole days when I was on msn dielup (intentionally misspelled to use the word die) We had a 9 minute handle time, and if you went above that they would literally break into the call and tell you to get off it. We were encoureged to lie, to cheat, to basically do anything to get the customer off the phone. Password resets took 24 hours, it was always aols fault.. ah the good ole days. used to throw up blood back then. I don't actually care anymore so now, I don't.
You already lost this debate because there is nothing to the universe beyond supply and demand. If it doesn't fit within that narrow equation, it's simply not valid. :)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Probe that the US middle class (if you can define it consitently for all points in space and time) is shrinking.
There is no serious economist that would back such howgash.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Wages can never ever converge up. That is an stupid and ignorant statment based on wishful thinking and not in simple common sense.
If you have a wage differential, all else being equal, the people with the lower wages will have a competitive advantage.
The people with the higher wages will need to lower them in order to compete.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=249
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!