Slashdot Mirror
Outsourced Call Centers Losing Feasibility?
Daniel Pronych writes "BusinessWeek is running an article about how outsourcing call centers in India are no longer an 'inexpensive option' for American companies. These shops are now striving for better outsourced work from the U.S. and Europe multinational companies; many are fed up with U.S. clients trying to continually lower prices. New Delhi-based EXL Services, for example, terminated a contract with Dell Inc. because EXL was losing money in the deal."
Evil contains the seeds of it's own destruction.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
If the call center jobs get moved to the US,etc... will Indians complain about their jobs being outsourced?
In the UK we have had a lot of companies who outsourced their customer care to India, but because of this there has been a real backlash against companies who have done so at the expense of British workers. Now you often see in adverts people advertising that they have UK call centers only. I wonder if it is maybe becoming unworkable for both sides in these deals.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
I would think the complicated communication between layers of the organization would cause the company to lose more customers than savings.
My father recently tried to get Dish Network to install a several room HD setup at his house, the first installer was a newbie and didn't get the job even 1/3 done, and to make a long story short, he called the tech support center (which he thinks is in India) and after half an hour wrangling with the customer service there who only then got a vague idea of what he wanted because the computers had him down as installed (since the guy installer came) finally agreed to send another installer. He came unprepared (they told him it was a repair, not an install) and so my father had to call again. Up to now, this melee of miscommunication between the customer, tech support, and the installers went on for about 4-5 visits. I can't think how Dish Network is saving money if you figure in the extra time spent and the fact they will lose a customer soon.
For myself, I can't say that dealing with an outsourced call center has ever been pleasant.
IHMO, Outsourced Call Centers were never feasible. They just seemed feasible.
Corporations *should* have a social responsibility and conscience. Look at any big, sparkling technology park anywhere in the world and you see housing and transportation links springing up around it - purely because most people want to live close to where they work.
Consequently, when these same corporations suddenly decide to move thousands of jobs overseas, offices close down and entire communities can be devastated through unemployment.
The logical solution, therefore, should have been additional taxation on the corporations by government - very simply, each nation works out how much profit a company makes in their country (i.e. how much money it takes out) and compares it to how much money it spends on employing people in their country (i.e. how much money it puts back in). Then just subtract the second from the first and, if it's positive, tax the hell out of it.
And before anyone flames me about being "anti-capitalist", I'd remind them that when people lose their jobs and, say, private health care benefits, they turn to the government for unemployment handouts and public healthcare - both of which are financed from our taxes.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
My worst offshore callcenter experience wasn't because the guy on the other line was incomprehensible it was because I couldn't hear him. They were obviously using very crappy VOIP technology and he would just keep on cutting out in the middle of sentences. Furthermore(this might not have been the VOIP but it probably was) I could hardly hear the guy. I turned the volume up on my phone and still couldn't hear him, but when he transferred me to the American call desk I damn near got my ear blown off because it was so loud. If they are going to cut costs on the workers they should at least spring for facilities that actually allow for decent voice quality.
Monstar L
The funny thing is all of your ideas ARE anti-capitalist. No one is accusing you of being anti-capitalist, you are simply proposing solutions that are anti-capitalist.
Whether capitalism benefits or does not benefit us doesn't make your ideas any more or less capitalist. Just because people will turn to welfare if insurance doesnt exist, doesn't make welfare any less socialist. Welfare is simply one aspect of socialism in the American government. It doesn't make any sense to try and avoid socialism through more socialism. If the law that made tarrifs eliminated welfare then maybe you would have a point.
At least most capitalists have the balls to call their ideas capitalism rather than trying to label socialism capitalism. Just say it, you like socialist policies. I don't in general, but it's a free country so no one is going to put you in the gulag or send you to be reeducated cutting sugar cane if you want to change a law.
I don't need to "flame" you for being anti-capitalist its clear to anyone who can read and knows what capitalism means knows that the state using taxation to redistribute wealth is as anti-capitalist as it comes. Exactly which of your ideas aren't anti-capitalist?
It used to be like that in many European countries. Americans called that socialistic or communistic.
When a large company had problems, the government would take action like buying products from them, subsidizing research or construction, etc.
It worked for a while, but then the first examples of fraudulous management who put the government money in their own pockets or their own adventurous projects appeared.
It seems like greed will always win from responsibility.
Now, we have the EU. Instead of moving jobs outside the EU, new low-wage low-welfare countries are added to the EU faster than you can imagine, and companies are encouraged to move their jobs there. This results in some fictitious good economic results, but of course when you are losing your job because of this, you'll look at it in a bit different way.
Imagine that the USA would expand to include Mexico and middle-american states "because there are so many people there that want to work and expand our economy". That would be like what the EU does.
Small wonder that those countries where the people were asked their opinion voiced a strong NO. However, it will take something stronger to really wake up the EU politicians.
...when people lose their jobs and, say, private health care benefits, they turn to the government for unemployment handouts and public healthcare...
That's assuming that these things even exist. I can think of one well-known North American country where the former is minimal at best, and the latter is practically nonexistent.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Odd... Jobs leave the US for India, causing Americans to get hungry. Then Indian outsourcers start rejecting those jobs because they pay so low the Indians go hungry. Sounds like there's a worldwide hunger crisis in the works, so to speak.
So if India can demand better wages and reject outsource work, can America have those jobs back? We already know the language. Or will we have to wait until Business is done exploiting China and the third- and fourth-world countries? Some companies have come to their senses, but not all and not fast enough.
Which brings to mind a Dilbert strip about how the outsourced work had been so undercut while being bounced to foreign markets that eventually it went to the lowest bidder -- the original company.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
I just don't see how you can have things both ways. The companies can sell outside the US but they can't hire outside the US? This is entirely a selfish outlook. Your statements implies that there are no benifits besides to the companies who do the outsourcing. The peopel getting the work are just as human as those losing it. If there is such a need for public money, tax the rich Americans, not the well of, I mean the filthy rich, esp. those who gained their wealth through questionable means. Like it or not, it is still one planet.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Welcome to slashdot, where when you sell records and cling to outdated pricing models we flame you but when you are tech support clinging to outdated pricing models (wage expectations) then you need the gov't to help you.
Both are government interference in trade but we think because its us getting the benefit of law making that its ok.
Nevermind the millions who aren't tech support who just want cheap computers like we want cheap music, video, etc.
I don't in general, but it's a free country so no one is going to put you in the gulag or send you to be reeducated cutting sugar cane if you want to change a law.
You seem to equate socialism to a suppressive goverment that blindly puts people into camps.
However, that is a serious misjudgement.
In the cold-war years, the American government saw the socialist and communist countries as their enemy. Because they could not sell that socialism in itself was bad, they looked for other aspects of those countries. What they found was a strong secret service that tracked many people, camps where dissidents were kept, etc.
Those negative aspects were very welcome in the American government's view. They stressed that America was free, and the eastern block wasn't. And that they would not do such horrendous things. So you were better off as an American than as a DDR or USSR citizen.
However, after the eastern block collapsed, this freedom thing was no longer required as a difference between America and other countries.
So, they simply took it away at the earliest opportunity.
Now, western secret services are just as bad as the eastern block used to be (wanting to tap everything, wanting to keep a record of everything for possible future use, etc) and Americans are putting people in the Guantanamo Bay camp were you probably are not better off than in the gulag.
So, don't confuse the capitalist/socialist discussion with the freedom discussion. That time is past.
I should firstly say that I'm a UK resident, not an American, but outsourcing from British companies is just as bad.
Also, I'm not trying to deny jobs to people in emerging economies who can work for lower salaries because houses and the cost of living are also much lower in those countries - that's how capitalism works.
However, whether it's in the US, the UK or India, the activities of corporations change the societies around them. Salaries are higher in the Western World because demands for housing near to places of work has increased the cost of them meaning that people have needed to earn more. Sure, there's personal greed in there also but then that's no different to Indian workers demanding higher and higher salaries also - people are the same the world over.
Unfortunately, at the drop of a hat, any corporation currently has free reign to make decisions at board room level that affect the lives of thousands of workers - and if those workers mostly live near to their offices, then an entire community can be devastated; this leads to more drain on government money (for benefits) and perhaps even forces local, smaller businesses to crash also.
My point of argument is that corporations should be stopped from making "snap decisions" by higher taxation of their profits - after all, despite reducing jobs in certain countries, those corporations still expect to make as much, if not more money from those same countries.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I work at a Canadian office of an outsourcing company that opened offices in India.
I've actually had a conversations start with "Finally, someone in North America.", "Great, a Canadian. Better you than India." and many other anti-offshore statements.
And that's not even getting into some of the rather rude comments that people make towards our Indian coworkers. I especially feel sorry for immigrants from India/Pakistan/etc. who are IN Canada, but get treated just as badly as if they were IN India.
And of course, I've dealt with India call centers as a caller. While I'm patient towards them because I know exactly what they have to go through, I'm less than satisfied with the level of service I get sometimes. I'm not surprised in the slightest that India firms are ramping up their rates.
Oh, and something interesting I've found out recently, is that there are also some firms opening up in Latin America. Why? Because they can support English and Spanish.
The reason why people don't like outsourced call centres isn't usually because they are in India (however if it has lead to loss of local jobs people dislike that too). It's because things are generally made harder. The people in India aren't generally very good at speaking English, and commonly fail to understand what you are trying to say. They also generally are of little help. If you have a problem, you are either put on hold, or relayed a manual (which you have probably already read). They also are usually rather powerless - there *is* very little they are able to do - they are just made to 'deal' with people - and this just annoys most. Since they usually know so little about the subject you are calling about, working with outsourced call centres is just like flogging a dead sheep. They also probably think the same about dealing with angry customers. It's all about profit now, not customer service, and not about keeping the customer happy. If the customer is unhappy but they stay with the company - then their business model is working. However if you leave the company, you just receive the same level of service elsewhere.
But while I see your point, the problem with it is that you want to solve a near unsolveable problem. These big bang corporations have all the pull and more on the laws involved. Barring some mass revolution, I don't see anyone in the current "developed nations" enacting any law (taxes) that will seriously take the edge of their profits, regardless of how sleezy these profits are earned.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
On the other hand, the corporation could go out of buisness or lose large market share by being not price competative enough and devastate communnities like in Detroit.
How many foreign companies are there in the UK? Should all those companies also be forced to pack up and go home when the UK companies are forced to stop outsourcing? Or is it just one way? Only domestic companies aren't allowed to outsource. Foreign companies are allowed to outsource to the UK?
Je ne parle pas francais.
I'm happy to live in a society where I do a job, get paid for it and have a nice wedge of money at the end of the month to go spend on the nicer things in life. I'm happy to go looking and what's being offered to me, comparing one item of goods against another and buying the one I think offers me best value for money. I have a reasonable car, a good house and private healthcare where public healthcare is already available and if I had any children, I'd probably send them to a private school. I don't see anything in there that makes me a socialist...
On the other hand, I don't own any stocks or shares because I'm really not that bothered about making money purely for the sake of it. I can admire people like Richard Branson, for example, who have set out from the start to make money, devoted all of their lives to making money and end up being rich - but I'm not interested in doing so myself because I consider money a tool to get things done only. I have enough of it to live comfortably and happily, if someone offers me more then I'll take it but I'm not out to accumulate more of it. Since I'm not out to accumulate wealth, therefore, I guess I'm probably not a capitalist either...
So, yes, maybe my definition is wrong but this still does not change the fact that corporations have a social responsibility - just in the same way that most capitalists wouldn't support a petro-chemical company polluting seas and rivers or a pharmaceutical company killing thousands of patients through not trialing new drugs properly, why would they support corporations making sudden changes in lifestyles of thousands of people purely for profit.
Or are you simply admitting that capitalism and social responsibility, not socialism, are entirely at odds with each other?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Let's take everyone's favourite American company, Microsoft. They have offices in the UK and they employ UK citizens. They also sell their products in the UK and probably sponsor a few schools and sports events.
The UK employment and sponsorship is money they put into the UK, the money they get through UK product sales is money they take out of the UK. Take the first from the second and have the UK government tax the remainder. And if UK jobs or sponsorship reduces, that figure gets bigger so you tax it more...
In other words, you *force* that company to make it more expensive for them to recruit overseas and perhaps stop them making snap decisions when it comes to mass job cuts. Plus you make the company realise that when you take something out of a country, you need to put something back in.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Hey, I'm not going to complain. U.S. companies like Dell should keep their jobs within the country so they can provide more US citizens with jobs and in turn those people can buy their products - improving the economy (as much as they can).
The "outsourcing issue" started about 30 years ago when manufacturing jobs started to move to Asia. Do you advocate action to save blue-collar jobs, or just white? The logical solution, therefore, should have been additional taxation on the corporations by government - very simply, each nation works out how much profit a company makes in their country (i.e. how much money it takes out) and compares it to how much money it spends on employing people
Companies structure themselves to minimise taxes. They'd just move the profits to another country. Besides which, ther are many legitimate businesses with a small staff and large profits which would be caught by your plan -- financial services, for instance.
I see what you're trying to accomplish, but I think your maths are oversimplified. One thing you're ignoring is whether the things a company sells in the UK help the UK citizens be more productive, make more money, etc. Microsoft would argue (whether they're correct or not is a totally separate argument) that the money that UK companies/citizens/etc spend on Microsoft products is recompensed by the increased productivity gained by using their products. Is Microsoft still "taking money out of the UK" in that scenario? Or are they helping UK companies generate more money? Or, most probably, are they doing both? If both, how do you measure the value that using their products adds in your final calculation?
Let's take the system to its extreme: Should a product that's entirely made & managed overseas be heavily taxed just because the company has no UK office? (And would, therefore, have no subtractions in your equation.) What if they're a tiny startup? Would you punish them for being foreign and small?
The Detroit car industry was devastated because of cheaper Japanese imports, was it not? Presumably all cars were manufactured in Japan and Asia and then shipped over to be sold in the US?
Therefore, by my argument, if the Japanese auto manufacturers were selling cars in the US but not making them there, then the US government would have taxed them more (kind of like a heavier import duty). This would have kept the US car industry more competitive and therefore helped stop the problem you're describing?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I work in one of the six main utility companies in the UK. We've just taken the decision to return all our work in house, from India. The reason we've done this is mainly that outsourcing doesnt work, but is also because we're moving away from a command and control environment where the work is broken down into small amounts and processed ad infinitum by the worker, which made outsourcing so attractive. We're moving to a system thinking/lean model like Toyota's production line being the main example. The, i've got 200 workers that can do 2000 units of work at $x amount means that there are targets in the system. Once you get targets you're defining that once they've done 2000units of work they are effective and its even better when we can get the work done cheaper. Problem is that those 2000units of work havent been done effectively. They've been fudged, the ticket has been resolved for instance but the actual customers problem hasnt so they'll raise 4,5,6,7 tickets all 'resolved' each time as a unit of work for the outsource, making the management happy by meeting the target but the customer is still pissed off and has taken there custom else where as they've never resolved the problem. The trick is to look at how the work works and improve the system. not break it down into a series of units and whore it to the cheapest bidder. Once you improve the system you can view what work is waste and value. IE one office receives a number of bits of paper staples whacks them in an envelope and sends them to another office where they employ someone to take the staples out. Why staple it? turn off that bit of work and free that employee to actually look at that work and work it. Yes, i've been sold on it, but then again it actually works. In 12months we've gone from 90% above average for customer complaints to 60% below average and have overtaken most of our rivals and our catching the rest up. Not only that moral in the company has really improved too. Personally my little rant doesnt do justice to how well its working and will continue to work for us.
I've had far more problems talking to ditzy secretaries in California who just want to laugh at my accent, make crocodile jokes and think I'm trying to act all superior by using clear english instead of slang. I can't understand US slang either in these conversations - to me gimp is a graphics program, a pastie is a sort of pie and a long black is a coffee.
As to your second point, that's a good one also. I'm inclined to say "Yes" to that one though because that company is employing someone somewhere and taking money out of the UK - although I do agree that what they're doing is different to, say, Megacorp Ltd employing 5,000 people in an office in the UK one day and then sacking everyone and moving those jobs overseas the next.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Sounds like it's time for outsourcing companies to head for the Philippines, which has been a sorely overlooked investment area in Asia due to the huge growth of India and China. Business process outsourcing has been growing exponentially in the past few years, with call center employment increasing 100-fold in the past 5 years. Besides, there's no shortage of qualified English-speaking Filipinos, and they have long-standing cultural ties to the United States.
What goes around, comes around..
India businessmen were educated under the same western techniques. The motivations that drive them are the same that drive the rest of the human species. Get the business at any cost, and then when you have them by the short and curlies, jack-up the price. Greed is the great equalizer in this global economy. Technology is the other! I forsee a future when North American and European entrepreneurs start unleashing superior business processes that effectively wipe out these 'outsourced' countries. Think about it, when you have to call support in in India for some peice of crap made in China..WTF!
> So, yes, maybe my definition is wrong but this still does not change the fact that corporations
> have a social responsibility
I'm not sure if you're suggesting that they do, or that they have some legal obligation to do so, but in either case, you're wrong. A corporation exists to make a profit and return value to the shareholders. That is all.
> just in the same way that most capitalists wouldn't support a
> petro-chemical company polluting seas and rivers
That's exactly what they do.
> or a pharmaceutical company killing thousands of patients through not trialing new drugs properly,
They don't, because that would be expensive. Killing your customers, and wilfully exposing the corporations profits to punitive damages by the courts will be frowned upon.
> why would they support corporations making sudden changes in lifestyles of thousands of people
> purely for profit.
Because that's what they do.
He means that as India "graduates" to (second world?) these calls are shifting to South Africa. That's still 3rd world, right?
Lets be honest here, this was all a short term snatch and grab, foisted on everyone so a few CEO's could say they increased the company profits thus the share worth. How many times have we seen one stupid cost cutting program come in to vogue only to find its all smoke an mirrors. No one sat down and asked the obvious questions, "well what will the customers think", I can bet the mangers said "the customers are idiots they don't think". The other obvious question is "if its a third world country wont we have third world inferstructure to deal with", lets ignore the major power outages and your computers not arriving because some donkey herder got lost with you gear because YES! "were saving money". Well your not, your just a bunch of cheap assed snake oil salesmen who get paid way too much for "petending" to think.
When anyone invests in a company ask this "is the CEO one of the top 100 paid CEO's in the world", if the answer is yes, don't invest because the reality is, the more a company CEO gets paid the lower the perfomance, Im not kidding thats true, google for it.
Indeed. That's entirely my point.
I think the main source of disagreement here is that it sounds like you're assuming that the economy is a zero-sum game. In other words, one group/country/etc must lose money if your economy is gaining money, and vice versa. I don't think that's true.
If a product I buy pays for itself in a short period of time, then, after that break-even point I'm making more profit than before for the same amount of work. Neither I nor the company I bought the product from lose in this scenario. I take a short-term loss (paying for a product) for a long-term gain (more productivity -> more profits), the company I bought the thing from gets a short-term gain. Where is the loss? In this scenario, both parties benefit, so money (well, value, but effectively the same thing) has been created, effectively out of thin air. Does this process take money out of the UK? I don't think so, even if the company I bought from is overseas.
besides, why would Microsoft care if someone was more productive using their products?
They wouldn't. But the UK government would care. After all, if this product is something that will help the UK economy grow, then it's in the interest of the UK government to minimize the number of roadblocks to its availability.
These big bang corporations have all the pull and more on the laws involved.
Therein lies the problem. What the governments need to remember is that the vast majority of people (at least in the UK, I suspect it is the same in the USA and other countries) are employed by small and medium sized companies. So policies and laws which favour the large multi-national corporations to the detriment of the small companies and individuals, are against the interests of the nation as a whole.
Or are you simply admitting that capitalism and social responsibility, not socialism, are entirely at odds with each other? They are. They always have been, but for a supporter of either side, one must recognize the importance in each. Basically, we need a little bit of both for a good society. We have seen capitalism at its very worse with no social benefits, and we have seen socialism in its purity and both cannot function without a little of each. The reason why socialism came to exist was purely due to the start of capitalism. Engels and Marx genuinely had a sincere utopian cause, but this easily and almost always falls to corruption. China for example is currently flourishing but wait.... that is a communist country, right? Wrong. Well, it has a lot of state control, but they have also turned into a free market economy. Before then, China was very poor, and the people suffered enormously, I am not stating that everything is good now, but I would have to say it is much better than say 20-30 years ago.
If your ideas worked then I may be inclined to agree. But it is all bollocks I am afraid. Itis not a purpose of the corporation to be fair. If they find out however that being fair give them advantage then (some of them at least) will try to use this advantage. Outsourcing in itslef is not bad. It is just a normal practice of a company to focus on activities that are main business and outsource others where the company is not a specialist. This said there are countries where the rules are so perverse that from taxes a bonuses are financed for the companies to off-shore jobs. One of such countries is corporation's tax heaven - Germany (social market economy they call it there).
The whole thing with offshoring works for all as long as the country to which offshoring is made develop in a process so that the new capacities that are created there are more and more used up locally. In this way no imbalances will build up. If OTOH modern getthos are created (like the ones by our beloved M$ in India) where poverty is just fenced off and wealth that stays is limited and not distributed - corporations get the upper hand - customer may get their goods cheaper but overall gain is just in hands of the few. At some point it is either fixed by marked forces or by revolution (which in a sense is also controlled by supply and demand).
In bad case poverty continues and gets globalized/democratized, in good wealth is created, globalized and democratized.
> In other words, you *force* that company to make it more expensive for them to recruit overseas and
> perhaps stop them making snap decisions when it comes to mass job cuts. Plus you make the company
> realise that when you take something out of a country, you need to put something back in.
That's just not how it works. You're not, as a political party, going to get the support of big business if you antagonize them by making it expensive to achieve their objectives, and as the leader of a political party you want the support of the business community. That's part of the job of political leaders - sounding tough about environmental damage, local communities, unemployment etc, but passing laws which have flaws, loopholes and no teeth so that it doensn't make any difference to the companies whether or not the laws exist.
I shall add the twist that this "re-educates" customers to know at time of purchase "there isn't a hope of support". So if it's a hardware commodity and it still works but is horrible, try to return it to the store, and if it breaks past warranty, buy another one.
Especially on the Systems Build side, I gather that a lot of Dotters can take a rough built system and tune it up themselves, rather than spend $300 on some kind of "service plan".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Oh get real!
All large businesses and plenty of small ones are constantly at the government's teat in the USA. Big Business in america is forever lobbying for more and more corporate socialism and calling it capitalism in order to justify it. Some entire industries are based on government subsidies - either direct money transfers like ADM gets or indirect subsidies as side effects of legislation like the big telecoms get.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
And before anyone flames me about being "anti-capitalist", I'd remind them that when people lose their jobs and, say, private health care benefits, they turn to the government for unemployment handouts and public healthcare - both of which are financed from our taxes.
Err yes you are anti-capitalist. People lose their jobs all the time (hell I've been redundant twice, fired once) the key is whether the economy as a whole grows, which it has been. And the richer the poorer companies get the more they will need finished goods and services which you can supply back to them. You're probably one of those muppets who thinks that subsidising farmers is perfectly acceptable because it only makes people in Africa die.
Welcome to the 21st Century, where 1st World countries stamp on the hands of the poor.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I'm a call center programmer for a large US financial company.
We have a LOT of call centers here in the states but none overseas for security reasons. However there has been a lot of talk lately about a call center opening in a Spanish Speaking country or territory (like Puerto Rico, which is part of US) where you never have problems finding people who speak spanish but can also find people who speak some english, french, etc.
Of course the main incentive is not language abilities but cheap labor. A Puerto Rican in Puerto Rico is cheaper than a Puerto Rican in Florida.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
"Now, western secret services are just as bad as the eastern block used to be"
That comment is just plain ignorant. I've yet to see tanks come down my street like in Hungary or Czechoslovakia.
Plus a company which has its revenues excessively taxed will just relocate their production base to a more liberal country. China, India, Lativa, Lithuania, Estonia, and other countries currently enjoying two-figure GDP growth will welcome them more than happily. No it's not a coincidence that countries with lowest taxes are the fastest-developing ones.
Imagine that the USA would expand to include Mexico and middle-american states "because there are so many people there that want to work and expand our economy". That would be like what the EU does.
We have. It is called NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).
There are many instances of companies going "south of the border" to get cheap labor. In fact, many "American" cars are less american than the imported brands. So we lose good manufacturing jobs _and_ we still have to import a signifcant amount of service labor.
In general, I am more capitalist and tend not to trust the government to solve my problems. I don't trust my employer to take care of me in the long term, either. I have to rely on my wits and keep my skills to the point where it would do the company more harm than good to outsource me. I make it a point to subtly remind my managers of this.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
There's a good section in the book "Lean Solutions" by Womack and Jones, that looked at Fujitsu Services UK applying lessons from the Toyota Production System on their call centre business. Instead of measuring # calls handled, # rings, # tickets closed, they ended up persuading clients to compensate them on the number of people who *could* potentially call them... and then set about doing rigourous "root cause" analysis and corrections to stop customers having to call in the first place. The end result being that more customers were satisfied, call volumes dropped dramatically, level of service went way up while the costs plummeted.
Most call centres are still back in "rote stock answers territory", so the life of the end consumer never gets to improve. In the final analysis, it's the fault of the company who decides to outsource in the first place. If they got a statistician or someone who could map out customer value streams, they'd save more costs than outsourcing to the cheapest battery farm - wherever it is located..
Ian W.
Corporations *should* have a social responsibility and conscience.
I agree. Corporations should try to employ as many people as possible in impoverished countries such as India rather than employing people in the US/Europe who are certainly not going to starve with the loss of a few jobs.
They don't, because that would be expensive. Killing your customers, and wilfully exposing the corporations profits to punitive damages by the courts will be frowned upon.
And that stopped Merck from selling Vioxx without a warning against people with heart conditions taking it? Someone in the company drafted a letter indicating that, if I recall correctly, Vioxx would make roughly $250million more in 6 months without that warning, and someone else went forward with it. Knowingly killing your customers being frowned upon or not, I bet regardless of whether Merck crashes and burns from the lawsuits, the people that knew about this will get their golden parachute and not a single scratch. They'll probably be welcomed to the executive ranks for another company, just another guy who makes the ballsy decisions that gets the stock price up for the quarter.
... and it wants to concentrate on data processing ('non-voice') work.
From an outsourcing service provider's point of view 'voice' work is simply a pain. Steep learning curves, high attrition rates, higher training costs - not to mention all the other complexities due to the 'real-time' and customer-facing nature of work.
Most of the large BPO providers in India offer voice services only because their clients want to offshore both kind of work. In any case, as a risk mitigation strategy these BPO companies do maintain a balance between the two (and perhaps emphasising more on data work). Again, even in case of voice work a balance is maintained between 'outgoing' call business and 'incoming' call business.
As far as the QOS issues are concerned, clients need to understand that 'what you pay is what you get'. Clients expect 'first-world' levels of service and infrastructure at 'third-world' prices. And that includes not just the basic service being provided but also value-added functions like quality initiatives (Six Sigma, ISO9001), risk management (BCP, infosec), etc. The interesting part is these same clients themselves hardly have such 'best practices' implemented back onshore!
The good part is that most of the large Indian BPOs really do a damn good job at offering all this (and more) and at a fraction of the price that it would cost their clients. In my opinion, it would be a good thing for India if clients stop offshoring voice work. Indian BPOs can do a fine job with data work - the BPO agents are great with written english, so even customer-facing processes like 'correspondence' work is not an issue at all.
PS: In case anyone is wondering - Yes, I am from India and I work for a large Indian BPO.
Regards
The whole point of outsourcing was quite capitalist in nature. Companies like Dell have institutional shareholders to report to. More profits meant more jobs, more trickle down. In Dell's case it was a disaster.
Now maybe we'll have a choice of speaking with over qualified foreign agents with average english skills, or under qualified American agents with poor english skills.
Or maybe the trend towards convicts in jail call centers will remind callers what ever their problem is, it could always be worse.
Anyone with even a basic understanding of macroeconomics would have. Build the economy in a country and they'll demand a higher standard of living. This is what economists have been saying forever why free markets are better.
I'm amazed this form of advertising hasn't happened in the US. There is such a push for "Made in America" and supporting American made stuff that this would fit right in. Then again, Americans don't like many American products.
Can I bum a sig?
Ever since he gave away our state secret about using big tubes to move information, the PVC market has gone nuts.
Do you have any idea how much schedule 40 pipe it takes to get those calls to India and back?
Never mind how much the techs charge for setting up tube switches - three guys covered in blue paint don't come cheap, you know.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"wake up the EU politicians"
:-)
You are forgetting that EU isn't only about economy, but about culture and security as well. The east-west division is unsupported by Europe's history.
Not to jab at you, but it's funny how economists have hijacked all decision-making and ways of thinking. We might be better off with people from the other "angles" in gov't and media leadership. Now it's like a buncha mathematicians running all Science...
Hope you get what I mean
I like Indian food, and they seem to be hoarding almost the whole world's supply of it over there. What little that gets out you have to go to a restaurant to get!
So, when I'm on a call with an Indian, I am seething mad because I know whoever I'm talking to probably has a churning belly full of vindaloo and here I am with barely a hint of onion on my breath...
Is it only me or would "India side quitting the deal made us pull back to US" be a great excuse for Dell execs and Dell itself to pull the centers back to US without admitting the entire idea was crap in the first place?
So, what you're proposing is a tax on imports. For a large chunk of US history, the federal government was primarily funded by import duties. We could try it here in the US again - it'd eliminate our trade deficit with China in no time at all! Under this sort of policy, for every item manufactured in China, the manufacturer would have to pay the US government a huge amount - maybe 33% of the price. Imagine inflating the price of _everything_ by a third. Of course, it'd be against every free trade agreement we've ever signed.
Now, I don't think that we really want to go back to trade barriers. Free trade does seem to be a good thing overall - we get cheaper goods, third-world countries start to industrialize and (slowly) get higher standards of living. We get more markets for our products, and in theory we get to reallocate people to more productive fields. The main problem with free trade, actually, seems to be that companies get the benefits of free trade but consumers do not. Hollywood, for example, takes advantage of free trade (and region coding) to sell at different prices around the globe. But I can't buy cheaply in another region and resell here. Similar problem with pharmaceuticals - drug companies can sell cheaper in Canada than in the US, but I can't reimport drugs from Canada for resale. Car companies cut labor costs by moving a plant to Mexico - why can't I go to Mexico to buy a cheap car and drive it back?
Though I agree with the underlining logic, it got me to thinking, is a socialism capitalist the same as compassionate conservative? And more to the point of your argument, there are no real capitalist societies in existence, just there are no societies that are absent of some form of capitalism. At the end of the day we cannot implement theories and pie in the sky ideals; therefore being critical of people that point out the real life consequences is wasted energy except for the scholarly aspect of what is, "is".
It's not what your Sig can do for you, but what you can do for your for your Sig.
The U.S. government actively subsidizes research and bails out failing corporations.
NAFTA isn't perfect, but it does a lot to include Mexico in the U.S economy, and more countries are signing on or signing similar agreements.
Also, the good economic results aren't fictitious; they are non-localized for the people who lose thier jobs, but usually, they move on to a new job(sometimes better, sometimes worse), and overall, the economy grows. The best support for this being the case is that the world economy is actually growing.
It can be very painful in the short term, but more trade is essentially always a good thing in the long term.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The problem with the American way of using Capitalism is the overweaning GREED.
No matter HOW cheap something is, businessmen always want MORE.
No steady state, no room for people, just more GREED.
The backlash has started folks, time to wake up and smell the burning crumpets.
Globalisation is allmost once around by now.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Well, humour me. Justify it.
The way I see it, all humans are equally deserving of rights and opportunities by default (their actions can then alter their eligibility, and opportunity doesn't equal outcome).
How then is affording opportunities to different people far away as opposed to similar people nearby a bad thing?
Oh, I understand it's bad for you if you're in the latter group, but people don't talk about this in those terms. They talk like it's morally wrong for companies to outsource. How can that be? I don't see the logic behind that. Is there any?
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Are you retarded? Just because you put a "anti-capitalist" disclaimer in your post does not make it any less ridiculous. The goal of a corporation is to make money. For some reason, I cannot remember the last time I checked the social responsibility and conscience index of a company before I invested in it. Personally, when I find a company that outsources call centers to a location that employs people that I cannot accurately understand, I stop doing business with them. That is your option. Capitalism is worthless when governments start trying to micromanage the system. It inherently corrupts it. Oh, and I especially love your blanket label of "western governments". Get over yourself.
Key is the third and fourth words - tanks are hardly secret service. Whilst the western secret services are not (always) openly advocating torture, if not as bad as Eastern Bloc, they certainly desire - and are aiming - to be.
let me explain the situation in india.here even small companies which are having 10-20 employees also start call center :) they try to represent a million dollar company and expert of the field. but thing is that everyone go for money once you have client you just need to hire few ppl who can spek english on very nominal cost.(100$ a month is wht some ppl get here!! seems strange to all USA and Europian ppl but its the reality)
so when someone is getting so less amount you can imagine wht kind of work they will provide.
A poor person in the West gets free housing, food vouchers, dole money, and jobs round every corner. A poor person in India starves to death. I applaud these companies for sending jobs to where they're needed the most.
So if an American company moves from California to Indonesia to save money, devastating a Californian community, they have to pay taxes. But if they move from California to Bumfuck Ohio to save money, devasting the Californian community just the same, they don't pay any taxes at all?
Your ideas are clearly arbitrary. Why country and not state? Why state and not town? Why town and not street? Why street and not continent? There's a shop down the road where I live that makes money, but they don't employ anyone on this road. Close them down, those evil capitalists!
For example, in the old DDR there was the STASI who tapped telephone calls, opened letters, kept a record of anyone in the country who was seen as a threat to what they believed was the correct society.
Whole archives were found of people's opinions, networks of contact inside the country and abroad, etc.
Please explain to me how this is different from what the CIA or AIVD does today.
Especially the easy excuse used for it, "we do it all for security or anti-terrorism" is very cheap. That is similar to the excuse the eastern block countries used, and which the west looked down upon so much. They regarded freedom so important, that a very good reason would have to be given to violate it that much.
However, this turned out to be true only as long as it was convenient to the American leaders.
This whole "freedom" ideal, that was acclaimed so much in the past, has turned out to have a very thin skin. One radical person and a group of 20 followers have destroyed it in one day.
If the belief in freedom was for real, it would have stood up to a little bit more than that. Now it looks more like it was a nice motivation behind the cold war, and once that had ended it was no longer required and could best be discarded.
Where is the loss? In this scenario, both parties benefit, so money (well, value, but effectively the same thing) has been created, effectively out of thin air.
Sorry, but that's a load of rubbish. If your productivity and hence your income increases, then it does so because more money shifts from your customers towards you in the same timeframe. The money doesn't just pop into existence.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
I believe that corporations should be reigned in on many fronts, but I believe that the current fad of outsourcing, at least in the area of software development, is a self correcting problem. The reason being that it simply does not work. I am a software developer who has ben involved with outsourced development in one form or another since 1995. The best that I have seen is what I would call a qualified success. Meaning that the project didn't out-and-out fail, but it wasn't terribly successful either. The other projects with which I have been involved or observed simply failed, either during development or after release due to the poor quality of the product.
The entire phenomena seems to have been driven top down from corporate managers who listened to the slick sales pitches from companies like Wipro and decided that they could save a few bucks. So they hand down mandates to make this work or else. But they don't really bother to look at the actual outcomes.
Most of the developers and first level managers whom I know have come to the conclusion that it simply doesn't work and there is no way to make it work. At a former employer, the statement was made "Yes they cost a third as much, but it takes three times as long, three times the management, and the quality sucks."
What was perceived as a tactical advantage has in fact become a huge liability and, slow, stupid and greedy as corporations are, it is only a matter of time until somebody screws up the courage to point out the fact that the king is butt naked.
This sig is intentionally left blank
saider mentions some good points...
There are many instances of companies going "south of the border" to get cheap labor.
My favorite comments for execs in companies that outsource is to say "Oh, you like to speculate on currencies too, eh?" The US economy is getting to where it's not easy again to manage things (companies, portfolios, hedge positions, etc.) When interest rates were at historical lows, it was pretty easy to pick stocks and not bonds, for instance. Financial management becomes much more challenging when conditions don't automatically pick the right answer for you. I'd swear this is the real reason the Fed uses its stick/carrot control of the Fed Funds Rate - more as a cue to the dumb managers out there to make the obvious decision.
Firms outsourcing labor have had an equally easy job with respect to a significant risk they're incurring due to similar currency conditions: because the dollar has been comparatively strong to the yen, euro, rupee, etc., it was easy to just assume there was no exchange issue and foreign labor was incredibly cheap. That's changing. I've built a moderate international exchange-traded fund (ETF) position in anticipation of a weakening dollar (which will probably become a major decline as soon as enough inflationary pressure collapses the "Federal treasury bubble" - a less-than-polite term for the near constant demand for US Treasuries used to back unsustainable U.S. Federal spending). When that occurs, the international assets I hold will increase in value, but efforts to buy more of them will also become more expensive.
Should U.S. firms outsourcing labor wake up and discover a moderate 10% decline in dollar, they're likely to have eliminated their outsourcing financial gain. Another risk now being realized is unmitigated outsourcing contract fee exposure - several firms I work with in the Midwest US have been surprised to learn that when they completely outsource an operation and lose that internal competency, the fees suddenly start to hike up. The company itself is no longer able to easily take that operation back in-house and the outsourcing firm that underbid the business knows this.
I have to rely on my wits and keep my skills to the point where it would do the company more harm than good to outsource me. I make it a point to subtly remind my managers of this.
That's really a critical point for all of us. If your cable TV becomes more expensive, less featured and less reliable than dish TV, people switch. The same goes for employees in companies.
*scoove*
I am no American or even for that matter European, so I dont have any specifc case where the service was poor.But what you guys report is sporadic instances.Companies like GECIS and Daksh are doing pretty good job, or else why did IBM aquire daksh and the acquisition took place recently only? But all the companies including these BPOs once in a while do the analysis, do we really want this customer? Read latest edition of HBR for example. Now that BPO market in India is getting matured, companies are not ready to bend down for any customer.This happens in all the businesses.Doesn't it? I really welcome this trend.It will allow these companies to focus better and deliver quality service. Attrition has been always a big problem for call centers.Most of the employees are young guys, who took the job as a stop over measure.They will move on, once they get better oppurtunities.But this is almost true for IT companies also.If you guys argue that, outsourcing never really saved the money for companies or government should have 'controlled it'.For, first I would say, how many of you are heads of organisations doing outsourcing? Now..dont start cooking stories.Give me cold hard facts.It worked for IBM,GE,DELL,HP and thousand other companies, but it may not work for every company.Those who follow copy cat business strategies are always doomed to bite the bullet at some point of time. And for the second, ah - it is almost sick to argue that govts should have controlled outsourcing.Then may be Indians should start boycotting goods made by western companies too. What will happen to yours truly Nokia,IBM , who are making big bucks there.It is naive to say that, govt should have controlled it.May be then we should all go back to totalitarean days of communism.Make up your mind, you want India to be your market and at the same time you don't want your jobs to to India.You can't have cake and eat it too.
I'm just curious here. What do you plan on using for your retirement? Hopefully you have a good job that will offer you a pension. I don't believe Social Security will be around for most folks when they retire in the way that my grandparents have used it.
Aside from that, owning stocks and securities is not about only making money. I work in the financial industry as a software engineer, and I have an interesting perspective on the subject. I'm sure you enjoy innovation and the idea of starting your own company; let's say you're the good person you come across as being and have an idea to make a better product; like a new more efficient light buld. Simple example, but I'm making a point. You'll need a lot of money to get your company going and your factory started. Just giving your idea to GE or somehting won't help, because maybe they won't believe it will work. So, you go through the process of bringing your company public, and what happens is that people buy shares of your stock. Sure you can say they are just hoping to make a buck, but they're still helping you do something good. Wierd how it works, but that's it.
Even then as I write this, I'll bet you can find some holes in my argument. Fair enough, I'm sure they're there. But, how about investing in bonds. Buying more government bonds; state, local, or federal; is a way to invest in the social programs that you like. By buying them, you help the government finance those programs; whether they be roads or other programs. In fact, the people of California did that exact thing when it came to bulding the Golden Gate bridge. The government sold "bridge bonds."
Either way, my point is that buying stock is not only about making money. Most folks I know do it as a way to provide for their retirement in a way that accounts for inflation. Simply putting your extra cash in a savings account will cost you money because the interest rate will rarely be above inflation; historically speaking. It certainly isn't now. Interestingly, the federal government started offering Series-I bonds a few years ago. They offer an interest rate guarenteed to be above inflation, and that the rate is adjusted twice a year to ensure that.
Anyway, I found your comments interesting. Hopefully, you'll say the same about mine.
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
Then perhaps my definition of capitalism is wrong - I can accept that.
Probably not. Capitalism is about, and is only about, the private ownership of property. Any definition beyond that is a projection of someone's radical ideology.
That is a really really bad idea. If one country starts down that road, all will retaliate and follow, the result of which will be a huge impediment to international commerce that will cripple economic growth on a global scale. It is reminscint of the concept of a tarriff war which is always very destructive economically.
Actually, that is precisely what it does (well, value, but again, I'm glossing over the difference). That's the whole point. I can't stress this enough: the economy is not a zero-sum game. Someone else does not have to lose for you to gain.
Forget money & purchases for a moment...let's talk just value and straight barter: what happens when two people trade items which they themselves can't use, but the other can? For example, you trade with your neighbour, giving him a wood lathe for a computer. Since you can't use the wood lathe, its value to you is low. Since your neighbor can't use the computer, its value to him is low. But, you can use the computer, so its value to you is high. Similar for the wood lathe & your neighbor. So, after the trade, you both have things that have value to you. By trading objects, you each gained value, but the total amount of *stuff* in the system remained the same. Value appeared *out* *of* *nowhere* simply due to trading.
I've been glossing over the difference between money and value because money is supposed to serve as a proxy for value...so, for purposes of this debate, they're the same thing.
Just because people will turn to welfare if insurance doesnt exist, doesn't make welfare any less socialist.
Does it make insurance any less socialist?
What you call welfare is insurance paid for by everyone through taxes, and with universal coverage.
Insurance is welfare paid for through premiums but limited to a select membership.
Participation in the "welfare" insurance plan is involuntary for taxpaying individuals, yes.
Participation in the "insurance" welfare plan is somewhat voluntary (although less so than you probably think), but is denied to broad categories of people who are either deemed high risk or are unable to afford it.
Dwelling on labels like "capitalist" and "socialist" does nothing to further your understanding of either insurance or welfare, which are both just mechanisms for spreading risk from the individual across a broader population. The real difference is simply how broadly you wish to spread it, and whether it will be denied to those most in need of it.
Exactly: true capitalism (which is based on the principle of voluntary trade for mutual benefit) doesn't exist in the US, and as far as I'm aware, anywhere else in the world today. In fact, the US economy today is much closer to socialism or corporatism (coercive economies) than capitalism (voluntary economy).
The deeper government (and its special "right" to employ coercion as a business model) is entangled in the market, the further away from capitalism the market is.
This was the first thing I thought about with this article.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
No, the US auto industry was devastated by Japanese imports that were perceived to be better. The early Japanese imports were considered to be junk, and didn't make much of a dent in US car sales.
The gasoline shortages in the late 70's and early 80's accelerated the market share of imports. Detroit was behind the curve on fuel efficiency and Japan filled the demand for cars with good gas mileage. But after gasoline was again available at a reasonable price, people decided they liked the imports better and didn't go back to US-manufactured cars.
Therefore, by my argument, if the Japanese auto manufacturers were selling cars in the US but not making them there, then the US government would have taxed them more (kind of like a heavier import duty). This would have kept the US car industry more competitive and therefore helped stop the problem you're describing?
We might still be buying US-made cars, but they'd still be crap. The US auto industry got a huge wake-up call to improve their products and increase fuel efficiency.
Unfortunately, at the drop of a hat, any corporation currently has free reign to make decisions at board room level that affect the lives of thousands of workers
The problem for workers, wherever they are, is that capital is now completely mobile across international boundaries, but labor is not (or much. much less so, anyway).
As trade barriers fall, companies are increasingly international entities that are free to buy their labor and materials where they are cheapest, and to sell their products where people are willing to pay the most for them. They see the world as their playing field, and there is no longer real allegiance to any particular nation or national interest, at least not for which they'll sacrifice their bottom line.
This is all very good news for workers where labor is cheap, but for those where it is expensive... well, not so much. Enjoy the race to the bottom.
By raising the taxes on an industry, you only encourage more outsourcing, and possibly an entire re-location. Isn't the whole point of outsourcing to lower costs to enable higer profits?
The article seems to be saying that the costs of outsourcing are rising...well if costs rise here, then it nudges the system back into balance, whereas to keep jobs here, we want it to be just as or more expensive to outsource, (not only in salary costs, but in public image and availability concerns), than it is to just hire somebody in Omaha.
What exactly would be wrong with having a United States of Europe? Seriously. From a security standpoint the EU as it is is kinda well not kinda but very convoluted. Lets just say for a minute that the US did not exist, and Russia threatnened the EU. Could you all act decisively with one voice? Or would the UK, France and Germany go one way with the rest of Europe going another way.....ensuring that you'd all lose?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I've yet to see tanks come down my street like in Hungary or Czechoslovakia.
Those were Russian tanks, not Hungarian or Czech tanks, the USSA tanks rolled through Iraq with an equally trite excuse. And now the gulag is in Cuba,,, There is nothing stupid about the GPs comment, just because you do not have your eyes open does not mean that others cannot see.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
wish things were so man... but you cant force empathy
I understand your position and I disagree with it personally and will always vote against it.
You can't handle the truth.
watch it when you have time
You can't handle the truth.
Working at a company specializing in videoconferencing Accent Reduction tutoring to Call Centers in India and a few other countries which market to American corporations, I have for years been watching both sides of this. The Americans don't like dealing with people they can't understand (no, it has nothing to do with Racism or even much to do with Nationalism. It's mostly frustration not understanding people.) Not to mention politicians pitting unionists and senior citizens against the whole idea of outsourcing, insisting it's magically bad for the economy (which anyone who's studied Econ disagrees with.) I live in Utah, so half the call centers that aren't in India are in Utah (for stereotypical reasons of over-educated, overly nice, morally opposed to suing their boss populus here.) The providers in India are frustrated that they have to spend a ton to get a huge fiber connection to support their VoIP call center, which they have no risk control over since any day the US Congress or mob rule could pass some law against their existence. Their employees are similarly over-educated, and half only speak English, but since they speak with a Hindu-British accent they can't keep their customers happy. I've helped a couple companies overcome their accent issues and become extremely profitable, but at the same time that is always met with cultural skepticism, as removing someone's accent is, among the masses, considered a violation of their ethnic identity. Luckily India doesn't have those problems as much as we do in the US, so you can always find people who are more concerned with global progress... Anyway, that's my summary. The market for call centers is just centralizing, as the small guys go out of business and the big guys merge. Call centers in the US need to be in Utah, and outside the US need to be in Jamaica, Ireland, or India; and those trends will continue as soon as some minor hurdles evolve away. Colin Jensen, www.sharpenglish.com, (801) 368-1623, colin@sharpenglish.com
--Colin Jensen
colinandbethany.com
This sounds fairly similar to what the IRS does to American Nationals who make over a certain amount of money working in a foreign country. I don't think they can currently tax corporations in the same way as they can citizens, but thanks to the notion of corporate personhood aren't corporations also 'people' for tax purposes?
Corporations *should* have a social responsibility and conscience.
Let me rewrite that for you.
Corporations *should* have a nationalistic responsibility and conscience.
When a corporation outsources, the US might very well have some lost jobs. Whether or not those jobs are made up somewhere else is debatable, but what is not debatable is that somewhere someone much poorer then an American scores a job. If corporations are trying to be "socially responsible", outsourcing makes complete sense. Outsourcing to a third world nation ensures that the poorest and neediest are given the chance to earn some income and bring up a deeply impoverished area.
What you are really complaining about is nationalism. Giving a tech support job to someone in India doesn't hurt India. It improves India. You can keep a handful of Indian workers living on sustainable wages for the cost of a single American worker. The only way you can possibly believe that the greater good has been harmed is if you are talking about the greater American good. If you are talking about the greater American good, you are not talking about "social responsibility and conscience", you are talking about nationalistic responsibility and conscience.
> And that stopped Merck from selling Vioxx without a warning against people with heart conditions
9 5104.html
> taking it? Someone in the company drafted a letter indicating that, if I recall correctly, Vioxx
> would make roughly $250million more in 6 months without that warning, and someone else went forward
> with it.
You're proving my general point, which is that companies do whatever makes the greatest profit, and aren't remotely socially minded. Short term profit is more desireable than long term profit, so you'll get the odd Vioxx, but it's probably more likely these days (since all the tobacco lawsuits) that they'll get caught doing that sort of thing. When a company gets caught, though, they pay the price. This happened with Ford, who kept quiet about a problem because it would have been cheaper to pay off bereaved families than to fix the problem. That's why the US has punitive damages - something we in the UK could do with!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto
Look at the problems the Vioxx incident has caused Merck:
http://www.thestreet.com/_more/stocks/biotech/101
> Knowingly killing your customers being frowned upon or not, I bet regardless of whether Merck
> crashes and burns from the lawsuits, the people that knew about this will get their golden
> parachute and not a single scratch. They'll probably be welcomed to the executive ranks for
> another company, just another guy who makes the ballsy decisions that gets the stock price up for
> the quarter.
Probably, yes.
No one can ever claim that anything done to corporations is 'anticapitalist', you fucktard. Corporations are fictions that receieve special priviledges from the government. They don't even exist without the government.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Not when the (revenue-producing) ads showing in the whitespace are for:
[b]Outsourced Call Centers
In the Philippines highly trained reps deliver superior performance.
www.ePERFORMAX.com
Outsourced Call Center
Improve agent productivity; provide great customer service. Free trial.
www.salesforce.com/service&support
Outsource to India
Wyoming co. has 200 desk ofc. bldg. in Bangalore, staff to your needs
www.globalstaffingconnection.com[/b]
Heh. Seriously, when I heard, maybe 10 years ago, an NPR report on the coming wave of outsourcing, the examples they recorded WERE of "computer science graduates who speak perfect unaccented english for $50/week". Of course, the companies (probably both US and Indian) soon realized they could get an "english mangler who may have seen a computer once" for waaay less than $50/week.
So the plan was to hand these less-expensive people scripts and flow charts/solution trees and roll around in the great pile of extra money like Scrooge McDuck. and I'm sure it's worked out exactly like that for some few execs.
That's why I've always felt bad dealing with unintelligible or ill-prepared service people in India and always try to be aware that they too are victims of decisions taken with NO consideration for customer satisfaction.
Companies are going to have to allow for 'cultural bias' and keep 'customer-facing' services local. The data and correspondence stuff? Not so much.
"To be fair, I was left completely unsupervised." ~Anon
Most people, like me, aren't anti-EU but would just want the EU to take it a bit more slowly
I agree with that. Unfortunately, we were never asked.
The first time they asked us any question, it was again voiced in the familiar EU-policy manner. "it is good for you, it is in fact already too late to go back, etc".
Many voters are so completely fed up with this typical EU policy ("no, we are not yet deciding anything, we are just starting negotiations, it may take 10-15 years before anything is decided" followed a few years later by "it has already been discussed, we have already come to an agreement, it is too late to turn back now, blablabla") that they voted NO to this constitution even though a YES vote might have actually been better to achieve their goals.
The NO was just to wake up politicians, not an answer to the question actually asked.
If I go to work at a company, do I bear the responsibility of the consequences of the decisions that company makes? It seems to me that if I take a job that is capable of being outsourced then I share in accepting the consequences when that outsourcing happens. The arrangements in the UK or the USA between and employer and an employee are voluntary. If you don't want your job to be outsourced then don't take a job that can be outsourced.
So all these oil corporations (and so-called energy corporations) that received tax breaks and other special breaks -- here in America by the Bushies -- to built refineries, but instead DID NOT build refineries -- are not receiving welfare????? All the corporations that receive special privileges here and in other countries (Italy under Berlesconi, for instance, UK under Thatcher) are indeed receiving welfare and are rotten examples of your brand of capitalism. Learn and grow... or forever remain ignorant....
Get real! There is always churn in any industry. I am been hearing about the demise of outsoursing to India since 1999. How companines are going to find out that it doesn't save any money, I cannot understand their accent, their code is no good, etc etc. Look at the revenues of some Indians companines:
INFY: $ 120.96M(1999) -> $ 2,152.0M(2006)
WIT : Rs 17B (1999) -> Rs 103B(2006)
SIFY: Rs 103M (1999) -> Rs 4,682M (2006)
I could go on and on. Those are y-o-y growth rates of 40-50% and there are no signs of any slowdowns yet.
Yes, that may be true.
However, until the evil desroys itself, a lot of people may be hurt or even killed.
Example: World War Two. By persecuting the Jews, Hitler drove out his best scientists. Many of those same scientists allowed us to develop the atomic bomb. Yes, I know, the Allies defeated the Germans with conventional weapons. But it would have taken a lot longer to defeat the Japanese without the bomb. Many more people would have died.
So Hitler screwed himself. His German scientists lost the race. We won.
But millions of people died before that happened.
Modern-day America has lots of "socialist" policies, not only welfare and the like, but plenty of "incentives" and other policies that benefit corperations. Look at copyright and patents, if this isn't intervention (and therefore anti-capitalist) in a free market, I don't know what is. In fact, the patent system purpotedly gives one party a monopoly; this is very at odds with a totally free capitalistic system.
America (and most of the rest of the world) does practice capitalism to a larger or smaller degree, as a free market economy is the central idea. Very few planned economies (communism) exist anymore. But again, no really totally capitalist states (where the state does not intervene in commercial matters) exist either. It's all shades of gray.
The EU is an economic union, not a military one. They discuss things like open markets, software patents, common legislation for product quality, etc.
Defense is largely left out of this. "the war against terrorism" is an exception because the leaders try to fight it in a 1984-style way, and thus it affects things like monitoring communication, money transfers, and thus affects economic traffic.
My experience with Matlab technical support (apparently located in India) was excellent. Those guys knew what they were doing. Now, I have never talked with any of the Americans involved in Matlab tech support so I have no basis for comparison. Otherwise my experiences with call centers located elsewhere is typically negative: Dell comes to mind as well as some of the telecos....
I, too agree this would be of real benefit!
" would like more companies start setting up online chat because it could be more effective, a better experience for the customer, and it probably would be cheaper since no phone would be needed and a customer service representative could handle more than one person at a time pretty easily. Of course the companies cannot get rid of phone support completely since some people do not have internet and some people prefer the phone but they should still at least consider setting up online chat support."
Once again reminding those who care, In the U.S., the largest demographic...presently, is over age 55 Senior Citizens. Many of us use computors to do things we find difficult to acomplish physically. Shop, communicate with our distant families, even our medical suppliers, DR.'s offices for RX refills. too many to mention.
CHAT would be so much more beneficial for us. Not only would it deal with the accent problem, but some of the accent issue has to do with tone and the preence or lack of familiar language inflections. Inflection can be the WORST for me. I often have to ask repeatidly for one simple 'non-instructive' phrase to be repeated because I simply can't figure out what is being requested or related.
Also: Info/instruction writen on screen is all there in front of you and you are less inclined to miss that one little now "type xxxxx" that would send you back to the whole beginning of the process, which surely drives both the tech and the user crazy.
Lastly, many of the connections are so poor that volumn along with soft spoken speakers which is very common in one of the most common countries doing customer service and tech support makes it incredably frustrating for elderly.
(if misspelling is present, please excuse..for some reason spellcheck seems to be annoyed with me this morning and refuses to work...impossible that everything is spelled correctly so spellcheck must be on strike)
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It simply wastes your time and truely annoys the pig"
Assuming we're talking about American companies outsourcing to wherever.
These companies were founded by Americans (and naturalized American citizens) in many if not most cases. It was Americans who built the company into what it is today. The corporations continue running things from America because it is financially beneficial to do so.
Creating opportunity elsewhere reduces opportunity here. We don't live in a vacuum.
Furthermore, corporations receive tax subsidies to outsource work overseas. Corporations profit from firing American workers, who will in turn go to government for unemployment and other benefits when suitable replacement employment cannot be found.
We don't live in a vacuum. Creating opportunities in third world countries eliminates opportunities in first/second world contries. Moving poverty around isn't helping anyone (except, in this case, corporations).
Why tax? If you will notice, capitalism worked in this case, as I knew it eventually would. You mention UK companies advertising that their call-centers are UK-based. I only wish US companies were smart enough to do that (if there are any left that have US based call-centers that is). The people who are getting screwed, the citizens in the country which the company is based, will vote with their dollar against the companies that are screwing them. That is capitalism. Duh...
Money does pop into existence all the time.
e.g. I could write you a note saying that anyone holding that note can redeem it from me for USD100.
You can then pass that note to someone else as payment for something.
Banks do this sort of thing all the time.
You put money into the bank, and then the bank lends it to others for interest. Those others could put part of the money back into the bank which then also lends that out as well.
When people start taking money out at the same time, the system starts falling apart.
Keep in mind that the one and only "technical discipline" now required for 95% of all businesses (regardless of field of activity) is IT.
IT is a wonderful thing but in some cases it lowers the barrier for involvement. eg, CAD operators being designated as designers simply because they know how to operate software efficiently.
"A corporation exists to make a profit and return value to the shareholders. That is all."
Lets see... are you serious, dipshit? Do you really believe this, or are you just trolling? Per your above post, its a damn good thing you don't run any major corporation. Luckilly, most corporations don't hire people like you to make administrative decisions from your world view. Unfortunately, some do. You would be hard pressed to find your definition of a corporation in any real studies or peer reviwed publications. Much less find any economists which would agree with you. You see, the social aspect of a corporation is the origin of a corporation. It is also the origin of capitalism. No matter how hard you try to deny this, lie to people in forums, and just plain spout off ignorance at the expense of your credibility, it won't change this fact.
You are a hypocrite and just fucking ignorant. Only someone of this nature would say something so stupid. Sorry for the name calling, but you just need to be put in your place.
Why is it greedy to offer more service on more efficient and economical terms?
Gee, I guess you'd better flog the scientists who invented the digital camera for putting so many chemical film makers out of work. Or the people who invented the MP3 format for giving the rich Hollywood execs sleepless nights.
Why don't you curse AMD for offering their efficient processors as an alternative to Intel's?
Sorry, but offering more for less is not a crime. It's called competition, and if there wasn't any AMD alternative, we'd be stuck with 300Mhz computers right now.
Nah, as a consumer, I'll take competition any day, along with its benefits.
I'll leave jealousy for the petty, bitter people.
Nothing wrong with being a little anti-capitalist. America's present social trend is towards the extremes of free market and capitalism. Your point about public subsidies like health care and unemployment (not to mention public education and emergency services) proves the point that darwinian capitalism is not necesssarily the ideal our neocons would have you believe. Extend the example to the inevitable crime rate increases, and we can fully make the point that whether or not the most self-sufficient like it, we are a soceity. We share successes and misfortunes. Unfortunately, present political trends tend to give too much credit to the argument "what you propose is slightly to the left of pure capitalism, and we all communism didn't work..."
What garbage. You're calling free market enterprise a zero-sum game.
If you could wave a magic wand and suddenly make half the US population disappear, would that mean there'd suddenly be a flood of job openings because half the population was suddenly not showing up for work? Nonsense, your market would have also been cut in half, thus halving the number of available job opportunities.
The converse is similarly true -- if people in other countries start joining the workforce, then does that suddenly reduce your job opportunities? Hell no, because all those new working people are also increasing the size of the consumer market, and therefore increasing the number of job opportunities available.
If anything, a larger economic pool is better than a smaller one, since it will be able to buffer against recessions and local swings much more effectively. There are piles of reasons to want the free market to grow larger.
> many are fed up with U.S. clients trying to continually lower prices
Well, yeah -- maybe they should've predicted that when they chose to *compete on price alone*...
This whole thing went from funny to political in less than 15 posts! Jeez. I wanna hear jokes about the indains not arguements about socialism and capitalists!
It's not -1 Flamebait! It's +5 Funny. You just didn't get the joke...
No, this isn't what you think. I seriously wonder if companies realize how many customers they lose by being cheap and using call centers outside of the US. I no longer do business with Dell because of this. In fact, there is a nice long list of companies I will not deal with for this same very reason.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Nice tantrum!
> Per your above post, its a damn good thing you don't run any major corporation. Luckilly, most
> corporations don't hire people like you to make administrative decisions from your world view.
> Unfortunately, some do.
I think you'll find that most, if not all, of the successful" - that is, most profit making - ones do. You appearing to be conflating someone who describes the world as they see it with someone who is happy that things are as they are.
> You would be hard pressed to find your definition of a corporation in any real studies or peer
> reviwed publications. Much less find any economists which would agree with you.
I don't concern myself with the opinions of economists. I wouldn't wallow for too long in the defintion of a corporation. I'm talking about what they do today, not the ends to which this or that limited meaning of a word in a certain context can be taken. I'm clearly talking about a western term describing a group of people acting together in an enterprise to make more money from providing services or producing products that it takes to provide/produce them.
> It is also the origin of capitalism.
Er..no.
> dipshit....hypocrite...just fucking ignorant...lie...so stupid
Such foul language.
> Sorry for the name calling,
No worries, it was all rather amusing.
Insurance is not socalist. It's simply an agreement, I agree to pay you a fixed amount of money each month, and you agree to give me a whole lot of money should something go wrong. Like having insurance on the contents of your house. You don't have to do that, if you don't want to. If you do pay, basically the insurance company is going to get to keep your money unless a disaster happens. then, they agree to give you money sufficient to replace everything you lost.
The reason it's capatalist is because it's all optional. They are just selling a service. If you don't want it, you don't have to have it. You can instead thake the $40/month or whatever (it's fairly cheap) and put it in a savings account, and then use that acocunt int he event of a problem. There's nobody holding a gun to your head making you pay.
The socialist version would be if there was government mandidated payments for this, and specificly if the rich paid more so the poor could have it without paying. The reason it's socalist is the government is forcing you to pay. You might feel like you don't need to insure your goods, perhaps they arne't worth that much, perhaps you make enough to easily replace them, but the govenrment says "Too bad, everybody pays. Pay up or go to jail."
There is a world of difference between welfare "insurance" and voluntary insurance programs. Insurance is intended to average out the cost to each individual in a given risk class. The system is fair precisely because the premiums tend to reflect the actual risk entailed for each individual. A private insurance company is motivated to define the risk classes as narrowly as possible for the simple reason that few individuals wish to pay higher premiums than their specific risk would require, and the insurance company would become bankrupt if it charged premiums lower than the actual risk. Defining a broader risk class would force low-risk customers to subsidize high-risk customers, and on a unhampered market such endeavors would naturally bankrupt themselves as low-risk individuals patronized firms with narrower classes and lower premiums.
Private insurance is not truly denied to anyone any more than any other uneconomic product or resource is denied, but the risk that the individual poses (whether natural or behavior-related) may result in a premium greater than the individual is willing or able to pay. If anyone wishes such an individual to be given insurance, they are more than free to provide such charity out of their own resources; in such cases, the charity-inclined individual is personally responsible for absorbing the costs of any behavioral risk. Charity is very selective out of necessity, which is good because unlimited charity eliminates personal responsibility. On the other hand, any broadly-defined welfare "insurance" program would necessarily subsidize those who create their own risks (through risky behavior) as well as those whose risks are natural and uncontrollable. It would eliminate, or at least reduces significantly, the incentive to reduce one's own controllable risks which privately-funded insurance tends to create. Welface "insurance" is primarily defined by a subsidization of risky behavior, followed by totalitarian, coercive attempts to force such individuals to change their behavior -- in other words, it is defined by a distinct lack of personal responsibility.
Incidently, the labels appropriate to this discussion are "unhampered market economy" (a.k.a. capitalist economy) and "interventionalist economy". A "socialist" economy is one in which there is no market whatsoever; any system, no matter how regulated, which still possesses private, voluntary market is not socialist. On the other hand, socialism is the ultimate expression of interventionalism, so using the term to describe the general tendency toward interventionalism isn't entirely inaccurate.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
These are subsidies that grew out of those good, progressive New Deal acts that were supposed to reign in the excesses of evil, exploitive capitalism, remember?
Agreed in full. And by the same token, communism is about communal ownership of property, and any definition beyond that is someone's radical ideology.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
India is starting to feel the crunch from call centers in the Philippines, China, Ireland, etc. with those whose native tongue is in English (or at least as a second language like in the Philippines) getting a larger piece of the pie. Dell just opened a huge Call Center operations in the vicinity of the SM Mall of Asia (Asia's largest mall) in the Philippines. A 3 minute walk away from my residence, a large Convergys building can be found. I am sure that it houses several hundred seats of Call Center operations.
It goes beyond the danger of a tariff war. While the simple economic response is that if something is more expensive it occur less, it is just as possible that a price increase would *increase* outsourcing. Why?
The whole point of outsourcing is that one country wants money from the other country. Let's say that they want $10 (US example is easiest to do with my character set; make numbers into millions or billions if you want to be more realistic). Now, we add a 25% tax. Does that drop the amount that they want to $8? No. It doesn't affect the amount that they want at all. Instead, it increases the amount that they have to sell to $12.50, so that they still get $10. Now, instead of displacing $10 worth of jobs, they are displacing $12.50. You've actually made the problem worse, rather than better.
There are two more sensible places to focus changes:
1. You could simply print $10 and give it to them. Since it is $10 in your currency, you (as the government) can do this for next to nothing (particularly if it's just electronic balances anyway). However, this can cause problems if they intend to spend the $10 on goods that your country produces (of course, if they are doing that, then why not outsource the work and move the people from the outsourced jobs to producing the desirable export goods?).
2. You can figure out why they want the $10 and make your currency less desirable. This can be complicated, but it would address the *problem* (that another country wants your currency but not your goods) where legislation focused on imports and outsourcing does not.
The fundamental problem with a lot of analysis of this is that the economics discussed was developed when there was a single global currency, called gold. Much of this analysis does not work the same when we go to multiple currencies. In particular, the $8 would have been closer to the result under a single currency. Under the multiple currency system, the value of the two currencies changes so that $10 buys what $12.50 would have gotten previously.
A lot of people will say things like "as you would have learned in econ 101" which are true but misleading. In econ 101, you would have learned the single currency case because that's what's covered in econ 101. Multiple currencies are studied in higher level econ courses because they are harder (at my alma mater, econ 500 was the introductory trade course and 1500 was the one that actually used real math). Further, they introduce less intuitive behavior, for example that an *export* tax may be more effective than an *import* tax at reducing imports.
How about we do this:
American companies can research, design, manufacture/product, and support product here in the US, using US workers, and market their products both domestically and abroad? Surely that would be efficient, AND success would be a huge boon to the local economy?
Indian companies can research, design, manufacture/product, and support product in India, using Indian workers, and market Indian products both domestically and abroad? Surely that would be efficient, AND success would be a huge boon to the local economy?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Removing employment opportunities from the country where the actual customers are, is quite evil.
Let India create its own employment opportunities. American citizens should have the jobs that serve our market.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Once upon a time, well educated smart English speaking Indians were working for chickenfeed or less. When the cost of telecommunications fell low, they became viable competitors to some white collar workers in Europe and West. High quality workers willing to work for low pay. Companies flocked and outsourcing boomed.
But though India has a billion people, not all of them are spelling bees, jeopardy champions and IIT graduates rolled into one. The average Indian is just semi literate. Demand outstripped the supply of high quality workers and now they are scrapping the bottom of the barrel. The salaries, the cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure increased and is increasing. The quality of the work fell and is falling. All in all, outsourcing is not economical anymore. Not that all these Indians are going to be laid off. The well educated and qualified ones would keep their jobs but the insane levels of out sourcing will slow down.
Contrast it with what is going in China. It has been running a trade surplus for two full decades. India still does not have a trade surplus. (It has against US but overall it does not.) The factory output of China has been increasing at the rapid pace of 10% per year for 20 years. If it is a democracy, the yuan would have appreciated by a factor of 10 atleast and the salary of the workers would have increased by a factor of 10 and they would not have been able to undercut US/European/Japanese factories. Even if their salary is low, couple it with transportation costs, and the low productivity of a chinese workers, they could not compete with US. Despite all the advantages China has today, there is still some manufacturing going on in USA and it is able to compete. Though barely. With a freer economy and democracy in China, we will not have this kind of imbalance in trade with China.
A badly implemented Democracy, like it is in India, is any day better for both India and US than the oppressive totalitarian governement of the few self selected leaders of China.
The smart thing for American blue collar workers to do would be to fight for the welfare of the Chinese workers. They should not be seen as "someone who stole our jobs" and our attitude should not be, "let those job stealers rot". If the working conditions and salary of the Chinese workers rise, it is a good thing for us. May be we can sell them some things and may we can compete with them. But with the present system of the Chinese Communist Party selling the blood and sweat of its citizens at throwaway prices, it hurts us, the ordinary Chinese citizens, every one except those party leaders and CEOs of our companies. Just my two cents.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"What garbage. You're calling free market enterprise a zero-sum game."
h ronicle/archive/2004/04/18/BUGAI66E7I1.DTL
/ business/business_nation/article_489293.php
Actually, it's a negative sum game. How so? Because America's poor class is growing faster than the rich class, and the middle class is shrinking. Aside from the filthy rich, consumer buying power is shrinking. Wages are currently falling against inflation.
Offshoring has reduced the amount of jobs in this country in relation to the growing populace. No new industries are coming to provide the number of well paying jobs that tech and manufacturing did. Biotech is already on its way out, just in case you were planning on countering with that example.
BTW bite me, looneytarian mods. Nothing I say can be countered with facts because they ARE facts.
Shrinking middle class, growing poor class: http://www.factcheck.org/article249.html
Biotech being offshored: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c
Wages not keeping up with inflation: http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2005/04/21/sections
So, yes, this IS a negative sum game.
I call you out now. Put aside your theories and back up your "plus sum game" with hard documented facts. I'll even let you cheat: feel free to use Fox News and the Heritage Foundation if you feel you need to.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I know of a worker just like you in our data/call center. Natomas area. Does that sound familiar?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAFTA
That's a good point. The downside is that that's not the incentive -- the incentive is that it's cheaper. And companies, trying to reduce costs, pick third-world countries simply because they're cheaper. Unfortunately, as a result, they tend to pick those where the respective labor rights are practically non-existent. Admittedly this doesn't hold as much for call center outsourcing because of a better level of education needed, but it holds true for, say, clothes. The further advantage is that not only does the absence of most labor rights lower the costs, but outsourcing to, say, a Guatemalan or Indonesian company also seemingly relieves the main company of the responsibility for the well-being of their workforce.
I don't necessarily have a problem with jobs wandering off to third-world countries or such, but I do have a problem with the exploitation that results from the fact that companies just look for the lowest bidder instead of actively trying to increase the standard of living in the countries they outsource to.
How about we abolish the tax on corporations, so the incentive to outsource is lessened?
That's a matter of opinion.
As a US-born individual of Filipino descent, I sometimes have a hard time understanding some of my Filipino relatives, many of whom learned English as a child and have spent decades in the US. Certainly, their accent is no clearer to my ears than many Indian and Indian-Americans.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Where I work, we buy a few thousand Dell systems a year. We are not happy with Dell. Strangely, we don't know who is our salesmans boss, and everytime a Dell screwup results in a major problem for us, no Dell Senior manager comes around to soothe ruffed feathers.
Dell is half a heartbeat away from losing our account entirely. Yet we don't even know who our salesman's boss is. If we did, we'd have a few words to say.
We thought that losing four major multi-hundreds of thousands of dollar contracts would have flushed out senior Dell managers, yet it hasn't.
I guess Dell doesn't care about customers that spend over a million dollers a year with them.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
I've seen examples of the outsourcing cycle up close and personal. You see, I live in a very economically depressed state in the U.S. (S. Carolina), and the wages here have always sucked. In fact, our state government made use of that dubious distinction: when competing with other states for that billion-dollar manufacturing plant, two of their main selling points was that the wages were lower than what they'd pay in other parts of the U.S., and there was little-to-no union representation here (sound familiar, India?). And you know something? It worked. BMW, Michelin, and several other decided to make our state home to some of their manufacturing facilities - and loved every minute of it. Everything was going great for years, but something nasty happened along the way: they called it Globalization. Suddenly there were people in other countries who could provide the same labor force for pennies on the dollar, much cheaper than we could. One by one, the manufacturing companies started to abandon ship to Mexico, then China. Literally thousands of people were out of work, and the satellite businesses which sprung up around the industrial giants suddenly dried up and withered away. To make a long story short, it seemed that nobody in their wildest dreams ever thought that there would be a cheaper labor force than South Carolinians. The state STILL hasn't recovered from this ecomnomic K.O. and, as of this post, it's previously sterling AAA credit rating is in serious jeopardy; unemployment is also above the national average, and what jobs still exist are mostly low-paying, service-sector type industries. This state has dug itself into one hell of a deep hole. Just consider this a cautionary (and very true) real-life story about what happens when a government uses low wages and a docile workforce as a selling point. You can always be undercut by another entity promising yet cheaper wages, and industry doesn't care one whit about your welfare - they will not hesitate to pull the rug from under you if it means saving an extra buck.
This space for rent!
I've had first-hand experience in the tech support outsourcing of my company's hosting business. The outsourcing firms, one after another, have been nothing short of headaches and incompetencies.
Take for instance, Suresh, an Indian tech support staff we've hired. He starts off working hard and does great work. Then, after a few weeks I start noticing that he sometimes doesn't come in on time, or is slow in answering support tickets. I reprimand him. He gets better for a few days... then he's off doing the same thing again.
My guess? I think he's taking on multiple clients even though he's a hired tech for our company. Since he's over there in India there's no way to ensure that he's not.
This problem has resurfaced with each and every outsourcing company and hired Indian tech.
BPO (business process outsourcing), as fancy as it sounds, is not something viable, unless you are over there watching these clowns. Our company will be shutting down all outsourcing to India and will be hiring only in-house.
Lazy and incompetent are adjectives I would use on these Indian guys. I don't mean to be racist or anything. It's probably due to the nature of the outsourcing model in general. Either way, our company is through with it. The lure of short-term savings ends up being a long-term headache. Not worth it.
eTrade SUCKS
I can assure that that a third world place with a call centre with no labour rights is much better off than if there was no work there at all.
(ring ring ring) Hello, welcome to the Nigerian call center, my name is, um, Bill, and I will be assisting you today. Before we get into addressing your problem, I want to take this opportunity to tell you about a very exciting business arrangement that I would like to offer you. You see, I also represent the estate of a deceased billionaire who died with no next of kin, and...
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Well, technically destinction between 1st, 2nd and 3rd "world" hasn't been used for a while. Nowadays, we prefer "developed", "developing" and "least developed" nations. Of course, there are very large differences in Indian society, but India is certainly isn't "least developed".
You clearly know nothing about India...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The countries that initially brought cheap labour in the EU eventually grew richer and began to demand products and services from other EU countries.
Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece, countries for which it was told that would swamp richer countries with poor immigrants, now have labour shortages and patch this with illegal immigration or outsourcing manufacturing to countries like Morocco.
If anything, the EU free market has probed beyond resonably doubt that free markets work far better than stupid subsidies based in hazy nationalistic nonsense.
The people working in the UK that came from the last wave of EU countries (Poland mostly) are covering gaps in the economy that were impossibly to fill anymore (Polish plumbers, builders, waiters are all around the place). At the same time some outsourcing is taking place to Poland, Hungary and the Baltic states. Once this pepople become more prosperous they will become clients of the richer countries. At the same time consumers in rich countries benefit from most realistic prices (ask any Brit what they think about plumbing or brick laying prices).
If politicians in the US had any real interest to benefit their people they would be trying to promote a simila treaty with Mexico and other American countries. Most Mexicand do not wish to go to the US, for many Mexico is a better place to be, but the people that could offer their services in the US would benefit both countries. THat is the beauty of free markets, they provide an overall benefit to all the parties involved.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In the one hand you have India, population 1.2 billion, new nuclear power, pan Asian interests.
In the other you have China. Ditto.
Then you have the US, population 300 million, global interests, more than willing to defend them as we all know.
And then we have little France (which is laughed at, "freedom fries" says it all), little Germany (which is ignored) or little Britain that does what the master says. And the we have even littler Poland, Italy or Czech Republic that do the dirty work of the master like illegaly allowing kidnapped individuals to be mover through their territory.
If the role you want for European countries is one of the above, keep rejecting further union, your country (Luxembourg? Malta? Cyprus?) will be an irrelevance that will be easily ignored.
If Europeans want a role in deciding how the planet should be run, they *must* join forces, it is the only way they will be heard. And you ought to do it, if the best Western Civilization has to offer is the US I think frankly we are fucked. THe US is a great experiment, but is religious zealotry is bringing all those great ideals to a sad end.
Humanism, rationality and democracy have their best champions in Europe, but only an Europe United will habe the etrength to defend those values.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The US government and people don't have the balls to do allow people from Mexico to work freely in the US.
In the EUropean Union you don't require of visas or work permits to work in another country.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Also, I don't agree with the seemingly growing sentiment that text would solve the language problems. Maybe this would be fine for India, but not all offshoring destinations have the characteristic that the English speakers have strange accents but impeccable spelling and grammar.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.