Inspired by this Pit thread about the anti-outsourcing bill getting shot down. It’s a pretty contentious topic with good arguments on both sides. On the one hand I lean slightly nationalistic and despise getting connected to Indian call centers for customer service and/or tech support, but on the other I feel like Americans on the whole are lazy, entitled jackasses and many simply don’t deserve work when there are harder-working people willing to do it for cheaper. So what say you?
If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that it is better to be the guy running the business than the guy doing the work.
Trying to hold on to the old days is like trying to lose longer. The global economy isn’t going to stop. The only thing that delaying entry into it would achieve would be undermining our position by becoming late-comers. Countries that win are the ones who know how to adapt to changing circumstances and use them to their advantages.
Like any other tool (management or not), it can be used right or it can be used wrong.
I don’t have a problem with calling Telefónica and having the call be taken by Fatima in Rabat; I’m happy that Fatima can have a job in Rabat; the more people can get jobs in Rabat, the less people there will be trying to swim the Straits; the more women can get jobs in Rabat, the better the social situation of women in Morocco will be. But it pisses me off that she’s supposed to tell me her name is Pilar, because Telefónica doesn’t want its customers to realize they’re receiving service from a foreign outsourcer (there was a report about this on the Spanish version of 60 Minutes a couple years ago which caused a great ruckus, but what pissed people off was the patronizing lies, not the fact that CS was outsourced).
I worked for a multinational which had call centers in Philadelphia, Shanghai and Mumbai. Each shift would get covered by one of them. People avoided “Mumbai hours”, not because of a problem with outsourcing (our company had factories in those locations as well, and in over 40 countries), but because of a problem communicating with those specific people.
Done right, I’m fine with it. But it’s got to be done right. Lies and inability to communicate are just two of the many ways in which it can be done wrong.
Other. I have outsourced own job.
I have a US business, but can’t buy health insurance there. Since July 1 I can, but only if I go 6 months uninsured and pay 4 times the price.
So 8 years ago I moved overseas and run my business from here. I have local contractors, but employ nobody in the USA. We plan to soon start a new business in the UAE because the situation is so much better than in the US.
It’s the same reason business are moving from California to Nevada and Utah.
Yeah, I kinda am. My husband worked for a US company which was bought by BP. BP managers showed up and said “The first thing we want to assure you of is that your jobs are all safe.” Two weeks later the same managers came back and said “Did we say ALL your jobs are safe? What we meant to say was that the finance division is moving to Bangalore.” The manager was invited to transfer but declined. No one else in the division was offered anything than a hand shake and hearty thanks.
My husband spent a week on the phone trying to transfer his knowledge of US sales tax, and the difference between a county and a town to his replacement.
I am sad that manufacturing jobs are largely gone but understand that a US consumer won’t pay $400 for a pair of Levis so I understand why companies find it necessary.
More than once I’ve suggested to my son that he pursue a career or trade that can’t be outsourced; plumber, hairdresser, construction. Anything that has to be done in person.
It’s a global economy. You can’t complain about outsourcing and then turn around and be thankful for low prices on everything from shoes to TVs. Besides, there’s still ahuge manufacturing industry in the U.S. just not for cheap consumer goods.
Oh, and option B. The last two places I worked ay were bought by US companies.
I guess then people shouldn’t have mentioned their desire to keep low prices on crap consumer goods, then. Especially in this thread.
I’ve been working with a global team for ten years. There isn’t any reason that Robert deserves a job more than YanWee. And given the amount of effort and quality the two produce, YanWee generally seems to deserve his job more - his output is higher and higher quality. He doesn’t argue about decisions made three levels higher that we merely impliment. And he dials into meetings - even if it is the middle of the night - Robert blows off the ones that go half an hour into his lunch.
Frankly, we’ve got to wake up and compete. This isn’t t-ball where everyone gets to run the bases and score.
A big part of my job involves launching plants outside of the USA (for some reason, I get all of the foreign plants). That’s kind of like outsourcing our production from the USA to Canada and Mexico. I still have union-mentality relatives who don’t understand economics that insist I’m betraying Michigan. :rolleyes:
My job could easily be outsourced as well. In fact, I’m surprised it hasn’t been yet.
I’m a software engineer for a large corporation whose “business model” is to fire people in North America and replace them with people in Brazil and other places. It’s not because we’re lazy, or unskilled, or anything else. It’s purely because of the pay scale. They cannot find enough skilled people abroad and yet they keep shifting jobs there. And one can argue that although our salary is greater, we do much better work. You might say “the economy is global” but I’m not going to move to Brazil to chase down a job that eventually might to to someplace even less developed. My company allows people to telecommute to work, which is great. But if my job gets shipped to Brazil they won’t allow me to telecommute to Brazil (even at lower salary), they will simply fire me. How does THAT say the economy is global?
Now this corporation is getting stimulus money from the federal government and at the same time they are firing people and moving our jobs abroad. Then the software will be sold back to the U.S. How ethical is that?
Like even sven, I feel that the global economy is upon us. It is here. And we had better get used to that fact, and come up with other ways to make our money and make jobs.
**Dangerosa **you must talk to different foreigners than I do. Every time I’ve had to deal with someone in India they are conned-by-rote mindless drones who always follow a script (for jobs that demand critical thinking skills, not a script) and they always always always have a weird accent ThAt Kind OF SOUnds liKe This. The emPHAsis on their words are all wrong so no one understands them and they mumble. I don’t mean calling Dell either, I mean this is various departments I’ve had to work with internally in various jobs, from vendors to programmers to helpdesk to mainframe operators. All of them, to a man, have been incompetent boobs who have no business working in any industry that relies on lots of telephone conversations.
No, not really. It’s an integral part of capitalism. Higher-ups are going to change things if it makes a favorable profit, nothing is ever guaranteed. People who are genuinely surprised and angered that their job just went to some guy in Taiwan who works for 1/3 of what he did makes me :rolleyes:.
I’m not particularly worried about my job being outsourced overseas. What I do requires a physical presence (you can’t do shipping receiving, rack and stack servers or run cross-connects from a different continent). However, many of our support groups have been moved to Manila, Singapore, and Bangalore. Sending those jobs out of the country may save the company money, but it’s made getting things done a huge hassle with the language/cultural differences, not to mention the time zone shifts involved. I also know that our customers hate hate hate dealing with outsourced people who have a hard time understanding the simplest concepts and requests.
Yeah! It(outsourcing) is all is part of the “free trade”, NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO, etc. that the overwelming majority of voters demand. It is exactly what the American people want, and exactly what the people voted for time and again over the past 25 years.
Ross Perot and Pat Buchannan LOST!!! - get over it!
(however, you are wrong about manufacturing, manufacturing jobs in the U.S. are at an all time low, which is what the people want. The people want a service economy, not a manufacturing economy)
(ancient Chinese curse: “May you get what you wish for” )
I voted “other”. Most of my negative experienced with outsourced positions is that there seems to be less employee accountability. For example, there is a company I deal with here. During business hours, they have a call center operated in a neighbouring province. After business hours, they have an outsourced call center, somewhere overseas. During business hours, you can get great support and customer service.
After hours, you get crappy service from someone who is simply not knowledgeable and you have no recourse for the bad service, and no potential for follow up or a complaints process that does anything.
I project manage teams of IT professionals. Understanding them on a call IS difficult, but their English is better than my Chinese. But once we get the understanding out of the way (in writing) their work output is generally better.
There are problems - their economy is growing faster than ours - so there is more turnover. That’s nice in that we get new ideas we don’t get from the people who have been in the same job 15 years in the U.S., but its a pain when you are in the middle of something. And I really don’t like being on the phone at 9:00 at night having conversations where I only understand 20% of what is being said and wonder how much of me they understand. And not everyone is great, some I have on one team and try never to get assigned again. But there are a lot more “oh, shit - no” names in the U.S. that I don’t want on my teams.
Now, its possible my U.S. side teams are unusually bad and my Asia side teams are unusually good - but what I see coming out of Asia scares me. Ten years ago it was “poor quality, have to micromanage, pain in the butt, communication is a huge issue, this isn’t going anywhere” Now its “better quality, less management, they’ll dial in when its the middle of their night, and its STILL hard to understand them - but we’ve learned how to type and talk at the same time to be clear.”
Vaguely disappointed, maybe, but not pissed. I don’t get pissed off very often.
I’m in two minds over it.
On the one hand, I understand if something can be done better & cheaper, then a business has to explore that option.
On the other hand, I think a lot of companies try outsourcing as a way to placate their investors, not because it definitely makes sense money-wise. I’ve certainly been involved with outsourcing projects that didn’t work out because of time differences, language issues, and bad management. At least once I’ve seen code that took a multiperson team many months to write thrown out because it simply wasn’t the quality that was needed.
I’ve also heard of outsourcing that worked really well, so I have to believe at times it makes sense.
What gets me, though, is that companies talk out of both sides of their mouths. They don’t allow telecommuting, for example, and won’t work with people based across the country. At the same time, outsourcing to India or China is just fine. So which is it? Can you effectively work remotely, or not?
There are a few companies attempting to outsource to US-based areas - rural areas where the cost of living isn’t so much. I’m intrigued by this, it seems like it might be a good bang-for-the buck kind of thing.
I want to be angry about outsourcing and cheer USA! USA! They took 'ur jobs! But I’m just too damned Capitalist to get that worked up.
As others have said, it’s hard to blame employers for finding the cheaper option when American workers bring the baggage of unions, health insurance, paid vacations, and law suits on top of higher wages.
I also dig the shit out of cheap goods and services. OTOH, I loathe foreign tech support and I REALLY detest when someone with a thick Indian accent tell me their name is Henry. I mean WTF, that fools no one.