Apple pulls out of India

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Braznor

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2005
4,497
349
126
Originally posted by: beer
Wow, to this whole thread....
Braznor needs to chill the fsck out and head to P&N
It's obvious that Apple wasn't too happy with their India call center
I work for a large fabless company that acquired anouther company that had India operations (my group doesn't have them because we're too time critical) and it took a few months for management here to realize that every time-sensitive product needs to be developed here and India gets to work on test frameworks. I am not sure why that is, whether it is competence or merely the latency caused by time zone shifts, but the growth of companies than heavily outsource (Dell, GE, IBM to name the biggest ones) speaks for the efficiency of their operations. None of them have grown in equity value since 2000.


This whole thread needs to head out to P&N
 

Jassi

Diamond Member
Sep 8, 2004
3,296
0
0
Originally posted by: beer
Wow, to this whole thread....
Braznor needs to chill the fsck out and head to P&N
It's obvious that Apple wasn't too happy with their India call center
I work for a large fabless company that acquired anouther company that had India operations (my group doesn't have them because we're too time critical) and it took a few months for management here to realize that every time-sensitive product needs to be developed here and India gets to work on test frameworks. I am not sure why that is, whether it is competence or merely the latency caused by time zone shifts, but the growth of companies than heavily outsource (Dell, GE, IBM to name the biggest ones) speaks for the efficiency of their operations. None of them have grown in equity value since 2000.

2 Things -

1 - Companies here don't know how to do business in India (whether it is lack of pay or cultural differences, I don't know enough to comment). A lot of AMAZING work in the US is done by people who lived in the same country, went to the same schools etc.

2 - Do you know what percentage of of their operations have been outsourced? I'm gonna guess not a large percentage, significant but not enough to crap out a company completely. The big push for outsourcing is that the market is not growing that fast and the cost benefits of outsourcing are needed to meet the profit margins that Wall Street and the shareholders demand.
 

dchakrab

Senior member
Apr 25, 2001
493
0
0
Braznor,

You're out of line. I say this as an Indian who grew up in India, who has a lot of friends working in call centers, and who has a lot of experience with the corporate tech sector here in the US...and I'm a US Citizen, living in Chicago, with a solid interest in developing the technology sector in the US further. There's no point starting a flame war...it's more productive to just make your point, and make it well. Acting immature and making Indians look like America-haters reflects on me and everyone else you're stereotyping in this forum, and I have a problem with that.

That said, you (and many others) are missing the point. It is not significant how many call center jobs are outsourced, because call center jobs are not the bulk of what is being outsourced. There is a lot of very sophisticated development work coming out of India. There are also a lot of crappy businesses in India who have no quality control and are simply not up to international standards in their products and services. I've outsourced positions in internet marketing in the past, so I know what I'm talking about. It goes both ways. But there are still so many high quality firms in India that are charging top dollar for great products that it's always an attractive option. I've had to negotiate Indian search engine optimization firms down on their price, because what they were asking for was *higher* than what we paid local US employees. I'm talking about very competitive search engine optimization work for the health insurance and mortgage industries, too...not exactly something you'd expect an Indian firm to have expertise in.

What's significant is that more and more companies are *thinking of* outsourcing. It doesn't matter that Apple pulled back, or that they found the accents to be too confusing for customers. What is significant is that Apple wanted to (and still wants to) outsource.

Secondly, Indians who moved here to the US are, in increasing numbers, moving back to India to find IT jobs that pay almost as much as they do here in the US...which is a *lot* more real income in India, let me tell you. Their standards of living are much higher in India than in the US, they have access to better facilities, they have better training and continued professional development, and more scope for promotion.

Thirdly, Indian youth who used to dream of coming in to the US to get jobs are no longer dreaming the same dreams. Now they can make money immediately working in India, getting a very high quality education, and moving into very profitable careers, without ever leaving home (I'm talking about the middle and upper classes here).

What does all of this indicate? To me, it indicates that the US has gone disastrously wrong in our efforts to maintain an educated and digitally literate workforce, and that we are beginning to lose ground internationally as a result. Our companies are looking for solutions outside the United States as a result, and the trend will continue. It doesn't matter to the US economy if a company outsources to India or Ireland or Antarctica...what matters is that our workforce is quickly losing its competitive edge. Along with this, we're no longer attracting the best and the brightest from other nations to the US...now, the best and the brightest in those nations are staying there, while those who are several levels lower down are the ones who come here.

And, knowing all of this, we still allow the telecommunications companies to dictate legislation that effectively allows them to control the internet in the US and stifle innovation. Three years from now, when this has further killed digital literacy in the US, we'll be wondering why *every* company is outsourcing their business to India, and why outsourcing is now a core topic in every MBA program in the country. We've gone from being the #1 nation in broadband deployment to #16 and dropping fast...I believe this is signifcant.

When we're talking about helpdesk work, IT development, or customer support, we're dealing in information. Information is the new product, the global commodity, the cash crop. If we're no longer the best at training our workforce to be information and knowledge workers, then as information becomes increasingly important the US will continue to see a decline in our global effectiveness in business and trade. Other nations see this, and are doing their best to capitalize on it. I'm not sure why efforts to do the same haven't been successful in the US...possibly because this country's been a world superpower for so long, we think we're economically invinceable, so there's no sense of urgency.

Dave.
 

dmcowen674

No Lifer
Oct 13, 1999
54,894
47
91
www.alienbabeltech.com
Originally posted by: dchakrab
Braznor,

You're out of line.

I say this as an Indian who grew up in India, who has a lot of friends working in call centers, and who has a lot of experience with the corporate tech sector here in the US...and I'm a US Citizen, living in Chicago, with a solid interest in developing the technology sector in the US further.

There's no point starting a flame war...it's more productive to just make your point, and make it well.

Acting immature and making Indians look like America-haters reflects on me and everyone else you're stereotyping in this forum, and I have a problem with that.

Dave.

Well said Dave but he is not alone, there are plenty of Americans that are Amerca haters too. Many of them right here in these Forums.

Between all them they will have their wish destroying America.
 

RichardE

Banned
Dec 31, 2005
10,246
2
0
Originally posted by: Braznor
Originally posted by: RichardE

Man, Dell's support consist of "lets reformat the computer" than send them off. Which wouldn't be so bad if you helped the customers save the stuff, than reinstalled the drivers for everything afterwards. I work for RR and my agents have complaints about Dell from people who call RR saying "I can't connect to the internet, oh wait, Dell didn't reinstall my Ethernet controller". Dell's support sucks.

Hot sure about Gateway, I know HP is based in Canada and the US, as we have some support for HP at the office I work at. Dell needs to pull its support back now. Let Indian companies use Indian labour to support Indian products. At least you will not have a language barier than.

I oversea all three support departments on a regular basis though, and we do more steps than reformating a computer which is where Dell's steps usually go to.


STFU, what do you know?

I have worked as a hardware tech for Dell and I'am now working in premium support where you pay 250$ plus to get help. FRs used to happen a lot and you know why? because the average american guy who calls has to keep going to sites to whack off and cannot help getting his computer reinfected again, again and again.

That's why Dell started the premium support where we do help them to backup data and format, only if hours of troubleshooting fails. Reformats are heavily discouraged and are used only as the last option.

Remember you enjoy living in a first world nation because your civilizational forefathers used the concept of free trade and colonization to rob us of our wealth. Now when it comes back to haunt you, then its suddenly "Let Indian companies use Indian labour to support Indian products. At least you will not have a language barier than"

STFU again


Ah stfu you lil racist pig. Your no better than black people who bitch and moan over something that happened to there ancestors and now need to "stick it to the man"

How about you realise this?

You are only getting a better life because our countries are successfull and decided to send some money your way, because you guys work cheaper.

As I said, personally I don't care, alot of companies are pulling out of India due to the fact the "average" america hates the fact you have jobs. So it comes around full circle to bite your "the world owes us" attitude in the ass.
 
Aug 14, 2001
11,061
0
0
Looks like the Indian nationalists are out in full force. They are easily the most nationalistic people on the entire planet, IMO.
 

DurocShark

Lifer
Apr 18, 2001
15,708
5
56
Thanks mods for putting this in P&N. When this thread went from a lighthearted "<nelson> Haw Haw! </nelson>" to a trollfest I asked to have it put into P&N
 

DurocShark

Lifer
Apr 18, 2001
15,708
5
56
Originally posted by: Braznor
Originally posted by: beer
Wow, to this whole thread....
Braznor needs to chill the fsck out and head to P&N
It's obvious that Apple wasn't too happy with their India call center
I work for a large fabless company that acquired anouther company that had India operations (my group doesn't have them because we're too time critical) and it took a few months for management here to realize that every time-sensitive product needs to be developed here and India gets to work on test frameworks. I am not sure why that is, whether it is competence or merely the latency caused by time zone shifts, but the growth of companies than heavily outsource (Dell, GE, IBM to name the biggest ones) speaks for the efficiency of their operations. None of them have grown in equity value since 2000.


This whole thread needs to head out to P&N

You got your wish. It didn't need to be here until you dropped in and starting sh!tting on everybody.
 

alchemize

Lifer
Mar 24, 2000
11,489
0
0
Dave (the Indian): Well written. Sounds like you could be in The World is Flat :D Sounds like you've read it/are living it.

What's funny is Dave#2 (the moron) has no clue what you are talking about, but that doesn't stop him from trolling it the second the thread hits P&N! Outsourcing is a reality that cannot and will not go away. It can't be legislated away, or voted away. It can be mitigated for the workers, as you mentioned, but investments in education, technology, retraining, etc. Your average american worker is no longer competing with folks in his/her hometown, it's now global.
 

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,234
701
126
Originally posted by: alchemize
Dave (the Indian): Well written. Sounds like you could be in The World is Flat :D Sounds like you've read it/are living it.

What's funny is Dave#2 (the moron) has no clue what you are talking about, but that doesn't stop him from trolling it the second the thread hits P&N! Outsourcing is a reality that cannot and will not go away. It can't be legislated away, or voted away. It can be mitigated for the workers, as you mentioned, but investments in education, technology, retraining, etc. Your average american worker is no longer competing with folks in his/her hometown, it's now global.

Dave (#2) has been in this thread since the start of OT! :)

(FYI)
 

Braznor

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2005
4,497
349
126
Originally posted by: RichardE
Originally posted by: Braznor
Originally posted by: RichardE

Man, Dell's support consist of "lets reformat the computer" than send them off. Which wouldn't be so bad if you helped the customers save the stuff, than reinstalled the drivers for everything afterwards. I work for RR and my agents have complaints about Dell from people who call RR saying "I can't connect to the internet, oh wait, Dell didn't reinstall my Ethernet controller". Dell's support sucks.

Hot sure about Gateway, I know HP is based in Canada and the US, as we have some support for HP at the office I work at. Dell needs to pull its support back now. Let Indian companies use Indian labour to support Indian products. At least you will not have a language barier than.

I oversea all three support departments on a regular basis though, and we do more steps than reformating a computer which is where Dell's steps usually go to.






STFU, what do you know?

I have worked as a hardware tech for Dell and I'am now working in premium support where you pay 250$ plus to get help. FRs used to happen a lot and you know why? because the average american guy who calls has to keep going to sites to whack off and cannot help getting his computer reinfected again, again and again.

That's why Dell started the premium support where we do help them to backup data and format, only if hours of troubleshooting fails. Reformats are heavily discouraged and are used only as the last option.

Remember you enjoy living in a first world nation because your civilizational forefathers used the concept of free trade and colonization to rob us of our wealth. Now when it comes back to haunt you, then its suddenly "Let Indian companies use Indian labour to support Indian products. At least you will not have a language barier than"

STFU again


Ah stfu you lil racist pig. Your no better than black people who bitch and moan over something that happened to there ancestors and now need to "stick it to the man"

How about you realise this?

You are only getting a better life because our countries are successfull and decided to send some money your way, because you guys work cheaper.

As I said, personally I don't care, alot of companies are pulling out of India due to the fact the "average" america hates the fact you have jobs. So it comes around full circle to bite your "the world owes us" attitude in the ass.

You are only getting a better life because our countries are successfull and decided to send some money your way, because you guys work cheaper.

If you think that India is hanging on to your dollars, your ignorance would demand your termination right now. Indian companies are making strides in our own right. Outsourcing is very negligible.

Ah stfu you lil racist pig. Your no better than black people who bitch and moan over something that happened to there ancestors and now need to "stick it to the man"

Yes, historical wrong has been done to us. But we owe each other nothing over it. What I was pointing out over was the west's hypocricy when it comes to free trade. Learn comprehension.

As I said, personally I don't care, alot of companies are pulling out of India due to the fact the "average" america hates the fact you have jobs. So it comes around full circle to bite your "the world owes us" attitude in the ass.

Its your hate which is shining through your post.
 

Braznor

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2005
4,497
349
126
Originally posted by: DurocShark
Originally posted by: Braznor
Originally posted by: beer
Wow, to this whole thread....
Braznor needs to chill the fsck out and head to P&N
It's obvious that Apple wasn't too happy with their India call center
I work for a large fabless company that acquired anouther company that had India operations (my group doesn't have them because we're too time critical) and it took a few months for management here to realize that every time-sensitive product needs to be developed here and India gets to work on test frameworks. I am not sure why that is, whether it is competence or merely the latency caused by time zone shifts, but the growth of companies than heavily outsource (Dell, GE, IBM to name the biggest ones) speaks for the efficiency of their operations. None of them have grown in equity value since 2000.


This whole thread needs to head out to P&N

You got your wish. It didn't need to be here until you dropped in and starting sh!tting on everybody.


Your thread was a pile of dung to begin with.
 

alchemize

Lifer
Mar 24, 2000
11,489
0
0
Originally posted by: Engineer
Originally posted by: alchemize
Dave (the Indian): Well written. Sounds like you could be in The World is Flat :D Sounds like you've read it/are living it.

What's funny is Dave#2 (the moron) has no clue what you are talking about, but that doesn't stop him from trolling it the second the thread hits P&N! Outsourcing is a reality that cannot and will not go away. It can't be legislated away, or voted away. It can be mitigated for the workers, as you mentioned, but investments in education, technology, retraining, etc. Your average american worker is no longer competing with folks in his/her hometown, it's now global.

Dave (#2) has been in this thread since the start of OT! :)

(FYI)

My bad, he trolled it from the get-go :)
 

Braznor

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2005
4,497
349
126
Originally posted by: RabidMongoose
Looks like the Indian nationalists are out in full force. They are easily the most nationalistic people on the entire planet, IMO.


:confused:

Ahem, I was defending globalization. Read my posts again.
 

Braznor

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2005
4,497
349
126
Originally posted by: dchakrab
Braznor,

You're out of line. I say this as an Indian who grew up in India, who has a lot of friends working in call centers, and who has a lot of experience with the corporate tech sector here in the US...and I'm a US Citizen, living in Chicago, with a solid interest in developing the technology sector in the US further. There's no point starting a flame war...it's more productive to just make your point, and make it well. Acting immature and making Indians look like America-haters reflects on me and everyone else you're stereotyping in this forum, and I have a problem with that.

That said, you (and many others) are missing the point. It is not significant how many call center jobs are outsourced, because call center jobs are not the bulk of what is being outsourced. There is a lot of very sophisticated development work coming out of India. There are also a lot of crappy businesses in India who have no quality control and are simply not up to international standards in their products and services. I've outsourced positions in internet marketing in the past, so I know what I'm talking about. It goes both ways. But there are still so many high quality firms in India that are charging top dollar for great products that it's always an attractive option. I've had to negotiate Indian search engine optimization firms down on their price, because what they were asking for was *higher* than what we paid local US employees. I'm talking about very competitive search engine optimization work for the health insurance and mortgage industries, too...not exactly something you'd expect an Indian firm to have expertise in.

What's significant is that more and more companies are *thinking of* outsourcing. It doesn't matter that Apple pulled back, or that they found the accents to be too confusing for customers. What is significant is that Apple wanted to (and still wants to) outsource.

Secondly, Indians who moved here to the US are, in increasing numbers, moving back to India to find IT jobs that pay almost as much as they do here in the US...which is a *lot* more real income in India, let me tell you. Their standards of living are much higher in India than in the US, they have access to better facilities, they have better training and continued professional development, and more scope for promotion.

Thirdly, Indian youth who used to dream of coming in to the US to get jobs are no longer dreaming the same dreams. Now they can make money immediately working in India, getting a very high quality education, and moving into very profitable careers, without ever leaving home (I'm talking about the middle and upper classes here).

What does all of this indicate? To me, it indicates that the US has gone disastrously wrong in our efforts to maintain an educated and digitally literate workforce, and that we are beginning to lose ground internationally as a result. Our companies are looking for solutions outside the United States as a result, and the trend will continue. It doesn't matter to the US economy if a company outsources to India or Ireland or Antarctica...what matters is that our workforce is quickly losing its competitive edge. Along with this, we're no longer attracting the best and the brightest from other nations to the US...now, the best and the brightest in those nations are staying there, while those who are several levels lower down are the ones who come here.

And, knowing all of this, we still allow the telecommunications companies to dictate legislation that effectively allows them to control the internet in the US and stifle innovation. Three years from now, when this has further killed digital literacy in the US, we'll be wondering why *every* company is outsourcing their business to India, and why outsourcing is now a core topic in every MBA program in the country. We've gone from being the #1 nation in broadband deployment to #16 and dropping fast...I believe this is signifcant.

When we're talking about helpdesk work, IT development, or customer support, we're dealing in information. Information is the new product, the global commodity, the cash crop. If we're no longer the best at training our workforce to be information and knowledge workers, then as information becomes increasingly important the US will continue to see a decline in our global effectiveness in business and trade. Other nations see this, and are doing their best to capitalize on it. I'm not sure why efforts to do the same haven't been successful in the US...possibly because this country's been a world superpower for so long, we think we're economically invinceable, so there's no sense of urgency.

Dave.

Dave, I'am an Indian and I love America. I wish nothing but the very best for both the nations. What I cannot stand is hypocricy of those who believe free trade is a one way street.
 

RichardE

Banned
Dec 31, 2005
10,246
2
0
Originally posted by: Braznor
Originally posted by: RichardE
Originally posted by: Braznor
Originally posted by: RichardE

Man, Dell's support consist of "lets reformat the computer" than send them off. Which wouldn't be so bad if you helped the customers save the stuff, than reinstalled the drivers for everything afterwards. I work for RR and my agents have complaints about Dell from people who call RR saying "I can't connect to the internet, oh wait, Dell didn't reinstall my Ethernet controller". Dell's support sucks.

Hot sure about Gateway, I know HP is based in Canada and the US, as we have some support for HP at the office I work at. Dell needs to pull its support back now. Let Indian companies use Indian labour to support Indian products. At least you will not have a language barier than.

I oversea all three support departments on a regular basis though, and we do more steps than reformating a computer which is where Dell's steps usually go to.






STFU, what do you know?

I have worked as a hardware tech for Dell and I'am now working in premium support where you pay 250$ plus to get help. FRs used to happen a lot and you know why? because the average american guy who calls has to keep going to sites to whack off and cannot help getting his computer reinfected again, again and again.

That's why Dell started the premium support where we do help them to backup data and format, only if hours of troubleshooting fails. Reformats are heavily discouraged and are used only as the last option.

Remember you enjoy living in a first world nation because your civilizational forefathers used the concept of free trade and colonization to rob us of our wealth. Now when it comes back to haunt you, then its suddenly "Let Indian companies use Indian labour to support Indian products. At least you will not have a language barier than"

STFU again


Ah stfu you lil racist pig. Your no better than black people who bitch and moan over something that happened to there ancestors and now need to "stick it to the man"

How about you realise this?

You are only getting a better life because our countries are successfull and decided to send some money your way, because you guys work cheaper.

As I said, personally I don't care, alot of companies are pulling out of India due to the fact the "average" america hates the fact you have jobs. So it comes around full circle to bite your "the world owes us" attitude in the ass.

You are only getting a better life because our countries are successfull and decided to send some money your way, because you guys work cheaper.

If you think that India is hanging on to your dollars, your ignorance would demand your termination right now. Indian companies are making strides in our own right. Outsourcing is very negligible.

Ah stfu you lil racist pig. Your no better than black people who bitch and moan over something that happened to there ancestors and now need to "stick it to the man"

Yes, historical wrong has been done to us. But we owe each other nothing over it. What I was pointing out over was the west's hypocricy when it comes to free trade. Learn comprehension.

As I said, personally I don't care, alot of companies are pulling out of India due to the fact the "average" america hates the fact you have jobs. So it comes around full circle to bite your "the world owes us" attitude in the ass.

Its your hate which is shining through your post.


Why become so defensive over the dollars you do not need? Your dependance on the success of the west is apparent.
 

dchakrab

Senior member
Apr 25, 2001
493
0
0
Well, here's the problem in a nutshell:

There are a lot of Americans who are unemployed. Research tells us that these Americans are marginalized...minorities, rural populations, those with special needs, those with lower levels of education and educational opportunity, etc.

There are jobs that are being done and sometimes done badly by Indians, such as call center calls, which might be better served by Americans. Not anyone's fault...they're both reading scripts. Read that again: they're both reading scripts. An American accent gets your script read more effectively. No other difference.

Now we've got a lot of patriotic Americans who're asking why we don't solve both problems by not outsourcing those jobs, and filling them with the unemployed here in the US.

But, at the same time, we're allowing telecom legislation that further shackles any move to educate those populations, that kills any attempt to make them digitally literate, so that they *could* compete for those jobs. This makes it impossible for us to compete in a global marketplace, and makes it a certainty that those positions will continue to move overseas in larger and larger numbers.

Here's a real life example. I frequently provide contracted website development services, here in Chicago. If I touch a project, I generally start at $1k. Not too shabby for a community website, full content management system, easy end-user admin, community blogging / portal / forums, etc. You could turn one of those into AT if you had the right motivation. I add extras for custom design work, etc, but we'll take $1k as a baseline.

Now, as a business providing a service (as a contractor, I am a business, theoretically) I must provide a reasonable level of quality. If I do not, my clients will look elsewhere for a. higher quality at the $1k price range, or b. similar quality at lower prices.

If I am very well trained, have access to the latest tools, the best techniques, and the highest skill levels, I can continue to provide high quality services at competitive prices. An Indian firm often can't match the quality of some of my work, because they're not as up to date on open source content management systems or cutting edge internet marketing techniques. They're trained to build one ASP content management system, in house, and then resell that to everyone who asks, no matter what they ask for. So I have a high quality product, and charge a competitive price ... = I have clients.

Now, if I have no training, or little training, I have a problem. There's a guy here in Chicago who works with a nonprofit; I'm training him in how to use the Drupal content management system. He has no website design skills, no technical training, nothing but a very keen interest in technology. He's from a rough neighborhood, and goes to an inner city school in that neighborhood.

He, effectively, has *no* way to learn the things that I have learned over the next few years. None. There are no training opportunities that will get him from where he is now to where I am now. At best, he'll learn to build a few websites from template-driven programs. Someone asks him to script a custom email form, and he's lost.

If he enters the marketplace, how will he compete? He's representative of an entire collection of communities that we have disenfranchised. How do you expect these people to contribute to the technology workforce?

How will he ever compete with the competition from India? Sure, he's here local, and in person, but they have a much higher quality product, and more expertise. Since my product is even higher quality, and I have even more expertise (than many of them) or at least a similar level of expertise, I can score clients because I am here, in person, and can meet face to face. Without that baseline level of competitiveness, you have no option but to leave the industry. In '99, he could have been paid $25 an hour to help grandmothers set up hotmail account. Today, he's going to get booted out of the website development industry and into something else, something non-technological.

And then, patriotic Americans are going to look at him working in a factory and wonder why the hell their company is outsourcing website development work when perfectly good American workers are working for starvation wages or collecting unemployment. If we're not willing to change the conditions that prevent them from becoming digitally literate or technologically competent, then we have no one but ourselves to blame.

Braznor: If you cannot stand the hypocrisy of those who believe free trade is a one way street, then your cause would be better served by explaining your points lucidly and ignoring the flamers rather than flaming people yourself. The reason? No one pays attention to the idiot who calls names. We ignore him and keep reading, filtering it out. The guy who takes the time to make his point, and make his point well, gets more attention. You're never going to persuade someone by telling them their thread was a pile of dung to begin with. But I've convinced people by making a logical argument, sometimes by pointing out things they weren't aware of.

The catch? You have to make your point, and make it well. It has to stand up to criticism.

Alchemize: Thanks for the compliment. I actually haven't read Friedman yet, but I'm certainly planning to, if I ever have time after my nonstop volunteer commitments.

Dave.
 
Aug 14, 2001
11,061
0
0
Originally posted by: Braznor
Originally posted by: RabidMongoose
Looks like the Indian nationalists are out in full force. They are easily the most nationalistic people on the entire planet, IMO.


:confused:

Ahem, I was defending globalization. Read my posts again.

Ahem, that doesn't matter.

I used to think that the American super-patriots were bad until I ran into the Canadians and Europeans. But Indians manage to trump them all. It's truly unreal.
 

RichardE

Banned
Dec 31, 2005
10,246
2
0
Originally posted by: dchakrab
Well, here's the problem in a nutshell:

There are a lot of Americans who are unemployed. Research tells us that these Americans are marginalized...minorities, rural populations, those with special needs, those with lower levels of education and educational opportunity, etc.

There are jobs that are being done and sometimes done badly by Indians, such as call center calls, which might be better served by Americans. Not anyone's fault...they're both reading scripts. Read that again: they're both reading scripts. An American accent gets your script read more effectively. No other difference.

Now we've got a lot of patriotic Americans who're asking why we don't solve both problems by not outsourcing those jobs, and filling them with the unemployed here in the US.

But, at the same time, we're allowing telecom legislation that further shackles any move to educate those populations, that kills any attempt to make them digitally literate, so that they *could* compete for those jobs. This makes it impossible for us to compete in a global marketplace, and makes it a certainty that those positions will continue to move overseas in larger and larger numbers.

Here's a real life example. I frequently provide contracted website development services, here in Chicago. If I touch a project, I generally start at $1k. Not too shabby for a community website, full content management system, easy end-user admin, community blogging / portal / forums, etc. You could turn one of those into AT if you had the right motivation. I add extras for custom design work, etc, but we'll take $1k as a baseline.

Now, as a business providing a service (as a contractor, I am a business, theoretically) I must provide a reasonable level of quality. If I do not, my clients will look elsewhere for a. higher quality at the $1k price range, or b. similar quality at lower prices.

If I am very well trained, have access to the latest tools, the best techniques, and the highest skill levels, I can continue to provide high quality services at competitive prices. An Indian firm often can't match the quality of some of my work, because they're not as up to date on open source content management systems or cutting edge internet marketing techniques. They're trained to build one ASP content management system, in house, and then resell that to everyone who asks, no matter what they ask for. So I have a high quality product, and charge a competitive price ... = I have clients.

Now, if I have no training, or little training, I have a problem. There's a guy here in Chicago who works with a nonprofit; I'm training him in how to use the Drupal content management system. He has no website design skills, no technical training, nothing but a very keen interest in technology. He's from a rough neighborhood, and goes to an inner city school in that neighborhood.

He, effectively, has *no* way to learn the things that I have learned over the next few years. None. There are no training opportunities that will get him from where he is now to where I am now. At best, he'll learn to build a few websites from template-driven programs. Someone asks him to script a custom email form, and he's lost.

If he enters the marketplace, how will he compete? He's representative of an entire collection of communities that we have disenfranchised. How do you expect these people to contribute to the technology workforce?

How will he ever compete with the competition from India? Sure, he's here local, and in person, but they have a much higher quality product, and more expertise. Since my product is even higher quality, and I have even more expertise (than many of them) or at least a similar level of expertise, I can score clients because I am here, in person, and can meet face to face. Without that baseline level of competitiveness, you have no option but to leave the industry. In '99, he could have been paid $25 an hour to help grandmothers set up hotmail account. Today, he's going to get booted out of the website development industry and into something else, something non-technological.

And then, patriotic Americans are going to look at him working in a factory and wonder why the hell their company is outsourcing website development work when perfectly good American workers are working for starvation wages or collecting unemployment. If we're not willing to change the conditions that prevent them from becoming digitally literate or technologically competent, then we have no one but ourselves to blame.

Braznor: If you cannot stand the hypocrisy of those who believe free trade is a one way street, then your cause would be better served by explaining your points lucidly and ignoring the flamers rather than flaming people yourself. The reason? No one pays attention to the idiot who calls names. We ignore him and keep reading, filtering it out. The guy who takes the time to make his point, and make his point well, gets more attention. You're never going to persuade someone by telling them their thread was a pile of dung to begin with. But I've convinced people by making a logical argument, sometimes by pointing out things they weren't aware of.

The catch? You have to make your point, and make it well. It has to stand up to criticism.

Alchemize: Thanks for the compliment. I actually haven't read Friedman yet, but I'm certainly planning to, if I ever have time after my nonstop volunteer commitments.

Dave.


Awsome post, and put a spin onto it I never looked at.

As you said though, they both read scripts, so the level of expertise you have in your position is not needed.
 

DurocShark

Lifer
Apr 18, 2001
15,708
5
56
Originally posted by: RichardE

Awsome post, and put a spin onto it I never looked at.

As you said though, they both read scripts, so the level of expertise you have in your position is not needed.

Agreed. Excellent post. Good job!

It reminded me of a meeting I had with a Software Architect from India I had a meeting with a few weeks ago while I was in California. The Project Manager and I are old school. We cut our teeth on C=64's and CP/M and such. We both wrote software in ML just to make it fit in the limited memory we had available in the machines we were coding for. We both had to make hardware mods and such on our own because there was no such thing as plug in cards (unless you had an Apple II or .. Ugh .. An IBM.) Piggybacking memory chips to expand video ram to 128k? Commonplace. Expanding a 128k RAM expander to 512k? No problem. Hacking a true serial port into a C=64. Cake. You get the idea.

So the PM and I got off on a tangent after looking at the architect's C code, about what a PITA it was to write for line numbers, and having to use POKE and PEEK to get anything useful out of a program. The guy from India's eyes glazed over. We dug a little into his background and found out there is ZERO education in the history of computing. They get no backgorund on where the industry came from. The education provided there is strictly "hands on" for current systems and languages. No "well rounded" education at all. It's like they all went to super-DeVry.

This guy had to be one of the best coders I'd seen. That's pretty impressive considering some of the friggin geniuses I've worked with. And his promotion to Sr. Architect in one year just reinforces that. And he was a contractor for an Indian company.

Now, with his genius at writing in C++, Java, etc, you'd think he would be pushing the envelope every day. Nope. His code is elegant, beautiful, tight, and absolutely pedestrian. He only learns new things if he's told to. He doesn't explore on his own.

So, the talent coming out of India, at least by his and other examples (my company's owner also owns majority shares in a large developer in India, so our dev people are ALL from India), are absolutely perfectly trained in using these packages, but not trained to be creative. Not trained to think for themselves.

This isn't a dig at the Indians I've worked with. It's an example at how hyper-focused the nation is at becoming a tech leader, but is kind of missing the point. The creativity is in the US and other western nations, but the grunt coding work is done there? That lack of a balanced education has to topple over at some point.
 

piasabird

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
17,168
60
91
Have never worked with any Indian People. I work in IT in the education field. Most of it is very low-end stuff. Most of our present programming package comes from a firm that is mosty full of American Programmers. Whenever I look at how edited the code, there are only American Names. It is a very progressive system even though it uses a low-end database product. Focus is on solving problems through better design. I have not met a large firm yet that I totally agree with. I think there are plenty of intelligent American Programmers but many IT People in the US were just paid an over-inflated wage. There are many reasons for this, and part of the problem is our concept of education in the USA. A well rounded education, often just makes well-rounded idiots.

Apple computer is or at least was a very progressive and an innovative company. They hired many of the best programmers that worked for PARC. PARC was a division of Xerox, that did a lot of research. The people from PARC designed things like the Mouse pointer system and Ethernet and high speed laser printers. The high speed printing was not possible without Ethernet so they invented it out of necessity. You would know this if it was not for your lack of historical knowledge. Apple was a very different kind of company that hired some very smart people and produced some very interesting groundbreaking technologies. While Microsoft was working in DOS, they revolutionized the computer industry. They made some mistakes early on and managed to mismanage themselves out of millions of Dollars.

The computer industry is a very interesting topic. A lot of companies were started by geniuses and then taken over by business men, if they didnt fail. A sense for Business and a sense for business are two different things. They are not necessarily compatible.
 

Braznor

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2005
4,497
349
126
Originally posted by: DurocShark
Originally posted by: RichardE

Awsome post, and put a spin onto it I never looked at.

As you said though, they both read scripts, so the level of expertise you have in your position is not needed.

Agreed. Excellent post. Good job!

It reminded me of a meeting I had with a Software Architect from India I had a meeting with a few weeks ago while I was in California. The Project Manager and I are old school. We cut our teeth on C=64's and CP/M and such. We both wrote software in ML just to make it fit in the limited memory we had available in the machines we were coding for. We both had to make hardware mods and such on our own because there was no such thing as plug in cards (unless you had an Apple II or .. Ugh .. An IBM.) Piggybacking memory chips to expand video ram to 128k? Commonplace. Expanding a 128k RAM expander to 512k? No problem. Hacking a true serial port into a C=64. Cake. You get the idea.

So the PM and I got off on a tangent after looking at the architect's C code, about what a PITA it was to write for line numbers, and having to use POKE and PEEK to get anything useful out of a program. The guy from India's eyes glazed over. We dug a little into his background and found out there is ZERO education in the history of computing. They get no backgorund on where the industry came from. The education provided there is strictly "hands on" for current systems and languages. No "well rounded" education at all. It's like they all went to super-DeVry.

This guy had to be one of the best coders I'd seen. That's pretty impressive considering some of the friggin geniuses I've worked with. And his promotion to Sr. Architect in one year just reinforces that. And he was a contractor for an Indian company.

Now, with his genius at writing in C++, Java, etc, you'd think he would be pushing the envelope every day. Nope. His code is elegant, beautiful, tight, and absolutely pedestrian. He only learns new things if he's told to. He doesn't explore on his own.

So, the talent coming out of India, at least by his and other examples (my company's owner also owns majority shares in a large developer in India, so our dev people are ALL from India), are absolutely perfectly trained in using these packages, but not trained to be creative. Not trained to think for themselves.

This isn't a dig at the Indians I've worked with. It's an example at how hyper-focused the nation is at becoming a tech leader, but is kind of missing the point. The creativity is in the US and other western nations, but the grunt coding work is done there? That lack of a balanced education has to topple over at some point.

Your story is very good, but still it errs in assuming that Indians are not trained to think for themselves. I admit that the west has still the largest pool of creativity, but give it time though and you can find all nations can achieve it when they have enough resources to do so.

Investing in education is not cheap, it is one of the most expensive cost ever and time consuming. Add to the fact that the West manages to steal away the best from the East. Now that trend is reversing and the East is now attracting back its former emigrated citizens.

 

Braznor

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2005
4,497
349
126
Originally posted by: dchakrab
Well, here's the problem in a nutshell:

There are a lot of Americans who are unemployed. Research tells us that these Americans are marginalized...minorities, rural populations, those with special needs, those with lower levels of education and educational opportunity, etc.

There are jobs that are being done and sometimes done badly by Indians, such as call center calls, which might be better served by Americans. Not anyone's fault...they're both reading scripts. Read that again: they're both reading scripts. An American accent gets your script read more effectively. No other difference.

Now we've got a lot of patriotic Americans who're asking why we don't solve both problems by not outsourcing those jobs, and filling them with the unemployed here in the US.

But, at the same time, we're allowing telecom legislation that further shackles any move to educate those populations, that kills any attempt to make them digitally literate, so that they *could* compete for those jobs. This makes it impossible for us to compete in a global marketplace, and makes it a certainty that those positions will continue to move overseas in larger and larger numbers.

Here's a real life example. I frequently provide contracted website development services, here in Chicago. If I touch a project, I generally start at $1k. Not too shabby for a community website, full content management system, easy end-user admin, community blogging / portal / forums, etc. You could turn one of those into AT if you had the right motivation. I add extras for custom design work, etc, but we'll take $1k as a baseline.

Now, as a business providing a service (as a contractor, I am a business, theoretically) I must provide a reasonable level of quality. If I do not, my clients will look elsewhere for a. higher quality at the $1k price range, or b. similar quality at lower prices.

If I am very well trained, have access to the latest tools, the best techniques, and the highest skill levels, I can continue to provide high quality services at competitive prices. An Indian firm often can't match the quality of some of my work, because they're not as up to date on open source content management systems or cutting edge internet marketing techniques. They're trained to build one ASP content management system, in house, and then resell that to everyone who asks, no matter what they ask for. So I have a high quality product, and charge a competitive price ... = I have clients.

Now, if I have no training, or little training, I have a problem. There's a guy here in Chicago who works with a nonprofit; I'm training him in how to use the Drupal content management system. He has no website design skills, no technical training, nothing but a very keen interest in technology. He's from a rough neighborhood, and goes to an inner city school in that neighborhood.

He, effectively, has *no* way to learn the things that I have learned over the next few years. None. There are no training opportunities that will get him from where he is now to where I am now. At best, he'll learn to build a few websites from template-driven programs. Someone asks him to script a custom email form, and he's lost.

If he enters the marketplace, how will he compete? He's representative of an entire collection of communities that we have disenfranchised. How do you expect these people to contribute to the technology workforce?

How will he ever compete with the competition from India? Sure, he's here local, and in person, but they have a much higher quality product, and more expertise. Since my product is even higher quality, and I have even more expertise (than many of them) or at least a similar level of expertise, I can score clients because I am here, in person, and can meet face to face. Without that baseline level of competitiveness, you have no option but to leave the industry. In '99, he could have been paid $25 an hour to help grandmothers set up hotmail account. Today, he's going to get booted out of the website development industry and into something else, something non-technological.

And then, patriotic Americans are going to look at him working in a factory and wonder why the hell their company is outsourcing website development work when perfectly good American workers are working for starvation wages or collecting unemployment. If we're not willing to change the conditions that prevent them from becoming digitally literate or technologically competent, then we have no one but ourselves to blame.

Braznor: If you cannot stand the hypocrisy of those who believe free trade is a one way street, then your cause would be better served by explaining your points lucidly and ignoring the flamers rather than flaming people yourself. The reason? No one pays attention to the idiot who calls names. We ignore him and keep reading, filtering it out. The guy who takes the time to make his point, and make his point well, gets more attention. You're never going to persuade someone by telling them their thread was a pile of dung to begin with. But I've convinced people by making a logical argument, sometimes by pointing out things they weren't aware of.

The catch? You have to make your point, and make it well. It has to stand up to criticism.

Alchemize: Thanks for the compliment. I actually haven't read Friedman yet, but I'm certainly planning to, if I ever have time after my nonstop volunteer commitments.

Dave.

Dave, I just gave what I got. You are mistaken in thinking we at Dell read from scripts. The varieties of problem we encounter in a particular day is hard to think of. The scripts exists, no one follows them.

My only mistake was calling the trolls in these threads as Americans. No they were first and foremost trolls and then Americans. Leave it to them to put an Antiamerican spin to it.

 

piasabird

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
17,168
60
91
It is very difficult for the average intelligent IT worker to come down to the level of the users that call them with problems. It is like they speak two different languages.

I dont know how the progam works, I just click the mouse!
 

kalster

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2002
7,355
6
81
Originally posted by: RabidMongoose
Looks like the Indian nationalists are out in full force. They are easily the most nationalistic people on the entire planet, IMO.

you keep saying that all the time
how ironic though that it comes in a thread where an American is gloating over 1 small company closing its outsourcing shop and moving back to the US to employ people from the US.