Comments on: Op/Ed: Time to Outsource SL Support to India and Botswana?

By: Harold Nutes

Harold Nutes — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 13:44:29 +0000

A very large telecommunications company has been outsourcing for years. The workers supplied when the company was testing the waters were decent. Now that the company has invested in infrastructure (The first building was bought from a high-level mgmt employee of the telecom company in India for $250 million. The employee had purchased the building himself for 1/100th of the cost), the quality of new contractors is terrible. English is no longer required, and many are completely untrained. Blatant examples of falsified resumes are the norm. It’s also common for one individual to “fill in” for an unqualified worked during telephone interviews. Tens of thousands of jobs have gone overseas, and now upper management has pretty much been taken over by non-US citizens. Each year more U.S. jobs are cut. Unfortunately a recent change in upper management has lead to even more egregious examples of corporate greed. In order to avoid the expense of providing severance pay, the company has been trying to force U.S workers to quit by making the work environment increasingly unpleasant. Thousands of individuals who were working from home successfully were told they must drive in to work if they lived 50 miles or less from a major datacenter. Not enough Americans quit, so the policy was changed so that anyone with an assigned office space needed to work from that office. Think about the ecological impact, with thousands more workers driving hundreds of miles each week (ironically, the company has regularly released commercials showing how it’s a “green” company”). Think of the economic impact to those workers. A one-car, two-job family would have to rely on public transportation if it is available, or buy another car. Raises have been very minimal for many years, so the average worker is now about 23% behind the inflation curve. Aside from the initial cost of vehicles, as well as wear and tear, what about the cost of gas? Child care? It all equates to a sudden pay cut of as much as $1500 a month. The additional commuters will also impact the infrastructure. The worst is yet to come. Since the remaining workers are clinging desperately to their jobs, and the company can’t fire them for poor performance (most slackers were weeded out years ago), the company is now planning on making ALL workers, even those who are not within 100 miles of a datacenter, report to work in an office. The choice will be to uproot and move up to 1000 or 2000 miles, or be fired for “job abandonment” even though the workers can, and have been, doing their jobs over the network. This is an yet another case of corporate greed. The company in question is sitting on 13 billion in reserve, yet during a terrible recession is trying to fire well-trained Americans and not provide any separation pay. Unfortunately the new management is also discriminating against older workers, using the excuse of the need for “new blood” to justify terminating them. The consumer is not even benefiting from outsourcing. The cost-savings are used for bonuses and salaries for upper management (salaries and benefits for upper mgmt are approximately 2500 times that of the average worker). Trying to contact customer support is a nightmare of automation menus, followed by hours of miscommunication. Why are the American politicians allowing large companies to send billions of dollars overseas while the companies in question still take advantage of massive tax loopholes? Outsourcing is the most damaging thing to ever happen to this country, and will lead to the downfall of capitalism.

By: Raul Rehnquist

Raul Rehnquist — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:31:11 +0000

How about if all US businesses just outsourced all of their positions out to third world countries. Where are the people that live in the USA suppose to work ? If people are not working they don’t have money to keep up the US economy, let alone the SL economy. A lot of US businesses have done this already in the manufacturing sectors. It is one of the reasons why unemployment is so high now in the USA. People are having a hard time finding work that was once plentiful and easily obtained in the USA because of outsourcing. Not to mention the obvious language and cultural differences that makes outsourcing a undesirable solution. That just leaves you with extra bodies manning phones and support tickets. It doesn’t necessarily mean any more resolutions are being accomplished in a proficient manner. It’s a bad idea period.

By: bugger bognor

bugger bognor — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:30:06 +0000

A CAUTIONARY TALE: All events recorded here are entirely true :

A guy I know decided to sack his IT team because they were expensive compared to having one IT manager that outsourced the IT work to some friends in india. This is the action he chose and in December 2009 he ended the contracts of his IT staff. In January the new IT team came in and rewired the ethernet cables that ran from the desks to the routers and servers. They configured a new servers costing over $8000. And everything ran smoothly and then the IT manager outsourced the day to day running of the IT and the help desk to India. In July 2010 the indian team phoned the boss of thecompany to say his servers were being attacked from within the building that he was in, one of his staff was hacking the data. They assured him they would find the culprit. Meanwhile in July a fire broke out in the server room from the rewiring that was done by the new IT guys who were a part of the indian company. the damage was over $4000 and the insurance paid for the servers but the loss of business was around $100,000 . In August the IT team was no nearer finding the hackers and the director of the company outsourcing all this was made aware by an honest competitor that he had been approached with offers of a database for sale which appeared to have been stolen the previous week. September came and the IT manager went to india for a month to visit relatives. Then 5 weeks later did not return and 6 weeks later was not answering his phone. In november the director of the company noticed $80,000 was missing from his accounts and the IT support had suddenly stopped.
That was when he realised he had been setup and that it had all been a scam
the moral of the story is: I personally would never trust outsourcing to anywhere that the law of your own country cannot reach. The bribery is so rife in the more funky countries that the police often only investigate a crime so they can blackmail the perps into coughing up some money to put bread on the table.
DONT DO IT LL it would be a bad bad move

By: Kure Zeveer

Kure Zeveer — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 04:16:50 +0000

hireing a bunch of idians and other is as bad as when hitler hired jews for his army.

By: had enough

had enough — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 21:38:44 +0000

Give American jobs to the toe heads? Fucking idiot.

By: Yep

Yep — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 21:27:46 +0000

I wonder if white people own convience stores in india?

By: Tarheel McCoy

Tarheel McCoy — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 21:22:23 +0000

Norton’s mostly right.

Ten years ago there was a great surge to outsource to India because the dollar was strong against the rupee. Tons of Indian companies took out this huge bank loans on the basis of letters of intent from American companies to sign enormous contracts.

Then two things happened: the American economy tanked, and the rupee strengthened too. Now all of the sudden, there was no possible way for the Indian companies to pay back their loans, and no way for them to break even providing the services they’d agreed to provide. American jobs went to India where they were being done for far less money than they were worth even in India terms.

Outsourcing has been a colossal failure, and big business in America traded a functional future for a fast profit – basically a grab-the-money-and-run operation. They’re all paying for it now, with businesses failing and having to drop the Indian outsourcing completely because they can’t make it cost effective. And of course the Indian companies are dropping like flies, and the Indian economy is now on the verge of collapse.

By: Emperor Norton hears a who?

Emperor Norton hears a who? — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 20:26:41 +0000

This is 2011, not 2001 kids. The days you could get a PhD in Mumbai for $5.00 USD an hour are long over. As Skye was pointing out Linden Lab in sourced to a low cost areas in the US.

By: Orca Flotta

Orca Flotta — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:56:00 +0000

You get what you pay for. Simple as that.

Some facts: neither India nor Botswana are developing countries. Still, if some employee there earns 10% of what you get paid in USA, they can afford a decent lifestyle of that, incl house, maid, gardener, pool service, 2 cars.

Off course companies who outsource jobs are assholes. But ppl who are complaining about “foreigners taking our jobs” are wrong as well. Let’s get some things straight:

First, Indians are no foreigners in India.

Secondly, they are not taking away your jobs. They are offered jobs in customer support and would be idiots not to grab them.

Another thing is that, particularly in India, many employees are not only highly educated, but also highly motivated. Can’t say that about the bitches in LL customer support. 90% of them should be fired on the spot.

So, mind your dialectic, use proper arguments and ultimately sound a lot less like a bunch bumbling nationalist idiots.

By: Skye D.

Skye D. — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:24:39 +0000

@Lordy – Yup, I applied for the job more out of curiousity…and some hope that there’d be more of a supervisory or 2nd level support position available that paid better. There wasn’t.