Is your job being sent abroad?

[_Q_]

Originally posted by AlphaXiGirl
Americans are spoiled - we seem to think that we should be paid well above market value for a job and then complain when goods and services cost more.

American consumer demand for cheaper goods and services coupled with American worker demand for higher wages creates an environment where businesses look outside our borders to solve the issue.

I don't blame companies for going overseas to fill positions. When American workers make themselves more attractive either by providing a work ethic and quality far superior to that of competing nations OR lower their pay standards, then companies will look back to the US.

As a hiring manager that hires college graduates for entry level financial services positions, I am continually astounded at the lack of work ethic that I encounter through the interview process and the level of sense of entitlement that exists. What happened to paying people what they are actually worth???? If you give me 110% everyday, I will reward you, if you are a slacker, why should I go out of my way to pay you any more than what you are worth.

If Dell has to pay their help desk employees $35,000 per year - who ultimately pays that salary - the consumer. If that same position in India costs Dell $20,000, that's $15k that doesn't have to be passed on to the consumer. If Dell isn't happy with the level of service provided by Indian employees (as shown by lower customer satisfaction levels) then Dell may be willing to bring jobs back to the US IF they know that they can improve service by hiring US employees. At some point, Dell will do a cost / benefit analysis and will look for a breakeven point between cost and customer satisfaction/quality. The same sort of evaluation that the American Auto Industry has had to do.

It's all about the bottom line. Quit whining, do a great job, don't make demands of your employer that you aren't worth - or they will find a cheaper alternative. There are very few people that cannot be replaced.

And Dell has brought back some of their major accounts customer service/help desk but the bulk will remain in India. In fact, some old co-workers of mine spent time in India putting in new quality processes for the Dell India phone center.

OK, I'll jump on my soapbox here. From around the mid 1990s to around the beginning of 2001, the IT market was artificially inflated. There were unrealistic expectations that anything connected to the Internet would make people very rich, and there were also some misplaced fears about Y2K, which drove more IT-related spending. The bubble eventually burst, and IT was no longer such a hot field. This seemed sort of inevitable; paying a marginal programmer $80K a year doesn't make much sense.
The competition from other countries has also contributed to driving salaries down. As an IT person, this doesn't bother or surprise me. I have a middle-class existence and I generally enjoy what I do. Although IT was the most visible casualty, I'm not convinced that any profession is "safe." So what's worked for me is doing work I like and being realistic about salary expectations.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by _Q_
OK, I'll jump on my soapbox here. From around the mid 1990s to around the beginning of 2001, the IT market was artificially inflated. There were unrealistic expectations that anything connected to the Internet would make people very rich, and there were also some misplaced fears about Y2K, which drove more IT-related spending. The bubble eventually burst, and IT was no longer such a hot field. This seemed sort of inevitable; paying a marginal programmer $80K a year doesn't make much sense.
The competition from other countries has also contributed to driving salaries down. As an IT person, this doesn't bother or surprise me. I have a middle-class existence and I generally enjoy what I do. Although IT was the most visible casualty, I'm not convinced that any profession is "safe." So what's worked for me is doing work I like and being realistic about salary expectations.

So you're not worried about losing your job and then being like one of those guys on slashdot who complains and once in a while posts something remotely witty about applying to work in India?

-Rudey

[_Q_]

Originally posted by Rudey
So you're not worried about losing your job and then being like one of those guys on slashdot who complains and once in a while posts something remotely witty about applying to work in India?

-Rudey

Well, it seems pointless to spend my energy saying, "What if, what if, what if?" I try to do a good job, and I'm also working on a master's in a different area. So what will be, will be.
Thanks for reminding me about slashdot - looks like I have to use my mod points there soon.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by _Q_
Well, it seems pointless to spend my energy saying, "What if, what if, what if?" I try to do a good job, and I'm also working on a master's in a different area. So what will be, will be.
Thanks for reminding me about slashdot - looks like I have to use my mod points there soon.

Hey no problem, I like to remind people of things. I'm glad I was able to bring up slashdot in a relevant thread though.

And yes a lot of jobs are safe from being exported if you have a skill that others can't quickly pick up en masse or if you have a job that involves personal relationships.

-Rudey

[cuaphi]

Okay, just a couple of things here. I agree that the overall globalization of commerce is not inherently a bad thing. However, the numbers presented here are way off. An Indian in a call center makes the equivilant of $10,000 a year. That provides a stable middle to upper middle class income in India. Second, a help desk job in the middle of the boom used to pay pretty well. Now I see (and have been called about) jobs at the IBM call center in Boulder where they're offering $10-11/hour. The market has been driven down by two things. One, the market was so inflated that they had to come back down and two, competition with Indian labor means that a job requiring a decent skill level has become quite low paying.

My boyfriend's company just sold the application he supports to a company based in India looking to break into the North American market. They're keeping the tech support crew and a couple of others while they set up a Broomfield office... for now. The software engineers and project managers are being offered sad little lay off packages. It's about 10 people in total which isn't a lot but the job market is unlikely to reabsorb these people any time soon.

On the one hand I can see how Americans have a sense of entitlement when it comes to well paying jobs and that the artificial pay inflation in IT in the late 90's was unsustainable. On the other hand I get angry when I see people constantly losing their jobs when they're well educated, hard working and have invested too much time and money to start over. People have tried to argue that this is the same as the evolution of the agriculture or manufacturing industries but it seems to me that those shifts took place over a larger period of time.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by cuaphi
Okay, just a couple of things here. I agree that the overall globalization of commerce is not inherently a bad thing. However, the numbers presented here are way off. An Indian in a call center makes the equivilant of $10,000 a year. That provides a stable middle to upper middle class income in India. Second, a help desk job in the middle of the boom used to pay pretty well. Now I see (and have been called about) jobs at the IBM call center in Boulder where they're offering $10-11/hour. The market has been driven down by two things. One, the market was so inflated that they had to come back down and two, competition with Indian labor means that a job requiring a decent skill level has become quite low paying.

My boyfriend's company just sold the application he supports to a company based in India looking to break into the North American market. They're keeping the tech support crew and a couple of others while they set up a Broomfield office... for now. The software engineers and project managers are being offered sad little lay off packages. It's about 10 people in total which isn't a lot but the job market is unlikely to reabsorb these people any time soon.

On the one hand I can see how Americans have a sense of entitlement when it comes to well paying jobs and that the artificial pay inflation in IT in the late 90's was unsustainable. On the other hand I get angry when I see people constantly losing their jobs when they're well educated, hard working and have invested too much time and money to start over. People have tried to argue that this is the same as the evolution of the agriculture or manufacturing industries but it seems to me that those shifts took place over a larger period of time.

Why did they go into those fields? Perhaps they can try and invest to get an even higher education with more opportunities in something that won't go away quickly.

-Rudey

[AlphaXiGirl]

The average "Professional" call center position (meaning highly trained - eg IT as opposed to reservationist, etc) in India will cost a company $20k per year starting at year #2. Year #1 is significantly more due to IT start up and training costs. The person's salary isn't $20K but the cost of the salary + infastructure will cost the company $20K - which is the cost that the company cares about.

The average starting salary for IT phone reps in the US is $32-$38k per year plus benefits which can easily add 50% more to that salary.

[_Q_]

Originally posted by AlphaXiGirl
The average "Professional" call center position (meaning highly trained - eg IT as opposed to reservationist, etc) in India will cost a company $20k per year starting at year #2. Year #1 is significantly more due to IT start up and training costs. The person's salary isn't $20K but the cost of the salary + infastructure will cost the company $20K - which is the cost that the company cares about.

The average starting salary for IT phone reps in the US is $32-$38k per year plus benefits which can easily add 50% more to that salary.

Some of the big challenges with IT projects are communication and planning. For example, if you tell me that you want a program to keep track of the widgets that your company makes, then I might have to come back and say, "Well, do you want it to do A or B? Will you need this functionality? What's important to you?" In the real world, you often don't get specs that you can code from, and you have to go back to the person and understand what it is they really need. It sounds like that kind of thing has been a major problem in offshoring. This means that local workers do offer a certain advantage, though not enough to justify the exorbitant salaries they were making in the late 1990s.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by _Q_
Some of the big challenges with IT projects are communication and planning. For example, if you tell me that you want a program to keep track of the widgets that your company makes, then I might have to come back and say, "Well, do you want it to do A or B? Will you need this functionality? What's important to you?" In the real world, you often don't get specs that you can code from, and you have to go back to the person and understand what it is they really need. It sounds like that kind of thing has been a major problem in offshoring. This means that local workers do offer a certain advantage, though not enough to justify the exorbitant salaries they were making in the late 1990s.

Says who? Is that why the market in areas like India have grown so rapidly?

Some quick quotes from the October 2004 Bloomberg Markets article "India: Beyond Outsourcing."

"Wipro....a global lab on hire that can build the guts of a cell phone, design a semiconductor or run a client's computer system for as little as one-fifth of the price a U.S. company would charge."

Wipro alone is attacking Accenture, Electronic Data Systems, and IBM consultants with "5,000 engineers from Australia to Canada and...190 consultants it gained with two U.S. acquisitions".

"India's computer services companies are growing seven times faster than US firms."

US companies are fighting back by hiring more. Where? In India. IBM added 6,000 employees recently to its 9,000. Accenture has 7,000 and is aiming for 10,000.

And how are the companies faring? Well the gains I have made on my Indian companies have been tremendous. The same US IT companies have been falling (EDS) or unable to make the same gains (Accenture). What do I know though? I only put my money where my mouth is. And I guess the market, essentially one of the most precise indicators of such things, seems to agree.

So it's not just an American company shifting jobs to Indian workers; it's an Indian company that used to sell cooking oil coming in and razing the battlefield because it offers a good product at a lower rate.

-Rudey

[Munchkin03]

Dell? Lexmark? Don't waste your time with those POS printers. HP is where it's at.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by Munchkin03
Dell? Lexmark? Don't waste your time with those POS printers. HP is where it's at.

I agree. I think the workers there aren't doing that great of a job. Hopefully when they hire more people in India, the quality will go up. Until then go HP and Apple!!

-Rudey