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168 Comments
- Witness4God, on 03/18/2009, -1/+39It's time to bring jobs back to America.
- zaffir, on 03/18/2009, -2/+34Um, you get what you pay for?
- inactive, on 03/18/2009, -5/+35America is committing self suicide by outsourcing. unsustainable in the long run. criminals run US government and corporations.
- SuperMoses, on 03/18/2009, -0/+25That's offshoring. Outsourcing is simply hiring a 3rd party company.
- scubascuba, on 03/18/2009, -0/+24Hope it is the new trend.. BRING BACK MANUFACTURING, CALL CENTER JOBS BACK TO THE USA...then the 3.5 million unemployed people in the US will be employed AGAIN !!!!
- inactive, on 03/18/2009, -0/+23I called HP customer service yesterday and it took them 45 minutes to figure out that my webcam is out of warranty. I couldn't understand half of what those Indians were saying, they transferred me like 5 times, had to tell my story each time, they all spelled letters the same (ie. U like in Unicorn) and they all had American names but obvious foreign accents. I told them that I can't get windows vista or xp to recognize my webcam and after 15 minutes of silence I asked what exactly I'm waiting for he told me he's trying to figure out the problem with the usb cable. WTF? He had very little information about my problem, he wasn't actively trying to solve my problem and didn't care. Horrible experience, made me feel sorry for humanity...
- MrSteamTank, on 03/18/2009, -2/+25Then it is a race to the bottom for everyone. Aheinzm. How can you compete in any job ever against someone similarly educated in a nation where the cost of living is 1/10 that of the USA. Seriously, I'd like to know your answer.
Better education is a not a guaranteed solution. I know dozens of countries with free decent education for their citizens is available ensuring that very soon their work force will be as educated or at least close to as educated as Americans.
Some protectionism against countries who treat their workers like slave labour would be nice. Otherwise trying to compete on a similar level where one company has to provide benefits and the other doesn't is unsustainable in the long term. - kingmanic, on 03/18/2009, -0/+23Offshore Outsourcing only works with a sound infrastructure; good management; and a good plan. Those 3 things cost money and in the end it's almost a wash. You are buying easily scaled capacity not cheap labor. When people jump into it for only cheap labor they tend to make massive money sink holes instead of successfully outsourcing. As well in many of those countries the best and brightest have already been employed by the larger firms who did outsourcing appropriately. You are going to get the 2nd and third tier people and companies which are as likely to be incompetent as not.
As well, you are building your own future competition. The more skills and resources you send that way the more likely you are to make a future Chinese or Indian Toyota or Sony. It would be better for America to bring those people here so they pay US taxes and start US companies like Yahoo or Google (both started by immigrants or children of immigrants). - moose26, on 03/18/2009, -0/+16What goes around comes around I hope. I am also seeing a trend for a few companies I have worked for to be ending their outsourcing way and hiring back at home. I hope it's part of a larger trend that continues to grow.
- kingmanic, on 03/18/2009, -0/+14Example of bad offshore outsourcing: A huge company I used to work for outsourced a billing, logistics and sale system to a middle east firm. In the end it cost 4 times the initial estimate for a locally developed one (it was sold to them as costing half). Wasn't working when launched and the semi-functional version was a year late. the consumer side effects of the semi-functional system reduced that companies market share by a double digit number and news of this tanked it's stocks by 50%.
- inactive, on 03/18/2009, -1/+14Most people who work in the industry know that the average Indian engineer is poorly educated and not very intelligent. In the last International Collegiate Programming Contest the best Indian university came 47th - a pathetic showing for a country of more than one billion people.
http://cm2prod.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/Wiki.jsp?page=R ...
China's engineers are considerably better, but few of them speak English. - inactive, on 03/18/2009, -0/+13They're saying it because the pitch fork market has exploded.. people are coming !!
- SuperMoses, on 03/18/2009, -1/+13They're probably assuming Americans will be willing to work for lower ages given the economic crisis.
- kingmanic, on 03/18/2009, -0/+12Canada is popular too? No time difference. 20-30% savings due to currency. Benefits costs less. Similar culture and language.
- AngelaQ, on 03/18/2009, -0/+11India invests in their workforce by providing its citizens with free higher education. Our national policy is to let India provide a trained workforce for American business and complain that our own citizens have not invested enough money for jobs that are going to be outsourced anyway.
- superkendall, on 03/18/2009, -0/+11Now that companies don't have as much money, they can't afford to "save" money by outsourcing. Instead they have to make do with spending less which means cheaper and higher quality developers in fewer numbers.
- drastik21, on 03/18/2009, -2/+13too bad I can't understand any of them.
- maddskillz, on 03/18/2009, -0/+10Oh the irony...
- WhiskeyLemur, on 06/30/2009, -1/+11My dad was helping me troubleshoot my HP laptop about a year ago - he had the same experience as you. Add into the equation his own heavy Russian accent (and the fact that he, as a veteran programmer, knows about 12 times as much about computer crap as the tech support guy).
Hilarity ensued. Customer support, not so much. I ended up taking the unit back to Best Buy (where, to be completely fair, I got a perfectly functional replacement with absolutely no hassles). - nofx1510, on 03/18/2009, -1/+11My roommate does web development and has been taking jobs away from india and back to the states because the quality of the code just isn't there. He ends up having to fix most of the code and cost his clients even more money so instead they end up sticking with him to cut down cost. This is happening in a lot of outsourced industries which is why you are starting to see the jobs move back into the states
- anexanhume, on 03/18/2009, -2/+12They have over 3 times the people of America and English is the official language of business. What do you expect?
- zacharytelschow, on 03/18/2009, -0/+10I want numbers, not conclusions, because I don't buy it.
What was the sample size? What was the exact wording of the questions and choices? What is the size of the companies surveyed? How were they contacted? Who from the companies actually filled out the survey?
Until I see the actual survey and the responses, this is worthless. - inactive, on 03/18/2009, -0/+10I wasn't aware India was plural.
- diggopolous, on 03/18/2009, -0/+9Only sometimes. Plety of corporations would rather not have a
in-house IT department for example and "outsource" these functions to an outside professional services arm of a company as IBM or EDS even though they are witiin borders. - inactive, on 03/18/2009, -2/+10stfu. Its not about entitlement. If you can afford to hire your own you should. Outsourcing all your work to foreign countries to save a few dollars is disgusting and it is destroying this country!
- Tcasey0478, on 03/18/2009, -2/+10One question that comes to mind is, "How will people in the U.S. pay for the services these outsourcing companies provide, without having jobs?" Just because you save money on employees doesn't mean it's the best way to go. These U.S. companies are killing themselves.
- Bloodwine, on 03/18/2009, -0/+8Rural Sourcing is on the rise. There are a lot of talented people in the midwest, midsouth, and south that can do the job for much less than it can be done in California and New York, due to the lower cost of living in "flyover" country.
Best part is that you are still generating U.S. jobs, are in the same timezone (or at worst, a couple hours off), no language barrier, and much shorter distance to keep the workers honest.
Sure the workers aren't as cheap as foreign labor, but it is a great compromise between expensive personnel and offshore personnel. - bjs3171, on 03/18/2009, -1/+9i'm in the shoe business. i've heard that we're likely to see more and more factories crop back up in the US. Trying to communicate with Chinese factories is very much like kicking yourself in the balls over and over again. People are sick of it, and with all the flying back and fourth, and taking 3 or 4 samples to get what you may get in 1 or 2 US made samples, it could actually be worth it.
- cubicledrone, on 03/18/2009, -0/+7" the offshore option is losing its sheen for US technology firms"
Because, as it turns out, American programmers and IT people had the marketable skills all along and deep down under all that ***** it was about money. - Factionrider, on 03/18/2009, -1/+8We /got/ better English than American red necks.
- mysmartypants, on 03/18/2009, -0/+7What they're not mentioning is that those US "outsourcing" firms are jam-packed with H1-B visas from India.
- mydigglogin, on 03/18/2009, -0/+6The loyalty/low turnover, and not having to put up with communication barriers (language, time zone, face-to-face, hallway conversations) is why my company is not outsourcing.
- zafayar, on 03/18/2009, -1/+7This is just plain funny. Regardless of what anyone says, I will believe it when I see it. All I can see right now is companies trying to get more things done on the cheap so that they can lower their prices further compared to their competitors. As long as US is loosing jobs no will come out and say we are thinking of more out sourcing, specially when their government is planning protectionist policies.
Wait and Watch. - mrsteveman1, on 03/18/2009, -2/+8"what's unsustainable is the American belief that we are entitled to a job that a non-American will do for less."
And you think this is some kind of victory for the free market? Corporations are circumventing the workplace and product safety laws we have in this country by outsourcing, there is a reason things get cheaper when work is outsourced to a place like China or India. People who don't have much opportunity for work are of course going to jump at the chance to make circuitboards for 50 cents an hour in a ***** warehouse.
"The cost of living is much higher here because our standard of living is much higher, are we entitled to that?"
The standard for living here is very high, probably higher than it should be in some ways. At the same time the standard for living in many of the countries that corporations are using for manufacturing and manual labor is below acceptable levels, which is why things are cheap.
Don't pretend like the world is some how equalizing itself out. - Elsewhere42, on 03/18/2009, -1/+7I hate to sound like I'm saying "I told you so", but.... I told you so! I've been trying to tell companies this from day one. Outsourcing to other countries just does not work. Working with the time difference alone is a pain in the ass. This doesn't even get into the legal and liability issues of sending work overseas.
A classic example would be the new Section 7216 of the US tax code. If your tax return will be processed in any way in another country your tax company must have you sign a consent form. How many people do you think will consent to having their personal financial information transmitted to a foreign nation to be viewed by a foreign national? Not many! - Elsewhere42, on 03/18/2009, -0/+5In the US you have legal protections should your information be abused.
In other countries you have no idea what kind of laws they might have or if you will have any legal recourse. - AngelaQ, on 03/18/2009, -1/+6They hire these call centers so they can pay lip service to customer service while actually not going to the expense it would require. I have spoken with techs in India who had no clue and didn't care, as well as some who were able to help me. I also lost over $1000 from Travelocity because customer care in India refused to apply my credit to another trip unless it was the trip of their choosing. Don't like it? Tough luck, no way to file a complaint.
- piper999, on 03/18/2009, -1/+6A lot of people still don't realize this. It happens all the time and at least at my company where we got stung by fraud at the Indian end of things there is an ever increasing desire to never do business over there ever again.
- superkendall, on 03/18/2009, -0/+5It appears to be you who lack experience.
I have worked with a lot of people from a lot of places - but sometimes call center accents are so think they really are impossible to understand. On top of that, you can often understand someone with a thick accent in person that you really can't over the phone. - bffoley, on 03/18/2009, -1/+6The day Americans stop wanting to buy everything for dirt cheap at Walmart is the day companies can afford to hire no-skill manufacturing jobs here in the US.
- WhiskeyLemur, on 06/30/2009, -0/+5High unemployment rates = employer's market. That means you don't *have* to outsource overseas - you can find cheaper labor domestically, since a low-paying job is still a damn sight better than no job at all. Makes perfect sense to me.
- SupermanWVU, on 03/18/2009, -2/+6Suicide against someone else is murder, so isn't all suicide "self suicide?"
- Grazzit, on 03/18/2009, -0/+4Holy crap these worthless certifications might be worth something! I too can answer a phone!
- superkendall, on 03/18/2009, -0/+4It's not even capacity you can really scale easily, because while you can add bodies quickly none of them will have very good domain knowledge of your company.
There is no magic bullet for capacity scaling, except perhaps a large workforce that works part-time but can be quickly positioned to work full time if demand calls for it. - tgc1, on 03/18/2009, -0/+4***** 'em. They're only interested in their pocket books. Not the state of the country. Because hey, when they cash in all their chips they can ***** off to Dubai or whatever. And we'll all be stuck here in the implosion, wondering where the ***** our next meal is coming from.
- DangerCollie, on 03/18/2009, -0/+4This isn't all economy related, although that has accelerated the trend. Seemed to me there was a growing desire to bring services back before the economy started to crater. Seems to be a lot of reasons. Quality, language barrier, convenience. And the outsource companies aren't nearly the deal they used to be. Raise the price of doing business overseas a little bit and those other issues start looming larger.
- aheinzm, on 03/18/2009, -14/+18what's unsustainable is the American belief that we are entitled to a job that a non-American will do for less.
- inactive, on 03/18/2009, -0/+4I too can verify this with first-hand information. I've been around software programs that went horribly wrong and they had to pull the job back to the US to do it right. I've seen accounting outsourcing that went wrong and after billions of dollars lost, they pulled the job back to the U.S. Indian phone support SUCKS. Let's not fool ourselves. If you've used it, you know.
- CrazyEddie041, on 03/18/2009, -3/+7Is it really outsourcing if it's American corporations hiring in America? I thought the whole point of outsourcing was that it moves American jobs overseas.
- savethejets, on 03/18/2009, -0/+4This has been a long time coming. I've heard of a bunch of companies who tried this and ended up basically having to re-do everything themselves.
IT isn't a job that can be done over long distances as effectively as when you're sitting next to the person who wrote the code you're looking at. -
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