India outsourcing back to USA

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/as-indian-companies-grow-in-the-us-outsourcing-comes-home/2011/05/17/AFZbrp7G_story.html

by nightbrawler • 14 years ago

128 61 14 years ago

washingtonpost.com

mark_l_watson2• 14 years ago

After the dot com bust, they only interesting consulting job I could get as a 5 month gig for an Indian company writing a Java Sharepoint clone. They did not pay very well, but the work was satisfying. I have also had two remote gigs from China and a few from Europe. Earth seems flat (in the Thomas Freidman sense) to me! Btw, I live in the mountains of Central Arizona.

reddit_clone• 14 years ago

Sharepoint clone in Java in 5 months? I am intrigued. Want to share any details?

mark_l_watson2• 14 years ago

Sure. All files stored on disk. Meta data stored in memory using prevalence. I used JSP and custom tag libraries.

AndrewDucker2• 14 years ago

More accurately - Indian outsourcing companies have become global outsourcing companies, providing services from wherever is cheapest/most efficient.

freehunter3• 14 years ago

On some projects, we work with an Indian outsourcing company (not necessarily an off-shoring company) to get temporary programmers to assist with a project. There have been a few cases where we went to India to find workers, and the Indian company came back to the city and found us a local contractor when local outsourcing companies could not. In talking with these people, they got more work from partnering with Indian companies than they did with local companies.

monsterix6• 14 years ago

The title and premise of the article seem totally flawed.

The reason why Aegis has opted to hire locals within US is for their native American accent. The cost of vocal training of an average Indian employee is quite high. Given the attrition rate and gap in quality of delivered service, it makes sense for these companies to find out ways to sustain and meet standards. That's why cheap hire of people who "lack high school diplomas" makes sense in the US.

This does not in anyway suggest that India is now 'outsourcing' back to United States. That is likely to happen only after huge and reverse tilting between the two economies [Assuming China does not exist!]. IMO, this move on part of the company indicates only their incapacity to serve from India. In other words the article is just an ego-massage fluff piece.

[Language fixes]

antidoh2• 14 years ago

That, and maybe combined with outsourcing companies being mostly Indian because of the last decade, and really good at sourcing.

monsterix6• 14 years ago

Yeah, it takes away the pain of finding alternate services and redo the contracts (read lazy managers at OEMs).

mseebach• 14 years ago

What you're describing are the exact same mechanisms that led US companies to outsource to India, but working in reverse.

monsterix6• 14 years ago

No. Cost of hiring in America was the only reason why outsourcing took shape. India was the largest population which had advantage of basic English education; and thus it was in a good position to serve such an emerging market at low cost.

Only now people have realized that English is different from Hinglish, Chinglish, Finglish, Singlish and cost-wise it is okay (economical and easier) to hire "barely educated" within the States than to train someone in Asia who would jerk the consumer experience quite often. I think both situations are completely different.

mikeash• 14 years ago

Unless I misunderstood the article, all they're doing here is hiring locals to handle local customers. This is something everybody does everywhere, and is by no means "outsourcing". When we talk about US companies outsourcing call center work to India, it's virtually always referring to serving American customers with Indian call center employees, which is a completely different situation.

DanBC2• 14 years ago

> Capuana, a manager for Aegis in New York, motivates this U.S. office with dress-down days

Can anyone explain to me why a call centre worker needs to be dressed 'up' most days?

tathagata• 14 years ago

Some dresses can be distracting.

freehunter3• 14 years ago

When I worked tech support, I asked this same question of my management. The answer was professionalism. The same reason why most interviewing experts or interviewing articles will tell you to put on a tie for a phone interview: the way you dress influences the way you comport yourself. Doing professional tech support requires a professional behavior that a t-shirt and jeans won't bring about. This might be different if you're doing tech support for a valley start-up.

PakG13• 14 years ago

I'd be interested in studies on this because I've heard the same thing over and over again, but I don't believe it.

DanBC2• 14 years ago

This makes some kind of sense.

I would be really interested to see some research about it.

There are a bunch of hints, tips, or suggestions for using the telephone at work, but a lot of them seem to be "good ideas" rather than researched.

Other examples I've heard are "stand up if you want to sound confident" or "smile to sound happier".

It's a bit odd because there's lots of money and reputation going into telephone support, and a small edge would mean big savings.

slurgfest2• 14 years ago

The real answer is that your employer is asserting dominance over employees who are cheap and have no bargaining position.

engtech• 14 years ago

The best tech support guy I've known always wore dress shirts plus ties and had a psych degree instead of any kind of tech degree.

He's since moved on to becoming a personal trainer, another profession where understanding human motivators really helps him out.

antidoh2• 14 years ago

Normally that's just un-thinking control. Although if they're hiring from "the park bench," as the article says, then there might be a minimum personal hygiene standard that dressing up might maintain as a side effect.

happywolf• 14 years ago

Could this be something similar to why some companies wear uniforms?

auser6784• 14 years ago

Yes, this is true.I know a lot of companies that are hiring more in the US and opening offices. This trend is going to continue. USA has some exceptional people and skillsets, and so do Indians. It will be a win win situation.

slurgfest2• 14 years ago

This is what the term "negative externalities" was invented to cover. It is a win-win situation for those who successfully outsource - getting good work at lower cost. It is a win-win situation for those who get decent work. However, it is not a win-win situation for those who cannot get a job or who take a big pay cut or worse conditions because so much of the work in their sector has been outsourced. Perhaps you could say it is a win-win-lose situation.

tatsuke95• 14 years ago

Like you describe, out-sourcing generally provides a net-benefit to society by providing cheaper goods here and jobs in India. But it does not necessary produce a net-benefit to the US, since the trade off is cheaper goods but fewer American jobs.

As a global citizen, I'm not concerned about the latter.

auser6784• 14 years ago

I disagree. The app economy has changed that and is creating jobs. Let me give you an example. An American has a great idea, but does not have the money to hire an expensive or the skills to develop an app. He gets the app developed in a lower cost company, and the app becomes hugely successful.

Now the same person ends up hiring more designers and marketing folks in US. That person has more discretionary income that is spent locally. The technology companies like Apple, Google and a lot of smaller ones end up hiring more people.

We have had a lot of clients who have done well and had the same path. I was deeply moved when one of our US clients told me that the app we had developed helped him pay the bills during the darkest days of the 2008 recession.

People need to understand this debate better

1. The app economy has democratised the idea to customer strategy. Outsourcing here provides a huge leverage. This is not like some IT department cutting down jobs and moving them to lower cost places.

2. The world is flat now, in terms of skills and not costs.

3. More non US companies are hiring in America and setting up offices there. We are doing the same.

ionforce• 14 years ago

"Near-sourcing" aka hiring? It's silly that we have to resort to jargon.

forgotAgain• 14 years ago

The article is 15 months old. This particular trend seems to have lasted for a very short period of time.

smountcastle• 14 years ago

I wonder how much profit there is to create loops? Company outsources to India which outsources to the US which outsources back to India which outsources back to the US, etc. I guess they make it work by finding cheap labor in the US (compared to training Indians).

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

> hustle the phones

Buzzword bingo.

suhastech• 14 years ago

I think with the advent of the internet, the disparity in the world economy is being normalised. In India, just 6-7 years back, $200/month was a good salary where one could lead a a happy life. Nowayadays, $1000/mo is fairly manageable (still very low compared to world standards). Inflation is up, living standards is improving, costs have risen and so are the income expectations. So, this might not be surprising.

Just my thoughts.

vexxt2• 14 years ago

H1-B visa abuse must be stopped.

mycodebreaks2• 14 years ago

Agreed, no abuse should be tolerated.

However, it's impossible to get h1b visas for call center workers.

vexxt2• 14 years ago

You sure? You can get H-1B for people with no work lined up! Those damn desi firms.

auser6784• 14 years ago

I would change the statement to 'The US Visa laws are broken'. Empirically H1-B demand is tied to the demand for highly skilled people. There have been years when it was allotted via lottery and there were years when the quota was not filled up.

The companies using H1 already pay a high penalty in terms of the very high fees, which is non refundable even if the visa is rejected. It is a source of revenue to the US govt

therandomguy• 14 years ago

How is a company hiring in a different country 'outsourcing'? It would be outsourcing if Aegis is giving work to another company in US.

y4m4• 14 years ago

The Article is from 2011 what a joke!

India outsourcing back to USA

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