Outsourcing jobs

[Atreides]

While watching Burton's Charlie and the Chocholate Factory (great movie!), something bugged me about the Oompa Loompas. At first I thought it was because they all looked identical and were... lame.

 

However when I realised that Wonka basically outsourced all his jobs (firing local workers including Grandpa Joe that was forced to live in poverty afterwards) and hired cheaper workers (hard to imagine if 3 cocoa beans per year was "lucky" by their standards), I looked at the O.Loompas in a different light. They looked Indian which I suppose goes with the outsourcing theme.

 

After that I didn't mind the O.Loompas as much since things made sense, though I'm surprised Grandpa Joe wasn't bitter towards Wonka. Maybe he'd gotten over that after 20 years.

[Laozi]

The trick to avoiding having your job outsourced is to actually have a skill people find useful.

[taks]

The trick to avoiding having your job outsourced is to actually have a skill people find useful.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

and be good at it...

 

i suppose it wouldn't be called a "skill," however, if you sucked.

 

taks

[Oerwinde]

One thing that bothers me is that one of the departments that every company seems to outsource is Customer Support. Who's brilliant idea was it to give the job of helping english speaking people with the problems with their purchases/services to people who can barely speak english?

[LoneWolf16]

I'd prefer American companies to provide American tech support. <_<

 

Bastards sent me the wrong computer, twice, and were going to charge me both times, even after I sent 'em back, explained to them their error, and told them again exactly what I wanted...twice.

 

No offense to Indian people or anything, but damn it, if you know nothing about the company, or what a computer is, you should not be in tech support! :angry:

[Kalfear]

I'd prefer American companies to provide American tech support.  <_<

 

Bastards sent me the wrong computer, twice, and were going to charge me both times, even after I sent 'em back, explained to them their error, and told them again exactly what I wanted...twice.

 

No offense to Indian people or anything, but damn it, if you know nothing about the company, or what a computer is, you should not be in tech support!  :angry:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Dell did that to me as well.

 

Ordered 2 256 meg ram sticks, get 2 128 meg ram sticks.

 

Replace order, same thing

replace order, same thing

replace order, same thing

 

cancel order and decide to never deal with Dell again

 

I did hear shortly after all that they moved their late night cust support and tech support back to States. To little to late though.

[Oerwinde]

I just hate having to get them to repeat themselves over and over because I have no idea what they're saying.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Outsourcing is one of the worst threats to the social and economic stability of the western world. Increasing the profits of major companies at the cost of significantly larger numbers of unemployed is quite insane to do from societys standpoint.

 

Sure, there will be a little more tax income from that company but that wont cover the cost of the damage done. Especially not if the company can get away with paying that tax in some other country or ignore it completely in the name of global 'free trade'

 

 

 

The trick to avoiding having your job outsourced is to actually have a skill people find useful.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Thats not going to help one bit if they can get someone, who is less skilled, to do the same job for one tenth of your wage. You might even get to spend the last unknowing months at your job as a consultant, teaching the oompa-loompas how to do your job before the company throws you out into the street.

[Atreides]

Well the O.Loompas lose out in height, right?

[LoneWolf16]

Well the O.Loompas lose out in height, right?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's a given.

[Laozi]

Thats not going to help one bit if they can get someone, who is less skilled, to do the same job for one tenth of your wage. You might even get to spend the last unknowing months at your job as a consultant, teaching the oompa-loompas how to do your job before the company throws you out into the street.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

But then that wouldn't be a true skill if just anyone can do what you do.

[Oerwinde]

Thats not going to help one bit if they can get someone, who is less skilled, to do the same job for one tenth of your wage. You might even get to spend the last unknowing months at your job as a consultant, teaching the oompa-loompas how to do your job before the company throws you out into the street.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

But then that wouldn't be a true skill if just anyone can do what you do.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I think you're confusing skill and talent. Talent is natural, Skill is aquired.

[Laozi]

I think you're confusing skill and talent. Talent is natural, Skill is aquired.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

We can argue over our own personal intrepretation of words and all, that's fine.

 

 

I live in Texas, and when I first decided I wanted to have a career I thought I'd be a carpenter. Well as most people in Texas know we have relatively cheap housing because we have a large illegal immigrant workforce that does the work for extremely cheap. At the same time I got on with a professional cabinet builder who mostly did large custom homes. The job was great, we worked at our own pace and usually in the same place for long periods of time, and though we were not even a consideration for 95% of homes built because we offered a skill people found valuable we were able to make a better living then 95% of people who work on homes. The quality of our work and the uniqueness of our skills allowed us not to even have to worry about people offering similiar skills at a fraction of the price

 

 

 

Edit:And yes, I realize this isn't exactly the same thing, but it has enough similiarities not to whine completely apples and oranges

Edited November 20, 2005 by Laozi

[SteveThaiBinh]

Outsourcing is one of the worst threats to the social and economic stability of the western world. Increasing the profits of major companies at the cost of significantly larger numbers of unemployed is quite insane to do from societys standpoint.

The counter argument would be that it benefits the developing world by providing employment and income to the poor, except than in practice it so rarely does. A job in a Nike factory may be slightly better than staying on the family farm, but not much.

 

However, for the West to restrict outsourcing would mean abandoning the neoliberal economic model and using tariffs to protect national industries, both in the West and in the developing world. There are some bad precedents there, and it tends to restrict overall growth.

[taks]

One thing that bothers me is that one of the departments that every company seems to outsource is Customer Support. Who's brilliant idea was it to give the job of helping english speaking people with the problems with their purchases/services to people who can barely speak english?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

silly, yes, but some companies are starting to reverse their positions on such ideas. i heard that dell is bringing their customer service dept. back into the states because of all the problems. we'll see, i suppose, how long this lasts.

 

taks

[taks]

Thats not going to help one bit if they can get someone, who is less skilled, to do the same job for one tenth of your wage. You might even get to spend the last unknowing months at your job as a consultant, teaching the oompa-loompas how to do your job before the company throws you out into the street.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

well, it isn't happening in the highly skilled arena. i have not once heard of anybody worth a salt losing their job overseas. also, the supposed "cheaper labor" is not quite true when all the expenses of running an overseas operation are taken into account. perhaps for low (or no) skill jobs there is a benefit, but when supervision and review of the work is required as they are with design services, the extra overhead to manage such positions replaces the savings in wages.

 

taks

[Surreptishus]

I find it odd when people complain about the low wages. If they were brought up to western standards it would create havoc with inflation,

[taks]

A job in a Nike factory may be slightly better than staying on the family farm, but not much.

i believe this is true as well. partly (maybe mostly?) because labor is not organized in the places we outsource to. should such places ever achieve wage equality with developed nations, outsourcing won't even be possible.

 

However, for the West to restrict outsourcing would mean abandoning the neoliberal economic model and using tariffs to protect national industries, both in the West and in the developing world.  There are some bad precedents there, and it tends to restrict overall growth.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

yeah, it is sort of a catch-22. the best way around it i think is to make sure developing nations actually develop and grow themselves. it really won't be equitable to ship jobs overseas when they are paying similar wages.

 

taks

[Kaftan Barlast]

Thats not going to help one bit if they can get someone, who is less skilled, to do the same job for one tenth of your wage. You might even get to spend the last unknowing months at your job as a consultant, teaching the oompa-loompas how to do your job before the company throws you out into the street.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

well, it isn't happening in the highly skilled arena. i have not once heard of anybody worth a salt losing their job overseas. also, the supposed "cheaper labor" is not quite true when all the expenses of running an overseas operation are taken into account. perhaps for low (or no) skill jobs there is a benefit, but when supervision and review of the work is required as they are with design services, the extra overhead to manage such positions replaces the savings in wages.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

As India has an ever-increasing middle class of highly educated and skilled people, we will see more, as its already happening- outsourcing of 'skilled' positions. As a general rule, everyone is replacable except the higher echelons of management.

 

But individuals is not the issue here, we need jobs and the majority of workers are not highly educated specialists and they are running out of options. Unemployment causes poverty and poverty is the mother of everything bad.

 

 

Outsourcing>Unemployent>Poverty>Breakdown of society as we know it

[Diamond]

There is a little thing called economics.

As companies otsource and pay to Indian workers it leads to lowering wages for local population and increasing wages for India. What happens next? Local people now have less money to spend and profit of the local companies goes down.

 

The result of outsourcing is not "poverty and breakdown" but a shift of economic equillibrium.

 

Also, outsoucing has its price of highly increased cost of administration and contract management. Hence outsourcing is a significant part of some industries but not a panacea.

[taks]

As India has an ever-increasing middle class of highly educated and skilled people, we will see more, as its already happening- outsourcing of 'skilled' positions. As a general rule, everyone is replacable except the higher echelons of management.

i disagree totally with this. we're having issues just with a satellite office in the states, let alone across an ocean. the highly skilled personnel certainly exist in foreign nations, but there are waaaay too many problems using them for anything other than customer service.

 

even commercial companies are restricted in the resources they are allowed to ship overseas... this is particularly NOT happening in the government contracting sector, btw.

 

Unemployment causes poverty and poverty is the mother of everything bad.

 

Outsourcing>Unemployent>Poverty>Breakdown of society as we know it

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

but that's not happening. we're at 5% unemployment, which is ridiculously low compared to the 10%+ we've seen in the past, before the concept of outsourcing even existed. even at that, society didn't break down then, why should it now? sorry, but this view is not only alarmist, but not based on any known facts.

 

taks

[taks]

Also, outsoucing has its price of highly increased cost of administration and contract management. Hence outsourcing is a significant part of some industries but not a panacea.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

which i've mentioned before. it is mostly unskilled jobs and labor that are being outsourced, partly due to this added cost. it is easy to manage a call center from overseas with nothing more than office space and telephones with simple computers connected to a network. do any sort of skill-based effort and it starts to add up. in the end, it may not be the boon that companies expect. and we are already seeing jobs coming back to the US...

 

taks

[Walsingham]

When I was younger I worked in customer serivices for a major UK firm for several years. Hence my dazzling people skills as a mod. "

 

My problem is not with the Indian staff so much as the role such a company must feel customer services plays in their firm. i.e. we don't give a rat's patookie about our customers because we are willing to put their access point half a world away from our executives and so on.

 

Where I worked every single customer service operative had the right to visit the Managing Director in person at any time (within reason). Although we had a good manager of customer services so this was rarely necessary. We also had direct access to any other department and could physically charge in to get stuff done if it was sufficiently urgent. And we needed that access on many occasions. Other departments would too often focus on the technical obstacles to fixing stuff without realising that they had no option.

 

I also don't like outsourcing of customer service because of the lax protection of personal data and the relatively poor law-enforcement.

 

In the main I actually find the working staff more polite and better educated than their English equivalents.

[Sarjahurmaaja.]

"Outsourcing is one of the worst threats to the social and economic stability of the western world. Increasing the profits of major companies at the cost of significantly larger numbers of unemployed is quite insane to do from societys standpoint."

 

Yay for more even distribution of wealth in the world!

[Raphael]

Outsourcing is one of the worst threats to the social and economic stability of the western world. Increasing the profits of major companies at the cost of significantly larger numbers of unemployed is quite insane to do from societys standpoint.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>