@Desi Banda
'Where do you think the profits reaped from outsourcing go? They not only line the pockets of CEOs and other such big d!cks but also the average shareholder who expects more and more out of his investment'
Most people who hold enough shares to reap any benefits are not exactly on the breadline, are they? Plus, more and more large companies are heading into private ownership. Also, as has been reported elsewhere on El Reg companies who give dividends these days are considered stupid on the financial markets - all that matters is growth and pushing the share price up.
With regards to my spelling, it was a slight typo - so what. If you read the rest of my comments you would have noticed that I did spell globalisation correctly the first time. You are also confusing WRITING with SPEAKING. Being dyslexic and have difficulty spelling, does not mean you have a small vocabulary and do not have the means to communicate very effectively when speaking.
'fail to understand why some people jump up and down about outsourcing. Outsourcing is only applicable to lowskill jobs like support (reading out from a freaking manual is not rocket science)'
So support consists solely of reading from a manual does it? Thats where I have been going wrong then. No need to know the product thoroughly through personal use, no need to know of any issues NOT in the manual, no need to be able to listen to the customers problem and what they have done to try and resolve it - instead just read from the script even when the script is asking the same things that they have just told you they have done.
And I beg to differ, but it is not only low-skilled jobs (and even if it were, my point still stands about the millions lost in taxes). A friend of mine worked for a reasonably sized company (about 200 employees) in a department of about 20. The department managed everything from setting up hardware, network configuration, user policies, bespoke programming and support. The company was bought by a larger one. The CEO and senior managers got big bonuses and nice pay rises. This department of highly skilled people was deemed unnecessary because they kept everything running well. As is the case with most I.T. departments, people only notice you when things go wrong. Everything the department did was outsourced to India as it was cheaper. Software query, well support is just reading the manual. Server or network error, that's ok it can be managed remotely unless it is an actual hardware fault in which case it's cheap enough to pay a contractor for a one-off job. Some programming needs doing - much cheaper to have it done in India. All but one of those 20 employees was made redundant, given a pitiful redundancy package and told to go. The remaining person was a traitorous git who was given a marginal pay rise and a relocation package to go to India and train the new staff in procedures.
Since then, at least 2 people from that department are still unemployed. Highly trained and skilled or not it is becoming harder and harder to find well paid work as we lose more jobs. Fewer jobs = more people applying for them. Why pay someone with a proven track record and 10 years experience when you can employ somebody who has recently graduated for 10-15k less?
1 person lost their home and their family as they couldn't pay the mortgage and the stress of it all destroyed his marriage. Don't know what happened to him after that. 1 more person was 'lucky' enough to be able to pay his mortgage but the stress and longer working hours destroyed his marriage too.
3 people tried to set up their own company which failed in under 2 years as they couldn't compete on price (quality of service doesn't mean much these days) taking their savings along with it.
As for the traitor. After his 2 years, his contract was not renewed and there was no relocation package to get him settled back in England. Since then the company has lost customers and is losing money as more people are unhappy with the level of support, the code they ask for is buggy as hell and takes far longer to sort out as it gets passed back and forth, has more downtime when things like the webserver go titsup and the remaining employees really don't enjoy their job any more.
For those of you claiming comments like this are racist - you are way off the mark. As Marty said, it isn't about racism it's about being unhappy with the way things are going.
@Ashwin
If you think my comments are aimed at the people involved - they aren't. They are just doing the job they are paid for, just like the rest of us. It's the companies who should be ashamed of themselves and our governments should step in to do something. It destroys lives and hurts our economy in the long run.
'BTW Bad at the Queen's English != uneducated'
Not at all, but just one example from personal experience. I rang Dell to report a piece of faulty memory. I knew exactly what was at fault as I had tested it. The guy in India asked me to remove the memory and switch the machine on and -his words- See if it booted! Even somebody with no training but that has taught themselves to build a PC from components knows that if you switch a PC on without memory, it gives a beep code telling you there is no memory or it is faulty. Even when I pointed this out to him, and that there is no way this machine would boot without memory all it would do is beep at me, he kept insisting it would. Eventually I gave in and put the phone to the machine as it was beeping, then asked him was he happy now that I had been proven correct that I actually know what i am talking about. Not knowing something as basic as that means badly educated to fulfil that role.It seems sometimes that the only qualifications need to work in an Indian call centre is the ability to read from a script and speak english to a certain level (in some cases not even a high level). You don't need to knwo anything because like Desi said, support is just reading from a manual.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
