

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

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monsterix
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]

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

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monsterix
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.

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binxbolling
Typically -glish refers to a mash-up of English and another language, _not_
English that sounds accented to Americans.

For example, Taglish is Tagalog with English mixed in (or vice versa) and
you'd be hard-pressed to find any call center in the Philippines that relies
on Taglish.

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eshvk
I would argue that the English spoken by as a vernacular in India contains
enough idiosyncrasies to be classified as a -glish.

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mark_l_watson
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.

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

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

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

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freehunter
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.

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DanBC
> _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?

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freehunter
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.

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PakG1
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.

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AndrewDucker
I don't believe it either. I've never seen any evidence that forcing people to
wear a tie has a long-term effect on their behaviour.

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stephengillie
Wearing a tie used to get in my way when I had to crawl under desks to get at
PCs.

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freehunter
Sounds like IBM.

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PakG1
Dude, my day job is at IBM. LOL. I am glad the days of having to wear ties
there are over.

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

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

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auser678
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.

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slurgfest
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.

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tatsuke95
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.

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v0cab
Problem is, other countries aren't necessarily as open as we are to
outsourcing and foreign labour. For instance, Western universities have many
Asian professors, especially in Math, Science, and Engineering. But South
Korean universities very rarely employ foreign professors, at least not full
professors.

This goes for many jobs in South Korea -- they simply don't want foreigners to
do it, because foreigners aren't Korean. The exception is teaching English
Conversation, because the Korean teachers very obviously can't do it well
enough themselves. The government is trying to limit South Korea's reliance on
foreign ESL teachers though.

This goes for outsourcing too -- the UK government is happy to consider having
foreign companies build nuclear power plants or railway lines in the UK, but
the South Korean government would rather have everything in South Korea done
by South Korean companies, even setting up a company to do it if necessary.

When Westerners open their labour markets to foreigners and foreign companies,
what can they do if the foreigners do not reciprocate?

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suhastech
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.

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smountcastle
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).

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

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pavel_lishin
> _hustle_ the phones

Buzzword bingo.

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y4m4
The Article is from 2011 what a joke!

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vexxt
H1-B visa abuse must be stopped.

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mycodebreaks
Agreed, no abuse should be tolerated.

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

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

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mycodebreaks
You must report abuse then. Be a vigilant citizen.

