

My Summer at an Indian Call Center - pier0
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/indian-call-center-americanization

======
bh42222
_Today, almost half of BPO employees are women, many of whom outearn both of
their parents. Free-market cheerleaders, conflating rising wages with rising
spirits, are quick to applaud India's "maturing" markets. But the truth is
more complicated: Studies show that once people move out of poverty,
increasing wealth does not necessarily lead to happiness._

Yeah but it sure cuts down on malnutrition. The above paragraphs is a
shibboleth for well-off far lefties. And boy does reading it piss me off. What
a way to miss the forest for the trees!

This article started out great but then slowly started to go bad. Our plucky
western kid, son of doctors, with a liberal arts education freely admits he
just can't quite grasp the basic geography of Australia.

If that was a badly done attempt to compliment the Indians, good. Badly
written, but good intent. If it was an honest admission of his... jeez is this
what liberal education does to a son of two doctors!?

The writer also goes the extra mile by sharing a bed with a stranger, but all
he seems to get out of it is a few sentences mentioning that he shared a bed
with a stranger, and this one time the power went out. Not exactly many deep
insights form all this self imposed hardship. Or as the kids say these days,
cool story bro.

Lastly, the author spends a lot of time writing about one depressed guy.

There was some good stuff, globalization, the changes in Indian society, and
it could have been a great article. But instead it seems to be just a vague
money doesn't bring happiness story, also westernization is kind of sucky. You
don't say.

~~~
brown9-2
Presumably malnutrition is not much of a concern after one has left poverty.
The author is citing studies that show that once you are _beyond_ poverty and
have the means to attain whatever things you want, then "increasing wealth
does not necessarily lead to happiness."

~~~
Symmetry
Its probably not much of a concern for the person working in the call center,
but what about the family they're sending money back to? I'm not sure if
giving money to your relatives so they aren't malnourished will increase your
happiness, but it should certainly increase theirs.

------
prayag
I submitted the same story in one page here yesterday
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2735814> , funny how things work here.

Having said that, this is a great read. What worries me about India is that we
are producing a generation whose sole competency is in answering phone calls
and faking who they are and the only selling point is that they are cheaper
labor than the western workers. This isn't a sustainable in longer term. We
are bound to find labor markets that are cheaper (we already are) or business
processes that are more efficient (we already are). For a sustained
development India needs to ramp up her infrastructure and invest in her people
in a way which produces value rather than ups elling her people cheaply.
Outsourcing should just be a stepping stone to industries that are more
valuable.

~~~
dimmuborgir
Remember, the whole IT/BPO industry of India makes up just 5% of Indian GDP
and it has directly employed just 2-3 million people. Most of the hype
surrounding it has been created by the clueless western media - "OMG, India is
eating our jobs".

India has achieved great strides in other industries in recent years (steel,
coal, automobile, textile, agriculture, crafts, jewellery etc.) which should
be highlighted and encouraged. Enough of this call-center nonsense.

~~~
prayag
5% of world's 10 largest GDP is huge. At 5% of 1.5 Trillion dollars its about
250 Billion US Dollars. Also, the growth in BPO is also much more significant
than the regular industries.

In any case, it is hardly insignificant (or nonsense).

~~~
dimmuborgir
Where did that $250 billion come from? Typo?

The Indian IT industry is worth $60-75 billion at present. Remember, it's the
whole IT industry. BPO sector hardly touches even $20 billion. Given its
value, the hype it has earned for more than a decade is ridiculous and
unjustified.

~~~
prayag
Yea.. Sorry about 70 Billion. My bad. That's a valid argument to make. But
given the growth that the BPO industry has seen and given the industry employs
mostly young people. I think its still important to consider its cultural
impact.

------
rluhar
To work in a call center, you need to be able to speak, read and write
English. You do not need a university degree, you do not need to possess a
particular technical skill set. Most call centers will offer just enough
training to get an employee going.

India has a huge number of young people who may not be able to join the IT
companies, manufacturing industries, or the booming private financial sector
because they may not have the education, inclination or aptitude to do so.

Call centers, much reviled as they are, provide an avenue for hundreds of
thousands of people to hold down a well paying, stable job. I think the
author's experience there is fairly typical, but there is a crucial difference
in perception.

What the author finds depressing (or pointless) is actually a gateway to a
"middle class" life for many thousands of people. I am sure if the author went
back in time to Michigan in the 20s, he would have similar things to say about
workers on the automobile assembly lines. But while the great American
manufacturing boom of the early 20th century is celebrated as a gateway to
prosperity, a fairly similar thing happening in India is looked upon with a
somewhat negative bias.

------
hzay
"Twenty years ago, before India opened its markets to the world, career
prospects were bleak. Men might have been laborers or government workers, but
even the most ambitious women often gave in to social pressure and stayed
home."

My 70 year old Indian grandmother was a school teacher. She had five daughters
and all of them became teachers or professors. None of them spent their
childhood in cities.

~~~
baltcode
It is a very superficial, stereotyped statement (not any worse than those
about Aussies, I guess), and people were obviously doing things other than
laborers, government workers, and homemakers. However, the BPO era has added a
significant number of jobs of questionable worth and the statement does talk
of a real sociological phenomenon.

~~~
hzay
>It is a very superficial, stereotyped statement (not any worse than those
about Aussies, I guess), and people were obviously doing things other than
laborers, government workers, and homemakers.

Yes. There were several statements that were plain false, and I picked that
one because I had proof-of-falsehood.

>However, the BPO era has added a significant number of jobs of questionable
worth and the statement does talk of a real sociological phenomenon.

I think it is entirely possible to write about this phenomenon without having
to stretch the truth.

EDIT: I just realized that the article doesn't really say anything about
Aussies.

~~~
rue
One anecdote certainly isn't “proof-of-falsehood”, be the veracity of the
original statement what it may.

~~~
hzay
I meant proof-of-falsehood for myself. That is, I knew vaguely that a lot of
things that were written in that article were not quite true, but I didn't
have facts that showed them to be false, except for the quote in my original
post. I didn't write all the facts I had against that because I felt that, if
you do not believe my anecdote, offering more than one doesn't strengthen my
case, and if you choose to believe it, I needn't offer more than one story.

------
parfe
>Call-center employees gain their financial independence at the risk of an
identity crisis.

I don't quite understand this concern. Do people worry any other paid actor is
at risk of forgetting who he is?

~~~
Raphael
I don't think many performances go on for 10 or more hours per day.

~~~
parfe
"A star's day is generally a very long one (12-16 hours)"

[http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4778488_movie-star-spend-
workda...](http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4778488_movie-star-spend-workday.html)

~~~
Kaedon
True, but most of that is not spent performing. It is spent waiting to
perform.

------
nl
(I'm Australian)

 _"Just stating facts, guys," Lekha began, as we scribbled notes, "Australia
is known as the dumbest continent. Literally, college was unknown there until
recently. So speak slowly." Next to me, a young man in a turban wrote No
college in his notebook._

I can't comment on the dumbest continent thing, but it is true that the Indian
accent often sounds very fast to Australians.

 _"Australians drink constantly," Lekha continued. "If you call on a Friday
night, they'll be smashed—every time."_

lol.

 _"Oh, and don't attempt to make small talk with them about their pets, okay?
They can be quite touchy about animals."_

WTF?? Where did they get this from? Can anyone explain the source for this?

~~~
vacri
Australian here too. They get this from the same place we get our ideas of
Indian culture - urban myth and hearsay.

Regarding slow talkers, it depends on where you come from in Aus
(stereotypically rural and/or Queenslander). I travelled across the US and
when I approached NYC I was eager to hear people speaking at a 'normal' rate,
as I was a bit fatigued from having to slow down my rate of speech (I'm also
known as 'the quiet one' among by friends). And when I got to NYC... New
Yorkers still didn't speak fast enough for me. I didn't have to slow down, but
it was still noticeably slower than what I was used to.

As for college being unknown here until recently, maybe they mean recently
compared to India? 150 years is a drop in the bucket to several thousand...

~~~
nl
The speech thing is interesting. Thinking about it some more, I suspect the
big difference with Indian English vs Australian is that the Indian version
seems to have smaller gaps between words (to my ears at least).

On US accents - have you seen the US Accent Test[1]? taking it as a foreigner
is pretty interesting. Apparently I have a Northeastern accent (I'm from
Adelaide).

[1]
[http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?action=go_detail&sub_ac...](http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?action=go_detail&sub_action=take&obj_id=9827)

~~~
bobbles
Sydney-sider here. I got a Northeastern accent as well. Although it may be
worth noting I was born in Adelaide but moved away while young.

~~~
someperson
Another Adelaidian here. Also Northeastern :S

------
VladRussian
highly recommend movie "Outsourced" <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425326/> \-
funny, seems (never been to India myself) realistic while without extra
cynicism, and personally it made me feel better toward the Indian guys/gals on
the other end of the phone line.

~~~
roundsquare
Haven't seen the movie but there is also a TV series. Its not very realistic
though (according to a real life culture trainer).

------
timxpp
"Truth is, 90 percent of the people there, you will find, they'll do the most
stupid things, impulsive things. I know for a fact. At the same time,
Americans are bighearted people, and the remaining 10 percent of them are
smart. Bloody smart. That's why they rule the world."

My observation as well :-)

~~~
vacri
Americans have a great can-do attitude and are lucky to have some of the
wealthiest land in the world. These two things let them exploit their smarts
very well. But bighearted? Not really. Domestic charity doesn't really stand
out from the pack and foreign aid is a lesser proportion of GDP than their
contemporaries. Their foreign aid is more effective than elsewhere because of
the size of their economy, but as a proportion of what is earned, it's not
competitive.

My personal experience in the US is that the people are very welcoming and
friendly, which leads me to think that Americans are bighearted to people they
personally know, but not so much to strangers - eg witness the powerful
currents of public opinion against welfare or universal healthcare that don't
really exist in contemporary countries.

~~~
truthseeker
Are confusing Americans and American politics? I haven't been to many
countries but I find Americans the kindest and helpful people around.

May be there are some advantages to a 2 party system but it left the whole
country divided and there seems to be no middle ground anywhere in sight.

------
braindead_in
I feel sorry that they have to put up with abusive behavior. Just hang up and
move on. But can you really just ignore abuse? It must be leaving a mark
somewhere. I have also had abusive users and customers and I also ignore them.
But can't get it out of my head sometimes. It keeps bothering me.

------
zalthor
I wonder what all these people would do if we ever managed to build a voice
recognition system that actually works.

~~~
gaius
Well, a call centre _is_ a voice recognition system. It's a black box, you
plug phone lines into one end, and your back-end corporate databases into the
other. Artificial artificial intelligence, I've heard it referred to as.

~~~
zalthor
It's really sad that its cheaper to have a person act like a computer than
vice-versa. Its like we are going through the industrial revolution, only
backwards.

~~~
ebiester
It's a matter of algorithms and processing power and data points at this
point. With the number of people working on it, we're close. Computer systems
have come leaps and bounds in the last 5 years, and computational linguistics
is not an easy problem.

------
balakc
I'd be happy if such _outsourcing_ jobs stop flourishing in India. By cutting
the amount of _easy_ options to make money, it will motivate/challenge
students to do well and aim for a much better career.

~~~
raghava
But alas, my friend, as long as the current exchange rate prevails, there
would be many opting for the _easy way_.

~~~
rrrazdan
One, being a bit pedantic but exchange rate has nothing to do with the income
gap. If I measure distances in feet and you in metres, would you say that
distances in my country are 'smaller'? The term that you should be looking at
is per-capita income at purchasing power parity.

Two, economies go through development cycles. They start out in the low-skill
jobs and then move on. For example look at the shipbuilding industry. Moved
from the west to Japan in the 60's, who then used it to move to other heavy
industries. After Japan had grown skills and incomes increased the industry
moved to Korea. The same cycle is in process right now, with the industry now
moving to China. Don't hate outsourcing, but use it to build a better future.

------
cssndrx
You've gotta check out the troll comment by emmarose on that page... highly
recommended.

~~~
waterside81
Troll comment? She was illustrating how clueless SHE was and how it must be
hard for CSRs to deal with customers like her.

~~~
cssndrx
"Troll" as in I'm pretty sure she was making the story up. Judging by her
perfect writing style and the degree of tech-literacy necessary for her to
find the narrative to begin with.

