More tech jobs going to cheap labor in India

by Elsewhere 55 Replies latest jw friends

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  Elsewhere

  http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/10/04/india.jobs.reut/index.html

  Jobs abound in India's tech sector

  BANGALORE, India (Reuters) -- Software engineer Prakash just quit his job in Bangalore, but he's not worried.

  "The market is booming. I can pick and choose a firm of my choice," said the 28-year-old engineer, who has been in the industry for about five years.

  Companies are slashing payrolls in the United States and Europe to cut costs, moving software work offshore and creating thousands of jobs for India's low-cost engineers.

  Headhunters are scrambling to fill the new jobs.

  "The shelf life of a job hunter has come down to two weeks from about two months," said Gautam Sinha, chief executive at TVA Infotech, which is placing about 90 software workers a month, double the number from the start of the year.

  Top home-grown software exporters such as Wipro Ltd and Infosys Technologies Ltd are also on a hiring spree but the bulk of their staff additions are entry-level positions.

  India's software sector, including the back-office services industry, added 130,000 -- nearly 25 percent -- to its workforce in the year to March, taking the sector to 650,000. Wage costs are rising but are not yet a threat for a nation that churns out about 200,000 engineers per year, analysts say.

  Software workers with two years of experience are paid about 25,000 rupees ($545) a month, roughly one sixth of what their U.S. counterparts earn but a princely wage in a country with an average per capita income of $480 a year.

  "Multinational company salaries are 50 to 60 percent higher at the entry-level and 30 percent higher at the middle management level when compared with Indian IT services companies," Bombay-based Kotak Securities Ltd said in a recent report.

  Wage hikes

  A fall in U.S. employment visas for foreign workers are partly driving the expansion plans of high-tech firms such as IBM, Accenture Ltd and Oracle Corp. in India. Visa curbs discourage Indians from seeking employment abroad and some are returning from a stint overseas.

  "Clearly, the romance of jobs overseas is no longer there for most Indian techies," said Pandia Rajan, the managing director at Ma Foi Management Consultants, a leading headhunter.

  Walk-in interviews are common in the shining offices of companies in the technology hubs of Bangalore, Madras and Hyderabad in the south and Delhi and Bombay in the west.

  India's call centers have been magnets for job-hunting youth in the past few years, but it is only in the last six months that software jobs are flooding the market after a two-year crunch. India's software services exports rose to $9.5 billion in the past year to March and are forecast to grow 26 percent this year.

  "Many Indians overseas are uncertain about their tech jobs and are coming back," said Smita Goswamy, who runs HR Solutions, a small consultancy in the western city of Baroda.

  International hiring

  A full-page advertisement from IBM screams: "The global giant is at your desktop with the opportunity of a lifetime. Can you afford to ignore it?"

  Internet media giant Yahoo Inc. and Fidelity Investments, the number one mutual fund firm, are among other large companies moving technical support work to India.

  Yahoo, which set up a software center in Bangalore in July, is tapping local colleges for talent, said Venkat Panchapakesan, who shifted from Yahoo's U.S. center to head its software unit.

  Accenture and Oracle are expanding furiously but their staff in India is still less than a quarter of Infosys and Wipro, which employ about 17,000 and 21,000 people respectively.

  "Overseas firms are even hiring from mid-sized local players," said Bangalore-based Shambhu Agrawal, who handles technology placements at ABC Consultants.
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  stillajwexelder

  mmm --serving where the need is greater eh?
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  suzi_creamcheez

  That's where my last job went. I can't compete with third world labor.
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  Simon

  I think there is a limit to how much can go before things ballance out and also implications re: security etc...
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  Elsewhere

  Simon, true... there has to be a stopping point. If too many jobs go overseas, then who here in America will be left with money to BUY the products and services being produced overseas. I'm just worried because I just got a very good job with a very large company doing software development. I'd hate to think that they will bring me on and then drop me after a year or two.
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  berylblue

  My partner, Tim, was a business executive who lived in India for some time,. He travelled all over the world and worked with persons from every culture.

  He's already told me about the following; it made my blood boil. Seems people in India are being trained to speak a perfect General American Dialect and are acting as consumer reps for 800 numbers in the US. You never know, when you are calling such a line, whether you are speaking with a real American, or one trained to speak like one so she can do American jobs for much less.

  While I am certainly not without sympathy for persons in all countries who are struggling to make ends meet (or even struggling to eat), I decry this action as deplorable.

  From Green Bay to Bombay
  By Roger Bybee
  
  While all the telecommunications commercials tell us globalization is bringing the world closer together into one big wired family, Wisconsin?s experience shows that corporate-style globalization is actually pulling people apart.
  
  Globalization is creating a more divided world, polarized between an international elite enjoying mega-wealth and those without wealth and power, whether we live in Mexico City or Milwaukee, Beloit or Belarus.
  
  Instead of an interconnected global village, we are witnessing global pillage on a grand scale: Ordinary citizens are losing job security and a democratic voice as corporations roam the globe to find the lowest wages, weakest environmental laws, and the most pliable governments.
  
  This form of globalization enshrines ?investor rights? while often trampling on human rights. It winds up pitting workers across the planet against each other, while both toil madly in a race to the bottom. In this race, decent wages, environmental conditions, fair taxes, and democracy are all excess baggage tossed aside in order to lure investment.
  
  A couple examples from Wisconsin illustrate this trend. A private firm called eFunds Corp. now administers electronic benefit cards for New Jersey?s recipients of welfare and food stamps. The company had utilized a 600-worker call center in Green Bay to handle questions from recipients. Wages at the Green Bay call center ranged from $7.50 to $12 an hour, according to a National Public Radio report. They offered entry-level jobs for workers lacking extensive experience and training.
  
  Then, last February, eFunds sawed off the ladder of opportunity in Green Bay. The jobs handling New Jersey?s inquiries were shifted to Bombay, India, nearly 8,000 miles away. While eFunds officials declined to discuss wages in India or the precise number of jobs lost in Green Bay, the New York Times recently pegged typical call-center wages in India at roughly $200 a month. Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass., projects that this type of ?off-shoring? could result in the loss of 3.3 million American jobs by 2015.
  
  Defending the shift of jobs as a prudent move, eFunds vice president Robert Azman stated, ?outsourcing is one route to attaining a competitive advantage for financial services companies facing increased competition and tighter margins.?
  
  Mr. Azman somehow neglected to mention that all the savings in labor costs from this public contract wind up in eFunds? corporate account, not the public treasury. As one New Jersey welfare official stated, ?But we?re not saving taxpayer dollars. The only group that saves dollars is the company.? An infuriated New Jersey state Senator Shirley Turner declared, ?This is another example of privatization victimizing people. They?re using tax dollars to take jobs out of this country.?
  
  But New Jersey is not the only state to see its public-service contracts shifted offshore by private corporations. Wisconsin?s food-stamp inquiry system has also been ?off-shored? to India. Under a contract with Citicorp Services, questions in English about our Wisconsin food-stamp program are now handled in India. (Spanish-language questions are routed to Tampa, Fla., even though there are plenty of Spanish speakers here in higher-wage Wisconsin.)
  
  This kind of cost cutting is remarkably shortsighted. Tax dollars should be used to give ex-welfare recipients the chance to earn a decent wage and become taxpayers, not to export jobs and enrich private corporations. Former Wisconsin Congressman Tom Barrett blasted the export of the food stamp project to India as ?reprehensible.?
  
  We have come to that point where poverty is being reinforced in Wisconsin while misery in India is being exploited, all at taxpayer expense. Worse, we are likely to see more of this if the Bush administration has its way with the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, which would put virtually all public services up for bidding by for-profit corporations.
  
  As the Legislature and Doyle-Lawton administration confront the $3 billion-plus budget deficit, they need to choose strategies that both restore Wisconsin?s job base and use tax dollars more prudently.
  
  An obvious step in this direction is to quickly put an end to state contracts that actually remove good job opportunities and tax revenues from Wisconsin. We can be a leader in challenging the ?investor rights? version of globalization.
  
  June 12, 2003
• 

  berylblue

  Also, Tim pointed out my recent experience of being told to be a robot at work or get out. He stated that the way to solve the "problem" of having consumer reps being too "pro-consumer" (I've been told that) and too "emotionally involved" with the consumer (ditto) is to hire persons from the kind of culture where thinking for oneself and being overly friendly is not something those from that culture would normally do.

  I hate to admit it, but I know TIm knows the cultural differences between India and the US very well, having lived there (his adopted son is from India, btw) and he may have a point. If English is not your first language, and you were raised to follow directions completely, maybe some woman in INdia is FAR more suited to my job than I could ever hope to be. H owever, I still think it's an abomination.

  Some world citizen I am, huh.
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  JT

  While I understand the impact, even on my own job, to me I see this is simply the result of technology-

  it reminds me of Napster or Kaaaza, while it indeed takes away $$$ from the artist and record companies, the reality is THIS IS THE NEW WAY OF MOVING MUSIC

  SAME with technology, with email, Citrix, Long distance phone service, while it makes it possible for us to sit in a PJ at home, sip coffee and attend a Conference call on the west coast while in NY, it also makes it possible to move jobs anywhere around the world

  i think that many of us need to get a reality ck on life in the 21st century, the days of corporations being based in USA MEANS NOTHING TODAY

  companies are global today and what the long term effect will be i don't know, but the same as we Love our SUVs, our wonderful Cell Phones getting all those FREE LONG DISTANCE CALLS, BEAUTIFUL DIAMOND RINGS well there is a price to pay for every single convenice we enjoy, for everything we enjoy, someone else somewhere is paying the price THAT IS A FACT OF LIFE-

  so to think that such large companines as Dell, Oracle, etc will not continue to move jobs to where they ALREADY DO BIZ is a joke

  i too may be affected but from my veiwpoint, this is just the underside/darkside of the developement of technology and it will continue like this for years to come

  thruout the history of man this has been the case, will it cause the fall of cilivzation as we know it, could be,

  for it will not be the first time that an entire econmonic system collasped under the weight of itself.

  big biz has never been concerned about the welfare of people in general, why do you think we have so many laws on the books, left to themselves they would charge you and i for AIR TO BREATH smile

  how does one stop jobs from going to a companies overseas office, esp if technolgy allows them to operate as seamless as if they were next door to you.

  it is going to be interesting to see where we are in the next 10-20 yrs as a society for sure
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  ballistic

  This is not just affecting the US. Every week here in the UK is another headline of 1000s of jobs going.
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  berylblue

  WTF!!! Those Indian women have MUCH NICER working environment than I do...all I get is a lousy POD which I have to share with 8 others and they get a cubicle?

  JT...you know I am always impressed with what you write but

  I do not have, nor do I want

  a diamond ring

  an SUV

  a cell phone

  etc

  I am grateful for what I have, and yes, I will blow my own horn here, I share willingly and without being asked what I have with others.

  No, it's NOT JUST ABOUT THE US. We can be selfish, self absorbed idiots, and I know it.

  But please. Don't train persons to speak General American Dialect to pretend they are in a call center in Minneapolis. That's deceptive at best and cruelly hurtful to Americans who, though no fault of their own, can not find better jobs. We cant ALL be brain surgeons or rock stars, can we? And McDonald's doesnt pay enough. I'm not talking diamond rings here, I am talking surviving.