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MagicMtnDan
02-27-2004, 08:48 PM
Op-Ed Columnist: What Goes Around . . .
February 26, 2004
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
BANGALORE, India
I've been in India for only a few days and I am already
thinking about reincarnation. In my next life, I want to be
a demagogue.
Yes, I want to be able to huff and puff about complex
issues - like outsourcing of jobs to India - without any
reference to reality. Unfortunately, in this life, I'm
stuck in the body of a reporter/columnist. So when I came
to the 24/7 Customer call center in Bangalore to observe
hundreds of Indian young people doing service jobs via long
distance - answering the phones for U.S. firms, providing
technical support for U.S. computer giants or selling
credit cards for global banks - I was prepared to denounce
the whole thing. "How can it be good for America to have
all these Indians doing our white-collar jobs?" I asked
24/7's founder, S. Nagarajan.
Well, he answered patiently, "look around this office." All
the computers are from Compaq. The basic software is from
Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent. The air-conditioning
is by Carrier, and even the bottled water is by Coke,
because when it comes to drinking water in India, people
want a trusted brand. On top of all this, says Mr.
Nagarajan, 90 percent of the shares in 24/7 are owned by
U.S. investors. This explains why, although the U.S. has
lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S.
companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to
$4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and
also benefits Americans.
Consider one of the newest products to be outsourced to
India: animation. Yes, a lot of your Saturday morning
cartoons are drawn by Indian animators like JadooWorks,
founded three years ago here in Bangalore. India, though,
did not take these basic animation jobs from Americans. For
20 years they had been outsourced by U.S. movie companies,
first to Japan and then to the Philippines, Korea, Hong
Kong and Taiwan. The sophisticated, and more lucrative,
preproduction, finishing and marketing of the animated
films, though, always remained in America. Indian animation
companies took the business away from the other Asians by
proving to be more adept at both the hand-drawing of
characters and the digital painting of each frame by
computer - at a lower price.
Indian artists had two advantages, explained Ashish
Kulkarni, C.O.O. of JadooWorks. "They spoke English, so
they could take instruction from the American directors
easily, and they were comfortable doing coloring
digitally." India has an abundance of traditional artists,
who were able to make the transition easily to computerized
digital painting. Most of these artists are the children of
Hindu temple sculptors and painters.
Explained Mr. Kulkarni: "We train them to transform their
traditional skills to animation in a digital format." But
to keep up their traditionp up their traditional Indian painting skills,
JadooWorks has a room set aside - because the two skills
reinforce each other. In short, thanks to globalization, a
whole new generation of Indian traditional artists can keep
up their craft rather than drive taxis to earn a living.
But here's where the story really gets interesting.
JadooWorks has decided to produce its own animated epic
about the childhood of Krishna. To write the script,
though, it wanted the best storyteller it could find and
outsourced the project to an Emmy Award-winning U.S.
animation writer, Jeffrey Scott - for an Indian epic!
"We are also doing all the voices with American actors in
Los Angeles," says Mr. Kulkarni. And the music is being
written in London. JadooWorks also creates computer games
for the global market but outsources all the design
concepts to U.S. and British game designers. All the
computers and animation software at JadooWorks have also
been imported from America (H.P. and I.B.M.) or Canada, and
half the staff walk around in American-branded clothing.
"It's unfair that you want all your products marketed
globally," argues Mr. Kulkarni, "but you don't want any
jobs to go."
He's right. Which is why we must design the right public
policies to keep America competitive in an increasingly
networked world, where every company - Indian or American -
will seek to assemble the best skills from around the
globe. And we must cushion those Americans hurt by the
outsourcing of their jobs. But let's not be stupid and just
start throwing up protectionist walls, in reaction to what
seems to be happening on the surface. Because beneath the
surface, what's going around is also coming around. Even an
Indian cartoon company isn't just taking American jobs,
it's also making them.

Blown 472
02-27-2004, 08:51 PM
And this is good how?? all the money they are making is staying there. ****ing nuke them.

fourspeednup
02-27-2004, 08:53 PM
Oh man...they had to **** with my cartoons too! J/K:D

572Daytona
02-27-2004, 08:55 PM
It's good that they buy compaq computers and lucent phones but aren't they made in Hong Kong. My company has been shipping stuff to India for several years now and I'm waiting to get canned. I'm sure it will happen sooner or later but I've already been planning another career when it happens.

JetBoatRich
02-27-2004, 08:59 PM
My wifes company just opened a call center out there:eek:

Blown 472
02-27-2004, 09:04 PM
Dell computors has their call/harassment center there and if you are a minute late on your payment they call you 5 times an hour, I told the **** to stop calling me and I just finished a steak and heard it screaming his name. They stopped calling me.

Dr. Eagle
02-27-2004, 09:05 PM
Originally posted by fourspeednup
Oh man...they had to **** with my cartoons too! J/K:D
That's the last ****ing straw....:rolleyes:

bigq
02-27-2004, 10:10 PM
Originally posted by Blown 472
Dell computors has their call/harassment center there and if you are a minute late on your payment they call you 5 times an hour, I told the **** to stop calling me and I just finished a steak and heard it screaming his name. They stopped calling me.
Actually I think I read somewhere or someone from the board said that Dell got so many complaints they moved the call center back to the US where you could understand the F**k on the other side.
I like your tactics though.:D

manuel
02-28-2004, 07:05 AM
I would be willing to pay a little more for support that spoke intelligible ENGLISH!! if they like our brands so much, why not learn to speak the language, I have quit trying to get any help from Compaq because of this and will never buy ANY product that outsources my calls, is Dell really using U.S. support ? I will go with them and dump all my HP and Compaq if it's true.
Manuel

SoCalOffshore
02-28-2004, 08:56 AM
Dell did move it back to the U.S. Blown, pay pay your bill and they will stop calling you! :D

LUVNLIFE
02-28-2004, 09:09 AM
Originally posted by JetBoatRich
My wifes company just opened a call center out there:eek:
A Countrywide call center in India. They don't have loans for mud and straw huts do they?:confused: Or are the calls being routed there from other countries?

flat broke
02-28-2004, 09:09 AM
Dell has U.S. and Indian Support. Just last week, soon to be Mrs Flatbroke's dad was on the phone with someone in India who was unable to rectify his problem. I think the reason he got the call sent to India was because of the hour he called. It was something like 7pm PST and I think India is like 13.5 hours ahead of us, which would have made it 8:30am in India.
While I see the point that the article posted by MMD, I don't agree with the trade off. The Indian's would still buy coke water, compaq computers, and lucent phones for their own business, so why send jobs over there. Setting up call centers over there is one of the purest forms of labor export I can think of. We are replacing a labor/service job in the states with labor in India. These are the types of jobs perfectly suited to college students and recent college grads. A perfect stepping stone on the path to a technology based career. Now our students and recent grads won't have the option to compete for those jobs.
I have called Dell for support for my laptop in the past (couple months ago) and received a tech in the U.S. He was curteous, helpfull and went above and beyond what he was supposed to do, to help me do something out of the ordinary with my machine. Based on my soon to be father in law's experiences with the India call center, I doubt I would have had the same good fortune. Especially (and this will be a stereotype based comment, but I have a good background with Indian tech types so stfu with any racist banter) since dealing with Indian tech types usually leads to a 5 hr debate over the recommended course of action, and the assumption that they are correct and you are wrong regardless of how much more schooling or practical experience you have in the particular field.
The bottom line, yeah I guess sending the jobs overseas wasn't a total loss (remember we sold more water, phones and PCs), but don't let that argument obscure the fact that american job opportunities were lost in the process and one more college or tech school grad will have to look that much harder for entry level work in a market where extremely overqualified individuals are comming back down the career ladder just to stay employed.
Chris

flat broke
02-28-2004, 09:24 AM
Originally posted by LUVNLIFE
A Countrywide call center in India. They don't have loans for mud and straw huts do they?:confused: Or are the calls being routed there from other countries?
Oh this is nice... put sensitive personal and financial information in front of some foreign national in a country with questionable international policy views. I can see it now, one of those credit card commercials where its the voice of the identiy theft perpetraitor is overlaid over the victim and they are going on and on about how much C4 and minimally depleted uranium they bought to give to their radical religous sect terroist friends to wage a holy war no the infidels of the west.:rolleyes:
Sorry folks, but I won't be sending anymore fallout to countrywide. Crap, if I had a loan with Countrywide, I'd refi the damn thing just to pull the $$ from them, even at the cost of new fees rolled into my loan.
Chris

welk2party
02-28-2004, 11:56 AM
The real issue here is why these jobs are being moved out of the country. In the call center arena, Indian companies have employees that are college educated for the most part and take these jobs as careers. They are offered retirement plans and other benefits. They are paid what would be near the poverty level in America, but the wage for them provides a fair to good income. These jobs in America are considered low level and usually have high employee turnover. Our service level expectations are so high, which is not a bad thing, that providing the service has become too expensive. We buy goods for the lowest price and demand lower prices still. There is a line of diminshing returns somewhere in there. How do you offer a top quality product with the service to back it up and compete in a highly competitive price war. This is a difficult balancing act. Lean to far in any one direction and you can change your whole business model overnight.
Sorry for the random thoughts, but I was just coming off the top of my head.

gnarley
02-28-2004, 02:44 PM
I had a tech support call that I had to make to Network Associates last week and the call went to India. The quality of the call sucked! The support was OK but it ain't like talkin to someone in the states and if I can I will demand to talk to a US tech in the future!