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Thread: Jobs Going Off-Shore to India - here's the scoop

  1. #1
    MagicMtnDan
    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.

  2. #2
    Blown 472
    And this is good how?? all the money they are making is staying there. ****ing nuke them.

  3. #3
    fourspeednup
    Oh man...they had to **** with my cartoons too! J/K

  4. #4
    572Daytona
    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.

  5. #5
    JetBoatRich
    My wifes company just opened a call center out there

  6. #6
    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.

  7. #7
    Dr. Eagle
    Originally posted by fourspeednup
    Oh man...they had to **** with my cartoons too! J/K
    That's the last ****ing straw....

  8. #8
    bigq
    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.

  9. #9
    manuel
    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

  10. #10
    SoCalOffshore
    Dell did move it back to the U.S. Blown, pay pay your bill and they will stop calling you!

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