What do I want to achieve?
I'm answering Feedback No. 6 first because it helps further clarify my position:
My take on the subject is that we all have our own destinies. Why do we do these jobs?
Read the Bhagavad Gita...
Has the US forced these jobs on us? Why should the US offer us technically challenging work? Why do we expect them to treat us as first class citizens in the industry? The beggars are seldom the choosers.
Right. I totally agree with you. And this is why I claim that the work we do isnt as good as the client's work.
And considering the bad state of our economy, government, general living standard of country and the attitude of all of us, look at what the outsourcing has done to our life? If outsourcing was not to happen, what would happen to us? What would we end up doing?
What would be our standard of living?
Agreed, agreed, and agreed. I earn more than my Dad did when he had 6 odd years of experience, and people in my company routinely fly to Malaysia and buy expensive Apartments. We are helping the Indian economy to grow, and triggering other sectors as well. But. In this blog, I am not comparing our jobs with the old-economy type jobs in India, but with the jobs similarly qualified people in the "Outsourcer countries" get. This may be an unfair comparision considering the country we live in. But people are making this exact same comparison and saying that we are at the same level as the Outsourcers. See the Feedback No.s 1 and 2 below : They illustrate the common mindset of the Outsourcee public, of the Indian media, of a lot of Indian officialdom, who say: "We are really competing with the Americans on common ground now."
Though I understand that the primary intention of the blog is to paint the other side of the outsourcing picture, what is its main point? What do you want to arrive at?
In a word : the truth. As I mentioned above, Indian public opinion today is that due to Outsourcing, we are rapidly gaining on the Americans. It is felt that a person fresh out of college today in India can expect to get the same kind of career that his counterpart in the US does. People say the outsourcing companies are among the world's top X companies, and the work people do there, the way they are run, is the best possible. The panicky reports in US media about job losses help fuel that feeling.
My contention is that outsourcee companies are a long way away from making serious contributions to World industry. Indian Outsourcee companies are nowhere near world standards - not only in the quality of work they do, but the way they are managed, the options available to their employees. This stuff is subtle. It doesnt show up in newspaper interviews, it doesnt get discussed openly.
When a college graduate joins such a company, he's only seen all the glowing media reports, he hasnt seen all the details I'm writing about. I want people to know the problems they'll face when they make a career in an Outsourcee company.
Recognizing a problem is the first step to fixing it. If enough people read, understand, and participate in this discussion, they are armed to see such problems and think of solutions. I do not claim to be an expert. I cant hand out magic potions that'll make everything all right. It'll have to be a joint brainstorming session.
This requires you, my readers, to ask me tough questions, and force me to clarify my points, and for you to spread the ideas to your friends so more people understand what I'm talking about. So shoot!
My take on the subject is that we all have our own destinies. Why do we do these jobs?
Read the Bhagavad Gita...
Has the US forced these jobs on us? Why should the US offer us technically challenging work? Why do we expect them to treat us as first class citizens in the industry? The beggars are seldom the choosers.
Right. I totally agree with you. And this is why I claim that the work we do isnt as good as the client's work.
And considering the bad state of our economy, government, general living standard of country and the attitude of all of us, look at what the outsourcing has done to our life? If outsourcing was not to happen, what would happen to us? What would we end up doing?
What would be our standard of living?
Agreed, agreed, and agreed. I earn more than my Dad did when he had 6 odd years of experience, and people in my company routinely fly to Malaysia and buy expensive Apartments. We are helping the Indian economy to grow, and triggering other sectors as well. But. In this blog, I am not comparing our jobs with the old-economy type jobs in India, but with the jobs similarly qualified people in the "Outsourcer countries" get. This may be an unfair comparision considering the country we live in. But people are making this exact same comparison and saying that we are at the same level as the Outsourcers. See the Feedback No.s 1 and 2 below : They illustrate the common mindset of the Outsourcee public, of the Indian media, of a lot of Indian officialdom, who say: "We are really competing with the Americans on common ground now."
Though I understand that the primary intention of the blog is to paint the other side of the outsourcing picture, what is its main point? What do you want to arrive at?
In a word : the truth. As I mentioned above, Indian public opinion today is that due to Outsourcing, we are rapidly gaining on the Americans. It is felt that a person fresh out of college today in India can expect to get the same kind of career that his counterpart in the US does. People say the outsourcing companies are among the world's top X companies, and the work people do there, the way they are run, is the best possible. The panicky reports in US media about job losses help fuel that feeling.
My contention is that outsourcee companies are a long way away from making serious contributions to World industry. Indian Outsourcee companies are nowhere near world standards - not only in the quality of work they do, but the way they are managed, the options available to their employees. This stuff is subtle. It doesnt show up in newspaper interviews, it doesnt get discussed openly.
When a college graduate joins such a company, he's only seen all the glowing media reports, he hasnt seen all the details I'm writing about. I want people to know the problems they'll face when they make a career in an Outsourcee company.
Recognizing a problem is the first step to fixing it. If enough people read, understand, and participate in this discussion, they are armed to see such problems and think of solutions. I do not claim to be an expert. I cant hand out magic potions that'll make everything all right. It'll have to be a joint brainstorming session.
This requires you, my readers, to ask me tough questions, and force me to clarify my points, and for you to spread the ideas to your friends so more people understand what I'm talking about. So shoot!
posted by Sudarshan | 8:18 AM
1 Comments:
> Read the Bhagavad Gita...
Same to you too :) That should give you some clues about how to make this situation better.
Let me make my postion clear. Put yourself in the oursourcer's shoes for a moment. You have a business and you need to be competitive, profit margins can't be increased all the time by just selling your products at higher cost but you also need to reduce your cost of operation. Thats the first variable in the outsourcing equation, reduce the cost, and the other being to make use of the global talent. Now since you have to get your work done at a lower cost and from people you don't know far too well, you start thinking about what can you outsource. Just because some company in India says they can manage cradle to grave journey of your product, can you hand-off all your work on the day one? No you can't. You start with that part of your work where you can afford to compromise on quality and where your business secrets (core work) are not given away. You start the partership. Slowly, if the outsourcee people are good, you start putting more faith into your partner. You start giving more important/core work.
Now look at it from this end. As soon as the project starts and the client gives us the peripheral work, our reaction is to loose our heart and then we don't put our 100% into it. Whenever the team here has put in more than 100% in delivering whatever the client started with, in almost all the cases the client begins to explore what more challenging work can be pushed to the partner. The client still needs someone to do the peripheral work. The trick here is to get good replacements and transition people who have been doing that work to more challenging work. This is where things start to go wrong. I won't go into details of all the ways in which the great situation here can be screwed but I know you would get the point. What does the client think about us now?
So, what do I want to say? Outsourcing is like any other business relationship. The trust has to be built with hard work and patience. Good work would eventually come but its only after establishing confidence in your outsourcer of your capabilities. So, what you say is not the complete truth nor is what the media paints about our industry as you pointed out in your post. Many of us are really doing cutting-edge work and a lot of us are doing the peripheral work. The proportions of each are definitely not the same. There is definite scope for improving it. And not every fresher in the US gets to do cutting edge work, many start with low rung jobs before making into exciting stuff.
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