Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: RevDisk on July 07, 2011, 07:30:13 PM
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http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/indian-call-center-americanization
Best quote?
"America is not all honey and roses the way they tell you," he informs me. "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 current department (Global Networking Operations Center) is being outsourced to Hyderabad. Our third shift already was. I was the last American, and spent a week solely with them. They were a LOT better trained, and given a lot more training than I was, period. My training was "Here's a couple docs, read them and ask questions when you have them." I adjusted, and am now on shift by myself managing several thousand servers, no problems.
The week I was with the Indians? Things got done quicker, more completely and much neater when I did it myself and handed them makework. When I handed the FOUR Indians the majority of the work, first shift tore me a new one for the amount of just plain bad work. Next night, did it all myself. No complaints.
I'm certainly not racist or protectionist. I have no bloody idea why, but the Indians doing the outsourced work cannot do independent thought. Hand them a script, step by step, and they can do it quite well and reasonably quickly. Tell them to put round pegs in a round hole, triangular pegs in a triangular hole, and they won't know to put a square peg in a square hole. I've seen it time and time again. Whatever scripts they have or made, they do. Anything outside of it, they close out the issue without resolution, transfer it inappropriately or let it sit until the Americans come on shift.
Having a production server or router be down for six, eight hours is expensive. Very expensive. I can't imagine they're saving that much money from what I've seen thus far. Couple months, the Americans are being phased out and it's all moving to Hyderabad. The rest of the company, which is heavily international, is NOT pleased.
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I'm certainly not racist or protectionist. I have no bloody idea why, but the Indians doing the outsourced work cannot do independent thought. Hand them a script, step by step, and they can do it quite well and reasonably quickly. Tell them to put round pegs in a round hole, triangular pegs in a triangular hole, and they won't know to put a square peg in a square hole. I've seen it time and time again. Whatever scripts they have or made, they do. Anything outside of it, they close out the issue without resolution, transfer it inappropriately or let it sit until the Americans come on shift.
From what I understand, it's a by-product of their training/education. It's cheaper and easier to teach them to do things by rote than to teach them how to figure things out for themselves. As a result, if you know exactly what and how you want something done, they'll get it done. But you still need someone to think up the "how" part of it.
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its cultural as well. independent thought is valued here. not so there is in fact sometimes dangerous
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its cultural as well. independent thought is valued here. not so there is in fact sometimes dangerous
This more than anything. Indians are incredibly culturally conservative by their own standards, and most anyone else's too. In actual practice, stricter than most Muslims, who seem to have a dozen-odd loopholes in "Allah's Will" that allow them to cut loose (Allah can't see me on Thursday, or when I'm over the horizon from Mecca or whatever, etc...), or just do so when no one else is looking.
It's not quite the same flavor as the Japanese/Korean/Chinese obedience-conformity. Working in the contracted IT sector that also had HUGE BPO operations (ACS out of Texas, they do entire state .govs practically...) we'd bring over Indian team members from Bangalore to cross-train etc.
Nice people. Very eager to please. These guys would have post-post graduate degrees in comp-sci and IT certs that would have someone here in the states making six figures, if not more, and on the fast track to being VP of IS/IT/MIS for a fourtune-500 company. Their resumes are terrifying... at first.
But while they are diligent, they lack any initiative, and squirm worse than snails dipped in salt if you try and put them on the spot to develop a process, or make some executive decision on their own. And since these guys, actually rising even above level 1-2-3 call center/helpdesk/support are examples of India's best and brightest... I'm not completely sure how India has accomplished becoming a nuclear and space-capable state, much less functioned since the British gave them their independence. =|
And that's where the mistakes, and Americans having to come in and troubleshoot all their work comes in, and eating up almost all the "savings" you get from Indian outsourcing. Net result, some H.S. Dropout dork 4Channer who drives the black and white VW Beetle for GeekSquad is often worth more than an Indian PhD in Computer Science and Information Theroy on simple initiative and independent problem solving.
The meanest thing I've ever done to one of them is tell them (innocently) about how McDonalds was in a bit of a scandal with vegetarians a few years back over how the fry oil had some beef broth in it as a flavoring. Poor Anjit... He seriously looked like he was going to cry. :laugh:
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thats a great analysis
its quite the hoot observing how culture affects performance
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its cultural as well. independent thought is valued here. not so there is in fact sometimes dangerous
Do they have those things that pop up out of the ground and slap them in the face ?
:lol:
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Do they have those things that pop up out of the ground and slap them in the face ?
:lol:
I'm pretty sure they do.
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I worked for ACS too and to get our own, internal, passwords reset we had to call India.
It SUCKED. What would have taken 20 minutes here took 4 hrs+ when we had to call.
You can NOT throw them off the script. EVER. It will cause a meltdown of epic proportions if you tel them the solution and what to do. I saw it at ACS, Agilent Technologies and MCI/Worldcom.
When I was with Agilent, there was a print server in Israel and no one could connect. I knew there was no connectivity, I made the call to the onsite tech. This was not the listed procedure but it had already been offline for 5 hours. The techs in India lost it, emails were sent, calls made and, eventually, I got a 'just don't tell them what you did' meeting. Oh, and the tech went to check the server, it was gone. No idea what happened to it.
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not just an it thing. my round eye uncle in new york sells equipment. milling machines and such. one piece had oil that cooled the cutting head and a pan to catch the oil. the tech sent to set it up spent a couple hours trying to make a 1/2 inch plug work in a 3/4 inch hole and finally concluded that "it must not be the one that was actually shipped with machine" since that would be a sin
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I worked with a lot of Indians in grad school. I remember a lot of times where they would ask me how I did a homework problem and I would tell them. And then they would ask "where I got it". They wanted to know where the technique I used 'came from'. Like where it was in the book, or what other book I found that had it, or what. The idea was that homework was a process of finding the map to follow and following it. If no such map was provided, they had to find one, or they got stuck and often blamed the teacher for being a bad teacher for not providing the map. When I told them I just you know, came up with the technique myself, I know they thought I was keeping something from them.
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Here's what happens when they outsouce phone security to an Indian call center . . . (there's a commercial first =( )
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/708062/outsourcing_security/
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One of the better group project guys I worked with on my MBA set up call centers in India before getting his MBA. Oh, the stories he would tell.
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Not just Indians. When I was stationed in Germany many of our NATO partners had a "If it isn't specifically authorized, it's prohibited" mindset. Whereas US Forces more often then not operated on a "If it isn't specifically prohibited, then screw it, let's do it." mindset. The Brits were most like us. But apparently WWII had beaten a lot of the operational savvy out the Germans. The rest of our NATO partners we regarded as little more then cannon fodder, as they are so eloquently demonstrating in Afghanistan.
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Back when I worked at Louisiana Tech University in the College of Engineering as a Scientific Instrument Tecnician (I took care of all the labs and equipment as well as our computers and network for the colleges of Civil and Chemical Engineering), I had to deal with these East Indian and Chinese national students. I had one that came to me needing something and I asked him if he needed the Red or the Blue one. He replied "Yes!" I repeated, "Do you need the Red one or the Blue one?" Again he replied "Yes!" I explained, "This is not a Yes or No question! There are two options and you have to tell me which one you need. Now, do you want the RED or the BLUE one?!?!" Him: "Yes!" Me: "Go away."
I got called before the department head for not helping the student who complained it was MY fault that he didn't get his work done. After I explained what happened I was chastized for not understanding the "cultural differences" between us and was advised to try harder to understand their needs next time. I replied that I can't help a GRADUATE STUDENT who can't answer a simple yes or no question and am more than happy to help when I am given enough to work with.
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. . . I can't help a GRADUATE STUDENT who can't answer a simple yes or no question . . .
But it wasn't a simple yes or no question, it was a far more complex red or blue question. ;)
When I was in college, I used to work during registration (got paid a little, and signed up for all my classes the day before registration "officially" opened.) Had problems with some foreign students . . . including grad students . . . that were, basically, dumb as a post.
The worst were the FPSE - Fire Protection and Safety Engineering - majors. Particularly Algerians. :facepalm:
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On the plus side, I've worked with Indians over here who were sharp and competent at their jobs. I guess they were the ones who rose to the top and actually succeeded in a private company.
That said, I have heard similar stories from engineers who had to train locals in other countries on how to operate their systems. The story about some Japanese operators was similar. The guy said they had the operating manual memorized and could quote it from memory, but had little initiative or flexibility outside of that.
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As a student there I despised the fact that they allowed some of the foreign nationals (Pakanastani/Iran as I recall) to openly CHEAT as "their culture considers it poor form not to "help" their fellow countrymen on tests and projects." They didn't learn squat! They copied and cheated their way through college and were given a "bu" by the staff!
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Honestly, I think the disconnect is that the Enlightenment in Europe and it's being carried through Western Civ over the generations meant that people were encouraged to try, and still given credit for failures if the attempt was credible.
This spark is what ALL these people lack.
And in general, I note that Japan, China, india, Korea, all these nations started their 20th century rise after being exposed to the West, and even then, they largely prosper by copying, or incremental evolution of western products and ideas. They do so with ruthless efficiency, but little true innovation.
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. . . The story about some Japanese operators was similar. The guy said they had the operating manual memorized and could quote it from memory, but had little initiative or flexibility outside of that.
On one of my trips to Japan to sort out problems with a vendor, I discovered that they'd made a mistake in their process (Hint: When you convert inch-ounces to grams-centimeters, you have to convert length as well as mass - they were off by a factor of 2.54.) and tactfully pointed this out; the company CEO chewed out their technical staff using what I understood was rather harsh language. BUT . . . we fixed the problem and they took me into their lab (normally off-limits to all outsiders, much less gaijin) so I could work with them for a while. After some initial reservations on their part, they became enthusiastic about fixing their process, and we ended up with a very good working relationship.
At the other end of the spectrum, when we called on another Japanese vendor (a division of a MAJOR camera maker) they arrogantly asserted that they were right, and all information to the contrary, no matter how overwhelming, was wrong.
We never did business with them again.
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At the other end of the spectrum, when we called on another Japanese vendor (a division of a MAJOR camera maker) they arrogantly asserted that they were right, and all information to the contrary, no matter how overwhelming, was wrong.
sadly that was more typical
good for you on cutting them loose. THAT they understand
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On one of my trips to Japan to sort out problems with a vendor, I discovered that they'd made a mistake in their process (Hint: When you convert inch-ounces to grams-centimeters, you have to convert length as well as mass - they were off by a factor of 2.54.) and tactfully pointed this out; the company CEO chewed out their technical staff using what I understood was rather harsh language. BUT . . . we fixed the problem and they took me into their lab (normally off-limits to all outsiders, much less gaijin) so I could work with them for a while. After some initial reservations on their part, they became enthusiastic about fixing their process, and we ended up with a very good working relationship.
At the other end of the spectrum, when we called on another Japanese vendor (a division of a MAJOR camera maker) they arrogantly asserted that they were right, and all information to the contrary, no matter how overwhelming, was wrong.
We never did business with them again.
That's one of the other major differences between East and West.
Those cultures seem to believe in a sort of pre-existing amount of honor or status that you have, and it can only be lost through failure or embarrassment, and thus this honor must be conserved and protected. Americans start out as neutral, with neither honor nor dishonor, and status-neutral (to a degree) and then the honor and status is earned through results.
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Ah outsourcing.
We recently shipped all our systems support to India. A problem that used to take five minutes to resolve now takes hours. Some of them outright resolve themselves before you can even pound the problem into their head.
"But it's not supposed to work like that"
"No $^&% Sherlock that's why I put in a support ticket!"
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"Do you want the red one or the blue one?"
"Yes" seems to be a perfectly logical response, regardless of which one you want.
Jes' sayin'.
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No. I like neither red nor blue. What else do you have? [tinfoil]
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I explained it was NOT a yes or no question and he had to choose one or the other. When he refused to respond other than to ask for the same thing and I again asked which of the 2 he needed, he again said "Yes!" and I had reached the limit of how much frustration I could stand from one person. I bade him leave until he could come back and converse in an intelligent, or at least somewhat reasonable manner.
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NOT safe for work (+ foul language warning), but perfect for this thread:
http://www.illwillpress.com/techYT.html
http://www.illwillpress.com/tech2YT.html
http://www.illwillpress.com/tech3YT.html
http://www.illwillpress.com/tech42YT.html
http://www.illwillpress.com/tech5522YT.html
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There is a GREAT bit by "Dead Trolls in a baggie" called "Internet Help Desk" that I always shared with new guys in the office. Check it out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LLTsSnGWMI
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Nothing I like better than calling our internal corporate tech support/test centers and getting a guy who's English is only marginally better than my Mandarin ( I don't speak a word of Chinese). Then I get a nasty-gram from my boss after (while really trying to be polite) asking the guy to repeat himself numerous times because I can't understand him. I was accused of being insensitive to corporate diversity ???. I've gotten to the point that if I need to call one of our test centers I just hang up and call back if I can't understand the person that answers the phone.
If you are going to put someone in a job where the main job is to talk on the phone to other technicians wouldn't it be a good thing to either use people that actually speak the predominant language they will be using or barring that get them some speech training.
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It was getting difficult for us to communicate with our IT types in India, as well. Very frustrating at times, especially when you have systems down that you have no access to, and production has come to a complete halt.
Like RKL we would have eventually gotten on the bad side of the corporate diversity folks. What saved us was that everyone also had access to MS Communicator, and we started using that routinely by a sort of Gentleman's Agreement. We'd start off with a conference call, and it's only real purpose was to get everyone up on Communicator. Works well once we get it going, because there are no hard to decipher accents in text.
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When I get one like that I ask for someone who can speak better English. Of course, I don't have "diversity" people breathing down my neck.
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When I get one like that I ask for someone who can speak better English. Of course, I don't have "diversity" people breathing down my neck.
It is pretty well supposed that such a request would likely lead to termination or at least severe discipline with my employer.
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ara/aramark sent me to diversity training 3 times. i think its a record. once for being sexist twice for being racist
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It is pretty well supposed that such a request would likely lead to termination or at least severe discipline with my employer.
Yep, I figured as much. In my case, I'm the customer so I can voice my disapproval with no fear of repercussion. It ain't my fault the effers put someone unintelligible on the phone. I feel for you though, that has got to suck.
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It is pretty well supposed that such a request would likely lead to termination or at least severe discipline with my employer.
Not if you knew how the phone system worked, and could make the call look like it was coming from any extension in the company. :angel:
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Heck, I can hardly understand these modern American kids thatrunalltheirwordstogetherealfast. ;/
And then some years back, I was on a 4 or 5 way conference call including our customer from England. Couldn't understand much they had to say, either.
I might be a soft ware in gin ear but I'm still an old south'rn country boy ;)
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It's threads like this one that make me wish that I was back at the Big Pharma Company.
It's a Bad Thing when you wander around a little, and forward unattended phones to someone you don't like.
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There is a GREAT bit by "Dead Trolls in a baggie" called "Internet Help Desk" that I always shared with new guys in the office. Check it out!
http://www.deadtroll.com/new/new.html
Why does this link NOT take me to "Internet Help Desk" ... or to a site on which I can find anything of that title?
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Heck, I can hardly understand these modern American kids thatrunalltheirwordstogetherealfast. ;/
And then some years back, I was on a 4 or 5 way conference call including our customer from England. Couldn't understand much they had to say, either.
I might be a soft ware in gin ear but I'm still an old south'rn country boy ;)
Somewhere I read, wish I could remember where, an account of a conversation between someone from the American deep south speaking English, and a Scot, also speaking English. They needed an interpreter. Who was a German.
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Why does this link NOT take me to "Internet Help Desk" ... or to a site on which I can find anything of that title?
YouToob'll get you there (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LLTsSnGWMI).
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"Do you want the red one or the blue one?"
"Yes" seems to be a perfectly logical response, regardless of which one you want.
Jes' sayin'.
Not logical.
Grammatically correct, yes. Logical, no.
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I'm certainly not racist or protectionist. I have no bloody idea why, but the Indians doing the outsourced work cannot do independent thought.
I have some thoughts. I've been an IT professional for about 11 years now, and I've never really written anything on the web about Indians workers, though I've had my fair share of experience with them. I never wanted anything I said to come back and bite me in the arse, but I'm getting out of the game, so I'll share.
For the record every single stupid choice I've seen an Indian programmer make I've also seen a Caucasian born and raised in the midwest make. Their stories are pretty much the same: went to college, got a degree, got a decent job making good money, and they just never see any reason to push themselves beyond that. If they get booted during layoffs they'll just find another job in a large corporation where their less than stellar performance will be masked by others.
Of course, they have no idea their performance is being masked by others, but that's beside the point.
Generally speaking I think most people set out in life to try and earn a living a little better than their parents did. Every generation wants to see a little bit of progress for themselves. As it should be, in my opinion. Tech gets better (on all fronts) worker productivity goes up, costs go down on the basics, and they should have a better life.
It's a whole heck of a lot easier to achieve that goal when your parents are doing blue-collar work in India than it is in America where blue-collar workers can make some pretty good coin. So, in the US, you have to keep advancing up the ladder to make it happen. Well, at least now you do.
I entered IT in 2000 nearly at the end of the dot-com bomb. In 1998-1999 I was getting calls from recruiters halfway across the country promising me $50k/year or more for an entry level job. With no degree. There was a rush in the US where all sorts of idiots enrolled in computer science courses trying to cash in on this. It was absurd. When it all came crashing down nobody wanted every Tom, Dick or Harry with a CS degree -- they wanted people with experience. Some kind of talent, not just a piece of paper.
India's still in that boom period. More and more of this work is going over there and I doubt they've got the qualified people to fill them, so they'll take anybody with the right credentials. Just like US firms in the dot-com era they've got a lot of idiots and (hopefully) a few stellar performers that can clean up the messes and get people on the right track. When it crashes the trash will get weeded out, just as it did in the US.
So, that's my high level politically correct analysis.
On the other hand there are some obvious cultural differences. Any technical discussion with an Indian is going to have the phrase "NO! NO! NO!" spoken in the middle of your sentences more than you'd think possible. It would appear that complete thoughts are not exactly respected. It's extremely annoying when everybody is on a conference call and you have no idea what the three of them are yelling at each other about on the other end.
Their ability to punt the problem down the line is only rivaled by Congress. I've hammered down plenty of times with native US citizens on projects where the screwed the pooch and needed a hand to get out of it. No problem. It's what I do. However, I expect you to HELP me on it if I'm saving your arse.
I got roped into one project, as a sub-contractor, with no influence at all, and upon request from a project manager after I did all my assigned tasks, I introduced one LITTLE change into a giant .ASPX file written by the Indian team. This was not in my original scope. Suddenly every problem was my fault. I stuck 12 lines into a 5,000 line file. Suddenly I owned it because it broke their code.
Yeah, you wrote 3,000 lines of JavaScript that inappropriately referenced (hard coded object IDs) code-behind objects by their automatically generated names. There isn't one single scrap of literature anywhere out there that says you should have done that dumb monkey crap but you did. And now I have to fix it. Yeah, I'm still pissed about that. There were four of them that worked on that code and if it were my team I'd have nailed somebody's balls to the wall for trying that nonsense about 100 lines in.
And that gets me to my basic mantra on Indian programmers: They work harder, not smarter.
Why? I don't know. I see it in US programmers to, but just not as often. They usually get weeded out quick. I guess that goes back to the "boom" thing. They do it because it's all that they know how to, and they're getting paid for it, and they're only going to change when it's no longer financially attractive to behave that way.
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When I get one like that I ask for someone who can speak better English. Of course, I don't have "diversity" people breathing down my neck.
I tried that. She said (in a VERY testy tone of voice), "Excuse me. I am speak English verrrry good."
My response to that was, "Fine. Now please connect me with your supervisor."
I was on hold for a very long time. The next voice was a male who said his name was Dave, with a decidedly American accent. I asked "Dave" where he was from. He laughed, and said, "My name really is Dave, and I'm not allowed to tell that I'm in St. Louis."
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I've had some wonderful conversations with girls in Manila in the past. I immediately recognize the accent and start asking about how the PI are doing these days. Then I tell them to have a San Miguel for me. They always laugh. Them I can understand, some of those Indians though, I can't fathom why anyone would put them on the phone to talk to English speaking customers.
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My response to that was, "Fine. Now please connect me with your supervisor."
The last time I tried that the guy I was connected to spoke even worse English and had an attitude to boot.
Now, if I haven't given them any identifying info I just hang up and try again.
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I worked in a call center, and many Indians would transfer to me, their "supervisor" of choice. It seems that many of their own "superiors" didn't have phone access. :facepalm: There were some truly insurmountable cultural chasms that the best educated of them could not fathom.
And that gets me to my basic mantra on Indian programmers: They work harder, not smarter.
That's one way to put it. Another is that they are immersed in a massive system of systems that inherently do not work. India is a massive bureaucratic mud pit where any progress is made in incremental steps by hundreds, if not thousands, of people. I don't think they understand that Americans are accustomed to devices and systems that usually work right the first time, and most of the time after that. They don't understand the frustration we experience if we have to call a second time to fix an issue, let alone ten times over the period of 2 weeks (which was all too common). They also had no access to the devices they were trying to fix or sell, and could not understand that the manual and the equipment might differ.
There were similar problems with the Philippine centers, too, but not as many. The Filipinos were much more eager to try out their "American" phrases than the Indians; my favorite was when I would tell them I wanted to look over their notes and they'd say "No biggie". :laugh:
It's one reason I'm not as worried about a Chinese ascendancy to superpower status as some, because the problem in China is worse in most ways.
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they are immersed in a massive system of systems that inherently do not work. India is a massive bureaucratic mud pit where any progress is made in incremental steps by hundreds, if not thousands, of people.
So they really are the Vogons =|
Is their poetry that bad too? :lol:
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I don't think they understand that Americans are accustomed to devices and systems that usually work right the first time, and most of the time after that. They don't understand the frustration we experience if we have to call a second time to fix an issue
"USA: The Land of Instant Gratification"
=D
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So they really are the Vogons =|
Is their poetry that bad too? :lol:
I rather like Vogon poetry.
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It's one reason I'm not as worried about a Chinese ascendancy to superpower status as some, because the problem in China is worse in most ways.
Yes.
And in my experiences with the Chinese, the ones with "western" style assertiveness and independence tend to be of the scamming/criminal variety. Or they're Chinese Americans who've gone back for business reasons.
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Hewlett-Packard (Compaq/Digital) used to have some of the best customer service of all the vendors I have dealt with.
Call the support line, give them a customer id and a product serial number and a field engineer would always call within 2 hours. Done.
Now? :facepalm: Endless discussions of contract expirations, serial number disputes, requests to run software diagnostics when the problem is CLEARLY hardware, smoke, mirrors, and flak. I HATE calling them, for ANYTHING. I also have a very difficult time understanding them.
Xerox on the other hand - excellent customer service, and excellent field service guys. And I can ALWAYS understand them.
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And in my experiences with the Chinese, the ones with "western" style assertiveness and independence tend to be of the scamming/criminal variety.
When thinking outside the box is socially unacceptable, only the socially unacceptable will think outside the box.
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That's one way to put it. Another is that they are immersed in a massive system of systems that inherently do not work. India is a massive bureaucratic mud pit where any progress is made in incremental steps by hundreds, if not thousands, of people. I don't think they understand that Americans are accustomed to devices and systems that usually work right the first time, and most of the time after that.
To be fair you get this in Europe too. Back when I worked for Uber Global Mega Corp our Eurpoean counterparts were well known for just passing the buck back to the American team to finally fix their problems. At one point my manager actually flew out there just to figure out WTF they were doing wrong. As he put it: "If a guy over there has to manage the network he considers his job done as long as the network switch has flashing lights on it. That's it. They look at at their thing and nothing else."
The "massive bureaucratic mud pit where any progress is made in incremental steps by hundreds, if not thousands, of people" isn't unique to India. It basically describes any large corporation. However, we don't outsource our IT needs to overpaid Europeans so we notice the Indians when they pop into the picture.
I guarantee you we'd be just as pissed at German corporate monkeys trying to do the same jobs. Be that simple tech support, network stuff like RevDisk is talking about, or programming work that I'm familiar with.
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Not logical.
Grammatically correct, yes. Logical, no.
It's perfectly logical. The problem is that when people say "or" they commonly mean "xor" or "exclusive or".
If I need the red one, and someone asks "Do you need the red one or the blue one" "Yes" is a perfectly logical answer. I could logically give the same answer if I needed the blue one, or if I needed both.