Why is every company outsourcing to India?

[Monkeyleg]

I'm in the process of getting a Verisign SSL certificate for a new site I'm launching. It's a pain in the butt process.

They need some documentation, and I needed to speak with them. At first I was speaking to a woman who I assume is American, or at least sounded like it. We were disconnected, I called back, and the guy I spoke with (who introduced himself as "Robert") sounded like he was from New Delhi. I could not understand one single word he said.

I finally hung up, looked at some other SSL companies, then tried Verisign again. This time I got a woman named Ellen. She sounded like she was from Mumbai. Near as I could tell, she wanted me to fax her a copy of my food license, a photo of my shoe, and a notary. She didn't tell me how to get the notary through the fax machine, though. I just gave up, and will do everything online. I'm pretty sure that 0's and 1's are universally understood.

Last week, while driving (yes, with a headset), I called one of the big pharmaceuticals to ask about possible side effects of a drug I'm taking. The first woman I spoke with sounded southern (Arkansas, maybe), and took all of my pertinent information, which took about half an hour (I didn't realize I was that pertinent).

I was then transferred to the drug safety department, which I could swear is probably right on the border with Pakistan. The man I spoke with had such a heavy accent that I couldn't tell if he was saying "hello" or "jello", and it just went downhill from there. Now, if I was trying to get instructions on how to put a monitor back in the shipping box, this would all be acceptable, but when it's about prescription drugs, I'd really like to know if 55 milligrams is going to kill me or make my "dug hair hud".

After about half an hour of me shouting (foreigners understand english much better if you speak very loudly), I was transferred to the prescription drug information center. I think it was in Hyderabad, as it was harder to understand "Bill" in Hyderabad than it was "Robert" in New Delhi. He needed all of the pertinent information I'd already given to the Arkansas lady half an hour prior. I asked why he needed it again, but I have no idea what his explanation was. I think he either needed it to verify that I didn't have "dug hair hud", or he was trying out for the Miss Arkansas competition.

I have no problem with people who can barely speak english doing things like working at convenience stores ("pack six?") or driving cabs ("footy siven evenews?") or even performing surgery or designing nuclear warheads, but when I'm trying to protect credit card information, or keep from overdosing or winding up with "dug hair hud", couldn't I please speak to an American?

[Brad Johnson]

Hello, my name is Peggy, how can I help you...

Brad

[280plus]

I'll give you one guess.

[Lee]

Because US companies make too little profit, are forced to pay a minimum wage, and their taxes are too high. Hahahahhaha
Some executive makes his "bucket" look good by buying cheap Indian labor (and gets paid a huge bonus), while another one at the same company gets constantly harassed because sales are not growing at the required pace....mostly due to people just giving up on them because of the pain associated with dealing with a "Peggy".

[RevDisk]

Because US companies make too little profit, are forced to pay a minimum wage, and their taxes are too high. Hahahahhaha
Some executive makes his "bucket" look good by buying cheap Indian labor (and gets paid a huge bonus), while another one at the same company gets constantly harassed because sales are not growing at the required pace....mostly due to people just giving up on them because of the pain associated with dealing with a "Peggy".

Looks like my company is about to outsource all of their Network Operations Center work to Hyderabad in the next month.  We're not supposed to know. 

My reaction is not anger, but hysterical laughter.  The Hyderabad folks took over third shift, and are not doing well.  All of the member firms across the globe are very angry, and the Hyderabad folks are only alone six hours (2am to 8am EST).  They're only doing so well because we Americans are covering for them, cleaning up afterwards and fixing the problems.  When they take over everything, it'll be ugly. 

[Azrael256]

Good luck, Rev.  That's their daytime crew, so they're the best ones.

[RevDisk]

Good luck, Rev.  That's their daytime crew, so they're the best ones.

I'm trying not to laugh hysterically. 

Someone got a ticket on an AD server in $SomeCountry had a drive that was getting kinda full.  (In reality, backups were running, and the temp files flush within 15-30 minutes.  Just keep an eye on it.)   So...  They decided to delete a few things to make some space.  Ayep.  You guessed it.  The damaged and corrupted AD info is now replicating throughout the rest of the global company.  For you non-tech people, Active Directory is everyone's account info, plus all of the systems control info.  Think the registry for your computer, but for a multi billion dollar global company.  Now imagine deleting random parts of it, and pushing it out to tens of thousands of machines. 

I can literally watch the havoc spreading, country by country, on our monitoring systems.  Can't do anything about it, because a number of us Americans don't have domain admin rights until we've been with the company for a bit.  But all of the Someones got immediate rights.

Five more days here for me.  I doubt this will be resolved before I leave. 

[AJ Dual]

 

Now it's just the time it takes for the "political gravitas of the individual who made the decision to move everything to uh... Finland... yeah... FINLAND. vs. the downtime and expense the incompetent Finns are costing the company."-ratio to flip over.

Sometimes it's been mere weeks. Sometimes it takes years.

[RevDisk]

Now it's just the time it takes for the "political gravitas of the individual who made the decision to move everything to uh... Finland... yeah... FINLAND. vs. the downtime and expense the incompetent Finns are costing the company."-ratio to flip over.

Sometimes it's been mere weeks. Sometimes it takes years.

We hit that number already, in dollar costs. 

And on Monday, Indians start on the other two shifts.  It will be epic.


Interestingly enough, the Finns and Swedes are basically foaming at the mouth.  Love working with those guys.  Sharp, and very friendly.  Heck, after small talking with me for five minutes to scope me out, they gave me full access to their vCenter infrastructure. 

[zxcvbob]

The man I spoke with had such a heavy accent that I couldn't tell if he was saying "hello" or "jello"

Actually, it was "Yellow".  HTH

[roo_ster]

Actually, it was "Yellow".  HTH

Unless he was pujjabi, then it was "Hell no!"

[HankB]

Reminds me of the time an Indian was being interviewed for a job - in order to test his ability to improvise and his use of English, the interviewer asked him to use the words green, pink, and yellow in a sentence.

He thought for a moment, and then said "The phone goes green, green, so I pink it up and say 'Yellow, this is Mujibar.' "

He now works for Dell customer service.

[Hawkmoon]

He thought for a moment, and then said "The phone goes green, green, so I pink it up and say 'Yellow, this is Mujibar.' "

He now works for Dell customer service.

But they make him call himself "Frank." Mujibar sounds so ... foreign.

[Scout26]

Now it's just the time it takes for the "political gravitas of the individual who made the decision to move everything to uh... Finland... yeah... FINLAND. vs. the downtime and expense the incompetent Finns are costing the company."-ratio to flip over.

Sometimes it's been mere weeks. Sometimes it takes years.

I used to keep files.  We'd be doing good, hitting numbers, happy Employees, happy Customers, happy Owners/stockholders and then we'd have relatively, newly hired MBA's come in and pitch Plan X, and we would do Plan X and it would go down like a flaming dog turd.  (Sales, Service, Productivity any and all negatively affected), so he'd get fired. 

We would then undo Plan X and go back to hitting numbers, happy Employees, happy Customers, happy Owners/stockholders.

Then the Next Guy would come in with Plan Y which would swing us far back the opposite way.  And it would be a another flaming dog turd.  So Next Guy would get fired, and we'd once again go back to status quo ante. 

Then the Next, Next Guy would come in and want to do Plan X.  I would go to my files, pull out all the reports and numbers and say "Yep, least time we did that we almost, but not quite, managed to drive the business over a cliff.  Ya really want to do it again?"

I was never popular at staff meetings.

[KD5NRH]

Then the Next, Next Guy would come in and want to do Plan X.  I would go to my files, pull out all the reports and numbers and say "Yep, least time we did that we almost, but not quite, managed to drive the business over a cliff.  Ya really want to do it again?"

Try working for a company that repeatedly falls for the Ted Kennedy argument; "it didn't work before because you didn't have me to make it work."