Questions About Exploitation of Indian "IT Coolies"

[billi]

I worked for 3 years in It industry my feeling is that what ever the writer said is exactly true.
I don't think Indian It industry is high end tech industry it is rather service driven doing low tech coding. Again it depends on the company. The three It giants Infosys, Tcs and lastly Wipro are all service based companies which will do the left over works of the off shore industries by hiring graduates.
The infrastructure and the facilities they provide are essential to get the most out of the employees nothing more. I would rather prefer quality work for less hours. I don't think in near future it will change.
But there are companies which are doing high tech projects which are a beacon of hope for India.
Especially Wipro is a worst company of all the three one should regret to join this fcuk company. Those guys suck with their fcuking policies and with their ***** HRs.

What do you mean by 'left over work'. Imagine you own a company in India, will you give critical , sensitive information to a third party outside your country. What indian it is diong is purely driven by business logic and interests. indian IT never claimed that it is diong high end work. Wipro has these policies based on their business needs.No one is asking you to join it.
Secondly from my investment bank we sent work to india. gradually those guys have been taking more and more responsibility and they do most of the functions that we do overseas. i am also sometimes scared that i will be redundant but I have learnt to positino myself in a client/business facing role within IT. We cannot give client facing roles to contractors sitting in india. Now what ew are scared of is 'Managed services' where the Indian vendor like tcs takes care of the whole infrastructure of it, deploy their own resources etc and also assumes the risk that the bank faces. This is the value added service that eveyone talk about. they are doing it welll so far with teething troubles , but if in 5-10 yrs the process matures then IT jobs overseas are finished (at least in non-technology companies)

Regarding non-innovation, there is something i remembered. If you see most clients of Ind it companies is NOT technology behemoths in US.
Most are either banks/insureance and other finance related companies and also a lot of telecom giants and retailers etc. So they are not in the business of developing s/w products. To them IT is a cost centre and not a revenue generator. Therefore their focus is on cutting costs and they will hand off as much as possible (keeping in their hands data secrecy and business drivers) while handing off what is not a risk to them. Thats where indian it comes in.
If you want do not call indian it as high-tech. But also do not belittle its acheivements.

 

[RiazHaq]

Here's a summary of Call Center bill intriduced in the US Congress, as published by Huffington Post:

Saying they hope to stem the tide of jobs heading overseas, legislators introduced a bipartisan bill Wednesday in the House that would punish American corporations for offshoring their telephone call centers, making such companies ineligible for grants or guaranteed loans from the federal government.

Introduced by Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) and Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.), the protectionist legislation would also put some aggressive mandates on call-center operations. Not only would customer service representatives working overseas for U.S. corporations have to disclose their locations upon request, they would also have to offer callers the option of being transferred to call centers back in America.

"Outsourcing is one of the scourges of our economy and one of the reasons we are struggling to knock down the unemployment rate and reduce the number of Americans who are out of work," Bishop said in a conference call with reporters. "We can't prohibit it, but we can certainly discourage it."

Although some call-center jobs have trickled back into the U.S. in recent years, the long-term trend has shown thousands of American-based customer service positions being outsourced to India and the Philippines, where workers come considerably cheaper. The Philippines' call-center industry recently surpassed India's as the largest in the world, according to a report in USA Today.

The call-center bill has strong backing from the Communications Workers of America, a union representing 700,000 workers, more than 150,000 of whom are customer service reps. Ron Collins, CWA's chief of staff, said that Americans have been losing decent-paying call-center jobs so that large corporations can save on labor costs. He praised AT&T for its decision to bring 5,000 customer service jobs back to the U.S. as part of its merger with T-Mobile.

"When I talk about this, I talk about it from experience," said Collins, a former Verizon call-center worker. "This bill is a very important step forward -- for jobs, for workers and for customers."

Overseas Call Centers Target Of Anti-Outsourcing Bill