Offshoring not paying off.

[Akil Todd Harvey]

Mike,

somewhat off topic, i agree, hope you dont mind too much

One of the results of expensive oil that I like is that it makes it harder and harder to ship our manufacturing jobs overseas, as they are doing here with white collar jobs......

see, in order to make things cheaper elsewhere (and to eliminate our jobs), transportation costs must be low (energy is one of the biggest costs in transportation (after labor), but if the cost of oil goes up high enough, then the cost of goods increases, closer to the cost of us making our own stuff again..........

maybe some day, we can have our jobs back, huh mike?

[Akil Todd Harvey]

lol

The survey found that 28 percent of the offshore outsourcing or offshore development project actually increased costs and 25 percent did not generate any significant savings.

i love it when cheapskates get what they deserve........it is one thing to try to cut costs to save jobs (and this happens sometimes), but more often than not, they are just trying to be cheapskates.......

can i get a lamborghini for the price of a yugo, please? I have dealt with folks like this in busines for years, always trying to get something for nothing........

they take your competitor, cuz their price is lower, and then they call back in a year and a half, saying, "how come we cant find ourselves on the search engine?".......it isnt polite to tell em they arent on the search engines cuz they picked the lowest bidder (with the least experience), but i laugh real hard inside..........

[MikeK]

Agree with me all that you want Akil.

I've been a developer for close to 20 years and I've seen more silver bullets than I care to remember. This is just one more. Someone wrote a column that if we can outsource the workers we can also outsource management.

[Akil Todd Harvey]

Stress, depression and other symptoms grow as more people work in call centers and for software companies.

Just wondering what you all think.......

By Stephen Overell, Financial Times
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-ft-i ... s-business

Every Saturday morning Dr. S. Kalyanasundaram knows whom to expect at the psychiatric clinic he runs at Shanthi nursing home in Jayanagar, Bangalore. It's the technology crowd, and their complaints tend to be of a similar nature: stress, panic attacks, depression, relationship troubles, alcoholism and eating disorders.

Between 20 and 33 years old and keen to hide their symptoms from employers and families, the patients have significantly increased Kalyanasundaram's workload.

"They work somewhere between a 10- and a 14-hour day, which, in my view, is just not healthy. They have no time for their partners and children, even more so if both partners go out to work. But ask them why they work so hard and they say it is absolutely necessary because someone is always waiting to take their job. Their way of coping is to hit the pub."

According to a report in the Indian Express newspaper, one in 15 people seeking counseling from a doctor in Chennai, India, works either in software or at a call center. But while stress and burnout are familiar topics of conversation among India's educated, outsourced workforce, their employers are "in denial," said Kalyanasundaram.

"They just do not want to know about it," he said. "It remains too heavily stigmatized. Stress is seen as a weakness of personality."

New work habits create new demands as well as problems, and India is seen in some circles as a potentially vast market for Western-style employee assistance programs.

Such programs began life in the U.S. just after World War I as a means for employers to offer support to alcoholic workers and keep them focused on the job. But they have expanded most quickly since the 1970s, helping to alleviate the complicated psychological fallout of white-collar work. In the U.S., about two-thirds of medium-sized to large companies offer the programs, according to the Labor Department.

Next month, PPC Worldwide, a British-based provider of employee assistance programs, will open an office in Bangalore. Chief Executive Nand Gouhari, who is Indian-born but has lived in Britain for 40 years, says the need to adopt an alien persona can be as damaging as long hours.

"The strain of pretending to be 'Bob' or 'Susan' on the phone for weeks on end and keeping up with 'Eastenders' [a British television soap opera] and baseball can lead to questions of identity," he said.

India's work patterns also are testing traditionally close family structures. Gouhari said: "Children are earning vastly more than their parents ever did and the new disposable income is leading to a burgeoning pub culture which is causing a lot of family tension."

The concept of employee well-being is not new to India. Some companies such as IBM Corp. already offer employee assistance programs to staff irrespective of where they work around the world.

Others take a less conventional approach. Infosys Technologies Ltd., a large Indian IT service and consulting company, aims to offer a "workplace that supports fun and relaxation." Its program supplies guidance on tai chi and "breathing techniques to develop tranquillity of mind."

Yet according to Rashmi Sharma, human resources strategy and planning director for Convergys, the world's biggest call center outsourcing specialist, India may not be quite ready for employee assistance programs. "Things are changing fast here and I would not rule it out for the future, but I think there is a timing issue. At the moment, people take their problems to friends and families."

Sharma agrees the call center environment is "stressful and competitive" but says the company's approach to tackling it focuses on practical matters such as limiting the work day to eight hours, lighting, ventilation, transport and nutrition. "Seventy percent of our staff have had no experience of work before starting here. It is vital to make the transition as smooth as possible."

Dr. Ashwani Kumar, executive director of Santulan, an Indian employee assistance company that has been operating from New Delhi since 1991, also is doubtful about India's appetite for the assistance programs. "There are very few enlightened organizations," he said. "The idea of seeking support for these kinds of issues is still very new in India."

[MikeK]

"They work somewhere between a 10- and a 14-hour day, which, in my view, is just not healthy. They have no time for their partners and children, even more so if both partners go out to work. But ask them why they work so hard and they say it is absolutely necessary because someone is always waiting to take their job. Their way of coping is to hit the pub."

Drunk and paranoid. Welcome to the working world.

Others take a less conventional approach. Infosys Technologies Ltd., a large Indian IT service and consulting company, aims to offer a "workplace that supports fun and relaxation." Its program supplies guidance on tai chi and "breathing techniques to develop tranquillity of mind."

While it's OK to be relaxed at work and have fun doing what you do, the workplace is not where you go for relaxation and fun. Sounds like India is getting what we went through for the last couple of decades.

[Veso4rgd]

It seems like Phillip Hatch, the president of Ventoro, is right in pointing out that unrealistic customer expectations play a big role in the struggles of offshore outsourcing. While many companies expected hefty savings from simply lower labor costs, the reality is often different. The survey you shared shows that cost savings from offshore outsourcing were much less than anticipated, with factors like process improvements and quality of systems playing a more significant role in achieving savings.

It's crucial for companies to set realistic expectations and have a well-planned offshore strategy. As the report concludes, the responsibility for success rests with the corporate executives, who need to ensure clear roles and expectations for both onshore and offshore teams.

For anyone looking to dive deeper into the process of choosing the right outsourcing partner, I highly recommend checking out this article on how to choose the right offshore software company.

[emattson]

I do not like offshoring as it usually is just greed, a race to the bottom. I feel that it is an important driver of growing wage inequality. Demanding Americans to gain high level skills to compete against a billion foreigners who are better educated won't cut it, especially since not everyone can get a PhD in engineering.