SWRTWannabe

Our company has just started outsourcing the software development functions, and in a big way. So, feel for you mate. We're quite fortunate, in that we are being kept on, but effectively doing an admin and testing role.

Seems to me that if there are all these people in India that can do our jobs much cheaper, then it would make sense to outsource all the CEO's, MD's etc - after all they get paid one hell of a lot more money. Now that would be a saving for the company!

Lee247

Cheeky bugger

RB170, hope all goes well for you. Be happy in the knowledge that I, for one, refuse to speak to them

davyboy

Of course if product a) cost £5, and product b) cost £10 but was made in the UK, I am sure you'd all buy b)

It's funny, I never see a thread on here saying where can I get the most expensive X, or where can I get the best service for X. No....it always where can I get the cheapest X. Or where can I get the best X for as little as possible.

So we the consumer want more for less, yet moan about it's consequences. And I know damn well faced with 2 products we will always, always take the cheaper one. I'm sure someone will say different to that, but hey this is SN

Richard_P

Let's make a scoobynet list of companies who outsource jobs from this country so as not to use them

paul-s

but most of the time its companies that are already making large profits. why sacrifice your customer base for a bit more profit. surely they will lose out in the long run.

Jaydee5

I'm with you on that

davyboy

Please make this list......it would be quite amusing.

I'll start. 3 mobile phones. I think there was a thread on here recently about them giving the best deals. Let's cross them off the list.

And don't forget insurance comapnies too......make sure you pay that extra £100 to insure your Subaru won't you.

Drunken Bungle Whore

Finally a voice of reason! How many threads have there been saying how wonderful it is to get dirt cheap clothes from Tesco, how other companies 'rip you off' because they charge more.

It's great to see everyone so patriotic about saving jobs but be patriotic about how you spend you money in the first place and these things will stop happening. You'd be amazed how many back office functions are off shored - there are plenty of companies who don't use Indian people to answer the phones because that's a dead giveaway but they do use them for admin and back office work.

And how many of you who hate this whole idea of off shoring are wearing clothes that are made by cheap overseas labour? Or how many have cheap foreign import cars? It's exactly the same principle - these things all take British jobs.

It's great to be patriotic - but not so great to have double standards.

SJ_Skyline

Dave,

Whilst I generally agree with what you said there are some fairly large exceptions, especially when it comes to spending money on cars - cleaning products and oils sping to mind immediately where many people on SN will spend top dollar on what is considered a better brand. How many people are precious about what brand of fuel they put in their tank - especially supermarket sul?

I guess it's the difference between goods and services...

Dracoro

Agreed with DBW and davyboy.

Why are you not all driving MG/Rovers? How many of you have Sony stereos rather than Arcams? How many of you wear sweatchop suits rather than Saville Row ones? and so on. Patriots? hypocrites more like.

Your job being outsourced abroad? Obviously not nice and one sympathises, however did you offer to do your jobs for less money to be more competitive with those from India?

People in this country (and all of 1st world) want high quality of life, high wages, cheap consumer goods etc. It's completely understandable but there are consequences. The Chinese and Indian are becoming more powerful and becoming consumers too. This will, imo, have a MASSIVE affect on our 'quality' of life many years inthe future. They'll use up the worlds oil (and push the fuel prices well up in the process) in double quick time and will have '1st dabs' on many goods that they make int he 1st place with little shipping costs as it's made locally. The impact of India and China can't be underestimated, they have a large chunk of the worlds population. There'll probably be wars about this as the west tries to ascertain their current quality of life.

Turbohot

Accent,is it?

I hope not to receive your call this weekend

Sorry to know about your plight,RB170.
It is all very unfair.Call centres abroad and the lot!Try telling the company owners.All they want is to save as much as possible on wages and production etc. etc. rather than looking after their existiing employee's livelihood and welfare

New_scooby_04

iTrader: (4)

DEYTOOOOOKERRRRRJERRRRRRRRBS


Ns04

dpb

yep manufacturing has goone overseas - what is special about IT / service outsourcing....

Crapaud62

I object to dealing with someone who cannot speak fluent English. Why should I have to waste my time dealing with a clearly inferior service?

If the service was equally as good then I would have no problems with dealing with them but I hate not be able to speak to them because they don't understand things clealy. 3 mobile phones are the worst closely followed by MBNA credit cards. Indian phoned me up and asked me to confirm my identity then tried to flog me useless insurance. Soon after I received crap in post saying I had agreed to sign up for the insurance which I had not.

It ultimately up to the consumers. As has been rightly said, if majority are happy with outsourcing then it will get worse but if enough people vote with their wallets then some companies will think twice.

Paul3446

I worked for Royal London Insurance in Colchester for 14 years and they moved to find cheaper labour, and went to..........Manchester!

About 1,200 compulsory redundancies, we were told the people up north had a better skill set! Some people with 30 years experience were sent up there to train people to do their jobs and said they were all 17 year olds straight out of school! It all comes down to money.

Petem95

Spoke to HSBC yesterday - or their Indian call centre I should say

Whenever I speak to someone there they always come out with random greetings at very odd moments. As Im telling them my account number they'll suddenly come out with [indian accent]"how are today sir mr peter"[/indian accent] and Im like "huh?!!"

Has to be said Im always polite to the guys/girls working in those call centres, wherever they are. Pretty off taking everything out on them.

Im going to change banks to Nationwide soon however, all UK call centres with them

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

I will start....

Hewlett Packard !!!

outsourced to

Slovenia
India (Bangalore)
China
and some 3rd world country in south America.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Hewlett Packard !!!

outsourced to

Slovenia
India (Bangalore)
China
and some 3rd world country in south America.

I will add

Subaru

Outsourced to

Japan
China
USA


RB sorry that you have some uncertainty and I hope it works out for you.

Let's face some facts

RB works for an IT service company who typically displace employed jobs.

His job is now being displaced be a more cost effective resource.

Almost everyone on here - and I mean 99.99% are enjoying the fruits of outsourced labour whether it is clothes made in Asia, cars with parts made in a geosourced market.

As others have said, why pick on India?

You could pick on every developing economy in the world because I am absolutely sure that everyone reading this thread has someone in their family whose job was displaced/outsourced to a lower cost economy whether they were in manufacturing, food, supply chain...

...you either live solely in your own back garden or you live in a global economy, you cannot have it both ways.

Dracoro

Now this I totally agree with. The amount of times I get northern or scottish call centre people who refuse to tone down their accent so that anyone can understand them is frustrating. Maybe this is part of the reason they've moved to India, people speak clearer english out there

New_scooby_04

iTrader: (4)

I don't agree with that: it's polarising the debate unnecessary. We don't buy things solely on the basis of price or patriotism etc.. decisions are based on a number of factors, the weighting of which are considered with respect to the item/service being purchased: the perception of the importance of a product/service, the perception of its quality, the perceived importance of its quality, an individuals means, and their perception of the vendor.

People didn't buy Rover's cause they were Poo, many people don't buy Saville Roe suits rather than BHS or whatever because of their limited means. Where people have the choice, i.e. where the products are comparable and the price is affordable, people do exercise judgement about the vendor/service provider.

What seems unfair here is that we have someone who is loosing their job to cheaper labour that will provide an inferior service. With no disrespect to these call centres, more often than not, when I'm put though to one of them it's very hard work understanding them. However, as consumers we now have the choice of going elsewhere as we can afford the alternatives and the alternatives will offer better service, we may also feel disgruntled at the ethos of the company that has resorted to the call centres. That's what a number of people on this thread have reported doing.

I do, however, wonder whether any drop in custom precipitated by the call centre move will only be offset by further cost cutting measures.

Ns04

PS. DEYTOOOOOKERRRRRJERRRRBS

Trout

iTrader: (1)

When I worked for a leading Mutual Life Insurer in Edinburgh we used to get people south of the border phone up and complain that they could not speak to someone with an English accent.

This was in the '80s

LC Geezer

I project lead teams of software developers which includes a team in India. The quality of what is coming from offshore is shocking. We spend more time and money fixing what they send us than we'll ever save. We have to do all their thinking for them and come up with solutions to the problems. All they do is code precisley what we tell them to...no more and no less. They appear to have no forward thinking whatsoever.

We've also started outsourcing some manufacturing to India (different compnay to the software people). Again, the quality of what they are sending us is just awful. They don't seem capable of setting up facilities to reliably reproduce parts to the same standard and specification in any sort of repeatable manner. Rather than spend money on jigs etc which are relatively expensive, they see the solution is just to throw whatever is cheapest at it i.e. people. 100 people all making metal parts by hand is never going to give us parts built to the correct tolerances time after time.

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

Funny you should say that as we outsourced one of our products to India and as you say the satandard of coding that comes out is appauling. On top of that they laid off most of the people here so there are not enough people to do the work, so the team is working at maximum capacity sorting out not only their own work but all the cockups and bad code coming out of India.

I could go on but there is no point really.

New_scooby_04

iTrader: (4)

Deytokerrrrrrrrjerrrrbs!!!!

The Chief

I've been watching this thread with interest.

Ok here is how i see it.

Like most people i get annoyed taking f****** tele sales calls from India but with regards to out-sourcing thats how it is i'm afraid, Supply and demand.

i have been involved in purchasing for 13 years now in a manufacturing enviroment and to put it bluntly if i did not outsource in the far-east, we as a company would be bankrupt in no time at all and the people we employ would lose their jobs. Why is it you can get a DVD player from Asda for 20 odd quid???? i tell you Chinese labour!

The average Chinese worker gets around 200 euro's a month, we simply cannot compete.

The real reason we cant compete is all the feckin' beurecrecy that the small to medium businesses have to endure from the goverment i.e. Employment law, Taxes, Vat, Local goverment rates on buildings etc. need i go on.

Thats why a lot of people think f**k it we'll just buy from China.
and to be honest i cant blame them.

There are a lot of small businesses here on Scoobynet - so ask yourself this.
Do you think a lot of your time is wasted farting about with needless beurecrecy and red tape instead of concentrating on running your business??

I bet the answer is yes.

The Chief

Anyway speking of Purchasing i'd better sign off and save the moaning old goat some money!!!

Trout

iTrader: (1)

[flame suit mode on]

If you are getting poor software working with Indian companies then either one of two things are happening.

You have either picked a rubbish supplier - there are some but no where near as many as there are in the west.

Or you have a typically rubbish process for handing over work.

Treat Indian - indeed any outsourced IT development as cheap coding labour then you will reap the fruits of your labour, i.e. cheap code.

Indeed I am sure if you treat many of the onshore IT coding Scooby owners here the same way you would still get poor results.

There is little or no business case now for sending work to India on a cost basis - it has to be on a quality basis and that is very hard to swallow for many people. Especially when it starts to come true.

[flame suit mode off]

SJ_Skyline

Trout,

Spot on mate - I learned through my own error using a Bangalore-based team that if you don't clearly spec a module then you will not get a working module doing what you want. Simple as.

If you spec clearly you will get working code and the benefit of reduced development cost. You should be able to take the same spec to any development team and get a similar module back.

Hoppy

The 19th Century belonged to Britain.

The 20th Century belonged to the USA.

The 21st Century belongs to Asia. And it's only just begun.

The implications for Western Europe and the USA are massive, and it will get nasty

Richard.