Thousands of Techies in Locked-Down India Are Braving Coronavirus Daily To Keep the World Running (qz.com) 70
The world's abrupt slowing down in the past few weeks may have introduced millions of Covid-19-wary professionals to the whole new paradigm of work-from-home. Yet, a third of India's four million IT employees are still trudging regularly to the office even if mostly to make life easier for clients abroad. From a report: Every working day, these thousands risk contracting coronavirus, jeopardising even their families' health, by going to work amid India's ongoing 21-day lockdown. Only because their jobs, in cities like Bengaluru, Pune, and Hyderabad, form the backroom spine of some of the world's corporate behemoths. Indian IT majors like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, and Wipro service giants like General Electric, Citibank, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Airbus, Cisco, British Telecom, Vodafone, and Nielsen, among thousands of other companies across the globe.
"We power the financial backbones of several countries, support some of the largest health care and pharmacy companies in the world, run technology for governments and public services organisations," a TCS spokesperson told Quartz when asked about the lockdown. Besides, many global businesses also have essential functions -- accounting, payments, billing, human resources, and payroll -- being carried out in their own back offices in India.
"We power the financial backbones of several countries, support some of the largest health care and pharmacy companies in the world, run technology for governments and public services organisations," a TCS spokesperson told Quartz when asked about the lockdown. Besides, many global businesses also have essential functions -- accounting, payments, billing, human resources, and payroll -- being carried out in their own back offices in India.
They're not doing it out of love (Score:3, Interesting)
Like grocery store clerks they're yet another group of absolutely critical employees who are also highly expendable.
That said there's been disruptions. Expect India to see a large build out in Internet infrastructure. At least at the data centers and the like.
Re:They're not doing it out of love (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt I'm the only voice who will chime in here to say that if these really are "essential" staff, why in the hell are they outsourced to a minimum-wage cube farm in Bangalore? In the pre-covid paradigm the CFO that "saves money" by outsourcing such non-core functions as HR and Accounts Payable, would it not seem to much of a stretch to say they should be savaged under post Covid-19 expectations and those jobs rightly should be on-shored to work-from-home but time-zone local people?
I have enough experience with MBA types to know why they think this was a great idea in the past, but if your giga-corporation falls apart because your minimum wage call center in India cannot trust their own staff to work by VPN (or the infrastructure where the call center is located cannot connect them at all) then you've shot yourself and your shareholders in the head and deserve to be fired with no golden-parachute.
Re:They're not doing it out of love (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe not all of them, but it sure is showing it might be worth a few extra $$'s to have some of it here on OUR shores and not put our private sector, public sector and even national security in the hands of those outside of our borders.
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Everyone is all for "Buying U.S.A." right up until they look at the price.
By "everyone," you mean corporate management and by "price," you mean their already-overinflated salaries.
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Re: They're not doing it out of love (Score:2)
The stuff in the dollar store that is imported is by and large the super cheap toys, and the borderline disposable cleaning tools, if the few I go to are the norm. I make it a habit of always checking the origin of stuff. Most of the foodstuffs are US made, excepting the Mexican foods (to be expected I guess), most of the cleaning consumables are US made also, but some are Canadian some Mexican made, the food grade plastic containers are US made. Quite surprising, really the amount of domestic products. The
Re:They're not doing it out of love (Score:4, Informative)
All that's being demonstrated is the desperation and ignorance of the buying public; no one's actually saving them any money by pushing that disposable shit on them.
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Kinda funny. Normally you buy a can opener once and it lasts you fifty years. Maybe it costs more than a dollar, but you only buy it once...
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Here ya go: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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Unfortunately, Walmart and dollar stores demonstrate a large number of end consumers are willing to buy imported crap to get a lower price.
For those of us who grew up in households with incomes under the poverty level, it wasn't not a matter of being "willing" but survival.
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Nope. Perhaps turn the subtitles on so you can learn to read.
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Well, I for one, would be willing to pay a bit more for made in the USA type products.
I'd say if nothing else especially after this virus....it would be a good advertising...."sure, we are a bit more $$, but this is to keep jobs IN the US, for us....."
That type thing.
I"d buy it....
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Well, I for one, would be willing to pay a bit more for made in the USA type products.
But the issue is you are that, one, and there are a lot of people who are either price-sensitive or simply could not pay a USA-made price because they arent paid enough to do that. You could make a valid argument that if all manufacturing was on-shored they might be making more and would be able to afford to do so as they'd get paid more working in manufacturing than their current job. But if everything cost more then they might not actually be better off (in purchasing power parity) terms. So it might make
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Actually, there may be MORE of those like myself that would be willing to pay a bit more if US made.
Hell, advertise it after all the virus stuff is over....make it more of a status symbol that US made is better.
Sure there are those that are price sensitive, poor or maybe just thrifty...but I"m guessing there's more out there w
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but I"m guessing there's more out there with disposable income that could be enticed to spend a bit more for US made.
The evidence from rates of import doesn't support this assertion very well.
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Sorta like only wanting to buy US cars. Except that many of those are made outside of the US, whereas there are foreign car brands made in the US. Anything complicated is made all around the world from parts made all around the world which were made from raw resources looted from all around the world.
Re: They're not doing it out of love (Score:2)
We need to identify strategic products and ensure there is adequate domestic production capacity, if needed:
For example, PPEs - the federal government should require that a proportion of all PPEs bought by a hospital must come US factories, the proportion to approximate the percentage of gov't reimbursed healthcare the hospital provides. The easy out would be to buy 100% American, but my idea allows for some wiggle room.
Steel - any project funded with US taxpayer dollars must use US-sourced steel. Private c
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Everyone is all for "Buying U.S.A." right up until they look at the price. If people really cared about U.S. workers then outsourcing wouldn't have worked in the first place. People like to blame corporate greed, but companies that don't provide what their customers want soon go out of business. At the end of the day what the customer wanted wasn't the satisfaction of knowing that they purchased something that was made or build in America, but something that cost them the least amount of money.
No, it really is driven by bean counters being penny wise (e.g. corporate greed)
US manufacturing is more productive than factories employing cheap labor resulting in aggregate manufacturing cost difference in low single digit territory.
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I remember trying to find a pair of tennish shoes that weren't made in China or Vietnam and they were extremely rare.
But it's not a new problem You can go back to landlords not wanting to pay the serfs too much otherwise their food would cost more. These days, we're all like the old lords in western society.
Re:They're not doing it out of love (Score:4, Informative)
"but it sure is showing it might be worth a few extra $$'s"
You do realize that the minimum wage for graduate level clerical and supervisory staff is equal to about $260 a month, right? Surely those able to follow scripts to interact with callers aren't even making that. And I bet they are able to satisfy 75% of their incoming requests for service (or the script can). https://paycheck.in/salary/min... [paycheck.in]
But, I do agree with you. Every time I call an outsourced call center that can't annunciate English sufficiently to understand them behind the bandwidth on their VOIP connection, I'm irritated (I'm multilingual). On rare occasions I'm so frustrated by the lack of communication ability that I just request a native English speaker.
And I'm not beating up on India. A good proportion of people living there speak better English than many in the US who have difficulty with their arterial language (and speak no other).
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"But, I do agree with you. Every time I call an outsourced call center that can't annunciate English sufficiently to understand them behind the bandwidth on their VOIP connection, I'm irritated (I'm multilingual)."
I just add them to the long list of companies with whom I will no longer do business. Same with a company that sells product that fails during the warranty period. They go on the prohibited list as well.
Of course, there are stupid arseholes who despite continually getting fucked up the ass keep
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Your last statement just makes you beating up on both, it doesn't retract the first statement.
Like if I said - "you're being a cunt about being multilingual - but I'm not beating up on you, Fred912 is MORE of a cunt, so don't worry about it."
It is not a language problem (Score:2)
Most Indians and Philippinos English is good enough. It is the mentality that is horrible.
They are given very little training, and taught to mindlessly follow scripts. What training they get is on how to tell customers platitudes. And they are only trained to do a very few things, so you always need to talk to somebody else.
I do not blame the workers, but rather their call center management culture. The workers are paid much more in relative terms than they would be in the west where a call center job i
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I suspect that at some call centers the goal is to annoy the caller so much that they go away and stop wasting the company's valuable time with complaints.
People already want that (Score:2)
We actually tried to fix that by electing Trump, but I don't see much evidence that it worked. Outsourcing increased under him. I think if we want jobs back we'll have to do it directly. e.g. a New Deal style Federal Jobs program.
I don't think we can count on the job creators anymore. They failed us.
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We are also the ruling class. We are the class that decides we want cheaper products. No hand-made furniture for use, we want factory made furniture for less. We don't want American shoes, they cost too much. The consumers are the biggest part of the problem, not the politicians or the corporations.
Don't forget back in the 70s and 80s the commercials to look for the union label. These weren't right wing jingoists asking us to buy patrioticly, these were left wing workers asking us to buy patrioticly. But
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I"m hoping this opens the eyes of a lot of people in the US, that we need to bring back more manufacturing and other jobs, such as call centers, etc to the US.
Actually, it would be the complete opposite. There will be more off-shoring, but to different shores.
Countries weren't impacted at the same time to the same degree. By diversifying the location of business in different countries around the world, you get better resilience against pandemic.
This is exactly the case in point. What may be deemed "non-essential" in the US and would have been shutdown, currently remained open in India. If the business has other locations, then those may be open when the India
Pure Greed (Score:2)
My assumption is most of these workers aren't even like grocery clerks. Grocery clerks are working because their work is essential. I doubt most of these workers are keeping vital infrastructure up and running. Most are probably just working on some random project building some website so their company doesn't miss a deadline. Instead of companies accepting they contracted cheaper resources in a country without the infrastructure to keep running in this kind of disaster, they just make the workers expose th
They're NOT being forced to (Score:2)
Bullshit. They are doing it for for money — for same reasons the rest of us work.
Yep, a very good analogy. Another one is Amazon warehouse workers — who just got a pay-raise, because Amazon can't find enough of them [slashdot.org].
Those, who want to make themselves harder to replace, ought to learn some valuable skills.
That's how the world worked for eons — and contin
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They are doing it for for money — for same reasons the rest of us work.
In some countries there are options for people to get paid so they can still buy food. Is India on of them? If not, then they have the choice of doing it for the money or potentially going without food (and their families too) for three months.That's not such a free choice.
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You obviously do not understand what "freedom" means. You (and they) are absolutely free to choose and absolutely free to suffer the consequences of that choice. Some people just have no fortitude.
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Food, eh? How about building a house? Educating children? Traveling? There are lots of things one may want to obtain from others — all in exchange for something, they all likewise want from him.
Unless you're forced to work, it is free choice... Contrary to what Communists would like you to think — until they get to power themselves, that is — there is no "system", that "oppre
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Of course, it is. Nobody owes anything. As long as no one is forcing you — on pain of taking something away — you're free.
You can choose both whether and where to work, certainly. Your options may be limited — but that, in turn, is mostly due to the earlier choices you made.
Sorry, I'm a USSR-raised atheist.
This thread was started by rsilvergun — who propagandizes (
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As long as no one is forcing you — on pain of taking something away — you're free.
So losing your place to live, access to food, etc., isn't having anything taken away? Those are some strange definitions.
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Like grocery store clerks they're yet another group of absolutely critical employees who are also highly expendable.
many global businesses also have essential functions -- accounting, payments, billing, human resources, and payroll -- being carried out in their own back offices in India.
Maybe global businesses should not outsource essential functions to India?
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We've told our Indian workers to stay home. Only come to the office to get stuff you need to work at home. But... when someone tried to go to the office for this reason, he was stopped by police and told to go back home. A letter saying he was "essential" was rejected, so there was some effort being put into trying to get an official pass from the police. I never heard if that succeeded or not. At this point we can't ship them any new products to work on, which is true for some European countries too.
A
Darned managers. (Score:3)
OUR company has an Indian operation and all of OUR guys have been given the necessary equipment and are working from home.
It works just fine. And we're doing IoT stuff, so they need our prototype hardware and development tools like flashers, not just some random office equipment.
I suspect that the managers of many of these guys are risking their lives to save the cost of giving them a laptop and a fat-pipe Internet connection.
In other words (Score:4, Insightful)
These IT workers are “doing the needful”.
I’m not sure I’d look for gratitude from anyone whose job was outsourced to over there, though. Or, for that matter, any of us who’ve had to tolerate tech “support” from one of these generally-poorly-trained-and-overworked offshore workers.
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Techies (Score:5, Interesting)
"Techies" are also braving coronavirus daily to keep the spam machine running. I've noticed a big surge in the number of new accounts getting flagged by Stop Forum Spam plug-in over the past 1.5 months on several forums I help manage.
Good Luck to India and the rest of the nations (Score:2)
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THIS is when giving aid is going to be needed. America needs to be prepared to GIVE many of these used/new ventilators to other nations. Likewise, we need to GIVE PPE. Medical personal all over the world is going to need it.
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"Keep The World Running" (Score:1)
Re:"Keep The World Running" (Score:4, Funny)
Come on, how else would I hear from Microsoft about the horrible virus my computer has?
Plus, the kind Indian-sounding person named "Eric" is willing to jump into my computer remotely to fix the problem for free! That's what I call service.
Utter bollocks (Score:1)
They are working from India, and therefore by the very definition are remote workers from the perspective of the client.
The fact that either their employer or their locality hasn't got the facilities, equipment or ability for them to work from home speaks volumes.
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We're not missing out on anything. Offshore indian programmers often can't speak well, aren't taught well, have no experience and are often not worth the $1 per hour they're paid.
Boeing thought they were worth at least $9 an hour [slashdot.org].
Oh. Wait.
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Is c6gunner still insisting it was pilot error?
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for(i = 0; i < 4; i++)
{
switch (i)
{
case 0:
break;
case 1:
break;
case 2:
break;
case 3:
break;
}
}
Of course I've actually seen that gem in an encounter I had with the outsourced firmware of an actual medical device.
definitely only india (Score:1)
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And there are THOUSANDS. (Even though the summary immediately points out 1/3 of 4 million?)
India's government sucks (Score:1)
Don't you mean (Score:2)
Covfefe-45?
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I know when I'm done with a rough day, I like to relax with an ice cold Covfefe-45
They are doing important work (Score:1, Funny)
Yes, they are doing the important work of telling me that they discovered a virus on the Windows computer that I donâ(TM)t have and about the fraudulent activities on my bank account they they will call the cops on unless I provide them with my ssn and a credit card #.
With out these important serviceS our world would surely collapse into anarchy.
Which is it? (Score:2)
"To Keep the World Running" or provide convienience?
I seriously doubt the world would stop running if a million call center workers weren't sitting in their cubicles, reading from scripts provided by their foreign employers.
It's cute you think it's a million plus Indian call-center workers are all that stands between us and a collapsed world economy. Perhaps the recall issue is a nation that undervalues its workers and overly relies on the foreign revenue those workers generate?
a mean thing to say (Score:3)
I'm fairly sure the globe's IT would function more smoothly and with less criminal activity if they all flopped over dead. Ignorant call center "help", theft of data of the clients they are outsourced to, scams & embezzelment.... i don't need them. The world's corporations don't need them.
PR Bullshit (Score:2)
Bullshit. What that TCS spokesperson omitted was that these people are going into work because they no option of working from home due to lack of infrastructure, resources, investment in cloud systems etc etc etc.
Lets add in good old distrust of your workforce while we are at it.
What a load of PR shite,
Disrespect (Score:2)
Utter disrespect from these corporations towards their Indian workers, that's what it is, nothing else.
If there is one job that you can perfectly perform from home, it's a techie IT job (unless you work in data centers directly, hands on the hardware).