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by redragtoabull 1 view

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Certification Magazine:

The outsourcing question for many IT workers is simply whether their jobs will stay in the U.S. or be sent overseas. This article takes a hard look at the employment future of IT workers in the global age. The good news is that outsourcing will not be the end of the American IT worker ? far from it.

Global outsourcing could very well create new jobs for U.S. workers. The trick is that they will be higher-end tech jobs, so clearly the way to stay employed is to maintain a high level of education and training in the areas that are most likely to be kept onshore, such as security. There will also be great IT opportunities in non-IT fields, such as the geospatial and health-care industries. One key problem in this glass-half-full scenario is that while higher-end IT workers should do fine, there's no way for entry-level IT workers to gain the experience necessary to move up, since all the traditional entry-level jobs are skipping off across the ocean. A few unique programs are being set up to help fix this problem. One is the National IT Apprenticeship System (NITAS), which was created through a partnership of CompTIA and the Department of Labor.

Link to article at:
http://www.mlgrocksit.com/Lists/MindShare/DispForm.aspx?ID=71&Source=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emlgrocksit%2Ecom%2Fdefault%2Easpx

Will

11 replies

by jdclyde

Many people in the U.S. HATE to call for support and have someone with a very heavy accent take their call.

They are already having a bad day or they wouldn't be calling support, and now they have to deal with this?

Also, the quality of the support you get regardless of the language barrier is generally lowest level of them going through the script of try this, try this, my computer now says to try this. If it isn't in the script, they don't know the answer so you get escalated to level two support which in every case I have had been back in the U.S..

It is a short term fad that will turn around when companies see they are losing money because customers will go with the company that SUPPORTS the products they sell. Period.

by kingskid

You have to realize just like in the 70s when japanese cars were considered sub-standard but are now considered industry standard because of the high quality, quality of support will go up. It is only a matter of time and training. You know English language is not only spoken in America, and accent reduction is something that can be taught. It is already happening and with time you will not know the difference whether you are speaking to a help desk in Bangalore or in Accra (which by the way is in Ghana, West Africa). Basically it is all about rolling you r's and being silent on your t's. Just my two cens worrrth.

by apotheon

I've spoken to tech support in other countries where the techs were taught to speak with some kind of American midwest accent and to pretend to be from some town or other in, say, Iowa. Any reasonably intelligent human being that is paying attention can see through it, though. There's only so much you can learn in terms of how to pretend to be an American without actually living in the US for several years.

Even speech patterns aren't that easily learned. The accent was clear, but somehow I found myself having to turn on my internal foreign-accent-translation routines (in my head, that is) to be able to communicate with this underpaid schmuck.

by turbogeek

An easy well to tell if you are dealing with a native speaker of English or one who learned from a book in a classroom is to use colloquial expressions, idioms, regional variants, etc. Most 'off-shore' support centers are located in countries that were likely once part of the British Empire and thus derive their own local English dialect from that of the UK. If they were a colony or governed by another European Empire, the bias will still be towards UK English.

"Are you going to get on the horn with the rockets scientists who wrote this kludge and fork over the dope on how I'm going to get this turkey humming on all 8 cylinders, or am I just going to park my kiester here whistling Dixie while you take a powder?"

Stunned silence likely equals 'off-shore'.

Alternatively, (if you can do it credibly) talk in a heavy regional Amercian accent, like Boston (pahk the cahr in Havahd Yahd, flatten out those 'r's til they are unrecognizable,) Southern Pantation. (Fritz Hollings, NOT Scarlett O'Hara), or Locust Valley Lockjaw (Thurston Howell III)

A bewildered response should provide you the answer to where your call ultimately got routed.

Once you have mastered these, you can move into the advanced level by simulating various speech impedements.

by rojackson

Japanese quality and productivity are the result of them listening to an American, Deming, when American companies scoffed at the idea!

I don't know if there is a six sigma / SPC parallel for level 1 help desk. I do know that there are major inherencies in the attitudes about code development at least in India. They remind me of my kid when he was first starting out, instead of designing it correctly they are constantly tweaking it w/ "fix it programs and scripts." They're response to an intermittent bug is "we can't replicte it, ticket closed." Their response to replicatable problems are "don't do that, ticket closed."

Nuff said, ticket closed ;)

by apotheon

There isn't any catch, as far as I've been able to determine.

Please open the original post you made, click the edit button, and replace the long URL with the short URL. When I open the original post, the layout of the page looks all screwed up because there aren't any linebreaks in the URL.

by redragtoabull

Entry level jobs - help desk, coding - can be done overseas for $500 per month and are GONE. Period.

And they ain't comin' back anytime soon, accent or no accent.

IT professionals, if they are to remain in IT, must move up the food chain. Business analysis skills, conceptual, design, and architectural skills will always be in demand.

The problem is you cannot start at the top - so how do you get the entry level experience when there are no jobs? - the apprenticeship program seems like a good idea to me.

My $.02

P.S. My long URL looks fine - exactly one line. Maybe its a screen res issue....

by jdclyde

And I have never talked to ANYONE who has worked the help desk that was happy with it. I wouldn't have the patience for it.

Now the problem is, it was a way for people to get their foot in the door. They have to find a new way to get that foot in.

by catherine

It seems like a Catch 22 thing - you can neither be at the top, or want to be at the bottom. What we should do, is to capitalise on what is unique for each industry and in the country, so that it is hard for people to replicate our work (by outsourcing).

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