- Forum Clout
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The Jim Norton thread went off-topic into a discussion of "off shoring" so I thought I'd make a fork.
Shit I hate about off-shoring:
1) In the Big Picture, I think the worst part about it isn't that it's mostly Indians, it's that moving jobs offshore basically eliminates entry level positions from the LAST industry in the United States that had a low bar of entry and the potential to get paid well. Imagine if doctors in America were all held to the same standard to GET their jobs, but Americans who wanted to become doctors were banned from going to high school and had to jump right into college with no education. That's basically what happens with offshoring. For instance, I got into the field I'm in (I.T.) by first working in a Call Center, just working the phones. I jumped from being on the phone, to being an "operator." These gigs basically don't exist any longer, but back in the day, people were paid to basically make sure that systems were running. It was basically like a really really entry-level version of system administration. I had no degree and my only experience was that I'd learned some UNIX in college. From being an "operator," I took a step backwards to fixing computers (literally just rebooting them a lot of the time.) Then they remembered that I knew enough UNIX to get by, stuck me on a UNIX team, and I've been doing it ever since. Jobs like this - they are G-O-N-E. One of my coworkers on the UNIX team, he actually came from one of the companies that offshores like crazy in 2025. But it was the 90s, so instead of him coming from Chicago, someone like him would now be working in Hyderabad or Pune.
2) Indians are completely allergic to hiring anyone who isn't Indian. I've worked with TONS of Indians who were hired by old white guys like me, but the reverse is not true; they simply won't hire Whites.
3) When a team is 10-25% offshore, things aren't too awful, but once the team is more than about 25% Indian, shit hits the fan. They just hire Indian after Indian. I frequently jump into conference calls where the onshore employees are talking to the offshore employees in Hindi, despite the fact that we're an American company. Sometimes it's obvious that they're flip flopping between languages to have private conversations about the White guys in the middle of a meeting.
4) The level of lying is so ridiculous, it's almost makes me laugh, if it wasn't so enraging.
Here's a few anecdotes about how much they lie:
My team (theoretically) consists of 67 people. About 10% are full time employees like me, the rest are outsourced. Most of the outsourced employees are offshore, a few are stateside. Out of sixty-ish people, I can only name about five. I don't know who the other 55 are or what they do. My 'hunch' is that my employer is paying for offshore resources, but those resources are likely juggling multiple accounts off in India, or they may even be working for multiple employers in India.
I've noticed that due to their thick accents, absolute refusal to get on camera, shitting VOIP quality, and tendency to use nicknames instead of real names, I think that many of the contractors aren't who they say they are. I believe that what they're doing is that we will hire 55 contractors, but only a tiny fraction of them actually know what they're doing. Maybe 2-5 of them.
IE, when I'm chatting with "Ravi" on Microsoft Teams, I may actually be chatting with someone completely different. "Ravi" is having one of his coworkers larp as him, so "Ravi" can work a different job, or a different project at the outsourcing company.
Yeah, I know that sounds confusing as fuck, and I think that's part of the scam. It's a level of lying and obfuscation that will make your head spin, and I don't think management is aware of it, because they're just writing checks. They're not interacting with these dudes.
If anyone has ever worked in sales, you know how this works:
If a team has ten sales people, the low-level salespeople do the 'grunt' work of greeting the customer, making small talk, checking the customer's temperature, etc. If the 'grunts' stumble, The Closer comes in to "save" the sale, or move the sale towards the goal, which is "closing the sale." I believe outsourcing companies are doing the same thing, but with technical work. You may believe you're chatting with "Ravi" but you're actually talking to a "grunt." "Ravi" will step in if needed, but as long as nothing is blowing up, "Ravi" is working on something else.
Shit I hate about off-shoring:
1) In the Big Picture, I think the worst part about it isn't that it's mostly Indians, it's that moving jobs offshore basically eliminates entry level positions from the LAST industry in the United States that had a low bar of entry and the potential to get paid well. Imagine if doctors in America were all held to the same standard to GET their jobs, but Americans who wanted to become doctors were banned from going to high school and had to jump right into college with no education. That's basically what happens with offshoring. For instance, I got into the field I'm in (I.T.) by first working in a Call Center, just working the phones. I jumped from being on the phone, to being an "operator." These gigs basically don't exist any longer, but back in the day, people were paid to basically make sure that systems were running. It was basically like a really really entry-level version of system administration. I had no degree and my only experience was that I'd learned some UNIX in college. From being an "operator," I took a step backwards to fixing computers (literally just rebooting them a lot of the time.) Then they remembered that I knew enough UNIX to get by, stuck me on a UNIX team, and I've been doing it ever since. Jobs like this - they are G-O-N-E. One of my coworkers on the UNIX team, he actually came from one of the companies that offshores like crazy in 2025. But it was the 90s, so instead of him coming from Chicago, someone like him would now be working in Hyderabad or Pune.
2) Indians are completely allergic to hiring anyone who isn't Indian. I've worked with TONS of Indians who were hired by old white guys like me, but the reverse is not true; they simply won't hire Whites.
3) When a team is 10-25% offshore, things aren't too awful, but once the team is more than about 25% Indian, shit hits the fan. They just hire Indian after Indian. I frequently jump into conference calls where the onshore employees are talking to the offshore employees in Hindi, despite the fact that we're an American company. Sometimes it's obvious that they're flip flopping between languages to have private conversations about the White guys in the middle of a meeting.
4) The level of lying is so ridiculous, it's almost makes me laugh, if it wasn't so enraging.
Here's a few anecdotes about how much they lie:
My team (theoretically) consists of 67 people. About 10% are full time employees like me, the rest are outsourced. Most of the outsourced employees are offshore, a few are stateside. Out of sixty-ish people, I can only name about five. I don't know who the other 55 are or what they do. My 'hunch' is that my employer is paying for offshore resources, but those resources are likely juggling multiple accounts off in India, or they may even be working for multiple employers in India.
I've noticed that due to their thick accents, absolute refusal to get on camera, shitting VOIP quality, and tendency to use nicknames instead of real names, I think that many of the contractors aren't who they say they are. I believe that what they're doing is that we will hire 55 contractors, but only a tiny fraction of them actually know what they're doing. Maybe 2-5 of them.
IE, when I'm chatting with "Ravi" on Microsoft Teams, I may actually be chatting with someone completely different. "Ravi" is having one of his coworkers larp as him, so "Ravi" can work a different job, or a different project at the outsourcing company.
Yeah, I know that sounds confusing as fuck, and I think that's part of the scam. It's a level of lying and obfuscation that will make your head spin, and I don't think management is aware of it, because they're just writing checks. They're not interacting with these dudes.
If anyone has ever worked in sales, you know how this works:
If a team has ten sales people, the low-level salespeople do the 'grunt' work of greeting the customer, making small talk, checking the customer's temperature, etc. If the 'grunts' stumble, The Closer comes in to "save" the sale, or move the sale towards the goal, which is "closing the sale." I believe outsourcing companies are doing the same thing, but with technical work. You may believe you're chatting with "Ravi" but you're actually talking to a "grunt." "Ravi" will step in if needed, but as long as nothing is blowing up, "Ravi" is working on something else.
