Author Topic: India's tech boom: Our "Service" transformation (Read 784 times)

Ripsnort · « **on:** October 02, 2003, 04:56:54 PM »

Hope you're not going to school for computer science in the US, its a dying industry, y'all get them hamburger spatulas warmed up!

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Jobs Abound in India's Booming Tech Sector
Wed Oct 1,10:24 PM ET

"The market is booming. I can pick and choose a firm of my choice," said the 28-year-old engineer, who has been in the industry for about five years.

Companies are slashing payrolls in the United States and Europe to cut costs, moving software work offshore and creating thousands of jobs for India's low-cost engineers.

Headhunters are scrambling to fill the new jobs.

"The shelf life of a job hunter has come down to two weeks from about two months," said Gautam Sinha, chief executive at TVA Infotech, which is placing about 90 software workers a month, double the number from the start of the year.

Top home-grown software exporters such as Wipro Ltd and Infosys Technologies Ltd are also on a hiring spree but the bulk of their staff additions are entry-level positions.

India's software sector, including the back-office services industry, added 130,000 -- nearly 25 percent -- to its workforce in the year to March, taking the sector to 650,000. Wage costs are rising but are not yet a threat for a nation that churns out about 200,000 engineers per year, analysts say.

Software workers with two years of experience are paid about 25,000 rupees ($545) a month, roughly one sixth of what their U.S. counterparts earn but a princely wage in a country with an average per capita income of $480 a year.

"Multinational company salaries are 50 to 60 percent higher at the entry-level and 30 percent higher at the middle management level when compared with Indian IT services companies," Bombay-based Kotak Securities Ltd said in a recent report.

WAGE HIKES

A fall in U.S. employment visas for foreign workers are partly driving the expansion plans of high-tech firms such as IBM, Accenture Ltd and Oracle Corp. in India. Visa curbs discourage Indians from seeking employment abroad and some are returning from a stint overseas.

"Clearly, the romance of jobs overseas is no longer there for most Indian techies," said Pandia Rajan, the managing director at Ma Foi Management Consultants, a leading headhunter.

Walk-in interviews are common in the shining offices of companies in the technology hubs of Bangalore, Madras and Hyderabad in the south and Delhi and Bombay in the west.

India's call centers have been magnets for job-hunting youth in the past few years, but it is only in the last six months that software jobs are flooding the market after a two-year crunch. India's software services exports rose to $9.5 billion in the past year to March and are forecast to grow 26 percent this year.

"Many Indians overseas are uncertain about their tech jobs and are coming back," said Smita Goswamy, who runs HR Solutions, a small consultancy in the western city of Baroda.

FOEREIGN HIRING

A full-page advertisement from IBM screams: "The global giant is at your desktop with the opportunity of a lifetime. Can you afford to ignore it?" _

Internet media giant Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news)and Fidelity Investments, the number one mutual fund firm, are among other large companies moving technical support work to India.

Yahoo, which set up a software center in Bangalore in July, is tapping local colleges for talent, said Venkat Panchapakesan, who shifted from Yahoo's U.S. center to head its software unit.

Accenture and Oracle are expanding furiously but their staff in India is still less than a quarter of Infosys and Wipro, which employ about 17,000 and 21,000 people respectively.

"Overseas firms are even hiring from mid-sized local players," said Bangalore-based Shambhu Agrawal, who handles technology placements at ABC Consultants.

Krusher · « **Reply #1 on:** October 02, 2003, 07:36:02 PM »

Have you noticed how little noise this is generating among our politicians on either side of the isle.

Fatty · « **Reply #2 on:** October 02, 2003, 07:38:36 PM »

Story's behind the times, Central America is already undercutting India.

Krusher · « **Reply #3 on:** October 02, 2003, 07:41:38 PM »

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Originally posted by Fatty
Story's behind the times, Central America is already undercutting India.

I noticed that Mexico filed an unfair trade practice against China because of their extreamly low wages...

weird times we live in

ra · « **Reply #4 on:** October 02, 2003, 08:58:02 PM »

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Originally posted by Krusher
Have you noticed how little noise this is generating among our politicians on either side of the isle.

That's because both sides know there's nothing they can do about, nothing they can even pretend to do about it.

This article concentrates on IT, but other professions are not far behind. Manufacturing jobs have been leaving for a long time, and now any white-collar job which deals with data (IT, accounting, design, research, engineering, architecture) are flowing away. If some new industries don't arise to give western workers a chance to be productive, this could be very bad news. Our financial system is designed around continuous growth, and with so many workers losing the jobs for which they are best qualified, that growth is in jeopardy.

ra

Wanker · « **Reply #5 on:** October 02, 2003, 09:42:57 PM »

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A full-page advertisement from IBM screams: "The global giant is at your desktop with the opportunity of a lifetime. Can you afford to ignore it?"

Grrrrr........

Gadfly · « **Reply #6 on:** October 02, 2003, 10:01:31 PM »

So it is a bad thing to bring development to emerging countries? Make up your minds, ladies. Besides, India is already under wage inflation, and, has been stated above, is already being priced out of the market. It is called Capitalism, and even though it hurts now in the short term, the long term effect is to make the world a better place. Kum-Ba-Ya-mother-F'er, you can't have it all ways at once.

Sandman · « **Reply #7 on:** October 02, 2003, 10:15:27 PM »

I'm sure you've seen the annoying Dell interns and their commercial about 24/7 tech support...

That support is coming from India.

Gadfly · « **Reply #8 on:** October 02, 2003, 10:22:05 PM »

There is about 4 million square feet of Dell tech support here in Austin(Round Rock/Pflugerville, actually), as well. They are more rude and less knowledgable here, though, that is how you can tell.

Badger · « **Reply #9 on:** October 03, 2003, 06:59:05 AM »

I'm curious....

The reality is that we all now live in a world based economy, so choosing to be a computer tech, systems admin, or help desk support person as a career path, then expecting to be paid at a wage level that permits one to own a house in the burbs, two or more cars in the laneway, vacation cottages and a boat load of luxury items is long gone. In fact, as was pointed out, it left a long time ago for primary manufacturing sector jobs in basic industries such as steel.

Why would any of us here find it so disgusting that any corporation in an attempt to remain competitive within the context of a world economic landscape, would seek out highly qualified workers whose primary focus would be on taking care of their business, instead of spending their entire working day logged onto bulletin boards practicing some form of electronic narcissism?

JB73 ran a thread on this board and there was also one on AGW by mietla, that in my opinion were quite thought provoking. The threads were attributed (rightly or wrongly) to Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1742-1813) a Scottish jurist and historian, but regardless, the content is thought provoking.

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"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with a result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:

From Bondage to Spiritual Faith
From Spiritual Faith to Great Courage
From Courage to Liberty
From Liberty to Abundance
From Abundance to Selfishness
From Selfishness to Complacency
From Complacency to Apathy
From Apathy to Dependency
From Dependency back into Bondage"

. . .Alexander Tytler "Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic"[/b][/i]

Does anyone think that perhaps the content, opinions and subject of this current thread could be fitted into the latter part of Tytler's proposition someplace?

Some days you have just have to wonder in astonishment....

Regards,
Badger

Fatty · « **Reply #10 on:** October 03, 2003, 07:01:49 AM »

Oh I don't have a problem with it. We'll have to suck it up for a while but in the long run it's a good thing.

Udie · « **Reply #11 on:** October 03, 2003, 07:49:17 AM »

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Originally posted by Fatty
Story's behind the times, Central America is already undercutting India.

Yup. I have a friend who's a manager at a "local" world wide computer DEaLLer, the name of which I won't mention.

They moved a bunch of tech support to India and Central America. They are moving a large portion of it back away from India. Seems the language barrier was stronger than they thought and they've lost alot of business over it....

AcId · « **Reply #12 on:** October 03, 2003, 08:55:17 AM »

They are not the only ones either Udie. I know of another popular tech company that has done the same. Not only was there a language problem but the fact that we....err they were exporting jobs caused a lot of problems with customers. So know they're trying to use this "resource" in a behind the scenes roll (software development). What would take us...err local development teams 4-5 months is taking this "resource" twice the time, half of which is spent in meetings alone just to communicate exactly what they are supposed to be doing.

A global economy is one thing, helping countries is one thing, but using people just because they work cheaper at the cost of development time in a market where being the first one out the door is important just hurts the company in the long run.

gofaster · « **Reply #13 on:** October 03, 2003, 09:18:33 AM »

Seems to me that the jobs being sent overseas are the "starter" jobs most college grads take to get their foot in the door.

"I used to be in Desktop Support before I moved into Development...."

"I did help desk stuff but now I'm in sales..."

"After spending a year in the Call Center, I got a job over in Business Partner Support..."

That sort of thing.

If you want to know the future of IT professions, just look at the garment workers trades.

Westy · « **Reply #14 on:** October 03, 2003, 09:30:35 AM »

The US transformation into a service economy has been going on for decades.
And IMO "IT" is more a "service" than a product. Perhaps the next chapter in the book on the evolution of the US economy and industry is how the US manages to export it's service industry too after having succesfully ditched it's manufacturing capacity.
What will the unemployed factory workers turned layed off telemarketers do next?