[PLUG] Re: Jobs to Canada

Karl Kulaga root at loraksus.d2g.com
Wed Aug 27 23:12:02 UTC 2003


<soapbox>
Ok, a couple of things. The definition "tech jobs" of rather broad. Call
center folk are "tech jobs" as are product design engineers and the IT
person in a momNpop. There is a big difference between these folks, and I
don't want to offend call center folks too much, but if you're reading this,
you're probably not one of the folks who I'm basically calling human IVRs

Call centers? /wave, gone to Canada or India if the company doesn't care
(aka Dell) if their customers can understand their tech support.

You know that whole "stream" thing in Beaverton? Yeah, the one that had 2
sites, now has one that is pretty empty. . . Guess where those jobs went?
Yup. Canada. I believe direct tv is also in Canada right now. Granted, India
is getting a lot, but a lot of jobs are going to Canada for the primary
reason that they speak English well. That and Canadian companies can offer
bigger bribes / swag to whoever picks the location of the call center. The
Canadian goverment also offers a REALLY nice tax advantage to companies
coming to it for the first couple of years, who can proceed to pull an
enron, fire all their employees (to get rid of that whole seniority and
raise issue), wait a 2 months and the same group of folks start a new
company to do the same thing over again.

What does it comes down to?
Canada gives bigger kickbacks, India is a lot cheaper. I'd hate to classify
"tech jobs" as most phone support, because most companies view their support
lines as a way to deflect RMAs and / or prevent / frustrate the customer
into not calling again. Sad, but true (ever tried calling dell support?).
Dummy phone support goes to India, tier 2 / escalations can always go to
Canada or stay here. Vast majority is Tier 1 though.
After all, most tech support isn't even that demanding, you could train
crackheads off the street to answer phones and to follow a cable isp's 10
step to reconnection guide. If you've ever called comcast's tier 1, you know
what I mean. Tier 2 gets passed calls from people who don't even HAVE cable
internet.
Most people don't care enough to complain about crap tech support, nor buy
products from a competitor who has better tech support - and since companies
want to save money . . . it isn't like this is going to change.

As a side note btw, apparantly the Republican Party just outsourced
fundraising to call centers in India. Not making a political statement or
whatever, just thought it was interesting.




Programmers? /wave, Canada, Ireland, or India.

Again, India is dirt cheap, but you get what you pay for. I've heard nothing
but nightmares from companies who outsourced programming to Indian
companies.

IT? Stays here, but there really is a wide gamut of "IT folk" - sure there
are a lot of actual sysadmins but the majority of small businesses have an
IT dept that consists of the guy who sat the closest to the printer. There
again, there isn't exactly room for an IT professional to move in. Windows
really makes it simple to set up AD on a 2k box, set up 100 users and assign
them to global groups. I could teach my 12 year old sister to do that
competently. 2k is fairly stable too. Sure flame on, but for the average
small business 2k (I'm not going to even mention 2003 Server) is stable
ENOUGH. The company doesn't see the need to change because the amount of
downtime is acceptable. They don't care enough to fix it. I've been to
places that haven't had their internal email working for a week and people
weren't saying "FIX IT NOW!!".
So, in a nutshell, computer morons / people who are not IT professionals get
IT jobs here for the most part, while your boss hires his nephew to "help" a
real sysadmin. Seriously, with windows 2k3, and it's nifty "configure your
server" startup wizard screen and the current state of the economy, there
aren't people leaving, but but little new is opening up which pretty much
means the same thing for the job market. Ulcers and unemployed folks.



Engineers, etc, are probably going to stay here, or American companies are
going to buy ideas from overseas. Pretty simple, but there isn't a whole lot
of folks designing new products compared to the total number of tech people.


Fab / assembly folks? Probably going somewhere in Asia, Canada costs too
much to relocate, and quite a bit of this stuff is in Asia already, it isn't
like those plants are going to be left standing with nothing to do when
their costs are dramatically cheaper (say, costs related to those pesky US
environmental laws, etc) Screwing together a computer / wireless AP isn't
exactly the most technically demanding job. Mexico and the East have those.
There isn't an advantage to having the person speak English, so it won't be
placed there for financial reasons.

Yeah, I'm bitter, but come on, you've all heard the horror stories and you
know they are true. I'm not sure if I missed any major groups; phone folks,
IT, programmers, engineers, fab and assembly folks. I think I've pretty much
got them all. Sure people like tech writers will have work, but again, a
minority.
Now distillers I hear are going to be making a killing in the next couple of
years ;)
</soapbox>


Phil - I didn't know about the intel thing, but it really doesn't surprise
me. Also makes me wonder how the state is planning on collecting the
additional tax money from those folks who are unemployed but not on
unemployment.






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