anyone's company ever outsource work to india?

[Gato Moteado]

no, i'm not outsourcing anything to india.

but, i was curious if anyone here works for a company that is outsourcing any work (particularly software or application development) to india.

how was the experience?
did the work get done on time and for the original estimated cost?
did the 12 hour time difference cause problems?
did the differences in business culture cause problems?

[MsTryska]

1. I've worked for a couple of companies that outsourced.

the first one outsourced the entire global 24/7 helpdesk to India over a year. Soem folks came over here to train, and then they switched operations over there.

the thing that bothered me most was that the Indian folks started taking various former helpdesk employees western names as their own. that really bugged me.


there was a lot of bitterness from various US employees - they couldn;t understand accents, soem were outright racist etc. Eventually they moved the operation to Montreal, if i recall correctly.



The next company i worked for also outsourced - but this time it was only software engineers. which is syaing alot because it was essentially 40 long-term employees getting canned at once.

that made quite a few people very bitter - someone eventually sent a "Ask the CEO anything!" emaila sking about it - the CEO essentially said, "well i can't really do anythign about it - it's the only way to save money - blame this all on your elected officials that voted for this decision".

good times.

[RobertSeattle]

2. Unsolicted email I got regarding Outsourcing

(This was a real email - I removed the person's name and phone #)

Dear Sir,

I hope your day is going well. I understand that currently your organization is undertaking various IT projects on .NET and other technologies for which you require contractors services and are also considering few companies, who can assist you in meeting out your programming requirements from offshore centres and help you in reducing cost as well. This is just a brief profile, we will like to make a formal presentation of our capabilities in the areas you will be interested in. We are working with many ISVs and global 1000 companies and providing them end-to-end e-business solutions and strategic sourcing. These also inclused Healthcare companies like VantageMed, Boston Scientific Corporation, Varian Medical Systems, Vertex Pharma to name a few.

R Systems Inc. (www.rsystems.com) is a SEI CMM Level 5 , ISO 9001: 2000 Certified Software Engineering & IT firm, with Intel & GE Capital as strategic investors in the company. We are the only company in the world to run an Intel Certified Application Solution Centre from its facilities based in US and India. Currently, we are on our way for Six Sigma and CMMi certifications as well. We have over 1000+ Technical resources worldwide with global software development and delivery centers based out of US, India and Singapore.

We are providing our clients, which includes Global 1000, medium size companies with a host of offshore - onsite software engineering, IT consulting and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services like:

Customized Software Development
Enterprise Application Integration
Quality Assurance & Testing Services
Wireless, Mobility & CRM Solutions
IT Staff Augmentation
24 X 7 Technical Help Desk (Level 1, 2 & 3)
Call Center,Web-based support Services and Back-end Operations support


We have over 200+ IT consultants on our pay-roll on different skills/platforms/technologies working at our client locations all across US on various contract assignments. These range from H1B to Green Card Holders to US Citizens as well.

We leverage our offshore facilities to save companies about 40% - 50% on your internal cost centers. I am also enclosing herewith a few business documents for your kind reference. I will be looking forward for a confirmation of receiving this email and your interests areas and a date/time for our call, where we can hold a brief discussion. Please feel free for any additional information you may require. I can be reached at xxx.



Thanks,

Sr. Manager - Sales

[indigo32]

3. Yes

I can't speak for the cost...
but the 12 hour time difference DOES make a difference.

[Tommymac]

4. I was outsourced

The corporation I worked for outsourced most development and infrastructure support to India...

We had to train our replacements...not pleasant. The experience, while I was still there was not good. The work did not get done properly. The time and cultural differences caused major issues. For instance, some Indian men refused to speak with their female counterparts here in the US - talking to a woman was beneath them.

End users were livid - urgent support calls that we answered and solved in hours or minutes were taking days. And the language barrier was a huge hurdle to overcome. Complaints of rudeness were prevalent.

Since our day was their night, time differences were a big problem.

Since the overseas company was a low bidder, they would hire people at the lowest possible wage right out of tech school...in 3 months they would loose them to higher paying jobs, kept having to re-train people in critical roles. They could not find qualified individuals to do the job we did. Cost overruns were happening for this reason alone. They had to keep us on a year longer than planned to keep the infrastructure running - in effect they paid for 2 support groups.

[dogday]

5. My internet company has

tried to get them to stop billing me twice and it was like pulling teeth. Could not understand my guy at all....

[Tim4319]

6. As an employee, my position is slowly being outsourced to India

I was let go June 7. I wrote something here on DU and received a lot of support.

[wli]

7. I've seen a few of them show up; however...

Both companies I worked for that did the offshoring already had large in-house operations set up in India. By and large it didn't show up through Wipro (basically, part of the outsourcing in one of the occasions was dumping Wipro and hiring in-house), but rather, layoffs stateside and hiring in the India offices. Secretarial staff was hit the hardest, technical staff not so much. The specific groups I worked in were largely immune to this, as by and large we were starving for people and only a couple blatantly unproductive people were let go in obscure, related areas (tech writers, some programmers who had essentially failed on-the-job training).

[ulysses]

8. yup.

That was the deal behind my second IT layoff.

[clmbohdem]

9. anyone's company ever outsource work to india?

Very bad experience. The code was like spaghetti with no documentation. It looked like High School quality level of work. It is cheap up to the point you have to fix the code.

[newyawker99]

12. Hi clmbohdem!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Gato Moteado]

10. so, nobody has had a good experience?

very, very interesting.

to be honest, i have talked with many people in the industry who have experience working with or managing teams of developers in india and have yet to hear a single good experience.

[LongTomH]

11. Add WorldSpan L.P. to the list

WorldSpan is outsourcing jobs through TaTa in India. I understand that with at least one department, the people in India were clueless as to our operation. That meant the people left in the U.S. had to work 10-12 hour days to do the work the newbies in India couldn't do.

There's more at: http://worldspan.blogspot.com This is a blog started by a former WorldSpan employee. WorldSpan has a lot of former employees; they've been cutting staff since before 9/11/2001. Most of the layoffs were "stealth" layoffs: a few at a time, so they didn't attract attention from the press or city or state government.

I got my notice in February. I understand about 80 people are currently slated for the axe.

WSP's current CEO is Rakesh Gangwal: Google that name. He's a real piece of work. He was CEO at US Airways when they went into bankruptcy. He laid off people right and left, and got big wage concessions from the unions. After creating all this wreckage, he left with 15 megabucks in his piggy bank.

He's followed the same M.O. at WorldSpan. Layoffs left and right and a 5 percent, across the board pay cut in 2003. We were told that might be temporary. About the same time we were finding out that it would be permanent, someone found the SEC documents filed by WSP for that year, which detailed the huge bonuses Rakki and his friends were giving themselves.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/business/6894212.htm?1c">WorldSpan execs paid millions in bonuses amid layoffs

[Gato Moteado]

13. link to the article didn't work for me

nt