Is Mumbai Shutting Down? (Indian Outsourcing Firms Responding to Wuhan Virus Putting American Firms @ Risk)

Self ^ | 03/15/2020 | USCoonservative

[fastrock]

“When we lived overseas I wanted to STRANGLE a couple of them. Their egos FAR outstrip their work ethic and Indians seem to think that their culture is superior to all.
That wasn’t tre for ALL Indians but, generally, for MOST of them.”

Held numerous vid-conf calls w our InfoSys India support personnel. India is a caste culture, occasionally you would have a upper caste working for a lower caste supv. Generally, to the US customer, you didn’t see any problems - bez we were the customer. It was just strange how the back and forth conversation would progress on vid-conf. What I learned in private voice conversations was lower caste supv or mgr would have to sway to needs or wants of upper caste, but lower caste supv/mgr would reposition conversation such that it appeased upper caste employee. In USA culture, it would be called “street cred”

Bottom line, the work got completed or problem solved expeditiously.

[usconservative]

You’re assuming in your response that I had decision rights to offshore. I did not.

[usconservative]

If this is widespread, you are going to see a lot of CIO’s shown the door after this.

I'm so glad you mentioned this.

The CEO of the bank left shortly after all the offshoring agreements were signed, he took a position on IBM's board of directors.

The CIO of the bank vehemently disagreed with the decision to offshore and he was shown the door by the CEO, shortly before the CEO left.

What's left are a new CIO in the past year who's undoing the offshoring mess and a CEO who's working with the CIO to undo it.

The problem for us is, they announced re-shoring everything in early December (I wrote about that here on FR.)

We're really caught by the short-hairs right now in all this mess.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Outsourcing may look fine on paper, but I suspect that there are hidden costs that counter the positive financial analysis performed up front.

Very many US companies see IT as a necessary evil that they don’t really want in the building where they have to look at it. Any hidden costs are more than offset - in their minds - by the benefit of being able to pretend their firms run entirely on the executives’ own brainpower, rather than being dependent on the work product of the socially maladjusted misfits they used to beat up in high school. :)

[PapaBear3625]

Good move. I heard that being in IT at BOA was brutal. But being a former staffer at an acquired company makes it even more difficult. I left Continental Airlines before the acquisition by United was complete. Heard from former colleagues that it was turbulent there as well during the transition. Most left.

A friend worked as a developer for Pan Am airlines back around 1980. Their IT dept was unionized. By the Teamsters union. They required you to use coding sheets and punch cards, because the keypunch operators were union.

[central_va]

I personally hope every Executive that made the decision to move operational support to India dies a slow, painful agonizing death.

Burning them at the stake has a certain appeal.

[cloudmountain]

India dumped the caste system in 1950.

You might have noticed that the higher the caste, the lighter skinned people you saw. Conversely with the lower caste, darker skinned. So, even though the caste system has officially gone these past 70 years the color bias still exists.

Gee, they are racist. Quelle surprise.

[fastrock]

As you said, caste may have been dumped, still alive and well.

[spintreebob]

Sears had both. The Brennan Brothers ran MontgomeryWard and Sears as brothers, both coasting downhill, just as they did Running the RNC under Bush I and their own Bob Michels. They bet big against Newt and lost in politics.

The Wall Street Journal and business specialty magazines argued for years to get rid of the Brennans. Finally the stockholders got wise and brought in Martinez, who brought in guys at the top with really good ideas. Later Lands End bought Sears and had really good ideas.

In both cases, it was middle management that sabotaged the good ideas.

Middle management and young whiz kids through sheer stupidity also caused Kemper Insurance to go bankrupt. I had a front row seat. In that case, the top executives were on the golf course far too much.

[cloudmountain]

Held numerous vid-conf calls w our InfoSys India support personnel. India is a caste culture, occasionally you would have a upper caste working for a lower caste supv. Generally, to the US customer, you didn’t see any problems - bez we were the customer. It was just strange how the back and forth conversation would progress on vid-conf. What I learned in private voice conversations was lower caste supv or mgr would have to sway to needs or wants of upper caste, but lower caste supv/mgr would reposition conversation such that it appeased upper caste employee. In USA culture, it would be called “street cred”
Bottom line, the work got completed or problem solved expeditiously.
As you said, caste may have been dumped, still alive and well.

.

If you already knew this why all this blather?

[StolarStorm]

Yeah, it really just depends on what company we are talking about. I went from a being a software engineer, to project manager, to software dev manager to VP of software development. The brightest (and most authentic) people were at the lowest level. The dumbest and most immoral types were at the very top. Lots of sociopaths. The middle level people were stuck b/w the two and just tried to survive the blame shifting coming from the top tier for the most part. I guess that effort to survive could be construed as resistance and it was at times. The perks of being a VP were great but the people I had to work with were awful human beings, true scum of the earth. Paid well, but I hated it. Glad I’m done with that. Give me back my days with staff who spent their days getting things done instead of engaging in office warfare and plots to enhance their bonuses.