Reply to: Off to India

[reddog]

If you're scared of cheap overseas labour, you need to upskill.

I have managed to upskill to avoid cheap competition, but the price was moving to another country and learning a new language (there is cheap labour in the new country - Switzerland, but they don't bother learning the language)

However I don't think my approach is realistic for everyone, obviously not everyone can be above average, and also maybe people would like to support their family in their local community, making their area, country a better place. This is not going to be possible if everyone spends their life obsessing over being in the top couple of percent of achievers.

[vetran]

WTAF?

Caption competition:

Bojo - I almost look as much of a knob as El-Reeker

[Eirikur]

WTAF?

[vetran]

oh missed this bit

"Trying to get staff is really, really hard," she said.

"It's unsociable hours, and I know a lot of chefs, during the pandemic, [who] left to work for Amazon, that kind of thing, because they were having the same wages as a chef but with more sociable hours.

shocked. shocked I tell you.

[SueEllen]

I'm mainly trolling but while there are always good people around who work hard, they seem more in the minority. The idea of slogging hard to work your way up seems alien to those growing up in the Influencer Generation, so to speak (the irony being that the successful influencers generally have had to graft to get where they are)

Nope. There are a lot more of them around than you think.

The problem is they are the quiet ones who just get on with it.

[vetran]

Not just IT, the hospitality business is now hiring from India.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-61094777

Thanks to Brexit, we have no choice but accept the bob overlord and carry on upskilling.

hmm

"Why would you get paid £11-£12 an hour to work in a boiling hot kitchen all day when you can get as much delivering parcels all day?

"I don't really know what the solution would be... giving people more money isn't going to be it because that's going to eat into your profit margins, and you know, the profit margin doesn't exist.

"The price of food is going up so I really, really don't know the solution."

pay tulip don't get tulip

[baen]

Not just IT, the hospitality business is now hiring from India.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-61094777

Thanks to Brexit, we have no choice but accept the bob overlord and carry on upskilling.

[TheDude]

They are no longer cheap & cheerful they are clever and well priced.

I worked for a Multinational who had a significant investment of in house Indian based IT resources (then they moved to offshoring accountancy & HR etc) some of the guys there were really impressive and were guiding the IT for a multi billion dollar business.

I too have worked for some very large companies who set a high bar on tech hires.

Many of my Indian colleagues have been fantastic - many of these guys will sooner or later want to move to the UK or US and then all of the sudden they are not so cheap.

Some of my Indian colleagues have been extremely frustrating to work with. I am not sure if it is a cultural thing but if asked to do something they don't understand then rather than ask questions they remain silent. You think they are working on something but haven't even started.

Some have been useless - my theory is that IT/development is seen as an aspirational career in India and as such attract people who neither have the curiosity or aptitude to make good developers.

[d000hg]

Well can't really agree with that, the last few companies I've been at have had, in the main, an outstanding 'crop' of grads. Maybe you're selection process is wrong, my mate at RR (a permie) only took graddies on who had a second job through uni. Didn't matter where your degree was from or what class.

I'm mainly trolling but while there are always good people around who work hard, they seem more in the minority. The idea of slogging hard to work your way up seems alien to those growing up in the Influencer Generation, so to speak (the irony being that the successful influencers generally have had to graft to get where they are)

[Gibbon]

When you look at the current crop of UK graduates, I'm not surprised companies are looking to a country where people don't view hard work as some sort of attack on their human rights.

Well can't really agree with that, the last few companies I've been at have had, in the main, an outstanding 'crop' of grads. Maybe you're selection process is wrong, my mate at RR (a permie) only took graddies on who had a second job through uni. Didn't matter where your degree was from or what class.

[OwlHoot]

When you look at the current crop of UK graduates, I'm not surprised companies are looking to a country where people don't view hard work as some sort of attack on their human rights.

The rot started setting in as soon as they banned caning at schools!

[d000hg]

When you look at the current crop of UK graduates, I'm not surprised companies are looking to a country where people don't view hard work as some sort of attack on their human rights.

[DoctorStrangelove]

I suppose flying to India to sell the country down the river makes a change from hiding in a freezer to avoid an interviewer.

All par for the course for Boris Bozo Bunter, the fat owl of the remove.

There must be something happening today that the coward wants to avoid.

[vetran]

Based on my own fairly wide experience, the problem I have with the Indian offshore consultancies is not that they are bad but their business model is to drive as much revenue earning as possible. So don't correct faulty code, rewrite the whole application, don't upgrade older systems but offer a whole new installation (plus hardware, as often as not) and emergent technology. In other words, get their maximum income rather than your maximum value for money. Add ot that the mysterious growth in their on-site presence for each new project, notable because the existing team are still there.

Obviously the UK-based companies do the same - no business is a charity after all - but at least they are willing to listen to your requirement first.

It may have changed in the few years since I left work but I doubt it. They can be cost effective, but it is an uphill struggle; you wind up spending more time managing them than you do managing your department.

And always remember, without the entry level code monkey jobs that they are absorbing, you high grade heroes with the niche skills would never have got started...

That is why many companies are investing in Indian wings. Many of the Guys & Girls based in India were sitting with VPs of fortune 500 companies supporting IT strategy. That is fairly high skilled.

Or the support structure is based in India, my expenses are processed by an app but any queries disappear into India, customer billing done in India, first line support is in India etc.

[d000hg]

Indians aren't just code monkeys. I've worked with some very clever and capable Indian people who were born, brought up and even live in India.

Me too, but they weren't working for major outsourcing factories. They were living and working in UK/US/etc because their skills enabled them to - Covid has a changed a lot but people still care about being able to interact with their colleagues. Or at the very least they were working for companies who had hired them directly.

The problem is the latter part. You can't complete with people who live in a place with a much lower cost of living.

You mean like London/SE Vs the rest of the UK? That is a huge disparity - you might get £30k in the NE when you could earn £50k in London - but it hasn't put London-centric businesses out of business, and most have resisted the desire to substantially use onshoring. Again maybe Covid will have a long-term impact on that.