Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2004-12-15 04:41 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2004-12-15 04:41 pm
Unpopular opinions: nationalism, tech support, and the global economy
One of the common things to complain about in the computer industry is the fact that large chunks of phone-based tech support are getting outsourced to countries such as India. The usual complaint is, "Since workers over there will work for less money, it's cheaper and companies are wanting to do that, which takes jobs away from workers in the United States."
I am really not thrilled with the argument that takes the form, "Buying things that are made in other countries is not good because it supports the people who work in those countries, and not the people working in our own country," because I think that the premise supporting the argument, the nationalistic premise that it is better to support people in one's own country (usually, the unspoken commentary is that this good outweighs concerns about the quality of their work) rather than people living in a different country. I think that the United States is currently living unsustainably, and I furthermore have gathered the impression that many products made to be marketed at the States are made poorly, with little regard for long-term use, but with much attention paid to the appearance. My sense of fair play is annoyed that poverty-level existence in the United States is unimaginable riches to people in developing countries.
I feel that quality and desirable features of any product or service should be the main decision factor between any two given products. Only if the quality and features are closely comparable should nationalism come in to play. (But then, my nationalism-factor is tied to Alaska specifically, not the United States as a whole. I do tend to choose items made in Alaska over those not, when quality is equivalent.)
All that being said, I have problems with the quality of service of tech support when language barrier becomes a factor. Phone-based tech support, especially between a technical person on the tech support end of the line, and a non-technical person on the problem's end of the line, is an environment where nuance in language, and the ability to explain things in multiple and flexible ways, is extremely important. There are a lot of times when people who speak English as a second language have the understanding and vocabulary to operate perfectly normally in a day-to-day English-speaking environment, but simply do not have the vocabulary and bone-deep understanding of nuance to understand what the person on the other end of the line means, versus what they're saying. Tech support is a lot of "You should tell me about what I mean, not what I say," things, usually with a further communications barrier between people who speak the commonly accepted technical jargon and those who don't, and especially between those who speak the commonly accepted technical jargon and those who have created a whole new private language that they, and perhaps parts of their office, speak (but isn't the correct technical jargon).
When I spoke with Dell's new, outsourced, very articulate but still ESL tech support, we had about five minutes of dancing around trying to get the terminology straight and figuring out what the hell we were talking about -- and in this case, I was the trained professional, and I knew the names of the parts and generally how to diagnose what was wrong with the system; I was calling tech support as a formality to make sure that they knew that I knew what was wrong, and to see if they had any super-expert advice beyond "replace the faulty piece". The poor fellow on the other end used the wrong word for the part several times -- not something Joe End-User would notice, but something that I noticed. It's a nuance thing.
So while I feel that tech support is not a thing that should be outsourced, it's for different reasons than many of the people arguing that position.
I am really not thrilled with the argument that takes the form, "Buying things that are made in other countries is not good because it supports the people who work in those countries, and not the people working in our own country," because I think that the premise supporting the argument, the nationalistic premise that it is better to support people in one's own country (usually, the unspoken commentary is that this good outweighs concerns about the quality of their work) rather than people living in a different country. I think that the United States is currently living unsustainably, and I furthermore have gathered the impression that many products made to be marketed at the States are made poorly, with little regard for long-term use, but with much attention paid to the appearance. My sense of fair play is annoyed that poverty-level existence in the United States is unimaginable riches to people in developing countries.
I feel that quality and desirable features of any product or service should be the main decision factor between any two given products. Only if the quality and features are closely comparable should nationalism come in to play. (But then, my nationalism-factor is tied to Alaska specifically, not the United States as a whole. I do tend to choose items made in Alaska over those not, when quality is equivalent.)
All that being said, I have problems with the quality of service of tech support when language barrier becomes a factor. Phone-based tech support, especially between a technical person on the tech support end of the line, and a non-technical person on the problem's end of the line, is an environment where nuance in language, and the ability to explain things in multiple and flexible ways, is extremely important. There are a lot of times when people who speak English as a second language have the understanding and vocabulary to operate perfectly normally in a day-to-day English-speaking environment, but simply do not have the vocabulary and bone-deep understanding of nuance to understand what the person on the other end of the line means, versus what they're saying. Tech support is a lot of "You should tell me about what I mean, not what I say," things, usually with a further communications barrier between people who speak the commonly accepted technical jargon and those who don't, and especially between those who speak the commonly accepted technical jargon and those who have created a whole new private language that they, and perhaps parts of their office, speak (but isn't the correct technical jargon).
When I spoke with Dell's new, outsourced, very articulate but still ESL tech support, we had about five minutes of dancing around trying to get the terminology straight and figuring out what the hell we were talking about -- and in this case, I was the trained professional, and I knew the names of the parts and generally how to diagnose what was wrong with the system; I was calling tech support as a formality to make sure that they knew that I knew what was wrong, and to see if they had any super-expert advice beyond "replace the faulty piece". The poor fellow on the other end used the wrong word for the part several times -- not something Joe End-User would notice, but something that I noticed. It's a nuance thing.
So while I feel that tech support is not a thing that should be outsourced, it's for different reasons than many of the people arguing that position.
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I am mildly nationalist, but only in the self-interested sense of "If a company is hiring only people in India, they're not hiring ME" and in the sense of "I don't speak the language, is this going to prevent me from ever getting a high-ranking position?" If the primary reasoning behind outsourcing is the fact that a lot of Indian citizens are really good programmers, that's hard to argue with. What I do have a problem with is then proceeding to outsource jobs that have nothing to do with programming, where the main qualification is being able to interact well with and give clear instructions to English-speaking Americans. As you said. I also have problems with the exacerbation of large-company "no one is responsible" due to people's managers being overseas from the people themselves.
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When I see people being pissed off at 'India stealing our jobs', and not 'corporations stealing our jobs', I'm reminded that American culture is both strange and scary, and that I should never live in the USA.
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...or something like that. I can't claim to go inside their heads, but I think that's the logic, though it might not go that far.
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I used to have a job.
Someone else has my job now.
That job belonged to me.
I did not give it up willingly.
If it belonged to me and I did not give it up willingly, it was stolen.
Hey! Those assholes stole my job!
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I can't help but wonder if that sort of racism/nationalism isn't encouraged quite a bit in American society, simply because if people realised that it was the corporations fucking them over, they might actually try and do something about it (since the corporations are largely based in the US).
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The US is quite capable of providing low-wage workers who speak "English" that is incomprehensible to speakers of "mainstream media-homogenized English" domestically. At many call centers and help desks, it seems that people with incomprehensible accents/dialects/diction are de rigeur, with "good phone voice" folks rarer than hen's teeth.
And I don't think my standards are impossibly high: I can understand people from the Tennessee hill country, West Texas, Georgia, Brooklyn, Minnesota--even, like, y'know, Marin County, fer sher. White, black, Hispanic, various social classes--mostly no problem. I have some problems with *some* Asian accents, and I find "Ebonic" (is that term still in general use?) utterly incomprehensible, but for the most part I just need people who can *enunciate*. And clear enunciation appears to be distressingly rare among those who are willing to work phone lines.
Frankly, I've had mostly good experiences with Indians on phone lines. Their English is usually in the range from "heavily accented, but precise and easily understood" to "impeccable, perhaps better than mine"--and they usually have a good understanding of the technical details. This leaves only the "technical talk with nontechnical people" issue, which tends to be problematic regardless. And I find the jargon issue to be much easier to deal with when I'm capable of understanding the other person's basic speech patterns.
(It occurs to me that the above rant might hit close to home. My apologies if it did. Really, I *do* know that just about any phone-center job can be difficult, frustrating, and thankless. I also know that there are many telephone workers out there who DO have decent diction in addition to the smarts/skills/determination to do whatever the customer requires--I've dealt with more than a few of them in the past weeks of holiday shopping. But I also know that sometimes I have to call two or three times just to get someone with good enough phone-English that I can comprehend their *greeting*. And that's Just Wrong for a job in which telephone communication is literally *everything*.)
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There's one fellow at work who literally rams the end of one word so far up the other word's ass that half the other word is missing. I used to hate monitoring him, because I knew that no matter how hard I marked him down for mashing his words together, it still wouldn't make any difference in his delivery.
It's very close to home, and I could rant for pages and pages.