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Comment by monsterix | Hacker News Reader

The title and premise of the article seem totally flawed.

The reason why Aegis has opted to hire locals within US is for their native American accent. The cost of vocal training of an average Indian employee is quite high. Given the attrition rate and gap in quality of delivered service, it makes sense for these companies to find out ways to sustain and meet standards. That's why cheap hire of people who "lack high school diplomas" makes sense in the US.

This does not in anyway suggest that India is now 'outsourcing' back to United States. That is likely to happen only after huge and reverse tilting between the two economies [Assuming China does not exist!]. IMO, this move on part of the company indicates only their incapacity to serve from India. In other words the article is just an ego-massage fluff piece.

[Language fixes]

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What you're describing are the exact same mechanisms that led US companies to outsource to India, but working in reverse.

No. Cost of hiring in America was the only reason why outsourcing took shape. India was the largest population which had advantage of basic English education; and thus it was in a good position to serve such an emerging market at low cost.

Only now people have realized that English is different from Hinglish, Chinglish, Finglish, Singlish and cost-wise it is okay (economical and easier) to hire "barely educated" within the States than to train someone in Asia who would jerk the consumer experience quite often. I think both situations are completely different.

Typically -glish refers to a mash-up of English and another language, not English that sounds accented to Americans.

For example, Taglish is Tagalog with English mixed in (or vice versa) and you'd be hard-pressed to find any call center in the Philippines that relies on Taglish.

Ah! I agree, stand corrected.

I would argue that the English spoken by as a vernacular in India contains enough idiosyncrasies to be classified as a -glish.

Cost of hiring is an important part. But one more important part is ability of indians to manage mundane tasks large scale, which is not available easily.

You say, "Cost of hiring in America was the only reason..." to outsource. Then you say, "Only now people have realized ... cost-wise it is ... (economical and easier) to hire ... within the States" in your first post you said, "The cost of vocal training of an average Indian employee is quite high."

So you are saying cost is the reason to outsource and because of cost that Aegis is hiring US workers to avoid paying for English training, which means Aegis is outsourcing English speakers to the U.S.

The U.S. outsourced call centers and India is outsourcing English speakers. Same thing. Indian companies (Aegis) are hiring Americans = outsourcing = American companies hiring Indians.

I'm not sure why you think it's different.

Aegis = Indian company providing support services to American OEMs. Therefore, outsourcing is still from America to India and not vice versa. Aegis hiring native Americans for the job is not the same thing as "India outsourcing to America" because native accent is not a requirement/demand of India. It is the demand of OEM consumers of America and thus it implies only that the American jobs have "stayed back" in Americas. There is absolutely no cross-border outsourcing happening at all, whatever be the consideration.

"Native Americans"... you keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Yeah I meant natives from English speaking countries and not in 'last of the Mohicans' sense. Sorry, but that answer is not editable any more.

BTW, outsourcing isn't just about call centres. Hinglish may not be a hindrance. For example, the IT arm of the NYC-based hedge fund I used to work for now pays $40k USD per Indian employee (in Indian Rupees, of course, I just converted the number back to USD) or more, and gets top-notch developers to work for them. The same skills would cost $80k in the US, and probably > $100k in NYC (very conservative estimates).

Hinglish may not be English, but C++ is C++, algorithms are algorithms, intelligence is intelligence, but INR is not USD. Outsourcing is (quasi-)arbitrage!

The accent is only an issue if the job involves trying to please the http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/photos/top-rated/.

Unless I misunderstood the article, all they're doing here is hiring locals to handle local customers. This is something everybody does everywhere, and is by no means "outsourcing". When we talk about US companies outsourcing call center work to India, it's virtually always referring to serving American customers with Indian call center employees, which is a completely different situation.

That, and maybe combined with outsourcing companies being mostly Indian because of the last decade, and really good at sourcing.

Yeah, it takes away the pain of finding alternate services and redo the contracts (read lazy managers at OEMs).

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