brother lost job to india
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- Meeklo0
this guy made a show (30 days on FX) about outsourcing, it was very enlightening, he asked a north american developer, that was betrayed by his company when they gave the job to another developer in india, and gave him the chance to fly and live in india for 30 days and get his job back (from india).
He experienced life from the other side, he lived like they do, doing the job he was doing here, but with the average salary for that position for an hindu worker, money was barely enough to pay rent, I think he had to share a 1 bedroom apt with 2 families or something like that, very interesting to see the other side.
- SteveJobs0
so basically they've subtextually told your brother he's got the time it takes to train them to find a better job?
better than being laid off out of the blue!
- team has till the end of Novemeber
starts training in 2 weeksalicetheblue
- team has till the end of Novemeber
- Projectile0
wait wait.. are you kidding!? they want them to train the replacements?! ..how fakken naieve are these people? When you buttrape a man you run away or kill him. you dont ask him to babysit for ya!!!
- Meeklo0
Ukit,
by following your school of thought, that US ad agencies are far superior than Hindu agencies...What is stopping Swiss agencies/ designers (given their worldwide known heritage in the design world) to just straight up point and laugh to anything produced here in the us?
How would you feel, if you send some samples of your best work to a swiss publisher and they rejected you, just because they assume the only thing you are good for is to create ads for burger king and you will never understand the relation between grid composition and typography the way they do?
Would you say that they are not only underestimating you, but making a horrible generalization?
- designbot0
Agreed ukit. Nothing whatsoever against India or Indian people (who I agree are just trying to survive and get jobs, not their fault at all)
But design wise it is highly unlikely India will ever be able to produce top notch design (web or print) for America or any other country. Book knowledge like tech jobs, technically (no pun intended) anyone smart enough to learn them can. Art and design is much different and cannot be taught in the same way. It plays on culture and host of other things that would be incredibly tough to teach someone outside the country to learn. Mediocrity in web/print/other? sure, it's already happening. Outsourcing design to India taking off like it has with tech jobs? not going to happen.
- ^Meeklo
- < Yeah, exactlyukit
- yeah. you can't design for a completely different culture!! period
Projectile
- ukit0
Quality in this case is defined by ability to communicate with the audience. If a big company is launching a campaign, are they just going to throw any thing they can come up with for the cheapest price out there? Something tells me that wouldn't be such a great use of marketing dollars.
Maybe Indian designers rise to that level, but like I said I haven't seen it yet, and if they do, something tells me they may start asking for more money;)
- Meeklo0
I don't understand why you guys think its so hard for a foreigner to produce great work for another continent's market.
I mean, Vignelli or Sagmaister are just 2 people that come to mind right now, they both run successful studios here in the US and they both came from europe, I'm sure they are not the only examples, and that there are great US designers doing great work in japan or other counties with even less cultural similarities, what is it so bad about hindu people that we are almost certain they will ever become decent designers, and who here knows enough about hindu design anyways? (other than the cheap logo king model studio).
I would love to hear the thoughts of a hindu designer on the subject.
(great debate btw, don't you love it when we can discuss civilized about design?)
- ********0
Too bad they are smarter
- designbot0
Meeklo, where I agree with your overall sentiment, I'm not sure I am getting your point?
If we follow your logic could we not just take a few examples and see how they pan out? Take tech support for example, often these jobs are outsourced to India. The language barrier alone is often maddening when you are trying to get a problem solved. This compounded with the fact that they (folks in India) are often only book smart and are simply reading off some screen matrix, and you can pretty much throw quality out the window. Getting any sort of solution over the phone (which is already difficult) becomes exponentially so to the point of almost being impossible. Lots of business is lost this way....just look at Dell.
Have you ever been through this scenario? Or tried to work with a developer from India to get a project done? Trust me, there is no comparison. Blame the language barrier or cultural differences or whatever you want (obviously Indian people are just as smart as Americans or anyone else), but I think you are lying to yourself if you think that outsourcing jobs to India produces the same result.
btw, comparing US to Europe vs. India is a very different scenario.
- Great conversation btw.....if anything I wrote sounds snarky...it's just the limitations of a text forum :)designbot
- ukit0
Yeah European culture is a lot closer to American culture, right? And I'm sure the designers you mentioned Meeklo, Sagmaister etc, are classically trained in principles of design and have experience in terms of concepting and marketing.
And it's absolutely nothing against Indian designers or 3rd world designers, in fact part of my background is from that part of the world. I'm just saying you can't expect to throw a guy into a cubicle with no education and background and pay him like a factory worker and expect him to produce the same quality of work as Pentagram. I mean, c'mon;)
- lowimpakt0
racism won't bring your jobs back.
- ok_not_ok0
My sister's entire department at the Royal Bank of Canada just lost their jobs to India.
- Meeklo0
I know US-India vs US Europe is a different scenario, that is why I included japan in the mix.
Maybe I'm alone in this, I don't think its hard these days to be culturally influenced by other than the place you where born.
I was born in south america, I work in the US, and I have clients as far as Finland. I mostly listen to british music and I'm influenced by swiss design, I'm nuts about japan, and would love to get a chance to live and work (as a designer) in tokyo.
- designbot0
Just curious Meeklo, aside from the "they can produce the same work" debate....are you pro outsourcing?
- lowimpakt0
free markets!!! (until the market moves elsewhere)
- ukit0
I'm just kind of throwing this out there but I think a lot of the "quality" may actually be as much of an economic issue as it is cultural.
People who are higher up on the economic ladder tend to have access to education, and the time and money (luxury perhaps) to spend on cultural stuff.
- I agree, but lets not of the high motivation some people have in order to stay out of miseryMeeklo
- Meeklo0
well, to be honest, I think It would suck to loose my job to someone else, no matter where they are. but at the same time I would love a chance to live and work in Japan, and I'm living and working in the US.
Even if I say I'm not pro-outsourcing, I'm writing this post on a mac computer (china) listening to music on my sony headphones (china) wearing Vans shoes (china) and I'm just going to stop there, because I was hoping to add a variety of countries to the list (vietnam, india hopefully, taiwan, etc but no, everything I have close at the moment is from china).
If I really wasn't pro outsourcing, I would probably make an effort in replacing all these goods with their equivalents made in the US.
Because all these corporations are re-acting to our choices as consumers, we like to have all these nice things and at an affordable price, thats the price we paid for, no one wants to think about the slaves in the other end of the world putting this together for us. At least not until another hollywood movie like the one with dicaprio warning us about diamonds.
So how could I say I'm against outsourcing and own all these things? I'm the reason outsourcing exists right?
(I might be overly dramatic, but you get my point)
- You have to check out this documentary:
http://www.youtube.c…designbot - thanks for reminding me, I saw they were showing it at a local indie theater a while ago, and I missed it, but I want to see itMeeklo
- looks GREAT!
Meeklo - It is awesome and right in tune with our discussion. I guess my view is, there are so many things wrong with our current global system...outsourcing being just one of them.designbot
- system (for lack of a better word)...outsourcing being just one of them. I completely agree about making no distinction between this and all the imported Chinese goods.designbot
- between this and all the imported Chinese goods.designbot
- You have to check out this documentary:
- ukit0
I think this points to what can be outsourced though. Outsourcing is effective in terms of stuff that can be componentized and mass produced like the things you mentioned. The interesting thing about production is that it doesn't really require any cultural knowledge.
I'm just not sure that design, or at least the creative, strategic aspect of design, falls into that category. If we are going to outsource design why not outsource management and business strategy as well?
- CALLES0
wait wait wait... your brother or yo' brotha man?
- Point50
- good movie... but a shitty situation for your brother.Point5
- there it is, us cultural values being forced to hindu peopleMeeklo
- is it really a good movie point 5? would yo recommend it? the topic is interesting but I get the sense of a chick flick from itMeeklo
- not really a chick flick; more of a situational comedy... so, a chick flick? HAHA
Point5 - I watched it on "Watch Now" on Netflix, so if you've got that why not give it a chance.Point5