To begin with, let me say, I am an Indian, currently living in India, after several years overseas.
There are a lot of things to complain about with this article - but the India connection by itself is not one of them.
How many people know that Microsoft and Google run major development centers in India? And when I say major, I mean of the order of several thousand employees. And no - they don't do grunt work - they do real development of real products.
My complaint with this article is about the outsourcing - Why should Apple outsource to Infosys and Wipro? Why cant Apple start its own dev center in India? Quite obviously, a company that has so many billions in the bank, and is so obsessed about secrecy is much better off owning its own dev center in India? Even customizing Siri for the Indian accent and for Indian languages is something I would rather Apple did at its own dev center in India, than by parcelling it off to Infosys or Wipro.
Regarding the quality of Indian programming - I have worked as a programmer in several prominent companies overseas - including in the US. Most people rely on Indian programming talent even in their inhouse development. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Indian programming skills. Quite likely, Apple already has a significant number of Indians working in Cupertino. And I am sure Google, Microsoft and Oracle have a lot of Indians too. At the top Investment banks, a lot of the senior technology guys are Indian - and no - they are not hired because they are cheap, or even relatively cheap!
The problems with outsourcing, are just that - problems with outsourcing. I am pretty sure if (for some weird reason) you outsourced a project from India to the US, the quality would be lousy. It is extremely hard to make outsourcing effective. It is of course cheaper in monetary terms - but there are other costs to pay as well. Smart companies outsource only after considering all the costs - not just monetary costs.
I remember a VC joke in the Valley from the dot com days - that you were more likely to be funded if your name was spelt "Krish" (short for Krishnan), than if it was spelt "Chris". That is how well respected Indian IT talent was and is, in the valley. That speaks for skill, and for work ethic.
How dare Apple run its company as it sees fit. If the US was competitive with India and China Apple wouldn't do this. It's simple free market economics.
It is "free market economics" if you consider tax incentives in both India and the US as part of the "free market" at work. Oh... there is also the part of the "free market" wherein 95% of India's education is public i.e. funded through government dollars and India is investing at a higher rate than the US and turning out students with better math and science skills. And did I mention India's "free market" also provides universal healthcare so companies are free of the costs of providing this to their workers. (Much like the super-majority of industrialized countries US companies and labor compete against.)
Sorry but this is not "the free market" at work, this is the result of government policies at the global level.
The "free market" myth is a bedtime story told by economics professors and pundits to college students and wanna-be-but-never-gonna-be-millionaires. It is echoed by CEOs whenever they are looking for removal of regulations or the creation of policies that benefit their company specifically.
Case in point, did we hear any of the mortgage companies clambering to let the full weight of the law and "free market" straighten out the fraud going on in the banking industry last week when they won a sweetheart deal immunizing them from prosecution and shifting most of their losses on to US tax payers? Not a peep. But sure as the sun rises this same group will be arguing for further deregulation under the "free market" banner next week.
If the US wants to return to its former competitiveness it will have to develop policies and incentives that drive education, research and investment both publicly and privately at an even greater level than India and China. This is not accomplished by drinking the "free-market no Government regulation or spending kool-aid" that is currently in vogue, it is done through planning that lasts more than one administration and doesn't shift with every change in democratic or republican majority in congress. Frankly India and China want it more than we do and they have had the policies and priorities in place to make it happen for over a decade.
Here in the UK a large number of our telephone companies, cable providers, banks and utility companies outsource a large number of their functions to India. It has been proven to be a complete turn-off for customers and some of the smarter companies are relocating their call centres/support back to the UK. The standard of service from Indian call centres is incredibly varied and thats once you have got over the language barrier. Not a good move by Apple methinks.
I now refuse to deal with any companies that have Indian call centres because the level of customer service is appalling. I changed my bank, insurance, mobile phone provider, etc, etc to ones with UK call centres. Thankfully I don't ring telephone support lines anymore I just do a web search to find the answer or go into my local AppleStore. I know a lot of companies are now moving their call centres back to the UK because they are losing so many disgruntled customers.
I remember a VC joke in the Valley from the dot com days - that you were more likely to be funded if your name was spelt "Krish" (short for Krishnan), than if it was spelt "Chris". That is how well respected Indian IT talent was and is, in the valley. That speaks for skill, and for work ethic.
it is a racist joke to be sure. what if the punch line were: 'likely to be fired' or some other derogatory comment?
How dare Apple run its company as it sees fit. If the US was competitive with India and China Apple wouldn't do this. It's simple free market economics.
How can the US or Europe possibly compete with China and India? Would you work for the wages those people get paid? I know I wouldn't.
What's the answer: soaring national debts? huge government spending cuts that result in rioting on the streets? rising unemployment causing millions of people to be homeless and/or in poverty? All so corporations like Apple who already make billions of dollars profit a year can make even more money?
I now refuse to deal with any companies that have Indian call centres because the level of customer service is appalling. I changed my bank, insurance, mobile phone provider, etc, etc to ones with UK call centres. Thankfully I don't ring telephone support lines anymore I just do a web search to find the answer or go into my local AppleStore. I know a lot of companies are now moving their call centres back to the UK because they are losing so many disgruntled customers.
i have had some good interactions with indian based call centers. let's not blame the people for the outsourcing, they are taking jobs that they need just like you and me.
the blame is with the american corporations who aren't satisfied with say 100 billion dollar surplus and don't give a cuss about the majority of people who put that money in the bank for them (north america for example) so rather than invest more here they are looking elsewhere so that they can increase profits even more (but don't expect a drop in price of product) How much are a pair of Nike's these days?
What's the answer: soaring national debts? huge government spending cuts that result in rioting on the streets? rising unemployment causing millions of people to be homeless and/or in poverty?
Yes. Or get more productive. (Exhibit A: Greece).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaun, UK
All so corporations like Apple who already make billions of dollars profit a year can make even more money?
Yes. Corporations owe you nothing. If people want to participate in the wealth creation, they should become shareholders, or retrain/retool themselves to become valuable as employees in firms that make "billions of profits".
Yes. Corporations owe you nothing. If people want to participate in the wealth creation, they should become shareholders, or retrain/retool themselves to become valuable as employees in firms that make "billions of profits".
I totally disagree. Corporations like Apple should have a social responsibility to the wider community as well as responsibility to their shareholders. Who do you think paid for the education of their well paid workers in Cupertino? American tax payers that's who.
Maybe you think the millions of unemployed people in the US should line up to buy Apple shares and forgo food for a few weeks? Or maybe they should all go out and retrain as iOS programmers. What planet are you on? No what you advocate is simple: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and big faceless corporations pay for the politicians that will keep it that way. What a thoroughly corrupt and morally bankrupt system.
I don't disagree with you. I'm probably just showing my own personal bias, because a company attempted to scam me a while back, it was an American company, but I guess they had outsourced their call operators to India and that's who I spoke to when they called and pulled the scam.
They signed me up for 5 years of magazine subscriptions to all sorts of magazines, and never once did I say yes or agree to anything at all! To make a long story short, everything turned out ok in the end, because of action taken on my part and the situation was resolved after I threatened them with various legal measures. The funny part about the story is that they will never see a dime from me, and I will keep getting a whole shitload of magazines every single month for free. To be honest, it's more of a hassle than anything else, because I don't even want or need them. I end up throwing away 3-4 magazines right into the trash every single week. And I'll keep getting all these magazines delivered for the next 5 years, unless I move or something.
What a waste of paper.
Please donate them to your local kidney dialysis centers. The American Kidney Fund calls me for donations of household items etc. one time they said that dialysis center patients need magazines to read while they are receiving treatment. Other charities would probably take them, or nursing homes.
i have had some good interactions with indian based call centers. let's not blame the people for the outsourcing, they are taking jobs that they need just like you and me.
the blame is with the american corporations who aren't satisfied with say 100 billion dollar surplus and don't give a cuss about the majority of people who put that money in the bank for them (north america for example) so rather than invest more here they are looking elsewhere so that they can increase profits even more (but don't expect a drop in price of product) How much are a pair of Nike's these days?
Whoa whoa whoa here guys, it's still a rumor, we haven't seen WHAT Apple will outsource.
It could be sales data, accounting, possibly backed server stuff ... The highest they would put there would be an iCloud server issue. They can do local dialects for Siri, etc as others have pointed out. there's lots of code to be written that isn't Apple's natural strength.
Let's not get all out on a limb fighting mad over this yet.
An interesting claim I believe to be false. Can you tell me how Apple is more vertically integrated than say Samsung?
I have a Samsung phone and they made and designed the components it is made from - the processor (Hummingbird), the memory, the AMOLED screen, the battery - designed and made the physical device itself and they even made the OS it runs on, Bada.
Now unless Apple have secretly been designing and manufacturing all their own components, that makes Samsung more vertically integrated than Apple by a wide margin.
Right, guilty of both hyperbole and anachronistic use of an old industrial term, vertical integration, as charged.
Responding to the senseless assertion that Tim Cook has made nothing at Apple, we need new terms for what he and other globally oriented operations magicians do with their logistical empires.
The vertical part I was thinking of pertained to Apple's R&D efforts to control the design and engineering of the hardware they source from everywhere (batteries, processors, screens, chassis, etc.) in contrast to other electronics mfrs who rely more on off-the-shelf solutions, Samsung excepted, plus the huge amount of investment they have in operating systems and applications, in contrast to other mfrs, including Samsung, plus their retail and online sales operations, again in contrast to everyone else in the industry.
So what do we call that kind of integration, which Apple clearly uniquely excels at? Anyway the point is that Tim Cook has built an empire of global logistics, maybe as much as other such managers, but still enough to get his own sort of unstinting recognition. He knows what he's doing, and it is just ridiculous to see the hand-wringing here over strategies that we are all completely ignorant of.
They are going to fill up their new headquarters in Cupertino, spend billions more in the construction of other data centers here and elsewhere, use their capital to start new industries that no one even imagines yet, and maybe even put Americans to work in those new industries. Just shameful the whining that goes on here.
Whoa whoa whoa here guys, it's still a rumor, we haven't seen WHAT Apple will outsource.
It could be sales data, accounting, possibly backed server stuff ... The highest they would put there would be an iCloud server issue. They can do local dialects for Siri, etc as others have pointed out. there's lots of code to be written that isn't Apple's natural strength.
Let's not get all out on a limb fighting mad over this yet.
it is a racist joke to be sure. what if the punch line were: 'likely to be fired' or some other derogatory comment?
it certainly isn't clever.
I guess some people might consider this racist. But this is simply along the same lines that a Kenyan is more likely to be picked for a long distance running team than an Indian. Would you consider that statement racist?
Am sorry if anyone got offended by that joke. I only repeated it to show that Indian programming talent is quite well respected.
And frankly, talking of racism, I wonder if you even read all the posts in this forum... Some of the comments are way worse than what I wrote.
And so it begins. Not satisfied with the vast wealth, profits and esteem its products have earned, Apple has decided to let the greedy bean counters start wrecking the company. As they did once before. I admire and use Apple products. But I find this disgusting. American companies that export good jobs overseas ought to pay a heavy price in U.S. tax penalties, and I think Apple's famous fanboys ought to think twice about their admiration for this company. It's not really all that different from all the others -- as this lamentable decision proves. Don't try to argue that everyone else does it. Apple has been an exceptional company. It should choose to remain exceptional, by bucking the trends and allowing American workers to show their stuff.
I guess some people might consider this racist. But this is simply along the same lines that a Kenyan is more likely to be picked for a long distance running team than an Indian. Would you consider that statement racist?
Am sorry if anyone got offended by that joke. I only repeated it to show that Indian programming talent is quite well respected.
And frankly, talking of racism, I wonder if you even read all the posts in this forum... Some of the comments are way worse than what I wrote.
i wasn't calling you a racist! just that the joke itself was a bit. and yes, i have seen far worse racist comments on the forum!
Comments
There are a lot of things to complain about with this article - but the India connection by itself is not one of them.
How many people know that Microsoft and Google run major development centers in India? And when I say major, I mean of the order of several thousand employees. And no - they don't do grunt work - they do real development of real products.
My complaint with this article is about the outsourcing - Why should Apple outsource to Infosys and Wipro? Why cant Apple start its own dev center in India? Quite obviously, a company that has so many billions in the bank, and is so obsessed about secrecy is much better off owning its own dev center in India? Even customizing Siri for the Indian accent and for Indian languages is something I would rather Apple did at its own dev center in India, than by parcelling it off to Infosys or Wipro.
Regarding the quality of Indian programming - I have worked as a programmer in several prominent companies overseas - including in the US. Most people rely on Indian programming talent even in their inhouse development. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Indian programming skills. Quite likely, Apple already has a significant number of Indians working in Cupertino. And I am sure Google, Microsoft and Oracle have a lot of Indians too. At the top Investment banks, a lot of the senior technology guys are Indian - and no - they are not hired because they are cheap, or even relatively cheap!
The problems with outsourcing, are just that - problems with outsourcing. I am pretty sure if (for some weird reason) you outsourced a project from India to the US, the quality would be lousy. It is extremely hard to make outsourcing effective. It is of course cheaper in monetary terms - but there are other costs to pay as well. Smart companies outsource only after considering all the costs - not just monetary costs.
I remember a VC joke in the Valley from the dot com days - that you were more likely to be funded if your name was spelt "Krish" (short for Krishnan), than if it was spelt "Chris". That is how well respected Indian IT talent was and is, in the valley. That speaks for skill, and for work ethic.
How dare Apple run its company as it sees fit. If the US was competitive with India and China Apple wouldn't do this. It's simple free market economics.
It is "free market economics" if you consider tax incentives in both India and the US as part of the "free market" at work. Oh... there is also the part of the "free market" wherein 95% of India's education is public i.e. funded through government dollars and India is investing at a higher rate than the US and turning out students with better math and science skills. And did I mention India's "free market" also provides universal healthcare so companies are free of the costs of providing this to their workers. (Much like the super-majority of industrialized countries US companies and labor compete against.)
Sorry but this is not "the free market" at work, this is the result of government policies at the global level.
The "free market" myth is a bedtime story told by economics professors and pundits to college students and wanna-be-but-never-gonna-be-millionaires. It is echoed by CEOs whenever they are looking for removal of regulations or the creation of policies that benefit their company specifically.
Case in point, did we hear any of the mortgage companies clambering to let the full weight of the law and "free market" straighten out the fraud going on in the banking industry last week when they won a sweetheart deal immunizing them from prosecution and shifting most of their losses on to US tax payers? Not a peep. But sure as the sun rises this same group will be arguing for further deregulation under the "free market" banner next week.
If the US wants to return to its former competitiveness it will have to develop policies and incentives that drive education, research and investment both publicly and privately at an even greater level than India and China. This is not accomplished by drinking the "free-market no Government regulation or spending kool-aid" that is currently in vogue, it is done through planning that lasts more than one administration and doesn't shift with every change in democratic or republican majority in congress. Frankly India and China want it more than we do and they have had the policies and priorities in place to make it happen for over a decade.
It is "free market economics" if you consider tax incentives in both India and the US as part of the "free market" at work.
In general, the lower the taxes, the freer the market.
Here in the UK a large number of our telephone companies, cable providers, banks and utility companies outsource a large number of their functions to India. It has been proven to be a complete turn-off for customers and some of the smarter companies are relocating their call centres/support back to the UK. The standard of service from Indian call centres is incredibly varied and thats once you have got over the language barrier. Not a good move by Apple methinks.
I now refuse to deal with any companies that have Indian call centres because the level of customer service is appalling. I changed my bank, insurance, mobile phone provider, etc, etc to ones with UK call centres. Thankfully I don't ring telephone support lines anymore I just do a web search to find the answer or go into my local AppleStore. I know a lot of companies are now moving their call centres back to the UK because they are losing so many disgruntled customers.
I remember a VC joke in the Valley from the dot com days - that you were more likely to be funded if your name was spelt "Krish" (short for Krishnan), than if it was spelt "Chris". That is how well respected Indian IT talent was and is, in the valley. That speaks for skill, and for work ethic.
it is a racist joke to be sure. what if the punch line were: 'likely to be fired' or some other derogatory comment?
it certainly isn't clever.
How dare Apple run its company as it sees fit. If the US was competitive with India and China Apple wouldn't do this. It's simple free market economics.
How can the US or Europe possibly compete with China and India? Would you work for the wages those people get paid? I know I wouldn't.
What's the answer: soaring national debts? huge government spending cuts that result in rioting on the streets? rising unemployment causing millions of people to be homeless and/or in poverty? All so corporations like Apple who already make billions of dollars profit a year can make even more money?
I don't the answer but I don't think this it.
I now refuse to deal with any companies that have Indian call centres because the level of customer service is appalling. I changed my bank, insurance, mobile phone provider, etc, etc to ones with UK call centres. Thankfully I don't ring telephone support lines anymore I just do a web search to find the answer or go into my local AppleStore. I know a lot of companies are now moving their call centres back to the UK because they are losing so many disgruntled customers.
i have had some good interactions with indian based call centers. let's not blame the people for the outsourcing, they are taking jobs that they need just like you and me.
the blame is with the american corporations who aren't satisfied with say 100 billion dollar surplus and don't give a cuss about the majority of people who put that money in the bank for them (north america for example) so rather than invest more here they are looking elsewhere so that they can increase profits even more (but don't expect a drop in price of product) How much are a pair of Nike's these days?
What's the answer: soaring national debts? huge government spending cuts that result in rioting on the streets? rising unemployment causing millions of people to be homeless and/or in poverty?
Yes. Or get more productive. (Exhibit A: Greece).
All so corporations like Apple who already make billions of dollars profit a year can make even more money?
Yes. Corporations owe you nothing. If people want to participate in the wealth creation, they should become shareholders, or retrain/retool themselves to become valuable as employees in firms that make "billions of profits".
Yes. Corporations owe you nothing. If people want to participate in the wealth creation, they should become shareholders, or retrain/retool themselves to become valuable as employees in firms that make "billions of profits".
I totally disagree. Corporations like Apple should have a social responsibility to the wider community as well as responsibility to their shareholders. Who do you think paid for the education of their well paid workers in Cupertino? American tax payers that's who.
Maybe you think the millions of unemployed people in the US should line up to buy Apple shares and forgo food for a few weeks? Or maybe they should all go out and retrain as iOS programmers. What planet are you on? No what you advocate is simple: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and big faceless corporations pay for the politicians that will keep it that way. What a thoroughly corrupt and morally bankrupt system.
I don't disagree with you. I'm probably just showing my own personal bias, because a company attempted to scam me a while back, it was an American company, but I guess they had outsourced their call operators to India and that's who I spoke to when they called and pulled the scam.
They signed me up for 5 years of magazine subscriptions to all sorts of magazines, and never once did I say yes or agree to anything at all! To make a long story short, everything turned out ok in the end, because of action taken on my part and the situation was resolved after I threatened them with various legal measures. The funny part about the story is that they will never see a dime from me, and I will keep getting a whole shitload of magazines every single month for free. To be honest, it's more of a hassle than anything else, because I don't even want or need them. I end up throwing away 3-4 magazines right into the trash every single week. And I'll keep getting all these magazines delivered for the next 5 years, unless I move or something.
What a waste of paper.
Please donate them to your local kidney dialysis centers. The American Kidney Fund calls me for donations of household items etc. one time they said that dialysis center patients need magazines to read while they are receiving treatment. Other charities would probably take them, or nursing homes.
i have had some good interactions with indian based call centers. let's not blame the people for the outsourcing, they are taking jobs that they need just like you and me.
the blame is with the american corporations who aren't satisfied with say 100 billion dollar surplus and don't give a cuss about the majority of people who put that money in the bank for them (north america for example) so rather than invest more here they are looking elsewhere so that they can increase profits even more (but don't expect a drop in price of product) How much are a pair of Nike's these days?
Whoa whoa whoa here guys, it's still a rumor, we haven't seen WHAT Apple will outsource.
It could be sales data, accounting, possibly backed server stuff ... The highest they would put there would be an iCloud server issue. They can do local dialects for Siri, etc as others have pointed out. there's lots of code to be written that isn't Apple's natural strength.
Let's not get all out on a limb fighting mad over this yet.
An interesting claim I believe to be false. Can you tell me how Apple is more vertically integrated than say Samsung?
I have a Samsung phone and they made and designed the components it is made from - the processor (Hummingbird), the memory, the AMOLED screen, the battery - designed and made the physical device itself and they even made the OS it runs on, Bada.
Now unless Apple have secretly been designing and manufacturing all their own components, that makes Samsung more vertically integrated than Apple by a wide margin.
Right, guilty of both hyperbole and anachronistic use of an old industrial term, vertical integration, as charged.
Responding to the senseless assertion that Tim Cook has made nothing at Apple, we need new terms for what he and other globally oriented operations magicians do with their logistical empires.
The vertical part I was thinking of pertained to Apple's R&D efforts to control the design and engineering of the hardware they source from everywhere (batteries, processors, screens, chassis, etc.) in contrast to other electronics mfrs who rely more on off-the-shelf solutions, Samsung excepted, plus the huge amount of investment they have in operating systems and applications, in contrast to other mfrs, including Samsung, plus their retail and online sales operations, again in contrast to everyone else in the industry.
So what do we call that kind of integration, which Apple clearly uniquely excels at? Anyway the point is that Tim Cook has built an empire of global logistics, maybe as much as other such managers, but still enough to get his own sort of unstinting recognition. He knows what he's doing, and it is just ridiculous to see the hand-wringing here over strategies that we are all completely ignorant of.
They are going to fill up their new headquarters in Cupertino, spend billions more in the construction of other data centers here and elsewhere, use their capital to start new industries that no one even imagines yet, and maybe even put Americans to work in those new industries. Just shameful the whining that goes on here.
Whoa whoa whoa here guys, it's still a rumor, we haven't seen WHAT Apple will outsource.
It could be sales data, accounting, possibly backed server stuff ... The highest they would put there would be an iCloud server issue. They can do local dialects for Siri, etc as others have pointed out. there's lots of code to be written that isn't Apple's natural strength.
Let's not get all out on a limb fighting mad over this yet.
Right on, thank you.
I've read all these Comments and got a Sad Feeling..Again, I don't think Apple is a bunch of fools... The Sky Is NOT Falling!
Thank you, it was a miserable experience reading all these hysterical comments for me too. Such emotion, such lack of reason and vision . . .
it is a racist joke to be sure. what if the punch line were: 'likely to be fired' or some other derogatory comment?
it certainly isn't clever.
I guess some people might consider this racist. But this is simply along the same lines that a Kenyan is more likely to be picked for a long distance running team than an Indian. Would you consider that statement racist?
Am sorry if anyone got offended by that joke. I only repeated it to show that Indian programming talent is quite well respected.
And frankly, talking of racism, I wonder if you even read all the posts in this forum... Some of the comments are way worse than what I wrote.
Obvious trolling
Nope.
I guess some people might consider this racist. But this is simply along the same lines that a Kenyan is more likely to be picked for a long distance running team than an Indian. Would you consider that statement racist?
Am sorry if anyone got offended by that joke. I only repeated it to show that Indian programming talent is quite well respected.
And frankly, talking of racism, I wonder if you even read all the posts in this forum... Some of the comments are way worse than what I wrote.
i wasn't calling you a racist! just that the joke itself was a bit. and yes, i have seen far worse racist comments on the forum!