Invisible Adjunct

Outsourcing to India is actually a big and occasionally bitter deal in the tech writing world. Some of the discussions on TECHWR-L have been pretty bitter, to put it kindly.

I can laugh, but there are people who wouldn't.

Why exactly is it virtuous to refuse to use tech services from India? Are you helping those folks?

As a tech writer who's been out of work for a little over a year, I can sympathize that the jobs just aren't there anymore as they were during the dot-com hayday. Unfortunately, instead of directing anger at corporate management that decides to hire offshore writers now to fill positions, many tech writers seem to be directing most of their racist animosity towards H1B visa workers and foreign workers abroad. It happens online and at STC and other IT organization meetings, and I find it distasteful.

Jim:

Thanks for that quick reply. I agree that it is appalling to direct one's ire toward poor folks in foreign lands. Here is a tougher one (I am not sure myeself where I come down on it). Is it even OK to attack management for outsourcing to places like India? Would these folks really be helped if management were to refuse to do business with them? I don't think it is much of an answer to say "they can outsource only if they pay as much as they do for US labor". I would imagine that the willingness to take lower pay is a big way they compete for work.

Gerald-- Well, part of me rebels against using cheaper labor in a foreign country, as a way of lowering wages here. For example, Indian tech writers in Bangalore are making less than our (i.e., US) minimum wage, but it's a good wage for them. How can a tech writer in the US compete? Move to India and run an outsourcing company, stay put and wait for the inevitable failure of the fairly short-sighted outsourcing strategy (see infra), or something else. Note that programmers are facing this same problem. I've spoken with Chinese and Indian friends about the whole outsourcing problem, as well as US colleagues who have personal outsourcing experience, and they all agree with me on one major point: what is necessary to make outsourcing work is to establish the fairly non-existent category of middle, or product, management in China and India to make IT workers there produce something that is similar to what US IT workers produce. --jfb

Gerald: So no one should have a decent wage unless and until everyone around the world has a decent wage? I don't think this is what you intend to be saying, but it seems to me the clear implication of your question. (I realize you haven't come down on either side, but it seems to me that if the question is posed this way, the clear answer is "no." It is not the moral duty of American workers to suffer so that foreign workers can improve their quality of life, any more than it is America's moral duty to live in penury because people in Nepal or Congo live in penury.)

IF you are comfortable breaking down the world into black and white categories of "decent living" and "penury" then there is no problem with refusing to hire folks from poorer countries. They'll be in penury whether or not you hire them, so there is no downside. But if you take the position that pay that would be appallingly low for us is an improvement for the person who accepts the job, the moral picture is not so clear. And if you decide to hire someone from a poor country at a US pay scale, you have what we call an "excess supply" problem. Too many poorer folks want the work at that pay and you cannot hire them all. How do you decide?

Well, you could make a decision about whether to hire American or Indian (or whatever) tech writers based on a quality vs. price sliding-scale metric of some sort. I imagine that's what many companies do.

Quality can be construed in a variety of ways. A lot of factors can go into it, including developer access, the writer's background and skills, availability of tools, and many other things.

As for the moral issue, you're talking about business decisions. Many businesses do not feel bound to make decisions based on traditional moral criteria. Many managers feel a moral obligation to maximize shareholder profit. Whether it's moral to pay for the services of an American or foreign worker may not even come into the equation.

I would like to keep our blog ghost writers in the US, so I can provide closer supervision, but price is certainly an issue. If IA costs $13,000 and I can hire another Indian blogger, like Dr. Chadwallah, for $4,000, I have an obligation to my customers, stockholders, and to my own stock options to put aside my patriotic sentiments. I am not even sure it is moral to favor American citizens over Indian citizens. Wouldn't the total sum of human happiness be greatest, if we raised the living standards of the most disadvantged? Afterall, Adjuncts are pretty close to the point of diminishing returns with their income. What is a dollar more or less to them? But think how much happiness it would buy in Calcutta.