Life on the Other End of the Tech Support Line 337
Ant writes to mention a PC World article about life on the other end of the tech support line. From the article: "According to interviewees, entry-level jobs at U.S. tech support firms pay about $7 an hour. Workers for a third-party tech support firm in New Delhi, India, make less than half that. Akanksha Chaand, who holds an advanced degree in computer science and had a job fielding calls for Hewlett-Packard at Business Processing Outsourcing in New Delhi, India, made the equivalent of $13,000 a year working in tech support--significantly more money than many less fortunate people in India earn. In contrast, a tech support pro who now lives in Arizona says she was barely scraping by on her $7-an-hour salary with no benefits. The rep, who asked that her name not be used, said it was only a bit better than her previous job--delivering pizzas. She said she received two weeks of training before taking calls from the public. "
Like omg and stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like someone who studies to be a chef wondering why they don't make a lot of money at McDonalds.
There are L2 and L3 roles which pay better. I know a few L3 people at IBM and they're smart people earning decent bucks [way more than $7/hr].
So if these peeps are so damn smart don't apply for L1 support roles.
Tom
Two different subjects, really (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a broad subject that in my opinion has little to do with TFA and might be better discussed relating to jobs in general, not tech support in particular.
Re:Like omg and stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
I can understand people who are truly [and I mean actually truly] qualified for more serious work and do the L1 shit to pay the rent.
But if India is anything like North America in this respect [and I can bet it is] a lot of people use these shit jobs as a safety net so they don't have to try hard in life. Like learn real skills, apply themselves, etc.
I get that bitch alot here, how do I get noticed without first getting a job... You make work. Do work on OSS projects and get your name attached.
Any asshat can be alive for four years of college. It takes a real winner to apply it out of their own initiative.
Tom
This is newsworthy? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Indian with a BSCS degree will get a job that pays well in the economy in which she chooses to live.
1. If the Indian wants more, she should move to the U.S. where the demand for degrees and pay is higher. 2. If the U.S. former pizza driver wants more, a degree and experience is the answer. I've stopped visiting this site as often because of "relevent news" like this.
Re:Compartively.. (Score:5, Insightful)
In third world economies a "dime" may well be "ten bucks," so long as you stick within the local economy for food, clothing and shelter. Living is actually quite cheap, which is why so many people from the first world choose to vacation/retire to the third. You may well find you can live, and live well, for a year for less than what it would cost you to spend two weeks at Disney/land/world/universe/whatever.
The rub is that things from outside the local economy, imports, are priced at what a "dollar" is worth where they are made, and can thus be beyond the means of someone who would otherwise be considered middle class. Things like a simple radio or portable television may require the investment of an entire community which otherwise lacks nothing needed for sustaining a good life.
One can see the same affect in the first world when comparing rural vs. urban living. I turned down $60k/yr in Manhatten awhile ago, because $60k in Manhatten cannot buy me what I could get working a cruddy retail job upstate.
When comparing disparate economies you cannot think in terms of dollars. You have think in terms of hours per pound of rice/place to sleep. When you do this you may find that lower wages are often greater wealth. Money is not wealth. It is an abstraction. What your money buys you is wealth. The "stuff" itself.
KFG
Tech support sucks (Score:2, Insightful)
So IMHO, irrespective of the pay, a call center job is not exactly a cushy job. One should not measure a job in terms of money alone. Job satisfaction also counts a lot.
Misses the point (Score:5, Insightful)
This sort of misses the point of the problem. There are a fixed and small number of well paying job and special skills or knowledge are required to get them. The number of unskilled jobs is very large- more jobs than there are people to fill them. These are the jobs that our president refers to as "jobs that Americans just won't do." These jobs are almost uniformly low paying, often menial, sometimes dangerous (recent statistic about 25% of all workplace deaths involve undocumented workers, which is disproportionately high).
Unfortunately, our American lifesytle and economy seem to require these jobs. The people who pick our vegetables, serve us in restaurants, work in supermarkets, work in hotels, work security jobs, etc. They are everywhere. Imagine how life would change without these jobs/people.
In fact, the American lifestyle is addicted to low paying jobs and what they mean- $2 BigMacs, $40 DVD players, cheap vegetables, etc. Companies outsource whenever they can to reduce cost and we , the consumers, reward them with our business. Over half a trillion dollars in trade deficits go overseas every year. Half a TRILLION dollars! Two or three years ago, there was a rumor that S. Korea was going to sell of US dollars in favor of Euros. Based on this rumor, the value of the dollar fell about a percent. China owns at least an order of magnitude more dollars (and growing every day). The administration accuses China of artificially devaluing their currency to keep costs of their good low. China/US relations quite frankly suck- US spy planes off the coast of China crashing into a fighter jet, the US bombing the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, President Hu visiting Bill Gates prior to president Bush, each accusing the other about human rights violations. The list goes on and on. China is a proud nation that is rising fast, sending up people in to space, and taking a more dominant place on the world stage. If/when they want to break the US financially, they almost certainly can.
Meanwhile, we, Americans, continue to pay illegal immigrant works to do "jobs that Americans won't do." All the while paying other Americans money for unemployment and welfare (Add to that the problem of billions being spent in Iraq.) The national debt is increasing. Bottom line is that this is not sustainable. One day China, Saudi Arabia, and all the other countries that own US dollars are going to decide that the US dollar is not a good investment (would you buy stock in any company that year after year goes further into debt?). That day is not far off.
I don't claim to have all the answers but I think that it involves something like paying people in the US a living wage, increasing the wages on "jobs Americans don't want" to the point where Americans would want them, stop migrating jobs out of the US, stop increasing the national debt, ie stop giving tax cuts with money you don't have. Americans will have to accept that it costs money to maintain our society, country, and way of life. It certainly does not involve smugly saying that if they are not qualified, they get paid "like shit."
Re:L1 is really really bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Then the L2 would come on saying something like, "Tell me a little more about your modem problem", and the customer would say something like, "Oh, that's just what I put in the form to get to a real person."
Then things would get ugly fairly quickly.
Re:The trouble wityh globalism (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm happy for these people, to be honest. I have a privileged fucking head-start on life, just being born in the United States. Add to that the fact that I'm white, and suddenly I have a leg up on a lot of people, even though it shouldn't be that way. I'm glad to hear other people in the world are living well, instead of suffering--and I don't care how that happens, whether it's cheaper than me or not.
I don't get upset when other people are doing better, if they're getting better perks, or if their lives are easier. I left that whiny, woe-is-me bullshit behind when I left high school.
You can compete, if you want to. If you don't, you'll whine that you can't.
Re:Like omg and stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
A great deal is demanded from L1 people, but it is not obvious how or where.
Here is the scenario: customer buys on price, driving him to the cheapest, thinnest-margin product. The producer still has to provide some kind of support out of that thin margin and knows the callcenter is a cost center not a profit center. The marketing and sales droids have already made wild and unsubstantiated claims about the product.
Solution: staff the callcenter with lowpay quasi-techs and judge them strictly on talk time average and number of calls taken. Provide them with little or no training, no physical examples of the supported product, and no way to talk to the engineers that truly know how it works under the hood.
The unstated real job of the L1 tech is to act as a punching bag absorbing blows for the company. Provide the lowest level of support possible that still avoids either customer revolt or calls escalated to management. Insulate the salesdroids, management, and engineers from any feedback on how their product is functioning in the real world.
If you can sell the same widget to two customers (one of whom calls your callcenter and the other does not) which is the most profitable in the short term?
You might be surprised how many L1 customer morons don't have their power cord plugged in, or plugged into a wall socket that has no power, or it's plugged in but not turned on.
In my experience our Indian brethren speak better English than the American L1 phonejockeys. The current crop of highschool grads I've had the displeasure of talking to are borderline illiterate.
If it's the accent you mean, I'd say between our lowest common denominator schools, tongue piercings, dip in the lower lip, Yo MTV Raps slurring and general apathy it's pretty hard to understand Little Johnny America.
I hate that term, "A Living Wage" (Score:5, Insightful)
The real trap is that too many people are convinced they deserve the "extras" but don't want to do what it takes to have them. These jobs that people complain about are for the unskilled. We are no longer a low skill work force but we do have many jobs that are low to no skill. Every economy will have these jobs. They are mostly to introduce people to the workforce. As many know there are people out there who just are not fit to work in professional environments. They don't have the personality, the required restraint, or the discipline. As such they will work these low end jobs. Some will take on more than one.
When I worked for a large security company, think rent-a-cops, I was amazed at how little some of the people made. We even had a few of these people working the building and lot of the company. What I found was three types of people, there are obviously more. The first were students who needed a simple job with regular hours. Much of security work is sitting and they would take advantage of it by studying. They would do their walks and escort ladies to the vehicles upon request. The second were people in between "real jobs" who were doing what was necessary to keep their homes and their families comfortable. Many had the security job as their second job. The third group were the majority of our hires, they were the people with no initiative. They simply didn't want more to do. Their idea of a better job was one with even less to do! Don't underestimate the number of people who fall into this last category. Sure we can find many who are in these jobs that should be somewhere else but those people are the exception. They should be spending their off time looking for the better job and improving their skills to get that job. I know, I was in this category for 5 years after leaving the service. I got out and expected to be able to land a decent job yet I found that my skills were not needed or out of date. I spent 5 years in a "dead-end" grocery job and eventually got myself back into tech school with the help of friends and my parents.
It was an incentive to not live that way that helped me move on. During that time I did without the big cable package, cell phone, and high speed internet. I didn't party every night or see movies all the time. I had an out of date car and for most of the time a 8 year old motorcycle to get to and from work. Sure it sucked, but initiative is the key. Unless you want to improve your situation you won't, you'll just bitch about how unfair it all is and never get anywhere.
Paying a living wage can be a trap as well. What consititutes a living wage for one person is barely surviving for another. How do you decide? Also, how do you provide incentive for people to better themselves and their families position if even the bottom end jobs pay a living wage? This is the big lie being foisted on people. The caring elite don't want these people to succeed, they want them content in their bottom end jobs so they, the elite, can enjoy all their low cost living without feeling guilty. Keep the poor happy and have no guilt for living off them. Gee, how nice. The "American way" is to build a better life for yourself if possible and definitely for your children. A living wage does not necessarily encourage the attitude needed to do that. Its a crutch, like many social programs, that keeps people just comfortable enough to keep them from improving while removing any guild felt by those with more.
just a follow up... (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing I kept from my low skill days is my disdain of monthlies.
You want some real money? Simple, avoid nickle and diming yourself with all these monthly bills.
I have a pre paid cell phone. Since I have a regular phone line, without any of the silly add ons like caller id and such, I only need a cell phone for occasional use. While others I know spend 40 to 50 bucks a month I spend an average of 7 to 10 a month. Cable? I have basic cable for less that $15 a month instead of the big packages that are 40 to 60 in range. I do splurge with DSL but negotiated with my provider and only pay 40 instead of the normal 50 that most of their subscribers pay. I keep a zero balance on my credit cards, never buying what I cannot pay off immediately. When I go to buy my new laptop I will be able to pay for it straight up. Sure it would be nice to have it now but then I would have a new monthly. I don't eat out every night or even every weekend. I don't eat out for lunch at work, I watch my co-workers spend 7 to 10 dollars a day for lunch on top of their morning coffee runs, hell I bring my own instant coffee to work!
Get into the habit of not loading yourself down with monthly bills and you will see that you can do quite a bit with little money. Get into the habit of not buying your coffee house coffee every morning, eating out for lunch at work, and running a credit card balance and your income will seem to be many times what it is. Even I don't like the current prices of gasoline but since I am not burdened down with all the frivolous extras many people cannot seem to live without I can sustain the higher price of gasoline without a lifestyle change. I only have two kinds of monthly payments, my house and my car. So top that off with my bills needed to maintain the house and I can buy lots of "toys - read computer junk etc" and appear to my friends and coworkers to have more than I do. It took a long time learning what is really needed to enjoy life. Look, marketing works. You get bombarded every single day of your life. Too many people fall for it. They become to believe they need all these things, after all its less than a dollar a day, why shouldn't they? Well all those dollars add up and they reduce your flexbility and ability to deal with emergencies. If you lose your job what are the first things your going to have to give up?
Re:Script readers (Score:2, Insightful)
Two replies (Score:3, Insightful)
2) On the other side of that coin, if you are an employee of any kind, you should be doing your job to the best of your ability, not being an elitist prick to make up for what you see as an imbalance in compensation. Doing a crappy job for $7/hr isn't going to qualify you to get a job making $10 or $15. Besides which, you knew the deal going into it. You'd make $n/hr and be required to perform certain tasks (certainly including "don't be an elitist prick to customers").
Re:L1 is really really bad (Score:3, Insightful)
It really depends on the product being supported and the customers. I've worked in tech support for a long time and you have to work on the following principles when dealing with a customer-base with a varying level of expertise.
1) Start simple. Explain concepts using non-technical words and provide detailed instructions. If the customer demonstrates some technical skill then adjust to their level. It's fairly simple to quickly determine someone's skill with a few questions. If it's done well, the caller doesn't realise they're being tested.
2) Don't assume the obvious. No-matter how experienced someone is, they are prone to making silly mistakes. The trick is to disguise the questions so they don't seem patronising. If you just ask someone if they've plugged it in, some people will take offence or become embarassed if they did indeed forget to plug it in. Ask them to disconnect the cable and reconnect it. Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups and I've seen too many cases at level 2 and higher where the obvious was missed because the caller claimed they had already carried out a step. of course, in cases like that the caller will blame the tech support guy, not themselves for missing the obvious.
The front-line guy in most cases isn't a moron and does speak English. What you're describing is an incredible generalisation or you've been dealing with companies that just don't take support seriously.
$50 dollars an hour for support is either incredibly excessive or very cheap depending on the type of product. It's the difference between buying an iPod clone or a Magnox nuclear reactor.
Tech Support Can be Skilled Labor (Score:2, Insightful)
What the author said is true when it comes to computer tech support. Most "technicians" receive about 2 weeks of training here in the Police States of Amerika before being turned loose on the phones. When I worked at Sykes Enterprise as a tech support agent, I was trained for two different clients. The first client was AT&T Worldnet. This training lasted about 3 weeks and included some basic computer troubleshooting concepts as well as training on how to use AT&T's troubleshooting database (Information Warehouse). The second client I worked for was SBC Internet, and this is where I received "training" on how to use their "Knowlege Base." The way "Knowlege Base" was organized made it next to useless, so a group of tech wrote a Web Browser sidebar that made finding relevant information much quicker. Many of the managers did not like that fact that this tool was created because they thought it would foster dependencey, however the technicians loved it.
The point is that different people with different skill levels become involved in tech support for various reasons. Some do not even know how to turn on a computer, while others are people who have programmed and hacked their way around systems for over 27 years. I took a tech support job because I (thought I) wanted a doorway into the I.T. profession.
I became dismayed as to how management limited my ability to provide assistance to users simply because if I provide a high level of support, customers would expect other technicians to do the same. I finally got promoted to the I.T. department after a couple of years. I ended up leaving the company in order to accept a position as a software engineer at another (small) company. About 6 months after I left the company, it moved overseas to the Phillipean Isles.
Tech support pays nearly all technicians low wages regardless of the knowlege and skills of the technician. This is the same for nearly every job in the P.S.A. What the government and corporations don't seem to grasp is that people can and do learn very much outside the confines of a four year college program. These days, if you are working as an employee for someone else, about the only way to get a good paying job is to become a memebr of the bachelors' degree club. For many who choose to go this route, they have to spend much more than four years living under slavish conditions in order toscrape together the money to pay for their membership. A great majority of those who get their degree are lucky enough to have parents wealthy enough to pay all of the membership fees. Others manage to get student loans to pay for their membership. A membership in this bachelors' degree club is considered mandatory for most well paying careers that
once accepted non degree holders.
An example of a job that now requires a college degree is that of a nurse. About 30 years ago, a person could become a nurse by studying some material and getting on the job training. Nursing school was also an option (which is a good thing). Now days, it is against the law to be a nurse without having a college degree. The cost of nursing school is simply beyond the reach of most working people. There are those who would say that this is done to protect that [patient from shoddy work. I would
Re:This is newsworthy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Rent, food, clothing, etc may be correspondingly cheaper in India, but international plane tickets aren't. And visas aren't easy to come by; there's a long line at the US embassy every single day from people looking to get out.
So we should do nothing? (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree with you there. But that does not mean the rest of us should sit back and do nothing. We should try to give people every possible opportunity to build a better life for themselves, by providing more open access to education and job training, and by helping those people who are trying to better themselves to support their families in the interim.
Been there, done that (Score:3, Insightful)
After a few years of doing this gig, I started getting calls from head-hunters at work and at home. The salaries that these guys were offering were more than double what I was earning! At first I resisted their efforts, I was safe and secure in my job and I liked it but one day I recieved an offer that I couldn't refuse. I was allowed to "name my price, name my conditions" so I picked a number that I thought was unbelieveably high, said I wanted to work Monday through Friday, and that I had a guaranteed one year contract. When they agreed to meet these demands, I couldn't believe it!
I went to work as a contractor and worked for the agency for over two years when the company that I was working for offered to "buy" my contract from the agency. In the end they offered me a job with another raise, full benefits, retirement and everything! The company agreed to give me up in exchange for more business from the company. I am still there and have worked my way up the ladder.
I can credit that phone-line tech support as being a great foundation for the path that I followed and the work that I am doing today. I am glad that I did it then and am not doing it now. It was an excellent and fertile training ground that opened a lot of doors for me.
I can't help but wonder how out-sourcing will affect the future generation of tech types. If these jobs aren't around to give the "experience" that so many better jobs require. If these jobs are all overseas, what is that going to do for the corporate IS jobs that demand the well rounded experience a TS job gives?
Re:I hate that term, "A Living Wage" (Score:3, Insightful)
Learn what your means are and live within them. What you actually need to live comfortably is much less than you probably think it is. And even on a low income, luxuries can exist! We still had a small plot of land (granted, out in the middle of nowhere) and presents every Christmas. It's all about saving for the few luxuries you care about and eliminating all the crap that sucks money out of your wallet.
Re:Tech Support Can be Skilled Labor (Score:3, Insightful)
An example of a job that now requires a college degree is that of a nurse. About 30 years ago, a person could become a nurse by studying some material and getting on the job training. Nursing school was also an option (which is a good thing). Now days, it is against the law to be a nurse without having a college degree.
Don't be a tard.
If you're serious about a BS in something, move somewhere that has good community colleges and a cheap, good 4 year college (like Northern VA). Do your 2 year at the CC for cheap, then transfer to the 4 year (GMU, for instance) and get your BS for cheap as well. If my mother could do it while raising a son and having no income, then you sure as hell can.
Re:Like omg and stuff (Score:1, Insightful)
Surprisingly, delivering pizzas was more satisfying and occassionally better paying than tech support.
People like to treat tech support like they treat the janitor. They say it's a monkey job that deserves no pay. Yet these same people then scream bloody murder if they can't get the answers they want when they call support. Imagine that! You get to sleep in the bed you made.