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Comment by SilverElfin | Hacker News Reader

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Just happens that these very-lesser-paid workers are usually Indian, Filipino and Moroccan, I guess. And if a company goes this route, they're most likely significantly cutting costs at the expense of the provided service

It is nothing other than modern slavery.

It is _very_ different. In the case of outsourcing, where companies offer decent local wages in developing countries, it can not be compared to slavery which is the perpetual ownership of a person.

Now with H1B sponsorship, where I've heard rumors of companies taking away passports of their workers, it is very much evil, but not slavery.

As of about 4 years ago software developers in India were making .20 of US counter parts. I was managing a team of 7 and 5 left for higher pay elsewhere. Same has happened in China and other countries. They are not so cheap anymore.

It’s not their race, it’s that they are completely removed from the business context, given simple resolution scripts and little power to escalate out of their call center.

When you hear the accent, you know it’s likely the business has done this, unfortunately.

Indian tech support works just fine when it’s more integrated with Indian engineering and product ownership, as support in the US would be with an American company.

To the best of my knowledge, the Indian support teams for AWS have all the same access their US/EU/etc. support teams have when it comes to escalation and communication avenues. Obviously real time communication is harder for them than the US counterparts speaking to teams in Seattle, but the same is true for a team in Ireland or Australia.

If you are building a follow-the-sun support organization for a technology company, would you really avoid building a support team in India? Seems like it's the country most likely to have a large enough number of people with the expertise and language skills to staff for the need, even if you were paying them the same as their US counterparts.

That’s my personal preference, to hire great remote employees around the world and treat them as first class as headquarters employees regardless of role.

I was just explaining the unfortunate correlation Indian support centers have with the business practice to minimize and alienate support.

I’m glad to hear that Indian AWS support is fully integrated.

Indeed, why is it relevant? We should ask companies like Amazon, because they're the ones who choose to outsource customer support to India specifically 99% of the time.

Yes.

westerners are loaded with the context that much work is outsourced to india for profit purposes. is indian a race? if it isnt a race, why are you making this about race?

What are the chances of someone winning the “(whatever) is not a race“

turnabout is fair play

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