Is Setting Up an Offshore IT Help Desk Ethical? 826
theodp writes "Except for a few odd jobs,' wrote an advice seeker to The Ethicist (NYT, reg. may be required), 'I had been out of work for nine months when I was offered a job setting up an [IT] offshore help desk. Would it be ethical to accept the offer?' Randy Cohen, who pens The Ethicist column for the Times, not only advised the job seeker that it was indeed okay to help co-workers lose their jobs, but also seemed to suggest that it would be unethical for him not to offshore the jobs, saying: 'Some people feel we have a greater ethical duty to those closest to us — our neighbors — but in an era of global trade and travel, that is a recipe for tribalism and its attendant ills.' The job seeker, who noted his father's auto-industry job was outsourced, chose to ignore Cohen's ethics advice — as well as his own wife's — and declined the job out of principle. He continues to seek work. Comments?"
Any time you need to ask the question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ethical? (Score:2, Insightful)
And this "Randy Cohen" individual is an ass, or a shill, and I hope he gets outsourced by his employer at the earliest opportunity.
Not sure if it is ethical, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
at least he has principles. I wish there were more people like him in IT.
practicality (Score:4, Insightful)
If the ethics are bothering you, perhaps you should look at practicality instead; what you see may eliminate your ethical quandary. Offshore support desks may be less expensive per call received, but the total expense difference is a smaller gap, as people have to call back when they don't receive proper care, or have to be transferred to 2nd and 3rd level techs in the US. You also have to worry about losing customers who get angry at having to deal with foreign techs. Overseas tech support quality is a long-standing joke, and the joke is firmly based on reality. I recommend you do some more due-diligence before considering this move.
Re:Any time you need to ask the question... (Score:4, Insightful)
You may of course reject this offer simply because it makes you uneasy, guided by Pliny’s dictum quod dubitas ne feceris. When in doubt, don’t.
Amusing (Score:5, Insightful)
Prove it... (Score:4, Insightful)
I see this tribalism is wrong argument popping up quite often but really what is this based on philosophically. I don't know them and they don't know me. I can only assume they are going to look out for their best interests, I therefore must do the same. This does not hold true for my friends and neighbors who I can expect to consider my interests, at least to a degree.
I don't turn on the even news and see a whole lot of evidence the rest of the world is filled with altruists, who only want what is best for everyone. The other issue with this argument for outsourcing is, I think its users should be required to prove its not a zero sum game. "Because they deserve to benefit from technology and have good jobs too", is only a sound argument if those jobs are not being taken from people here. Where countries like India are concerned they are competitors, it might be a mostly friendly competition right now.
I don't know what I would have done in this guys shoes, I suspect I would have been even more tribal and decided to do what is best for MY family, and taken the job. I applaud him for standing on principles though which I feel are sound.
If you have to ask whether it's ethical.... (Score:1, Insightful)
...it probably isn't.
Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the horrible aspects of capitalism is that if someone is not greedy or negatively greedy (like the man in the example) and looks out for others, they're eaten like a sheep among wolves. Of course it is not society that is harmed but merely the perceptually insane individual.
In an age where lawmakers are trying to strike down healthcare for all of your fellow citizens [slashdot.org] and Social Security is just a cookie jar to be raped by fiscally careless politicians it's unfortunately pointless to pass up this job. You're just ensuring that you're the victim instead of someone else. Sadly, in a capitalistic society, that's not a sound plan to ensure your future and survival.
I respect the man for his decision but as someone who has watched my father go on and off unemployment, I implore him to adjust his attitude to just consider legality and not ethics. We live in a world today where all politicians and businesses lead by example in this department and playing the game optimally means that capitalism rewards them.
Ethical? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ethical? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course it's not "ethical"
Then of course you can explain your reasoning? I fail to see what is unethical about it. "I don't agree" != "unethical".
ethical decisions are personal decisions (Score:4, Insightful)
So all engineering is unethical? (Score:5, Insightful)
I worked for years as a mechanical engineer in the automation industry. All we did was put people out of work by automating routine tasks. That is how we become more productive. Engineering is all about using your mind to improve the way things are done. This inevitably means putting some people out of work. The beauty of a free market system is that labor can move to where it is needed the most. For example.
I helped build a machine that assembled carburetors for Briggs and Stratton. Before there was an assembly line that ran 2 shifts with 12 people each shift. The machine allowed 2 technicians to build the same number of carburetors with less scrap in one shift. So 24 people were out of a job. How can this be good? Because it frees up those peoples labor so other things can be done. When someone first starts making something it usually isn't beneficial to automate because of the capital costs. But if the product is successful and the demand it there it makes sense to automate. Then free up the labor to go to where it is needed more.
Re:Prove it... (Score:4, Insightful)
I see this tribalism is wrong argument popping up quite often
Pretty much any time you have to resort to playing the -ism card in a debate, you're admitting your argument is weak.
Re:Any time you need to ask the question... (Score:3, Insightful)
Since you feel the need to ask that question, your answer is no.
I, on the other hand, feel no need to ask such a question.
Isn't burning strawmen fun?
Re:Ethical? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps because he feels that "his country" is superior to all others and so helping a different ones economy is helping something inferior.
This is also known as Nationalism or Tribalism. I would be interested in hearing a different possible reason.
Re:Any time you need to ask the question... (Score:5, Insightful)
In that case, it's all a matter of what you count as your "own people". The people in your home? Your street? Your neighbourhood? Your district? Your city? Your country? Your continent? Your world? Where do you draw the line, and why?
Re:Any time you need to ask the question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Any time you need to ask the question... (Score:3, Insightful)
Our first responsibility is to our own people.
But I don't own any people. If you mean that I'm obliged to feel kinship with people based on their geographical location then I don't agree.
I can see the practical sense in hiring people with accents understandable to the target audience but I don't believe that that means e.g. that anyone from anywhere in the US is easier to understand than anyone at all from India.
Fairness (Score:5, Insightful)
Just make sure that when the CEO has trouble with his laptop, he has to call the call center in Mumbai.
Re:Ethical? (Score:5, Insightful)
While it is legal to offshore the work, with a 9-10% unemployment rate in this country, it's not ethical or moral.
What if the country that gets the jobs has a 25% unemployment rate? What if the country has vast amounts of starvation and extreme poverty? What makes it ethical to say that the lives in this country are more important than the lives in other countries?
People talk like outsourcing jobs is equivalent to stealing. That is not so. No one owns a job; no one deserves a job. My country has no more right to a job than any other country. We all have to compete. What could possibly be unethical about fair competition?
But, once upon a time, people trusted the companies they worked for - companies very often took great care of their employees - now, we have to look out for ourselves.
What time was that exactly? Was that at the time when companies used child labor? Was that at the time when no one worried about worker safety and many jobs had appalling mortality rates? You have a fantasy view of the past. You have always had to look out and fight for yourselves. You have always had to compete. Some groups (e.g. auto workers in Detroit) were able to gain some insulation from market forces in the past, but that couldn't last. The market will always catch up to you.
Re:If you have to ask whether it's ethical.... (Score:2, Insightful)
or you don't know what ethical means.
Re:Any time you need to ask the question... (Score:5, Insightful)
...then the answer is no.
So what's "ethical" is not only fixed, but something everybody must intuitively know. As soon as something isn't intuitively known to be ethical, but raises question "is this ethical", then it automatically isn't?
Intriguing point of view, I must say.
Does it extend to "as long as you don't question it, it's ethical"?
Re:Any time you need to ask the question... (Score:4, Insightful)
Our first responsibility is to our own people.
That way of thinking is the source of most of the evil in the world.
Every helpdesk is offshore to most people (Score:5, Insightful)
So unless you are prepared to bear the overheads of your favourite software company running a helpdesk in every country int he world, the question is moot.
Re:Any time you need to ask the question... (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree.
We should ask questions of ourselves ALL the time, rather than just blindly push forward. Now of course I don't mean trivial junk like, "Should I go to the bathroom?" but more serious issues like, "Do I have a right to take cash-for-clunkers, when the $3000 I'm getting comes from my neighbors' wallets? They probably need the money more than I do."
Or: "Do I have a right to take a job that involves laying-off my neighbors?" For me the answer is not a simple one. The pros are that Indians overseas get to be employed, instead of being penniless and hungry. The cons are that I'm laying-off my neighbors, and most likely, laying off myself in the future (when my engineering job is also outsourced).
Another consideration: In the long term, oil prices will rise, and shipping goods from China or India will no longer be as cheap as building here at home. Offshore call centers probably won't be affected, but I think it wiser to keep the factories for physical goods HERE, so we will be prepared for that coming Oil Shock (circa 2020) rather than have to rebuild from scratch.
Re:Any time you need to ask the question... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So all engineering is unethical? (Score:3, Insightful)
My dad did the same kind of work. However, when manufacturing drifted overseas, he was out of a job. He eventually became a hospital efficiency analyst, but it never paid as much.
Many studies show that the "replacement jobs" typically don't pay as well as those shipped overseas.
And you are mixing up job loss due to technology versus job loss due to cheap overseas labor. They are only partially comparable.
Re:Any time you need to ask the question... (Score:4, Insightful)
In that case, it's all a matter of what you count as your "own people". The people in your home? Your street? Your neighbourhood? Your district? Your city? Your country? Your continent? Your world? Where do you draw the line, and why?
I'm going to be completely arbitrary here, and say:
n = number of people
v = how close the values of the people match mine (between 0 and 1)
d = distance from me
concern = nv/d
Therefore, I'm much more likely to care about my neighbors than people halfway across the globe. Unless, of course, I really hate my neighbors.
Re:So all engineering is unethical? (Score:3, Insightful)
You argument that people can shift to a different workforce makes the assumption that there are at least as many jobs (if not more) as there are people, which we all know isn't the case. It also ignores the costs incurred of retraining for a new field, which in the US falls solely on the individual unless they're somehow particularly spectacular and can get someone else to foot the bill for education.
I'm a little indignant about the subject, as I used to be college student whose database administration job was eliminated due to outsourcing. Unable to find any other work in the area (low-level job market saturated due to the several colleges around Rochester), I and several of my former colleagues had to take a leave of absence. This kind of behavior by greedy corporations and institutions ruins families and dreams.
Re:So all engineering is unethical? (Score:5, Insightful)
I worked as a process automation specialist. I was automating the processes that ran a last furnace. Yes I put people out of work, but the jobs I was replacing were just about intolerable. No question there.
Sadly, I didn't manage to automate the rather heavily clad bloke who had to wander about sweeping up the spilt piles of coal and iron ore. I always wanted to manage that, but failed.
And what did these people do, these people I put out of work? I don't know, but I do know that a similar blast furnace eventually closed down, unable to compete with cheaper steel from overseas. So I staved that off a bit, and kept lots of other people in employment. Overall, it was a good result.
Basically, what automation does is to replace people with - effectively - robots. This should reduce costs, and improve quality. Economics says this is a good thing. It improves the return on capital. Economics is less good about what happens to the replaced people, it simply sees them as "labour". It's true that displaced people usually go on to do something else, though whether it is as satisfying to them is well outside the realm of economics (not known for its kind heart).
Outsourcing is a little different. It simply moves work to where labour is cheaper. It doesn't make the product (a help desk) better, indeed it's usually worse in my experience, all it does is save money. Saving money isn't a bad thing, it means it might be spent better elsewhere. Unfortunately, with the dreadfully short-sighted management we seem to be beset with at the moment, this isn't what happens. The money gets siphoned off into managers and shareholder pockets.
We need a better approach. When Ford opened his Model-T factory, he wanted his workers to be able to afford a Model T. He paid them well. The results speak for themselves.
Let's find a better approach!
Re:Ethical? (Score:4, Insightful)
. To my way of thinking, selling out your fellow citizens to make a buck is unethical.
Citizens of what? The nation? The planet? To my thinking, valuing one person above another just based on where they were born is unethical.
Citizens of my country, of course. Do I wish the people of any other country ill? No. Will I go out of my way to hurt them? No. Will I go out of my way to prevent them from hurting me, and those important to me? Yes, I will ... and they, should they have any sense of ethics at all, will behave exactly the same way. Keep firmly in mind that, while you may feel that nationalism is unethical, they don't!
... but nor do I see that as a reason for me and mine to give up what generations of our forefathers built for us.
The truth is that one may have high ideals, but those ideals had better track with reality or human suffering will result. The problem with many of my fellow Americans is that they are utterly complacent and exhibit misguided compassion. They haven't had to suffer in the same way that people of most other countries have, truly do not realize that America is vulnerable and is not above economic ruin. When the total collapse of the United States finally occurs, well, they'll have only themselves to blame. We seem to have lost the will to compete on any serious industrial scale, and that's frightening. I hope you live here in the U.S., and I hope you have a nice lifestyle: maybe you'll appreciate your ethics more when you're on the street hoping for a handout.
So, do I blame the people of China or India or any other developing nation for wanting a better life? No
Re:Prove it... (Score:4, Insightful)
>When I compete for a job, it is irrelevant where my competition is.
Do you live in a cardboard ghetto? You can live on $3/day if you don't have to pay for an apartment that has running water and electricity.
It used to be people getting rich off our hard work and that was okay. Now it's the same people getting richer off someone who can live on $3/day and extending the middle finger of indifference to their fellow Americans. There's a line there somewhere. Outsourcing has not benefited this country much at all. It gutted our middle class, lowered the standard of living for 99% of the country and shipped our manufacturing base to places where they don't really like us all that well.
The idea we could survive as efficient consumers is right up there with wishing on a star.
Re:Ethical? (Score:5, Insightful)
As you almost point out, it isn't just a race to the bottom. For the folks in the country you are outsourcing to it's part of a race to the top.
Re:So all engineering is unethical? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah the kids will need braces and guess what? Braces are available as a direct result of the exact process described. How much do think a tire would cost if it was made by hand instead of in a largely automated factory? How much do you think an automobile would cost if every process that currently takes two people actually took 24? Without automation poor mom and dad wouldn't be able to afford food much less a car.
In fact there is a name for a society without automation. It's called subsistance farming. A world where close to 100% of the population works as farmers because we wouldn't dare automate anything because it would put people out of business.
Re:It is ethical (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup, and you don't see McDonalds doing burger-flipper re-orgs every six months or contemplating that perhaps their whole problem is that they're selling burgers when smartphones make so much money.
Mature industries can be boring, and simply changing everything doesn't guarantee a huge improvement. However, it is hard to justify a 8-figure salary if you're just saying that you're going to do more of the same, so CxOs feel the need to "transform" their business every six months or so.