RE: India - Wave of the Future?

["Srivathsan Raghu" <srivathsan_raghu -at- infosys -dot- com>]

Hi Everyone!

I am from India and I wish to address some of the issues.

Before 1991, India was more or less a closed economy. Not much foreign investment for high-tech industries, not many Indian companies listed on NASDAQ, not many foreign companies setting up their operations in India. India still had the manpower in those days. But instead of companies coming to India, Indians used to move abroad (immigration, H1B, etc). 

From a macro-economic perspective, a higher influx of people to a country creates a great load on the power, water, infrastructure, education system etc. So once India opened up its economy, there was a huge strategic change in the way transnational companies looked at India. Firstly, there was listing of Indian companies on NYSE and NASDAQ. This gave a lot of visibility to the finances, management and operations of Indian companies. Secondly, transnational companies had entered into a stage were cost-cutting was inevitable. For instance, as per US immigration laws, a H1B visa holder working in the USA had to be paid a minimum of US$5,000. For the same job being moved outside the USA, it cost them only 20,000 Indian Rupees (i.e. 500 US$ - which is enough money for a person to have a good middle-class lifestyle). 

Both situations happened at the same time. Good quality *English Speaking* , *technically qualified* manpower was available for lower costs. A local US resident cost them 8,000 US$ per month, and a H1B person cost them 5,000US$ and the same person in India would cost them 500 US$. 

Many Indian companies are listed in NASDAQ and are doing well. The company I am now working in - Infosys (NASDAQ:INFY) is one of the largest software companies in the country. Similarly, TCS, Wipro etc are huge software corporations which get business from the USA.

Many foreign companies are expanding in the country. Oracle, SAP, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Intel are a few that are visible on the streets of Bangalore (South India). Most of the foreign companies want to increase manpower between 2000 to 5000 people in the near future.

****Alright - now to the million dollar question: What do Tech writers in the USA do?****

As far as I know, only few kinds of jobs are outsourced to India. Mainly the Technical Support, Business Process Outsourcing, Call center, and software development. The outsourcing of Technical Writing is very limited. And I feel it might stay that way.

For our organization of 17,000 employees + about 5000 contract workers, we must have only about 50 writers!. And many of them work on projects abroad. I see majority of software work to come to India, but not much of documentation. 
Maybe:
-because documentation depends on end user interaction 
-clients might want to develop it themselves using local resources. 
-documentation projects are (comparatively) short term
-delivery is rapid if the writer is in the USA?
-better control over quality and delivery?

I am not sure how hard the software outsourcing has hit tech writers in USA and Canada. I would request writers in USA and Canada to give me some statistics as to the number of jobs that have moved to India, reduction in number of openings  , lesser number of ad's for openings etc. Could some of you provide some statistics? I believe that (as far as technical writing is concerned), the impact would be minimal. I mean that, the loss of jobs in technical writing due to outsourcing is same the general job loss that used to happen in the USA due to economic reasons. If people are laid off in the USA, they probably find one more in a week......So I feel there is nothing to worry - at least as of now. I am sure there are numerous jobs in the USA and job displacement is a common feature there.

Regards
Srivathsan 

-----------------------------
Technical Communicator
Communication Design Group
Infosys Technologies Ltd
Electronics City, Hosur Road
Bangalore - 560100, INDIA.
Board:+91-80-8520261
Direct:+91-80-51174743
Cell: 9886087036  
srivathsan_raghu -at- infosys -dot- com
------------------------------ 

-----Original Message-----
From: Anachie Shakespeare [mailto:anachie -at- lycos -dot- com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 1:26 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: India - Wave of the Future?
Importance: High



All:

Over the past few weeks, I have had several friends tell me that their projects are moving to India, and that they are no longer needed. 

I've also had other friends tell me that I should get out of the high tech industry, as it's future is uncertain at best, and that many jobs are moving to other countries. 

After seeing what happened to manufacturing: companies moved to from country to country looking for cheap salaries, no benefits, and no environmental laws to hinder them, I wonder if this could happen to tech writing?

A.