Your call is important to us
Most nights, I can hear phones ringing in the lab. Sometimes it's next door, sometimes it's far off. The sound wanders around the otherwise quiet floor like some digital ghost. But what's actually happening is that, because all of our office phone start with the same numbers, a telemarketer is pinging them in turn. Maybe someone should have told them we're all business lines.
Telemarketers are pretty reviled in the US, possibly because it's a job that requires little skill (I mean they're supposed to sound enthusiastic about the product they're selling, but most I've talked to sound tired of long hours at the phone), but most likely because they're annoying like spam. But, so I hear, they get to work from home and choose their own hours.
On the other hand, there's another group of people infamously known for just talking on the phone: call centers, especially those cropping up on the Indian subcontinent. I think about half my tech support calls have been fielded by someone out of the country. So the thing is this: people talk about the outsourcing of jobs, which is mainly a function of cheaper labor costs overseas. A quick google search turns up that US telemarketers make about $32k while an Indian call center staffer, even with a university degree, probably gets less than $4-5k.
One would hope that it's the unskilled labor jobs that are being outsourced, but what may be happening is that there's greater pressure to find overseas skilled labor because the cost differential between domestic and foreign skilled labor is (probably) greater than the gap above. I just worry that we're becoming a telemarketer nation, one which subsists on consumption and doesn't produce anything.
Telemarketers are pretty reviled in the US, possibly because it's a job that requires little skill (I mean they're supposed to sound enthusiastic about the product they're selling, but most I've talked to sound tired of long hours at the phone), but most likely because they're annoying like spam. But, so I hear, they get to work from home and choose their own hours.
On the other hand, there's another group of people infamously known for just talking on the phone: call centers, especially those cropping up on the Indian subcontinent. I think about half my tech support calls have been fielded by someone out of the country. So the thing is this: people talk about the outsourcing of jobs, which is mainly a function of cheaper labor costs overseas. A quick google search turns up that US telemarketers make about $32k while an Indian call center staffer, even with a university degree, probably gets less than $4-5k.
One would hope that it's the unskilled labor jobs that are being outsourced, but what may be happening is that there's greater pressure to find overseas skilled labor because the cost differential between domestic and foreign skilled labor is (probably) greater than the gap above. I just worry that we're becoming a telemarketer nation, one which subsists on consumption and doesn't produce anything.