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Dell Expands In India 53

Posted by Hemos from the growing-with-the-cost-basis dept.
s31523 writes "NEW DELHI - Computer maker Dell Inc. said Monday it planned to add 5,000 jobs in India over the next two years, bringing its work force in the country to 15,000. Dell is also looking to set up a manufacturing center in India, a move that could help boost the sale of Dell computers here, President and CEO Kevin Rollins told reporters after a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. "
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Dell Expands In India More

Dell Expands In India

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  • So the are trying to get a bigger foothold in the india market for computer sales, so the board members can make an extra buck or two. Dont see how this is going to help John Q Public unless you want to buy some stocks (DELL: 29.52 +0.25 / +0.85%). But the charts on their stock dont look that good.
    • Especially since this is 5000 jobs that could be filled right here in the U.S..... Want increased computer sales, then build more jobs here. I know, I know, we can't find anyone here in the U.S. that will answer phones for $1.00/hr... Dell lost one customer by doing this... I canceled my Dell order when I couldn't get any help from someone here in the U.S.

    • Re:India Market (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Uh, yeah -- I can't imagine how selling computers to the second-most populous country in the world is in the company's long-term interest. As you say, it's just a scam "so the board members can make an extra buck or two".
      • I can't imagine how selling computers to the second-most populous country in the world is in the company's long-term interest.

        Eventually, as they become more developed, India will become one hell of a market. Now, how many people can actually afford a computer - even a Dell? And, you don't need to move to a country to sell there. There's something called the internet that gives anyone an automatic world presence.

  • In related news... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PFI_Optix ( 936301 )
    I thought Dell's market share was slipping in the U.S. following their outsourcing of tech support and the frustration/language barrier it created. When are they going to be adding more jobs back in the U.S. to satisfy their customers here?
    • Well, see, what they are going to do is they are going to source the support for Dell India to China so Indian customers have the same homogenous "Dell Experience" that thier American counterparts have, and make Mike a wad of cash in the process. If they pay extra, they can get an Indian call center.
    • I think Dell understood that as "People are frustrated with wait times and queue's" rather than "People are frustrated with bad english".
      • We have long wait times for tech support. Do we: a) Not care and make our customers wait. b) Hire more tech support agents to help our customers. c) Shut down the majority of our American call centers and route American tech support calls to a call center on the other side of the world in a nation that does not natively speak English. d) Sell our stock and tank the company Enron-style. Hmm...
        • I think they chose "B", except that the hiring is in India. I'm not aware of call center closings in the US, in my experience those are mostly allocated to corporate purchases. I'm not saying that I agree with their policy, but their competitors are doing the same. Unless either a) the US government finds a way to discourage this activity or b) customers express a strong interest in only buying american products supported by american citizens (they haven't, see the auto industry), everyone in any industry t
          • ...customers express a strong interest in only buying american products supported by american citizens (they haven't, see the auto industry)

            It's getting harder and harder to find anything these days that are "American Made". Even the stuff assembled here in the US have many (usually the majority) parts that are made overseas. Some, such as power tools, are manufactured and assembled overseas. They're American in name only. Some of those overseas companies will actally manufacter items for a firms competiti

          • customers express a strong interest in only buying american products supported by american citizens (they haven't, see the auto industry)

            There's a big difference there. Japanese and German auto workers have good pay and benefits too. Most Japanese and German brands have assembly plants in the U.S. with varying degrees of imported components. The only low-wage country that exports a significant number of cars to the U.S. is Mexico. They have assembly plants for Ford, GM and VW.

            Cars are complex machines, and
            • You can make similar arguments about computers. Most of the ICs are physically made overseas, even if the company owning them or designing them is in the US or Europe (assuming the designs aren't outsourced as well, and they quite often are). If the ICs aren't the printed circuit boards almost certainly are, and the assembly of all of the above with it. That's just the HW, some argue the least important aspect of a computer. Chinese/Indian workers are also paid very well in their country, although their wag

        • Re:In related news... (Score:3, Informative)

          by benjjj ( 949782 )
          India conducts most official business in English. There is no "Indian" language that is spoken across the entire subcontinent. Hindi (the national language) is spoken by about 30% of the population, according to the CIA world factbook.
          • I don't think that was the point of the "language" barrier that was being suggested. I have personally experienced a language barrier in dealing with a call center located in New Zealand. Yes, they speak and Queens English, but the US does not. We speak Americanized English with quite a few idioms that don't make sense to others. After about 10 years of having family members from Canada and New Zealand and a couple of years with best friends that moved here from U.K., I can tell you that english != engl

    • Re:In related news... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by benjjj ( 949782 )
      my experience with Dell's tech support has been pretty good. I went to them with two IMO above-average-difficulty problems, and the indian tech support guys fixed them. not only that, but their english put mine to shame. as a satisfied US customer, i gotta give dell credit. considering that many of dell's tech support calls are probably from people who can't figure out why a dvd won't play in their cd-rom drive, it doesn't make a lot of sense for dell to keep tons of top-tier tech support people on the pay
    • Funny thing was, I was having trouble with a Netgear router they sold me, and when I searched around on the web to references to it, I found a lot of people complaining that Netgear had overseas helpline people who obviously knew nothing about routers, but were just sitting there with the manual. I wrote to Dell to ask whether I could return it, and mentioned that one of the reasons was that Netgear had on their service line "people who knew nothing about the product because, like most offshore help, they w
      • The effect was in making them have to route your memo to /dev/null.

      • Re:In related news... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by CMiYC ( 6473 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @02:14PM (#14599955) Homepage
        I'm sure the message gave you a sense of satisfaction, but it did not amount to much. You did not "write to Dell" you wrote to a minimal wage employee reading customer support emails. That person most likely read your message and deleted it.

        Sending shitty emails to a customer service box is as effective as yelling at a customer service person on the phone. You'll feel better but they'll care even less about your issue.

        People seem to forget that just because a company employs someone, that person is still a person. So they will react and handle things the way they do. There isn't a "Dell" chip implanted in employees anymore than any other company. Assuming you work at a medium-large sized company, imagine a reversal. Say a customer called you and asked you a question (not necessarily tech support question). Do you think you would answer or react the same way the guy sitting next to you would? Why not? You work at the same company, don't you?
        • At the time, I didn't realize that Dell's support staff had already been outsourced to India. I had no idea that it was going to end up there.

          And how is a message I sent abusive to the service guy? I was writing to Dell telling them that companies can't get away with paying their support staff peanuts. So the message was intended as ammunition given to someone who probably already had the same opinion--and it was a complaint, not about Dell, but about another company (um...did you even read my post?) Of cou

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @12:14PM (#14598912)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Dell getting wise? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Monday January 30, 2006 @12:17PM (#14598961) Homepage Journal
    Dell is also looking to set up a manufacturing center in India

    Now that's the first smart thing I've seen anyone do with Indian outsourcing.

    Outsourcing manufacturing is a tried and true method of cost saving. Since the work that needs to be done is mostly repetitive, it lends itself well to operating with minimal communication from the headquarters.

    Computer Programming, OTOH, is inherently about collecting new requirements and developing new processes. When you have an office with an orthagonal time zone, working with completely separate operations from the one's they are trying to reduce to code, you're significantly reducing your ability to produce the results you need.

    Managers need to get this through their heads: Coding is not a blue collar job. It inherently requires direct interaction with other professionals, and is core to making a business work. Bringing highly trained workers from other countries can work (putting aside cultural and language issues that sometimes cause problems), but you just can't be moving your core operations away from your headquarters unless you also move your headquarters. It's a recipe for disaster every time.

  • To address the inevitable... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 30, 2006 @12:18PM (#14598968)
    To address the inevitable deluge/trickle (as the case may be) of comments grumbling about Dell moving jaabs offshore, here's a quote from TFA:

    But Rollins said his company's expansion plans were not limited to tapping the talent, but also benefit from the growing demand for desktop computers and notebooks.

    A free market economy is not a one way street. You can't treat a country with a population of 1 billion solely as a market to sell goods to. Most people opposed to this idea of "outsourcing" would rather have companies (McDonald's, Coke, or their IT counterparts) profit from selling their goods to other countries, but not have them benefit through creation of local jobs or improvements in economy.

    • Most people opposed to this idea of "outsourcing" would rather have companies (McDonald's, Coke, or their IT counterparts) profit from selling their goods to other countries, but not have them benefit through creation of local jobs or improvements in economy.

      Actually, I'm against offshoreing- and I'm against American companies turning traitor against the consumers that made them big and seeking markets elsewhere. Free trade indeed SHOULD be a two way street- and this playing of one country against anothe
    • Most people opposed to this idea of "outsourcing" would rather have companies (McDonald's, Coke, or their IT counterparts) profit from selling their goods to other countries, but not have them benefit through creation of local jobs or improvements in economy.

      The best way to explain this would be to ask how many burgers McDonald's would sell in other countries if they all had to be made in the US and delivered overseas.

      This is completely different from "outsourcing" where jobs that were done in the US are mo

      • The best way to explain this would be to ask how many burgers McDonald's would sell in other countries if they all had to be made in the US and delivered overseas.

        As long as they're made of beef, McDonalds isn't going to sell many burgers in India, regardless of where they're made.

  • I was speaking with Bob and Roy over in Bangalore regarding my brand new Dell machine just the other day and I have to say that while very curteous and well spoken they were completely clueless about resolving my issue - worse than that, no one could actually locate the machine that I returned for replacement.

    This move does little more than increase the capacity for cluelessness, more seats in India is not going to help if they don't have the resources necessary to help the customer. Dell should refine thei
    • The whole advantage to Dell, from my perspective, is that their customer service (at least for corporate customers) has been great. They're semi-knowledgable and quick to respond. If the corporate support ever moves over seas... that's a lot less reason to buy a Dell.
      • Obviously you work for a larger organization, while I'm not exactly in a large organization, we spent over 250,000$ on laptops, desktops, and servers last year, 65K$ of that went to Dell. I call and get an indian every time, and go around the support queue talking to "bob" "joe" and the likes, they are still clueless. This of course pushed me to IBM for hardware which I'm happy to say I have yet to speak to an indian(or really to have an issue).
    • You get what you pay for.

      Dell learned a while ago that there was backlash from outsourcing Customer Service. They responded wisely (IMHO) with a tiered support system. If you buy the $399 "as seen on TV" special - you get the joy of waiting on hold for Roy in Bangalore when you call. If you buy one of the business line machines - you get better service. Buy the high-end XPS systems, you get even better service. Everyone also has the option of upgrading to "Gold" service - with minimal wait times an
      • Most of the whining comes from folks who don't want to pay a few extra dollars for the service.

        I bought the XPS M170 laptop - don't want the bother of building my own but wanted badass gaming machine. According to Dell the XPS does get special service options - that service is based in India.

        My intent was not to knock India so much as companies that expect something magical to happen just by going to India. If companies do not set up the appropriate infrastructure to enable the customer service folks then i

  • Versus tax rebates in the US (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @01:10PM (#14599449) Homepage Journal
    Here in Central North Carolina Dell was offered about 300 million dollars in tax rebates to locate a plant here. But the local conservatives and small business groups are up in arms that tax dollars should be spent at all, even if it is for jobs. Now the number of jobs is questionable so the criticism may be valid but on the whole, in the US we prefer the Walmart model which is to move in to a local economy, destroy it, and then hire back some of the people to work in the local hypermart. Most local governments would rather have one Walmart with 1500 part time jobs than one software developer with 300 high paying jobs. So if its going to be 1500 wage slave jobs then there's no need to fork over tax dollars to entice them when there's a bunch of hypermarts lining up to do it for 'free'.

    Let Dell hire 100,000 people in India. Americans don't care as long as you don't spend tax money.
    • Here in Central North Carolina Dell was offered about 300 million dollars in tax rebates to locate a plant here.

      Not good enough. India offerred to change the name of their capitol to "New Dell".

  • Great more language barriers. Thanks Dell! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bogie ( 31020 ) on Monday January 30, 2006 @03:20PM (#14600489) Journal
    I just love not being able to understand the person on the other end of the phone when I need to get a hard drive replaced.

    Saturday I was at someone's house and the hard drive was dying. It got a failure code via Dell's built in utility and was going bad. "Steve" was a total PITA and having to try to figure out what the hell he was saying only made things worse. If I had to hear him repeat that dam script one more time I was going to lose it. I then got to fight with his supervisor "Shawn" who finally relented.

    This client while a small fish has bought 6 Dells within the past 1.5 years. So far 2 of the POS Maxtor SATA drives Dell uses have failed. Next time a drive starts going South I told my client we won't be calling Dell anymore. We will just go out and buy a drive and skip the whole fight with the person in India bit. It will end up costing much less.

    Oh and he probably won't be buying Dell's anymore, not as long as Dell keeps putting calls to India or anywhere else you have to strain to understand the tech on the other end. FU Dell for making people have to deal with this kind of crap.
  • Ok, so when all USAians' salaries are dropped to the same levels as they are in India, who will be able to afford the price of a computer?
    • I generally think this every time i see one of these stories. People just don't see the economy as a system, and think they can optimize a portion of it and not have it affect them down the road. I don't know where the faith of "we can make totally self serving decisions at every level and it will in general create a healthy ecosystem" got so deeply ingrained that no one can think of larger issues, but it will harm us in the end.

      Henry Ford got this, he realized his employees were his customers, and the pe

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