Outsourcing (592 hits)
Category: Humor -> Dumb JobsRating: -0.56 on 14 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by <gnamit.at.gmail.com> (View user info) at 2004-07-01 02:58:46 EDT
Now I'd like to start with a little apology. I've been reading ubersite for about a week, I found it from b@w, which I found from wench of maddox which i found from maddox's page. Now I've seen you guys have a habit of flaming people's first posts, and that's cool, but I also have noticed that when something is rated well (I'd say 1.5+) it usually is a good story. So hopefully you'll find this story, as I do, rather funny.
I'm going to start my third year of college in september, I study at the Cooper Union, studying electrical engineering. So this summer, I got an internship at IBM in India. I'm off indian descent, i'm half punjabi and half kaist, and I thought it would be an interesting experience to work in india. Plus international internships look good on resume's and all that. so this is now my third week here and...well its not what I expected.
First off I'm here as a trainnee, which means they will "teach" me some software and then give me a certificate saying I can use it. I think it's all a crock of shit. But for all the work that people are complaining about being sent to india what I dont understand is why. I know it's cheaper, but I honestly think work is done a lot slower here. For starters I have a boss and a supervisor, my first week here my boss came in the first day and then not for the rest of the week. The supervisor for 2 days. 2nd week they were both here every day so I thought it was an anomaly, but its thursday and I've yet to see my boss this week and my supervisor has dissapeared for the last two days.
Now they have a coffee machine, and I think a lot/most of American offices do to but they seem to take hourly coffee breaks. So every hour, sometimes half hour people go and get some coffee, which turns into a 10-15 minute process since everyone else is waiting for coffee too.
Now maybe I'm just an arrogant American, but they have the IS guys who are supposed to come fix any computer/network problem that comes up. So the second day I was here there was a guy in here re-installing windows. I asked what happened, he said that he installed redhat and it deleted the mbr and windows couldn't boot. Puzzled I let him continue. Now he installed windows ok, then he continued to install redhat. He clicked the autoformat for the drive, and then got really confused, "Why is there more than one partition??" So he called up another one of his IS buddies who came about 20 minutes later and explained what the partitions were. Then a third IS guy showed up, so the three of them are sitting around this computer installing redhat, a very productive group of people wouldn't you say? So they instlal redhat and boot hte machine, and in lilo there's no option for windows. They all shake their heads and say the mbr is broken have to re-install windows again. Now, I'm no guru or anything, but I know enough that he just needed to configure lilo. So they decide its time for lunch. Lunch took them 2 and a half hours. I dont know what freakin lunch takes 2 and a half hours, but they didnt come back for 2 and a half hours. I called one guy on his cell phone and asked him for the root password so i could configure the boot loader so that one of the other trainee's coudl get to work, but instead he told me it was broken he'd come and fix it and hung up. So I sigh a big sigh and go back to my computer, another piece of crap mind you but I can work with it, and they come back after there ungodly long lunch and are about to reformat the machine and put windows on it. I walk over and ask in the best hindi I can muster, do you mind if I try fixing it..? He looks at me, a little shocked and I think insulted, and then gets up and goes, "Sure yaar, go try." And after calling the other two guys back in to get the password since only one of them remembered it, i setup lilo and he's on his merry way.
Of course there's the girl who sits across from the bathroom and stares at me every time i get up to take a piss, and i've only seen work when the nerdiest looking guy comes over with his laptop sitting next to her and they do something, but maybe these people do magically get something done. I've never had a qualm with outsourcing, good old india's economy is boosted, my family just started a call center here in conjunction with a debt agency in the us and all in all its making more jobs in the US so I dont have any real qualm with outsourcing, but people just dont seem to have an urgency to get work done, then again that might be the way big companies work. Of course the one problem I have with is the shitty internet conneciton. Everything goes through a proxy server which periodically goes down and right now is not letting me back on aim. This is IBM, you'd think I'd have a reliable 10k a sec or something, but i had ot d/l a 400 meg patch at 3k/sec. I dont knwo if its a bad internet connection or just bad networking, but either way I'll be quite happy when I go back to the US and my school and the lab I work in. All in all, as an indian being outsourced back to india, I miss manhattan.
(all in all it seems like an overly long post and not all that funny, but I just spent the time typing it up, so I figure somewhere will get some entertainment from reading it)
User Reviews
Submitted by me at 2004-08-25 03:41:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by jboogz (user info) at 2004-07-01 12:37:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
OMG. That was one of the most boring and unentertaining things I have ever read. Please Kill yourself.
Submitted by NetProphet (user info) at 2004-07-01 09:27:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
"I figure somewhere will get some entertainment from reading it"
No, I'm afraid not.
Submitted by vodka7tall (user info) at 2004-07-01 09:19:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
You put this in the humor category? I guess they don't really have a "don't waste your time on this yawnfest" category.
At least you used paragraphs, so I won't -2 you. Next time try writing about something that's actually interesting, instead of a bunch of rambling about loading some shit on your computer. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Submitted by Envenom (user info) at 2004-07-01 09:10:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No no, outsourcing.
http://www.ubersite.com/m/32333
Submitted by AlahAckbar (user info) at 2004-07-01 08:56:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
Now I've seen you guys have a habit of flaming people's first posts
Only if your first post sucks.
Proofread! But at least you got paragraphs!
Don't listen to squatall, he's a fucking douchbag.
Submitted by euripidestrousers (user info) at 2004-07-01 08:28:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
No Comment
Submitted by Quasiplasmohedron (user info) at 2004-07-01 03:46:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Next time, proofread.
Submitted by squattail (user info) at 2004-07-01 03:27:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Nah, I review anything like this with maximum rating of 0, just because this sort of shit is lame. What I hate though is when I ring customer service for my phone or net, and they put me through to a fucking help desk in india, and I can hardly hear the fucking curries cause they don't speaka the english.
Submitted by ramirez60 (user info) at 2004-07-01 03:23:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
A friend of mine works at mlb.com and got me an invite to gmail.
ah, so if i'm a white guy complaining about how my job was given to some sorry ass arab instead of a brown guy saying that you white folks giving this work to the sorry ass arab are dumb i'm more justified?
Submitted by squattail (user info) at 2004-07-01 03:18:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Go eat some papadums and try again
Submitted by Socialist_Joe (user info) at 2004-07-01 03:12:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
goodnight uber and a happy canada day (i think)
Submitted by propertie_fenspost (user info) at 2004-07-01 03:11:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I wouldn't know if this is worth anything, I got bored at the first line. Hence the zero. You probably deserve about a ten. Like I said, I wouldn't know. Make it shorter u dumb fuk!
Submitted by squattail (user info) at 2004-07-01 03:02:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
a) ubersite is a place for WHITE PEOPLE to submit posts
b) how the fuck did you get that g-mail account, it is my understanding only really nerdy assholes get them?