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The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

economist.com

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Re: The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

#71

Post by nylonstrung »

duncangh wrote: post #53
nlpnerd wrote: post #2

From a recent article in The Economist. It turns out that once again many of the jobs that people predicted would be eliminated by AI have instead received a boost, at least for now. This closely follows another recent report on how Indian BPO firms are surprisingly thriving due to AI. "Moreover, AI is helping offshore workers in the Philippines do new, more complex jobs. They are picking up work training AI models o…

“Hospitals in America are increasingly outsourcing the checking of insurance eligibility and filing of medical records to Filipinos packing AI tools. Mr Gallimore says” How is this HIPPA compliant? Please tell me there’s an aspect of HIPPA that requires sensitive data to be only accessed and processed by Americans on shore. You’d think the multiples we pay on health care for worse outcomes would at least be supportin…

This is already common for both HIPAA and financial data, it usually comes down to the offshoring site meeting compliance guidelines and functioning like a "clean room" with data leak prevention in place

Also though, I don't think there is anything inherently less secure about a Filipino handling my data than an America

Re: The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

#72

Post by nylonstrung »

I think offshoring to the Phillipines is extremely net-positive from a purely utilitarian sense

I know a lot of Filipinos and essentially 100% of them in white-collar work are using the money to support their extended families. The money gets spent in a very different way than a Westerner would use it

Re: The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

#73

Post by russelldjimmy »

decimalenough wrote: post #69
russelldjimmy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WLB is truly awful in India. People are stretched and stressed out at work, in addition to awful civic conditions which makes travelling to and from work a nightmare. I am not sure how long this can continue.

It does depend on the company and your role. Working a senior role at a FAANG in India is much nicer than junior roles in the local WITCHes (Wipro Infosys etc), which are notorious for their crap salaries and shitty labour practices.

Yes, fair point.

Re: The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

#74

Post by andersmurphy »

decimalenough wrote: post #68
andersmurphy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth pointing out Anthropic is a sponsor of The Economist. Probably muddies the water some more.

A "sponsor"? As in buys some ads? The Economist's take on AI is hardly uncritical.

Judging by the amount of insider interviews it's more than just ads.

Longtime subscriber. Pretty disappointed in how biased their coverage is.

The most critical piece they have put out on AI is oh no it's so powerful it's hacking everything. It's like being in a job interview and saying your biggest weakness is you work too hard.

Re: The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

#75

Post by SloppyDrive »

dyauspitr wrote: post #9
nlpnerd wrote: post #2

From a recent article in The Economist. It turns out that once again many of the jobs that people predicted would be eliminated by AI have instead received a boost, at least for now. This closely follows another recent report on how Indian BPO firms are surprisingly thriving due to AI. "Moreover, AI is helping offshore workers in the Philippines do new, more complex jobs. They are picking up work training AI models o…

Yeah, paradoxically Indian software outsourcing is growing. I guess the way the companies are thinking about this is we need some sort of human oversight for all the work the LLMs are doing, might as well pay someone the least amount possible to do that.

Indian tech sector has seen rapid decline; the Indian outsourcing model is obsolete.

I can now translate tasks that can be easily split to low cost regions, and not have to deal with the cultural issues of India. I can also rapidly generate work of similar (and improving) quality... I have no use for a meat-proxy to a llm.

I expect a severe crash in the Indian tech sector, before a minute proportion of the workers can start to build it up again.

Re: The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

#76

Post by ben_w »

rightbyte wrote: post #49
pjc50 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also an analogy with the globalization of manufacturing era. People have I think been prone to assuming that the West has a "magic ingredient" which entitles it to revenues from skilled work forever. A presumption that people overseas, especially in the "south" and "east", wouldn't acquire the same skills or culture. The idea that it is so absolutely critical to software development to be in an office in Silicon Vall…

The WFH aficionados that emerged during Covid had no concept of bargain power or power structures. Dunno why there was such resistance from the owning class afterwards with return to office mandates.

> The WFH aficionados that emerged during Covid had no concept of bargain power or power structures.

IMO the wrong thing to point at.

How many of us have ever, even before Covid, been in a trade union?

Unions definitely know about bargain power and power structures, yet also get it wrong when new tech arrives.

Re: The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

#77

Post by SloppyDrive »

nlpnerd wrote: post #2

From a recent article in The Economist. It turns out that once again many of the jobs that people predicted would be eliminated by AI have instead received a boost, at least for now. This closely follows another recent report on how Indian BPO firms are surprisingly thriving due to AI. "Moreover, AI is helping offshore workers in the Philippines do new, more complex jobs. They are picking up work training AI models o…

We have moved some "low cost" work from India to other reigons, now that translation is improved...

At the same time, we are reducing the proportion of outsourced work, because a local team with LLMs are dramatically more capable... There so many benefits to how you can organize a smaller high-skill team. I would put a 10-man team with the current tooling on par with a 10 high skill + 80 low cost heads even 5 years ago.

Re: The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

#78

Post by tchbnl »

nylonstrung wrote: post #72

I think offshoring to the Phillipines is extremely net-positive from a purely utilitarian sense I know a lot of Filipinos and essentially 100% of them in white-collar work are using the money to support their extended families. The money gets spent in a very different way than a Westerner would use it

You're only saying this because you're in the fortunate position of not worrying about your job being offshored.

Re: The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

#79

Post by notaslave »

decimalenough wrote: post #69
russelldjimmy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WLB is truly awful in India. People are stretched and stressed out at work, in addition to awful civic conditions which makes travelling to and from work a nightmare. I am not sure how long this can continue.

It does depend on the company and your role. Working a senior role at a FAANG in India is much nicer than junior roles in the local WITCHes (Wipro Infosys etc), which are notorious for their crap salaries and shitty labour practices.

Please don't take me wrong, but FAANG is like not even 0.00001% of Indian labour. Outside of may be the FAANG (have doubts about Amazon), pretty much all companies are bad, even the American or European GCCs don't seem to be good. Note that I am not thinking just about IT - banks, police all seem to have terrible work cultures.

Re: The Philippines' big offshoring industry is growing despite AI

#80

Post by notaslave »

russelldjimmy wrote: post #55
notaslave wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do these GCC's have great work life balance? They may be better that the service companies, and may pay better, but WLB is shitty everywhere in India as far as I can tell. As an example, the death of Ernest & Young employee Anna Sebastian sparked a lot of discussion in Indian media since it was attributed to work pressure.[1] Another example I recently heard was a USA Texas based company called CorroHealth suddenly c…

WLB is truly awful in India. People are stretched and stressed out at work, in addition to awful civic conditions which makes travelling to and from work a nightmare. I am not sure how long this can continue.

Will we have good civic sense, streets and road culture before we get old? I can only hope.

From https://theprint.in/opinion/indias-poor-little-rich-people/2...

"The purpose of life of an Indian is to escape India, it can either be done by leaving India physically or figuratively by shifting to a gated community. Once the Indian escapes India, India becomes the best country in the world & requires no improvement".

"By walling themselves away, India’s rich secede from society. If the elites don’t use public services, there is less pressure on the state to improve them."

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