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There's also the implicit xenophobia/offshoring angle that people in a call center in the Philippines must be doing low quality work and/or being exploited.
by bsimpson 8mo ago
There's also the implicit xenophobia/offshoring angle that people in a call center in the Philippines must be doing low quality work and/or being exploited.
- OGEnthusiast 8mo agoWhy is it xenophobia if it could be true?
- GuinansEyebrows 8mo agoas someone with zero love for waymo/alphabet, why would you believe it to be true?
- OGEnthusiast 8mo agoI'm not saying it's true or not true, I'm saying I don't know what "xenophobia" has to do with evaluating the quality of workers being used in potentially life-saving situations.
- tialaramex 8mo agoI'd have a way easier time buying the idea that there's genuine concern for the quality of this work if say, few Americans old enough to do so were licensed to drive. But er, actually it's estimated at almost 90% because the standards are extremely lax. What "potentially life-saving situations" are you envisioning? Here's a Waymo article so you have some idea what we're actually talking about: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/ https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/ Edited: Clarify by removing negation
- catlikesshrimp 8mo agoNobody had mentioned any evaluation of anything. The Grandparent mentioned that xenophobia makes the headline more spicy. "Remote operator" phrase is not as attractive as "Remote operators from Phillipines" or even "Pinoys" can be. Edit: "They finally issued a correction in the linked article that makes it clear they're not remote controlling the cars, but the headline is still really slanted and a frustrating framing"
- danielmarkbruce 8mo agoIf you think they are doing bad work because they are in country X for any X, it's xenophobia.
- legostormtroopr 8mo agoWhy is it xenophobic to be concerned that non-registered drivers in one country are being allowed to drive remotely in a different country.
- MostlyStable 8mo agoAs far as I understand it, they aren't being allowed to drive. They are doing the equivalent of "ignore that, it's not a real obstacle" or "try to go around this way", and then the car takes that input into account and does the actual driving (steering, control of throttle/brake) on it's own as usual.
- dataflow 8mo agoYou're saying they don't interpret road signs/markings/etc.? Or need to know if e.g. a right or left turn on red is legal in a given intersection?
- agumonkey 8mo agoIt might be for non road code level issues, like physics / crowd ambiguity, where a normal human could fill the missing gaps, US citizen or not.
- rcxdude 8mo agoI don't need, legally, to demonstrate any knowledge of this to drive on US roads currently (or even, strictly speaking, to know what side of the road I should drive on).
- junofan 8mo agoShould probably be licensed to drive in the US if “explicitly proposing a path for the vehicle to consider” as Waymo has disclosed… I would not personally be comfortable “explicitly proposing a path” for a vehicle operating in the Philippines since I’ve never even been there, let alone driven there. Why would I be comfortable with somebody doing the reverse?
- catlikesshrimp 8mo agoSuper interesting take you mentiom. Tourists can drive in the US on their foreign license. Can that be used as a loophole for a call center? Also, maybe it is a gray area where they are not asking what they don't want to hear. Those offshore subcontractors already break any US law they want because they aren't hiring humans inside the US, they are providing a service from abroad. Specifically, how do you know the operator can drive?, as you ask. But also, how do you know your operator won't steal your PII / bank account details out of your law enforcement physical jurisdiction?
- gjm11 8mo agoIt seems possible that people in the Philippines providing advice to Waymo vehicles in the US get some training on US road signage, traffic regulations, etc. (I can't see how it would make any sense for Waymo to pay people to do this and not give them the information they need to do it reasonably well, since the whole point is for them to handle difficult cases.)
- Brybry 8mo agoAnd it would be difficult for whatever training Waymo provides to its employees to be less stringent than the lax license requirements of most US states.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- dylan604 8mo agoOne that I heard a lot is that if you're in the US during the day talking to an offshored tech support person, it's the middle of the night for them. The A-team doesn't work overnight, so you're getting at best second tier. blah blah
- catlikesshrimp 8mo agoThe guy says there are workers abroad, not exclusively in Phillipines. Phillipine call centers work when it is night in the US. There almost certainly is /are other centers in another location which work when it is daytime in the US. Because Night shifts are always more expensive. Nothing to do with any A, B or C Team. Edir: "Markey then asked about where the operators are located, to which Peña says they have "some in the U.S. and some abroad,” however he did not know an exact percentage of those located elsewhere. "
- WillPostForFood 8mo agoThe way the Waymo rep answered strongly implied they only have workers on this task in the The Philippines. -- Markey: In what countries are these employees located? Waymo guy: The Philippines. Markey: Excuse me? Waymo guy: the Philippines. Markey: So they are in the Philippines. ---- If they aren't in the Philippines, they need to fire Waymo guy..
- catlikesshrimp 8mo agoHe gave a non answer, quite surely on purpose. Since the interviewer didn't explicitly ask "Only in the Phillipines?", I can see the guy retorting "I never said there weren't operators in other places" (again, without saying which other places, or even if there is any other place)
- WillPostForFood 8mo agoDefinitely possible, but the more likely answer is that the Phillipines is the only foreign country with operators.
- hsbauauvhabzb 8mo agoBecause outsourced work is often a race to the bottom price wise, resulting in skilled workers finding better higher paying work elsewhere? There are highly talented people in every country. The vast majority of them do not work in call centres.
- jayd16 8mo agoOffshoring our good, American, pretending to be a robot car jobs.
- amiga386 8mo agoThey are being exploited. They live in a lower cost-of-living country than where their services are rendered, and so neither demand nor receive the same wages as someone in the USA. The contracting company profits - quite intentionally! - from labour arbitrage. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Outsourcing.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Outsourc...
- OGEnthusiast 8mo agoYeah but ironically it's actually the workers in the US who are being exploited. The workers in the developing countries are largely beneficiaries since they get access to wages and a labor market far beyond their local region. (Obviously the companies still benefit the most.)
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago> They are being exploited. They live in a lower cost-of-living country So tech companies should be barred from hiring anyone outside the Bay Area? Because hiring someone in Texas or Arizona is necessarily exploitation?
- amiga386 8mo agoHiring specifically in Texas or Arizona because you heard it's lower cost-of-living than the Bay Area, and not being willing to offer Bay Area salaries to people there... that's still exploitation. If you were instead hiring from anywhere (because you'd be happy with a remote worker, and they have the same employment rights) and willing to pay the same as you'd pay your Bay Area workers, i.e. it's about the hunt for talented/capable employees whereever they might be, rather than a hunt for cheap ones, that's no longer exploitation.
- dekhn 8mo agoShouldn't pay be scaled to the locale? Note also the role here is fungible- Waymo could move to another location if they chose.
- mediaman 8mo ago
- tbrownaw 8mo agoI think people tend to distrust an assumed lowest bidder regardless of whether they're from here or from over there.
- seanmcdirmid 8mo agoI would guess they are not only getting lower rates in the Philippines, but better service than they could get in the states.
- nathanaldensr 8mo agoThey are being exploited. I've traveled to Cebu City where many of these call centers are located. My wife is from the area. To Filipinos, it's a good job, but the quality of life for these workers is still very poor. It's not a living wage; most can't afford to live on their own.
- TurdF3rguson 8mo agoIt's a good job but they can't live on it? I think you mean they can't live like westerners.
- orwin 8mo agoNo, I have a friend from Madagascar where they have the same type of 'jobs' (basically classifying stuff for AI, or checking reported images to see if it's porn or worse). It is a 'good job' in the sense that it's a 'desk' job you can do at home that also signal education, so it's social value is high. It is also very 'competitive' so the pay is low and the hours to live on it approach 90/week (it's a 12h/day job)
- TurdF3rguson 8mo agoNo I'm familiar with the call center jobs op means, they're good paying (for the region) but you have to go in to the physical location in the city. Which usually means paying rent or a long commute.
- simonw 8mo ago"most can't afford to live on their own" That's true for a lot of workers in many USA cities as well.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- BobbyTables2 8mo agoWell they are being exploited for potentially illegal purposes. Forget self driving cars for a minute. If Domino’s wants to deliver a pizza to me, the delivery car driver needs to be licensed (pretty much in that state). It doesn’t matter even if Domino’s extends some sort of liability insurance. Laws are laws. Legally driver must be licensed. It doesn’t matter if they drive while on a speakerphone call with a licensed driver. It also wouldn’t matter if the delivery driver had no license but carried a licensed passenger at all times. It wouldn’t matter even if the passenger owned the car. Having a person drive a car in a country in which they are not licensed to drive seems fundamentally illegal. It’s not a technology issue. It doesn’t matter if there are sensors and satellite links involved. The driver must be licensed. Somehow society had decided in favor of a little convenience to forget all principles and let tech companies run roughshod over laws, societal norms, and basic human decency. This is worse than the 1970s mentality of “if it came from the computer it must be correct”. Now it is AI…