20 ms·
"I Was a Director at Amex When They Started Replacing Us with $30K Workers" [video]
- functionmouse 7mo agoIt seems our enemies are making a mistake.
- only-one1701 7mo agoWhat enemies?
- quacked 7mo agoThe two American political parties are so perfectly shielded by their own ideological blinders to avoid any possibility of national protectionism against offshoring and outsourcing that I don't think there will ever be any kind of movement against this. The conservative base is unfriendly to foreigners and foreign cultures, and claims to prefer American-made goods and services, but will immediately guillotine any internal party member who causes consumer prices to raise substantially--which they would have to do in order to support American workers creating products rather than our offshored counterparts. And the business owners and shareholders who love to outsource generally aren't true blue voters. The liberal base is in theory pro-union and pro-worker, but will immediately guillotine any internal party member who suggests economic discrimination in favor of native-born industries and workers.
- epolanski 7mo agoI really find the state of American (but not only) politics dreadful where everything is seen under the lenses of conservatives vs liberals. Most people I know, everywhere in the world have mixed views on most topics. Let alone the fact that ideologies tend to change, modern rights are way more populist and economically-socialist than they were 2 decades ago. See Poland, Hungary, Italy, etc, where governments make money fall on the poorest, on the elderly, etc ignoring their historical electorate (middle class).
- refulgentis 7mo agoPeople one-on-one have heterodox views, no one likes to think they just take it all wholesale from some amorphous ideology without a leader. If I could filter "conservatives are X and liberals are Y and it makes no sense" type thought, I would, because it's a driver of this impression.
- quacked 7mo agoI agree, but the fact of the matter is that for voting purposes there are two "teams" in the US, and they vote and argue in public down pretty well-defined ideological lines. If you know the two or three most strongly-held moral-political beliefs of an American, it's highly likely that you can guess another 150 sociopolitical beliefs they at least profess to hold to their friends.
- functionmouse 7mo agoYou must understand, we're only allowed to vote for good cop or bad cop over here.
- apercu 7mo agoBad cop and much much much worse cop. And somehow the latter got elected.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- rayiner 7mo agoExcellent analysis.
- lenerdenator 7mo ago> The conservative base is unfriendly to foreigners and foreign cultures, and claims to prefer American-made goods and services, but will immediately guillotine any internal party member who causes consumer prices to raise substantially--which they would have to do in order to support American workers creating products rather than our offshored counterparts. Currently, the head of the party is raising and lowering tariffs at will, so I don't quite think this holds anymore.
- wat10000 7mo agoHe is able to do so only to the extent that he can convince them that prices aren't rising, or he's not causing it.
- lenerdenator 7mo agoHe's able to do that.
- wat10000 7mo agoFor now. It remains to be seen how long it will last.
- lenerdenator 7mo agoIt's been over a decade. He's been impeached twice, lost an election once - and it sounds like the lesson he took from that is "get rid of elections" - been convicted on thirty-four felony counts, charged with even more, mismanaged a pandemic, "shot at", wiped his ass with a number of strategic alliances, sent thugs out on America's streets to harass people for being Latino, and been linked to a cabal of child-trafficking sex offenders. A few hundred bucks a year ain't gonna move the needle at this point.
- apawloski 7mo agoAgree. It is harder to manufacture in America when the party leader breaks critical parts of your supply chain with rapid and unpredictable tariff changes. It is impossible to lower consumer prices on a good by raising taxes on it. This is not even mentioning the astounding corruption of a president and his family personally and directly benefiting from these tariffs threats. Does the party not understand the realities of this? Do they understand and are just lying about it because they're afraid of the leader? Afraid of admitting that they're wrong? I believe people are usually rational but I do not understand a rationalization where choosing to harm American manufacturers and consumers on the whims of a visibly corrupt leader is good, actually.
- stronglikedan 7mo agoIn my opinion, it's because the two party divide has reached the point of extremism on both sides, and extremists act on emotion rather than logic or reason. Up until a couple of decades ago, they both did a good job of keeping their more extreme members out of sight and mind. Now they're embracing and amplifying them.
- gorbachev 7mo agoIt's not extremism. It's plain old American capitalism. Both parties are being funded by the same people, so both parties play ball with the same set of funders.
- dakolli 7mo agoIts very obvious, imo they are going to have a hard time signing young men up to fight for this country when they inevitably make everyone so poor they beg anything, even a war. But... They'll use profits and greed to alienate the working class further and further, they'll try to get us to go fight wars to capture resources for the KKKapital owners. My prediction is the only war the American people will be willing to sign up to fight, is against those same KKKapital owners. Probably explains why they love bunkers so much, for the case where this whole experiment backfires on them.
- _DeadFred_ 7mo ago“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” ― Ulysses S. Grant
- OGEnthusiast 7mo ago[dead]
- meowface 7mo agoConspiracist nonsense. Like, this could hypothetically explain a few things for a few industries where both parties somewhat align, but in general this is populist slop.
- gamblor956 7mo agoliberal base is in theory pro-union and pro-worker, but will immediately guillotine any internal party member who suggests economic discrimination in favor of native-born industries and workers. Well, yes, because discrimination on the basis of where someone was born is illegal. The American liberal base is, and has always been, fine with economic discrimination in favor of those in America (without regard to where they were born or their residency status).
- happytoexplain 7mo agoThere is a stereotype that conservatives are "less fine" with outsourcing than liberals. I'm not saying it's strictly true, but it's a very strongly embedded stereotype if it's not true. Also, you're resigning the biggest part of the conversation (immigration and residency policy and enforcement, especially with regards to employment) to an implication in a parenthetical?
- yongjik 7mo agoProtectionism may work in some cases, but even when it works, it works by making things more expensive. People don't buy American cars because it's cheaper to make similar cars in Mexico. Fine, so let's force companies to make cars in America. It's now more expensive (otherwise we won't be importing from Mexico in the first place). You add more and more protectionism, it may get some jobs back, but the price is that things get more and more expensive. And not by a few percent, more like by 50% or more. (Just think of how much money an American worker needs to have an ordinary middle-class life compared to a Mexican worker.) Now consider how much people were angry over the Covid-era inflation and how it was a major factor in Trump coming back (and looks like it's going to be a major factor in Republicans losing the mid-term election this year). Nobody wants prices to go up. Americans say they want protectionism but what they want is a fairy tale protectionism where jobs comes back but prices magically stay stable. It cannot happen, and if the choice is between some other group of Americans in Michigan getting better jobs and you getting your SUV at a "reasonable" price, people will choose the latter. (I'm not digging at Americans - the same is going to happen everywhere.) It's basically "It's extremely hard to defeat capitalism at its own game." Nobody likes capitalism, but that doesn't mean you'll get popular by defying capitalism.
- jerkstate 7mo agoI think you need to look at the data before making assertions like this. > People don't buy American cars 53% of cars sold in the US are assembled in the US versus 18% assembled in Mexico. > things get more and more expensive. And not by a few percent, more like by 50% or more. The total cost of manufacturing wages only account for 5-15% of the MSRP of a vehicle. So moving manufacturing from an expensive country to a cheap country only changes the price by maybe 10% due to the impact of wages.
- xyzzy123 7mo agoI think all of your points are valid and I can't really see any part if your argument that isn't at least directionally correct. But then I'm left wondering: Why is protectionism working for China?
- 7mo ago
- epolanski 7mo agoThat's how capitalism works, eventually everything gets moved where it's more efficient. Obviously, time and time again has proven that outsourcing is not always more efficient.
- recursivedoubts 7mo agoSo then that's not how capitalism works, is it?
- jen20 7mo agoIt is, if you add the word "perceived" to the original post.
- epolanski 7mo agoWhy wouldn't it?
- mcphage 7mo agoAmerican capitalism doesn’t worry about long timescales, beyond a year or two.
- democracy 7mo agoIt's not math, it's pressure down the chain of command - you had to be outsourcing or at least trying to. Same as now - you have to be trying to "AI" and report improvements as this is what everyone wants to hear.
- sumedh 7mo agoBy that definition companies should just employ children because they are cheap.
- throwaway920102 7mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- OutOfHere 7mo agoThere is racism all around in America -- every race effectively has some bias to hire its own. To some limited extent they don't. The way I think about it is that if they don't want to hire me, it means I am not offering them enough value to bypass any bias.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- OutOfHere 7mo agoBetween AI and outsourcing, desk jobs in the US can risk disappearing altogether. Do not count on them, and do not expect you to be owed anything. Go in every day knowing that day can be your last day there, and you will be at peace. Find your own alternate paths.
- cmxch 7mo agoCan’t offshore cleared government work.
- _DeadFred_ 7mo agoCan't offshore plasma donation, especially when many countries outlaw it or don't let people donate twice a week.
- lanstin 7mo agoIf this was about a useful part of the economy rather than financialized credit access, I would care. Paying 10x to US residents to provide a better Amex experience really doesn’t incentivize anything that is long term useful. Now when materials scientists and skilled scientific technicians are fired from US based jobs, well that is a problem. The economy in the US has fallen prey to the demands of irreality based capital which is seeking, not profit, not good products and healthy trade, but seeking to extract capital and to erect legislative barriers to Adam Smith style competition (between innovative small businesses striving to find an innovative way to push product utility up a bit). If you can’t brag about the good your job is doing for people, life, or history, try again.
- bagacrap 7mo agoCredit cards alter the power dynamic between customer and merchant, especially in a world where so much commerce is remote. I appreciate protection against fraudulent merchant activity, as well as the ease of use relative to alternatives (who likes carrying cash or a checkbook?). Not having to pay for a month is nice but not the reason I use credit cards.
- givemeethekeys 7mo agoLet this be a lesson. If you're dumb enough to say "how high?" when they ask you to jump, you will always get steamrolled. Always! This poor fellow talks about what happened to him as if it's something new. This form of outsourcing has been exploited ever since the internet became fast enough! If anything, it's possible that AI will result in all those Indian offices being shut down. Don't work harder than your boss. Find a leader who is worth following.
- llmslave 7mo agoI worked there a long time ago. Indian VPs were taking kickbacks from consulting firms to hire their devs, it was an open secret. Whole divisions of the company are 95% Indian. I wont expose the group here, but there's a broad network of technology directors from Amex, that have all been hiring and promoting eachother for 20 years. Very tight nit networks of nepotism, in some cases, brother and sister working together All that really matters is the Amex brand, and so all the tech was considered back office, and unimportant. Also, once a company enters some kind of monopoly status, very little matters in the quality of their product.
- bagacrap 7mo agoAmex has less than 10% worldwide market share and is a distant 4th behimd unionpay, visa, mc. I don't see the monopoly here. I have to say I was relieved when my Amex card issuer switched to visa because owning an Amex is a pita. I think they build their business on various rewards programs, the brand itself is garbage in my eyes.
- jst1fthsdys 7mo agoThis happened to the company I worked for also. Blatant corruption. One Indian guy gets appointed to VP, then almost immediately all their reporting chain is Indian. Managers are told they can only hire from some obscure Indian staffing company (that the VP has a stake in or gets bribed to use). Quality is garbage cause no self respecting Indian dev would work for them. Zero pushback from exec level, zero acknowledgment even though it's obvious. Very deflating for employees.
- iririririr 7mo agoThis happens everywhere. The bigger difference here is that most in this board identify with white anglosaxan, so when they bring in their peers you build the false illusion that if you work hard you will join the club. heh. you won't.
- spwa4 7mo agoThat pretty much describes Indian work culture/ethic. Let's say "aggressive" work hours, and you just let your manager claim whatever he wants and agree with it, against everyone. "Yes", "Yes, sir". And then, yeah, when the time comes that the work needs to be delivered, odds of it actually being done, let's say 50/50 at best. Does your manager even want to know the truth? Mine does, but that's only the case because I changed managers 4 times before I found one that I can reasonably believe tells the truth to his superiors.
- sumedh 7mo ago> against everyone. "Yes", "Yes, sir". The Indian manager has the power to fire that employee, finding another job is difficult, so from the employee's perspective it's safe to just say yes.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- democracy 7mo agoIs amex still alive? The worst company I dealt with - both professionally for data integration and personally took me a year to make them fix their own mistakes and close my accounts.
- josefritzishere 7mo agoOutside of corporate cards I've never seen an AMEX in the real world.
- missedthecue 7mo agoAre you in Europe or something? It's the most popular credit card among Gen Z and Millennials. 1% of US GDP goes through Delta co-branded Amex cards.
- bagacrap 7mo agoUS data, total transactions: Visa: $3 trillion, 52% Mastercard: $1.4 trillion, 24% American Express: $1.1 trillion, 19% Discover: 0.3$ trillion, 5%
- missedthecue 7mo agoNearly as common as Mastercard is shocking. Didn't know it was that close
- silexia 7mo agoWe need high tariffs immediately or there will be no jobs left just like there is no manufacturing in America.