I received an email today, out of the blue, from a consultant named Lambert O’Neill. I don’t know Mr. O’Neill, but based on the subject line of his email, I was expecting a message about death-march projects. But here’s what his message said (this is all verbatim; I haven’t even corrected a few innocent typos and spelling mistakes that I noted in his message):

Mr. Yourdon,

I have been a consultant for the past twelve years, I specialise in trying to bring death march projects in the financial sector to some agreed end. In the past three years, I have noted a disturbing reason these types of projects are initiated. Please forgive me, as I am going to raise an issue which is normally unaccepted in the political framework of the US.

In one word, it appears to be a result of racism. Defined as, members of one “race” are intrinsically superior or inferior to members of other “races.”

In the financial domain, sub continent teams are being brought into the US in large numbers. As you know these team members, though on-shore, are paid substantially less then their American counterparts, are not paid over-time, have no access to labour laws in the US, and are considered a very cheap and easily available commodity. The lack of respect and outright agressiveness these professionals encounter upon arrive from the enterprise senior managers, project owners, American technical team shareholders, users, and project managers is shocking.

I have witnessed countless and repeatable unexceptable behaviours made to these teams, here are a few examples

- Agressive comments made about their accents

- Comments about their body odour and cooking smells on the floor

- Comments about their ignorance due to their inabillity to understand how Americans and “real-world” works

- Outright refusal to meet with team members until they learn to speak English correctly

- Isolation, some enterprises now keeps “contract” help in separate buildings. These areas are sometimes refered to as the “curry floors” by employees

- Yelling and intimidation

The view that these teams are sub-human and powerless in face of the enterprise because of skin colour and origin, encourages managers to deliberately compress timelines even more. Respect for any team member in current business environment is hard to find, but when it comes to this group there is no effort made at all.

As a consultant, I do not have a solution to the racism problem but I have well proven strategies I use when engaged in such a projects.

Best regards,

Lambert O’Neill

I wrote back to him, asking if I could publish his message on my blog — and if so, whether he wished to be identified by name. Within an hour, he sent the following response:

Mr. Yourdon,

Please feel free to post this message on your blog. You may also provide my name. The reason I wrote you is I believe this issue is something IT/IS/Business Partner community should face and identify/implement solutions.

Indian team members and I have openingly discussed this issue. It is one appraoch I use to identify death march issues and risks and implement some basic solutions to negotiate an end point to the death march.

As you know, speaking out against “authourity” is not culturally acceptable in India. They also seem to express a fear they will be sent back to India and/or fired from their companies. As their are limited employment opportunities at home and they often have extended families relying on their income it appears to me that this is a system of a bounded labourer (indentured servants). History books tell us this system was abolished in North America in the 19th century, they maybe inaccurate.

My last death march project just finished, and I will be travelling through Europe until January 2008. However, I will occasionaly read emails and your blog. I look forward to reading the responses to the posting, which according to modern corporate culture most likely will be – complete denial.

Much thanks for having the courage to open up this issue.

Warmest regards,

Lambert O’Neill

If I were publishing a newspaper instead of a blog, I would obviously be compelled to check out Mr. O’Neill’s background, and corroborate his story with independent sources. And you might feel that, even as an informal, unregulated blog, I have an ethical obligation to do so. You may be right; but I’ve seen enough similar situations in my own travels through IT shops throughout the U.S. to find his story sufficiently plausible and credible to warrant bringing to everyone’s attention. On the other hand, I have not personally experienced anything as blatant and extreme as what he describes, so it was a bit of a shock.

While I can’t claim to have done any kind of in-depth investigation of the situation, I did type “outsourcing racism” into my Google search engine, and found a few interesting results:

• “Racism is no answer to outsourcing,” in the January 25, 2005 issue of the San Jose Mercury News.
• “Outsourcing Racism,” in the October 26, 2005 posting of James McGovern’s blog, “Enterprise Architecture: From Incite comes Insight…”
• A 5-page PDF “fact sheet” from the SAALT Exchange, written sometime in 2005, entitled “Addressing and Responding to Bias Related to Outsourcing.”
• A November 17, 2005 article in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled “Outsourcing Outrage: Indian call-center workers suffer abuse.”

And there’s probably more: these four documents came from the first page of Google hits, out of a total of 1,720,000 hits on the search term. If you know of any examples, incidents, reports, or other information that confirms or rebuts Mr. O’Neill’s characterization of “racist” behavior in offshore outsourcing, I’d appreciate hearing from you. Obviously, if there is more documented, confirmed, objective information of either a positive or negative nature, that would help all of us better understand what we’re dealing with.

Assuming that Mr. O’Neill’s story is basically accurate, I don’t think it’s sufficient to react by saying, “Such behavior is unacceptable!”, and then just pretend that it doesn’t exist. It reminds me of all the young parents I’ve met over the years, who listen to my stories of the exploits and escapades of my own children (all three of whom have grown into wonderful, happy, remarkably successful adults), and who say to me, with great indignation and a touch of condescension, “Well, my child would never do X!” — where X is any combination of unacceptable behavior, ranging from misbehaving in fancy restaurants to (underage) drinking, smoking, drugs, sex, watching R-rated movies, visiting Internet porn sites, or lying about something while earnestly proclaiming otherwise. “Maybe your child did those things, and maybe you let them get away with it,” they’ll say smugly, “but my child would never do such a thing!” I used to get into heated arguments with these earnest young parents; I don’t bother any more … they’ll find out soon enough on their own.

While I obviously don’t accept, condone, or excuse the behavior that Mr. O’Neill describes, it doesn’t take a genius to understand some of the reasons it may be happening — and why it’s likely to continue happening as we continue outsourcing call centers, help desks, software development, and many other kinds of jobs to countries, cultures, and ethnic groups other than our own. At the very least, ignoring it and pretending that it doesn’t exist is going to reduce or eliminate some of the benefits typically associated with outsourcing; and at worst, it could cause a serious backlash.

Let me know what you think about all of this…