New York Times Article on Outsourcing to Vietnam
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 08:21:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jonathan London <jonathandlondon@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
This article may be of interest to you.... Outsourcing Finds Vietnam By KEITH BRADSHER Vietnam is making a big push to turn itself into an outsourcing powerhouse.
Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/30/business/worldbusiness/30vietnam.html?oref=login
Best,
Jonathan
=====
Jonathan D. London, Ph.D.
Department of Sociology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
From: Peter Hansen <johnev@netspace.net.au>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: 10/1/2004 2:10:50 PM
Subject: RE: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
The article seems to be password protected.
Peter Hansen
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 18:25:44 -0400
From: catharin dalpino <catharindalpino@earthlink.net>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
For those who don't want to go through the process of setting up a password account with the NY Times, the article on outsourcing is pasted below.
Best,
Catharin
Outsourcing Finds Vietnam
New York Times
September 30, 2004
By KEITH BRADSHER
HANOI - With a portrait of Ho Chi Minh gazing down benevolently opposite the doorway and fan blades making leisurely orbits above, the long green room looks as if it could still belong to officials from the Communist-controlled legislature here, its former occupants.
Instead, the room holds one of the more unusual outposts in the shift of clerical jobs to ever-poorer countries in the developing world.
Rows of young university graduates working for World'Vest Base, a company based in Chicago, scan the Internet for everything from emerging market stock prices to corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States. They copy data into spreadsheets and e-mail it to clients around the world.
Vietnam is making a big push to turn itself into an outsourcing powerhouse. Mathematics instruction has long been the strong suit of Vietnam's educational system, and now the country's government is trying to train people across the country in computer skills.
At the same time, wages remain extremely low: World'Vest Base hires recent graduates with accounting or finance degrees, but no experience, for a starting salary of $100 a month, little more than an unskilled factory worker earns in neighboring China.
Very low wages and strong math skills are a combination that has made believers of some experts.
"You're going to see Vietnam competing with India and some of the other countries doing this within the next five years," said Pete Peterson.
Mr. Peterson was a prisoner of war here for six years during the Vietnam War who went on to become the first United States ambassador after President Clinton normalized relations.
Yet Vietnam still faces considerable obstacles in its pursuit of the Kind of low-skill jobs that now employ hundreds of thousands of people in India, Malaysia and the Philippines, let alone the higher-paid computer programming jobs that have helped turn Indian cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad into prosperous models of economic development.
With the approach of the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon next spring, Vietnam remains one of the poorest countries on Earth. It still struggles under a Communist government that has moved more slowly than China's to embrace capitalism.
Government bureaucracy and regulations remain pervasive, especially here in northern Vietnam. Skills in spoken and written English, a prerequisite for a lot of outsourcing work, remain weak, although skills in French, a legacy of colonial rule, remain fairly strong.
The road system is in poor shape, especially in comparison with China, and Vietnam lacks the tidal wave of foreign investment that has helped China builds so many modern buildings and factories. Multinationals have built some factories in Vietnam, including small auto assembly plants to supply the local market, but have refrained from setting up big telephone call centers, computer programming operations or other service-sector outsourcing.
"You're not seeing the I.B.M.'s, H.P.'s or Infosyses of this world charging in there," said Philip Hassey, the associate director for Asia and the Pacific at the International Data Corporation.
Yet a handful of companies have set up shop here. A growing number of Vietnamese who fled the country at the end of the war and afterward have begun to return.
Atlas Industries Ltd. has 100 people in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, performing the technical tasks of turning architectural drawings from Britain into detailed blueprints that can be used by British construction companies. Joseph Woolf, the company's chief executive and founder, said that he preferred Vietnam to India because Vietnamese employees were more loyal and less inclined to change jobs repeatedly or seek work overseas, two problems some companies have encountered in India.
"People are more committed to the company, the country and the family," he said.
At the same time, Mr. Woolf, a former project manager for a succession of British oil companies, said that he was sensitive to concerns that are operation might be taking work from British architects. All his customers in Britain are successful architectural firms that are expanding and adding staff, not laying them off, he insisted.
Job losses may be occurring, however, at other firms that are losing market share.
At the 38-employee operation here of World'Vest Base, young men and women sit at computer terminals with high-speed connections to the Internet. Surfing the Web, they fill spreadsheets with prices from obscure stock markets in places like Kazakhstan and Mauritius, then distribute them to investors specializing in emerging markets.
For investors seeking gems in bigger stock markets, they glean financial data from French annual reports and comb S.E.C. filings. They also gather data from local companies seeking to prove their creditworthiness to international banks.
Nam Nhat Tran, 28, found the annual report of Groupe Global Graphics in France online and copied the company's cash reserves into a database; her screensaver is a photo of the red wooden footbridge that has long been a symbol of Hanoi and a rendezvous point for lovers.
Nguyen Cam Nhung, 23, an experienced hand after six months on the job, sat nearby and coached Tran Trong Tuan, 25 and newly hired. He scrolled up and down through an S.E.C. filing from the American company 3M, looking for depreciation figures from last year.
"I'm learning new things about finance," Mr. Tuan said.
Jonathan Bloch, the chief executive of Exchange Data International, a company based in London that distributes financial information to big investment banks and other customers, said that data from World'Vest Base was inexpensive and reliable.
"We outsource also in India and the Czech Republic," he said. "Vietnam compares very favorably; I think they're on a par."
In coming to Vietnam, Philippe O. Piette, the chief executive of World'Vest, who was born in Antwerp, the Netherlands, has followed an odyssey that says much about how far some companies are willing to look these days for cheap labor.
Trying four years ago to expand overseas, he initially considered Dubai because he wanted to sell market data from Arabic-speaking countries. But he found costs in Dubai were too high, and that few Arabs were available anyway.
"The labor pool was all Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and Filipinos - no Arabs," he said.
Mr. Piette considered India, but was discouraged by what he saw as sloppiness and poor quality in data-entry operations there. So he ended up opening an operation three years ago in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a polyglot nation with many linguistic groups that were brought together before it gained independence from Britain in stages, beginning in 1957. But wages in Kuala Lumpur are still fairly high: $450 a month for a new graduate and as much as $800 a month for someone with a few months of experience. Even worse for Mr. Piette was the job-hopping.
"We lost a whole slew of people - we're the perfect training ground for the investment banks and brokerage houses," he said.
Mr. Piette, a naturalized American, wanted to offer more data from French-speaking countries and looked to former French colonies in Indochina. He called a diplomat to inquire about Cambodia, was told it was hopeless, and flew to Hanoi late last year instead.
Five decades after independence from France, Hanoi is still poor, with practically no skyscrapers and streets still filled with motorcycles and bicycles. When Mr. Piette tried to place an overseas call from his hotel, it took him nine hours to get an international phone line.
Dismayed but not deterred by the delay, he kept investigating.
He found that Vietnam had not only plenty of French speakers and some English speakers, but also lots of people who spoke Russian and German, having worked in the former Soviet Union and the former East Germany. While World'Vest Base still has 56 employees in Kuala Lumpur, its biggest expansion now is in Vietnam, where Mr. Piette now pays up to $400 a month to some of his first hires who are especially productive and have stuck with the company.
Being a native French speaker has helped in navigating the government bureaucracy.
"The whole country runs on who you know, not what you know," Mr. Piette said. "It's true of most countries, but it's particularly true here."
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 14:42:55 +0700
From: Markus Taussig <markustaussig@mac.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
I always thought that Vietnam's success in getting French investment into fixing up Hanoi in the run up to the Francophone Summit was pure genius...
_______________________________
Markus D. Taussig
Private Sector Development Research
DC/Global Access Tel: (202) 204 0963
Vietnam Mobile: (84) 903 25 8774
markustaussig@mac.com
http://homepage.mac.com/markustaussig/
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 02:30:37 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jonathan London <jonathandlondon@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>Subject: RE: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
In addition to the nonsense about the frequency of French versus English speakers, this article contains several other problematic claims -- including the claim that "Vietnam remains one of the poorest countries on Earth" -- which, while true not long ago, is almost certainly no longer the case. There are a host of other uninformative, formulaic, and outdated claims.
Nor does the article provide much in the way of data as to the scale and scope of outsourced activities in Viet Nam.
On the other hand, I believe the outsourcing of clerical and other forms of work to Viet Nam (and Vietnamese' efforts to tap into this work) does indeed represent a potentially important sphere of economic activity, which was my reason for sharing the NYT piece with the VSG.
We all know there are ongoing efforts by state leaders and entrepreneurs of various stripes to link up with globalized service industries. Software is a big focus, I have less about the type of clerical work referenced in the NY Times piece. It will be interesting to see how things develop in these spheres of the economy over the next years. Any thoughts (and/or data) on this?
Jonathan
=====
Jonathan D. London, Ph.D.
Department of Sociology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 16:45:11 +0700
From: Markus Taussig <markustaussig@mac.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
The AmCham in HCMC is planning to organize an IT workshop in December with IT firms from the States attending. A Vice Chair of HCMC's PC, Dr. Nhan, has been a big advocate of outsourcing and the HCMC Computer Science Association does seem to be one of the more active business associations out there.
There seem to be some pretty important infrastructure problems still, though, such as the poor quality of internet services in Vietnam. My service provider, FPT, for example, seems to be more over stretched every day and my ADSL regularly slows down to slower than dial up. Plus, Vietnam is choosing to be quite conservative with the amazing new internet telecom services, leaving an uncertainty that is scaring people from investing into setting up new services that would of course be very hard for VNPT to compete with.
_______________________________
Markus D. Taussig
Private Sector Development Research
DC/Global Access Tel: (202) 204 0963
Vietnam Mobile: (84) 903 25 8774
markustaussig@mac.com
http://homepage.mac.com/markustaussig/
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 21:29:44 -0700
From: Peter Hansen <johnev@netspace.net.au>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: NYT article on outsourcing to VN, French or English?
No way HCMC is more Francophone than Hanoi. Vice versa, if anything.
Peter Hansen
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 01:19:53 -0700 (PDT)
From: Chuck Searcy <chucksearcy@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: NYT article on outsourcing to VN, French or English?
Peter, I had the same thought about the assertion regarding French.
Older folks, yes, still greet me in French sometimes and want to converse in French, and a number of students are specializing in French, but their numbers are far fewer than those studying English. In the IT world, English nowadays is a necessity. I know no one working with computer software or hardware or programming who does not speak functional English, and many of them speak it fluently. French may be a third language for some. I'm not sure who Keith Bradsher interviewed or what IT firms he visited (maybe HCMC is more Francophile?), but in Hanoi it's all English.
CHUCK SEARCY
Country Representative
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF) / Vietnam Enterprise Group (VEG)
25 Truong Han Sieu #302, Hanoi, Vietnam
(011) 844 943 8061 tel / 844 943 8062 fax
(011) 849 03 420 769 mobile
chucksearcy@yahoo.com
www.vietnam-landmines.org
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 08:11:47 -0400
From: Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
Hard to say what the assertion about French vs. English could mean.
Anecdotal impressions are fine with me, but what is the observer's standing to observe the use of these languages?
Then there is the matter of the difference between knowing French and knowing English. For example, I have used French since childhood as well as many Vietnamese Americans who function perfectly well in the US use English, and as well as Vietnamese who function with foreigners perfectly well in VN, use English.
Those speakers are commonly accepted around the US and among Americans in VN as "knowing English". In contrast, I don't think I'll ever speak French the way you have to "to know French." Knowing French and knowing English are two different kinds of knowing.
If a VN person in VN wants to learn French, the language has got rules and there are plenty of people around eager to tell them what they are. If a VN person in VN wants to use English, he can memorize some vocabulary and have at it.
The last time I was there, eight years ago, it seemed to me people were learning to use English were in evidence everywhere. On the other hand, I did also know students who saw a comparative advantage for learning French in this situation, who took advantage of the wonderful opportunities at the Alliance, and have since made a profession of speaking proper French.
So I don't think the reporter is just making up what she says about French vis-a-vis English in Viet Nam. She could have elaborated, though.
Dan
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 09:33:18 -0400
From: Mike High <mike.high@starpower.net>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
I'm glad that this was raised -- when I read the article I was puzzled by the assertion that the French language is better known than English.
When I first went back to Vietnam in 1999, biking down from Nanning, across the border, down the coast, and up to Hanoi, I was amazed at how many North Vietnamese could communicate in English, despite the fact that there had never been a significant American presence in the North. When I biked through the countryside, children in the smallest villages would run out to try out there "Hello!" or the more ambitious "Where are you from?" When visiting the War Museum in Hanoi, I was amused to see a tour group of Russian military being escorted by a Vietnamese woman in uniform. She was describing the exhibits to them – in English! One of the Russians had to translate the English into Russian.
Flying Vietnam Airlines, I was pleased to find the elegant in-flight magazine, Heritage, had English text as well as Vietnamese (I don't recall any articles in French). The Airlines says that all of its attendants can speak English as well as Vietnamese. (I think they are all supposed to also be able to speak in one additional foreign language.) The reason for all this seems quite simple to me. I was sitting in a little restaurant in HCM last time around, enjoying some Malai Kofta, listening to the Indian proprietor having a friendly verbal tussle with a Malaysian businessman, including Hindu and Muslim marriage customs. The entire conversation was in flawless English. Forget the Americans and their war -- English is the most common way for Southeast Asian tourists and businessmen to communicate.
|| Mike High
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 09:37:30 -0400
From: Tam Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
My niece and nephew (early 20s, both studying computer science) learned
English in high school (my niece is currently in Australia, my nephew has just gone to Korea). Despite our family's long history of French education of sharing a house with my Paris-born sister and umpteen relatives living in France, they learned very little French in their elite high schools in HCMC. They're very typical of their generation. I recall seeing a sign in HCMC in 1995 for the Nguyen Tat Thanh School of English (sign of the times, indeed). If the reporter spoke to people in their 40s or 50s, there's a greater chance that they spoke French or Russian or some East European language. But I would say that among the 20-something generation, the foreign language of choice is most likely to be English or Chinese.
Hue-Tam
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 23:27:51 +0700
From: - <caphorn2001@yahoo.co.uk>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
And what about the Vietnamese government ? who can communicate in english ? NDM speak Russian and French...The others ? the new generation ?
MD
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 11:11:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dan Tsang <dtsang@lib.uci.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
In April, I taught a few internet sessions at the International Studies faculty (department) in Vietnam National University in Ha Noi, and at the end of one session, one student asked, "You've shown us a lot of web sites in English. Can you show us some in French and Russian?"
I answered with some words in French and in Russian. So at least in that school, while most study English, others are still learning French and Russian.
dan
Daniel C. Tsang
Bibliographer for Asian American Studies, Economics & Political Science
Social Science Data Librarian
Fulbright Research Scholar in Vietnam, 2003-2004
380 Jack Langson Library, University of California
PO Box 19557, Irvine CA 92623-9557, USA
E-mail: dtsang@uci.edu; Tel: (949) 824-4978; fax: (949) 824-2700
UCI Social Science Data Archives: http://data.lib.uci.edu
Subject Guides: http://www.lib.uci.edu/online/subject/subject.html
Office Hours: Tuesday 3-4 pm; Thursday 1-2 pm and by appointment
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 13:57:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: Hoang t. Dieu-Hien <dieuhien@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
I wonder how well the author of that article speak French? He evidently is well qualified to assess the English ability of non-native speakers in Vietnam, but does he possess the same qualification in French?
That said, French influence is still there.
An American product marketed in Vietnam with the name Style is pronounced as "xi`-tin" on its television ad. Although AIDS has been the official acronym for Acquired Immuno-Deficient Syndromes since the late 90s, many people still refer to it as SIDA, the French version of AIDS that the government adopted originally. These are but two very small examples of the insidiousness of French influence in Vietnam.
Knowing English means employability, hence the ability to make a lot of money. Therefore, practically everyone who can wants to learn English. Knowing French, however, denotes a certain amount of prestige that knowing English doesn't quite give a person.
I have to agree with others on VSG, though, that the number of young
Vietnamese these days who can speak decent English far outnumber those who speak French.
Dieu-Hien
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 2004 09:23:51 +0200
From: Markus Vorpahl <m_vorpahl@web.de>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
It’s clear that young people learning and communicating in English far Outnumber those learning French. Still, there is a considerable effort to teach French, be it in the Alliance with its new building downtown, or at specialized centres, for example at Bach Khoa - speaking for Hanoi only, there are other centres and bilangual schools in other cities. One problem of the French school in Hanoi is that there are almost only vietnamese children there, so that communication outside classrooms happens mostly in vietnamese - or English. One reason leading to the strange conclusion in the article could be that there is a french-language centre for applied teaching in informatics at Bach Khoa, and they also have an office accros the VNA agency?
Markus
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 08:58:15 -0400
From: Hong Anh Vu <HaVu01@maxwell.syr.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
I agree with Markus that "there is a considerable effort to teach French" in Hanoi, and I would add, to sustain French. It reminds me of the days at Truong Dai Hoc Su Pham in the mid 80s, where students who studied French were provided a nice compound adequately furnished with facilities provided by the French government via its embassy in Hanoi. At the entrance, there was a sign in French saying (if my memory serves) that you can enter the building if you speak French. Early in the 90s, at the French managed Metropole hotel in Hanoi, where all the staff speak English, effort was made so that French guests would be provided a letter before check-out in French rather than English. Hotel staff were paid to take French classes at Alliance Francais.
Today, the people who are most motivated to learn French are doctors who are seeking training opportunities in France. Some also need french to teach and work in francophone countries in Africa. Rather than the colonial legacy, in Vietnam, the reason people attempt to acquire proficiency in a foreign language is more directly linked to the career opportunities available. It seems French offers opportunities outside while English has more to offer both at home and abroad explaining the proliferation of English speakers in the country.
Hong Anh
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 15:04:30 +0800
From: Nguyen Quoc Toan <tqn200@nyu.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: RE: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
Like Duyen, I completely disagree with the assertion that French is more spoken than in English.
Toan
Date: Saturday, October 02, 2004 7:49 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group
Subject: RE: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
Thanks Catharin,
I'm sorry, I didn't realise the NYT is a free log-in.
Incidentally, what do you all think of the assertion in the article that the standard of spoken French among young urban professionals in Vietnam is superior to their English? It doesn't accord with my experience.
Peter Hansen
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 11:04:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: Thomas Jandl <thjandl@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
I wrote to the Times about this article telling them that there are MANY more Vietnamese nowadays speaking English than French.
They responded with a ridiculous attempt to maintain that they are right by saying that the article said nothing about speaking English vs. French, but that the mastery of French is more widespread than the mastery of English. Could any one of you linguists out there enlighten me how (1) that is different and (2) how that makes the statement more correct???
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 14:15:09 -0400
From: Tam Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
Translation (very loose):
"We're never wrong. How dare you suggest otherwise?"
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 11:08:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Thomas Jandl <thjandl@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: New York Times article on outsourcing to VN
For those of you who didn't read the article and find it password protected (after a few days, they archive and passowrd protect), Mr. Bradshaw is writing about young Vietgnamese working in outsourcing businesses -- particularly a business that hires Vietnamese young graduates to check financial reports and input the data into spreadsheets.
So there is no excuse here, he is just plain and simply asserting that young Vietnamese on the job market speak French better than English.
No, sorry, they don't speak it better, they master French better than English, which according to them in their response to me makes the assertion correct.
Thomas Jandl