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The offshored American

Michael Kanellos CNET News

Published: 15 Apr 2004 14:45 BST

Life in India as an expatriate can be a mixed bag. On the one hand, Westerners on even a modest salary can afford to hire full-time domestic help, and hefty annual pay raises are still the norm.

On the other hand, you have to contend with thick air pollution, nocturnal barking dogs and bureaucratic tangles.

"Having patience, a pocket full of small denomination bills and the acceptance that most activities take two to three times longer than one would expect certainly makes living here easier," said Leo Niedas (not his real name), a US tech worker who recently moved to Bangalore to manage an Indian group for a multinational tech giant. "The lack of parks is also an adjustment. I mean, there are not really any big parks to go for a run or throw a Frisbee," he said.

"The daily electrical blackouts are commonplace now," he added.

Niedas is part of a small, but growing, wave of Americans and Europeans hoping to cash in on the mushrooming after-effects of offshoring.

Although thousands of US programming and support-desk jobs are being shifted overseas to low-cost destinations such as India and China, large companies are discovering that setting up shop offshore is not like opening a branch office in Phoenix.

Cultural, linguistic and even simple geographic distances can make it more difficult to coordinate large, ongoing projects, according to sources. Figuring out the mood or particular dynamic of a remote office is also proving to be tricky. Companies that parachute executives in from the headquarters for short hops run the danger of coming away with too rosy, or too dour, a perspective. Permanent intermediaries from the home office will be needed.