About work ethic and integrity @ ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

About work ethic and integrity

I am actually a person pretty easy to work with. I would shoulder the responsibilities of most of the honest mistakes committed by my subordinates or my peers. However, I will not tolerate gross negligence. There are quite a few tech onshore or offshore contractors from China or India that my colleagues work with. I am glad that I don’t have much direct interaction with these contractors. Most of the time, I just complain to my colleagues of the poor quality of work provided by these onshore or offshore contractors from China or India. I don’t know how many that I have let go over the years for their poor performance. I do have to say that I am not biased. I do agree that not all of them are bad performers. However, the number of poor performers is alarming to me. Since I do oversee the success and failure of a project and am responsible for it, I have to make sure that the right person with the right skill is assigned to the project.

As we get more and more tech onshore or offshore contractors from China or India assigned to the projects, I am seeing more and more rework and project failure. I know that the company made the financial decision to outsource but the poor quality of work provided eventually increases the overall cost of the project and leads to a higher rate of project failure. You would probably say that you reap what you sow and that it is the consequence the company has to suffer for the decision it made. However, I would ask “Where is the work ethic?” Even though these contractors are earning a salary much lower than that of their American peers (roughly 2/7), their salary is still considerably higher than what they can get from their own countries. Isn’t that the reason for the flourishing of the outsourcing companies in China and in India? Where is their sense of accountability and responsibility? How can the same error be repeated so many times? Where is their quality control? By the way, don’t think that I will go easy on them just because I am a woman. The male chauvinism that some of them, especially the older generation from China and India, has is just idiocy.

I can understand if more time is needed for the complexity of the work. What I cannot tolerate is the excuses for poor performance. Don’t tell me to push out the launch date simply because they did not do their due diligence. We do not pay them to sit around and wait passively for the apples to drop. Don’t they understand the importance of follow up! Where is their initiative to get the work done as requested? Aren’t they accountable for what they are assigned? Aren’t they responsible for what they deliver? How can I trust the quality of work they provided when the same errors were transferred from one project phase to the next?

I am going to ask again “Where is the quality control? Where is the work ethic?” For the Chinese onshore or offshore contractors, I may look like a Chinese but I am not. I don’t share the same value as many Chinese perceive. I despise that the Chinese contractors would switch from speaking English to me to Mandarin in an attempt to ask for special treatment after learning that I was originally from Taiwan. Don’t they know that it is extremely rude to discuss work in another language that the rest of the coworkers have trouble understanding? I will not cover up for their screw-ups. We are all adults. We have to learn to own up our responsibilities. Don’t think that they can get away from sloppy work with suck ups and by grouping me as a Chinese like them. I have to say to them that we are not all Chinese. If they cannot get their job done as requested, they are probably in the wrong line of business. Don’t come to me and ask for favoritism.

To me, business is business and having a sense of accountability and responsibility is what separates a successful person from the rest. By the way, working smart is another attribute but that is another story.

On 10/12/10 in Minneapolis