Let those dreary jobs in
TRUE, there are so many things that do-gooders and the usual crusaders can grouse and carp about the mushrooming of supposedly IT jobs such as contact centers and medical transcription firms that have taken the job market by storm.For one, these night jobs are truly hazardous to the health. Some kids end up drug-addled just to cope up with the night shifts and the boredom. The young in these jobs often get an overdose of both caffeine and nicotine.
Second, these are not real IT jobs at all and the label as IT-related is a grand deception. Ten years as a call center agent won’t qualify one for an entry-level job at Silicon Valley or Bangalore for that matter.
A hard-core IT job involves the three fields of embedded technologies, programming and networking. If they don’t fall within the three, then what you have are IT-induced jobs but never the real thing.
Third, cast-off jobs from India are the ones coming to us. India has moved into the hard-core stage of programming and embedded technologies. They are into accounts bigger than hosting contact centers and medical transcription entities. There are still contact center jobs there but the transition to hard-core ICT technologies is being done at a very frenzied pace.
But tell us, what is the alternative? Right now there are none. These IT-enabled jobs are the stars in the employment galaxy, lowly they may seem in the real IT world. We can create them at the pace of tens of thousands a month with the proper training and an elementary technology backbone. They can be based anywhere, even in the strife-torn areas. An average IQ is enough and so is a decent-enough phonetics.
Why, we are now exporting contact center agents to places such as Dubai and Singapore, at salaries triple the local pay.
These IT-enabled jobs have propped up consumer spending and the real estate sector at the scope and magnitude that was even beyond the expectation of the major real estate developers and the mall operators. The “For Rent” signs that used to clutter Metro Manila’s business districts have been easing. From Muntinlupa up north to the Clark Economic Zone, one can find buildings upon buildings that host call center operations.
Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City is having a building boom of sorts, thanks to the call centers along a particular strip.
The real spenders at the malls are workers in these IT-enabled jobs, who earn more than the average-wage earners and have—literally—money to burn.
The IT-enabled jobs, if one just probes deeper, do other wonderful things than giving decent-paying jobs to the young (who, without the jobs, would join the armies of unemployed Filipinos) and making the Sys and the Ayalas wealthier every day because of their sustained spending.
These jobs do their bit for the environment. This is for real, not twisted logic.
As more and more young men and women move from the provinces to the call center sites to work and get decent pay, the number of hopeless youth (who in their desperation would otherwise engage in slash-and-burn farming, charcoal gathering, and spraying their farms with lethal chemical and pesticides) diminishes. The pressure on the environment also eases.
As more and more young men leave the farms, the more area is left for the individual farmer to till. Instead of six young male kids tilling the three-hectare rice farm bequeathed by the father, one or two would share the land if all four can land jobs as contact-center agents in the cities.
Where there is less pressure to feed all six kids and force the land to produce more via lethal fertilizer and toxic pesticides, something good is done for the farmland and the environment.
Every sector of the economy, and even the patrimony, is better off because of these jobs.
So instead of carping and complaining about health hazards that these jobs impose on the youth, the do-gooders should better plan ahead just like India. Which is to prepare for the next stage after the IT-enabled jobs. This means training the young to work in the real thing” embedded programs, programming, and maintaining complex ICT networks.
With the real thing, we can grab a sizable slice of the technological innovations in Asia. And we all know what comes with being a technological powerhouse.
