Are you sure Outsourcing is always bad?

The human face of it..

Published on October 7, 2004 By Draginol In Business

We don't discriminate against who we work with. We look for the best and brightest from all over the world. JoeUser.com's Blog Navigator is developed in Poland. Our documentation is written in UK. Some of our artwork is from Canada and other parts from Brazil. And a lot of JoeUser.com's upcoming ASP.NET stuff will probably be done in Italy. Is this a bad thing? I don't think so.

Next month we're going to release a Gold Fish Aquarium Desktop. It's incredibly cool. The fish were designed and rendered in Japan by someone who doesn't speak a word of English (we worked together via email via translation software). The scripting was done in the United Kingdom and the Graphics engine was done in Italy. How is this bad?

It hasn't stopped us from hiring more and more Americans. As some know, we're hiring now. In fact, we hope to add another 8 people internally (Michigan USA) by next Summer (we're a small company and we're very very picky about who we hire so it's a slow process).

The more flexible a country is for hiring workers, the better off everyone is. We wouldn't have been able to afford the developers who made JoeUser.com (the IT people working on JU are all American working from Michigan). And they work seamlessly with the Blog Navigator team in Poland. Everyone wins.

So next time you hear someone demonizing outsourcing, don't be fooled. It's not always bad. Like most things, it's sometimes bad and sometimes it's not.

Comments

CrispE

on Oct 07, 2004

Draginol:

It's not "creative" outsourcing which you're doing that's demonized. What is demonized is outsourcing solely to lower costs by hiring workers in other countries to do the same job an American would.

Take, for example, an IT support person for Dell (not true as far as I know). One living in Texas might cost you $15 per hour and one in India (a hotbed for these types of outsourcing) might cost you $7. This is the kind of thing that we need to deal with on some level.

historyishere

on Oct 07, 2004

I think the only outsourcing that really gets demonized is when someone has a job in North America, and they are let go and replaced by someone else, and what you are doing Brad is slightly different than that... because it isn't like you closed your Michigan offices and replaced your staff with a more affordable staff in Indonesia or other such country. I have absolutely no problem with the kind of outsourcing you describe..

I think the most often(and most damaging) outsourcing practice is the hopefully rare(or better yet, fictional) occurance where American workers have to train their replacements or they will not receive a severance package. That I think it just a bit of dirty pool(to put it mildly).

Draginol

on Oct 07, 2004

I think it is pretty rotten to have people train their successors.

pseudosoldier

on Oct 07, 2004

I think it is pretty rotten to have people train their successors.

greywar is fast at work attempting to train 1/2 dozen successors... we deal with it constantly in the military, although it is less likely that we'll be "fired" outright... more usually promoted out of a job we enjoy.

I'm glad we can't (safely) outsource my job.

mgosh

on Oct 08, 2004

That's horrible when they make the workers train their successors. I think that practice should be made illegal. It's totally demoralizing and it's just cruel.

What you were doing was sourcing the project out, you weren't letting go of your staff and replacing them. I view that as consulting not outsourcing.

CamMeg

on Oct 08, 2004

I do not think they are too concerned about how the worker feels in regard to this remember greed took them to letting go of this employee to give the position to someone they will not have to pay as much too hence the thought of compassion in regard to training that person ...I think not....all that is,,,, in mind is ,,,,,,,I have this minion until this date now here is what you will do until that time mentor your replacement~!~

Have a good night~!~

~Peace,LoVe,Health & Happiness~ Extended to you all

unigolyn357

on Oct 08, 2004

In the short term, outsourcing is a Bad Thing. But in the long run, lower HR costs mean more money directly invested into enterprise, which means a stronger economy, which means more, BETTER service jobs in the US. Let's say Dell outsources their tech help phone jockeys to India, and saves a bundle. That bundle is then spent in various ways which result in more Dells being sold. More Dells sold means more on-site service. And you can't outsource that.

The actual number of jobs lost due to outsourcing is not that huge - but to the individuals who are the butt end of it are pissed off. What will NOT happen is tens of millions of jobless people wandering around cursing those damn Hindus for taking their jobs. In a globalized world, the whole planet becomes one huge society, and like every society it'll have class distinctions (i'm not talking Marx here, bear with me). Outsourcing will mean a shrinking of the American working class, but there is no reason whatsoever to think that this will lead to unemployement. The past 200 years of history say it means the opposite - a growing middle class.

From Ford's assembly line onward, people screamed bloody murder and inequity and warned of impending doom whenever progress was made in production automation - what did the loss of manual labor jobs bring with it? A hugely successful economy, the vast middle class, the average joe living in luxury never before dreamed.

What's happening with outsourcing is that the Bangladeshis and Peruvians and who knows else are filling positions that are losing their cost-effectiveness in the US. Improved cost-effectiveness means better business, and better business invariably means more jobs.

Macroeconomically and in the long run (think in decades, not years), free markets in free societies will make everyone richer. It's inherent in the whole concept of capitalism. The richer society gets the more people spend (duh). The more people spend, the more there is a demand for stuff to spend it on. The Dell phone jockey will have to go do something that is economically viable.

Professions will always die out. It's a necessary byproduct of economic progress. Fighting outsourcing is, in the end, like fighting alternatives to coal power at the turn of the last century - sure it'll keep lots and lots of coal miners employed, but it would stunt economic growth, it would keep the hordes of miners and their offspring from morphing into the middle class they are today.

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