Why I Outsource Offshore

When the planes hit the World Trade Center, I was sitting in my cozy sunroom home office. Living in Fairfax County Virginia, we actually heard the plane that hit the Pentagon fly very low overhead. We knew something else was going to get hit. Then we actually heard and felt the explosion. The next minute my son and I were outside in the street looking up into the sky. We didn’t know what to expect.

I didn’t know that my life had radically changed that day; I knew the country had, that was quite apparent. But the downward spiral I was about to take wasn’t going to be pretty.

I remember telling my sons pre 9/11 about the phone calls I would get from headhunters, at least once a day. I would tell my kids’ that was real job security, having skills that were readily needed in the marketplace. I actually made $16,000 in about a day, tracking down a bug in a major government computer system. I remember working on another system on my laptop aboard a cruise ship in the Caribbean (the cruise ships had just gotten email capabilities, and my client had no idea where I was, and didn’t care). Talk about working from home! We all probably all have many great memories of the good times.

The week after 9/11, nobody returned my phone calls. I had a couple of contracts with a very large city government. We couldn’t even get into the building. Of course I later found out that the city was much more interested in detecting anthrax and acquiring and placing cement barriers than the work I was doing for them, tracking the maintenance of the cities trees and processing abandon vehicles left on the city streets. I was instantly unemployed. It was the end of an era.

It was time to send out some resumes, nothing, time to get out the Rolodex and tap into my “old boy network”, nothing. A month goes by, then two. I remember going to the local shoe retailer, because they had a sign posted looking for a store manager. I showed the current manager my resume, and he told me not to bother applying, they knew I would be gone the instant I got another tech job. Time to send out thousands of resumes, all over the world, nothing. Several months pass. I tap into my homes equity to pay the mortgage, sort of like chewing your own arm off. All my friends are doing likewise. We talk with each other, it deadens the boredom and pain, misery loves company.

Ok, so I am going to re-tool, so I buy some on-line coursework to learn Oracle 9i. I start digging in 8 hours a day, going through the coursework; I hate every second of it.

I actually started reading articles about offshore outsourcing here on freerepublic.com. I was upset by this as most people were. I had lost my wife by then, and it is apparent that the house that I had planned to play with my grandkids in will be gone soon also. I am at my low point.

Just through dumb luck, a complete stranger calls me up one day, and tells me he ran into my resume, and was impressed with my background. He tells me that over the last year, he has cobbled together a team of programmers in Moscow that can write computer systems in just about any language. He tells me they are quite good, and I believe him because I have worked with Russian programmers before. The he told me one thing that would change my career goals forever. The Russians will write computer systems, Including Oracle systems for as little as $15 per hour. In other words, I am beating my brains out to learn a computer database system that can be done elsewhere in the world for about the same price as is paid to a cahier at the local grocery store. This changes everything. I rewrite my rather lengthy resume.

I cobble together a list of email addresses of headhunters and other companies from several job boards. The title I put on my resume is “Offshore Outsourcing Project Manager”. In my resume under the skills section I put the rather lengthy list of technical skills the Russians posses. The list includes just about every major computer system I have ever come across. It is the ultimate resume. I mail out a few hundred. I don’t have to wait for long.

The next day, the phone rings. Another telemarketing call, I am thinking. The man on the other end of the line tells me he is looking at my resume. He starts explaining a project he needs accomplished, actually two projects. I have no idea what he is talking about. And I can tell he is getting frustrated. He tells me that he is going to email me his address, and I should show up the next day at 1 PM. I am excited yet confused. I don’t sleep well that night.

I am ushered into a boardroom a little after one the next day. I didn’t eat lunch, partially because I really don’t have much money, and I am a little dizzy (lost 30 pounds through the last 12 months). They start explaining the projects to me, three guys, a marker board and me for 3 hours. The last hour I am just sitting there with my mouth hanging open. I am starting to get what they want, two computer systems for arguably the largest retail chain in the world. They are massive undertakings using cutting edge technology, and it is obvious it will take dozens of programmers and other specialists (maybe more). Then they tell me how much they want to pay for all of this, and it isn’t much. But it beats the heck out of what I made in the last 6 months, which was nothing. At this point I am only thinking that I want to just get something going, anything. I just want something to do, any form of cash flow, to make some contacts and get the hell out of my house once in a while.

I instant messaged the Russians the next morning. They couldn’t believe whom the project was for or the massive scope of the undertaking. I had my Visio thing going most of the night, and I had some pretty dead on flow charts of what was explained to me, which I emailed to them. They started sending over some very impressive examples of XML scripts based on my previous nights work and the hours of conversations we had. The client liked it all. They were impressed. I could not believe what I was getting into.

We all signed the clients NDA’s, and wrangled over some small details in our various contracts. We put together a scope of work, and set a timeline with invoiceable milestones in MS Project (the Russians are very good at this also). My project leads wife had a baby, and we all send each other pictures of our kids. Weeks pass in preparation. I am starting to get to know these guys, and they work together as a precise seamless team (woman are not allowed in there office building). They work late into the night (5 PM EST is 1 AM Moscow time). The client is happy, we are busy and I can’t provide any further details for legal reasons. Suffice it to say your mother/sister/wife will probably use this system at a store near you within the next few months. And I get to point to it and say, “I did that”. I didn’t make much money off of it, but it sure beat sitting at home all day playing computer games.

They don’t speak English, but they read and write it well. In the late 80s the Russian defense industries essentially imploded, and a lot of very intelligent people were left jobless (sounds familiar). It was at about this time the Internet came into its own (well email initially). They started getting possession of US computer systems documentation. Many of them learned English by mastering these systems. It took them several years to do this. Thousands of hours of hard work and study. They are very good technical writers and write proposals and documentation like no others that I have seen. They are very productive, and are slowly getting rich (by there standards). I have never met any of them personally, but look forward to doing so someday. I do enjoy working with them. They are slowly becoming good friends.

Am I taking jobs from Americans, yes, do I feel bad about this, yes, do I have any other choice other than waiting tables, no.

Have you ever heard more straight talk than that?

Thanks for "coming clean"!

Look, you have networked with the Russians, and are serving as a "front end".

Glad you found that niche.

I know of many out of work IT types on a listserv I belong to who could probably find some opportunity in the "New Reality" of dirt cheap Fibre interconnecting the World!!

Hedgetrimmer,

I, too was positively aghast at the term of less than endearment for the former wife.

Why, not since the drunken jockey fell through the roof at the stable and found his former wife in the throes of passion with the stable boy, have I heard such vulgarity to describe a former wife.

My heavens, what has become of this F.R. site?

Shocking!

*/: ^ (

My boss does the marketing in my organization. I do the technical work. It is a good partnership. You have found a niche where you can market to U.S. companies and do the high level design/project management. The Russian staff can't make calls on stateside customers as easily as you can. The niche won't last forever and you may very well find a bunch of copycats following your model.

I'm sticking with commercial work as much as possible right now, but I do have the advantage of a DoD clearance. If the commercial work slacks off too much, I can park myself in the DC or San Diego area behind a spin lock door to keep the bills paid.

Well, it's a little late for your pause. You initiative and talent in creating a method and company for causing americans to be pre-deselected for work is deplorable.

You are just as guilty as the Unions that overpriced themsleves, and the CEO's who stole from pension funds and took overly large salaries and benefits from failing companies.

Your creation of that off shore outsourcing company is part of the problem, not a reason to praise your ingenuity.

Your definition of Capitalism is nothing more than Greed, and is Anti-American. You just stabbed us in the back as good as any economic spy looking for the secret blueprints to the better mousetrap.

And I am just as disgusted at the people who thought you should be praised for you 'Getting what is yours'...

She called him names... I am fighting the outrage now.
How totally insensitive of her.
Imagine what she could have said if he had actually been forced, by those dreadful circumstances to MOP FLOORS for his living

I am in tears laughing tonight. That is so good.

There is no way to stop non-Americans from joining the tech boom. The idea that you could prevent this by refusing to work with them is silly. We can't keep everythig in the world to ourselves, and demand all of the good jobs go to 'mericans while everyone else does the menial stuff for us. That's "colonialism," where the imperial country sucks the life out of client states. That's not what our government should be trying to achieve.

Meatloaf,

Laws and regulations, you say.

Well, that is the way it is then.

One must not break the laws or the law will break him, as Percy my attorney would say.

I do hate prison attire. Stripes are not my style, you know.

Plaid is one of my favorites but it is not allowed in prison. So I am told. One must not encourage clan activity.

*/: ^{

That does not excuse the idea of giving them the rope to hang us with.

Not one of the countries that we are now in economic competition with had any industrial base to even compare with ours...until we started to give it away or sell it to them.

No one gave it to us, we created it through hard earned dollars, and it WAS capitalism then, it WAS honest trade, and it WAS good work!

It was NOT socialism, not Fascism, not government running of companies to prevent losses, it was men whose fortunes were risked to make better products competing on the open market, improving quality to make a more salable item to the public...and we just handed the keys to the candy store to the children, and we are left with the cavities in their teeth....

Good Grief, doesnt anyone remember what a CONFIDENTIALITY AGREEMENT with a company is? It was to keep company secrets from competitors. How in the world can we then hand things over to our international ecnomic rivals who do NOT play by the rules that WE do??

You have a very good point. The U.S. invented integrated circuits and multi-layer circuit boards. We handed that technology on a silver platter to Taiwan. Now most of PC motherboards and peripheral boards are manufactured there. The fine details of computer science, development tools and networking were invented in the U.S.....and handed on a silver platter to India, China and Russia. All the intellectual capital that we worked so hard to produce in the U.S. has been handed to our 3rd world competitors. Our competitive advantage has been given away. Pretty foolish. The barn door is open, the animals are gone. Not too bright.

I have thought of that before. I asked that of an executive at a large tire company recently. The meeting ended very quickly (I could tell they were just pumping me for information on off shoring, and I would never make a dime off of them).

Why do these clients need you, anyway? What's stopping them from going directly to a giant offshore consulting agency like Tata, and cutting out yet another American middleman?

Given time, I'm sure they'll find a country where people will work for free.

It looks like you've outsourced your soul to another dimension, where the worms never die and the fires need no kindling.

Hold on one moment! I hope you are being sarcastic. Look, I don't like H1B, I don't like government policies that lead to jobs leaving our country, but what was FoxPro supposed to do? He is not a billionaire who decides to hire foreign labor to make 20% profit instead of hiring American and making 17% profit.

He is a guy who needed work. These Russian programmers fell in his lap, he brokered the deal and is now overseeing a major project. As a result he can earn a living. He broke no laws and persecuted no one. Perhaps we should try to walk a mile in his shoes.

Look, I don't like H1B, I don't like government policies that lead to jobs leaving our country, but what was FoxPro supposed to do?

You pretty much sum up how I feel about this thread. I'm staring at the same predicament as FoxPro. I've been officially terminated from my company and hired back as a consultant. And that gig will end eventually.

My solution was a little different. I went in with a group of systems people who have been let go and formed our own enterprise to target a specific tech market. Our chances of success are problematic at best. But the main similarity I see with FoxPro is that we're both essentially middlemen.

Over time, the offshore workers' kinks will be worked out. Their English language skills will improve, the business acumen will get better, the coding skills will get sharper and their overall business sophistication will improve. And beyond that, they will work cheaper still than they are now. The need and desire to have such middlemen as us will evaporate. And the client companies who utilize our services will know that.

I don't blame FoxPro for doing any of this. Indeed, his cleverness and innovation are the stuff of which fortunes can be built. But I don't see, for either of us, that we've accomplished anything more than redefine ourselves as a different version of overhead. And that's easily disposed of.

Much as I've enjoyed my tech career, I simply don't see a future in it. At all. And I've done it too long to easily jump to anything else.

Manufacturing is one thing, but for knowledge industries like computers, there's just no way we could keep all of the information within our borders if we wanted to. Information wants to be free, it will find a way to get out, and it will find people willing to work on it for low wages. There's no stopping the outsourcing of software. Making physical things might be a bit different.

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