Why I Outsource Offshore

Friday, July 18, 2003 | Me

[Lael]

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!!

[Lion in Winter]

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!

*/: ^ (

[Myrddin]

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.

[Lion in Winter]

Fox pro,

Oh, my.

All that and incest as well.

Well.

Words fail.

*/:^ !

[RaceBannon]

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'...

[FoxPro]

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.

[xm177e2]

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.

[Lion in Winter]

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.

*/: ^{

[RaceBannon]

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??

[Jim Anchower]

Hola, amigo. I admire your business sense and resourcefulness, but you obviously don't spend much time around us little people. 15 bucks an hour is about twice what you can pull ringing up Wonder Bread at your local Safeway or Kroger.

[Myrddin]

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.

[BlazingArizona]

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.

[Zack Nguyen]

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.

[Euro-American Scum]

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.

[xm177e2]

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.

[FoxPro]

Perhaps we should try to walk a mile in his shoes.

Oh my G*d, you actually read and understood the whole initial post?

[FoxPro]

And so what do you do for a living? Do you produce anything to justify your earth bounde existence? Do you have a refrigerator? Do you enjoy it? Whether it was made in Japan or in the US is besides the point with you.

[FoxPro]

I'm staring at the same predicament as FoxPro.

Your post is so to the point, it is almost poetic. I wish you well and hope to meet you down the road.

[jejones]

Good luck when the Russian programming team finds some other way to sell their work.