The Onion: Outsourcing Your Own Job Overseas
How about some Friday afternoon humor:
I love the scene with a bunch of speakerphones in an empty conference room talking to each other. With the growing popularity of virtual personal assistants from sites like GetFriday, I bet this is happening more often than most people think. I remember the story about medical transcriptionists where a big company got a contract for something like 50 cents a line, who subcontracted to a self-employed woman in Florida being paid 25 cents a line, who then subcontracted to someone in Pakistan for 3 cents a line. [Direct video link]
May 8th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Not at all funny….I am so sick and tired of news/networks beating the bush on the whole ‘Outsourcing’ issue. When are we going to learn this is the age of globalization. The country that taking ouir jobs might pull us out of recession…..
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BU.....lOnlyonCNN
May 8th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Straight out of the “Four Hour Workweek”…
May 8th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
[...] Companies have been doing it for years, now individuals have the ability to outsource their jobs. [The Onion via My Money Blog] [...]
May 8th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
I love The Onion.
May 8th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
“Okay, we’re all on the same team, here!”
May 8th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
This was pretty funny - back when it was in Doonesbury.
Check out this:
http://a.sc.msn.com/2@/8JTP1J3UN12X-LV9F,7C0,.gif
I believe it dates back to 2004.
Tim
May 9th, 2009 at 12:45 am
Hey guys. Been following this excellent blog for about a year. I just graduated from medical school and after reading the blurb about the medical transcription incident I had to pipe in. I had never heard of it before. The incident that occurred at UCSF Medical Center is crazy! What is even more alarming is that american hospitals are still permitted to outsource medical transcription work. That just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
I’m all for globalization and outsourcing in general. But with regard to sensitive personal information especially like someone’s medical history… things like that shouldn’t be sent overseas. I mean, the HIPAA law pretty much makes that illegal.
May 9th, 2009 at 1:45 am
Hi
Very funny. Not so sure I’ll be laughing when my IT job is shipped out to India
I suppose I’ll just have to try and “move up the value chain” or whatever nonsense is suggested!
May 9th, 2009 at 3:16 am
I think there’s a lot of truth in that video. The whole ‘four hour work week’ idea of getting your job done overseas so you can spend more time in Machu Pichu has gone too far. And how many people have actually achieved it. Even Mr Ferris (the author) seems to be running about promoting his book 24/7.
May 9th, 2009 at 3:57 am
[...] My Money Blog has found a very funny Onion video on personal outsourcing. [...]
May 9th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
I am in IT (computer programming) and have been hurt a few times by outsourcing already. Just like news of a crime, it is no big deal …….until you become the next unfortunate victim.
Just blythely stating that “this is the age of globalization” in my opinion is not very satisfactory. And this is why.
What happens when a critical level of outsourcing is reached? Well a bunch of people will be unemployed and starving. A starving person is not going to care too much if the country is in recession or not.
Spare a thought for all the struggling workers in the motor industry, and elsewhere in the US who are hurting from outsourcing. In the next few years, it is possible that the motor industry in the USA, is going to disappear. In the future we can also expect a far larger lower class population, and a much smaller middle class.
Remember that about 70% of our GDP here in the US is due to consumer spending. So now we are talking about a shrinking GDP and a shrinking tax base. And compared to other countries, the USA is going to become a lot poorer. But the rich folk, will get richer.
I have difficulty picturing how this is going to turn out. It has turned out badly for a lot of people already.
To conclude, I would like to offer the idea that more senior executive positions are outsourced. Senior company executives in this country are over paid. Companies should be out sourcing these positions to save money. But that will never happen because these executives are the ones who benefit the most.
PS
I have worked with many Indian folk during the past 10 years. They are very pleasant and smart, very smart.
May 10th, 2009 at 10:28 am
@ Ron - The age of globalization doesn’t mean that our workers should be unproductive and pay people to do their work, it means our workers should be working on other things.
May 10th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
@Justin - Well you right in your statement but that never happens we all want a 4 day week so that we can work on other things but as Monevator said we rush to Machu pichu or as described in the video shooting hoops and playing fantasy baseball/football.
It’s time we learn from our Indian compatriots and grow up.
I totally agree with Mississippi Mike on this..
“To conclude, I would like to offer the idea that more senior executive positions are outsourced. Senior company executives in this country are over paid. Companies should be out sourcing these positions to save money. But that will never happen because these executives are the ones who benefit the most.”
PS
My current job also involves working with Indians. They are part of our 24/7 application support handling night calls when it’s morning in India. Kinda works for really nice.
May 10th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
The video is funny, but it outlines the problem: everything can be outsourced, so what kind of of work or skills will be left here?
@Ron,
Some of what you say is true. But there is another side: what is going to happen with skills in the US? What kind of jobs will be left? What happens with technology leadership or even national security if high tech jobs continue to disappear? What kind of industries and skills will remain in the US? With new high tech communication technologies, virtually anything that doesn’t involve face to face contact with customers can be outsourced.
Some of the jobs that are outsourced now are high tech job. Not just application programmers, but highly skilled software engineers and even scientists working on new technologies. People who were laid off cannot find jobs - look in the news, virtually every technology company is laying off people in the US, nobody is hiring. I am a highly skilled software engineer working for a large international technology company. Over the past 10 years the number of US employees of my company was going down whereas the number of employees abroad is going up. Most of the projects I work on are global - and there are good people in these other countries, really smart. A lot of meetings indeed look like in the video. It used to be that they simply were helping us while we were doing most of design work. This is no longer the case. There are good smart people in other countries - both engineers and scientists. But if all R&D moves to other countries, is it good for the US?
What will happen 10 years down the line? How many young people do you think will want to go to CS or engineering if more and more jobs go oversees? Is it in the US interest to lose these skills? Can the US compete in technology if there is nobody in the US with skills? What about national security, who is going to work there if virtually no American wants to study CS or engineering?
Now I am also a shareholder, so sure I like my employer stock to go up. I would also like my employer to show good earnings - bad earnings generally lead to layoffs. I also don’t believe that taxing foreign income is a solution: I think it is likely to be counter-productive and hurt us rather than help it since a) the people abroad will still be cheaper, the difference is just too high b) higher taxes on corporations = lower earnings = layoffs c) I don’t generally believe in protectionism. So I don’t know what the solution is. But the outsourcing of these high tech jobs is not good for the US. It’s really not very good for companies long term: as more and more growth occurs oversees the salaries abroad go up. When dollar falls, foreign employees cost more. Sure, they can continue to shift jobs - from India to China, from China to Brazil… and so on. What if there is some political upheaval in one of these countries? At some point the companies may want to bring jobs back in the US, but by that time there’d be nobody here skilled to do these jobs.
@Mississippi Mike - good points.
May 10th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Love this video. :-)) Thanks for sharing it.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Globalization will only be “wonderful” when currency rates are equalized. Otherwise, the US loses (jobs, that is). We get to import loads of stuff that soon we won’t be able to afford. And there should be major tax de-incentives to hiring workers abroad for less pay.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Hey court reporters have been subing transcript work out for decades. Nothing new.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Hilarious! I have been outsourcing work-related tasks for a while now for my business but I can’t believe the things you can outsource these days. Just last week I read a TechCrunch article about VirtualDatingAssistants.com, a company that lets you outsource your online dating. Unbelievable…
July 28th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
[...] Companies have been doing it for years, now individuals have the ability to outsource their jobs. [The Onion via My Money Blog] [...]
August 4th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Similar to what Mimi said: First, don’t let anyone tell you that they have any other reason but one for outsourcing - that reason is cheap labor.
What has to happen is some kind of worldwide minimum wage, or some other equalization - I’d gladly work for the same pay as my Chinese counterpart, if I then had a Chinese cost of living to go with it instead of Philadelphia, PA prices. Until American cost of living goes down &/or wages offshore go up, there will be big problems and U.S. government is going to have to tax and tariff to equal things out. And the American people are not just going to lie down and take it — that’s why Obama won last November.
September 13th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
And he is not ashamed to show his face on camera saying he wants to become completely lazy? He’s trying to become a complete parasite. And who’s paying for that? The Consumer! That won’t last long. If I had an employee who was outsourcing his job and doing little to nothing for the salary I was paying him I’d simply either reduce his salary or fire him. I’m against a society becoming a bunch of lazy nothingdoers.
September 13th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
As an employer one must be able to take on Government’s role to give working people a life (good salary, health benefits, vacations etc.). If you can’t and won’t give people a life they deserve, you should not be employing anyone. Corporations and large companies or any employers must remember - GIVE YOUR EMPLOYEES A LIFE.