Extreme Outsourcing

Incredulous was my first impression when I first read the story online. I even remarked on my Facebook page when I reposted the link that the US TV show producers of Extreme Couponing should create an off-shoot based on this incident and call it, Extreme Outsourcing. Judge for yourself: http://securityblog.verizonbusiness.com/2013/01/14/case-study-pro-active-log-review-might-be-a-good-idea/

I don't want to recapitulate since the writer made a very good narrative.

But pondering on it after sometime, one may wonder how it feels like on the other side of situation... from the outsourced developers.

Well, I've been (and may still be) on that other side. That's how I felt when I was working back home under IT BPO companies. Of course, I do not know how much my counterparts in the US or Europe actually earned. But I had my suspicions. I usually am sent out to work on-shore to our client's offices and I'm usually given a per-diem (i.e., per day stipend) by my company's client. And all I can remark is... if you keep a very low profile in the US or Europe and preserve as much of the stipend as possible, you not only save your salary back home but can bring back much more upon your return. In fact, the per-diem is as much as twice or thrice my daily rate back home.

Now, I'm sure our US and European clients would not have brought me there if bringing me there would actually cost more than having one of their IT personnel do the job. So, my suspicion is that my counterparts would have earned more than five times I'm getting back home.

So there's a bit of sour-graping on my side upon this realisation. But I consoled myself with the usual neoclassical economic explanations (emphasising the plural) about the disparity. That their standard of living is much higher... blah blah blah... and so their cost of living is such and such and such. But I can't seem to shake away the lingering fact that, basically I'm doing the same thing as that other person is doing. And yet,

• I'm treated as second class "resource" by my company's client.
• I'm treated as a slave by my company and my company's client. Reifying the notion of me as a mere resource for them.
• I have to deal with two managers who most of the times have different ideas of what the work is about.
• I'm given deadlines which are often too compromised so in effect, I do overtime work but never clock them on my reported time sheet because my Project Manager wants to keep his/her scorecard below scrutiny.
• I'm blind sighted by a lot of "management" decisions which does not really make sense (later did I know... and good thing I already resigned from the company when I did realise this... "upper management" only wanted to protect their ignorance from reeking to higher management)
• and on top of it, I'm paid a measly fraction of what my counterparts enjoy.

Of course, this gripe stems from my assumption that I'm just doing the same work as they are and yet compensated less. And some might actually point this out as a flaw in the logic.

This article actually provides some sort of counter argument against that. In fact, I think in many respects the situation narrated might be analogous to what usually happens: that at the higher levels, the decision makers do not really know how much outsourcing their trustee managers and delegates employ and all the while the same have been claiming credit for what the remote pawns have actually built which they only repaid with but a fraction of their own salaries (or budgets).

Well, it's a world full of ironies... and full of inequities. But if you're on the shorter end of this relationship, you can only bite the bullet and put on the friendly client service smile.