Outsourcing

[rant start]

So I've settled into my new job. I'm a lot more challenged mentally now, which is a good thing and I'm learning heaps.

I also took a substantial pay cut to be here and I'm also starting half an hour earlier. Although, this is kind of my fault:
I initially approached them with the premise that I wanted to learn, and didn't really discuss pay, just thinking it would work itself out. I told them that I wanted to earn what I was worth, and told them what I was getting in my last job, it was all a bit hasty - as I was keen to move out of my last job. I took a holiday and then started my new job, where they handed me the deal - which was slightly less than my last pay - but the kicker was "inclusive of super". I was a bit peved, but just thought, I'll play it by ear and let's see what happens.

I'm getting a bit off track here. But I guess the point I'm getting at is this company are cheapskates. They do a lot of work for some very big clients, some of it is highly technical. It's the sort of industry that's a bit of a niche so I'd say it's not price based. Obviously, they get lots of work that isn't so highly technical, and this work they have chosen to farm off to companies in the Ukraine and Vietnam to save a few more dollars.

Many of the 30 or so people in my workplace are from all over the world, I struggle to understand my immediate boss. I don't mind this - but I find it incredible how different my workplace is now than it was 10 years ago. I just get a sense that there is very little commitment by my fellow workers towards the ideal we used to call - The Australian way of life. On the train to work I was thinking, as I was jammed in tight amongst so many non western faces and foreign smells - where is Australia going to end up.

I guess I'm starting to sound racist, but I just don't get it. Why does this company and other companies farm off this work, I think it's very short sighted? There are plenty of people in Australia now who could do this work better. Why are we always looking at the lowest common denominator - price.

With my children now entering the workforce, I don't have much confidence that Australia is going to remain the idyllic place, it once was.

Maybe I'm naive, but I think other countries should have been looking at Australia as a lead, rather than our country who seem to be looking to the third world for ideas on productivity and profit instead of investing in itself and it's own people.

[/rant end]

Sadly, it is all about price now. I worked for a company that would outsource things to India on behalf of a lot of other companies.

The story going around was that they could afford to get the guys in India to do it 3 times before it became cheaper to do it locally, so that's what they chose, even though it wasn't often done right the first time.

The companies that used these services were happy to do this, unless they had to deal directly with the resources in India themselves, at which point they preferred an Australian resource.

Adolf, your topic is an observation, not a rant. Good on you.

The ever dropping value of the local working force has been known and discussed within companies (tech field and banks anyways) for at least 10 years. It's the impetus for the numerous "the changing workforce" studies I've been involved in. All nice PC wording around the fact that we get little implication and competitiveness from the newly grads. "I don't want to work like my parents", "I have a right to Facebook at work", that sort of stuff - seen it all.

The answer for many managers I know is in-sourcing (my own word), a non-written policy consisting of hiring mostly for the newly arrived, highly qualified immigrant workforce. I've seen amazing things in that field the last few years, years later I am still in awe about this.

The only reason I voice this friendly warning is that I'm mostly done working - other people give me their money now. I no longer risk losing business for saying what a lot of people think. There is absolutely great local talent in the new generation, attitude and competitiveness will have to come to the party.

'luck.

A couple of companies in my industry have started to outsource most of their work. They laid off many of their staff, and saved some money in the short term.

However now both of them are losing clients hand over fist, and are on the edge of going bankrupt.


Every month or so I get a phone call from someone saying that they have gotten a website done overseas, it's "90% complete", and "only requires a bit of tweaking"... Har har har. You won't believe how shoddy some of this work turns out to be. It's always better to start again rather than put lipstick on the pig.


You still get what you pay for...

"Intelligent hungry here". Not so sure about the hungry part. I have all sorts of smart applicants asking for the world on their first job, lots of demands, etc. I don't call that hungry. I call that uncompetitive.

Outsourcing: never said it worked all the time. It's prob. OK when well done, with penalty clauses, on large projects that you can break down into accountable chunks, and so on. I certainly wouldn't use for small things like websites. But anyhow, what we think matters little, it's here to stay, and it's stealing an incredible amount of jobs that would be local otherwise...

Technically Adolf, much of your comments are related to the immigration question in general, which Hawke and Keating said would work seemlessly. You're right: we're surrounded by people who couldn't give a rat's arse about the aussie way.

Quite a topic...

I work for a large international (american) telco and we are are actually going thru a phase where we are pulling the job flow back from the regional model.

In past all our Operational Resource centers that control fault tickets have been located in singapoore and hongkong.

Now all those faults aer coming back directly to our group in sydney and we now take ownership of the tickets from start to end. The bottom line is we can give a lot better service and are able to coordinate with our customers locally than the asian centers can. By doing this we are eliminating the need for Repeat call out and site visits.

Keeping the support infrastructure local, allows us to make sure when our field engineers hit the site they have all the tools and support they need to get the job done fast and move onto the next. It costs a lot more if they have to do a 2nd or 3rd visit than hiring an extra staff to stop this happening.

Outsourcing may appear cheaper on paper but porviding fast and reliable service without wastage will be far more important in the long run.

At the end of the day you get what you pay for.

BTW, when you call and get support or sales from a foreign country (Egypt, India, etc.), call the Australian office and INSIST on speaking with someone in Australia, and being called back by someone in Australia. Dell comes to mind, but there are many more examples.

You are entitled to it, they'll do it and some ocker will call you back.
Every little bit counts...

we over here is SA are haveing a bit of a power problem seems the big player is Singapore power 40%+ of the ownership of the privatized industry . sing power is owned by their government, seems the auz government was selling out auz overseas long before any of us thought about it. so much for buy Australian made

Around the time I met my wife, I did 8 months making hearing aids for a swiss company in Brisbane. Repetitive work (fine soldering using eye or large magnifier) for minimum wage, great fun job though as you could talk, listen to music, prank each other, whatever so long as you hit your numbers. We had a fun team from all countries - I worked next to a very cute vietnamese chick, married since 18 with 2 kids, who was sexually frustrated and just wanted to flirt all day - one way or another I went home knowing the colour of her panties every single day.. anyway... I'm sidetracking myself but I wanted to say that multiracial teams can be fun with the right people... great short term job except I would look up at break time and I couldn't see the far wall - too much fine focussing. Decided I had to go as it wasn't worth ruining my eyes for minimum wage.

Point is this Swiss company had chosen Norway, Australia, and several other "expensive" countries for manufacture. They did it deliberately - they considered a number of factors not just minimum cost-per-unit. They valued quality product, local presence for repairs, and a whole lot of unconventional factors.

They are highly successful, one of the market leaders.

So I guess we *can* compete, and not everything will be outsourced. It's about identifying what we can do better than others, what we can offer outside of cost-per-unit and making companies realise the value of that.