Small Town USA Competing With India

William Hood writes "According to a news article at ABC, companies are sometimes opting to outsource to rural USA rather than foreign countries. Although it still achieves the same result of lowering the value of a job, I think the idea of moving to a larger house that costs less in a town with no traffic is a much better option than flying to Bangalore to train your replacement." From the article: "Sebeka is 14 miles from the closest traffic light, hours from the nearest Starbucks coffee shop and a far cry from the Chicago suburb he left. 'There is no traffic,' said technical consultant Clayton Seal, who also works in Sebeka. 'Anytime, day or night, you can cross Main Street -- almost don't have to look 'cause there's nobody there.' Seal also lost his job to outsourcing."

Comments

Larger house on smaller salary, huh?

[Seumas]

How exactly do you buy a larger house on a smaller salary? Chances are, if they move you to a more remote and cheaper part of the country, they're going to reduce your salary to an adjusted range for that region.

So let me get this straight... you move away from your family and friends. You pull your children out of their school, away from their family and away from their friends. You go through the trouble of selling your house and moving to a new place and buying a new house on your reduced salary. You lose the conveniences and diversity of a big city.

And what do you end up with? A job that could still always be outsourced if someone gets that bug up their ass. And what happens when that position is no longer there? Well, now you're stuck in the middle of nowhere and will probably have to move again because your new little podunk town isn't where all the jobs are - just your current one.

But if you want to inconvenience your family and live like a nomad, at the beck, whim and call of your employer - go for it.

For the record, my employer did this recently, too. But I refused to follow along unless they not only retained my previous salary dollar for dollar (not just salary GRADE), but gave me an increase. Most people, however, are not in a position to make such demands and will be in the "do it or we give your job to some guy in Russia" category.

Even companies that are doing this then move on to the next step of outsourcing, because no matter how cheap they can find labor in America, it's cheaper elsewhere. There are places without OSHA. Places without the same expectation of benefits. Places without the same taxation requirements or insurance. Places with cheaper construction, electricity and maintenance costs. If you can hire an engineer for $4-$7/hr outside of this country, why would you ever waste your money hiring an American when they could make more than that at Burger King?

To stay employable in the future in this country, you need to have highly marketable skills that are unlikely to be shipped overseas. Brush up on your ability to push a broom or ring up a cash register.

Seriously, any and every job that can be outsourced, eventually will be. I can't think of many that could not be. Even surgery eventually (since we saw the story of a surgery taking place across the ocean, via a remote/robot). Management could be handled overseas. Product manufacturing can be done over seas. Taking orders at a fast food drive through can be done overseas. Gas pumping can be automated. Even cashier work will eventually be automated. I guess security guard work is probably a sure bet. Police work. Janitorial work. And, I suppose, hollywood/acting type of work. Maybe teaching?

And yes, I'm a little bitter because I was too young to get into the game to enjoy the dot-com insanity and profit from it and now it feels less like a career every day and more like an 8-5 burger flipping job.

Re:Larger house on smaller salary, huh?

[SwedishChef]

How exactly do you buy a larger house on a smaller salary?

Anyone who has watched "What You Get for the Money" on cable tv knows that what you get depends more on where you are than on what you make. Rural America is no different. In N. Dakota you can buy 300 acre farms for less than a studio apartment in San Francisco. But unless you are a damn good farmer (or semi-retired) you might not want to move there.

However there are lots of places with most of the amenities of big cities without the high prices. In Moses Lake, Washington, for instance, you can buy a nice 3br, 2ba ranch house for under $100,000; often lots less. Or a condo on the water with dock for your jet-skiis for $129,000. And about 2.5 hours to Seattle or 1.5 hours to Spokane if you really *must* get to a big city.

Want Internet? Moses Lake has DSL and cable Internet plus Fiber-to-the-home in many places (not all) at reasonable prices (under $50 per month for duplex 1mbps). And power rates that are among the lowest in the country at under 4 cents per kw/hour.

Moses Lake has an entire former B-52 bomber base with a 13,000 foot runway and tons of room for construction of new buildings in case you don't like the old Air Force hangars.

Recreation? The lake itself is great for water skiing, kayaking, sailing and jet-skiing. We have hundreds of acres of sand dunes south of town for 4-wheeling and off road motorcycling. Bird hunting in the fall, fishing in the summer and deer and elk close by if you really have to go kill something. We are 1.5 hours from ski resorts and x/c ski areas, Moses Lake has a *FREE* ice skating rink in the winter, bike trails, tennis courts, a dozen baseball fields, great parks, and friendly people.

Ever want to learn to fly gliders? One of the finest locations for soaring flight is run by the Seattle Glider Council and located at a former WWII training base in Ephrata; only 20 miles away. This is where the Seattle pilots come to really learn to fly gliders.

Top it off with free concerts in the park every Saturday during the summer, a Community College and affiliations with several 4-year universities, splendid weather featuring summers with rainy days you can count on the fingers one hand and friendly people.

So not only can you buy a bigger house on a smaller salary but you get a better lifestyle too.

Re:Larger house on smaller salary, huh?

[b0s0z0ku]

There's always other friends, and besides, children would probably be better served growing up in a rural area vice a city, with all the problems that they come with.

Not necessarily:
* City magnet schools are some of the best, if your kid is smart and can get in
* Rural areas have their social problems, too, often more so than cities (witness the recent problems with crystal meth in the Midwest and West)
* Kids can actually *walk* in cities with less of a risk of being hit by a car (counterintuitive, but cities have sidewalks and traffic doesn't move that fast). Not to mention that there are interesting places to go to within walking distance. I see a lot more 10-12 y.o. kids out walking on their own in NYC than in any rural area
* Gangs are still a problem in "rural" areas. Look at some parts of New Mexico for an example of this.
* Don't think that rural areas aren't polluted. Pesticide runoff and industrial pollution (like from mining and coal burning powerplants) is more of a problem than one would like to think.

Cheers,
-b.

Good or bad, depending on what's important to you

[93 Escort Wagon]

Living in the city is important to some people, but not to all. I lived in Seattle for a dozen years. My wife comes from a small town in eastern Washington state (we met in college in Seattle). Every time we go back to visit her folks, I always end up thinking "this is such a wonderful place - too bad there aren't any jobs".

Personally I'd take this sort of job in a short second. Friendlier people, a real sense of community, no commute, an amazingly lower cost of living... sure sounds good to me. Plus it'd make my wife happy - she's still a small-town girl at heart.

I'll work for $12/hr or 25k/yr

[CrazyJim1]

I can code anything you can imagine, and work with any software program. I live in nowheresville PA :P Nothing to do here but bum on the internet 24/7 and wait for Dungeons and Dragons Online to be released.

Get a clue about what "rural" is - and isn't

[gregwbrooks]

God, I love it when people talk about all the horrors of moving to scary, unconnected "rural" America.

A few data points from Plattsburg, Missouri (pop. 2,375), where I call home... based on what I can tell (and I've lived in Chicago and SoCal, as well as other rural areas) these data points could be duplicated in many areas:

• Wages are lower, but the variance in housing prices and other cost-of-living items far outstrips the wage differential. The wage thing doesn't faze me because I'm self employed and, before that, I drove into Kansas City (higher wages) for work. Still, it shows up in a lot of small ways, like the fact that it's cheaper to get your car fixed or your air conditioning unit installed. Housing, on the other hand, is a shocker for anyone who isn't used to these sorts of prices. I paid $145k for a fully restored Victorian painted lady; there are small-but-cute houses in town for about $80-90k and I think the nicest Victorian on the market right now is about $225k. Compare that with the metro market of your choice.

• "Rural" doesn't mean "no access to a major metro area. I'm 35 miles (and 35 minutes - there is no traffic) from the Kansas City metro area.

• No crime and good schools. 'Nuff said.

• Yes, Virginia, there is connectivity in the boonies. You just have to shop for it. We had to have DSL and we had to have it with a provider that wouldn't get its corporate panties in a twist if we wanted to run mail and web servers. It wasn't that hard to find.

• One downside: The housing market isn't very liquid. A house put on the market in my town will take about six months to sell. That number is trending down as people discover the area, but it's still a far cry from the sell-it-in-a-weekend character of a hot metro market.

• Another downside: Less access to fast food. We don't have any fast food in town -- the closest is about 13 miles (and 13 minutes!) away. On the upside, I've dropped 20 lbs. since I moved there. ;)

Where I live is a perfect example

[ShatteredDream]

I live in Harrisonburg, a college town in VA where $35,000 would actually be a pretty good starting salary for a programmer since the cost of living is $17,000 a year. I'd rather be paid $40-45,000 a year here starting out than $60,000 in Fairfax, VA which is a pretty large IT area in the US, because the money would go farther here.

Seriously, these companies are abysmally stupid. They can always hire an English-speaking CS or CIS student and start a new branch in bumblefuck USA for much less than going to India. The best part about it for the management is that it's all domestic and if they do it right, they can drive out that day and talk to the team in person.

Like many CS students here, I'd rather work in this town for $45,000 because it's close enough to bigger areas that it's not a struggle to get out on the weekend, but it's small enough to make an entry level salary really attractive. I can honestly say that I'd be very happy making that same salary around here for 4-5 years because barring VA's tax rate going through the roof (yeah, fuck you Gov. Warner!) it'd be easy to really save and invest A LOT out here on that kind of salary.

Outsource to bumblefuck USA, not Bangalore India. That should be our new anti-offshoring slogan :-D