Slashdot Mirror
Outsourcing to Rural America
andy753421 writes "Wired is running an article about 'Rural Sourcing, an IT company that outsources not to India or Mexico, but rural America.' The company targets IT workers in rural location due to lower costs of living, 'The company charges $35 to $50 per hour for IT expertise, which may cost around $100 in New York City. While this is no match for outsourcing rates in India, clients benefit from local accents and similar time zones -- not to mention the absence of stigma sometimes attached to farming jobs out to foreign countries.' The article also points out several other innovative attempts at outsourcing such as Lakota Express and Seacode, which was previously covered on slashdot."
On my last job, wirelessing an apartment and "dealing with" schlepping to a cheap Brooklyn store to buy the family a laptop plus a little de-spywaring, I got paid $600 cash money. Sure the work I did might be worth under $20 in sweat, but one extra-sharp demand in Manhattan is paying for trustworthiness. I've networked and have a reputation with clients for getting the job done and not stealing any silverware. Manhattan pays more not just because people can afford to, there is a greater demand to protect their assets. Got some nice silverware here. And some virgins. Err, withdrawn---got some silverware.
I'd give anything to be outsourced to someplace I'd want to live, say New Mexico, Northern California. I like making a lot of money, but it just doesn't go that far in New Jersey, where property taxes are out of control and there are just too many people. I'd take a pay cut to live in some place that was quieter, with a lower cost-of-living. And in this day-and-age of telecommuting, why not? I suspect it would save companies a fortune just by not having to have huge amounts of office space and the environment would certainly be served by getting a large number of commuters off the road.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I can see this working if you are looking to provide basic end user support, but good luck finding highly skilled technical people to move to the country for less money. In the past, I've been involved in trying to hire skilled workers to rural areas and its very difficult to find good people who are willing to move to remote areas.
I moved to Arkansas from the Washington D.C. area several years ago. My plan was to find a job as a software developer here but after looking for quite a while, I couldn't find anything that really interested me. I ended up moving to Mexico where I knew I could find some work (and also the slow paced lifestyle I was looking for). I did some work for various companies for a while and after then was contacted by some old co-workers about some contract work. The only catch was I had to move back to the U.S. The good news was I didn't have to move back to the D.C. area, where they were based.
So, I moved back to Arkansas and for 2 years I've been contracting out to one the largest software companies in the country. My rates are very competitive because my cost of living is far lower than what it would be in the D.C. area. I'm paying less for a large 3 bedroom house with a fenced in yard than I was paying for a small 2-bedroom apartment there. I get to have the slow-paced lifestyle that I was looking for and despite making less than I was in D.C., I'm saving quite a bit more.
Our group is also outsourcing to a company India and I'm under the impression that my rates are actually fairly competitive with theirs. I suspect there are a large number of people in this area that would work for rates that would be impossible to find in the D.C. area or other larger cities.
As one such person, (one who has been hired to work in a small town away from any large metropolitan areas.) I have to say it's pretty nice. At first I was worried that the change in lifestyle from a big metroplex (DFW) to East Bumblefuck, TX would suck, but it's turned out to be a lot nicer than I thought. More relaxed pace of life, less pollution, etc. Yeah, I took a lower salary to do it, but I've found you can live pretty cheaply out here... you can live like a king for a grand a month. (nice apartment/rent house, utilities, fast internet, the rest of my bills, and food) Plus it's kinda nice to see something besides concrete during the drive to work. Definitely not as horrible as some /.ers are making it out to be. Nearly all of my fellow coders are competent and pleasant to work with. No stupid rednecks here, just like-minded people who enjoy life away from the booming metrop. and all the headaches it brings.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
After the years of the constant miscommunication, the lies, the hanging up, the brutal attitude of india tech support I'd be very much inclined to hire people from rural america. Oh yeah I used to work for Earthlink and had to deal with india tech support on a rather daily basis. God that was awful. Tech support would take 5- 6 times as long to fix a customers problem then I could. Of course I was getting paid 10 an hour but still it pissed me off that they had access to systems I didn't and got paid less.
About 2 years ago I interviewed with my current employer, a large bank based in NYC. I live in Syracuse, NY. During the interview, they told me how after 9/11, they decided to move the majority of their IT staff out of NYC up to Syracuse. This was because it was much more cost effective for them. They didn't even offer the current NYC employee a chance to move, they were just laid-off. I always knew Syracuse was a third world country and this just confirmed it.
But the article says $35 to $50 for consulting? Assuming the contracting company takes a good bite of that, it sure doesn't sound like much. I think one could make a lot more as a plumber.
The only reason that many people live in cities is because of access to more jobs.
That is certainly not the only reason that most people live in cities. Cities are generally more interesting places to live, and I'd rather take a studio in NYC over a mansion in Nebraska.
I was in the Dentist office yesterday and read a Business week article about how India's internal economy is booming so much now that it's getting harder to find and keep workers. This is leading to high turnover and making it tougher to outsource work there. I wish I had a URL but it was an early Nov. issue.
This could mean that outsourcing might have peaked, at least for India.
No matter where you go, there you are.
Sometimes out-of-pocket isn't the only cost that people are concerned with. Another advantage of rural outsourcing is that you can prosecute under US laws. I suspect this would be a big selling point for those who want to lower the costs related to processing medical data without assuming the liability if someone decides to ransom the data.
Finished reading 'The World is Flat' by Thomas L. Friedman http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312425074/104-96 58154-8360738?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v =glance
who actully talked about home sourcing by Jet Blue. About how instead of sourcing their customer support overseas they work with mothers who want to work and need to stay at home to take care of their kids. This just reminded me of that.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke
Not to mention the fact that any questions that pop-up while the over night shift is working take about 24 hours to resolve JUST FROM A LOGISTICS STANDPOINT, if you're lucky and the answers are perfect and don't require any follow up answers. Yeap, been there...actually stuck in that reality right now. My advice, shift all your target dates ahead by about 1/3 of the estimated hours.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
That is a move from RTP, NC USA to Bangalore, India. RTP's cost of living is probably mid-way between NYC and BFE rural town pop. 600. A 2800 sqft house will run about $300,000 to $350,000. Don't expect a new house here for less than $300K but older smaller ones might be as cheap as $150K. Apartments run $700 to $1400 a month.
I would be willing to move to a smaller city if I could take my IT job with me.
Think Deeply.
Thats's nice- find the worst of an area and then judge the state by it. I live in Ohio. Would you want Los Angeles judged just by the ghetto? I could say "I can assure you that California has a loooooong way to go to catch up to the rest of the world in terms of social conventions, modern thought, and tolerance.
Seriously though, you demonstrate an attitude that seems to pervade the coasts, that we here in flyover country are useless hicks....
BTW- Marrying your cousin is 100% legal in Calif, 100% illegal in Ohio.... Just an observation.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
I must say I am quite surprised to see this article on slashdot, mostly because I just had an interview with Rural Sourcing and was given a job offer. A whopping $27,000. I'm sorry but I quickly sent a polite email saying, "No thanks." I made more than that my sophomore year working at SAS.
h tml Just one bad hire can kill a team and it really takes a good programmer to know a good programmer. It's safe to say their manager (named "Buddy") is not a programmer. He's a great guy and moderately buzzword-compliant, but he's not a programmer.
The driving reason for declining their offer is that I just do not believe they will be able to keep smart graduates in Greenville, NC at that rate. There are just too many jobs on the east coast for IT workers. They are basically trying to hire my entire graduating class since I seriously doubt they will be about to coerce kids from coming from anywhere else.
On my second interview I was invited to their job site where I was shown the master plan for upgrading their cube-farm. They want to have 45 employees by next summer and 100 by Dec 2006! They have 12 now. I think they would be best to take a look at http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html and consider hiring people based on need. If they had fewer employees they could offer better wages and have a ghost of a chance of keeping smart people in Eastern North Carolina. There's plenty of great evidence showing that smart programmers can consistently be 10 times more productive than average programmers. Here's just one link http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.
I am graduating from ECU (the university mentioned in the Wired Articles) this Decemeber and I believe that our program (although practically unheard of) is very competitive. Plenty of our graduates go on to be successfull just like other schools and some of our graduates find out that by not taking their career into their own hands they have effectively received a degree in Common Sense(tm). I'm afraid that Rural Sourcing's idea of trying to grab every graduate from ECU is going to be a disaster. The smart ones will go other places, the ones who have NO CHOICE will stay in Greenville and work at Rural Sourcing.
I got a job out of college in a small town and I've been planning a move into a city ever since.
There are more problems with small towns than are immediately obvious. Besides the fact that there are few stores, bars, and women, there are also few choices of where to work. I like my job, but I would be hard pressed to find a better one in the area. Anything else would be a step down or require a move. So they can get away with paying you in peanuts.
You are correct - it is JetBlue, not Southwest. The details were a little foggy. I read the book a while back.
I think that the development (outsourcing to remote areas) is a positive consequence in that it does allow wage arbitrage within the United States, which may help to reduce the pressure on urban areas as well as empower and enrich more remote communities where employment can be a hit or miss thing. Lose one of your majors, and the community suffers tremendously.
By broadening the possible options for labor and making them less dependent on things like geography, it will enrich and stabilize rural areas while giving a lower cost structure to businesses. Essentially, it is a "benefits of trade" type argument, only within the political boundaries of the US as opposed to a benefits of trade scenario involving different countries. It still involves multiple markets, and the differences between the markets can be exploited to create value on both sides of the equation.
Lots of petrified grits
Uh, I don't think this Dell technician spoke English as their native tongue.
http://www.jigglethecable.org/node/139
Your logic is flawed. You assume that when workers give away their rights, they earn jobs. The fact is that Europeans have been giving away their labour rights and lowering their quality of living, and the unemployement just gets worse. At the same time, corporations are getting absolute records in profits. And those are not being used to improve living or create jobs.
If you give the corporations your hand, they will demand your arm.
I find it funny that many people take the side of the corporations, even when themselves are being injured by them. Tell me, are you a boss?
Cities are generally more interesting places to live,
... ?
Define "more interesting". Here in the country, I can hunt, fish, swim for free most of the year, go birdwatching, hiking (again for free), ice skating outdoors (again for free) when the weather permits, sledding, cross-country skiing, sailing, spelunking -- all within a five-minute drive of my house. There are movie theaters (with admittedly a slightly less diverse selection than in the city), a thriving local community theater with professional-caliber productions, trendy shops and coffeehouses (fewer of them, but no less "interesting" than your local Starbucks), used-book and used-music stores, high-quality ethnic restaurants (again, a slightly less diverse selection -- but just about anything we're missing here is only an hour's drive away), and the standard number of chain stores and fast-food joints.
I can also get farm-fresh eggs, fresh unpasteurized cider, freshly-butchered meat that hasn't sat in a refrigeration car for days to get to the grocery store, raspberries right off the cane, and more (and fresher) fresh produce than I ever saw living in the city.
In six years of living here, I have yet to find myself bored at all. So just what exactly about the city would be "more interesting"
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
I'm from a backwards area (the Upper Penninsula of Michigan--which happens to have the same type of accent as Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin--you know, derivatives of the Fargo accent). I can tell you that I don't call people from my home territory backwards because they are Republicans, I call them backwards because they are behind the times on many, many issues. Despite some great high schools in the UP, there is still a devastating lack of good education (both primary and secondary) among residents, with widespread ignorance on many topics the result. There is almost NO culture to be found off the campuses of the two Universities worth mentioning (MTU, and NMU). There is little appreciation for art, theatre, music, etc. The economy is almost entirely reliant on manufacturing (mostly paper these days) and tourism, which means little in the way of infrastructure appropriate for small IP-oriented businesses. And finally, the horrible accent. Even UPers make fun of their accent (via "Say ya to da UP, eh?" bumper stickers).
That said, there is plenty to like about the UP, and there are plenty of people to like in the UP. There are many articulate, informed and cultured citizens. The land is plentiful and beautiful. The way of life is relaxed and simple. But none of this changes the fact that in a large portion of citizens there is rampant racism and homophobia, and you have to search hard for any semblance of culture.
Yes, I consider much of the UP to be backwards (ditto for Alabama and some grain-belt states). Am I a bigot? I don't think so. I appreciate the fact that not all people from the UP (or from the ghetto, for that matter) are the same. There is a difference between acknowledging the truths behind stereotypes and bigotry.
Taft
More that we're voting against socialism. By helping small business, jobs are created. I get to work in those jobs. I could even make a business and thus jobs. Why should I vote to be taxed into oblivion and no hope for earning any money or making any(if I'm a business).