Stop Offshoring
Monday, February 26, 2007
The San Jose Mercury had an article over the weekend about "nearshoring". Responding to complaints about the poor performance of offshore employees in countries like India, American companies are bringing more work back to the Western Hemisphere, although not necessarily to the U.S. itself. Three locations highlighted in the article were Costa Rica, Nova Scotia, and Mexico. This may be a step in the right direction, but I'll have to wait and see how these "nearshore" workers compare to their farflung offshore counterparts and domestic workers.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Amid recent claims that offshoring will have little effect on domestic jobs, The Brookings Institution estimates that as many as one in five programming, software engineering and back office jobs may be eliminated as a result of offshoring. The most heavily affected parts of the U.S. will be major metropolitan areas such as Silicon Valley, Boulder, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
For companies considering offshoring, perhaps this news story, titled "Offshoring is too costly", will help you decide. It's about the Newcastle Building Society, which has been testing using staff in India for two years. In the end, it determined that "overall costs here are less than the all-in costs of outsourcing to India" due to all of the hand-holding needed to train and manage an offshore team.
Companies need to think about the overall costs rather than the cheap salaries highlighted by offshore proponents. Combined with the inferior level of work performed by offshore employees, it just doesn't make sense to send jobs offshore.
