Monday, March 17, 2008

Outsourcing = Frustration

I'm working from home again. Well, let me rephrase that, I'm trying to work from home. I signed up with and created a profile on a couple of different freelance websites. The type of jobs offered are right up my alley and I like that I can pick and choose what I want to work on. Unfortunately, those buying my services make it very difficult to make a living as they will often decline my perfectly reasonable bid to accept the bid of someone in a foreign country who will do the job at a fraction of the price. To say that I get pissed off every time this happens would be an understatement.

Now, I understand the reason for outsourcing to foreign countries, its cheaper and usually the work quality is excellent, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with it or like it. Personally I think every US corporation that outsources to another country should be ashamed of themselves. The bottom line should never be more important than the people you employ. Of course a lot of the people who post jobs on these websites aren't big corporations. They are just regular people who need some help so I can't blame them for wanting to go with the cheaper provider. All I ask is that they state in the job description that they don't want to pay a reasonable United States wage. I'll take my services elsewhere and not waste my time or energy.

All that said, I have been offered, and I accepted, two jobs that I have been working on for the past week. One is a tedious, boring job that pays well so I forgive it for being boring. I've already been asked to stay on and complete more work for this client. The other job is performing research and the client was so impressed that she doubled what she was paying me. I'm glad that these people were willing to overlook the cheaper bids and go with mine. I appreciate them giving me this chance to get established. I'm sure I will get more jobs because of them so I will stay the course and keep submitting proposals. Hopefully, I will eventually stop caring so much when a job goes to someone willing to be paid $2 an hour. Then again, is complacency ever a good thing?

2 comments:

SirFWALGMan said...

I agree with you except the part about the quality being the same. At least in my field that is often not the case. Of course in my field some of the local hires suck pretty bad also.

Maura said...

I'm glad the results of the two jobs you took on have been good, and I can only imagine how frustrating the rest has been.

Hopefully, as has been the case in some outsourcing here in the corporate world, there will be a point where the people paying will realize that the quality isn't always as good and things will start to shift back.