Outsourcing Industry

Around three years ago I was talking to a German colleague of mine about outsourcing and how he should be worried about his career in Germany since the current trend is to outsource everything possible to countries that can operate the same function at a much cheaper price, I told him that within a couple of years he'll end up moving to one of these cheaper countries in order for him to find a job. However he wasn't the least bit worried, his point was that as work gets outsourced to cheaper countries, such as Egyptian, the Egyptian employees start getting a glimpse of what they should be paid for their job if they were in one of the outsourcing countries, also they start realizing that their work conditions isn't as fair as they thought they were as their European counterparts get paid better, work less hours and generally are more respected by their employers, soon enough they'll demand the same treatment, pumping up the over head until outsourcing isn't that cost effective any longer, he then quoted the Romanian and Polish examples and how it was predicted that they'll crash the salary averages once they joined the EU but that never happened. Also he mentioned something about how outsourcing by its nature is not a sustainable model, as you'll end up outsourcing to a company that would outsource it again and the task will keep getting outsourced until it is done by the cheapest least qualified team possible.

I remembered this conversation as I was handing over my job to my Indian counterparts that accepted the same job for a much smaller amount of money. Talking with them I realized how we must have appeared to the German counter parts, these guys worked more hours, got paid less, got placed in the worst hotels possible, and generally were being abused by their management and didn't have any rights, as one of them put it "in India, you either work hard or not work at all", within 3 weeks they started getting more curious about our packages, how we get paid, compensated, our work rules, our rights as employees, which hotels we stay in and generally started slowly at first demanding the same treatment.

I predict that within a couple of years they'll be more expensive than their say Chinese counter parts, and they'll end up handing over the project to them, and as they hand over the technical part, they'll also hand over the work culture, soon enough outsourcing will not be as cost saving as it originally was, in reality the amount of money saved while outsourcing will be smaller than the money lost during the difference in quality.

The good thing is I believe that us as human beings should be treated the same way, regardless to the nationality we have, I believe that doing the same job you should be compensated relatively the same way, what out sourcing had done is that it allowed workers from all over the world to share how they are being compensated to their cheaper outsourced to counterparts.