What is Outsourcing?Simply stated, outsourcing means to pay others to do the work that we used to do.

Individual and corporate outsource all the time.For example, you pay for the service of babysitter to take care of your kids for a couple of hours tonight.That is outsourcing of childcare service.

A company may opt to outsource functions such as IT support, accounting support, security services etc.

Why do we outsource?Why do we buy services?

There are many reasons, some of the reasons as below:

  • We are not able to do it better, so it’s better to let the service provider does it.
  • We need to free ourselves to do some other things.
  • We can afford to!
  • It is cheaper to buy the service than to do it ourselves.For example, the hourly rate of a busy Executive is so high that it is better for him/her to hire a housekeeper.

These are the reasons that corporate and individual outsource.Many of the reasons we as individuals give for outsourcing are the same reasons that corporate gave.

But why do we view outsourcing so negatively?It is due to the fact that many of our jobs go to the developing countries as a result of corporate outsourcing.

As individual, when we outsource, we provide employment to the babysitter, barber, part time help etc.All these are folks that reside in the same country as us.

However, when corporate outsource, the jobs are gone from our countries to the third world countries.In our heart of hearts, we know that the jobs gone from our land will probably never come back. We resent the fact that folks in the poorer countries are able to do a better job than us, and at a cheaper rate.

Outsourcing is trend that will continue.As long as there are people able to do our jobs and get lesser salary than us, companies will outsource the jobs to them.

Unfortunately, we are not able to outsource bodily functions such as sleeping and eating.How nice it will be if we are to do so.

Imagine paying just 10 bucks to the guy in the third world country to replenish our 8 hours sleep.The guy will have to sleep 16 hours a day, including 8 hours of sleep for us while we enjoy ourselves 24 hours or work 24 hours to earn more money.

Imagine also that we eat all we can, and outsource the digestive systems to the folks in third world countries.How nice to keep on eating and eating and never get fat, just because the extra calories go to the folks in third world countries.It will save us the pain of going through the weight loss program.