Outsource your job

[Arif]

This is just a hypothetical thought so humor me:

What if an employee that works from home outsourced his daily work tasks to someone in India and just reviewed their work and forwarded it to his boss? For example, suppose you have to complete X number of tasks or reports per day but instead forward the task to someone in India for a 1/3 of your pay. Now if you had three jobs with the same income split and repeated the outsource you could make money money and thus RE!

 

[maddybeagle]

sure...sounds like a plan...

 

[bssc]

Wasn't this in one of the Dilbert books? Still not a bad idea.

 

[Khan]

I know I've seen it in cartoons.

I think Doonesbury (among others).

 

[bssc]

Of course, if you are the Arif who is working on my GNA PTP project, I am going to want a cut.

 

[Financial Jungle Guy]

I'm a software engineer. While picturing this, I can see a lot of overheads on my part just to communicate and pass materials back and forth. I would not want to give up my password to India. The overheads can be shared if you have a bigger team.

 

[Texas Proud]

Well... if you were an employee, then it would be a problem.. they hired YOU to do the work...

If you were on a contract, unless they said they wanted you, then maybe you could do this. Think lawyer or accountant... most of the time someone else does the dirty work...

 

[sgeeeee]

Reminds me of a conversation I had with a colleague right after the Soviet Union opened up. He had been tasked with going over there and finding technical companies to fund. I asked how it was going and he told me, "We can hire 6 engineers in the Soviet Union for the cost of hiring one in the US. And if we work really hard at it, we can get almost as much work out of 6 of them."

 

[Arif]

Of course, if you are the Arif who is working on my GNA PTP project, I am going to want a cut.

Uh oh.

I know I've seen it in cartoons.

I think Doonesbury (among others).

I guess it is true what they say, "there's nothing new under the sun."

 

[farmerEd]

This is just a hypothetical thought so humor me:

What if an employee that works from home outsourced his daily work tasks to someone in India and just reviewed their work and forwarded it to his boss? For example, suppose you have to complete X number of tasks or reports per day but instead forward the task to someone in India for a 1/3 of your pay. Now if you had three jobs with the same income split and repeated the outsource you could make money money and thus RE!

This is essentially how I was able to ER, though I was self-employed software developer, not an employee.

Had a great business making 6 figure salary getting paid by the hour to develop software for big businesses (most in financial services)...the work poured in, I couldn't keep up, so I advertised locally, and couldn't find anyone willing to do the work for what I would pay, so I looked overseas and eventually hired several individuals in the Peoples Republic of China, and then several more in Pakistan. The chinese I paid $8/hr, and the Pakistani's I paid $12/hr...I billed each one out at over $100/hour for a good amount of time before the IT bubble burst. None of my clients ever knew it wasn't me that was doing the work; as far as they were all concerned I was a one-man shop. (and all were very happy with the work).

Needless to say, it was very profitable. Now outsouring is commonplace and its harder to make those kind of margins, but it was fun while it lasted.