Saturday, April 19, 2008

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is all the rage. Save a few bucks by shipping some work overseas. I'm sure it works with some things, I just haven't seen it. Most companies I've seen do outsourcing get bad results, or spend a lot of money managing the project that it costs as much as having it all done here.

So why don't companies who are trying to save money do some serious outsourcing? Instead of taking some of the workforce and outsourcing it, why not take the most highly paid position and outsource it for instant savings. CEO's get paid 5, 10, 100 million dollars or more. Instant saving of that amount would go right into the company's pocket. That would be instant savings and certainly better than trying to take 100-500 engineers and moving their work overseas. In my mind, it would be less risk and less transition for the company.

Of course, realistically, the guy making the outsourcing decisions is the CEO and he won't like his 100 million dollar salary moving to some guy in a foreign country.

If the CEO's are so concerned about saving money for the company, they should consider keeping their salary at a fixed mulitple (20 times or so) of the lowest paid workers in the company. If a secretary can live on $40k, do you think a CEO can do well on 800k?

I think that's too much to ask. CEO's will cash out if given the opportunity and I don't think that there's much that can be done in the current system.