Offshoring, or sending work to countries where a workforce charges less for the same thing, is big business. In recent years, large companies have been hiving off departments -- call centres, engineering plants, research and development labs and so on -- to countries such as India, where an educated workforce costs a fraction of the price in a fully industrialised country.
For big companies it can make a lot of sense. A fully trained Indian programmer, for example, costs perhaps a quarter of her/his UK equivalent.
Personal offshoring has been done before -- it was good form in the Russian Tsar's court to send shirts to Paris to be laundered -- but what was once the the preserve of big business is now available for the individual. A combination of the internet and the universal acceptability of credit cards means that although you might not need a call centre, there are an increasing number of things that can be moved offshore that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive or outside one's skillset.
The first is computer code. The idea of hiring a programmer to make that little widget you are desperate for might seem decadent, but it is very good value for money and remarkably easy. I needed a selection of little programs to do things with my email. But I'd never had the time, or the patience, to write them myself. After a visit to RentACoder.com, I was able to file a request for bids from programmers around the world.
Prospective coders can view all the requests on the site, and bid for the ones that interest them. Once I'd accepted a bid -- it was less than ?200 for a fortnight's programming work -- I paid the money to the site, which placed it in escrow. My coder, a young man in Belarus, completed the work, and once I'd checked it was up to scratch (it was), I instructed the site to release the cash.
I got something I needed for a fifth of the price I would otherwise have had to pay. Indeed, the UK price was always too much: I wouldn't ever have spent that much money. But via the web, I could get what I needed for a price I could afford. That it was written in Belarus, and not in London, made the difference between having it or not.
This sort of auction and escrow arrangement is commonplace with personal offshoring sites. Both you and the business at the other end are protected from fraud and non-payment and, by off-loading the credit checking and banking systems to the credit card companies, the offshoring marketplaces can be very efficient.
With my coding done, I needed a webpage built. Web designers are everywhere, and web hosting is cheap. It is just much cheaper in India. So, ?30 paid via PayPal.com to templatekingdom.com got me a website design, an hour of the designer's time for changes, and a year's hosting for good measure. In 24 hours, and for less than the price of a few rounds in a pub, I had a new, uniquely designed website up and running. For small businesses needing a home page, why spend hundreds of pounds on a domestic designer, when something just as good can be commissioned from designers in India or Bangladesh?
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique