Why are we still debating offshoring?

Its November of 2007 and we are still having violent discussions about offshoring. A recent post in InformationWeek’s blogs triggered, as of today, 162 mostly emotional comments. I think the ship has sailed, yet cannot resist joining the debate.

Amongst them, there are some enlightened points of view (I happen to agree with the author on many). And for the record, these opinions, as well as all others in this blog, are not necessarily those of my employer.

1. We still view the offshoring issue as personal…its my job and the customer service I receive. Get over it. Personal affronts hurt, but this is part of a phenomenon called globalization that is much bigger than an individual.

2. The numbers don’t support the critics of offshoring. The US remains a net job importer and some 90% of jobs could not go abroad even if we wanted them to. And if you don’t believe me, or Steve R., why not check the Bureau of Labor Statistics?

3. The arguments for policy or regulation of offshoring fly in the face of the market-based capitalism. If you don’t like the service you receive, you can take your business elsewhere. If a company can’t make its shareholders the highest return, it has an obligation to do something about it. If my skills are no longer in demand, I owe it to myself to get some new ones. I don’t think we can be selective about when we like free markets and when we don’t.

4. Xenophobes exist (just read through this list of comments), and they are vocal. They may annoy or even offend someone like me, but they have opinions, voices, wallets and votes. Don’t ignore them!

5. We can all come up with numbers and facts to support our position (one blog-commenter actually argued that the falling dollar exacerbates the trade imbalance with China when the opposite, but theoretically and in actual performance, is true!), so the debate needs to move to something more meaningful to be productive–how about addressing the training needs of the nation in order to remain competitive?

6. Offshoring does, sometimes, stink. Its difficult to pull off. Its difficult to manage. The savings are falling and were probably overstated anyway. The people who make the decision rarely have to deal with its execution, so they feel the gain and not the pain. Customer service can and often does suffer.  But we the consumers demand lower pricing (other than that, we’re not particularly good at expressing what we want from the companies we deal with). Furthermore, in the last 20 or so years, we get upset if our 401(k)s and investment accounts don’t hit at least 10% growth per year. So at the end of the day, which way the offshoring pendulum swings is really up to us.