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I think that's being completely unfair. Outsourcability is purely about how easy it is to extend a supply chain to another continent without impacting quality c

I think that's being completely unfair. Outsourcability is purely about how easy it is to extend a supply chain to another continent without impacting quality control and lead time. Automation is purely about how easy it is to program a computer to do the work. The two have very little to do with one another. In fact, the more automateable a job is, the less likely it will be pushed offshore because managing a highly automated process means that quality control becomes much more difficult (bugs, etc.).

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
Yet if you look at what the West has offshored it's manufacturing, customer service, IT support, etc. All areas that are amenable to automation because the deliverable arrives down a wire or in a container. What hasn't been offshored are jobs that require a physical presence, these are much tougher to automate.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  "Yet if you look at what the West has offshored it's manufacturing, customer service, IT support, etc. All areas that are amenable to automation" No. All of those are areas are very unamenable to automation. * The west hasn't offshored manufacturing that it could automate. It automated it and kept it at home. The manufacturing it couldn't automate went offshore, provided the QC / lead times didn't completely fuck the product (e.g. apparel / cheap plastic toys / electronics / etc.). * Customer service is fundamentally unautomateable since it's mostly dealing with problems (have you automated fixing bugs in your code yet? if so, maybe there's hope) and people who just want to talk to a human when they buy things. Moreover, you suffer massive quality issues when offshoring it, which is why the companies that do offshore only survive the quality hit because they don't need to be competitive. Comcast outsources its call centers; Netflix keeps them at home. * IT support is similar - most of the time you're dealing with IT issues, dealing with people and dealing with the broken way people deal with their IT issues. Again, generic, high level problem solving that involves a great deal of human interaction is just about the last thing that will ever be automated.
  - gaius 9y ago
    The west hasn't offshored manufacturing that it could automate. It automated it and kept it at home Not entirely true: another reason to offshore manufacturing, if you are a certain kind of executive, is that you don't need to worry about pollution laws.
jordanb 9y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. You're right. For instance, take the garment industry: the big gains in productivity were made a long time ago. It now takes about as many people to make a pair of jeans as it did 30 years ago. But those jeans are very easy to transport. Consequently, the industry is constantly searching the globe for the cheapest possible hour of human labor. If the garment industry where still seeing big productivity gains then they'd have less pressure to seek low labor costs and there'd be less interest in outsourcing. If jeans went bad when packed into a container then there'd be less ability for them to outsource (goods less tradable) but tradability is orthogonal to automatability.
- gaius 9y ago
  Not sure why you're getting downvoted. You're right. Not entirely. One company I worked for had an office in India where workers had 2 screens on their desks and their job was to re-key from one app into another. It was cheaper to do this than to integrate those two apps. Tho' not really because of the re-work needed due to typos, but senior management will never have realized that.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago

Yet if you look at what the West has offshored it's manufacturing, customer service, IT support, etc. All areas that are amenable to automation because the deliverable arrives down a wire or in a container. What hasn't been offshored are jobs that require a physical presence, these are much tougher to automate.

crdoconnor 9y ago
"Yet if you look at what the West has offshored it's manufacturing, customer service, IT support, etc. All areas that are amenable to automation" No. All of those are areas are very unamenable to automation. * The west hasn't offshored manufacturing that it could automate. It automated it and kept it at home. The manufacturing it couldn't automate went offshore, provided the QC / lead times didn't completely fuck the product (e.g. apparel / cheap plastic toys / electronics / etc.). * Customer service is fundamentally unautomateable since it's mostly dealing with problems (have you automated fixing bugs in your code yet? if so, maybe there's hope) and people who just want to talk to a human when they buy things. Moreover, you suffer massive quality issues when offshoring it, which is why the companies that do offshore only survive the quality hit because they don't need to be competitive. Comcast outsources its call centers; Netflix keeps them at home. * IT support is similar - most of the time you're dealing with IT issues, dealing with people and dealing with the broken way people deal with their IT issues. Again, generic, high level problem solving that involves a great deal of human interaction is just about the last thing that will ever be automated.
- gaius 9y ago
  The west hasn't offshored manufacturing that it could automate. It automated it and kept it at home Not entirely true: another reason to offshore manufacturing, if you are a certain kind of executive, is that you don't need to worry about pollution laws.

jordanb 9y ago

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. You're right. For instance, take the garment industry: the big gains in productivity were made a long time ago. It now takes about as many people to make a pair of jeans as it did 30 years ago. But those jeans are very easy to transport. Consequently, the industry is constantly searching the globe for the cheapest possible hour of human labor. If the garment industry where still seeing big productivity gains then they'd have less pressure to seek low labor costs and there'd be less interest in outsourcing. If jeans went bad when packed into a container then there'd be less ability for them to outsource (goods less tradable) but tradability is orthogonal to automatability.

gaius 9y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. You're right. Not entirely. One company I worked for had an office in India where workers had 2 screens on their desks and their job was to re-key from one app into another. It was cheaper to do this than to integrate those two apps. Tho' not really because of the re-work needed due to typos, but senior management will never have realized that.