17 ms·

The moral of the story is: route your Chinese subcontractors through your own VPN first, so they appear to be coming from your house. Also, use your freaking t

by ef4 14y ago

The moral of the story is: route your Chinese subcontractors through your own VPN first, so they appear to be coming from your house. Also, use your freaking time to do something more interesting than surf Reddit and Facebook.

jwdunne 14y ago
Agreed. If I did this, I think that, given my employer is paying me for my time, I should still focus on stuff for the company whether my work has been outsourced or not. Rather than use it as a way to slack of, I could do way more, meaning pay rises, bonuses and additional opportunities. It would make doing that more worthwhile, in my opinion. If I run out of work to do, awesome, I'll ask for more, making my productivity gains clear as day.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Interesting business model. Outsource as much of your work as possible but take on more responsibilities in the extra time it frees up. Make yourself look superhuman, get a pay rise/promotion and spend some of that extra income outsourcing even more stuff. Repeat until the whole house of cards falls down.
  - jwdunne 14y ago
    I didn't envision it working like that. I probably wouldn't keep my personal outsourcing a secret. If my employer was dead set against it, I wouldn't do it. Since I work for a small company and have a good working relationship with the owner of the company, I will either receive an approval or a refusal, with a good explanation. The way I see it is that if I can increase my productivity in a big way by doing that, I can't see a problem with it. That's especially since I have the ability/authority to hire a contractor on company funds if I need one. Some say it's very shady but this could work well if you're completely honest and if you have good delegation skills (after all, anyone can delegate but effective delegation can be much harder to do). It depends on your employer I guess.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      Well, if you are a programmer in a way you could see your entire job as "structuring tasks so that they can be outsourced to a computer". Ultimately I guess it boils down to what other work there would be for you to do and how your employer would view your suitability for this work. The trick is to not outsource yourself out of a job.
  - jonnathanson 14y ago
    Isn't that basically the corporate middle-management playbook? Only replace "outsource" with "delegate to someone lower on the totem pole."
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      Yep, I basically realised that after making the post. I've certainly worked in places where this wasn't too far from the truth.
      - jonnathanson 14y ago
        Same. I mean, I wrote that line with more than a hint of cynicism, but with an equal dose of earnestness. At a handful of the larger corporations I've worked for, the folks who got ahead quickest seemed to be the folks who mastered the ancient martial arts of KU/KD (kiss up, kick down) and mass-delegation. (That's not to say that they weren't smart, or good at their jobs. Some of them were; some of them weren't).
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
        jiggy2011 14y ago
        In order to be a true master at this , you also need to be able to kick sideways and treat other employees at your level as if they were your reports. You must do this in a way that gives you maximum face-time with senior management and minimum accountability in the work you actually do. I worked with someone like this in an IT dept years ago. "Hey man, I'm so busy all afternoon! I gotta organise the dept football tournament, then I volunteered to do training as an evangelist for methodology X, oh and then I promised I'd stop by the big bosses office for a chat about our teams performance before I went home! I'm such a hard working guy" , "oh , do you mind if I assign some of my tickets into your queue? I know I can trust you to do them quickly because they're going to fail SLA in 2 hours but they shouldn't be too hard for you! I will be putting in a good word for you with the boss after all"
  - rmc 14y ago
    So... basically "start a business"?
- martincmartin 14y ago
  Your employer is paying you to deliver things that make them money. They're not paying you for your time.
  - mpyne 14y ago
    Does viewing videos of cats make your employer money? If you've already delivered what they paid you for today then go home and watch the videos there in your pajamas, if they're not paying you for your time.
  - jwdunne 14y ago
    It comes down to time. My employer pays me money with the understanding I will dedicate a slot of time to working solely on the projects he needs me to work on. Yes, he's paying me to deliver. If he was paying for my time and I wasn't delivering then there's a problem. If I deliver, however, I can't just get up and walk out in the middle of the day.
    - jchrisa 14y ago
      Really? I'm a big fan of delivering and then spending less time in the office.
    - tmh88j 14y ago
      >It comes down to time. >If he was paying for my time and I wasn't delivering then there's a problem No, he's paying you to deliver and that's it. Your time is required to do work. Your time is worthless to them, what you produce is, however. Robots require less time to do many tasks, and they can accomplish more of them. They're paying you for output, not time.
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        This depends on individual agreements between employer/employee at the end of the day and also on the nature of the job. There are certainly situations where it is advantageous to have your employees sitting at their desks in your building. So you know where they are if some emergency situation arises or if you need to ask them some questions or even just to make the place look big/busy.
- mattmanser 14y ago
  You'd outsource your job to someone else in order to work more on the off chance that your employer will pay you more in the future? Which they probably won't as most jobs are only marginally performance based. Seems mighty odd to me.
  - jwdunne 14y ago
    Not on the off-chance, I know for a fact. I have received regular pay rises and bonuses during my time there and I am rewarded fairly in that regard. That and I recently approached my employer about what it would take to double my salary, which originated from a simple curiosity rather than burning desire. It was a productive conversation and told me that if I continue to improve as I do, I will be rewarded for it. As I said, it depends on the employer. I have to add that I don't see my employer as just my boss but also a mentor and sometimes even a friend. I trust him and I have very good reason to. Edit: also, I wouldn't just outsource my job. I would continue to do similar work myself but I could plough through more in the same or less time.
- ajuc 14y ago
  I could certainly think about outsourcing testing, to be more sure about commits without having to do the repetative parts. That is, if I was earning more than the Chinese programmers :/
- seanalltogether 14y ago
  He could have used this as an initiative to find ways to send more work to china, and then become a liaison with an offshore team. I've actually been told that if I could figure out a way to bring more offshore people into my line of work, I could double or triple my salary.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  >meaning pay rises, bonuses and additional opportunities. Have you ever actually worked for a big company before? Honest question.
  - jwdunne 14y ago
    Nope, I never want to.
jiggy2011 14y ago
Like reading HN!
johnnymonster 14y ago
Yea! For that guy being "Smart", he isn't that smart... lol
waterlesscloud 14y ago
The Register article said he used his spare time to find other jobs, which he then outsourced, so he was making a good deal of money on the side.
- antihero 14y ago
  Am I the only person that really doesn't see the problem here?
  - jtms 14y ago
    I also REALLY don't see a problem with this... I would have given him a raise and more work to outsource rather than giving the boot.
    - roozbeh18 14y ago
      hahaaa
  - ramy_d 14y ago
    No one talked about whether he lied about his skills and the quality of work he oversaw.
    - roozbeh18 14y ago
      he is probably over qualified old man
  - flyinRyan 14y ago
    Problem: he didn't have a manager title. If he did, he would probably have been promoted.
  - GFischer 14y ago
    The problem is, he violated the company's trust by sending sensitive information to unauthorized third parties.
baddox 14y ago
> Also, use your freaking time to do something more interesting than surf Reddit and Facebook. Or, if surfing Reddit and Facebook make you happy, by all means do that.

by ef4 14y ago

jwdunne 14y ago

Agreed. If I did this, I think that, given my employer is paying me for my time, I should still focus on stuff for the company whether my work has been outsourced or not. Rather than use it as a way to slack of, I could do way more, meaning pay rises, bonuses and additional opportunities. It would make doing that more worthwhile, in my opinion. If I run out of work to do, awesome, I'll ask for more, making my productivity gains clear as day.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Interesting business model. Outsource as much of your work as possible but take on more responsibilities in the extra time it frees up. Make yourself look superhuman, get a pay rise/promotion and spend some of that extra income outsourcing even more stuff. Repeat until the whole house of cards falls down.
- jwdunne 14y ago
  I didn't envision it working like that. I probably wouldn't keep my personal outsourcing a secret. If my employer was dead set against it, I wouldn't do it. Since I work for a small company and have a good working relationship with the owner of the company, I will either receive an approval or a refusal, with a good explanation. The way I see it is that if I can increase my productivity in a big way by doing that, I can't see a problem with it. That's especially since I have the ability/authority to hire a contractor on company funds if I need one. Some say it's very shady but this could work well if you're completely honest and if you have good delegation skills (after all, anyone can delegate but effective delegation can be much harder to do). It depends on your employer I guess.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Well, if you are a programmer in a way you could see your entire job as "structuring tasks so that they can be outsourced to a computer". Ultimately I guess it boils down to what other work there would be for you to do and how your employer would view your suitability for this work. The trick is to not outsource yourself out of a job.
- jonnathanson 14y ago
  Isn't that basically the corporate middle-management playbook? Only replace "outsource" with "delegate to someone lower on the totem pole."
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Yep, I basically realised that after making the post. I've certainly worked in places where this wasn't too far from the truth.
    - jonnathanson 14y ago
      Same. I mean, I wrote that line with more than a hint of cynicism, but with an equal dose of earnestness. At a handful of the larger corporations I've worked for, the folks who got ahead quickest seemed to be the folks who mastered the ancient martial arts of KU/KD (kiss up, kick down) and mass-delegation. (That's not to say that they weren't smart, or good at their jobs. Some of them were; some of them weren't).
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        In order to be a true master at this , you also need to be able to kick sideways and treat other employees at your level as if they were your reports. You must do this in a way that gives you maximum face-time with senior management and minimum accountability in the work you actually do. I worked with someone like this in an IT dept years ago. "Hey man, I'm so busy all afternoon! I gotta organise the dept football tournament, then I volunteered to do training as an evangelist for methodology X, oh and then I promised I'd stop by the big bosses office for a chat about our teams performance before I went home! I'm such a hard working guy" , "oh , do you mind if I assign some of my tickets into your queue? I know I can trust you to do them quickly because they're going to fail SLA in 2 hours but they shouldn't be too hard for you! I will be putting in a good word for you with the boss after all"
- rmc 14y ago
  So... basically "start a business"?
martincmartin 14y ago
Your employer is paying you to deliver things that make them money. They're not paying you for your time.
- mpyne 14y ago
  Does viewing videos of cats make your employer money? If you've already delivered what they paid you for today then go home and watch the videos there in your pajamas, if they're not paying you for your time.
- jwdunne 14y ago
  It comes down to time. My employer pays me money with the understanding I will dedicate a slot of time to working solely on the projects he needs me to work on. Yes, he's paying me to deliver. If he was paying for my time and I wasn't delivering then there's a problem. If I deliver, however, I can't just get up and walk out in the middle of the day.
  - jchrisa 14y ago
    Really? I'm a big fan of delivering and then spending less time in the office.
  - tmh88j 14y ago
    >It comes down to time. >If he was paying for my time and I wasn't delivering then there's a problem No, he's paying you to deliver and that's it. Your time is required to do work. Your time is worthless to them, what you produce is, however. Robots require less time to do many tasks, and they can accomplish more of them. They're paying you for output, not time.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      This depends on individual agreements between employer/employee at the end of the day and also on the nature of the job. There are certainly situations where it is advantageous to have your employees sitting at their desks in your building. So you know where they are if some emergency situation arises or if you need to ask them some questions or even just to make the place look big/busy.
mattmanser 14y ago
You'd outsource your job to someone else in order to work more on the off chance that your employer will pay you more in the future? Which they probably won't as most jobs are only marginally performance based. Seems mighty odd to me.
- jwdunne 14y ago
  Not on the off-chance, I know for a fact. I have received regular pay rises and bonuses during my time there and I am rewarded fairly in that regard. That and I recently approached my employer about what it would take to double my salary, which originated from a simple curiosity rather than burning desire. It was a productive conversation and told me that if I continue to improve as I do, I will be rewarded for it. As I said, it depends on the employer. I have to add that I don't see my employer as just my boss but also a mentor and sometimes even a friend. I trust him and I have very good reason to. Edit: also, I wouldn't just outsource my job. I would continue to do similar work myself but I could plough through more in the same or less time.
ajuc 14y ago
I could certainly think about outsourcing testing, to be more sure about commits without having to do the repetative parts. That is, if I was earning more than the Chinese programmers :/
seanalltogether 14y ago
He could have used this as an initiative to find ways to send more work to china, and then become a liaison with an offshore team. I've actually been told that if I could figure out a way to bring more offshore people into my line of work, I could double or triple my salary.
flyinRyan 14y ago
>meaning pay rises, bonuses and additional opportunities. Have you ever actually worked for a big company before? Honest question.
- jwdunne 14y ago
  Nope, I never want to.

jiggy2011 14y ago

Like reading HN!

johnnymonster 14y ago

Yea! For that guy being "Smart", he isn't that smart... lol

waterlesscloud 14y ago

The Register article said he used his spare time to find other jobs, which he then outsourced, so he was making a good deal of money on the side.

antihero 14y ago
Am I the only person that really doesn't see the problem here?
- jtms 14y ago
  I also REALLY don't see a problem with this... I would have given him a raise and more work to outsource rather than giving the boot.
  - roozbeh18 14y ago
    hahaaa
- ramy_d 14y ago
  No one talked about whether he lied about his skills and the quality of work he oversaw.
  - roozbeh18 14y ago
    he is probably over qualified old man
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  Problem: he didn't have a manager title. If he did, he would probably have been promoted.
- GFischer 14y ago
  The problem is, he violated the company's trust by sending sensitive information to unauthorized third parties.

baddox 14y ago

> Also, use your freaking time to do something more interesting than surf Reddit and Facebook. Or, if surfing Reddit and Facebook make you happy, by all means do that.