I’m reading a couple of articles by Ryan Norbauer on 43 Folders, a great site for personal organization junkies. (Not that I’m one of those…)
Ryan’s most recent article is about his paperless life, and though I love the concept, I’m a little scared by the recommendation for the $400 scanner.
I also found another article about how Ryan uses outsourcing to enhance his personal and professional life. He uses GetFriday, an online service which supplies him with a personal assistant in India. Ryan outsources lots of menial, time-wasting tasks to his assistant Suresh. the thought is very interesting and very provocative.
The business uses for GetFriday made a lot of sense, but every time he suggests outsourcing personal tasks to Suresh, I shudder:
He does all sorts of one-off research, such as finding contact information on the net, and he even once called around Boston for me to find out which Starbucks was open latest. (I got the results in a meticulously-prepared spreadsheet.)
Or:
When I get an iPhone, for example, I imagine that I’ll be calling Suresh less frequently to look up little tidbits of info on the internet for me while I’m out and about. (Right now, it’s actually far less painful to call someone in India and ask them to search the internet than for me than to wrestle with my Treo’s nearly unusable browser.)
At the end of the article, Ryan does address the elephant in the room. It feels unsettling and imperialist for rich Americans to send all their boring, menial work to underpaid assistants in India or China. Ryan’s argument against this is pretty strong. He argues that it’s a situation of comparative advantage: the developing world has a surplus of labor, so there’s nothing unnatural about sending work to them. The alternative is to let them “sit around twittling their thumbs in relative poverty,” which doesn’t help either side. By sending them work — even tasks like “sit on hold with Dell for an hour” — we’re actually doing something about the income inequity, and transferring little bits of our wealth to the developing world. I’m not sure whether I’m convinced, but I encourage you to read the article and check it out yourself.
What do you think — are these indeed reasons to sending more personal tasks to India? Or is Ryan just rationalizing America’s laziness?
4 comments ↓
I love it! I’ve always stated as one of my personal goals to have a personal assistant by the time I’m 40yo. I do not enjoy the menial, time cosuming tasks like Lundry, dry cleaners, bill paying, deciding what to wear, etc… I think’d be worth my money to pay someone else to do it.
I should consider outsourcing some of those tasks to someone in India, or perhaps someone in a country with a more similar lifestyle.
There’s a scary side to this though, what happens when one outsources all those tasks one does not care about, and then one day, you actually need to do them yourself……do we lose the ability to solve the little problems? are we setting ourselves up to “drown in a glass of water”?
Sounds great to me! And if Ryan’s willing to pay the money, and Suresh is willing to take the work, sounds fair to me. And from such a distance, I can’t see any argument that its oppressive or taking advantage. Rather, he’s giving work to someone willing to do it.
If anyone’s at risk here, how about folks working in this country as PA’s? That’s who’s being squeezed in this equation.
Hey I am to Ryan Park but I am in NY. Not the City Just east of Rochester. Do you know much about you Family heritage. From what I have read it contradicts itself. I do know that my forefathers went though the south at one point before making there way to NY. I have an Aunt and uncle who names were Barbera and Robert. Both have died though. Drop a note if you want.
Thanks
Ryan L. Park
Great post. I’m all for fair and win-win outsourcing arrangements. In my opinion, any one who’s against this type of outsourcing has serious problems being consistent with their ethics due to their preconceived attitudes based on feelings, not facts.
Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Workweek talks about this topic extensively in good light.
http://www.outsourcingdelegation.com
Business Outsourcing Tips
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