A Personal Blog
Archive for November, 2003
Overseas Outsourcing
Nov 24th
Seems there is quite a stir being created, again, about overseas outsourcing. Rob over at Business Pundit recently posted an email from a user about Dell’s call center stuff coming back to the US.
Now, Rob believes this will result in a few hundred jobs. Personally I disagree. After all, Dell still outsources their call center operations, so it’ll still be in a multi-purpose call center. Really it’ll only mean a minor % increase in jobs, and at the bottom end of the payscale at that.
In the comments for the entry, Jim Moran, someone I’ll definitely be reading more of, points out that he believes the situation is in fact worse than people believe.
His points seem to boil down to less jobs means less taxes – which everyone has to bear the burden for.
While that might be true, I believe there are 2 fundamental points about outsourcing which are often forgotten:
1. Any change to economic trends will be perceived to be more extreme during times of economic duress
2. Outsourcing components of your business can be cost-effective if properly managed, though generally those cost savings only apply in the short term.
Now, back to this thing with Dell, specifically Jim Moran’s comments. Yes, jobs are leaving. No, that’s never a good thing (for the local economy).
But, is it as bad as it seems? After all, outsourcing was happening during the boom but it hardly made a difference. If the economy resumes some semblance of growth will it really be as bad as it seems?
I don’t believe so. I believe hardship magnifies small events.
Quick Resources
Nov 23rd
Some resources I’ve been meaning to add:
Google PR Calculator – of course not official, but a decent estimate, especially since it calculates to 1 decimal point.
HijackThis – Great program for uninstalling stupid apps that start on startup and kill your PC (that Spybot may not catch).
Design Updates
Nov 21st
I’ve just redone all the ‘not the frontpage’ pages of Ensight in order to help pass PR from individual pages which Google ranks fairly highly around the site effectively. There is now a shorter version of the sidebar on all pages.
If you spot any bugs, please let me know.
About Blogging
Nov 21st
It’s always interesting to see the circle a thought can take. There’s been a recent one about what blogging is, why it’s unpopular outside of bloggers, etc.
It goes something like this:
Wayne posts @ Ensight complaining about the lack of respect for bloggers > Stu conjects that perhaps it’s because it’s abstract and new > Shel adds that he believes some of the top bloggers are in fact journalists so it’s not that blogging lacks professional appeal, it’s simply that it’s new and non-competitive > Roland feels that blogs will get monetized, eventually > I comment @ Ensight
Personally I agree with Stu. Blogging is simply hard to understand. From the basic “blooog? What the heck is that?” through to “why do you blog?” it’s hard to comprehend.
My simplest explanation is that it’s halfway between a diary and a braindump (for me). It’s thoughts, it’s ideas, it’s things I’ve thought about… The question of why is harder to answer, of course, as I’ve yet to figure out why I do it. I just know I enjoy it and that I get value from me blogging.
In a lot of ways it’s like wandering around with a notepad (like many of yester-years greatest thinkers used to do). I can go back and reference ideas and thoughts at any time.
In fact, if I ever got an internet-enabled PDA I would likely treat my blog even more like that with smaller drawings, schematics, even more half-formed ideas, etc.
Time will tell, but ultimately blogging is really hard to understand. Most tech people understand what it is, a reasonable number of lay-people have heard about it. Few understand it, and I really can’t put my finger on why that is.
Blogrolling Back Up
Nov 21st
BlogRolling is back up, so I’ve added another half dozen blogs that I’d been waiting to add. Good stuff :-)
