The world is flat all because of new advanced technology. We can now hold meetings with people from various countries, without having everyone to travel all the way to a common location. People can attend the meeting, staying at wherever they are, with technology.
With technology, distance doesn’t matter anymore. We can have colleagues from all over the world, working from their own country, because with technology, communication amongst people living in different countries is possible. We can now work with people in different time zone, outsourcing work to them. We can send work over to our colleagues in other countries at 1 a.m. and expect it to be completed by 7 a.m. This means that, while we are sleeping at night, our work can be completed for us by our partners in other countries, where it is still day time.
How much work we are outsourcing
Its crazy how much work from one country can be, is being and will be outsourced to other countries.
I’m not talking about the outsourcing of production and manufacturing work. We all know that factories of one company can be set up in many different countries. For example, different parts of our laptop can be made in different countries and be assembled in yet another country (battery cell made in Japan, assembly in China, etc). There is no such thing as: factories can only be set up locally.
However, as I’ve said, I’m not talking about factory jobs. What I want to talk about is the outsourcing of service and information technology work. Do you know that most of the call centers aren’t where we expect them to be, but in China and India.
The people of Dalian (a part of China) are ready to put aside their hatred for the Japanese and work for them. They are even willing to pick up the Japanese language for the benefit of their economy. I think that these China workers deserve to be commended for handling personal and economical matters separately.
Another country that we should learn from is India. The young people there are prepared to put in more time and effort into their future. They have to study and work at the same time. Working at night and studying during daytime. They need to attend classes to learn different accents, American, British and Canadian. They also have a chance to take up MBA programs.
And yet, here I am, complaining of having not enough sleep. We indeed have a lot to learn…
Even jobs from the accounting, journalism, and medical field can be outsourced to other countries. Outsourcing indeed makes our lives easier. Accountants can choose to have the more taxing and mundane work to be outsourced and come up with the evaluations and solutions themselves at the end. Work can be completed faster and more efficiently, that’s the good thing about outsourcing.
What are we facing?
In this process of flattening the world with technology, we are opening up more challenges and more competition for ourselves. Why should companies hire you when they can hire another person for a lower salary and with the same skills? What skills, experience, talent, etc, do we possess that will set us apart from other applicants?
We are not only competing with people from our own countries but also people from other countries. Yet here we are, happily slacking our lives away, spending hours on computer games, complaining about our lives…while people from other countries are working and studying 24/7, picking up skills and knowledge really fast.
Zi Xin
Zixin17's Blog 