Title quoted from “Outsource me?” in answer to the question of what Ivy-league undergraduates would do when all the I-Banking analyst jobs went to India (from www.leveragedsellout.com). Also inspired by Mark’s story, “The Light of the World” .
By Matt Miner
Blue-green eyes glazing, he “stared” blankly at his Thinkpad™ brain display. Intel, struggling for “the next killer processor” had, in its Digital Health Group, inadvertently developed a chip which could be implanted in the optic nerve to project a computer display right before the user’s eyes. When investors wondered whether consumers would really sign up for a product which required surgery, Intel partnered with the World Government of Kazakhstan (now the dominate nation in post-Borat society) to mandate the implantations for all persons ever born anywhere in the universe.
(Although sales surged with the product’s introduction in the years 2019 and 2020, the chip proved to be the undoing of Intel, since processor upgrades were often fatal to the recipients. Adding insult to injury, the Intel Implant Machines ran a buggy version of Windows and a cumbersome security suite from McAfee which was known to cause uncontrolled flatulence. Frequent restarts, managed through painful, robot-administered injections, were required.)
Matt worked away in Excel, with high-class formatting (sparse use of color, tasteful borders) and eyecharts shaped to present beautifully when pasted into PowerPoint. Knowledge-work outsourcing had come as a shock to Matt and his lower-upper-middle-class buddies. “What?” they had cried, “Someone is willing to do addition and formatting for less than $100K per year with gold plated benefits? [derisive snort] I don’t think so.” But some go-getter U.S. analyst had done the math and the result looked like this:
|
U.S. MBA RCG |
Indian MBA RCG |
| Salary |
$ 100,000 |
$ 20,000 |
| Bonus |
$ 15,000 |
??? |
| Equity-compensation |
$ 10,000 |
N/A |
| 401(k) contribution |
$ 6,000 |
N/A |
| Health Insurance |
$ 12,000 |
$ - |
| Annual hours |
2160 |
2805 |
| Productivity-adjusted annual cost: |
$ 188,506 |
$ 20,000 |
It hadn’t taken companies long to realize that they could hire nine Indian MBAs for the price of one American, and now, so far as Matt Miner knew, he was the last financial analyst in the United States. Between the implanted chip and his negative value proposition, it wasn’t much of a life, though he was thankful for his HMO.
Matt awoke with a start. A glance at the alarm clock. A grimace. 8:30! He was running late for 9:30 face-time. Matt walked to the kitchen of his 2000 square foot home in the suburbs to make his breakfast. A quick shower and a trip to work in his two-year old Honda Accord EX (he’d need a new car soon) left him feeling normal. He arrived at work, walked to his cube and fired up the Thinkpad on the docking station. 9:45 – time to get jammin’ on some arithmetic and formatting. He’d have to hurry as he needed to leave the office by 4:30 that afternoon. A sip of the SBUX and Matt was off to the races. His job was secure! Who could consider outsourcing this type of high-end work? Unworried, Matt began another day of living the dream.
