Reality Check

Outsourcing jobs in North America to cut costs is practically a common practice nowadays. For the past ten years there have been reports of companies moving its operations to low cost centers around the world. Just today it was reported that Citigroup is eliminating 17,000 jobs and moving over half of them to countries like India and Poland. Outsourcing work overseas has changed the entire landscape of the manufacturing industry in the U.S. Call centers in India are abundant now. It's not uncommon to call tech support and have someone from India answer on the other end.

I've heard stories upon stories about people who were making a hundred grand or more a year and suddenly realizing there's no way to compete with offshore workers who were happy to do the same job far below the poverty line in the U.S. Sure it's depressing, but if you owned your own business and had a choice to choose between two people who could perform the same job and the only difference is their salary... I think the choice is clear. 

Manufacturing, tech jobs and support functions are definitely the most at risk of being offshored, but I didn't think design and innovation could ever be outsourced. I had an eye opening realization today after finding out from my manager who had just returned from a fact-finding trip to India and China on a mission to search for the best location to hire a production team. My biggest questions have always been the quality of the work, the actual savings after consideration of productivity level and high turnover, customer satisfaction and idea generation. Simply put, India and China are learning fast and can do all of these things well. They understand the design process and fulfilling the customer's needs. Who knows, it may not be long before designers here have their jobs outsourced. The recently released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is an example of this reality. Imagi, a Hong Kong based studio, did all the CGI work for this animation and some other Hollywood films for much less than production studios in the States.

So what reason does my company have to keep me around if someone offshore can do my job for a lot less? That's a hard reality that many designers onshore may soon face. For now cultural knowledge of our home country and experience give us the advantage, but one day that may not be enough as India and China are gaining ground and learning fast from the exposure to many foreign companies. Designers will need to continually grow and enhance their skills as well as wear many different hats. It won't be enough to do what they're good at doing. In order to ensure value to the company, designers must be able to lead and manage other creatives and think in business terms. Most creatives wince at the thought of having to sell their services, manage costs, figure out ROI and the like. How boring! Where's the fun in that? But it's so necessary in order to do the work you love.

I never understood why design programs are lumped in with the fine art progams and not paired with the business curriculum. In order to compete with a world that's becoming more and more globalized, design schools should really redesign their curriculums to give creatives a better edge. I can go on about that, but that's another topic entirely.