US employee outsources his own job to China

[Storm]

This seems like a pretty smart way of taking advantage of wage arbitrage.  Apparently this guy was working at about 5 different local companies and outsourcing all of his software development to Shenyen.

If it's good for corporate America, they should have no problem with it, right?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21043693

[Pointedstick]

That's a very smart idea. As long as the quality remains high enough, who cares how it gets done?

Then again, there's the risk that his employers could fire him and pay the Chinese people he was outsourcing to directly.

[RuralEngineer]

My company already does this, essentially. They use U.S. engineers as program managers and outsource FEA, CAD modeling, drawings, and other analysis work. It's not a bad system.

[murphy_p_t]

My company already does this, essentially. They use U.S. engineers as program managers and outsource FEA, CAD modeling, drawings, and other analysis work. It's not a bad system.

How does the next generation  learn the ropes to become project managers?

What happens to the company's market for their products?

[RuralEngineer]

My company already does this, essentially. They use U.S. engineers as program managers and outsource FEA, CAD modeling, drawings, and other analysis work. It's not a bad system.

How does the next generation  learn the ropes to become project managers?

What happens to the company's market for their products?

I'm not sure I understand your question.  How does the method used to design a product impact its market?

As for how we train project managers, I think you misunderstand what I mean by project manager.  The engineers run the various projects and make all technical decisions as well as manage cost and quality.  For example, I wouldn't run the FEA (finite element analysis) but I would review the results to ensure that they were acceptable or to leverage them for a redesign if the components failed.  Being the one to mesh the model for analysis or putting the individual weld callouts on the print isn't really a value added process when compared against having this be performed by low cost resources in India or Romania.  However, we still do need to train new engineers and that is usually done with a mentoring system where the more senior engineers train the new employees.

[Pointedstick]

So I guess the answer is "they don't; engineers don't need any damn project managers mucking things up!"