Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and... India?

A good friend just sent me this link, which is a list of the countries which need Airport transit visas if they have a stopover at Germany. This includes known 'terrorist-type' countries. It also includes India. His companys employees usually fly Lufthansa when going to the US to give client-side support. But for the past two weeks, travellers have been harassed by the German airport authorities over this visa. Now they are thinking of shifting to another airline.

Have a look at what this visa allows you to do: "Airport transit visa are only good for short stopovers while you are waiting a few hours for your onward flight in the airport's international transit area. However, hotel accommodation is only available outside the transit area. Please apply for a regular tourist visa if you want to stay at the airport overnight." That means you need this visa if your flight is going to take a one-hour halt, enough for you to maybe take a leak in peace. Indians, apparently, are not trustworthy enough to do that without a visa.

So much for India "rapidly turning into a developed nation", and "the outsourcing king of the world". So much, also, for Germany "wanting Indian engineers to work there". If you want to so much as cross over Germany because you chose a German Airline, you will have to go to their consulate in Mumbai or Delhi and get permission from them.

I would really like to hear more about this. This visa would be required by anyone flying Lufthansa to Europe or the US. Has any reader faced this problem? How hard is it to get this visa, and has anyone been rejected yet? Please spread the word.

The Momentum of IP

The overlap between Product Revenues and Outsourcing Billing is a very interesting one. In my previous post, I mentioned an entrepreneur, D, who got a services company to build a prototype of his product cheaply. Now, this was cheap for him not only because the billing rates were lower - but also because, once the prototype was ready, the team was simply disbanded. He had his prototype, and he would now need coders only when he wanted to build something more, so why bother paying the outsourcee company?

Suppose now that our D does find a customer, and possibly the customer wants a few minor changes to the product. D would probably come back his favourite outsourcee company, pay billing for a couple of months for a small team, get his changes, and go back happy. He'd earn good revenue from his first customer, possibly sell the same product to several dozens of others, and come back to the outsourcee only when he wants grunt work done.

See anything interesting? The outsourcee company gets money - through billing - only when actual coding or testing is going on. It gets the same money whether the product is a failure or a bestseller. And, it has usually no stake in the IP created. If the product does spectacularly, the customer - the guy who owns the product - can pretty much take it easy until his clientele dries up. The outsourcee company, once the coding is done, must IMMEDIATELY assign the coders to a new project so that their billing goes on. They gain no long term benefit from creating IP for their customers.

Again, if D has a team of 10 people, these 10 people can generate astronomical revenues for the company if the product sells well. The revenues of the outsourcee company are strictly proportional to the number of people billed that month.

I'd like to coin a phrase for this : IP has momentum. If you own IP, if you create IP, you can basically coast along on your created IP as long as a market for it exists. As you accumulate it, a small company can earn bigger and bigger revenues without growing in manpower. You can build on your older IP, like momentum, to push through newer products and (what else) sell new IP.
Outsourcee companies have no IP momentum. At the most, they have reputations that bring new customers. But regardless of whether they built the next Windows last month, if they don't have billing flowing in for this month, their bottom line dips.

One more reason for outsourcee companies to move towards products. If nothing else, having a products division would help the company in the long run.

Outsourcing as opportunity

There are dozens of sites - here, here, here, and many more - run by disgruntled American workers talking about how outsourcing destroyed their lives, killed their dreams, how to deal with unemployment, etc. Every site talks about how the next job they found paid half their old wages. One site even has a guide on what you can do if you're laid off. This guide says things like "Meet your ward representative", "Put up posters against outsourcing in malls", and suchlike.
I would like to venture another, more practical, suggestion based on personal experience. A couple of years back, I worked on a small project for an American company. Perhaps calling it a company would be a misnomer, because it consisted of just one employee - a techie who was using some portion of his savings to try out an idea. Let me call him D. He got two friends to do the sales work, and he hired our outsourcee company to do the entire product creation. We were about 6 people, 4 in development, and 2 in QA. D came to a profit sharing agreement with our company - once we developed the product, if he is able to sell it, we receive a part of the profits. In return, while actually creating the product, we work for a very low amount.
The work went on for some months, while D and his friends looked around for potential customers. Eventually, our work was done, we had a working prototype in place, and the 'project', as far as our company was concerned, was done. The team went on to do other projects. D now has a working, demonstrable, prototype of his project idea which he got for next to free. If he finds a customer, our company will get a portion of the profits.
If D had tried to start up a garage company in the US to implement his idea, he would have had to find a bunch of geeks willing to work for free - because he didnt have the money to pay them. Alternately, he would've had to work for years to write the prototype himself. This way, in a matter of months he had a prototype ready, while he was free to explore the market.
It probably takes some personal contacts or hard marketing to get an outsourcee company to agree to a deal like this. But if you can get through that stage, you can get your product idea implemented for real cheap - by the same company, maybe, who took your job. Everything that worked against you when you were an employee - cheap labour, excellent English, IIT-grads, Fast learners - now helps you when you're the brain behind a product idea.
Every techie, I am sure, has some viable product ideas. Outsourcing provides her the means of getting from idea to product cheaply. This has been proven again and again - your boss, who laid you off, has put his faith in the same technique. What stops you from starting up your own firm now?

PS. To the owner of DisplacedTechies, that place where all the jobs are going is Bangalore, not Bangladore. Know your enemy.

A Short followup to the previous post

See this post on the DisplacedTechies blog. The blog is run by, who else, an American IT worker displaced by outsourcing. Agreed that The West Wing is basically a mirror of the government's status, and the episode talked of discusses the outsourcing debate during the presidential election. It still underlines the 'popular culture' aspect of this debate.
It would be interesting to hear from you all on this. Have you seen any more mentions of outsourcing in American music, movies, soap operas, books?