BPadvertisementfrom

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Thursday, 17 January 2013

US-China software arbitrage

Posted on 16:47 by Unknown
Who says outsourcing doesn't work?  :-)

This is just a single anecdote, but it suggests that US software developers cost many times more than coders of similar quality in China ...
Verizon RISK team security blog: ... As it turns out, Bob had simply outsourced his own job to a Chinese consulting firm. Bob spent less that one fifth of his six-figure salary for a Chinese firm to do his job for him. Authentication was no problem, he physically FedExed his RSA token to China so that the third-party contractor could log-in under his credentials during the workday. It would appear that he was working an average 9 to 5 work day. Investigators checked his web browsing history, and that told the whole story.

A typical ‘work day’ for Bob looked like this:

9:00 a.m. – Arrive and surf Reddit for a couple of hours. Watch cat videos
11:30 a.m. – Take lunch
1:00 p.m. – Ebay time.
2:00 – ish p.m Facebook updates – LinkedIn
4:30 p.m. – End of day update e-mail to management.
5:00 p.m. – Go home

Evidence even suggested he had the same scam going across multiple companies in the area. All told, it looked like he earned several hundred thousand dollars a year, and only had to pay the Chinese consulting firm about fifty grand annually. The best part? Investigators had the opportunity to read through his performance reviews while working alongside HR. For the last several years in a row he received excellent remarks. His code was clean, well written, and submitted in a timely fashion. Quarter after quarter, his performance review noted him as the best developer in the building.
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Posted in China, globalization, software development | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • O Rio de Janeiro
    A 1986 book of Bruce Weber photographs taken in Rio de Janeiro. Weber brought some of his own models, but Rickson Gracie and family appear i...
  • News from Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2013
    Measuring the maximal commuting subset of observables uniquely determines the pure state of a quantum system (recently proved Kadison-Singer...
  • Beanbags and causal variants
    Not only do these results implicate common causal variants as the source of heritability in disease susceptibility, but they also suggest th...
  • Talk cancelled
    This talk has been cancelled, for complex reasons that I will not discuss.
  • "Only he was fully awake"
    A great quote from this review of George Dyson's Turing's Cathedral . Despite the title, von Neumann is the central character. ... ...
  • Swedish height in the 20th century
    Average height of Swedish military conscripts during the 20th century. Looks like an increase of roughly 1 cm per decade or about 1.5 SD in ...
  • Helter Skelter
    This is a great interview. I was a kid in the late 60s and early 70s, so dimly aware of and terrified by Manson and  Helter Skelter . Appare...
  • MSU photos 2
    Touring a new building with the deans and provost. MSU vs Boise State from the skyboxes. QB play was a bit shaky for the Spartans.
  • David Epstein and self-censorship
    David Epstein's new book The Sports Gene is getting a lot of attention. For example, this New Yorker review is quite good, as are thes...
  • The differences are enormous
    Luis Alvarez laid it out bluntly: The world of mathematics and theoretical physics is hierarchical. That was my first exposure to it. There...

Categories

  • ability (2)
  • academia (9)
  • affirmative action (8)
  • ai (13)
  • aig (1)
  • alan turing (3)
  • algorithms (2)
  • alpha (2)
  • american society (54)
  • art (3)
  • ashkenazim (1)
  • aspergers (4)
  • athletics (6)
  • autism (4)
  • autobiographical (13)
  • basketball (4)
  • bayes (1)
  • behavioral economics (4)
  • berkeley (5)
  • bgi (24)
  • biology (23)
  • biotech (6)
  • bjj (5)
  • black holes (4)
  • blade runner (2)
  • blogging (3)
  • books (5)
  • borges (2)
  • bounded rationality (10)
  • brainpower (57)
  • bubbles (3)
  • caltech (14)
  • cambridge uk (1)
  • careers (18)
  • charles darwin (1)
  • chet baker (2)
  • China (25)
  • christmas (1)
  • class (2)
  • cognitive science (35)
  • cold war (1)
  • complexity (1)
  • computing (9)
  • conferences (4)
  • cosmology (4)
  • creativity (3)
  • credit crisis (10)
  • crossfit (5)
  • cryptography (2)
  • data mining (4)
  • dating (2)
  • demographics (1)
  • derivatives (5)
  • determinism (1)
  • digital books (1)
  • dna (4)
  • economic history (5)
  • economics (38)
  • econtalk (2)
  • ecosystems (1)
  • education (5)
  • efficient markets (8)
  • Einstein (2)
  • elitism (14)
  • encryption (1)
  • energy (1)
  • entrepreneurs (3)
  • entropy (1)
  • environmentalism (1)
  • eugene (3)
  • evolution (19)
  • expert prediction (6)
  • fake alpha (2)
  • feminism (2)
  • Fermi problems (2)
  • feynman (7)
  • film (9)
  • finance (42)
  • fitness (3)
  • flynn effect (1)
  • foo camp (1)
  • football (5)
  • france (1)
  • free will (1)
  • freeman dyson (2)
  • fx (2)
  • game theory (1)
  • geeks (2)
  • gender (4)
  • genetic engineering (15)
  • genetics (79)
  • genius (24)
  • genomics (2)
  • geopolitics (7)
  • gilded age (13)
  • global warming (1)
  • globalization (23)
  • godel (2)
  • goldman sachs (2)
  • google (4)
  • happiness (2)
  • harvard (8)
  • harvard society of fellows (5)
  • hedge funds (4)
  • hedonic treadmill (1)
  • height (2)
  • higher education (38)
  • history (8)
  • history of science (12)
  • hormones (3)
  • hugh everett (2)
  • human capital (34)
  • humor (1)
  • income inequality (21)
  • india (2)
  • industrial revolution (1)
  • innovation (38)
  • intellectual history (10)
  • intellectual property (1)
  • intellectual ventures (1)
  • internet (4)
  • iq (16)
  • italy (4)
  • james salter (3)
  • japan (4)
  • jiujitsu (8)
  • keynes (1)
  • kids (13)
  • lewontin fallacy (1)
  • lhc (1)
  • literature (12)
  • luck (1)
  • machine learning (8)
  • malcolm gladwell (1)
  • manhattan (2)
  • many worlds (10)
  • mathematics (14)
  • meritocracy (7)
  • microsoft (2)
  • mma (10)
  • monsters (2)
  • moore's law (1)
  • movies (9)
  • MSU (18)
  • music (5)
  • mutants (2)
  • nathan myhrvold (1)
  • neal stephenson (1)
  • neanderthals (2)
  • nerds (3)
  • net worth (5)
  • neuroscience (7)
  • new yorker (1)
  • nicholas metropolis (1)
  • noam chomsky (2)
  • nobel prize (2)
  • nsa (2)
  • nuclear weapons (5)
  • obama (7)
  • olympics (4)
  • oppenheimer (7)
  • patents (1)
  • personality (9)
  • philip k. dick (1)
  • philosophy of mind (2)
  • photos (40)
  • physical training (13)
  • physics (73)
  • podcasts (10)
  • political correctness (6)
  • politics (4)
  • pop culture (2)
  • prisoner's dilemma (1)
  • privacy (2)
  • probability (5)
  • prostitution (2)
  • psychology (25)
  • psychometrics (31)
  • qcd (1)
  • quants (9)
  • quantum computers (2)
  • quantum field theory (3)
  • quantum mechanics (18)
  • race relations (10)
  • real estate (1)
  • realpolitik (6)
  • renaissance technologies (1)
  • research (3)
  • russia (2)
  • sad but true (2)
  • sci fi (8)
  • science (42)
  • sec (1)
  • security (5)
  • silicon valley (6)
  • singularity (1)
  • smpy (1)
  • social networks (2)
  • social science (12)
  • software development (2)
  • solar energy (1)
  • sports (13)
  • startups (19)
  • statistics (16)
  • success (2)
  • taiwan (1)
  • talks (16)
  • teaching (2)
  • technology (34)
  • television (2)
  • travel (24)
  • turing test (1)
  • ufc (8)
  • ultimate fighting (1)
  • universities (33)
  • university of oregon (6)
  • usain bolt (2)
  • venture capital (3)
  • volatility (1)
  • von Neumann (10)
  • wall street (2)
  • war (1)
  • warren buffet (1)
  • wwii (3)

Blog Archive

  • ▼  2013 (134)
    • ►  August (10)
    • ►  July (15)
    • ►  June (22)
    • ►  May (20)
    • ►  April (21)
    • ►  March (18)
    • ►  February (14)
    • ▼  January (14)
      • US income distribution
      • Iceland: Let banks go bankrupt
      • Big data from a big eye in the sky
      • Learn to solve every problem that has been solved
      • Wonders of science
      • As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods
      • US-China software arbitrage
      • Discrete genetic modules can control complex behavior
      • The good books
      • Low hanging fruit and technological innovation
      • Cognitive, Evolutionary, and Computational Models ...
      • Sprints, interval training and energy expenditure
      • Annals of brainpower: Oregon football
      • Scientific publications by country
  • ►  2012 (222)
    • ►  December (17)
    • ►  November (19)
    • ►  October (20)
    • ►  September (25)
    • ►  August (19)
    • ►  July (18)
    • ►  June (16)
    • ►  May (20)
    • ►  April (16)
    • ►  March (18)
    • ►  February (20)
    • ►  January (14)
  • ►  2011 (144)
    • ►  December (20)
    • ►  November (16)
    • ►  October (25)
    • ►  September (23)
    • ►  August (21)
    • ►  July (26)
    • ►  June (13)
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

Unknown
View my complete profile