From Employee to Consultant - How To Make the Shift

Anthony checks in with a delightful story from the BBC on a well paid fellow who hired people overseas to do his work.  (This got lost on my computer, so I put it up just now):

"The employee, an "inoffensive and quiet" but talented man versed in several programming languages, "spent less than one fifth of his six-figure salary for a Chinese firm to do his job for him", Mr Valentine said.
"Authentication was no problem. He physically FedExed his RSA [security] 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 nine-to-five work day," he added.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21043693

And he watched cat videos!  He could have started another business. 

But he did start another business.  He was thinking of his "employer" as a client, and with the money he was paid gave his "client" the very best value for their money.  His job was providing management services for his "client" (employer).

Now what is curious to me about this is the fact that this was going on in the 1980s, so I presume it has blossomed wildly in the last 30 years.  When a firm like Microsoft or Google has a "brilliant" Asian worker who seems to produce as much as ten others, perhaps it is because he has ten others working for him.

With the foreign expert immigration H1-B visa program such a benefit to tech companies, and the bane to USA tech engineers, perhaps someone should study to what degree USA tech engineers are competing against H1-B engineers, who happen to have a posse back in Bangalore doing the heavy lifting.

Now,  I have no problem at all with this.  The job is getting done.  I would just say those USA tech engineers who cannot compete alone against Fan + 12, simply line up your own 12, like the enterprising fellow upon which the BBC reports.

No doubt this fellow will lose his job and perhaps face sanctions.  Too bad.  I'd love to work with him. And the "barefoot bandit" teen who eluded law enforcement for a few years as he had no problem figuring out how to escape in airplanes and boats on intuition as to how they worked, and the child who scammed his way onto flights across the country to see his grandpa.  We prosecute these kids!  Crazy!

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