Outsourcing Creativity

Some day, peo­ple will look back to the early 21st cen­tury and think to them­selves, “what an inno­v­a­tive and chaotic time of human­ity to have lived in.” They will see our movies, com­mer­cials, music, blogs, papers, excite­ment, hap­pi­ness, vio­lence, wars, and suf­fer­ing like no other gen­er­a­tion which came before us. The dig­i­tal age of world-wide com­mu­ni­ca­tion came about — report­ing events in for­eign lan­guages in near-instantaneous “real time.” They will see us as a gen­er­a­tion of lit­tle patience — con­stantly want­ing more with each pass­ing sec­ond and not stop­ping to look around at what we have done to this world. They will look in amaze­ment, but also remark at how awk­ward society’s grow­ing pains came about.

The first decade was like no other. They could directly see the impact a few greedy peo­ple had on the entire world. It was a global eco­nomic depres­sion that was caused pri­mar­ily by an unreg­u­lated bank­ing sys­tem — know­ingly let­ting peo­ple who were at risk to buy the homes of their dreams. And when the bankers real­ized that they weren’t going to be paid back, they passed the risk to smaller banks who didn’t real­ize the sever­ity of the entire prob­lem. This was cou­pled with two wars, ris­ing oil prices, and the out­sourc­ing of jobs through faster telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. The peo­ple at the end of the decade were liv­ing on the edge of  what the next day may or may not have brought. It was com­pletely unsus­tain­able to have con­tin­ued in that direction.

What they had is a drain on the sys­tem. The money went to the top and never came back down. And if the paper trail did go any­where, it often lead straight to the Mid­dle East, China, and India. The baron tycoons and cor­po­rate monop­o­lies took to their advan­tage the means to blind­side gov­ern­ments and offi­cials — none of the policy-makers cared so much as long as their own fam­i­lies weren’t suf­fer­ing and they were forg­ing ahead. But the almighty dol­lar mat­tered most — and these tycoons felt that if they could get their work done in for­eign, dis­parate coun­tries, then they could safely pad their bot­tom line at a sub­stan­tial profit.

What they didn’t real­ize is that this was a house of cards wait­ing to fall down.

I just received word today that a col­league and major com­peti­tor known through­out the world had to shut its doors this week. On Fri­day, they had to let every­one go. While some might view a com­peti­tor hav­ing to close shop as an oppor­tu­nity, I view it more with a bit of sad­ness and con­cern. The fact is that com­pe­ti­tion is healthy to a degree. This com­pany helped inspire my own work and wanted me to bet­ter myself. They con­stantly pushed me in the right direc­tion in order to get ahead.

It brings me lit­tle hap­pi­ness to see these col­leagues out of work. They are peo­ple within the 3D com­mu­nity that I’ve come to known over the years, almost like friends that I’ve had in real life. And it’s espe­cially wor­ri­some when they are con­sid­ered to be one of the best teams of artists in the world.

In part, we can blame the hous­ing mar­ket calamity for bring­ing us this mess. The truth is that this was only the tin­der, and the cat­a­lyst was ris­ing oil prices. Peo­ple sud­denly found them­selves out of work, and uncer­tainty started to set in. The com­pa­nies that were left over started to send their jobs over­seas in mass because they could save money in order to stay afloat. The prob­lem with out­sourc­ing is that it is a tem­po­rary ban­dage on a much larger issue. If all of the money is trav­el­ing out­ward, then who is left on the inside to be buy­ing what is produced?

Glob­al­iza­tion is a funny thing. In some ways, it brings peace and order to those poorer coun­tries. It opens up com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It opens up free­dom. How­ever, as the finan­cial bal­ance starts to tip in their favor, the peo­ple left over on the inside have much less to work with. In the long-run, it brings about a more sta­bi­lized world. In the interim, it desta­bi­lizes it and causes panic. As to how long that desta­bi­liza­tion lasts, it’s sim­ply a guess for now until either the bal­ance evens out which could last years, or West­ern gov­ern­ments step-in and put caps through tar­iffs or taxes on jobs flow­ing out­ward. Right now, we have a bath­tub full of water, and some­one just pulled the drain while we were still sit­ting in it.

This issue of out­sourc­ing isn’t just lim­ited to my field of archi­tec­tural ren­der­ings. It’s hap­pen­ing to almost every cre­ative field.

I’ve talked with sev­eral print­ers recently. Most of them were telling me that they were strug­gling through lay­offs. Their main com­plaint was that their larger print jobs were sud­denly get­ting shipped off to China to be printed. In order to stay com­pet­i­tive, let alone stay in busi­ness, these print­ers had to fol­low suit and lay off some of their staff in order to com­pete with the rock-bottom prices being offered by the Chinese.

As for pub­lish­ing itself, I worked for Scholas­tic and Pear­son Pub­lish­ing as a free­lancer for a num­ber of years. Towards the end of my pub­lish­ing career, we were pack­ing books up into PDFs, and send­ing those books over to China to be printed out. As if the print­ers in this coun­try didn’t have enough com­pe­ti­tion locally to worry about.

The same thing is hap­pen­ing to archi­tects and engi­neers. They’re find­ing their plans and draw­ings being shipped off to other coun­tries. Peo­ple that spent 6+ years in school to learn a fairly sophis­ti­cated trade are sud­denly find­ing the rug pulled out from under­neath them. Sure, the qual­ity may not be 100% of what would be pro­duced here, but in some cases what is pro­duced over­seas might reach 85% of that qual­ity. Most peo­ple also couldn’t argue with those prices being offered.

And if that isn’t enough, it’s hap­pen­ing to other cre­ative fields as well as manufacturing.

Even other fields that were con­sid­ered to be more secure are feel­ing the tight­en­ing of the belt/noose. Because finances have been so tight, instead of hir­ing a skilled elec­tri­cian or a plumber, peo­ple are turn­ing to peo­ple that are new to this coun­try (some legal and some not) to get their jobs done instead. If a home­owner has to make a deci­sion between spend­ing $100/hour or $10/hour for some­one that could prob­a­bly do some­what of a com­pa­ra­ble job, who do you think most peo­ple will turn to? So this bal­ance has been severely upset, and it has trick­led down to other facets in life and even fields that on the out­side, might appear unrelated.

This is a much dif­fer­ent world than the 80s and 90s when peo­ple com­plained that the Japan­ese were tak­ing over the auto­mo­bile indus­try, and that the Detroit-based man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs were being shipped to Mex­ico. Today is a time of instant com­mu­ni­ca­tion. You can sim­ply press a but­ton and hit send and the job gets sent over­seas. Jobs can be lit­er­ally lost within a mat­ter of sec­onds. We’re not talk­ing about heavy equip­ment and parts being shipped (although they are), but more sci­en­tific and intel­lec­tual pur­suits as well. Plus, you don’t “need” to have that insider source any longer to have that “secret” eco­nomic advan­tage. All it takes is a lit­tle bit of home­work and research on any search engine to find out who could man­u­fac­ture or cre­ate your prod­uct for less.

So, I feel it is very impor­tant for peo­ple and busi­ness own­ers to con­sider the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of send­ing their jobs over­seas. It may work as a tem­po­rary fix, but shortly there­after, you will erode your base of support.

Out­sourc­ing, while hav­ing some pos­i­tive effects, also has some neg­a­tive con­se­quences. In my field of art, I am con­stantly see­ing this. A few of the things I’ve encoun­tered are:

1. Mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion lead­ing to infe­rior products.
2. Mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion lead­ing to longer than usual pro­duc­tion times.
3. Mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion lead­ing to increased costs due to an increase in pro­duc­tion times.
4. Tar­get dates and dead­lines being missed.
5. Tar­get dates and dead­lines being missed due to time-zone differences.
6. Increased costs locally due to time-zone differences.
7. Infe­rior products.
8. Copy­right infringement.
9. Patent infringe­ment.
10. Prod­uct theft.
11. For­eign com­pa­nies using other people’s work ille­gally to pass off as their own.
12. Stolen money which is nearly impos­si­ble to recover.
13. Loss of local jobs.
14. Loss of local, skilled-jobs.
15. Loss of busi­ness as a result of busi­ness policies.
16. Sup­port­ing “sweat­shop” types of conditions.
17. Sup­port­ing child labor conditions.
18. Sup­port­ing cor­rupt gov­ern­ment offi­cials and ties.

It’s sim­ple (and irre­spon­si­ble) for most busi­ness own­ers to turn a blind eye to these prob­lems. The polic­ing isn’t there and our gov­ern­ments can’t step in to mon­i­tor every sit­u­a­tion. It’s almost as if “you don’t see it, then there must not be a prob­lem” men­tal­ity. Well, that is a very reck­less posi­tion of fel­low busi­ness own­ers to take when all you are doing is con­cern­ing your­self with the bot­tom dol­lar. As far as I’m con­cerned, tak­ing that posi­tion makes you just as guilty enact­ing those injustices.

I had an archi­tect write me the other day for a project. In his email, he wrote:

“I am try­ing to source a US firm that is com­pet­i­tive with the for­eign ren­der­ing firms.”

I imme­di­ately picked up the phone and called him say­ing, “you have to be kid­ding me. There’s no way I can com­pete with a $300 ren­der­ing. This is very dif­fi­cult work and if I have to spend an entire week or two work­ing on this — how do you expect me to live on $300? I need to make at least $2,000 a week min­i­mum as a busi­ness owner by the time you fac­tor in busi­ness expenses and taxes. You have to give me a break…”

He started apol­o­giz­ing and said, “I’m sorry. But every­one seems to know that you can get ren­der­ings for those prices. The same thing is hap­pen­ing to archi­tec­ture too. I don’t feel good about it one bit. But that’s what the devel­oper asked me for.”

I replied, “well, I think you need to edu­cate him.”

As for whether or not that hap­pens, I think the like­li­hood of that hap­pen­ing is slim to none. Unfor­tu­nately, peo­ple are afraid to “bite the hand that feeds them.” If he really wanted to do us all a favor, he could send the devel­oper this arti­cle — which I will gladly for­ward to him.

Ulti­mately, you have to weigh the pos­i­tives and neg­a­tives of sup­port­ing the peo­ple closer to home — and if it keeps going down this path, then we won’t have much of a home to speak of. I know where my con­scious­ness sits — but where does yours?