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I remember it all so well. The dot-com had just dot-bombed, the stock market was suffering from a sucker punch to the throat, and we were beginning to hear about some guy named Ken Lay. A little while later, news came out about Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, and Adelphia, among others. It seemed that companies were going under and CEOs were getting indicted faster than you can say ‘stock option’. And then came the layoffs. Thousands upon thousands began losing their jobs on a regular basis. We started hearing about places overseas that were getting all kinds of work from US companies.
I’m pretty sure that most everyone has heard that many jobs have been ‘outsourced’ through something called ‘off-shoring’. What that means is that a job that used to be based in the US is now done by someone in another country. You see, many companies started thinking about how nice it would be to pay someone in India 50% less to do the same job they were currently paying a US employee. They evidently didn’t stop to think that the new employee didn’t speak English as their first language, was half a world away and lived in a completely different culture… I guess it’s sometimes easy to miss those little, really minor details such as the ability to communicate with an employee and not having to deal with a time difference so great that it could take days to accomplish what would otherwise take hours.
Surprise, surprise… It would appear that some US companies are now starting to reconsider this whole ‘off-shoring’ thing. Yea, they save money directly in the form of paying lower wages, but there are other, more hidden, costs in terms of customer satisfaction, phone charges, etc. What’s a company to do?
The answer is something called ‘home-shoring’ or ‘near-shoring’ or ‘rural sourcing’, or whatever other buzzword they’ve come up with. What it means, and why you should care, is that some pretty smart entrepreneurs started thinking that there are some really bright folks living in some rural parts of the US. And these rural areas of the country are usually the places that need jobs. Hmmm…. Is there a business model there somewhere?
In fact, there is. IT consulting companies and call centers are starting to pop up in the most unlikely of places. Take Lebanon, Tennessee for example. No, not Knoxville or Nashville, that’s Lebanon, TN. And then there’s Beckley, West Virginia, which is doing quite nicely, thank you, when it comes to operating successful high-tech consulting companies.
What does that have to do with those of us here in Eastern Kentucky, you ask? Good question and here’s the answer: West Liberty. You see, there is a little company in the small but beautiful town of West Liberty, KY whose goal is to provide high paying technology jobs to folks within the region. They are called Natural Bridge Technologies; visit them on the web at www.NaturalBridgeTech.com.
When I graduated from Morehead State University back in the 90’s, the thought of having a software job in Jackson, Kentucky was laughable. I first moved to Lexington, then to Atlanta. Finally, after too many years, I was able to move back home. With the concept of ‘home-shoring’ and companies like Natural Bridge Technologies, future geeks can have the best of both worlds: making good money writing software during the day and spending evenings gazing at the beautiful foothills of Appalachia in which we live.
As always, if you have any questions or suggestions for future articles, please email me at mike@MikeBryant.com. |