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About eight months ago, a Verizon employee was fired after an internal investigation on data breaches turned up a shocking revelation: this high-paid, high-ranking employee was outsourcing his job to China while he spent the entire day on the internet, watching cat videos and shopping on eBay. All the while getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for his “work.” “Bob” was even considered to be one of, if not the best developers Verizon had on staff.
Due to privacy concerns, the employee is simply referred to as “Bob” and ol’ Bob was fleecing Verizon while some other dude halfway around the world was doing all of his work. Bob paid a third-party contractor $50,000 a year for their services, while retaining the remainder of his salary from Verizon, getting sparkling performance reviews and still positively contributing to the employment rate in the good ol’ US of A. That’s a power move I can respect.
In all honesty, if you were in a position to pull this off, wouldn’t you do it? I mean, if I could find a guy who could do my job for oh, say, 20% of my salary and my employer wouldn’t find out about it, I’d totally pull that scam.
Can you go to jail for this? Excuse me, not jail, but Federal “pound me in the ass” prison? I’m pretty sure I could hold my own in county lockup. All it’d really take is just kicking some homeless guy’s ass until he pees on himself and then boom, you’re the alpha male. It’s funny, because I’m listening to the leaked Katy Perry single while picturing myself kicking wholesale ass in jail. Kinda concerning?
Either way, I’d do this. Worst case scenario, you get fired. Best case scenario, you collect a nice paycheck, watch Vine compilation videos and read PGP all day long. The real American dream has been redefined.
I don’t think there’s a person in the country that hasn’t at least considered doing this. Unless, of course, you’re growing your own business or don’t make enough money to outsource your job to China. $50k a year? That’s more than you’ll make in a year probably until you’re at least 28.
I can picture how the confrontation and the firing went down…
Tech Guy: Bob, come with me.
Bob: *quickly closes 13 web browser windows* Sure thing, tech guy.
Tech Guy: Follow me to the boss’s office, Bob.
Boss: Bob, what the hell, bro? You’ve been outsourcing your job to China for three years?
Bob: I don’t know what you’re talking about, boss.
Tech Guy: Allow me to interject here. Bob, we have your internet history. You literally haven’t done any work for 38 months. The only website you’ve visited in the last three years that could be remotely tied to your work is Mashable.
Bob: I didn’t even know you guys could track that kind of stuff.
Tech Guy: You use Internet Explorer 6. It wasn’t that hard.
Boss: We’re a multi-billion dollar corporation. You didn’t think we knew how to pull up your browsing history?
Bob: Goddamnit.
Boss: We have no choice, Bob. We have to fire you and you’ll be hearing from our lawyers.
Here’s to you, Bob. I was rooting for you, man. You raged against the corporate machine and unfortunately lost the battle. The war continues for you, though. Cubicle warriors everywhere salute you.
On the other hand, you also might’ve screwed a ton of people out of their jobs considering your story revealed that most companies can outsource their jobs to China for a fraction of what the cost and twice the productivity. So, fuck you too, I guess.
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Brian McGannon
What do I love? I love happy hour, a good golf tan, and getting moderately drunk during dinner.
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Why didn’t he Shift+Ctrl+N?
Epitome of “work smarter, not harder.”
I learned about this in a class last semester. Apparently one of the many companies that the guy worked for ended up hiring the Chinese guy that was doing all of the work.
this is kind of a tfm…
Bringing a new definition to “made in China.”