Hedging the risk of losing your job to India

By wpcomimportuser1 | August 2, 2007 | +

Genpact, the former GE division that got the whole India call-center thing going a decade ago, started trading on the New York Stock Exchange today. Worried that your job might be moved to Gurgaon? Buy a few shares of G and prepare to profit from your own misfortune!

Now if only I’d thought to hedge the risk of working in old-line media by buying GOOG back at the IPO.

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http://girishmallapragada.blogpsot.com Girish

Justin,

Just clarifying — don’t you think globalization is a 2-way street. In my opinion, the only way the flow of jobs can stop is due to pure economic factors such as greater integration of the global workforce (and capital) which will eventually reduce the pay-differential across countries.
Peter Varhol

Girish, you are probably right. Globalization is good in the aggregate, but can cause pain and disruption for (mostly) random individuals in the process. This is in part why it has become politicized. When manufacturing was offshored on a large scale, the same uncertainties were felt by blue collar workers. Today, offshoring has moved up the food chain, to the point where an increasing number of educated professionals find their jobs at risk. And from an individual basis, it is not at all clear what actions those professionals can take to guarantee their jobs and their lifestyles.

If Justin didn’t get out and take photos of New York or Washington every once in a while, we could reasonably think he was in, well, the Ukraine making perhaps a quarter of his salary. And even so, his employer may well conclude that the business value of those photos is not worth his salary, and offshore this blog and his column anyway. A professional in that position (and many of us are) may well be smart to hedge.
Justin Fox

How do you know that Apple store photo wasn’t from Kiev?