I just finished the audiobook for The Four Hour Workweek… Now!
I’ve wanted to read it for a couple of years, but I’ve been conflicted (not least because some thinkers I respect don’t like it). Mostly the book can be summed up like this: elimination over optimization, outsource everything you can, and get to the point where you’re truly untethered to a desk — and then telecommute from the beach.
I’ve already started. Today I contacted an outsourcing firm in India to get quotes for some of my game ideas, but a couple of weeks ago I outsourced editing for my next (long-procrastinated) short, a music video. Here’s some test footage:
So the new modus I’m trying is to do the parts I really love, pay people to do the rest, and take (appropriate) credit for the finished product. Capitalism!
The issue I have with this model is transactional costs and, in an imperfect market, every step of the supply chain will be extracting profit. Are you confident that the cost of living in India and your comparative advantage in high-level labour is enough to make up for those inefficiencies?
No, but I must try. The math is simple enough: I have to hire some set of coders for less than my own hourly rate, plus projected profits of the eventual product.
If I set the profit projection to zero, then the math simplifies to: can I hire some number of coders for less than my own hourly rate?
Unfortunately that’s still a bad metric because, no doubt, the quality of the output of the lower-priced coder is a giant variant — an hour of coding time is not a uniform commodity.
That’s a new post though.
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