When I supervise somebody's work, I don't watch the clock for how many hours a day they work. If the work is good and done within the 3 days or 8 weeks we previously discussed, I don't care.

And if that employee actually outsourced that work from China, do I care? I don't think I care that much. Or maybe I do. Hmm. Let's think about this with a real world example.


The Story

In 2013, Verizon wrote on its IT security blog that it was asked to perform a security assessment for a U.S.-based client after the latter was "startled" to discover a live "open and active VPN connection from Shenyang, China!" After investigating, they found that a Verizon developer [given the pseudonym "Bob"] was behind this - he was simultaneously logged in from China, while sitting at his desk in his U.S. Verizon office.

According to the Verizon account, "As it turns out, Bob had simply outsourced his own job to a Chinese consulting firm. Bob spent less that one fifth of his six-figure salary for a Chinese firm to do his job for him."

Programmer Bob allegedly would spend his day noodling around most of the day on the web, with a long lunch in between - then at the end of each day, he would update management on his work progress.

In short, he was successfully outsourcing everything about his job and getting exemplary performance reviews.


Actual Problems

My initial reaction at the time was that Verizon was being short-sighted; if they work was good, who cares?

But there are some obvious problems for a responsible employer. For one, this VPN access opened the company up to unauthorized access from non-employees. The fact that it was in China perhaps made it sound 10% more sinister.

And then to have work performed by people without a contract with Verizon, it created a slew of liability issues for the work, should there ever be a problem.

Furthermore, software code ownership is a big deal. With employee developers the rights to the code itself defaults to the company, not the programmer. Contracted developers have a more flexible arrangement, depending on their agreement or contract?

In this case, the outsourced programmers are way too much of an X factor.


The Tone About Bob

Articles about this Verizon incident seem to have a tone; this was 2013, long before A.I. and back when employees were normally expected to do their work at their desk in company office space.

The part that seems catty about this is that most of the articles I read on this made a big deal out of "Bob" playing games online or shopping on Etsy. Who cares what he was doing with this freed-up time, whether he was playing Solitaire or writing a novel.

Yet the aggrieved party, Verizon wasn’t upset about laziness. They were upset about loss of control and breach of trust boundaries


Is This Wrong?

Normally I'm not so brief and definitive when writing about software issues in business. But ...

Legally: Yup, "Bob" messed up in clear ways.
Ethically: I don't think it's wrong morally to outsource.


Is the A.I. Situation Any Different?

When it comes to modern workers using A.I. to write code, the big difference is that the company is aware of the practice.

That said, "Bob" was just managing the Chinese workers like modern employees "manage" A.I. Not really that different ultimately about the situation except for liability issues.

AI makes the "Bob" 2013 model of delegation feel less like misconduct and more like normal 2026 workflow.


Conclusion

The work landscape keeps changing - and changing fast. Outsourcing to China would have been impossible in 1970. But the A.I. capabilities that I, and perhaps you too, use nearly daily were unimaginable even just six years ago in 2020.

My larger point: As long as the work gets done and client/customers are happy - that’s what's important.

What Bob discovered then, and what we're all discovering now is that "doing your job" no longer necessarily means personally executing the work.


SOURCES:

LA Times article: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2013-jan-17-la-fi-mo-man-outsourced-job-to-china-20130117-story.html
ABC News: https://abcnews.com/Business/us-software-developer-busted-employer-outsourcing-job-china/story?id=18230346
Spectum: https://spectrum.ieee.org/programmer-bob-latterday-tom-sawyer-or-massive-security-risk