Musings on the Expat Techie
For years management thinkers, textbooks and movies eulogized the glamour of the Expatriate professional. Wikipedia “An expatriate (in abbreviated form, expat) is a person temporarily or permanently resident in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing or legal residence.” With an entire generation of technologists cris-crossing the globe, the glamour of being an Expatriate professional is certainly wearing thin (though not the experience and exposure that it brings).
I sometimes wonder if the conventional definition of Expat is being redefined. For instance, the Wikipedia entry talks about how “the term is often used in the context of Westerners living in non-Western countries, although it is also used to describe Westerners living in other Western countries” Does this mean that Indians living and working in the west, many of whom are permanent residents or Naturalized citizen in their adopted lands are not Expatriates?
A few interesting blog entries by Western Expats moving to India: Lin Chase’s entry on “Building a World-Class Research Facility in India” and Fast Company blog "Dreaming of a Global Career? Think Bangalore"
Just some of the issues that managers routinely come to grips with while planning to manage Expat teams:
- Compensation, Salaries, wages and allowances: perhaps the most complex aspect of managing expat workers.
- Cross-cultural, communication and other issues
- Visas, immigration and other travel related paperwork. [on this topic, it is interesting to observe the recent announcement by Microsoft: managers will try and leverage global skills while observing the laws of the land.]
- Facilitating and providing an infrastructure for basic logistics for Expat staff.
There are pros and cons of being a temporary or permanent Expat, aspects of which managers of hi-tech companies are coming to grips with. Entire textbooks have been written about counseling western Expatriate on moving ‘east.’ The aspects of managing techie-Exapats from east (China, India etc) moving west is an area that has not received much formal attention from researchers and ‘gurus’ though a lot of empirical and anecdotal studies and articles are being published.
Bottomline: While these issues may or may not be under the purview of managers of offshored programs, an awareness of the intricacies is certain to be an asset.
