I’m from Serbia and let me tell you a little bit about my experience with outsourcing.

The first real job I got was 5–6 years ago. It was a remote content writing position. Basically, I wrote articles on various topics to be used for content marketing and link building purposes.

At the time, I didn’t know what link building was, or search engine optimization for that matter. So after four months on the job, the company’s owners invited me for a job interview and offered what they called a promotion.

Being my first interview at an agency, I took it really seriously. When I walked in the office I noticed a lot of employees were people I went to college with. That was reassuring, although I wasn’t aware back then why English college graduates work in the SEO industry.

This is where my experience with outsourcing begins.

I got the job, passed with flying colors! They loved me because I was really enthusiastic about it. Before that, I worked as an English teacher and a translator, but only part-time. I thought that this new opportunity was something that would lead me to a better life. After I got the job I had to go through “link building training”, which lasted for a whole month and for which I received only half of the salary, approximately $160.

On the first day, one of the bosses told me that I have to create a fake persona and showed me this website. It’s a fake name generator. I was immediately disappointed. The reason why we had to create fake personas is because English natives don’t respond well to weird Serbian names. And also because the whole thing was a sham.

I start blasting emails offering guest posts to random blogs. These guest posts contained one link toward a client’s website. And since I was really enthusiastic about it at first, I quickly advanced in the company to get a higher salary and to work on less spammy, but still spammy projects.

After two years I reached the maximum salary. It was around $550. For me to make this amount, I had to work eight hours a day- five at the company and three at home. By the way, the five-hour workday is something the company used to attract talented young college-educated people.

A year passed and my workload maxed. I was now building forty to fifty links per month. Every day I would be in front of the computer, sending emails and ordering content to be published on various websites. The work started to become overwhelming. When I asked for a deserved raise and a different position, they wouldn’t let me get off the link building team. I was creating too much value.

I didn’t know that I was being played, big time. When I was working as a writer, my rate was $0.01 per word. Anyone who knows a thing or two about content writing knows this is robbery. I was getting paid approximately $12 per one link built. And they sold these links for 10x the price to their direct clients.

This company was actually outsourced by an Australian company. I was working eight hours a day and earning $550 per month, whereas the average link builder’s salary in the west is around $8000!

After 3 years, I left the company to join another SEO agency, also here in Serbia. This time, they promised me a management position based on my knowledge and experience and a bit higher salary — $600.

After I signed the papers, they told me I was getting $100 less than initially stated. My friend, who was the CEO and who was the reason I though it might be a cool place to work at got fired a month after I got hired.

Another Australian company told him that if he gets a branch up and running in Serbia he would get a raise and become a stakeholder. But guess what? They conned him. They fired him only because he demanded what was promised. That and higher salaries for the workers, who work in a windowless office. The Australians however, got what they wanted — a cheap, obedient workforce in a hardship region. I got another job offer and left this shithole after six months.

The new job seemed promising. It was an American millionaire who offered $150 per one link for his website. He told me that he had outsourced teams from hundreds of countries all over the world — India, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Serbia…

What he does is hires five American workers so that the business would seem legit and then illegally hires hundreds of workers from different “hardship regions”, as rich countries refer to us.

These people, including myself spent the same amount of time if not more to do the work, but we got paid ten times less. Working at a computer every day takes its toll and we are not compensated for enough to have a comfortable lifestyle or even pay health benefits.

So after a while, the guy got fourteen people from Serbia working for him at the price of two average American workers.

Awesome.

After only 2 months, he started lowering the amount he catfished us with, only to end up with being payed 3 times less than we were initially promised. He promised us severance too, which he of course did not deliver and laid us all off when he got what he wanted. By the way, he now ranks first on Google for an incredibly valuable keyword.

I am tired, sick, disappointed... Also I feel as if I wasted 6 years of my life on the corporate thieves who take advantage of the poor without hesitation. I went to school the same way an American did. Why not pay me the same amount if I can do the job just as good or even better?

Outsourcing exists only for businessmen to exploit the good people in difficult situations. They ruin the lives of thousands of people in a way they wouldn’t do to their fellow countrymen, family members or themselves for that matter.

Outsourcing is modern slavery and anyone who underpays people from poorly-developed countries is a cruel asshole. I hope the world comes to its senses after it gets too damn late.