Sure it's a trend.
But sometimes outsourcing is preferable to integration. Not everyone wants to cut their own checks. I wrote the following in 1999.
- From
http://www.buildinganempire.com/1999.html
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Outsourcing
Probably anything that you think of can and has been contracted out including wartime soldiers (mercenaries).
One alternative to hiring an employee to perform a certain task is to contract the job out. It might be something as small as paying a cleaning service that would save you or one of your employees a considerable amount of time. You can outsource graphics design, programming, system administrator, payroll, bookkeeping, and almost anything else you can think of. You can hire girls to go to shows wearing your company shirts and saying that they work for you.
The core idea is that you need to focus on what makes you money and grows your company rather than on peripheral issues. The decision to outsource something can include many factors. We would never outsource programming, for example, as it would involve a security risk - allowing someone access to our servers, proprietary programs, and ideas. If one is on a tight budget, having everyone chip in every once in a while to clean the office might be a better idea than having a cleaning service come in. Currently, we have about 1000 square feet of office space and clean the office ourselves. In two weeks we move to a 3000 square foot office and will undoubtebly pay a cleaning service at that point.
I know one webmaster that outsources all his graphics work and always to the same guy. Someone who is both reliable and does excellent work. He prefers this to the alternative of having a full time graphics artist which would include not only aying him or her a constant year-long salary but having to create enough projects to keep a graphics artist busy 2000 hours a year - a problem in and of itself.
If you do have a programming job there are probably temporary services in your area where you can hire someone on a day to day basis and might even find someone you'd like to hire on a full time basis. Like I said, we ourselves would never do it but maybe security isn't such an issue with you.
You might also hire a consultant to see how you can streamline your business' operation or a phase of your business operation.
If you run a webmaster program and are cutting the checks yourself I know it can be quite a hassle. There was one program that ran into a lot of problems doing this - they had so many webmasters in their program so quickly that they were not able to keep up and the checks kept getting sent out late. You can call ADP payroll services and they will send all your webmaster checks out for you for (I think it's) about $1.50 a check. Call them and they will send a very friendly rep out to you and set it all up. You can fax them the info once a week or 2 weeks or whatever your pay period is.