IT jobs take root in small town

But entrepreneur facing a new challenge from automation

MACON, Mo. — Shane Mayes figured out a way to outsmart globalization and hire U.S. workers, but he stands to have a harder time competing with robots. Like other employers, he sees the rise of artificial intelligence as a major potential disrupter — and he’s scrambling to respond.

But Mayes is accustomed to challenges.

Back in 2005, Mayes moved to small-town Macon, Mo., about 60 miles north of Columbia, because his new wife, Lisa, wanted to attend A.T. Still University in nearby Kirksville. Mayes, then 32, wasn’t sure what he’d do for a living.

When he worked for Elsevier, a major publisher with a big presence in St. Louis County, he’d seen jobs outsourced to India. That gave him an idea.

Many small towns in rural America, battered by recessions and globalization, saw factory jobs disappear, and for many, that meant fewer opportunities. In Macon, the loss of the Toastmaster factory in 2001 eliminated more than 600 jobs from the local economy.

Mayes figured if companies could ship work overseas in search of cheap labor, perhaps they could find what they were looking for in distressed communities in their own backyards.

Telecommunications and computers now make it possible to locate some work anywhere on the planet — and that’s especially true for information technology. If an information-technology specialist can work from India, he also could work in rural America, where the cost of living is still relatively low and jobs are in high demand.

His plan was to start a company to provide information-technology services that would be staffed by displaced workers he’d train. His first obstacles: He didn’t have any money, and his credit was rocky.

Mayes found an angel in Frank Withrow, who at the time was Macon County, Mo.’s economic development director. Withrow helped him secure a $52,400 loan from the city of Macon and another for $52,400 from the Mark Twain Revolving Loan Fund in 2005.

“I used to have a daily newspaper and was in a similar situation when I started, and somebody believed in me, so I believed in him,” Withrow said.

Today, the company Mayes created, Onshore Outsourcing, employs 380 people who do work for some of the nation’s biggest corporations. Clients have included national giants such as Nike, Commerce Bank and JPMorgan as well as big St. Louis area-based employers Panera, Centene, Ameren and Mallinckrodt.

Onshore Outsourcing identifies workers by offering an eight-week crash course on programming, customer service and software testing. The top students get hired by the company, where they develop, test and support software applications for clients.

“People love the Onshore value proposition, what we stand for, so they will give us opportunities that we are not accustomed to,” Mayes said. “We end up with a very diverse service portfolio because our clients have asked us to do this stuff.”

Onshore Outsourcing has a number of things going for it. The workforce it draws on is relatively stable and low cost. Mayes says the average salary is about $35,000 (but can rise to $80,000 for more experienced software developers). And a U.S.-based workforce is attractive to corporations with security concerns. Despite the success, Mayes is worried.

“Onshore is winning with all the new business all the time, and everybody is doing great. My fear is that it is shortsighted,” Mayes said.

According to the recent study by BMC Software, 73 percent of informationtechnology decision-makers believe businesses that do not embrace automation to achieve the larger digital business strategy within the next five years will cease to exist in 10 years.

“Automation in a human outsourcing business is not a good place to be,” Mayes said. “In order to prepare ourselves well for the future, we have to attack these technologies.”

Fear of automation pushed Mayes to start a new subsidiary, OTS Digital, where employees are will develop new technology. The company, based in the U.S. Virgin Islands, was started in January and currently has two employees.

“The Virgin Islands is a good place to attract people and hire talent,” Mayes said. “To be slightly divergent and be able to offer a different lifestyle for some of the employees, I decided to go in a different direction.”