Outsourced ! yea...

[Deschodt]

Not the movie.. My job.. this year...

Allow me a small rant... As an IT guy, this is now the 3rd time I go through that, except this time I'm probably gonna bite it, and it's always the same BS...

Company goes public, or gets bought, done both. In come the consultants... Despite the problem very likely being way too many chiefs and not enough indians (VP of talent maximization? Director of availability management? are those even real jobs?), and in many cases poor guidance (I'm not a bitter techie, I also got an MBA, I know some of this stuff) the consultants are not about to bite the hand that sign their checks, so they recommend outsourcing... Big savings are projected by the consultants, and the VPs buy it hook line and sinker, people get let go... Then later whoever has not cashed in their stock options to go fishing in the bahamas realizes Apu and Sanjay, while cheap, cannot quite do all that your local people did. Sure they are cheaper but you gotta redo a significant portion of the work due to a variety of factors (communication, time difference, misunderstandings, scope issues) or add more layers of quality control... Then once they got you after the first year, they raise their price too. So you go back and try to rebuild your IT department, by which time the good people are long gone and you are stuck with the deadwood... Lather, rinse, repeat....

Oh well, it's not about logic, it's about making your stock price go up in time to sell your stock options. I think this might be just the impetus (that's latin for kick in the butt) I need to go do something else entirely... If only I could figure out what I wanna do when I grow up ;-)

It's could be a while, but i got this planned out... use the severance to get my Private pilot license and take a sabbatical... then we'll see if i can stand corporate America, still! I have my doubts...

[widgeon13]

Go in to politics. Or become a consultant.

They're both the same, bloodsuckers!

[fintstone]

Tough break! Good luck with your plan to make lemonade from these lemons. When one door closes, another opens.

[jhynesrockmtn]

I went through this a few times as a senior finance/accounting type. Not outsourcing but merger/consolidation so the stock value could be realized. I got off the hamster wheel several years ago. The biggest POS I worked for during those years is now the CEO at GM.

[widebody911]

Just yesterday my boss asked me point blank what parts of my job could be done remotely.

[asphaltgambler]

Originally Posted by jhynesrockmtn

.......................The biggest POS I worked for during those years is now the CEO at GM.

UH............that makes TOTAL sense to me; nothing but POS's in the car business with the worst at the top

[azasadny]

I'm working from home today because I have the flu, but I really need to be in the office for face-to-face meetings. My job was cut at Ford, back in 2007 and I took the salaried employee buyout. More than %30 of the salaried employees were cut, jobs were outsourced but contractors were safe. I don't know of any contractors who were cut. I'm now a contractor/consultant and it's not all it's cracked up to be not by any stretch of the imagination. I can be cut any time and then have to hit the streets looking for my next assignment and my company takes a healthy cut from my billing rate. It's better than being unemployed, but not by much. The last 5 years have been incredibly stressful for me...just like many, many others...

[944Larry]

Originally Posted by widgeon13

Go in to politics. Or become a consultant.

They're both the same, bloodsuckers!

Why not doubledip-become a political consultant!

[Groesbeck Hurricane]

I was going to suggest giggilo. Used to joke about that years ago, now I'm likely too old! Don't let options pass you by!

[legion]

Originally Posted by Deschodt

Then later whoever has not cashed in their stock options to go fishing in the bahamas realizes Apu and Sanjay, while cheap, cannot quite do all that your local people did. Sure they are cheaper but you gotta redo a significant portion of the work due to a variety of factors (communication, time difference, misunderstandings, scope issues) or add more layers of quality control... Then once they got you after the first year, they raise their price too. So you go back and try to rebuild your IT department, by which time the good people are long gone and you are stuck with the deadwood... Lather, rinse, repeat....

I work for a privately-held company, so making this quarter's/year's numbers good is not so much of a problem. (The owners have a much longer-term perspective.)

BUT...

I have had whole projects or large chunks of projects outsourced. We see the same thing. The joke is that it costs 2.5 as much to outsource something because the initial offshore work "costs" half us much, then it takes me twice as long to fix it. Our first-line managers are aware of the problem, but it gets sugar-coated as it moves up the chain. And that's not to say that externals don't do good work. We have two on our team that have been onsite for years in the past, are now both offshore, and have been on our team for 5 and 7 years respectively. They understand what our team does, the nature of the business and the work, and can do the work just fine.

When I first started, it was after a massive re-org when some VP decided that anyone could write code in any language for any system. They threw people together in random units to break up the "silos". Over then next five years, the old teams slowly re-coallesced.

My reservation is that no one cares about your business as much as you do. External developers are compensated on meeting deadlines, so they do. They then either hide or fail to recognize any problems with a system that can jeopardize a deadline because it will hurt their compensation and they don't have to service the system once it is developed. I, on the other hand, recognize that all requirements are incomplete at best, and that any problems with the system are going to lead to years of headaches if I don't fix them as soon as possible. I spend a lot of time looking for the holes in requirements and getting clarification, and also if something doesn't seem quite right, I don't ignore it and move on.

[legion]

Oh, and the third act in most massive outsourcing stories is a huge loss of marketshare and/or the business folding. When your new system is difficult to use, even if it isn't used directly by customers, it can manifest itself in a lot of problems for the customer. Orders being lost, incorrect billing, undiscovered loopholes in the system. I've seen it all.

[dhoward]

Silos.
Haven't heard that for a few years now...

[legion]

How many development methodologies have you used? I don't know for myself, but I can tell you that I have literally never followed the same methodology twice. I gave up on trying to learn the new method each time, I just do what seems right for the situation and let the "process" people bark at me for not filling out the right form.

IT seems to be one profession where the higher-ups are ALWAYS chasing the latest trend. One company had success doing X, and suddenly everyone else is doing X. Never mind that most of the time, the reason for the succes, and the reason it was attributed to, are often completely different things.

Co-location and "collaboration" is another one. Yeah, it was a pain when my development team was spread across 8 buildings, buts it's also a huge pain (and costly, thanks to the Teamsters ) to move my desk every three months. And now that my big, 10-year project is finally done, I am being mvoed to a "collaborative" environment, which makes no senses for service work.