What Jobs Are Left After Outsourcing?
Rita says : At my company they are talking about outsourcing programming to India. Being a programmer I want to know my options. What kind of jobs are most likely to be left after the operation? They offer me to compensate training. Anyone share same experiences?
Rita
Bernard says : Outsourcing is not all it is cracked up to be IMO. Here's some food for thought for your brass:
Outsourcing Projects
3CPO says : :D Thanks for the pointer Bernard.
Rita, Bernards link provides also an answer to your question, if your company dives in the offshore development (dispite the risks :rolleyes:) your options are in management and communication: project management, business analysis, requirements, test coordinator, etc.
ross_valusoft says :
Rita>At my company they are talking about outsourcing programming to India. Being a programmer I want to know my options. What kind of jobs are most likely to be left after the operation? They offer me to compensate training. Anyone share same experiences?
Rita
Sorry to hear this Rita. Unfortunately, this is a cancer in business circles, and not just for programmers. It goes this way...
Manager1 is pressed by owners and or shareholders to improve bottom line. Comes up with idea of lowering costs. Now where can we do that? Oh yeah, we have 50 geeks downstairs who sit around all day writing code and drinking Dr. Pepper. Lets get some of those Indian guys who cannot afford Dr. pepper to do the coding instead.
The word gets out and the best coders jump ship leaving behind those who are perhaps less attractive to other companies. (This is called "dumbsizing", as opposed to "downsizing"). The company awards to the low bidder (best improvement to bottom line) and all goes well for a little while until a problem occurs.
Manager1 doesn't know how to answer this technical question and hey, his best geeks have gone! The fan starts up and spreads the manure everywhere. OK, dramatic...but it does happen this way. The important point is that when they realise their mistakes, it is already too late...they have lost the people that were fundamental to their business understanding and are left with a bunch of people on the other side of the world who have just won another outsourcing job and can care less about your business (aka non-programming) problems.
This is not to say that all outsourcing is bad. It isn't. You don't write your own compilers or service your own car or whatever. But you do outsource these activities wisely. You ensure that there are enough mechanics to handle your car if the first guy does not work out ok. You would NEVER outsource a current inhouse capacity without a means of reversing the process if it proved not to be in the best interests of the company long term. One of the big problems with outsourcing is shrinkage of bidders. An example.
An organisation has an internal servicing section for their countrywide specialised equipment. After calling for tenders/bids, they decide to outsource to a national servicing group and so no longer need Fred and Barney posted on the west coast and midlands. Immediate savings! After the initial two year contract period, they call for bids for the next two year contract. The present supplier has the inside running and fearful of competition lowers their bid by a smidggen. The other bidder(s) miss out despite their sharpening of the pencil and decide to never bid again. Third time round there is only one bidder and he knows it. This is when the problem starts....prices increase, quality drops and eventually the good relations are gone. Bids are called again, but no others come in and you are left high and dry. Meanwhile Fred and Barney have gone elsewhere and will not even return your calls.
All of this can be sheeted home to bad management, not to the outsourcing activity. There is enough evidence out there now for managers to be educated. To do otherwise is criminal in my humble opinion.
What should you do? Well you could start looking elsewhere so that you get the jump on the others who haven't thought about it yet. You could also tell management that x% of your geek group have decided to leave and that the rot has already set in. Maybe they will rethink themselves...but I doubt it. Best of luck.
Ross
Unregistered says : Ross, do you work for my company? ;-) It is just exactly like you described!!!!
Bernard, thank you for the articles. I read them all and it helped me a bit.
I guess the conclusion is the company will not change its course so I will try get some education in project management, and other management positions.
Thanks you Guys. Will hang around.
Rita
ross_valusoft says :
Unregistered>Ross, do you work for my company? ;-) It is just exactly like you described!!!!
Bernard, thank you for the articles. I read them all and it helped me a bit.
I guess the conclusion is the company will not change its course so I will try get some education in project management, and other management positions.
Thanks you Guys. Will hang around.
Rita
Well Rita, I guess it is obvious that I do not work at your company...any longer
Perhaps there is a way for the staff and management to have a "discussion" about other options for improving the bottom line. Everyone has ideas about improvements, but do not mention them because they don't think the bosses would listen to them. If you do not ask, you will never know the answer.
salcorp says : Good pints...
personal experience :
my cousinīs company outsourced almost 50% of software development to another country. result = complete and utmost failure. imediate responsibles were fired, people were running around screaming, pandemonium struck the development management group. Now the only problem I see in this picture is that they outsourced too much in the first time they tried.
He called in and asked for some help so I went down there to talk about my own experience. In the first time I ever did outsourcing I only passed 5% of the entire job. And it wasnīt even critical to the completion of the project. I then could scrutinate the most of the outsourced work. I reached a level where I dove into the source code to see if it was good enough by the standards of my company.
Even though my experience with outsourcing was not traumatic I can honestly say that it has at least double if not triple the risk of failure compared to a inhouse. One of the remedies for that is limiting the outsourcing so that full control (specially of man-knowledge... eg. geeks) is still inside.
Now never more than 30% of the work here in my company is outsourced. We cut back costs because of it, but havenīt stepped on any toes and still have the dog-collar on our hand.
ross_valusoft says :
Unregistered>I guess the conclusion is the company will not change its course so I will try get some education in project management, and other management positions.
Thanks you Guys. Will hang around.
Rita
Rita,
I had a meeting with a client today and happened to mention your outsourcing situation. She told me that in her previous company their outsourcing efforts also outsourced their intellectual property; an expensive mistake because they eventually went bankrupt. Their IP had been created by their best people who left during the outsourcing. Her company then did not have the smart people to create new IP....and the outside did have it. And although they had a non-disclosure contract in place, it was almost impossible to prove that the new products from the outsource supplier had been derived from their original IP.
Very dangerous...
But to put some balance here...outsourcing works well for common services such as cleaning, car pools, some call-centres, etc. These do not generally put a company's products at risk and there is a big field of potential bidders for the outsourced work allowing genuine competition. It then takes the "necessary evil" activities outside and leaves the company to focus on their core activities.
Cygnet-Infotech says : We are in outsourcing and offshore software development for the past 5 years and we are very much a successful company!
