Rise of the Corporate Skeleton Crew?

Big Stick asks: "Recently I have noticed a trend in several prominent companies in my area of laying off entire technology departments. Just this week in my own company--a division of a well known, mid-sized corporation--the software engineering department was let go en masse, rather than just a reduction in head count. The rationale for the move being that it would be easier to evaluate the potential cost of developing a new product if groups of contractors were hired, instead of the numbers getting lost in the 'free' work of the full time developers. The overall impression this leaves is that many major companies are re-prioritizing the need to innovate new technologies for the presentation of their business, relying on skeleton crews of DBAs/SAs to maintain rather than enhance. The main question this raises is, are we heading towards an era where full time software development is more likely to be housed in technology specific firms? Something along the lines of the construction industry where projects are bid on, constructed, and the involvement of the creators with the finished product is minimal?" If others of you are noticing this trend in the industry, please share your thoughts. Do you think this is a move forward or backwards?

Comments

Re:Contracting and the GPL

[smatthew]

>A full-time employee who makes $50K a year typically costs twice that when taking the cost of benefits into consideration

Not really. That "cost" above the salary is referred to as the "fringe rate". The company that I work for has the fringe rate set at 25%, which is a little low. An average fringe rate is generally 35-40%, not 100%

When you hire someone through a temp agency or contracting agency that fringe rate is built into that. If as a contractor you're being paid 25/hr, the agency is billing you out for at least 35/hr, probably more.

And yes - I do work for a HR Department.