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CIO Magazine On Offshore IT
lpq wrote to us with a reference to the cover article from this month's CIO Magazine that talks about the off-shore movement of IT from its traditional bulwarks to the developing world. A selection from the article:"
Think again. There are real costs associated with shipping your IT department (or a portion of it) overseas. Our Special Report covers the Backlash from a growing political storm as well as the Hidden Costs you should be aware of before you join the stampede overseas. "
Sad that people who spend years on an MBA degree that presumably includes a course on Spotting The Obvious 101 can't, well, spot the obvious.
I've always found that when things are outsourced (or moved offshore) is that the dialog between the users and the devlopers/support etc breaks down. The idea of IT is to help the company function and for that a good dialog is needed during development etc.
There is nothing to compensate for talking round the water cooler and say "Whilst I think of it...". I hoenstly believe that the development costs might be lower but overall it will cost more on the bottom line
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
..that they will be increasing their Indian workforce. They did it with quite a play on words too.
With the success of this initial stage and with our need for resources continuing to grow, we will be resourcing to grow this team substantially in the coming weeks.
While we are directly recruiting in India now, we would also welcome your recommendations of suitable external applicants that you may be aware of as potential permanent employees in Bangalore.
Applicants should have 3-5 years experience in billing system deployment with perl, SQL, Oracle and Unix skills. Willingness to travel internationally and to be based and paid in India is a requirement.
Here's what bugs me about my company specifically, and the trend of moving work to India generally:
1. My company is trying to do this covertly, like we wouldn't notice more and more layoffs in our offices in North America and Europe while at the same time increased staffing in India and a requirement that those Indian workers must be willing to travel internationally.
If you are going to farm your workers out to India , at least be honest about it and admit what you are doing, all in the name of a temporary increase to share price....which leads me to point two:
2. If your company will go bankrupt unless you move your workforce to India, then fine. But if you are going there to save a few bucks and make the share price jump 1/4 point, then fuck you. I get billed out at around $300 US per hour, of which I see less than $30 US. Isn't that enough of a profit margin? Maybe we should bring back slavery so that they can make that margin jump to a full 100% of the $300!
I don't hold anything against India workers, but I truly hate any corporation that farms work to India (and other cheap countries) all for the sake of a quick buck.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
At least on a per case basis, if not on the whole.
Our staffing company, in all its brilliance, hired an Indian systems manager to run one of our overseas offices. they saved about $1000 per month in salary. Well, due to his one week of wrecking half the systems, that $1000 they save per month will necessitate his working at least 6 months just to pay for the phone bill.
You see, he crashed the e-mail server, basically irreparably. Needs to be redone from scratch, and he, of course, has not the first clue of how to do this. So who does he call past mignight to unfuck his system? Me! The only American sysadmin at the company.
While e-mail is down, the workers turn to fax/phone for communication, so our long distance and cell phone bills are now skyrocketing, just because of this twat. I wrote a nasty-gram to HQ about how whatever money they thought they were saving has just evaporated.
Going overseas is not always the answer. There is some superb, home-grown talent that even makes economic sense to employ, when all factors are taken into account.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
I'm not saying yes or no -but- remember that tariffs are very effective on physical goods since those goods all go through customs on their way in/out. That's arguably not so easy with "work units" and it's very easy to spot loopholes to exploit any system they try to put in place. If you have an offshore subsidiary farming out the work, then where's the tariff going to be collected? Since there's no effective way of measuring a "work unit" there's no effective way of running it through the customs system.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
I assume this is a troll, but I'll bite - too much money??? Are you insane? This ain't 1999, bub. Bus drivers, bartenders, and Cable Installers make more than we do. Crane operators on construction sites can make 100k/yr. The guys climbing the poles for Verizon make over 75k/yr, at least according to their recent ad campaign. IT salaries, on the other hand, have fallen to 30s-40s/yr, maybe 50k if you are a manager. Thats assuming you can find an IT job at all
First, how interesting how loudly programmers cry now when during the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs they said nothing.
Second, if companies can send jobs overseas, and move their capital around whither they will, so too should workers be able to chase the jobs. I'm sure many folks here would be more than happy to code while sitting on a beach in Goa.
Third, with video conferencing a CIO/CFO/CEO could really be anywhere in the world. So why not hire an Indian CEO with a degree from Stanford for $50K? Think of the millions the company would save! Hey, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The agenda isn't hidden. We would like to keep our fucking jobs, or for those of us just out of college, we would like jobs to begin with. Selfish? Perhaps. Hidden? No.
see, what your thinking of is a type of socialism. so don't be talking about it to loudly.
Fortunately I live in a free country so I don't have to whisper my non-mainstream thoughts. I feel sorry for you poor Americans.
Ok I'm being deliberately provocative, but you raise an interesting point. I have a friend that grew up in the USA until his early twenties, then came to Europe, then decided to spend some more time in the USA in his early thirties. He returned to his old community where he still had many friends he grew up with. He said he was amazed by the fact that he was completely rejected by many former friends just because he had some non-mainstream views. Nothing very controversial either, at least not here in Europe - Bush is corrupt, Americas foreign policy these days is much worse than it used to be, stuff like that. He said that people he grew up with would completely stonewall him and reject him just because of his opinions. Now, I don't know what you might think of this, perhaps in America this type of behaviour might be "normal" or accepted. But pretty much anywhere I've been in Europe people don't reject you just because of your opinions. The fact that you have said I shouldn't "be talking about it too loudly" because I have mentioned something that might be considered socialist makes me understand what a hard time my friend must have had returning to the USA. He only lasted four months before returning to Europe.
How? First, please visit the web site that explains "H-1B Myths". Professor Matloff, who teaches computer science at a top-notch university, has campaigned tirelessly to terminate the H-1B program.
Anyhow, we have only 2 choices.
The second choice is best and will result in the long-term gain of jobs for Americans. The United States of America (USA) is a big market, and companies will set up shop in the USA once their share of the market reaches a certain critical size. As well, domestic content laws facilitate this trend. Toyota and Honda are excellent examples; they have built huge manufacturing and design facilities in the USA.
Further, by terminating H-1B employment, you ensure that American jobs stay with Americans.
The second choice also directly deals with the strongest bogus argument by unethical American companies like Intel and possibly Google. Even when Silicon Valley has 8% unemployment, they insist that cannot find American workers for critical jobs and that they must hire H-1Bs. We in the Slashdot community should say, "Fine. Go set up shop overseas. There is plenty of labor there."
This is truly IT, what it's all about.
(mod parent up).
When I was employed at "VeryLargeSoftware Corp", (who incidentally, has an office in Pune), I saw engineers who were denied new hardware, essential for fulfilling the needs of engineering a product to run on the same equipment our customers were running on. For budgetary reasons.
Our company engineered many products, because we were a result of many mergers and buyouts over the years, with satellite offices all over the country. But the sales team really focussed on our top-selling product. They could not be made or enticed to actively sell the other products. As a result, the other products, regardless of technical merit, whithered and died, and the satellite offices were closed down one by one, putting engineers out of work. The sales guys didn't care, because their offices were at our HQ.
So While the sales guys were, essentially not doing their job - they refused to do their job, and our officers refused to force them, and while our engineers were being constrained by opressive and crippling budgetary restrictions, the sales and marketing groups were rewarded with offsite meetings at posh resorts, junkets (one of which was a company-paid trip to South Africa, including a safari trip, resort stay, and an engraved commemorative gold watch - as a reward for what ultimately turned out to be a year of lackluster sales).
Freinds who had been laid off and got jobs at other software companies, had reported similar situations.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
" Yeah, because all IT folks are the same people, with the same job and the same opinion..."
Humm so looks like slashdotters don't have any problems lumping all the businessmen into one group but gets offended if they are lumped into one group...
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
This article talks about the about the kind of folks who are working in Offshore IT :
Dilbert pokes fun at IIT grads
Contents:
Jokes apart, the ongoing backlash in the US against job losses to Indian techies has found a place even in the famous cartoon strip Dilbert, the latest of which (September 15, 2003) goes on to take a dig at IIT grads from India.
Asok, the brilliant but naive Indian trainee, the cynical Wally and the ever-sceptical Alice are sitting in the boardroom with the pointy-haired Boss. Asok says that though he was the project manager, nobody replied to his e-mail.
However, he is proud of the fact that he is an IIT graduate and considers himself superior to his counterparts and thus had been able to finish the project himself. When Wally asks him, "Are you tired?", he replies: "I am trained to only sleep during National Holidays".
And this spoof shows up the threat of Indian takeover in global arena specially in the field of technology. It also show up the Indian techie - the IITian - as he is perceived by his colleagues: a work maniac who has inhuman abilities to slog and thus outpace his American counterparts.
India's IITs have, of course, been the subject of admiration - now bordering on envy - in corporate America for more than five years now. A 1998 BusinessWeek article on India's whiz kids has this to say for IITians: "The rise of IITians, as they are known, is a telling example of how global capitalism works today. The best companies draw on the best brains from around the world, and the result is a global class of worker: the highly educated, intensely ambitious college grad who seeks out a challenging career, even if it is thousands of miles from home. By rising to the top of Corporate America, these alumni lead all other Asians in their ability to reach the upper echelons of world-class companies."
A researcher at UC Berkeley estimated that fully 20 per cent of start-ups in Silicon Valley are IITian-owned. Amazon.com CEO and founder Jeff Bezos has described the Indian IITian as a "world treasure." Bill Gates says the computer industry has benefited greatly from them.
Besides graduates of the prestigious IITs, where the quality of technical training is comparable to the best of the educational institutes in the world, India has a growing bank of 4.1 million technical workers, supplied by over 1,800 educational institutions and polytechnics. These train more than 67,785 computer software professionals every year - many of whom are a threat to America's homegrown computer jocks in the competition for jobs.
With the recent swell in outsourcing key software development jobs to India - coming on top of the BPO migration - a mixture of awe and resentment about India's brainpower is beginnning to develop. The American media have so far been mostly kind to IITs and IITians. CBS 60 Minutes had a very flattering portrayal of IITs recently. In fact, a co-anchor on CBS 60 Minutes had gone on to describe IIT Bombay thus: "Put Harvard, MIT and Princeton together, and you begin to get an idea of the status of this school in India."
But as usual, cartoonist Scott Adams - who draws and writes the Dilbert strip six days a week, is probably ahead of the pack in anticipating media and public opinion about IIT grads.
Here's the:
Dilbert strip