How severe is the IT Outsourcing risk??

[Z064life]

Hi,

I am a .NET Developer (with strong experience in AD, DNS, Hyper-V, Sharepoint, etc).

A family member also works in IT, in PM, and used to be a dev/dba 20 yrs ago (so experienced on paper etc).


Now I always hear about IT being outsourced and being a major risk.


Question is, just how severe the risk? I find plenty of jobs available. Should I be worried? If so, how can I outsource-proof myself (the above skills - sys admin from dev - does help) and aren't other industries like accounting, which are equally office-based jobs, getting outsourced?

Also, what reply can I give to negate the argument of outsourcing (and a very credible one)?

Thanks

[Olivera]

IT outsourcing to the far east (e.g. India/China) has been going on for at least the last 10 years, so it's nothing new. More recently outsourcing to alternative locations such as eastern Europe is increasing. An additional trend is the rather controversial practice of intra-company transfer to the UK which compounds the outsourcing problem.

However I don't yet see these problems as insurmountable for UK IT workers. In my experience if you are proficient in the right skills then you will still find work. The quality of outsourced work which I've seen is also generally poor. Finally workers in India and China have a high turnover rate and inflation (including wage inflation) in these locations is several multiples of that in the UK, so the cost savings of outsourcing to these locations is continually being eroded.

[Webber3]

It's not as big a risk as some people think. I remember worrying about this over 10 years ago when the Internet really got going. Support work and whole development projects were being outsourced to other countries.

Fast forward 10 years and we still have an IT industry in the UK. I'm sure it has had an impact, but not as much as first thought.

[CobolMan]

We got outsourced 7 years ago which was swiftly followed by most contractors getting the heave-ho and being 'replaced' by a team in the far East. 18 months ago, the remaining UK staff were insourced, make of that what you will. Let's just say that when it all hits the fan, the business don't turn to the outsourced guys offshore to sort it out!
As others have said, they do have a very high turnover of staff so no real knowledge is ever built up and that is reflected in the quality of the work that is produced. It's not even as if it's actually saving the company money because a) many of the people I deal with offshore are charged out at higher man-date rates than me and b) I spend too much of my time correcting the boneheaded mistakes they make.
Not a fan personally, yet another management consultancy con.

[cornet]

I wouldn't worry about it. There are plenty of companies around for whom outsourcing plain doesn't work.
There are also alot that have outsourced and brought back in house.

I would never outsource anything that is business critical if at all possible. The long term pain far exceeds the short term benefits in my experience.


If you are good at your job then I don't believe you have anything to worry about.

[Crafty_]

Any office based job can be outsourced pretty much, IT is no different.

My experiences match the above - outsourced stuff is generally low quality. When it comes back (invariably near a deadline) and doesn't work someone has to sort it out.. guess who.

I had to go through a lot of security clearance to get my job, although I currently only work on commercial products we do quite a bit of military stuff. If I wasn't cleared I wouldn't even be able to walk around our office unaccompanied. Outsourcing that kind of stuff to the East is near impossible because of security headaches.

The best thing to do is keep up your skills with the in vogue stuff - I can see async stuff getting popular when .net 5 gets a full release. Even if you haven't used them read blogs/articles or go to user group events and get an understanding of them. If the worst does happen at least you'll be attractive to a new employer.