Bobation

[mos]

The trouble is that it's hard to explain to a CTO that 50 useless bobs do not = one team of three very good onshore staff...

Well .. I am pretty sure that psychopathic CTOs prefer to have an army of mindless zombies on the "production line" designed by the madman (err.. himself).
Who needs employees who thinks for themselves and have an opinion ?

[jmo21]

I'm convinced that most of these outsourcing deals are based on similar scenarios: "How can I get the biggest bonus this year? Next year is irrelevant!"

Totally agree.

[mos]

A couple of years ago I did a piece of consultancy on in-sourcing an IT department that had been outsourced three years before. The COO had realised that his bills for the IT function were substantially higher than when the company had their own IT dept, service levels were down and complaints were persistently hitting his desk. I did the analysis of the project function to see if we could get the PMO back in-house then the ongoing projects.

The whole consultancy piece of work was cancelled when the outsourcing company pointed out that the client had sold their entire IT estate to them in return for a free year of service with no buy-back clause. That included all datacentres, office servers, desktop equipment, software licenses, etc. The outsourcing company, quite bluntly, refused to sell it back. A quick round-table discussion followed by some snap quotes from suppliers gave the rebuild costs as so high that it just wasn't worth the effort, licensing was the most expensive part of the lot.

The old CIO left a year and a bit into the outsourcing deal having apparently been well rewarded for saving an 8 figure sum in the first year. He made himself redundant in the second year with a (gossip-sourced) massive payout. The problems started coming in the latter part of that second year. I'm convinced that most of these outsourcing deals are based on similar scenarios: "How can I get the biggest bonus this year? Next year is irrelevant!"

That's shocking. Was that TCS ?

[craig1]

That's shocking. Was that TCS ?

Can't say. Strict confidentiality clause. That said, I'm fairly sure someone on this board must have been there and recognise the scenario!

[mos]

Can't say. Strict confidentiality clause. That said, I'm fairly sure someone on this board must have been there and recognise the scenario!

I regret that I asked.

[escapeUK]

Well .. I am pretty sure that psychopathic CTOs prefer to have an army of mindless zombies on the "production line" designed by the madman (err.. himself).
Who needs employees who thinks for themselves and have an opinion ?

Just let them, they'll soon be gone the way of HMV. Talking of which, I was looking for a bargain and noticed how all the staff had loads of tattoos and piercings, and I was thinking where on earth are you going to work next now that the council isnt recruiting.

[IR35FanClub]

Have there been any decent insiders stories/exposes on the whole farce of outsourcing/offshoring of IT ? Or is it just too hard to explain it all in laymans terms.

The only defence I can think of is that some big Co IT departments were in such a mess to start with that you might as well palm it off and try and make it a cheaper mess.

My current company seemed to have it sussed to some extent, they have signed an offshoring deal before sacking everyone and are trialing things. All but the most menial tasks have been a disaster and things are being drawn back in house. Not sure if common sense will prevail but it is at the moment.

Yep our indian based outsourced helpdesk is so bad i wont call them anymore, they cant understand me and i cant understand them. Yesterday i submitted an email that said... "Please can you give me access to the xxxxxxx.world oracle support database using user xxxyy123 as a clone id". I got an email back that said, and i quote, "please can confirm if you need to the support databases or an new oracle id.". Was my request not clear, and what does this question mean?

After "clarifying" what i wanted, i got told to use the self service catalgue, which appear to have been built by an infinite number of monkeys using an infinite number of typewriters and is basically a blacjk hole that acts as a delay tactic for not having to do work.

QED.

The best was listening to my line manager day chasing a new user id for someone who started 20 days ago. He was patient, but I could tell he wanted to let rip.