More underhand tactics by an Indian Firm

[original PM]

I think the root cause of the problem is that IT professionals are not seen as true 'Profesionals' when compared to say Finance or Law professionals. (e.g. accountants and lawyers!)

And so in the constant drive for reduced costs it becomes easy to outsource to the lowest bidder because the true value of the service provided by true IT profesionals was never really understood.

So the Indian (or other offshore firm) firm comes in and offer 'IT Professionals' which are cheap.

And so you pay peanuts, get monkeys and tulip code.... which then only goes to re-affirm the belief that 'IT Profesionals' are rubbish.

Fooked one way or the other I say.

[vetran]

I was rather hoping the other professions would start to go like finance & customer support. Then businesses would realise.

but of course they did start then the CFO's realised the writing was on the wall and held back.

[yetanotherbob]

Why blame the Indian firms, they're only trying to get business.

Because the Indian firm violated the terms of the business visas?

[craig1]

I just find it all very sad that the UK IT industry is dying on its feet and nobody seems to care.

Dying? Dead but just doesn't know it yet is probably more accurate.

An example, a good friend of mine is a CIO at a FTSE250 company, they haven't taken on a graduate or inexperienced worker in IT since 2008, his reason is that there's such a glut of very experienced people on the market who'll work for low wages that there's just no economic sense in hiring someone with future potential but no current skills when he can get someone experienced for the same money. He also outsourced his IT Support as a "commodity resource" but forgetting that that's how he got his real break in IT when someone gave a young IT Helldesk operator a secondment chance at a technical job. He got quite snippy when I accused him of pulling up the ladder behind himself.

Edit: Hit send too early! So, where are the next generation of IT people going to come from then?

[DodgyAgent]

I think the root cause of the problem is that IT professionals are not seen as true 'Profesionals' when compared to say Finance or Law professionals. (e.g. accountants and lawyers!)

And so in the constant drive for reduced costs it becomes easy to outsource to the lowest bidder because the true value of the service provided by true IT profesionals was never really understood.

So the Indian (or other offshore firm) firm comes in and offer 'IT Professionals' which are cheap.

And so you pay peanuts, get monkeys and tulip code.... which then only goes to re-affirm the belief that 'IT Profesionals' are rubbish.

Fooked one way or the other I say.

The risks associated with getting law or accountancy wrong are serious.- Health also. Not so with IT systems. It is not the end of the world if someone is sold a "poor quality" IT system. In fact in many cases low quality is all that is required. Furthermore "quality" of IT systems is an entirely subjective concept.

[woohoo]

The risks associated with getting law or accountancy wrong are serious.- Health also. Not so with IT systems. It is not the end of the world if someone is sold a "poor quality" IT system. In fact in many cases low quality is all that is required. Furthermore "quality" of IT systems is an entirely subjective concept.

I'm missing the point here. Having had poor advice from a solicitor and an accountant, I could also say that the "quality" of this advice is subjective. I also understand the risk of implementing a bad IT system can be serious.

[darmstadt]

The risks associated with getting law or accountancy wrong are serious.- Health also. Not so with IT systems. It is not the end of the world if someone is sold a "poor quality" IT system. In fact in many cases low quality is all that is required. Furthermore "quality" of IT systems is an entirely subjective concept.

Shall I just hit this big red 'Emergency Power Off' on the wall in the Stock Exchange's computer room? Or one in many other mission critical computer rooms? Maybe that program I was writing to analyse a person's critical health symptoms should have a few random variables thrown in= IT is now so tied up in everything that getting it wrong can be serious, very serious (I've seen first hand how serious...)

[vetran]

The risks associated with getting law or accountancy wrong are serious.- Health also. Not so with IT systems. It is not the end of the world if someone is sold a "poor quality" IT system. In fact in many cases low quality is all that is required. Furthermore "quality" of IT systems is an entirely subjective concept.

so how do the big 5 accountancy firms manage it?

Arthur's used to employ 1st year graduates at minimum wage and pimped out at up to £1000 a day.

Infosys, TCS etc are big enough to do the same thing and just employ a couple of top notch accountancy people per 100 bobs.

For goodness sake its just book keeping most of the time.

[craig1]

The risks associated with getting law or accountancy wrong are serious.- Health also. Not so with IT systems. It is not the end of the world if someone is sold a "poor quality" IT system. In fact in many cases low quality is all that is required. Furthermore "quality" of IT systems is an entirely subjective concept.

Nope, don't get it. If I write a legal opinion that's wrong then I'm covered by indemnity insurance usually meaning that in all bar the very worst of gross negligence that there's no net loss to either the lawyer or client. Same with accountancy, in all bar the worst gross negligence or fraud most financial mess-ups can be rectified by a correction to accounts or a note in next year's accounts. Health is different and far, far more serious than anything in a corporate field.

By comparison, a poorly trained datacentre tech can knock out a patch cable and take down an entire datacentre for hours while people work out what's gone wrong before realising that the tech has plugged the thing back in the wrong place. There's far more scope for an IT worker to cause massive damage to a company than almost any other support trade.

[Gibbon]

The risks associated with getting law or accountancy wrong are serious.- Health also. Not so with IT systems. It is not the end of the world if someone is sold a "poor quality" IT system. In fact in many cases low quality is all that is required. Furthermore "quality" of IT systems is an entirely subjective concept.

Ponder on that next time you board a plane.