Reply to: Outsourcing again

[yetanotherbob]

What's wrong with senior management, thousands of UK graduates and people out of work in this country; and they've decided to hire people from India, fly them over here to the UK, pay their expenses and give £300 a day to TCS and iGate for each person my bank hires...

I hope senior management choke on their bonus.

I'm planning to get UK graduates in as trainees/interns to eventually take on the ongoing maintenance and support functions once my work is done. Trying out some strategy but it needs cooperation from clientco management...

I think its time to move on.

Or change strategy and try something new.

[ChimpMaster]

What will it take for someone high up to realise what's going on here? Should we start setting contractors on fire outside 10 Downing St?!

[DieScum]

I had an offer at Wipro in Glasgow. They offered 270 a day and I told them I'd need 400. They thanked me for my time and wished me luck in finding another role.

Tbh I find the whole working through an outsourcer bad enough as it is. Add in a company based out of India and I couldn't see it working well. All the guys who interviewed me were Scottish though.

[Scoobos]

I worked for Bob once, subcontracted to a US company - they paid me 300 per day and charged 750......

As soon as my client started mentioning he was paying "750 per day" for us, rest assured that things changed quickly.

Bribery and corruption are also being outsourced the other way !

[portseven]

£300 a day is cheap! Bob is charging my current FS client £650 a day, that's more than me!! mad

Ad they still do a tulip job and I end up having to step in and help out!

[AtW]

Make your Plan B to become Plan A - then you are in charge and it's you who will decide whether to outsauce or not.

[oracleslave]

So does that mean or then?

I think I have a semi. Could be this lech beer I tried out today though

[oracleslave]

Nice theory, but it doesn't explain where the major part of the £300/day disappears to.

I wasn't responding to your question.

However, I'd have thought it fairly obvious where the money goes. Here's a clue...it doesn't go to to the SI employee.

[Scoobos]

So does that mean or then?

[TimberWolf]

Nice theory, but it doesn't explain where the major part of the £300/day disappears to.

[oracleslave]

What gets my goat with this, is that these decisions are not made with the long term interests of the company in mind.

This is done as a cost cutting measure, in the short term, to increase short term profits and make the current MD look great , take a big bonus for the year, or two and then leave.

Once the (crap in most cases) outsourced guys start their own projects fresh, which fail and have very little quality - the new MD will take the blame as if it happened on his watch.

Do you think this has something to do with middle managers being incentivised via bonus schemes etc that focus on cost cutting rather than revenue generation and growth? Cutting costs seems to be the path of least resistance i.e. they can hit the target, get a bonus and go and repeat ad nausem elsewhere.

Middle management incentivised to cut costs as opposed to increase revenue. I think I have banged this drum before.

I've always thought this was partly due to the way people are incentivised. There are whole layers of middle manager types across the UK who are given a budget and incentivised to not exceed it, i.e. they are urged to control costs, use outsourcing etc. They do this for a couple years, hit their cost-related targets, pocket their bonus and move on. Rinse and repeat elsewhere. What we should be doing is rewarding increased turnover, opening of new markets, diversifying into new markets etc. In other words revenue generation and not cost-cutting as this only benefist the short-term view. I could be wrong though...

[TimberWolf]

I wouldn't mind if they really were on £300/day, but presumably the Indians receive peanuts and the remainder disappears down a dodgy black hole. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of tax is avoided too.

[Scoobos]

What gets my goat with this, is that these decisions are not made with the long term interests of the company in mind.

This is done as a cost cutting measure, in the short term, to increase short term profits and make the current MD look great , take a big bonus for the year, or two and then leave.

Once the (crap in most cases) outsourced guys start their own projects fresh, which fail and have very little quality - the new MD will take the blame as if it happened on his watch.

[ChimpMaster]

I agree with NoPaddle - this country is up sh1t creek and it is just going to get worse. You can try to justify your existence 'til you are blue in the face, you can tell them you are worth 10 offshore staff, you can talk about the fallacy of the economic model, you can even accept a rate cut ... but nothing will change their mind. This is because management are paid to reduce their costs and will be paid a bonus to remove all UK contractors and replace them with Bobs. The one thing I learned when my role was offshored was that there is nothing you can do to prevent it.

Now, ultimately the Bobs will not work out any cheaper; we know this and client management know this - and Bob knows this too. But the only thing that matters is the client's bonus, and so they blindly continue down this path of self-destruction. There is nothing you can do to stop this.

It still surprises me though, that they are paying Bob £300/day plus expenses - which must include travel, accomodation and food as per usual consultancy agreements, so probably ~£400 all in. Given the offshore/outsourcing problems of poor communication, poor quality, delayed work and re-work needed, is the relatively minor saving really worth it? Is there any saving? Of course not, but that won't change uneducated minds from making stupid decisions. There is nothing you can do to change this.

Unfortunately all you can do is move on, as quickly as possible. Professionally, yes sure stay and handover, but start looking immediately and move on soon as you get the next role - don't hang about to train Bob and Co because that is in your client's and Bob's interest and not your company's. They obviously don't care about you, so do the one thing you can do: look after yourself and your family first.

[cojak]

Move on to the next wave while it's still a ripple.