Reply to: Bobation

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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 ?

[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]

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 ?

[craig1]

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!"

[The Spartan]

Cripple your systems, lose business, p*ss off your customers and receive lots of complaints seems a great tagline for off shoring lol

[mos]

Where I used to work we project managed Bob programmers and got it in the neck if it went wrong.Within a year we were all sacked and now they run the development in the company.

I also suspect that what we get from Bobs is as much incompetence as it is sabotage and back stabbing.

[original PM]

in my experience the only benefit of offshoring is a percieved reduction in up front costs.

normaly done by CIO's whose sole interest is hitting a budget line and getting a bonus.

in my view nowadays (especially given the UK economy) anybody who suggests offshoring should be sacked for being a complete fu<kwit.

[TestMangler]

Well that is bleedin' obvious, you f**kin racist b**tard.

Not true. I hate every nationality (including my own), equally.

[MyUserName]

The particular client to which the OP refers has been outsourcing heavily for a few years and things in IT depts generally have got worse over time. The general motivation for it appears to be dogmatic rather than results or performance driven. As you state, even menial tasks in the testing area, which were previously so simple, you paid them little attention, have become major headaches. Stuff like restoring databases, mining data, putting builds into environments are a bloody disaster area and as more and more goes offshore, the worse it gets.

Of course, there are still twats on this forum who will call you a 'f**kin racist bastard' for verbally articulating the bleedin' obvious.

Well that is bleedin' obvious, you f**kin racist b**tard.

[bobspud]

The particular client to which the OP refers has been outsourcing heavily for a few years and things in IT depts generally have got worse over time. The general motivation for it appears to be dogmatic rather than results or performance driven. As you state, even menial tasks in the testing area, which were previously so simple, you paid them little attention, have become major headaches. Stuff like restoring databases, mining data, putting builds into environments are a bloody disaster area and as more and more goes offshore, the worse it gets.

Of course, there are still twats on this forum who will call you a 'f**kin racist bastard' for verbally articulating the bleedin' obvious.

This ^

[MyUserName]

Where I used to work we project managed Bob programmers and got it in the neck if it went wrong.

A colleague wanted a technical document from them, on Friday he emailed them the broad spec and asked for the technical brief by the next Friday. These were detailed and went as deep as function names, data types and you were expected to code to these exact specs and had to exlain why not if you changed so much as a variable name. Normally they were at least 20 pages.

On the Thursday my colleague checks with them - yep it will be submitted tomorrow.
The next day, nothing - they admit it is not finished. On the Monday he gets the document. 3 pages which are a cover page, a copy and past of the email he sent them and an outline of what some code does - which is not relevant to the new functionality.

I thought his head was going to burst.

Within a year we were all sacked and now they run the development in the company.