Originally posted by northernladuk
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NLUK makes a good point about the difficulty of predicting what the contracting market will be in 5 years. The IT Leadership Team in my last three roles has been looking at their 'IT Operating Model' in other words asking 'what can we get away with outsourcing.' From my experience it seems that roles that are strategic, commercial or customer/business facing are most likely to be retained in house. Almost everything else is potentially up for grabs but in reality going too far outsourced may bring a higher level of risk so every IT organisation has to try and find a suitable balance.
I usually work in an internal IT relationship management type role, sometimes akin to being a 'mini-CIO' for a business division. My Lead BA is my right hand man along with an Enterprise/Solution Architect. I would dread the day that BAs, for example, were predominately outsourced. Having said that, some of the long term on shore guys at my last place had business knowledge as good as or better than some permies.
Based on my thoughts above I believe it's unlikely my type of role will disappear to some bloke in India in the next few years. However I'm not naive enough to think it may never happen. To that end I'm doing what is often recommended here - constantly trying to improve my skills, experience and marketability.
I'm only in my first contract but it's in an industry I've never worked in before and I am responsible for 15 countries in Europe, again a step up from the scope of what I've done before so my CV looks better for my next potential contract.
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