IT workers hit hardest by offshore outsourcing, survey finds

[OhioChick]

Jobs most at risk for offshore outsourcing are computer programming, development

August 28, 2008 (Computerworld) As many as 8% of IT workers have been displaced by offshore outsourcing, either through job loss or an involuntary transfer to a new job by their employer, which is twice the rate of workers in other occupations, according to a study based on data collected from some 10,000 people, which may be the largest survey of its kind.

The survey, conducted by researchers at the New York University Stern School of Business and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, also backs up the long-standing view that IT employees in purely technical jobs -- computer programmers and software developers who have little customer interaction -- are at the most risk from offshore outsourcing.

The broad conclusions are unlikely to surprise many high-tech workers, but what may make this offshore outsourcing study unique is its breadth: some 6,700 workers across a variety of occupations and more than 3,000 hiring managers and human resources professionals were surveyed.

There has been a dearth of data about the impact of offshore outsourcing on U.S. workers, and its authors, Prasanna Tambe of the Stern School and Lorin Hitt of Wharton, said their work is the first to pin down offshore outsourcing's impact by occupation.

The job site Careerbuilder.com funded the research, which looked at a spectrum of occupations, including technology, and published initial data from the survey in April. But the 44-page paper, posted this week on the Social Science Research Network (registration required) analyzes what the data is saying about the fate of high-tech workers who have been directly affected by offshore outsourcing.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9113755&intsrc=hm_list

No shit....They needed a "study" to confirm this?? I don't buy the 8% figure, either. It's much, much higher. :eyes:

[populistdriven]

1. salaries have also been shredded as a result

[ihavenobias]

2. K & R (Greatest)

[ChromeFoundry]

3. Good find...K&R!

[FatDave]

4. I don't buy the 8% either.

Every IT person I know has been fighting to keep their jobs since about 2003. Most have taken lower salaries to stay employed, myself included.

[OhioChick]

5. I've taken many, many

Pay-cuts just to keep my job. Just recently, I was informed that the company was no longer paying for my health care to boot. Bunch of greedy bastards.

[alittlelark]

6. I talked to one yesterday questioning NM purchases.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I was questioned. I live in CA and had $4,600 charged in NM. We are building a greenhouse on our property there. It was for the materials our contractor needed.


It took 3-5x the amt of time it should have due to the 'language barrier'.

[AdHocSolver]

7. The reason that IT work is readily outsourced is that the managers who oversee this work...

are in most cases severely technically challenged.

In twenty-plus years in the computer field, I can think of only two instances where the managers actually were knowledgeable and competent about computer systems.

In most cases, the managers were essentially bean counters who made decisions through ignorance. One manager's favorite phrase to the programmers was, "You can stop right there! I don't understand what you are talking about." Another manager rated programmers on the basis of how fast they could type. That is, as far as he was concerned, the best programmers were the fastest typists.

Even when I worked in engineering environments, the managers seldom had any idea about computers or software. This state of affairs was evident in my struggling to fix problems with some seriously bad software, problems that should have been fixed long before.

My point is that most of the managers I worked for wouldn't know good software from bad or good programmers from bad. They spend their time making spread sheets, and, in their opinion, all programmers are the same. So the "best" programmers are the ones who will work the longest hours for the least pay and will never bother the managers about any problems with the software.

One company I worked at was setting up a factory in China and had brought Chinese engineers to the U.S. to train them. I was forced to work with one of them on a project. This guy was not only incompetent, but he was an obnoxious jerk as well. He was really not up to the job, but he must have hypnotized the managers because they were quite willing to excuse the fact that he never really accomplished anything useful.

Before the Chinese guy came here, I was working with an American engineer who was very competent and a nice guy as well. We were making good progress until the managers made the switch and the project mostly fell apart. I tried to explain what was happening and pointed out that I had made good progress with the first guy, but I have no doubt that the only consideration for them was that they were paying me more than the Chinese guy.

I got to thinking that the Chinese are really very clever. They keep their best engineers in China and send their mediocre engineers to the U.S. to work for the Americans. Not only does this give a competitive advantage to the Chinese, but this reduces their unemployment figures at the same time. The American companies lose in two ways, but the American managers are too dumb to see it.

[ChromeFoundry]

8. This holds true for all levels of management

I have had very similar experiences as you. The biggest fault I seen in failing projects is the lack of talent found in the area of project management. I have been in this field for over 20 years, 10 of which have been in the consulting arena. Every project that has gone over budget and over the timeline has been due to the shortcoming of skills in the sale of the project and the management of the project.

Typically the failing in the execution of the sale are that the statement of work is poorly defined and open for vast interpretation. This causes the client to expect more than what is feasible in the under-bid timeframe. Sales (or what they like to glorify themselves with snappy titles, such as Business Development Managers) work on commission and will sell anything to anyone and make promises that cannot be delivered.

Most of the Project Managers are nothing more than people that try to prove their value each day by making up elaborate spreadsheets and ghantt charts. The are supposed to determine timelines and assure client requirements are met as milestones are completed. 90% of the PMs are clueless when it comes to technology. They become the obstacle in completing projects. They constantly query the project's lead technical resources to provide technical documentation related to the projects poorly defined scope, so that they can look somewhat competent in the next client meeting. When the client has more questions in that meeting, they tap the architects again to provide more documentation to answer the clients questions. When the client decides that new features need to be added to the scope after the module has already reached the quality assurance phase, they guess at a the timeline of the change-order and under bid on the resources that will be required to allow for the change. The don't even think about an additional QA phase.

Why do projects fail? Because the managing individuals involved cannot define what the project is supposed to include in the scope. They do not understand the technology so they cannot determine accurate timelines and resource management. The cannot write/understand requirements documents, so when change orders are added, they do not understand what will need to be changed to accommodate the required new functionality. They usually leave the timeline fixed because the initial statement of work has already defined a production ready date.

At the end of the day.. the architects , senior developers, and the rest of the technical team are blamed for failures to meet the project's goals and timelines. Upper management believes the BD and PM managers because they don't understand the technologies either. When the C-level management looks to reduce costs, they RIF, replace, insource or outsource the group that they understand the least... the technical staff.

IMO- forcing a senior level architect to be present on all sales meetings, and removing the project management level all together would solve a lot of the problems.