Labor group: Microsoft offshoring work on Longhorn

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There is a bigger problem

Your right, there is the pressure from stock holders and the need to increase profit margins. But in the IT world, there is a much bigger problem afoot. The reason for a separation of management and ownership of a company is because with this separation, you can have management that focuses on long term growth of a company, rather then short term profits.

Outsourcing is a short term fix. Entry level jobs are eliminating when you choose such an option. A job that will gain an American IT worker an income of money that he/she can throw back into the economy and government. This job with also gain that worker the expierence they need to advance in their IT career. However now your eliminating most of those positions. Its harder and harder for a passionate IT person to find a job once entering the labor market, as all of the positions open require expierence of some sort. So you create a shortage. Well today's expierenced IT staff aren't going to be around forever. They will retire. Who will fill their shoes when they are gone? Who will have intricate knowledge of the systems once they leave? You can't offshore their jobs too. You have no one in house to step up and ensure the companies survival. A HUGE personalized knowledge shortage is created. Now you have a much larger problem on hand. You think there is documentation for these systems? I'd say about 50% of system knowledge is located right in the employees head. The intracacies, processes, batches, and the way the systems integrate are knowledge that lays directly in an employees head. And now there is no one there with expierence on the system to lead the charge. It goes into chaos. In house IT is needed. You need to be continually training new hires and relatively new employees to a companies IT positions to get that expierence and knowledge, so they are ready to take over once the torch gets passed. Right now IT departments all over are getting pressured to break that chain and interrupt it with outsourcing and offshoring. The industry needs to contend with this issue, and realize that offshore has its places, but its IT departments should never become dependent upon it

And this is all besides the fact that offshoring produces lazy standard uninventive code. It will eventually freeze the technology growth process. But as long as shareholders and upper management only care about the bottom line.... for the short term...

Posted by: johnnyu   Posted on: 07/29/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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